Frost DW: 1 or 2 Diseases?

[Eidi]

Right now I'm using 2 diseases with Glyph of Disease to refresh'em, but I noticed Splugg/Spyte using a 1 disease rotation with Howling Blast and it's much simpler, but I'm worried about using Razorice on most bosses still. How good is the threat compared to a 2 disease rotation?

[Taei]

1 disease is fine for trash, but single targets should really have 2 diseases on, especially since you'll be using Obliterate rather than Howling Blast.

Glyph of Disease isn't any good for Frost. If you have Icy Talons, you'll be using IT to refresh it. If you're using Glyph of Howling Blast, you'll be using that to reapply your diseases. You'll get much more benefit (and threat) by using a different glyph.

[Airowird]

1 disease is fine for trash, but single targets should really have 2 diseases on, especially since you'll be using Obliterate rather than Howling Blast.

Glyph of Disease isn't any good for Frost. If you have Icy Talons, you'll be using IT to refresh it. If you're using Glyph of Howling Blast, you'll be using that to reapply your diseases. You'll get much more benefit (and threat) by using a different glyph.

The problem here is that to refresh 2 diseases without the Glyph of Disease, you need to dedicate an Unholy rune to Plague Strike. This means that you lose out on an extra chance to Obliterate (or Howling Blast).

Once you apply diseases, Glyph of Disease allows for a single Blood rune to do what you would else need a Frost and Unholy rune for.
On top of that, last time I played my DK, there was a bug where using Pestilence or Blood Strike actually turned the other Blood Rune into a Death Rune as well if it is on cooldown. With that bug, you would be able to have a 15s disease cycle with 2xObliterate, IT, Pestilence. In case they fixed it, or you simply prefer it, a 21s disease cycle would be 2xOb, Pest, BS, RP dump, 3xOb. Either way, in 2 rune cycles you use atleast 4 Obliterates and either 2 IT or Ob + BS extra. In the end the difference is not that great, in favor of less attacks that can be parried, and free disease spreading to other targets.

[Satorri]

Taei said it well.

I prefer to use the single disease set for large trash. Essentially open with HB, spam BB, and OB to proc Rime, but hit HB every time it's up, this is fine for large group aggro and does some very nice splash. On single targets or small groups 2 diseases shines much more, fully buffed OB and BS hit like hammers, and I only use HB on Rime procs or if there are 2+ things I'm fighting. I don't use GoDisease partly because of this, glyph of HB (which I haven't removed) keeps FF up 100% which is what I care about most, and I'll keep BP up as needed on the main target, and spam the daylights out of OB, two weapon hits on OB is very nice for Rime procs.

I actually don't often use IT any more because I have glyph of HB (with OB and FS), though I think GoDisease is ok, I feel like I get more mileage this way.

[dhthomps]

I agree that GoDisease is far from optimal for Frost. If glyph of unbreakable armor becomes useful next patch due to the UBA buff it will be that much more difficult to justify GoDisease in a frost build. For AOE threat I would stick with HB glyph and BB spam. For ST threat you're looking at any combination of OB/FS/RS glyphs.

[Splug]

The last time I checked the numbers, a two-disease rotation will generate slightly more throughput threat if all else is equal. However, running howling blast as an opener lets you get into the primary attacks a GCD earlier, and as such yields a much better opening burst. As this is the most critical point of the encounter, running a single disease rotation at least initially is justifiable. In the long run, it also serves to create more open GCD's to burn off frost strikes, as well as opening up some talent points from the unholy tree (epidemic).

EDIT: There's also something to be said for sheer simplicity being itself beneficial. Being able to mash 3-4 buttons instead of 7-8 leaves the tank more open to react to other elements of the encounter, as well as saving keyboard space. You can argue that skill will compensate for it, but the fact remains that having more keybinds to reach for does constitute a small price.

As for razorice: I carry 4 1h weapons. One with razorice, one with fallen crusader, and two with swordbreaking. I consider frost's modularity in weapon-based threat one of its strong points, in that both enchants and weapon style (slow-dps vs fast-tanking) can be changed mid-combat if you have enough bag space (and discarded 1h drops).

-Splug

[Eidi]

Yeah, simplicity is probably the biggest reason I was considering it.

Right now I have glyphs for FS/Obliterate, would replacing Disease with Rune Strike be much better? With only one weapon hitting right now, it doesn't seem like it'd be better compared to having an extra obliterate every rotation cause of Disease. Next patch it probably will be though.

I only use this spec for raids where I have someone providing melee haste. My secondary has the Icy Touch glyph.

[Jeges]

Run Recount and see how much of your damage Rune Strike amounts to. For me, it's 15-23% of my damage, or 21-31% of my threat. Baseline crit on it is pretty low, so the glyph would increase single-target threat by almost 2-3%. Post-nerf, I pretty much never see Frost Strike above 10% of my total damage. If you squint hard, the FS glyph gives you about 25% more Frost Strikes, which means the glyph would buy me less than 2% more threat.