Frost Opener

[Griptard 0]

Is there a specific opening rotation to Frost? I've been looking into frost builds and kind of seems like people are just playing procs etc?

Could someone give me their opening rotation to a boss fight so I can compare to what I am doing?

Thanks.

[demonardvark 556]

9 hours ago, Griptard said:

Is there a specific opening rotation to Frost? I've been looking into frost builds and kind of seems like people are just playing procs etc?

Could someone give me their opening rotation to a boss fight so I can compare to what I am doing?

Thanks.

It depends on what you are doing. This is just my personal opener, take with grain of salt. This is assuming I have to do a bit of running to get to boss.

Pre Pot

Hard Cast Howling blast

Pillar of Frost

Glacial Advance

Obliterate

Obliterate

(assuming I have now 5 stacks of razorice) Fury of sindragosa

Rime howling blast or frost strike spam

if previous attack was rime howling blast, frost strike spam now

So, this gets my diseases ticking, burns a lot of runes for FP to begin proccing, fires off sindragosa at the time she'll do most damage, sets me up with enough RP to FS spam to get my icy talons stacks up, basically sets me up for battle :)

[Griptard 0]

This make sense. I was using Glacial Advance later for some reason... Are you using a lot of haste with frost right now?

[demonardvark 556]

10 hours ago, Griptard said:

This make sense. I was using Glacial Advance later for some reason... Are you using a lot of haste with frost right now?

I sit at about 20%. It gives me enough rune flow but also keeps me low enough to keep high uptime on FP. Now, I run OBRA so I have the extra passive rp for FS usage in down time, which usually procs another rune. So because of the resource loop frost has, 20 is more than enough for me personally, and I don't feel like investing into the 2nd break point, one extra obliterate isn't worth it to me.

[Dreadshyn 0]

hey Demon - got a question for you. In your opener when do you proc Remorseless winter ? and then is it simply just pop it when its ready to go and add into rotation?

thanks

[demonardvark 556]

23 minutes ago, Dreadshyn said:

hey Demon - got a question for you. In your opener when do you proc Remorseless winter ? and then is it simply just pop it when its ready to go and add into rotation?

thanks

That depends completely on if you have the legendary helm. if you don't have it then you don't use remorseless winter in single target. For Aoe without, I pop it when I get close to the adds, so if im far away i'll cast GA first, if im closer i'll pop RW.

Now with legendary helm, I wait until I get a rime proc and cast RW before rime howling blast, this is done after all my IT stacks are up, and I won't lose my FP uptime. For AOE with helm, same deal, pop RW when i get close to adds to hit em. 

[mgibbonsjr 2]

9 hours ago, demonardvark said:

That depends completely on if you have the legendary helm. if you don't have it then you don't use remorseless winter in single target.

Is this always true? I went through some of the top US DK logs for Heroic Nythendra and saw that RW is used between 4 - 9 times on that fight. Is there ever a time to use RW in a ST rotation without the helm? None of the logs I looked at had the helm. I looked at the first 4 people on the logs below. 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/10#boss=1853&difficulty=4&region=1&class=DeathKnight&spec=Frost

[demonardvark 556]

3 hours ago, mgibbonsjr said:

Is this always true? I went through some of the top US DK logs for Heroic Nythendra and saw that RW is used between 4 - 9 times on that fight. Is there ever a time to use RW in a ST rotation without the helm? None of the logs I looked at had the helm. I looked at the first 4 people on the logs below. 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/10#boss=1853&difficulty=4&region=1&class=DeathKnight&spec=Frost

no not always true. big factors that come into play are stats, artifact progression, and rotation. Frozen soul adds value to remorseless winter however, its one of the later traits you'll get and likely the last golden talent. From there part of it comes to rotational situation, the one rune for RW is better used for GA or food for obliterate (or a fsc) however, you can reach points where you are going to be rune locked for a bit and GA is on CD, so it behooves one to use RW to have damage rolling instead of nothing. Also its frost damage so it scales. 

So if you look at all the logs on mythic and heroic its sort of a toss up, you see some using RW on CD, some only using it once or twice, and some completely omitting it. So at higher artifact and gear levels tossing it in can lead to some gains however if you check its only 3-4% total dps in the cases where they do, do that. In the cases where its omitted you see obliterate or GA sitting at a higher dps % so it appears to come out in the wash, however, on all but ursoc on mythic there is room for cleave so its usable. 

tldr, got frozen soul and high mastery? probably fine to shove it in there, don't want to? probably fine to not. simple answer smack a target dummy for 30 secs, see which is best for your individual situation :)

[mgibbonsjr 2]

Thanks man! Always a pleasure getting your insight!

[demonardvark 556]

6 hours ago, mgibbonsjr said:

Thanks man! Always a pleasure getting your insight!

not a problem hope my response was coherent XD wrote it kind of late. 

The issue is what sims the highest, what logs the highest, and what is realistically the most fluid playstyle for the majority of players. So, many things in legion you see so many different answers to the same question, so i try to showcase all sides which can lead to very long answer :)

also if choosing to use RW

Pre Pot

Hard Cast Howling blast

Pillar of Frost

Glacial Advance

Remorseless Winter (when finally in bosses face)

Obliterate

Obliterate (maybe if runes available) if not move to next step

(assuming I have now 5 stacks of razorice) Fury of sindragosa

Rime howling blast or frost strike spam

if previous attack was rime howling blast, frost strike spam now

[Vela 0]

Hey, just wondering if there is ever a case of using obliterate as last tier talent over GA. For example HC nyth or ursoc where it is completely ST or will GA always be better - If Obliterate is viable how could you use it in your opener?

[Tremin 0]

I tend to pop RW on 1 just before pull happens, somewhat together with pot and then do the rotation which demonardvark has mentioned, dunno if it is the most optimal way of doing things but it works out.

[Andell 0]

So I see a bunch of people mentioning glacial advance, but the guide says to use obliteration and only really mentions glacial advance in the context of using it with the machine gun rotation. Should we be using glacial advance with OBRA now?

Edited November 21, 2016 by Andell

[Memnokers 0]

2 hours ago, Andell said:

So I see a bunch of people mentioning glacial advance, but the guide says to use obliteration and only really mentions glacial advance in the context of using it with the machine gun rotation. Should we be using glacial advance with OBRA now?

I use the GA machine gun in 5man's and Obliteration build in raids 

[demonardvark 556]

8 hours ago, Andell said:

So I see a bunch of people mentioning glacial advance, but the guide says to use obliteration and only really mentions glacial advance in the context of using it with the machine gun rotation. Should we be using glacial advance with OBRA now?

Well one thing to keep in mind with the guides on this site (formal ones) is they are aimed at absolute top dps assuming max everything. top ilvl, top trinkets, best enchants etc. Obliteration requires a little pre planning and a bit more thought than GA. Obliteration sims best on pure single target fights. GA on the other hand is fire and forget, scales well with mastery (and pillar of frost and some legendaries), and is good to help keep up FP uptime. The ugly bears answer is that its sort of your choice. When you check top parses you see a mash up of people using either A or B, there does appear to be a few more using GA than obliteration but not a huge differential, 55/45 ish.

Myself I stick with GA where there is anything to cleave. So the only pure single target fight in EN is Ursoc and then I'm just too lazy to change talents on him. Same even with TOV Three head doggy bro is pure single but Odyn and Helya have cleave. So, in current raid setup I use GA in most scenarios with OBRA (note OBRA is for obliterate and runic atten, not obliteration and runic atten, simply because machinegun was in reference to not using obliterate, so an obliterate centric build needs to say "hey brah your using obliterate now).

However, you are honestly fine either way.

6 hours ago, Memnokers said:

I use the GA machine gun in 5man's and Obliteration build in raids 

That's a pretty common thing. In 5 mans especially Mythic + the trash is really more of the issue than the boss. So FsC demolishes trash and can do alright on bosses. The irony is myself I prefer using obliteration with machinegun simply because it guarantees my FsC will crit XD

[Andell 0]

On 11/21/2016 at 6:29 AM, demonardvark said:

However, you are honestly fine either way.

Fair enough - So, if one wants to use Glacial Advance, how should it be weaved into the rotation? Should it be used on cooldown?

[demonardvark 556]

15 hours ago, Andell said:

Fair enough - So, if one wants to use Glacial Advance, how should it be weaved into the rotation? Should it be used on cooldown?

In general sort of. I do try to make sure I have pillar of frost up but otherwise its fire and forget, just smash it when it comes off CD.