3.1 was a great era. 2h frost using frost strikes that where unavoidable. Back then dw didn’t scale with both weapons for moves like frost strike. Dw sucked from the start because of this. Even the developers knew this.
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Blizzard said it was DW even pre 3.2. Why would you go deep in the frost tree? There wasnt a reason to. Why go so deep to pick up hungering cold? Some builds didnt even pick up Frost Strike with the hybrid build. But there wasnt a reason to go past Unbreakable armor early on.
Its fine if you like 2h. Just dont complain about it. I dont understand why people have to complain about it. Its clear people dont like the spec and are trying to change it into something they want. Talk about entitlement. If you like the spec, you would play it regardless and wouldnt be trying to change it.
The spec evolved because the spec was a complete and utter mess.
I remember Frost Strike being a legitimately a deadly ability. Especially those pesky rogues who dodge things.
They didn’t. If you wanted to dw you could pick the one or 2 talents that made dw even functional.
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That’s what made 2h frost so awesome. Oblit, oblit, km proc, frost strike, with a howling blast in the mix. This build didn’t even go all the way down the frost tree. You would pick up the blood dps talents and I think one or two unholy.
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Might of Mograine.
It was a pretty legit talent! 
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It was a great build at the time. Ahh the nostalgia lol
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Idk why some people try to say this build didn’t exist. That’s just not true.
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Who said the build didnt exist? I mean Howling Blast was rarely used because Obliterate didnt proc Rime at the time, but no one said a 2h build didnt exist.
Since when does saying the DW build was better, equal to saying a build didnt exist? How do you end up at suggesting people are saying the build didnt exist? Yeah, a 2h build existed. Whats your point?
Heres a more important question, Howling Blast damage VS Obliterate damage.
A DW build could go all the way down to Guile of Gorefiend, increase the crit damage of Howling Blast by 45%, ignore Rime completely. Use Pestilence or even Blood Strike even though it was with 1h, to convert runes (pestilence with a glyph refreshed diseases on the target) and spam the fool out of Howling Blast. Glacial Rot increased its damage, 30% increased frost damage from Black Ice, 15% from Razorice, FF doubling howling blasts damage. Km procs used on Howling Blast, dump runic power with Death Coil which its damage would be increased by Morbidity and Impurity. Spell hit from Virulence, get crit and haste after hit which spells dont need expertise (autos did though which you got some from Nerves of Cold Steel and that paired with Necrosis and Blood Caked Blade). It also summoned a Gargoyle as a 3m cd and it did a lot of damage, also had Unbreakable armor.
People would usually stop at either Howling Blast, or Unbreakable Armor and put more into Unholy. Getting a permanent pet, reaping so you could use BB to convert blood runes, wouldnt even have to use plague strike and just keep up Frost Fever for almost complete magic damage. Instead of Razorice cinderglacier was an option.
2h had to cycle in Icy Touch and Plague Strike. Had to work in Blood Strikes as well.
The DW hybrid spec was really strong, if it wasnt there would be no reason to move Howling Blast and Gargoyle to be end talents so you couldnt pick them both up.
Blood talent. Guile of Gorfiend was Might of Mogrine but for a few different abilities.
What I dont understand is why would anyone go into frost, other than crit chance, and not go Blood if looking to use Obliterate. More physical damage increases in Blood.
Not like physical damage was all that great in early Wrath since you had to contend with armor, and hit/expertise came before anything else, even strength. So that prevents armor pen from making any real impact. As the expansion went on though armor pen got more and more desireable.
They even changed Scourge Strike from full shadow damage to physical and shadow since magic damage had no way to scale. If DW was almost entirely magic damage, that could be another reason why they changed the spec up along with the spec just not working well with its procs.
They changed Rime, KM, Howling Blast, moved talents around. Changed Frost Aura to Improved Frost Presence.
Blood was changed a bit. Which my suspicion must have held some weight. If you wanted to use Obliterate, Blood was the way to go. But Obliterate was removed from Blood talents. Might of Mograine lost the Obliterate portion of it. So did Abominations Might. Improved Death Strike was added which increased death strike damage and increased its critical strike chance. So it replaced Obliterate with Death Strike.
So early on if you wanted to play with Obliterate, it looks like Blizzard wanted you to go blood then replaced it with Death Strike. Blood then focused on Death Strike, Frost on Obliterate and Unholy on Scourge Strike.
Sure I will link just tell me how to find
show me then… 3.0 version.
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see, i’ll call BS on this because with 3.0, frost was first considered the “tank” tree- it had the survival and defensive talents. it wasn’t until a bit later that they made blood the tank tree because of the self healing and such.
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The build I’m talking about you said yourself didn’t exist. Now you are saying no one said it didn’t exist. Wow. You don’t even know how it worked.
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But not everyone is saying it. Just you.
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This is the problem when you dont pay attention to the people in your side. They are the ones that posted the link of the blue post.
Where? Where did I say it didnt exist? Saying something is better than something else does not equal to me saying something didnt exist. In fact you cant logically arrive that that conclusion since for something to be better than the other, the other would have to exist.
If you are getting what I said from other people thats a you problem. Not a me problem.
I think I said a diseaseless 2h build didnt exist. Which I guess it could exist if you wanted gutter trash Obliterate damage, just more unneeded self nerfs. But hey, you do you if you wanted that.
Not everyone is saying what? You dont need an army of people saying stuff and trying to silence others (2h community which if you are making your own community within a community are you really part of the overall community? I dont think so) for something to be how it was.
Once again you are contradicting yourself. People who were playing back then knew how 2h was dominant and what killed it in 3.2 was the merger of main hand and off hand damage calculation. Dw hit faster and 2h hit harder. Dw didn’t scale with its off hand and too much damage was placed into oblit and frost strike. That’s why the no disease build work and was top dps for a bit. It shouldn’t have worked and blizzard really messed up on the calculation. Oblit should be more effective when implementing diseases not without. But it was a thing, it was nerfed into deletion, and blizzard reworked dw to basically do what 2h was doing all along and stripped 2h of its identity. They could make a new 2h ri rune forge, allow 2h to have 2 runeforge or something but the two styles can coexist. Dw only works today because enough people wanted it to work back then not because it worked from the start. That argument is just being done today for 2h.
DW only hit faster in auto attacks. The rune system was locked in. It didnt scale with haste. When you used them you just had to wait for them to come back.
DW didnt hit with its offhand, and when you went DW YOU WOULD USE SPELLS BECAUSE THEY DONT NEED AN OFFHAND TO DO DAMAGE!
And no, you didnt play without diseases.
Glacial Rot - Diseased Enemies take 10% increased damage from your Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Frost Strike spells. (dont know why you would pick this up when thats 10% increased damage from 2 of the 3 abilities that you listed 2h used)
Icy Talons - You leech heat from your victims of your Frost Fever, so what when their melee speed is reduced, yours is increased by 20% for the next 20 seconds.
Howling Blast - 1 Unholy 1 Frost - Blasts the target with a frigid wind, dealing x-y frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Deals double damage to gargets infected with Frost Fever.
Tundra Stalker - Your spells and abilities deal 10% more damage to targets infected with Frost Fever. Also increases your expertise by 5.
Obliterate - A brutal instant attack that deals x% weapon damage plus y damage, total damage increased 12.5% per each of your diseases on the target, but consumes the diseases. (where Annihilation came into play)
Blood Strike - Instantly Strike the enemy, causing x% weapon damage plus y, total damage increased by 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target. (used because Blood of the North talent)
Blood Boil - Boils the Blood of all enemies within 10 yards, dealing x shadow damage. Deals 50% additional damage to targets infected with Blood Plague or Frost Fever.
There is no way any rational mind would look at all those damage boosts just from having diseases on the target and say “oh, no reason to have diseases on the target”.
If you played without diseases you should have been permanently benched. You were just hindering yourself. The buffs to Frost Fever and Blood Plague were class buffs, not spec buffs because these things did enough damage on their own that you didnt need to have diseases on the target.
Your entire post is a fabrication based on one article because it didnt mention diseases. I have yet to find a Frost diseaseless build from 3.0 - 3.3.5. None. You could play without Blood Plague if you wanted to for an easier rotation but at the loss of dps. Thats it, and you could just replace one of those blood strikes with a pestilence and have the pestilence glyph to save that unholy rune gcd.
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I think we also try to stack armor pin for stronger oblit strikes. The simple math was something like one extra oblit was more valuable of a use of runes than casting our blood strike and icy touch. I loved this build. It was very effective in ulduar.