Frost DKs rotation

[Multibocks]

Anyone help me with this? I wanted to try frost before they nerf it and I'm kinda at a loss for what should be going on. Do I open with HB? Is there a rotation or is it priority? I tried the macro from the macro forums for frost but that seems aimed at dpsing PvE.

[Ualaa]

You want a weighted priority.

Mosg2's Manifesto basically suggests something like this:

Two step mapped key.
Execute a step on press or release.
Reset to step 1, "5" seconds after most recent press.

Step 1
Do Mapped Key Action > FTL Assist Me > Target: Current Window
Do Mapped Key Action > Mind Freeze
Key Action > Your Warcraft Howling Blast Keybind > All Windows

Step 2
Key Action > Warcraft Keybind A > All Windows
Key Action > Warcraft Keybind B > All Windows
Key Action > Warcraft Keybind C > All Windows
Key Action > Warcraft Keybind D > All Windows
Key Action > Warcraft Keybind E > All Windows
Key Action > Warcraft Keybind F > All Windows



Explanations...
Create a mapped key, called Mind Freeze.
Give it four steps.
Step 1: Keystroke Action > Warcraft Keybind for Mind Freeze > DK #1 as Target
Set this to not advance to the next step for 2.5 seconds.
Step 2: Keystroke Action > Warcraft Keybind for Mind Freeze > DK #2 as Target
Ste this to not advance to the next step for 2.5 seconds.
Step 3: Keystroke Action > Warcraft Keybind for Mind Freeze > DK #3 as Target
Set this to not advance to the next step for 2.5 seconds.
Step 4: Keystroke Action > Warcraft Keybind for Mind Freeze > DK #4 as Target
Ste this to not advance to the next step for 2.5 seconds.

With Mind Freeze talented, it costs no Runes and no Runic Power.
And it is off of the GCD, so you can Mind Freeze + Anything else, at the same time.

So your main DPS Key, will have DK 1 Mind Freeze the kill target, as you spam away.
And not advance to step 2, until 2.5 seconds have passed.
Although ideally you are spamming quickly, say 2-5 presses per second.
So close to exactly 2.5 seconds later, the Mind Freeze mapped key can advance to Step 2.
Which has another Mind Freeze launch...
In this way, without managing anything, you will Mind Freeze the current target, approximately every 2.5 seconds.



You can use whatever keybinds you want.
But you want six keybinds in warcraft.

Put Howling Blast on the first one (Keybind A).
Put Frost Strike on two of them (B and C).
Put Blood Strike on one of them.
Put Necrotic Strike (Plague Strike, if you're not 83 yet) on one.
Put Hungering Cold on one.

This is a pseudo priority sequence.
You should HB if that is available.
And Frost Strike quite often; possibly go Frost Strike on A/B/C.
When you don't have the Frost Runes or Runic Power, you will Blood Strike/Necrotic Strike/Hungering Cold.

Your main DPS is Frost Strike.
But Howling Blast is AoE pressure on multiple targets.
And it is glyphed to apply Frost Fever.
Plus Frost Fever is talented to Snare and Reduce casting speed.
Necrotic Strike is anti-healing.
Blood Strike is a Blood Rune that will regen as a Death Rune allowing for Howling Blast or Necrotic Strike.

Hungering Cold is semi-random, but helps out often enough.

Talent in Unholy, to restore a rune when a disease is cleansed.
So anytime they cure Frost Fever (your only disease), which is removing the cast-slow or snare, you get a Frost Rune back and can immediately Howling Blast from your spamming of the attack key.



Have Anti-Magic Shell, Icebound Fortitude, Pillar of Frost, etc on their own keybinds.
Definitely glyph Hungering Cold, to make it runic power free.
I glyphed Anti Magic Shell for the extra 2 seconds.
Get the range increase for Death Grip (major) and the Death Grip (minor), as Death Grips are our defense against being snared/rooted.

[Multibocks]

Wow that was awesome, thanks Ualaa!

[remanz]

Talent in Unholy, to restore a rune when a disease is cleansed.
So anytime they cure Frost Fever (your only disease), which is removing the cast-slow or snare, you get a Frost Rune back and can immediately Howling Blast from your spamming of the attack key.


I used to think this talent is good as well. But somehow , no PVP DK is taking this now. I guess people just assume that DK diseases are not to be dispelled.

[Multibocks]

So I set it up the way you described (frost pvp dks) and the first step works. Howling Blast goes off, but the next step makes all the DKs hit Enter and then type out the 6 buttons. I can see it in their chat, something like "456789-------------"

Really embarassing because I went into BH without testing it lol. So I included pics of my setup, hope you can tell me what I did wrong. =)

[ghonosyph]

Not sure if many know, or take into account, but casting obliterate has a very high chance to proc a free howling blast. This let's us hit bigger numbers than mindless howling blast spam, tho it does require us to be in melee. I have at least one obliterate in my pvp cast 2 step for this reason, as I tend to get jumped more often by casters, when I DO get them in melee, ie death grip chains of ice, obliterate = they run away, usually I get a free howling blast out of it which keeps them snared after they blow trinket or defensive cooldowns, which tends to be the norm for open world pvp.

I should be hitting 85 tonight, and its been fun so far battling with everyone in open world pvp so far. Its very active on my server, and the alliance tend to like to mess with me. Usually the dks will manage a kill or two just after my pally dies from the lvl 85 geared burst lol.

Edit: just realized that the obliterate spam might not be a solid option for us even if we do get the free howling blast, as we want to stack up as many necrotic strikes as we can with our unholy runes. I still like the thought of having a second dps spam key for obliterate chains of ice necrotic strike blood strike *2 then howling blast spam and frost strikes, tho for that key I'd lean more toward using death coil, hitting softer but at range means More of a beef caster on demand.


I'm planning, when I get home, to play a bit with the idea of a round robin dmg key that pulls with death grip on one toon, howling blast on the rest, next step to cast strangulate then chains of ice then obliterate then mind freeze then death grip again then repeats with howling blasts thrown in for good measure as well as the death coil spam.

This will be my hunter/mage killer key for all those silly bastards that think they can kite me lol :)

[Ualaa]

Sorry, cannot read your screenshots.

You want a keystroke action.
You could go into any of your FTL DPS Keys.
For example DPS 2.
Copy the Keystroke Action that sends "2" to all windows.
Then paste that inside your Step 2 of the Frost DK Macro.
Paste it six times.
And then edit the keybind from "2" to whatever they should be.

[Toned]

Obliterate takes 2 runes and is single target. The main reason for avoiding obliterate is that the random rune resets off frost strike gives you more attacks using only single rune abilities. The second reason is the AoE cleave. 4 DKs using howling blast is a lot of pressure. What most people seem to be doing is have a single target DPS setup with obliterate to use during your hungering cold rotation. I'm finding this to be a good method.


I personally wouldn't waste RP on DC. Grip them into 4 frost strikes if they are trying to run

[ghonosyph]

You've got to remember tho, that soon, our cleave is going to hit for 40% less. So the idea of throwing in an obliterate on the 2step means you're going to get one less Necrotic strike, but also that you're hitting for more single target, on top of the free proc off rime for a free howling blast. Since our cleave IS being reduced, the only real bonus of popping howling blast over and over is the range and the snare, which will still be applied on a decent rate via the proc :) and the dc spam is just an idea for those who seem to perpetually stay at range

[Toned]

Cleave burst even though it's going to be nerfed it's still creating pressure that lead to swaps. + the 12% gain Frost is getting I think Howling Blast will still out weigh Obliterate in most situations. Rime is only a chance not gaurenteed Oblit x 4 into 4 Free Howling Blasts.

[remanz]

Did you put obliterate on a different key spam or something ?

I'd imagine HB and OB can't be spammed in the same key otherwise HB would always go off first. and then you can't OB.

Same issue in the current 1key BS/HB/NS spam. 1 blood strike turns the next blood rune into death rune. But chances are this death rune will be used for blood strike again, which is not what we want. We want all death rune to be used as frost rune , or at least unholy rune as NS.

[Toned]

Use the setup where you send multiple downpresses then your release is howling blast... This prioritizes howling blast and you always use death runes for howling blasts.

[remanz]

That merely "tries" to send HB more often than anything else. It doesn't make sure when your blood strike turned death rune is ready , you will use HB. When death rune is turned, you might be in your "down state" and doing blood strike again since you are spamming.

[Ualaa]

Howling Blast hits 100% as hard, on the actual target.
And provides snare + cast speed penalty, to everyone within 10 yards of that target.

Pretty decent advantages, even if the damage isn't there.
A 40% reduction, makes for less pressure to heal several targets.
But it still softens up several at once.
And the initial target, or the switch target has Necrotic Strikes making the heals less effective.

[Mosg2]

The problem with Obliterate proccing free Howling Blasts is that there's no way to effectively control it so that you can just spam one button and make use of the free procs. If you're just weighting Obliterate then you end up with a wonky rotation.

As it stands now and on the PTR, the single target damage you do via Necrotic Strike, Howling Blast and Frost Strike is comparable to what a solo player accomplishes by managing the procs and using Obliterate.

Regarding the group damage--On live I have many games where I swap targets and my new target is at less than 50% health. Even with two healers it's damn hard to keep a person up under the 4 DK assault. No healer can effectively keep up your burst target plus the secondary/tertiary that's getting hammered by Howling Blasts. Even losing 60% of that damage on the secondary targets does not phase me--Now instead of being at 40-50% when I swap to him he'll be at 60-70? Tops? That's still *damn* good considering how much single target damage you're doing.

If I could conceive of a way to one-button mash and have it Obliterate and Howling Blast smartly I'd give it a try. As it stands the dps gain doesn't make up for the efficiency you lose by having to think about it.

[remanz]

Agreed here.

hb/bs/ns spam does a little bit less than OB + proc HB on single target dummy. But It does more when you can hit more than 1 target which is like 99% of the case in arena. Your opponents can't be all perfectly spread out. Not to mention hb/bs/ns spam is so easy to fit into a 1 button spam.

With that said, I see OB is probably worth using though. Meaning just throw it into the rotation, if it goes off, good for you. If it doesn't, HB/NS goes off is ok too. When killing machine procs, it is better to OB than to FS. Taking OB talent doesn't make you lose much in the unholy tree.

[Toned]

That merely "tries" to send HB more often than anything else. It doesn't make sure when your blood strike turned death rune is ready , you will use HB. When death rune is turned, you might be in your "down state" and doing blood strike again since you are spamming.

After 15mins of spamming my dps key... I had 0 death runes used on anything but Howling Blast.

Tweak your Custom Lag Tolerance... When I had the number matching my latency I had a few blood strikes sneak through, but when I set it to 200ms (2x my normal 100ms latency) I didn't have a single one go through, and had a dps gain because of this.

[remanz]

Thats good to know. Stuff spammed faster than GCD doesn't make sense anyway. Put those off GCD skills into the macro. and write isboxer steps with GCD in mind.

If I know which skill just got fired off, it will open up a lot of new possibilities.

[Negativ1337]

Put Howling Blast on the first one (Keybind A).
Put Frost Strike on two of them (B and C).
Put Blood Strike on one of them.
Put Necrotic Strike (Plague Strike, if you're not 83 yet) on one.
Put Hungering Cold on one.

With this do you mean:
Howling Blast on 1 hotkey, on all chars
Froststrike on 1 hotkey on 2 toons, Blood strike on 1 toon and necrotic strike on 1 toon
Hungering Cold on 1 hotkey on 1 toon?

Or Howling Blast on all
Frost Strike on all
Blood Strike on all
Necrotic Strike on all
Hungering Cold on all on 5 different hotkeys?

It doesn't makes sence to me to only use necrotic strike on one character, since its a really nice debuff
And i wont waste any runic power on my slaves that wont use froststrike?

Kind regards,

Negativ1337

[Ualaa]

Every toon will HB on key down.

Every toon will attempt to mash six keys on key up.
The six keys are: HB, FS, FS, BS, NS, HC.

Pretty much taken straight from Mosg2's manifesto.

[howster]

Every toon will HB on key down.

Every toon will attempt to mash six keys on key up.
The six keys are: HB, FS, FS, BS, NS, HC.

Pretty much taken straight from Mosg2's manifesto.

Almost.. Mosg2 doesnt use HC combined with HB though. If you do you will break the cc from HC.
He has a different key he spams when he want to use HC. And what it does is exchanging HB with OB so he dont breaks the cc. And HC is on a 4 second round robin from the same hotkey.

My dk's is almost starting cata content atm (almost 78 now).. what i inserted instead of HC is DS to get some heals aswell. Works quite well if I start pulling mobs with DG then my next ability is DS. After that my team use DS every now and then. If i dont start with DG my guys start with HB untill their in range, then FS BS HB is pretty much what they do..

Ill most likely gonna make a 2nd dps key to utilise HC on roundrobin and exchange HB with OB at 80+.

Oh and thnx Uala for posting the how to set this up. :)

[Multibocks]

Just wanted to thank everyone for their inputs. My DKs are all over 3k resilience and tearing up BGs. I have some trouble in arenas, but I know what I'm doing wrong so it's just a matter of time.

[ghonosyph]

Aww shit bro lol now you out gear my guys !

What did you do to push for 3 k?

[Multibocks]

filled every slot with resilience and gemmed for it.

[ghonosyph]

yea lol but exactly how did you go from less resil than me to over 3k in just under a week>? lol did you bg for 19 hours a day>? lolol

[Multibocks]

I have done TB a lot (79 honor for loss and 300+ for win) plus lots of BGs. Had the last 6 days off, so ya =)

[Fat Tire]

I have done TB a lot (79 honor for loss and 300+ for win) plus lots of BGs. Had the last 6 days off, so ya =)

My ass would have just bought the crafted, sheesh. I cant see myself doing the honor grind ever again.

My wife wanted to start to get pvp set, we did 2s and we got her points for the week in an hour . She was in greens mostly and she is not very good at all. Fuck that insane waste of time called honor.

I could see TB only if you were going for the exalted stuff, I am sure you were having fun though.

[ghonosyph]

Lol yea the honor grind blows, but screw all the grind imo

Pve is just as bad via heroic loots and all the rep grind for head and shoulder enchants... The whole game is a grind, just gotta figure what part of that grind is most fun for you :)