Lichborne: The rise of PvE frost DPS on the patch 3.3.3 PTR
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Mar 9th 2010 at 6:00PM
With Patch 3.3.3 on the PTR and looking closer and closer to going live, the buzz around death knights is just about where you'd expect it to be, squarely on the frost talent tree. This is especially true of frost DPS. While it once reigned supreme as a cornerstone of the famous 39/32 builds, it's fallen out of favor, and even Threat of Thassarian hasn't been enough to keep it from being consigned to the status of third rate, a pariah from any raid that already has a shaman to provide Windfury.
Blizzard's obviously dedicated to getting the tree properly buffed in Patch 3.3.3, but have they succeeded? Let's take a look at the frost tree thus far, and what we may be doing with our own builds and talents in a few weeks' time.
Frost Dual Wield
Frost dual wield got an incredible flurry of upgrades on the PTR from more innate strength from Endless Winter to a buff to Nerves of Cold Steel. Of course, the big question is simple enough: Is it enough?
Preliminary tests suggest that, yes, it is. Specifically, this 1/52/18 build looks to be the new favorite contender for PvE DPS. Blood Caked Blade continues to make unholy the top dog secondary tree. There's a single point of conversion simply because rank 5 of Killing Machine is considered wasted - you won't be able to churn out Frost Strikes fast enough to keep up with it. You'll also be using Glyph of Disease to refresh your diseases. Other than that, your priorities are about the same. Use Frost Strikes for Killing Machine procs, use Howling Blast when Rime is up, and otherwise churn out Obliterates, Blood Strikes, and Frost Strikes in between keeping your diseases up. Due to the high physical damage from this build, some are suggesting armor penetration may be better to gem than strength, though the jury is still out on that.
Regardless, the preliminary results are promising, to say the least. Sims put dual wielding frost with the build above well on top of Unholy DPS, even by as much as 1000 DPS in some simulations. That said, if you're a blood or unholy death knight, I wouldn't retire that Bryntroll just yet. Frost seems to over perform on simulations quite a bit, and we'll need more actual in-game testing to be see exactly where it falls. That said, it looks like there's a very good chance that one will be able to walk into a raid with a frost dual wielding DPS spec and not get laughed out of the thing. Overall, Blizzard seems pretty dedicated to make frost PvE DPS viable again, so I'd stay optimistic, personally.
Frost as unholy's secondary tree
The Scourge Strike damage change contained in Patch 3.3.3 is essentially a non-issue on its own, but what's really shaking up the unholy DPS world is the prospect of switching over the frost tree as your secondary. The idea is this: With the incredible buffs to Endless Winter and Icy Talons, grabbing those will more than make up any lost DPS from anything in the blood tree. You get a straight up extra boost to all your damage from Endless Winter's strength, and Icy Talons' new stackability is, in theory, pretty much insanely good.
Preliminary tests suggest Frost is a competitive secondary tree on one condition. You may have guessed said condition already. That's right, you have to drop Reaping. Since you lose the extra Scourge Strike damage from Subversion, Reaping once again becomes non-competitive. But a Reapingless unholy/frost build on the order of 0/17/54 does end up pulling ahead on damage sims and preliminary testing. Not only that, but if things stay the same, we may perhaps see a resurgence of Unholy dual wielding, as some sims are reporting that they're doing relatively competitive DPS with the build we just linked, only swapping 3 points of Black Ice for Nerves of Cold Steel.
That said, there's a few things to keep in mind here before you start planning to live with the cold. First, understand that you are losing not only Reaping, but Subversion with this build. That means you'll be putting out a whole lot more aggro, which could, in the long run, mean less DPS as you spend more time sprawled on the floor, dead. Second, testing of the new changes is still very much in progress, but what little information we do have generally puts the difference between Unholy with a blood sub-spec and Unholy with a frost sub-spec between 20-80 DPS. If you aren't an absolute min-maxer, that means you can probably stick with your blood sub-spec and not be too far behind the game.
So the ultimate question: If the patch as it is now came out tomorrow, would it be worth it to switch? I think at this point, it probably comes down to whether you like the extra haste from Icy Talons or the flexibility of death runes with Reaping. The DPS gap is so small as to hardly be worth it unless you're a stickler for min-maxing. Beyond that, testing is still ongoing, so with so much upheaval, it may be weeks before we have a good enough sample size to say for sure which sub-tree is better, and by how much.
In addition, there's always the ultimate wild card: Blizzard. The PTR is still up, and changes can be made. I wouldn't be completely surprised to see Icy Talons moved further down the tree, especially since Blizzard did something similar to Howling Blast some time ago. They already seem to be hinting at their dissatisfaction with Icy Talons in the recent Mastery preview, where they imply that Icy Talons may be replaced altogether by Mastery haste for frost death knights. Whether they will act ahead of Cataclysm to change things up, however, remains to be seen.
One thing we can say for sure in all this is that, as usual, patch day should be an interesting time for death knights. Watch this space, and we'll keep you updated as we know more about what exactly the new "it" specs will look like, and whether dual wielding will once again be king of the hill...
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly class column on the newest WoW class, the death knight, where we discuss PuG etiquette and Emblem of Triumph gear for the Death Knight tank, 5-man Crusader's Coliseum gear for tanks andDPS,andbasic Death Knight statistics and mechanics. You might also want to check all the other articles in our Death Knight category.Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Nazgûl Mar 9th 2010 6:09PM
It may be worth it to lose the 4% Strength bonus from Endless Winter to get the reduced threat from Subversion. Even the 16% would go a long way to aggro control. Also, with the lack of Reaping, you get a bit more from your Blood Strikes with Subversion.
It certainly looks promising. Can't wait to toy with it a bit.
feniks9174 Mar 9th 2010 6:13PM
I retired my DK and focused on my warlock early into the ToC era because 1) we had way to many people playing plate DPS and 2) Frost, my favorite spec just wasn't keeping up with Unholy.
My once beloved former main too. May be making a come back soon, I hope.
Shot Mar 9th 2010 6:22PM
I always enjoyed the style of frost dps, I used to play a 2h frost dps dk before ulduar was released and remember it being very competitive dps at the time. It was a bit of a shame to discover that it had been nerfed so much when I returned to the game recently and I'll be glad to see it make a comeback, even as a dual weilding variant.
veil Mar 10th 2010 11:56AM
sigh...you're making me sad by reminiscing about my lost 2h frost spec. i ran a double-death rune conversion machine gun spec and just cranked out non-stop obliterates and frost strikes...which at the time hit for 14k and up. that was probably the most fun spec i'd ever run on any class...and was competitive with the other dk's in my guild (we each represented our respective "colors")
Rodalpho Mar 9th 2010 6:27PM
Frost subspec unholy is primarily worthwhile if you have heroic bryntroll, since you get more procs with the 20% haste and the procs do 10% more damage with black ice. Without heroic bryntroll they're roughly equivalent; blood subspec gives threat reduction and frost gives free interrupts.
It's all academic anyway, as mainspec frost is clearly dominant. All that talk about "sims inflating frost" is bunk. I did a frost sim with no rime/KM in the priority list at all and it STILL beat unholy mainspec. Come 3.3.3, DKs in the know will all be dualwielding.
Rodalpho Mar 9th 2010 6:33PM
The above assumes it goes live unchanged, BTW. Currently, dualwielding frost with H-LK weapons handily beats 2H unholy with shadowmourne. Even if it goes live, I don't see that lasting very long.
Mike Mar 9th 2010 7:11PM
I switched to DW-Frost DPS a couple weeks ago and I won't be going back to Unholy anytime soon. Just on a target dummy alone, with no gear, gem, or enchant changes other than weapons (went from Tyranical Beheader to two swords from ICC5 which I was using for tanking - I've since replaced them with more appropriate weapons), my DPS went up by about 1000.
Rodalpho Mar 9th 2010 7:17PM
You're doing it wrong. DW Frost is WAY behind 2H unholy in 3.3.2. You should only spec DW frost in the live game if your raid needs the windfury haste.
Mike Mar 9th 2010 7:20PM
I think the key word in your sentence, something I did not reference at all: raid. I'm not a raider. My 3K-5K DPS in 5-mans was serving me just fine, and is now 20-30% higher with my style of play. Definitely not the most optimum, but I really don't give a damn, because I find it fun.
Randal Mar 10th 2010 9:45AM
Actually Rodalpho, you are doing it wrong. DW Frost can outperform all other specs if you don't have a near BiS 2-hander. Even then, DW does not fall WAY behind, but remains extremely competitive.
"While it once reigned supreme as a cornerstone of the famous 39/32 builds, it's fallen out of favor, and even Threat of Thassarian hasn't been enough to keep it from being consigned to the status of third rate, a pariah from any raid that already has a shaman to provide Windfury."
This quote from the article is just a plain old incorrect statement born out of ignorance more than anything else. Run some sims if you don't want to do some actual in-game testing and you'll find that DW Frost is fine. Not that I will turn any buffs away.
Wuvlycuddles Mar 9th 2010 7:12PM
While mousing over the nerves of cold steel tooltip i noticed daggers and fist weapons are included, this an error or are we getting some new weapon skills?
Chillguy Mar 9th 2010 7:17PM
I've been Frost DW DPS for a good while now, and I'm always easily top AOE DPS on trash, and always in the top ranks on single target. Instead of Unoly subspec though, I've gone blood with this build.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVMVZG0exAdckc0cuzAo:Tka
I use only a single HB to infect targets, ignore plague strike completly, and pop haste cooldowns whenever their up.
I'm conflicted about the patch though...awesome buffs for me, but now every idiot on the server with a DK is gonna respec frost :-/
Chillguy Mar 9th 2010 7:24PM
edit:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jfV0VZG0exArcks0cuzAo:kaT
^^correct spec...we don't need @H weapons :-p
WTB edit button
BadPatrol Mar 9th 2010 9:21PM
Your guild must suck ass if your topping anything with that spec and rotation.
Jason Davis Mar 10th 2010 12:07AM
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Medivh&cn=Mirict&group=1
With that spec and around a 5650 GS as frost DW in live i pulled 8240 DPS on festergut 25man if i was more comfortable with using UA in my rotation when i need to id prob get 8500+ easy if the current patch on the test server goes lived id prob be at 10k+ from the testing ive done so these are huge buffs and put frost DW in line with unholy they are much needed so frost DW is just a buff bot for raids
physicsgeek42 Mar 10th 2010 12:35AM
The return of DW-unholy? No more reaping? I have a few choice words to say about both of these atrocities.
rizendragon Mar 10th 2010 4:43AM
Are these +rp talents really that necessary? i'm constantly finding myself full on rp the 2 points in that talent seem wasted to me. i've been playing frost DPS since it's inception never dabbled in shadowfrost spec and only changed from frost because it was being out scaled by blood and unholy. (as soon as and ever since dual speccing became an option i've had a frost off spec). from what i've seen using this spec http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#jfVZG0exAMczf0cuzAofM:kap0MV i'm able to reach about 4800dps on a pre-made character. currently i use a 10/51/10 build on live.
Othor_NL Mar 10th 2010 4:39AM
Any thoughts on what the changes mean for a Frost DK dual wielding Tank?
Thera Mar 10th 2010 5:18AM
Increased threat with more str and faster swings I believe, and ofc more parry from str.
tekmunki Mar 10th 2010 10:02AM
Anyone concerned with Frost being such an over-contender that it inherently makes DKs a poor choice for Shadowmourne? A weapon, which IMO was tailored toward the addition of DKs and DKs in Wrath lore.