BoS question - Gathering Storm VS Runic Attenuation

[Boogyness 1]

Hi fellows DK!

with 7.1.5 changes, I've simmed myself and it sounds I could output much more with a BoS build than an OBRA build. 

I've tried this yesterday on a dummy and it seems BoS required much more attention/reactivity to compete with OBRA. On a dummy, I've barely reached my OBRA DPS. But I guess BoS needs a little practice. 

There is something I just can't figure out,: why is the Tier 6 talent Gathering Storm recommended with BoS where as we could think Runic Attenuation would provide free runic power to ease maintaining  BoS ticking? Is it purely a DPS question as RA is not required to maintain BoS ticking?

I'm sorry if my question sounds stupid... better sounds stupid than dying ingnorant ^^

Boogy.

Edited January 20, 2017 by Boogyness

[godsilla94 5]

Hi Boogy

 

First of all, BoS in theory is definitely stronger than OBRA, although Legendaries such as the Belt or Necrofantasia improve its value massively. Which legendaries do you have and what are your overall stats? BoS takes a lot of practice to really get good at and you need to get an understanding when to use breath, how long to use it and why. It also requires you to know bossfights quite well in order to plan ahead. That being sad, it's a really rewarding build to run, as proper usage can boost up your damage significantly.

 

For your main question, while it is understandable to think RA would be good as it gives us RP, it actually tends to overcap you when running the HRW HoW build and therefore doesn't really give any benefit. GS, on the other hand, synergyses very well with our playstyle, as we can a LOT of Obliterates, especially during HRW. This talent actually makes Remorseless Winter a major part of our damage ranking 3rd in our overall damage after Breath and Obliterate. Also, due to the fact that there is significantly more cleave/adds in NH compared to EN, RW gets even more value.

 

If you own the legendary helmet and/or the T19 4pc, the talent gets even more valueable.

 

TL;DR: GS outmatches RA by quite a bit and flows very well with our rotation.

 

Hope this helps a bit

 

Àtrocity - Thrall

 

[Browed 19]

The thing with RA is that it is a more gradual low level of incoming RP and it's not on demand whereas ERW/HRW and HoW are all talents/abilities where you can stagger and instantly inject RP when BoS is running low on RP.

GS out performs RA for this reason.. the alternatives give better synergy with BoS.

GS does not contribute to the RP gathering for BoS but because you are going burst centric with your style of play GS/RW benefit due to extending the uptime on RW with your high rune usage in the burst phase.

Edited January 20, 2017 by Browed

[Boogyness 1]

Thank you both for your answers. It helped a lot.

My DK is my alt. I really like to play Frost as I found this spec really refreshing (ahahah ;-) ). My gear is not really high (873) and I only have then legendary belt and back.

[godsilla94 5]

@Boogyness The belt is a very good legendary for BoS and makes GS even better for you :)

[Elretardo 0]

What simulator are you using? I'm not sure about simcraft, but AMR has a bug that is causing it to overestimate the power of gathering storm, which in turn tends to overestimate the strength of the standard BoS build which takes GS.  I posted on the AMR forums about it but it won't be fixed until the next update is pushed. GS is still the best choice for BoS builds (and even OB in some cases), but not by the margin AMR is suggesting (especially if you have it set to lust on pull, or if you have seal of necrofantasia).

In any case, I have both seal of necrofantasia and koltira's newfound will, and BoS builds consistently sim around 7% better for me than the best OB builds.  Without those legendaries, I would expect the difference to be smaller, so don't be surprised if you aren't immediately seeing gains when learning the new rotation, as it should only be a few percent better.

As far as GS vs RA goes, what it boils down to is just that the RP gains from RA are insufficient to make it better than GS.  Over the course of e.g. a 210s fight, RA will give somewhere in the ballpark of 200-300RP.  Even if 100% of this goes into extending BoS, that's around 17 seconds or less which will work out somewhere between 3 and 5M damage, assuming you are in the 885-900 ilvl more or less. That's roughly 15-25k dps.

On the other hand GS builds routinely have remorseless winter at around 10% of their total damage, which is clearly more than 15-25kdps.

I think one of the things that makes GS (and BoS) good, and which I expect will cause them to scale well in this tier vs. other talents, is that they are both substantial sources of damage that cost virtually nothing in terms of GCDs.  This removes a lot of the frustrating competition that can exist, e.g. between consuming rime procs, KM, overcapping RP, or wasting runes. This is all the more important with the T19 2pc, which significantly increases the number of GCDs we need to spend.  BoS and GS are both at their best during resource rich states, the relative proportion of which increases with gear. On the other hand, the relative benefit of OB declines with gear, and both OB and RA decline in benefit as you become more resource saturated. 

The downside of BoS is the higher degree of management it requires and the penalty if you flub a BoS, In general, though, I am finding the fights in nighthold well suited to BoS builds, and since you really only need ~2 solid BoSs per fight, it's usually possible to identify good windows even on fights with lots of target switching or movement.

[ocellot 0]

Somewhat off topic with the BoS build. I am wondering what trinkets you guys are stacking for this. I have been experimenting with different ones, but can't tell what the best combo would be.