DK Frost Spec - Deathchill vs. Hungering Cold

[Ronnon]

I did a forum search trying to find the answer, but to no avail, so I decided to ask here!

I used to be specced Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

But then I read somewhere that I should sacrifice Deathchill for Hungering Cold for tanking. What do you guys say to this?

[asches]

hungering cold would be more, "give the healer a minute to save me"/"give my runes a second to cool down", both assuming the dps will stop hitting them.

deathchill would be more "give me more threat".

personally, knowing next to nothing about anything, id say trust your healer and go with deathchill.

[keeprock]

I would say most serious tanks don't use either. 40 runic power to freeze a mob for 10 seconds is not very useful. And 1 extra crit every 2 minutes is about the same. I'd steal a point from Killing Machine to make it 4/5 and put the 2 in epidemic.

[Ronnon]

I would say most serious tanks don't use either. 40 runic power to freeze a mob for 10 seconds is not very useful. And 1 extra crit every 2 minutes is about the same. I'd steal a point from Killing Machine to make it 4/5 and put the 2 in epidemic.

Would be nice except you need it to hit 51 talents and get HB.

[asches]

Would be nice except you need it to hit 51 talents and get HB.

you could drop a point or three from scent of blood?

[Ronnon]

I'm sure I could be persuaded too. I was just following the model given to me by more "knowledgeable" people


Edit: Still doesn't answer my question though

[keeprock]

Would be nice except you need it to hit 51 talents and get HB.

Good point. (<== That's a pun.)

Looking at my spec, those 2 points I mentioned are in Icy Reach. Not a game breaker either way you spend them.

[Molohk]

I would say most serious tanks don't use either. 40 runic power to freeze a mob for 10 seconds is not very useful. And 1 extra crit every 2 minutes is about the same. I'd steal a point from Killing Machine to make it 4/5 and put the 2 in epidemic.

You really don't need epidemic, especially if you're running a HB Glyph rotation (the OP link shows glyph of HB). Deathchill is a very common choice because even though it's not great, it's (mildly) useful in different types of situation, where as talents like Icy Reach, Hungering Cold, Chillbains, Acclimation or Lichborne are very situational.

[Ronnon]

Very Punny! (<=== See what I did there?)

Looking at your spec I have another question... 2H Wep Spec talent. You don't think it's useful having 4% more damage for threat? (After reading that it sounds condescending but I assure it's an honest question!)

[Molohk]

Personally, I'd rather get 2H spec than Scent of Blood. When I tried out SoB as frost spec I just had more RP than I could effectively use, I ended up ditching it for virulence, since I run with the glyph of HB and the +hit does help a lot for HB.

[Bluepepper]

Hi,
I'd say if you give up deathchill for hungering cold that's probably a good idea. One of deathchill's strengths is that it's a forced crit and is great for moments in pvp where your opponent is at low health and you want to close out the fight. It could also be used in pve for opening threat on a boss to give you more of a threat lead. Though, generally as a death knight tank, you have a wide variety of tools (Death and decay, Icy touch, Deathgrip, blood boil, dark command, pet pull, etc) you can use in order help you with inital aggro, and threat production. Maybe as a MT frost death knight deathchill would be a good idea to spec into.

Hungering cold, paraphrasing what Asches said, is basically an "oh shit" CD. Those moments where it's either going to get bad OR is bad and you need to buy time. Obviously you can use it for other purposes, such as waiting for a cooldown to finish, but it comes in really handy as frost dk when you get an accidental pull and need to re-establish control quickly. Also, tanking in WoTLK is mostly about AoE tanking and Hungering cold can definetly be of benifit overall (5/10/25mans, MTing & OTing). You can use Hungering cold (1 min CD) twice as often as deathchill (2 min CD). I'd personally go for Hungering cold.

[Molohk]

Frankly, I fail to see the benefit of Hungering Cold as an aid for AoE tanking, especially if you are glyphed for HB (like the OP). Hungering Cold has laughable threat, the only real value would be adding frost fever, which HB already does (if glyphed) with the added benefit of huge direct damage (threat). The CC effect is useless in most situations and breaks too easily.

[Ferfey]

In a raid where you're DPS are FoK'ing, Hurricane'ing, Divine Storming, SoC'ing, Blizzarding and [insert favorite AoE here] A death-chilled Howlingblast opener is Godly for threat. Hungering cold's only real benefit as a tank might be as an additional interrupt on spell casters. As far as giving you time... see the above list of AoE and realize its going to break those little ice-cubes as soon as you lay em down. Might be worth it to try it on Brundir for his chain lightening, although deathgriping him out of a rune and mind freezing (and strangulate in 3.2?) is usually enough.

Oh, one more thing... when MTing Hodir if someone brings the first crit buff to you a deathchill'd howling blast for really helps you front load threat. Gotta love tanking in resist gear.

[ttocs]

Try both.

Use whatever fits your playstyle. I find myself with KM up semi-regularly, so I don't really have much of a use for DC. I also don't use glyph of HB for tanking, so I use it for a quick disease spread on things like freya, on a lasher phase. HC -> HB. The stun isn't really the point, it's the easy application of frost fever in one GCD.

[Inaara]

Try both.

Use whatever fits your playstyle. I find myself with KM up semi-regularly, so I don't really have much of a use for DC. I also don't use glyph of HB for tanking, so I use it for a quick disease spread on things like freya, on a lasher phase. HC -> HB. The stun isn't really the point, it's the easy application of frost fever in one GCD.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Kurtosis]

In a raid where you're DPS are FoK'ing, Hurricane'ing, Divine Storming, SoC'ing, Blizzarding and [insert favorite AoE here] A death-chilled Howlingblast opener is Godly for threat. Hungering cold's only real benefit as a tank might be as an additional interrupt on spell casters. As far as giving you time... see the above list of AoE and realize its going to break those little ice-cubes as soon as you lay em down. Might be worth it to try it on Brundir for his chain lightening, although deathgriping him out of a rune and mind freezing (and strangulate in 3.2?) is usually enough.

Oh, one more thing... when MTing Hodir if someone brings the first crit buff to you a deathchill'd howling blast for really helps you front load threat. Gotta love tanking in resist gear.

/agree. If you want HC, don't take it for the CC, which will get broken almost immediately by overzealous dps in most cases (unless you're with an extremely pro, aware, coordinated raiding team). Only take it for a quick way to spread FF... once a minute.

Personally I prefer glyphed HB and DC to frontload AoE threat every ~2 out of 3 pulls (depending on how fast we move from pull to pull, 2m cd on DC):

#showtooltip
/use [nomod] Deathchill
/use [nomod] Blood Fury
/use [mod:shift] Howling Blast;[nomod] Howling Blast

First rotation = [mod:shift]+HB -> DnD -> BB
Second rotation = [nomod]+HB -> Oblit -> BB -> BB
Repeat second rotation till pull finished.

First rotation puts up FF, second rotation hits w/ a guaranteed HB crit. The problem with using Deathchill+HB on the first rotation is that FF isn't up, so Glacier Rot and Tundra Stalker won't buff that HB crit. I prefer to wait for the second round when I can get the max dmg on that crit possible.

That builds a pretty insurmountable AoE threat lead and maintains it through the fight. Much more useful to me than a 40-rp, 1m cd, disease spreading, cc-failing ability.

[Ferfey]

I like this idea alot and have been playing around with it on the test dummies in Ebon Hold. I tried modifying your macro a bit (but having problems). I'd like to only use Deathchill when my modifier key is pressed otherwise use regular HB (would be great on the Thorim fight when adds came in after D&D expired etc. Also, I tend to have tons of extra RP on AoE pulls so I started adding runestrike to HB...

#showtooltip
/use [nomod] Howling Blast
/use [mod:alt] Deathchill; [mod:alt] Howling Blast  
/startattack
/cast Rune Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

The problem I'm having is that pressing alt+"The Key" doesn't give a Deathchill'd Howling blast. Any thoughts?

p.s. anyone else find it annoying that Howling blast and blood boil don't start auto attack?

[Hades]

Macros have never been my thing, but personal experience has told me two things. A deathchilled HB is INCREDIBLE for picking up adds, and Hungering Cold is useless unless I wanna guage my own performance midfight while I'm soloing. Also, using Deathchill on your second HB makes your threat go through the ROOF. Highly recommended

[Kurtosis]

The problem I'm having is that pressing alt+"The Key" doesn't give a Deathchill'd Howling blast. Any thoughts?

p.s. anyone else find it annoying that Howling blast and blood boil don't start auto attack?

Sorry, just saw your reply. Try this:

#showtooltip
/use [mod:alt] Deathchill 
/use [mod:alt] Howling Blast; [nomod] Howling Blast
/startattack
/use Rune Strike
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Basically my same macro, but in reverse.

And I didn't even notice they don't start autoattack, thanks. Will add /startattack to mine now too.