How is Frost in…
M+
Bgs
Arenas
Raids
How is Unholy in…
M+
Bgs
Arenas
Raids
Which one is the best overall?
The one you enjoy the most.
If you are coming to the forum to ask you most likely aren’t jumping into the highest end content and even if so both specs are viable.
Frost and Unholy are both great in mythic+
Whelp frost does well with small pulls and BOS Frost/Unholy does insane damage on big pulls.
Both are viable for raiding with BOS Frost pulling ahead on end game mythic progression because of the needed on demand burst.
PvP I’m not entirely sure of with the vers nerf but Flark has updated guides I think.
3 Likes
I would say it’s undoubtably Frost in PVE and they’re equal in PVP.
Frost
Subcreation has Frost as S tier
Warcraft logs has Frost as as the 10th best DPS spec for Raiding
Warcraft logs has Frost has as the 6th best DPS spec for Mythic+
Unholy
Subcreation has Unholy as B tier
Warcraft logs has Unholy as the 22nd best DPS spec for Raiding(3rd from last)
Warcraft logs has Unholy as the 17th best DPS spec in Mythic+
Then Frost has built in advantages for PVE like the AOE is completely mobile, the rotation is easier, and you can use control undead.
For PVP like 80% of DKs use Unholy, probably because Unholy is by far the more popular spec regardless of numbers, and alot of Frost’s abilities were heavily nerfed in PVP damage, so you won’t be getting the same numbers there as PVE. Frost still has ridiculious PVP burst every 45 seconds because of Chill Streak, but Unholy has more consistent damage with Necrotic Strike.
I’m constantly rune-starved as frost.
The same is true of Unholy though. I still have rune downtime in my rotation at 60% base haste, averaging like 80-90% haste in a long fight.
That’s just DK, it plays slow AF.
Frost rune problem gets a lot better with enough crit and haste. To the point where you can hardly fit frost strikes in.
Nyomi - great post. It’s funny how under the radar frost still is. Sure, it’s boring and spammy but just talking about performance here.
Subcreation has had frost at S tier basically since the site started. Everyone still thinks unholy kicks the crap out of it in m+, I guess they just watch MDI and don’t look at the data for live keys.
1 Like
They have vastly different play styles. Choose what you prefer. Frost has the absolute slowest rotation in the entire game. Unholy has one of the highest. Frost relies on pooling a generating it as fast as possible to maintain a major cooldown. Unholy has a constant rotation of generating and bursting zits to deal damage. One has a permanent pet that makes up a significant part of its damage, one doesn’t.
If you play icecap (which you should in m+) frost rotation is basically as fast as Unholy’s. Slower on single target, give you that.
Unholy is only faster because we all stack haste infinitely though. Not many specs are going to compete with the speed of one that sits at 70% haste minimum in combat when geared.
2 Likes
Or hate the least which is generally how I end up choosing
I think the best all around spec right now is Icecap Frost DK. It’s great in M+, and any farm boss or Heroic raiding. If you’re pushing mythic raid progression still, BoS is going to be better for many of the encounters. But for the majority of my gameplay, Icecap is just better all around.
Unholy is still an excellent spec, but I just flat out perform better in the majority of situations as Icecap when comparing the content I’d be doing as Unholy vs. Frost.
Frost can be pretty spammy, but it’s incredibly consistent and the damage you can put out @ high 50s% crit and 30% haste is pretty amazing.
Ice cap is VERY gear dependent. With expedient and sever corruptions you will rarely ever press frost strike