Frost 2H Help

[Forza 0]

Hi

First of all this is my first post and all,  so i'm trying to get the hang of this.

My native language is not English  so please bare with me here. 

So the short version of the story is i play 2H Frost and i think i'm doing a pretty decent job. 

I follow the guides here on Icy Veins without almost any hesitation, i gem, reforge and enchant as

icy veins deems to be best.

I was going about my usual business in a flex part 2 group, we were killing Iron Juggernaut and i had about 215k dps with 550 ilvl.

I thought i was doing fine until i glance over my recount and see another DK with the same prides fall 2H same trinkets and same talents as me, but with different gems (cant remember wich gems).

 

My question is, do the gems really play such a huge part in dps? Or is this just a case of he's a more skilled button masher and overall a better player, i don't really consider myself really that good.

Should i use Ask Mr Robot? Can it be trusted? It just seems really shifty with its optimised builds taht give, yes more crit but much less strenght...

I try to use my pillar of frost with the strenght trinket procs up and then pop my ghoul and all these things to get my dps up. Anyhow sorry about this rambling story My toon is Epicsaxguy on Ragnaros Eu Horde.

Any help will be massively appreciated. Thank you 

 

[Storm 426]

Gems and reforging makes a difference, but it's a usually a small difference. And it's also situational. Usually Crit will be best for ilvl 550+, sometimes Haste or Strength may do better though. For 2H frost I would normally advise Haste until 80% then crit. I looked you up on wow-heroes but the only log it linked to was LFR from December 5th, and then I couldn't find you on the list.

 

Typically the largest dps losses for frost dk's are:

- Disease uptime. This should be 95%+

- Pillar of Frost, The first step is using it as many times as possible during the fight. The second more advanced step is to work on lining it up with other cooldowns such as Heroism, strength potions, big trinket procs, etc.

- Make sure you're using most of your killing machine procs on Obliterate. every time you use accidentally use a killing machine proc on frost strike you're losing a small amount of dps.

[Storm 426]

another thing to consider for a fight like Iron Juggernaut is the amount of time you spend dps'ing boss. If the other DK positioned himself better during the shock pulse, then he wouldn't have to run back as far, and his dps could easily be 10-20k higher than yours. Just because he spent more time dps'ing the boss.

[drumsmani 47]

Also on IJ, if you can time your Pillar of Frost with the shock pulse, it is possible to avoid the knock back for two of the pulses. Bit touch and go, but you can definitely avoid at least one knock back. Also, use AMS during this phase for free runic power to dump with frost strike and proc tier 5 talents.

[drumsmani 47]

As Storm mentioned, you should be using Pillar of Frost as much as possible. It is nice and definite boost to line it up with procs, but don't go about holding it off for too long, especially since the cooldown is reduced with the CDR trink.

 

Other than that, specific to IJ, you should be better off with Plague Leech. I don't know if you were using conversion, but that has to be a DPS loss as well.

[Deathwardenn 0]

I noticed you suggested an 80% haste cap before going crit. I've seen this mentioned before, although most frost guides put haste dead last when it comes to stat priority, so I'm a little confused. Should I have haste as a priority or crit? 

[Ceraius 34]

When I was simming my DKs offspec (2H Frost) the simulation gave me a pretty high haste value(above crit at the time), so haste does play a role in gearing still. I went and did the reforges based on those stat weights and simmed again, and got haste as the last one with the amount I already had. Not far from mastery though, but ever so slightly behind it. Talking as minor of a difference like mastery weight: 2.50 and haste weight: 2.49. What this tells me is that I'm pretty close to the "haste cap" for 2H frost, since haste has barely fallen behind.

 

I dont remember the exact haste I have on it atm but its somewhere in the 90%-100% range. 

 

TL;DR: Yes, get some haste first and then dump everything to crit. the 80%-90% haste sounds fine to me.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Ceraius

[Deathwardenn 0]

Awesome, can't wait to try it out. Thank you for the speedy reply!!

[Storm 426]

Haste will sometimes sim higher than crit overall, but this is mostly on completely patchwork fights. Once you start moving around and spending a few seconds here and there not on the boss, then Crit becomes better. Especially once you have enough haste to be resource capped.

 

the 80% target +/- has to do with being resource capped. Somewhere around 80% +/- depending on your talent selection and skill, you will reach a point where you always have enough runes and/or runic power to not waste any global cooldowns waiting for something to refresh. Up until this point Haste is by far the strongest stat.

 

Once you're resource capped then some sims may say haste is still the best stat by a little bit, some will say crit is the best stat by a little bit, but in actual fights crit is better than haste by a lot after you have enough haste to be resource capped.