How big is the difference?
Guides say that Deathbringer dw is the go-to this patch. I have been having success with 2h riders, so i guess is what do you like more really.
I’m simming only about 10-20k less than dw as a 2h deathbringer so not really a massive difference there. Though I can see dw pulling further ahead later since our tier bonuses seem to be made for shattering blade and breath of sindragosa
~10% more in dungeon/ae with riders
~10% more with DB in single
Rider is generally better suited to dungeons because you’ll have more opportunities to take advantage of DnD cleave.
Deathbringer is generally better suited to single target because it’s a huge amount of burst damage on a 45 second cooldown which happens to line up perfectly with Pillar of Frost.
Both are still good outside of their respective optimal cases.
For what it’s worth, a 20k spread is around 3%~ right now and 1% is enough to “kill” a talent choice 
Generally doesn’t matter for 99% of players in 99% of content but I wouldn’t personally consider 3% to not be “massive” in this context.
I’ve seen this posted a lot and there’s not really much truth to it. The extra FS/Breath damage is generally offset by the extra GA damage for 2h with KMs.
Also, it’s all ppm/capped so the benefit is generally the same for both DW and 2h.
Guess we’ll agree to disagree on that first point. If UH and Frost were within 20k of each other I think most people would consider that pretty well balanced. And I see the dw vs 2h choice as similar. So a 3% difference seems pretty solid to me.
That’s good about the set bonuses tho, I would be happy to see them stay close together.
I disagree
I have no problem keeping dndup.
Add to that 1.5 min timer for 4 horses VS 45 s for db
And horn of winter
You want runic power for fe shatter and frostrike, as frost strike hits as hard as obliterate
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/sargeras/Nerfd
Rider is definitely viable in raid and mythic+. Play with chill streak.
Don’t play shatter. And run with stoneskin instead of razor ice. Plays exactly like it did last xpac but with more uptime on dnd better movement, and passive cleave from breaking chains. Also play with the talent that extends the rider duration focus on FS/Oblit in pillar windows only press rhime if you have no other choice or its aoe (in pillar, outside of pillar us rhime to manage runes).
You will want to get as much crit as you can at the moment. Don’t give into the Deathbringer sheep people.
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We have sim data now. Mathematically, your statement is wrong.
M+ small pull counts will be relatively similar, otherwise that gap for 2H rider is 5%+ (as in worse) as pulls get larger. In raid 2H rider is behind by 9% compared to BOS top sim, and also 1-2% behind 2H DB in ST.
Viable is a very loose term to throw around in this regard.
Who said anything about 2h rider?
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Sorry I’m so used to you spreading misinformation about the spec I figured you were still all in on 2h obliterate.
Rider is still 5% behind, and largely worse in m+ based on the data.
DW rider being 10k off in simcraft sims from deathbringer while functioning better with more mobility and not a janky playstyle will be perfectly viable with DW deathbringer breath build. Breath build offers way more room for human error. But you can tell me what you want while i spend the season putting up pink parses as rider.
IDK what M+ data you have already, but considering rider is very diff stat prio than db and the upcoming changes, i would consider anything on beta with a giant grain of salt.
Your just a hater lol literally no misinformation spread. “Liking DND” is not misinformation its an opinion.
EDIT: Lets keep in mind that 2h oblit last xpac was behind breath in sims more than what we are discussing right now and was prefectly viable in all mythic raid content contending on front pages for frost dks.
Rider is 71k behind DB in ST BIS profile, and gets gapped by upwards of 1 million DPS with pull counts 8-15+ if you wanna talk about m+. I for one actually understand that the people responsible for writing the DK sim data know what they’re doing as opposed to your anecdotal, and often incorrect, evidence/assumptions.
Do some research before you run your mouth. Blood mallet has target count scaling data available, go take a look…
You can feel free to link your data lol.
Please link, Blood Mallet notoriously uses only one profile for builds. Example last expansion there was never a Obliteration build on blood mallet and only breath.
Just go to bloodmallet, it’s not hard. Data is available for everyone, use those two braincells.
https://bloodmallet.com/chart/death_knight/frost/talent_target_scaling/castingpatchwerk
Most builds are 2h - TWW1 is breath. You are not going to play breath in M+ lol. While we get different talent builds I see no gear profiles, are they using the same profile for each build? That seems like it would heavily skew the data.
Target scaling seems like a pretty terrible way to judge and aggressively belittle people for your “M+ data” lol.
Linking things for others to see what we are talking about while trying to discuss information about a spec that others might read with less information is just good practice. Spewing out “facts” with no support doesn’t help anyone in this community
Take a second to look at the data, still upwards of a 900k dps gap betwen DB and Rider as 2h oblit as pull counts increase; DB has a massively higher ceiling in m+.
I think BOS could see play in coordinated groups due to also having access to oblit via talent tree changes in TWW.
Hard to post links when forum won’t allow me to.