I main Blood and off-spec Unholy. I don’t play Frost.
However, I would like to see 2H Frost return. A lot of people seem to want it.
If Frost becomes a choice between 2H and DW, it could become a balancing problem requiring a disproportionate amount of resources to address. I don’t know all the math behind it. I’m not suggesting people who prefer DW should be denied their preference. I’m just hoping (perhaps irrationally) that Blizz can figure out a way to make both work.
Thats a good idea. If the pvp community is anything yo go off of, it will be a few xpacs of testing other things before doing what the community wants. Miss them venders.
Maybe I’m crazy, but why not just allow players to do both? That way the player can weight the pros and cons of dual vs not dual wielding with respects to DPS output. Like make two-handers hit harder, but make dual wielding hit faster (and have that impact rune recharge). This would be awesome if both options got to the same damage output and it basically came down to the “feel” of gameplay.
They used to be, but were deemed too difficult to balance.
Legion’s artifact weapons changed all of that. where you were forced into a weapon type. vs being able to play around with different types and carve your own.
If ANYTHING is to be learned from classic, is that people are hella thirsty for variety in their class. Give back the ability to be creative with the class and stop forcing junky overpowered toys IMO.
I’m going to take this to be asking about 2H Frost, and not Frost as a whole based on the rest of the post context. Yes, I do think it had times of viability. It wasn’t as often as people like to claim, but yes.
This is too reductive to the situation to only answer as yes or no. Of course I would support a balanced option if it were shown to work, but largely the point I’ve been trying to make is of how that likely can or can’t come about. The sub-spec idea doesn’t work, it has too many pitfalls for the way this game is designed and balanced; but a separate spec would be significantly easier to balance. That’s why I advocate that option.
Not at all, and I’ve outright said I supported this multiple times. Even in this thread.
Fear of balance, yes. It’s fear of balance overall than just that of dual-wield, though. While I do prefer dual-wield, and it is the original design of the spec, neither side really wins with the sub-spec concept as far as performance goes; both tend to suffer, which is what we generally saw over three expansions. It’s not fun to see your spec, regardless of weapon type, fall by the wayside because a design is inherently limiting. I think Frost is in need of a design overhaul as it is, much less with a sub-spec complicating matters.
A clarification on this, the DK was originally designed to use both DW and 2H in all funtions, but with the passing of the expansions this was changing according to the preferences of the players (often based on efficiency), in the case of frost DK the 2H option was removed in Legion, my opinion is that this had more to do with artifact weapons than with balance problems in previous expansions.
Bringing back the 2H would actually be return to the authentic design of the Frost DK. Moreover, his return is being requested since the end of Legion! This says a lot about how important and dear is the 2H option for a lot of players.
My only fear with this, is if they DO bring back 2h frost (god please) then people will complain they want to be able to DW for UH and Blood. Which could be another can of worms.
This was never true. Dual-wielding was outright broken for Unholy twice during Wrath alone, and Blood didn’t even have hope of getting the idea of dual-wielding off the ground because the only synergy they would have had would have been Bloodworm procs, and Bloodworms were mostly considered a wasted talent. Frost was the only spec with intentional dual-wield synergy that actually benefitted the spec, wasn’t a bug, and didn’t get broken by the devs.
Killing Machine proc’d more than twice as often for dual-wield. It effectively gained 82% more damage from Killing Machine than a two-hand would have over the course of a fight, in spite of it dealing less base damage with Obliterate prior to Threat of Thassarian being added.
The ability to dual-wield allowed the use of Razorice, and gaining a flat 10% boost to all Frost damage, and additional Frost damage on auto-attacks. Frost damage was roughly 40-50% of your damage over the course of Wrath unless you geared full ArP at the end of ICC. A 10% boost to half your damage was no small thing.
Dual-wield had better uptime on Fallen Crusader once ToT was added (off-hand specials always land, even if the main-hand missed or was dodged/parried).
Frost had two dual-wield synergies that are cores of the spec, and Fallen Crusader uptime was just a bonus. So yeah… Frost Strike.
And Obliterate’s crits (which is the only reason you would want a killing machine proc as it’s the only thing killing machine affects) are nothing with one handers. Next.
Fallen Crusader DESTROYED Razor Ice in Wrath.
For for BFA? That’s a simple fix. Make a two hander-only runeforge that combines the two for Frost.
Armor Pen for life. Also, you know, geared two hander. Then your dps is based off of Obliterate, and not Frost Strike.
Full blown lie. Fallen Crusader (as well as normal crusader) has always had higher proc chance for slower weapons than faster.
Here’s the math on it. While a one-handed hit alone is certainly less than a two-handed hit, you seem to vastly overestimate the difference in weapon damage. One-handed weapons that are 2.6 speed have ~75.5% of the weapon damage and DPS of an equal ilvl 3.6 two-handed weapon, and this rough ratio has been the standard for a while, even pre-normalization. So sure, Obliterate and other strikes comparatively hit for ~75.5% as dual-wield pre-ToT, but dual-wield still procs Killing Machine ~2.4 times more often through more numerous auto attacks, with an effective damage ratio of 1:1.819. That is to say that for every 1 damage that a two-handed weapon saw from Killing Machine, dual-wield saw 1.82 damage from Killing Machine.
That is not nothing. You are handwaiving this away because you don’t like it, and aren’t even attempting to argue why dual-wield saw an 82% damage increase from a core spec mechanic.
Two weapons = two runes. Frost used both. This is dense.
Literally gave you the reason for this, you left it out of the quote to play dumb. Razorice on the main-hand, and Fallen Crusader on the off-hand. Off-hand hits never miss on specials. Ergo, they never suffered misses, or being dodged or parried like a two-handed weapon could be.
Also, the proc rate was “higher” on slower two-handed weapons because it was a 2 PPM proc, aka it was normalized and both weapon types proced it the same amount assuming similar Haste values.
I’m confused. Why would the team add Threat of Thassarian if FDK was originally designed to be used for DW as well as 2h? Doesn’t seem like DW was viable till ToT. I didn’t roll DK till ICC so I’m not sure.
ToT was adding in Patch 3.2
Threat of Thassarian is a passive specialization ability for Frost death knights, available at level 74.
This is a key passive that makes dual wielding viable for death knights. Normally only the main hand weapon is taken in to account for abilities that deal damage based on weapon damage, such a Frost Strike and Obliterate, severely reducing their damage when dual wielding instead of using a 2-hander. This passive ‘fixes’ that problem for frost death knights.
It’s wrong. Kelliste, you saw Trumpknight’s video in the other thread. I’ll post it here. You have no argument on the topic of one handed Obliterate DPS. Your math is incorrect.
FC on a two hander was so good in Wrath, that Razor Ice’s absence wasn’t felt. Doubly so because two handed Frost focuses on Obliterate’s physical DPS and not Frost Strike which you would know, if you had actually played.
Well yeah. When you make them 2 different playstyles meaning they each have a different focus, then it creates problems because not only do you have to balance it with itself, and if you buff obliterate (which it was buffed quite a bit) then it is buffed for both 2h and DW and the same goes for Frost Strike, which had buffs and nerfs. So I heard a suggestion of “making it into a talent” alright how exactly would that work? Just meaning you can now equip a 2h? Who would take a dps loss? People liked Drain Soul but if you look at the affliction warlocks no one would take it because it was a dps loss over taking no talents at all. So really the only people that would take it is the people that want to use a 2h. So in that case just make it a transmog option, 0 dps loss and you get the look you want. Go for it.
Or I have even seen the suggestion to separate the damage in the tooltip based on what weapon set you were using. And then you are getting into the whole balance nightmare thing again even though abilities now are based off of attack damage. Obliterate right now is based off of 120% of attack power and then you have to factor in armor. Frost strike does 62% attack power, then you have to factor in mastery, versa and then razorice and not armor since its magic damage. So really, with that it wouldnt matter what weapon you picked in that regard, but you have to take into account that 2h wouldnt have as many KM procs, as much frost damage output due to the loss of Razorice. So then you would have to make something for 2h to balance out those loses which is where Might of the Frozen Wastes came in, and even that didnt balance the 2 weapon sets and DW still pulled out ahead and at the time in Cata, there was no focus on obliterate or frost strike depending on your weapon, Might of the Frozen Wastes just increased melee damage while wielding a two handed weapon and you have to talent. ToT all it did in Wrath and Cata was allow your weapon strikes would be done by your offhand as well. Which if you think about it makes sense back then since it would be easier to balance when you have both weapons hitting for a combined amount and 2h, while behind, was still a thing in wrath. Not really looked at seriously after ToT became a thing but it was still there.
Time after time it shows that Blizzard couldnt balance 2 sub specs. Demo with dark apotheosis, Gladiator stance, DW and 2h frost, Single Minded Fury, all taken out because it was a balance nightmare, except for dark apotheosis. That is the odd ball out since it was a tank thing and its possible that people were using it improperly creating hell for tanks, kind of like how hunters would leave their pet growl on (good tanks let their pet take aggro and die and eventually the hunter will learn to take growl off). And that a good warlock could take just as well or better than a full fledged tank and all that they needed was a glyph.
I have also seen it suggested to make it another spec, but then what about tank unholy? Blood Dps? Frost Tank? are you going to make those into specs as well? I mean Blood DPS was MUCH more popular than 2h frost was so if they do it for 2h frost they should do it for Blood DPS, and then you open the can of worms of “you did it for this so why not this” and it just gets out of hand and you have to draw the line, and right now the line is Frost is DW.
