Frost Death Knight Criticism/Help

[whiteknightfall 0]

Hello Icy Veins DK Community!

 

 

I'm posting here for a friend who's experiencing some lackluster DPS and cannot figure out what he is or isn't doing in raid to get his dps up. To this point, he's never been a problem player with survivability, he keeps his diseases up 90% or better most of the time and is reliable with raid mechanics.

 

 

I, as raid leader, push all of my people towards Icy Veins class guides and expect he performs as the they dictate. He also uses Askmrrobot.com for reforge/gem/enchanting needs, as the rest of our raid does. However, he does express a lot of confusion and frustration when it comes to getting his DPS from the 200 - 250k range to upwards of 300k like our other, less geared melee DPS.

 

 

Attached below are this past week's raid logs, in which we cleared up to Malkorok as DW Frost and up to Blackfuse as 2H Frost, and his armory.

 

 

If anyone can provide some honest Death Knight criticism that I can relay back to him, I would be grateful. He's a great player and I'd really like a chance to better help him get to where he needs to be as we move steadily towards fulltime Heroic Siege.

 

 

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Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/thunderhorn/Costantinee/advanced

 

 

Raid 1 (DW Frost): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3t1msquch5tz8767/details/6/

 

 

Raid 2 (2H Frost): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/vi6uxu2m34ro8gk4/details/75/

 

[drumsmani 47]

Couple of things regarding gear: 4pc is really awesome. So, is Thok's trinket. He probably doesn't doesn't have either of them due to RNG issues, but he should try to get them. Pants from celestials if possible and I think even the Flex trinket from Thok would be better than normal Skeer, at least for DW.

 

I took a quick look at Malkorok and IJ fights since those are purely single target and generally pretty good fights for Frost. Few major issues:

 

Death Siphon and Death strike. These shouldn't really be part of the rotation. If he thinks he is not getting enough heals during certain boss mechanics that needs to be communicated with the healers and/or use AMS/IBF etc to mitigate the damage. Death Pact is the best talent in that tier and is not DPS loss. It can provide a quick emergency heal if Timmy is up at that time.

 

Icy Touch. I don't why this is being used in both the fights. Howling Blast should be the go to spell to expend Frost / Death Runes as DW.

 

I will add more later if I find something else.

Edited March 10, 2014 by madraslover

[Failhard 2]

Tell your "friend" that its ok and we all have performance issues from time to time, consult your doctor to see if you are healthy enough for death knight activity, side effects of this help are High disease uptime, Huge crits and topping meters.  If E-peen lasts more than 4 hours, continue raiding.

 

The logs you linked are overall or something strange, when I narrowed down to IJ and Malk kills here's what I found:

disease uptime is good

stop using IT as dw frost, howling blast all of the things

don't use oblit as DW frost

Deathstrike should only be used if you proc dark succor, which neither of the fights have adds to do so...don't do that.

Only popped one pot on Malk and none on IJ.

 

 

Other than that just generally HB until KM procs fs, and dont cap out runes or rp.  when/if you get to soak magic dmg dump all RP before and burn through about half of it after you get full

[drumsmani 47]

Potion usage seems alright to me. The logs show a count of only 1, but an uptime of >25 seconds. So, I guess pre-potting is messing the count.

 

Few more things:

 

I see some Death Coil usage in some fights. He is better of dumping runic power using Frost Strike. If you really want a ranged attack, Howling Blaaargh is best. 

 

Seems like he uses Strangulate / Asphyxiate for interrupts. Strangulate is a DPS loss. Mind Freeze should be the first option for interrupts. 

 

Synapse Springs usage is bad. Only 5 times on a 9-minute Galakras fight and similar low numbers on others. It should be used on cooldown every minute or close to it. You can track it using WeakAuras or just macro it to one of the spammable abilities to ensure that it gets used as often as possible.

[Drtain 74]

A lot of these posts are correct 2 things i noticed that are bad 1 oblit should be in the rotation it really should deathcoil isn't useless if you are going to cap on runic before u are able to get back to the boss because he had to run to get a mechanic or something it's better to use 1 deathcoil then howling blast. repeat til u are at a safe lvl of runic or are back to boss. things i didn't see mentioned is low soul reapers only 4, also deathstriking once isn't that bad if it's a live or die thing which coulda been avoided just by using deathpact tho. Also considering he has plague leach he has semi decent uptime on dots i suppose not hard to keep it up lel it should always be 98/99% plague leach should be the exact same 98/99 MAYBE 97 MAYBE that's like a this or that type thing. I feel he doesn't have enough oblits can't remember what mine are percentage wise tho so i can't say for sure. he has to low of ams counts he should be using it every swirl he picks up and he should be picking up every single 1 and amsing every thing one i will give you 100% runic 10/10 (note it won't be up every swirl if he's not using ams glyph to reduce it bye a bit) this is for the dw fight btw i didn't look at the other fight do to this is all the same for 2h and dw um i mean you can message me with future fight logs if his dps doesn't go up much. just message me in game! Drtain- Korgath or add my on battle tag Tain#1729 just leave a note when u send the friend request. :) sorry this doesn't have proper english

[Drtain 74]

looking over the fight again he's not using pillar off cd only 3 counts only 2 engineering gloves used i also don't see him using his ghoul off cd and his army at beginning of pull MAYBE wrong i'm not really use if it shows it because of him using it out of combat or something idk same with ghoul i'm not the best log reader but i have a general understanding of it. so i may miss things and not 100% sure how pets work on it

Edited March 12, 2014 by Drtain

[Pistons 0]

Never Obliterate. I know the guide here says to, but it is wrong and top Frost DK parses prove it. If KM procs while you're pressing Obliterate you lose a ton of damage.

 

Death Siphon and Death Strike are bad. He should be able to time his defensives according to incoming damage(AMS, IBF, healthstones, Death Pact)

 

He seems to be missing out on KM procs(56 procs to 32 Frost Strike crits). KM Frost Strike is top priority.

[Drtain 74]

pistons u actually bring up a good point on oblit, also the deathstrike thing i honestly think it shouldn't ever have to be used it really shouldn't but personally i use it if i don't have any cds and i think my healers arn't going to keep me up

Edited March 18, 2014 by Drtain

[Drtain 74]

i also don't go off numbers from noxxic or icy-veins i go off numbers in sim c and yh but u really do bring up a good point i kinda can't disagree with u

[Tarazet 144]

First off, it sounds like you have a good raid member. Keeping diseases up is not as easy with Frost as it is with Unholy and Blood, and being reliable with raid mechanics is more important than anything else. A dead DPS does no DPS.

 

That said, it seems a little like he is used to tanking and isn't really thinking like a DPS. That means using DPS cooldowns whenever they're available, using resources 100% for damage whenever possible, always using the highest-damage attack available, and avoiding use of DPS-robbing abilities like Strangulate and Icy Touch (unless glyphed to purge a magic effect from a mob).