Inconsistent DPS Frost 2H ilvl ~510

[Shadowbane92 1]

Hey guys, I've been gearing and playing my DK more recently, and I've been noticing that my DPS is really inconsistent. Some fights I'll be pulling about 120k, which is near enough to where simcraft says I should be, but others I'll be hitting only 100k, or 80k. I was wondering whether that was just familiarity with the class, and muscle memory for the rotation, or whether it was something I actively need to change.

Here's my last combat log: http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/cdxv7DZV2mQNRtCM#

And my Armory link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/khazgoroth/Vaelivar/simple

I'll be doing some more SoO LFR tonight, so I can add those logs then.

 

I've been playing around with simcraft a little, and it's improved my DPS quite a bit, but I just thought I'd ask you guys what you think.

 

My basic priority has been Diseases -> Soul Reaper -> Howling blast with a Rime Proc -> Obliterate -> Frost Strike -> Horn of Winter. I've recently switched to Blood Tap, and I usually try to bank the charges so I can use them for runes when Obliterate is on cooldown and I get a KM proc, so I waste as few KM procs as possible on Frost Strike. I try to use plague leech every time Outbreak is up, and if I have a Rime proc, I'll use it halfway as well. My uptime on Frost Fever is usually 98%+, because of Rime, but Blood Plague is only 80-85% usually. Simcraft seems to be telling me that my diseases are only a small part of my DPS, but I assume the important part is for the bonus Obliterate damage.

 

I'm also not sure when to use Army, because LFR tanks frequently don't do countdowns or anything. Should I always be using it at the start because of the 4 second channel, or  is the extra DPS worth it? I generally use my Alchemist Flask, for 320 Str, and 250 or 275 Str food while I get my cooking to 600 for the Black Pepper Ribs and Shrimp. 

 

I've been using custom stat weights from Simcraft for AskMrRobot, and I put a haste softcap of 7000, cause that should get me close to the 80%ish amount. The weights are Str > Exp = Hit > Crit > Haste > Mastery, and that's with only 3kish haste.

 

Anyway, sorry for the massive post, and anything else you need, I can probably find. Thanks for the help in advance.

[Ceraius 34]

You are indeed correct about the diseases. The uptime is very important for the Obliterate synergy reasons. I suggest trying out a weak aura to track your diseases or one that just pops up when theres less than 3sec remaining so you know to refresh.

Here's an aura I use for my diseases. It shows the timers of the diseases on target and when they're missing it shows an icon for Icy Touch/Plague strike depending on the disease.

 

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As for the army, if you cant do it during downtime (pre-pull or otherwise at a timeframe when you cant hit the boss for a small while) its generally not worth it to break your rotation to channel it.

 

The haste is another story, with which I was set straight a while back. get to that 80% ish haste and then go crit>mastery>haste. Haste wins out on target dummy (and therefore simcraft) but the other two win out on a normal fight with movement and such. Haste is valuable to the point when you're resource capped but loses its value after that.

[Shadowbane92 1]

Thanks very much for the help. I'll try that WeakAura out, and see if it helps. With the combat logs, is there a way to see how many obliterates I used without diseases up? And what I spent my KM procs on?

[Ceraius 34]

Not with my log reading skills at least

 

What i did pick up was a few parries there. You should try to minimise these. Also, your armory shows you somewhat under the hitcap. I'd close that gap even if it overcaps you slightly. a hit+crit gem into your chestpiece would probably fix that quite nicely with the added socketbonus. Sometimes it might be optimal to stay a little under the cap but for me the line goes somewhere in the 0.0X% range. If I'm more than 0.1% down from the cap, i usually take it all the way up there.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Ceraius

[Storm 426]

With the combat logs, is there a way to see how many obliterates I used without diseases up? And what I spent my KM procs on?

 

We can't get a definite amount, but we can estimate them.

 

98.37% uptime on frost fever is decent enough. however 84.31% uptime on Blood plague is low enough to make a difference. We can roughly assume 15.69% of your obliterates were without blood plague. Obliterate count for the fight was 76 which means roughly 11-12 obliterates were 12.5% weaker. based on your average hit/crit size and the duration of the fight you lost 5624.05 dps just from obliterates that happened without blood plague up.

 

The lost bloodplague ticks themself only account for roughly -600 dps but the loss of 12.5% on the obliterates for even just 15% of the fight is a big deal.

 

figuring our your KM usage is a little bit more difficult. raid buffed you should have 20.2% crit, which means we should expect you to have 16 Obliterate crits just based on your base crit. You actually had 34 so 18 more Obliterate crits than expected from base crit

 

Frost strike we should expect 23 crits you had 49. you have 26 more frost strike crits than expected from base crit.

 

Looking at KM, you had 67 Procs. which suddenly makes my math make a little bit less sense because I didn't account for KM crits that statistically would have been crits anyways. but regardless you are definitely wasting at least half, if not more, of your KM procs on frost strike. Sometimes this is unavoidable because you just don't have the runes to use KM on obliterate, but if we assume you can turn even half of those frost strike KM's into obliterate KM's. then you're looking at gaining another 1764.70 DPS based on your average Obliterate crit = 150,000 more damage than a basic obliterate hit, then subtract the KM crit which is a 90k increase over a basic hit, 13 crits being changed in the encounter, and 442 second fight duration (150,000 - 90,000 * 13) / 442 = 1764.70 dps

 

edit: I also realized I need to subtract out the Frost strike crit damage, so I fixed my math.

 

Overall that really isn't that bad though. You're only looking at maybe a 8k dps increase on this particular log based on diseases being 100% uptime, and KM procs being used about 50% more efficiently. I'd be willing to bet that on the fights where your dps is sub 100k the disease uptime is probably the biggest culprit.

[drumsmani 47]

If gems aren't too expensive for you, try swapping out some of those pure STR gems into STR+Crit gems. Crit is pretty strong for 2h. Also, consider replacing that 320 haste gem in your feet with 320 crit gem. 80% haste is good, but it is not a soft haste-cap that you should absolutely hit, you can be slightly lower, but crit is more awesome than haste in this tier. 

 

You can either summon your army at the pull or if you know the fights and can anticipate when heroism is coming up, you can save it for those times. 320 str flask is good, but 1300 Str (Winter's Bite) is better as Alchemist. Of course, if you would rather not waste that flask in LFR, it is fine. Try to get Crystal of Insanity from Timeless Isle. +500 all stats is pretty good alternative for LFRs.

[Jagatron 0]

 

My basic priority has been Diseases -> Soul Reaper -> Howling blast with a Rime Proc -> Obliterate -> Frost Strike -> Horn of Winter. 

 

All I can say is Wow, you're doing it wrong.

 

Read the tool tip for soul reaper.  PLEASE.  You DO NOT start out with it.  You use when the enemy has 35% or lower health.

 

After your diseases are up (preferably with outbreak or unholy blight)  Spam obliterate 3x to build up runic power.  By now you should have no runes.  Use up your runic power with Frost Strike and repeat.  If you need more RP, use your Horn.  Once you build up 5 charges on BT use it.

 

HB should only be used when it procs or you're in an AOE situation.  It will not not be as effective as DW because you don't stack mastery.

 

 

 

In case anybody reading this didn't know, the most effective way to play ANY DK spec is to use your attacks that uses runes to build up runic power and then use your attack that uses runic power and repeat.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Jagatron

[Failhard 2]

You need to put serious attention into your disease uptime and do the things Jag and Mad suggested.

[drumsmani 47]

I think the OP positioned SR in terms of priority and not rotation. Based on logs, SR seems to be used only towards the end and not at the pull.

[Shadowbane92 1]

Ok, thanks. I'll try and work on getting my KM usage a little more towards obliterate, and my Blood Plague uptime above 95%. And as for the pure Str gems, they're in there because when I gemmed those pieces, the sims had str at slightly more than twice as valuable as the other secondaries.

 

And Jagatron, perhaps I should clarify. I've read the Icy-Veins frost DK guide so I'll be a little more explicit: Keep Diseases up -> Soul Reaper when below 35%, Howling blast only with a Rime/Freezing Fog proc, which makes it free -> Obliterate whenever it is available -> Frost strike to keep RP below 40ish -> Horn of Winter if nothing else is up. I bank my Blood Tap charges to 10, so I can save them for if I get a KM proc when Obliterate isn't up.

I don't blame you for assuming the worst. I was in a SoO LFR with a Ret Pally pulling 20k DPS with a 528 weapon once. Some people are... special, lol.