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I've been simming myself with lonely winter and without EB and GS and for me - Lonely Winter with no EB no GS is top DPS. When did this happen??? All of the guides always said no lonely winter EB and GS. Must need a new guide the locks are destroying me in DPS.

Certain configurations of stats/traits have made LW/FT/TV more competitive, but it's not universal.

Generally, GS is still stronger on average.

My current talent setup is Lonely Winter, Frozen Touch, Splitting Ice and Thermal Void. The generally recommended setup of Bone Chilling, Ebon Bolt, Comet Storm and Glacial Spike in total only sims 0.10% (1/10th of 1%) higher for me. Generally I'm a min/max kind of person, but LW/TV is so much easier to play that I've actually seen a noticeable DPS gain in-game.

Whats your azerite / stat setup?

Meme spec here

Played hc today here are the logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Ac ... a#fight=16

Flash Freeze 3
Glacial Assault 1
Tunnel of Ice 1
Whiteout 1
Overwhelming Power 2
Unstable Flames 1

Intellect: 11,232 Stamina: 12,509 Crit: 1,372 Haste: 1,020 Mastery: 518 Versatility: 868 Avoidance: 118

My current talent setup is Lonely Winter, Frozen Touch, Splitting Ice and Thermal Void. The generally recommended setup of Bone Chilling, Ebon Bolt, Comet Storm and Glacial Spike in total only sims 0.10% (1/10th of 1%) higher for me. Generally I'm a min/max kind of person, but LW/TV is so much easier to play that I've actually seen a noticeable DPS gain in-game.

Yeah, one of the challenges with the simulation is that it is based on highly simplistic conditions. The Patchwerk fight was a simply sit still and do your rotation fight (for the most part).

The problem is that those fights don't really exist anymore. Most fights are filled with a lot of motion...so you are going to see a better dps many times without GS which requires you to be still for a long cast and, to be optimal, do so as soon as you get your 5th icicle. Some people can do that well...but the vast majority cannot pull this off very effectively with most fights. And for that majority, a spec that doesn't include GS will always do better for them.

I personally use LW, EB, CS, and TV, and consistently crush other frost mages with better gear who use the supposedly optimal spec. For my ilvl, I even get orange level ratings on a few fights (and I'm pretty old, so it certainly isn't due to quick reaction speed anymore).

And some of those special "some people" just ignore mechanics like move (or move only for blink distance), switch, etc.
With tv build, you can do those mechanics with fewer losses (in most cases).

So glad I've seen this post. After a lot of simming I've found I can get more dps with this build and equip my 415 Azerite peices without FF (compared to 400 with FF) for a dps increase.

Also worth noting that sims against 2 targets chain reaction showed 2% dmg increase. Very handy if you can time your frozen orbs right on jadefire.

GS came out slightly on top for me in m+ sims but there's not much in it although GS might be easier to play in m+ as you don't have to plan your cds around bosses as much.