Breath Duration in 10.1

Classes Death Knight
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10.0.7 brought a much needed nerf to how long players can sustain Breath of Sindragosa for. BoS uptime was far too long, to the point where players could maintain nearly 100% uptime on certain fights. This made the spec incredibly demanding and unfun to play, as any mistake or even just focusing on a mechanic over your rotation would drop your damage to just barely above a tanks dps. The 10.0.7 changes helped this by making it more rewarding while you kept BoS going, and also dropping the uptime so players were no longer expected to maintain constant uptime to keep up in damage.

Except, the 10.0.7 changes didn’t do that. BoS uptime is still out of control, mainly thanks to Rune of Hysteria and bolstered by AMS/AMZ through the talents Anti-Magic Barrier and Assimilation. I’ve picked a couple examples from current logs to show this. All examples are taken from below the 90th percentile, without PI, just to show what’s reasonably capable with proper play.

This problem will continue into 10.1. Some examples to highlight:

What needs fixing?

Overall, the duration on BoS needs to come down. This build is at its most fun and competitive when BoS is consistently 30-45 seconds long. Planning out burst windows and being rewarded for skillful execution around specific points in the fight is more fun and forgiving than trying to maintain a draining buff throughout the course of a fight. Constant uptime is an extremely unfun playstyle, where the reward for doing it successfully is being a little bit ahead in damage but the punishment for failing is being massively behind in damage. There are a few things that contribute to this massive uptime, I want to focus on some key factors.

  • Frost as a whole generates a massive amount of resources right now. To illustrate this point, in a standard sim, the 2H build is wasting almost 700 RP, or 140 RP/minute. It does seem unlikely this changes anytime soon, but it is worth nothing that this is an issue and all others I’m about to mention stem from this foundation.

Rune of Hysteria.

This is the single biggest contributor to the issue, and the least fun. Every FDK I’ve talked to, across the range of skill levels and progression goals, hates Rune of Hysteria. Runic Empowerment and Murderous Efficiency are already enough RNG influencing BoS uptime and Hysteria being the third and biggest contributor makes BoS often unfun.

Rune of Hysteria’s impact on BoS uptime is severe, and is something the player cannot control. I believe removing Hysteria is the biggest change that could be made to bring some enjoyment back into the spec.

Finally, it is worth mentioning AMS and AMZ RP. Anti-Magic Barrier and Assimilation turn defensives into powerful resource cooldowns that have a notable effect on BoS uptime However, I personally think these talent should be the last thing adjusted. Both because they affect the other specs, and because they are the least consistent contributors. Getting RP value from these talents is entirely dictated by the encounter, and so should be viewed with a grain of salt as at any point we could get a bunch of encounters featuring mainly physical damage.

I hope BoS uptime is something that sees more changes in 10.1, as it is currently driving people off of what should be a fun and unique build (pushing FDK down to one of the least played specs in PvE).

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This is one of the reasons that Sinful Brand was removed from Havoc DH going into Dragonflight - +1 to this whole post, really good summary of the issues. Really hope some changes happen to address the absurd reliance on uptime frost needs.

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Constant uptime is a fun playstyle to me, actually it is the main reason that I play Frost Mage and FDK. Therefore, as long as the reward is great, and the punishment is not too harsh, I am happy with it, though currently the reward and punishment is not balanced.

However, making Breath a typical burst spell and FDK a typical burst class is welcome as well. In fact, I find aligning all cooldowns in Obliteration Pillar window satisfying, so I believe we could have a good time that aligns cooldowns in Breath window.

After all, I love the concept of building around constant uptime, as long as it greatly rewards those who successfully maintain it, while not harshly punishing those who execute mechanics more often. But I do not hate a burst playstyle either, though we already have many choices of that type from other classes and specs.

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i’d be cool if they made hysteria have a more reliable uptime but drop the generation power of assimilation from amz

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Here we are at 10.1.5 and everything I went into is still true. BoS is still oppressively long, so much so that many folks feel like it unplayable in all content. There’s a lot that can be said for what’s wrong with Frost right now, but Hysteria is a particular pain point. I believe the spec would be better off the Runeforge were just removed from the game, and the spec given a buff to compensate if a full rework of resources is off the table. Right now Breath is one of the most RNG specs in the game, (above builds like DRE Enhance or Outlaw, specs defined by gambling on procs) and this is a turn off for a spec that has historically attracted players as being a highly skill expressive spec.

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