3.2 Dual Weild

[Watchman]

Are there any PTR builds up for this? Is the new Frost talent worth it or not?

[Gravity]

6 points of talent spend to make dual-wielding feasible seems like a waste to me.
It's not like you gain 6% tps, since you start at -15% or so untalented.

There is also some chat by Zook in this thread on it.

[Zenzai]

6 points of talent spend to make dual-wielding feasible seems like a waste to me.
It's not like you gain 6% tps, since you start at -15% or so untalented.

There is also some chat by Zook in this thread on it.

Scent of Blood --> slow MH, fast OH --> potential for ridiculous amounts of FS spamming? Has potential since you could skip the first DW talent since your specials are only using the 8% miss rate.

Or 2 x fast weapons...it might be relatively devastating, or utter trash 

[futhark]

you could skip the first DW talent since your specials are only using the 8% miss rate.

I had considered something similar.

[Raptorg]

Well, your off-hand hits would hit for less if you skipped them.

[Süffer]

Scent of Blood --> slow MH, fast OH --> potential for ridiculous amounts of FS spamming? Has potential since you could skip the first DW talent since your specials are only using the 8% miss rate.

Or 2 x fast weapons...it might be relatively devastating, or utter trash 

I've been pondering those exact questions, Blizzard has announced the removal of the CD on scent of blood for 3.2, though I thought i had been and the tooltip was just outdated. Regardless, I'd like to find out comparatively if dual last laughs, or a broken promise/Last laugh combination would work out better. The unfortunate thing I've noticed, is there's just not another slow MH, so fast/fast would have to be the only way dw would be viable to tank under moving forward ilevel wise anyway from naxx.

[Leukos]

There is no CD on live. It's a tooltip fix.

[Ahrimanyu]

I had considered something similar.

Wouldn't another 15% dmg from offhand Oblits & FS etc be worth those 3 points? Especially if the data on EJ is correct than the dmg from SotVH is also increased 15% by this talent.

[Zenzai]

Goood point. Problem is you want 13 points in Blood, 5 in Unholy and 51+ in Frost. Considering Frost is a cluttered mess of talents (the whole silly IT improving line for instance) you have to lose out somewhere. I'd have to give up Acclimation which is something I'm loathe to do.

If one does opt for pure tanking 1H's anyway it wouldnt be a massive boost would it? Though there are some nice socket based slow 1H DPS weapons you can easily make use of (my defense has cranked 571..and I'm not trying to collect it but it just gets higher and higher) for some slow/slow.

All in all, you'd be relying on a spamming build which its more important to pump out repeatable attacks than having single, slower big hitters. I mean between Chill of the Grave and Scent of Blood you could be filling up your RP bar quite fast. Throw in the IT glyph to fuel your second rotation after BotN with 2 IT's and 2 Oblits it will be interesitng to see if you can even keep up the rate at which your bar fills against your FS/RS spamming finger (you should hopefully pump out a LOT of RS with 1.6 speed weapons especially since you're more than likely to have Windfury up in a raid). Your AOE frost builds wont be affected at all, since you still have HB for groups.

Its like an IT spamming build, without needing to spam IT...as much. This is pure speculation based on random musings! . Downside is a loss of Stoneskin Gargoyles stamina bonus.

[Zookz25]

Tbh, the frost threat really isn't that bad, getting up to 4000 TPS self-buffed is nice really.

The only reason I'm making it an off-spec is due to bloods TPS + utilities being better in terms of single target, where a lot of frosts power can be focused on AoE (more-so then unholy now with unholy blight gone).

Also, the Dual Wield Frost Tank's TPS will change a lot depending on how fast the mob is attacking you, due to SoB (really fast means just an all out frost strike super spam, slower will lower it a bit).

Still, I've gotten to use to timing death strikes + rune taps as blood after big attacks, which is really fun and something that I enjoy about the death knight tank compared to other tanks. So I'll be keeping blood my single target build.

But I'm for sure switching to frost as an AoE build from unholy, timing things like Killing Machines with Howling Blasts, Hungering colds to halt mobs attacks, constant 50% slow on AoE packs of mobs, and Unbreakable Armor making you god for the duration on AoE packs is just really enjoyable compared to what I do with my Dual Wield Unholy Tank right now for AoE.

Single Target spec

AoE spec

These are my two suggestions. Also have to give some props to splug for his testing tbh, single target build was mostly based off of what he said (I have never played forst since beta so most of frosts rotation/talents were confusing to me got the hang of it now though)

Also, overall, there isn't much difference between the AoE and single target spec, I just like having the utility for AoE (hungering cold, chillblains, etc.) even though it's not that useful.

[Gravity]

fyi did some dps dw tests here. Don't draw conclusions yet, but better than nothing. Appears 2H and DW will be about the same dps.

[futhark]

fyi did some dps dw tests here. Don't draw conclusions yet, but better than nothing. Appears 2H and DW will be about the same dps.

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but DW better come out ahead in the end.  There has to be a justification for sinking six additional talent points into a build beyond a personal style choice.

[Splug]

If 2h/dw break even on all fronts, then the six points have exactly justified their value - they were at least as good as the next best alternative.

-Splug

[Gravity]

Yah Splug, but it should be impossible for them to be even on all fronts, because you invest 4 more points in DW than you do in 2H. I would expect DW to be ~4% worse in some way.

(6 pts for DW, -vs- 2 pts for 2H spec.)

[Splug]

Yah Splug, but it should be impossible for them to be even on all fronts, because you invest 4 more points in DW than you do in 2H. I would expect DW to be ~4% worse in some way.

(6 pts for DW, -vs- 2 pts for 2H spec.)

Sure it's possible.  Let's say, for sake of argument, that a player deals X weapon-based damage with a 2-handed weapon and no weapon-spec support talents.  With the 2h talent, they increase that to 1.04X.  Assigning an arbitrary value Y to their unmodified dual wield damage, such that Y < X, it's still possible for the modified value to reach 1.04X, the modifiers just have to increase weapon-based damage by a larger factor than 2% per point.  It doesn't create talent balance problems for the 2h player because they have no effect there, though it does force dw to select them for maximum efficiency.

-Splug