2H Obliterate outside of Pillar/KM hitting for far less than the tooltip states, while Frost Strike hits harder

Classes Death Knight
1

So I was doing some WQ today and I noticed that my 2H Obliterate swings were only hitting for a measly 1,261. Now I hover over the tooltip and it states that it’s supposed to hit for 1,845. That’s a pretty steep difference.

I went and tested this on target dummies and it’s hitting the same. I mean, roughly 600 missing damage on an ability that’s hit often, even outside KM/Pillar is a lot of damage lost. Since it’s physical, I assume that armor is causing this, but that would mean every enemy has a base armor of 30% physical dmg reduction, even target dummies lmao, is this intended? Am I missing something here?

Then, to add to this, I tested frost strike on an enemy without Razorice, and it’s actually hitting for roughly 1,300 on the dot, even though the tooltip states it’s supposed to hit for 1,274. I’m beginning to think that there’s an underlying issue with Frost 2H, that it’s supposed to be hitting harder than it actually is.

Base Obliterate costing 2 runes should hit far harder than Frost Strike. Frost needs some serious attention, especially 2H. Anyone else feel like a wet noodle outside of Pillar?

9 Likes
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normal oblits are physical damage and are thus affected by target armor so yes working as intended.

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Physical attacks lose ~30% of their damage because it is mitigated by armor.

That said, yes 2h Frost needs attention and an attack shouldn’t have such wild swings in damage as Oblit. A simple KM proc is a bare minimum of like 50-60% extra damage on Oblit if you have like ZERO mastery.

If you’re actually decently geared and have 40-50% mastery, then you can go from critting for 2k outside CD’s to suddenly dropping 7k crits during PoF. Thats insane and shouldnt happen.

1 Like
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Yeah I hit 7.5k~ during Pillar windows. Any other time I hit for like 1200 base, 3k-ish crits. 5k for KM procs. It just feels bizarre and like something is broken. I figured that the damage mitigation was from armor but by that much on our main ability? Seems like the spec is unnecessarily gimped.

2 Likes
5

The spec IS gimped no doubts there but its not from the armor reduction.

Its from the heavy handed Quad nerf it got in October in Beta and having f–k all for AoE.

9 Likes
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phs oblits man people been telling blizz about it ever since wraith alpha/beta

needs armor pen baseline or somethin similar

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30% damage reduction is quite a lot. But you kind of just pointed out the problem that people have with Obliterate that people dont want to acknowledge.

Yes, that is a big gap, im getting 600 non crit Obliterates and 5.1k Obliterates in Obliteration windows. Its an absolutely huge difference. Buffing Obliterate back to where it was would possibly come with a mastery nerf, or the ability not scaling with mastery or something. People were seeing 18k crits on the beta and Obliterate was making up 60-70% of the specs overall damage and thats why it was nerfed.

Thats really the nature of Obliterate this expansion, its feast or famine and not a steady source of damage like it was and it doesnt take much for people to notice it. KM procs are pretty much like Rime procs right now.

1 Like
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does anyone know how KMs Multiplier works?

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It just converts the damage to frost damage. So you take your tooltip damage, and add your mastery bonus. Then you double that number, because crit.

1 Like
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KM isnt a multiplier. What is going on is Obliterate gets reduced by armor and KM removes that and allows it to scale with Mastery and Razorice. Its not a set multiplier.

So like Fester is seeing 1200 base but in pillar windows with Obliteration I assume, is getting 7.5k Obliterate crits, thats 6.25x its normal damage. For me, im seeing around 600 base Obliterate damage, but in Pillar windows with Pelagos im seeing 5.1k crits which is 8.5x its normal damage.

Its just how buffs are stacking. So say they did revert the nerfs and say my Obliterates are now doing lets say 100% more damage so its now 1200 base instead of the 600 and the 8.5x that I am seeing translates to the buff. That would be be doing 10,200 Obliterates in a KM window with Pelagos. That would put Fester at doing 15,000 Obliterates in the Obliteration window.

Thats just quick napkin math by the way and probably not how it would actually function but you could get an idea.

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I just wish frost strike hit harder. Outside of pillars of frost I feel like my weapon is a wet noodle. KM barely procs outside of pillars too. Maybe it shouldn’t just be limited to auto attack crits.

5 Likes
12

so 1456 x .27 x 2= 3683 mm no thats not right

1456 x.27 x 3-3.5 = 5,525-6445 and i even saw a 7k one once

@Wunce maybe moving KM off crit to mastery would help

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If you’re including pillar, fallen crusader, trinket and covenant buffs then sure. I’ve hit in the 8000s 2h when everything stacks up. But run of the mill, relatively unbuffed KM oblits? Those are gonna sit in the 4-5k range for most players without extremely high ilvl.

1 Like
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Tooltip damage x Mastery (+ 15% if using Razorice) = KM Oblit

So if your tooltip says 1300 and you have 50% Mastery, a non KM crit would do ~1800 and a KM Crit would do ~3900.

Then Pillar of Frost, RotFC, Trinkets, etc come into play.

With my gear I see regular crits in the 2-3k range with KMs pushing it up to the upper 5s I think and with Cov/Trinket/PoF all popped I see in the upper 7s-8s mostly depending on if it procs Vers or Mastery. Its a ridiculously wild damage range.

1 Like
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Since you guys are doing math.

I’m in heroic dungeon-ish gear (ilv 168) so it’s a decent low-end reference. More PvP stat weights than PvE, but whatever. I have 11.77% Versatility that may be boosting my base Obliterate tooltip.

My Tooltip says Obliterate does 1272 damage, and I have 35.16% Mastery currently.

With a regular Obliterate, I simply take the armor reduction, which brings me to 978 (1125 under Fallen Crusader, 1075 under Fallen Crusader in PvP)

With a KM, It ignores armor, gets mastery, and is always a crit. (tooltip * mastery * 2). So, a KM Obliterate does 3438 (3954 with Fallen Crusader or full Razorice stacks, 3782 on FC in PvP).

You will notice that before procs and on-use items, you will find the KM Oblits are roughly 4x the damage of regular Oblits (in my example, 978 vs 3954 on a tooltip listing of 1272). All the parses I have looked at have reflected this pattern (KM Oblits have half the number of uses and are ~20% of damage, regular Oblits are 10% of the total damage).

Of course, given how much of your damage comes from the Pillar of Frost window (especially as a 2H), you want on-use effects on your trinkets to take advantage of that. Your PoF gives 20% Str +1% Str per Rune spent, meaning if you go HB+Oblit, your final Oblit will be at +33% Str. In my example, that would bring the KM up to 5259, which is almost 6x the base Obliterate. Amplify that with on-use items (preferably Strength or Mastery) and you could likely get a few 6-7ks with that 1272 tooltip (up to 8x situationally). The use of a haste trinket in this case would be to attempt to get 2 more GCDs, but that is pretty much unreachable outside of a Bloodlust/Heroism (~22.5% total Haste for 1 GCD, 40% Haste for 2 GCDs).

(In the PvP values, I am not accounting for the additional damage I get from my PvP trinkets boosting Vers damage, for the sake of clarity.)