Heya guys!!  So, it’s time to finally talk about Dual Wielding specs for 3.2.  Oddly enough (at least for some), this is going to include both Frost and Unholy discussion.  Keep in mind with all posts about specs before a PTR release goes Live, that it’s impossible to perfectly predict the outcome. 

But I’m not going to keep you guessing about the future of Frost.  It does appear that the future of 2H Frost is dead, RIP.  Why?  Well the nerfs to Frost Strike have been abusive at best, and when combined with the scaling benefits of DW…well there’s just not much potential left for 2H.

Dual Wield Live

0/17/54 - Considered to be the best “cookie cutter” Dual Wield build currently available in 3.1 Live.

Basically this runs in Unholy Presence, and focuses on the maximum amount of GCD’s used possible for massive Runic Power (RP) generation for Death Coil’s.  While it is competitive, it does not top the charts by any stretch of the word.  This is basically for DW die hards only.

Frost Live

17/51/3 - Considered to be the best “cookie cutter” Frost build currently available in 3.1 Live.

Frost basically focuses on only using Frost Fever and ignoring Blood Plague.  This method relies heavily upon Rime procs, Glyph of Howling Blast, and Obliterate.  While there is also the “IT Machine Gun” spec which relies heavily upon UP and Glyph of Icy Touch.

There are some variations (for IT Machine Gun for example) which requires point shifts to talents like Death Rune Mastery, but that’s another post for another time.  When all is said and done, outside of Yogg-Saron and Hodir, Frost 2H has been a largely sub-par spec performing nowhere near as well as Unholy or Blood.

Frost and Dual Wield 3.2 PTR

As I said before, Frost 2H is basically dead.  Frost Strike has been severly nerfed due to primarily PvP reasons.  3.2 Frost Strike can now be dodged, parried, or blocked.  Also, the weapon damage bonus was reduced to 55%, down from 60%. 

Combined with the changes for DW like Threat of Thassarian (3/3 talent, req 35 points in Frost, 100% chance to deal damage with your off hand), better scaling damage from DW’ing over 2H, and more…RIP 2H.

Now here is the upside however.  Something is going to give, and Blizzard will eventually make future changes.  Why you ask?  Because of Unholy.

There are basically 2 big kids on the block for 3.2 DW:

Unholy DW

0/17/54 - 3.2 DW Unholy

The only question that comes in for DW Unholy is whether one of the Glyphs needs to be dropped so you can work in the new Glyph of Unholy Blight.  Since this spec so heavily relies upon Deathcoil damage, the new UB is a big deal.  Due to the UB bugs on PTR, and lack of raid testing, the current status is inconclusive.

Frost DW

3/51/17 – 3.2 DW Frost

Frost is a lil hinky however.  It doesn’t perform anymore like it did as a 2H spec.  First off your melee white damage will be significantly higher, which also means that Necrosis and Blood-caked Blade will be higher as well.  But then your special ability damage will be lower as well.

Frost Strike: Originally this was using two separate tables for the MH and OH weapon for hit/miss/crit.  So you could miss with your OH weapon, but hit with the MH weapon.  Last I heard this was fixed supposedly, but I cannot confirm that.  Also, only the MH strike uses a Killing Machine proc, meaning most of the benefit from KM is gone as it only applies to about half of a FS.

Outside of that this is a standard IT -> PS -> OB -> BS -> BS // OB -> OB -> OB rotation.  Not sure if the new disease buffs for dmg and Blood Strike will justify using 2 diseases or not, so we’ll see if this degenerates back into a HB single disease rotation.

BCB Normalization

An interesting side note is that BCB is no longer normalized.  Long story short on this is that instead of multiplying the base damage numbers by 2.4 (regardless of the weapon’s speed), BCB now multiplies the base damage by the weapon’s speed. 

What does that mean to you?  Fast weapons are no longer PWN for any Necrosis/BCB DW build.  Slow/Slow is now the desired weapon combinations for DW.

The DPS Winner

It’s Unholy DW actually.  Which is retarded.  DW Unholy is sub-par to Unholy 2H.  DW Frost is sub-par to DW Unholy.  2H Frost is sub-par to DW Frost.  So that means that both variations of Frost are not remotely on par to where they should be. 

While having DW Frost and Unholy being close in DPS is not too much of an issue, having DW Frost being equal to a tree not specialized in DW, and sub-par to 2H Unholy and 2H Blood is an issue.  The big question is whether Blizzard has noticed this detail.  If not, it is possible it will go Live and not be altered until 3.2.1 release.

End Story

ATM, Frost DW seems to be slightly under Unholy DW which means its basically sub-par for PvE dps balance.  Because it’s so difficult to actually test this in a raid environment on PTR, there’s no way to verify the theories or prove anything to Blizzard.  So this info could be wrong. 

But if it’s not, it means that unless they change something soon DW Frost won’t really be offering all that much until 3.2.1 release at earliest.  Worst case scenario is that there will be 2 viable DW specs available that don’t suck so much that you can’t get a raid spot with them.  But they won’t be top end 25man hard-mode content specs if things stay as they are.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

Tags: PTR, Specs