This is a pretty delayed question (I noticed it from TWW season 1), but something I’ve always wondered…
When I run BiB for a dual-wielding Frost DK playing Shattering Blade (Frost Strike consumes Razorice), it tells me to use Fallen Crusader and Stone Gargoyle as my weapon enchants. This seems contrary to everyone that writes about or discusses Frost DK, and seems counter-logical considering that Shattering Blade is all about consuming Razorice.
Is this something you’ve come across before that has a good explanation, or is it just a case of counter-logical but the numbers don’t lie? Thanks for your help as always.
I had to do a pretty big re-write of Frost DK for this patch. I don’t think we can really compare what we were doing before this patch to now, because of Frostbane.
Right now the actual proc chance of Frostbane is unknown. Whether or not razorice is optimal in this build will depend a lot on how often it procs. The proc chance scales with how many razorice stacks are on the targets. There is a very complicated and not obvious interaction going on with this new talent. If I lower the proc chance per stack, razorice becomes optimal. For now I had it set at a 5% chance per stack of razorice, based on some brief testing. If I lower it to 3%, razorice becomes the optimal runeforge.
I can set the proc rate lower to favor razorice for now if that is what people want, but I think this is a good illustration of how easy it is to shift what is optimal, based solely on one assumption.
If there is a lower chance to get frostbane per stack of razorice, we need the extra razorice stacks from frostscythe to reliably proc it. With a higher chance per stack, we can still get a good number of casts without those extra razorice procs.
I think we will see weird things happen here regardless. In AoE, frostbane is the only ability using up razorice stacks via shattering blade. If, on average, you are getting frostbane procs before you get to 5 stacks of razorice, you will stay at a higher stack of razorice, on average. If you are getting to 5 stacks of razorice before you proc frostbane, on average, you end up consuming them with every proc, and thus have a lower average stack of razorice. I think this is why a lower chance to proc frostbane favors razorice - to bring up that average razorice stack.