Hello, my name is Vin I have been playing DK for around 15ish years or so, and I feel it’s time to go over some frost topics. In this post I plan to cover some things that I love about the spec and some things that I find to be major pain points.
- Spec identity (What it means to me)
- Rotation and design
- Playability
Firstly, I want to jump into the identity and the crisis that Frost seems to always find itself in. From a slow-moving juggernaut to a min/maxy breath style of gameplay. I truly believe frost can be both. I have been extremely vocal that Breath in and of itself is incredibly pleasing to play and execute well. I am extremely aware as of well that Breath of Sindragosa is an extremely divisive talent selection choice when it comes to the spec and what people feel they can and what they should be able to play. I am on the side that I don’t necessarily prefer Obliterate to do the damage that it should. I do not entirely enjoy being just a spammy class that all of my damage is frontloaded into a spammable builder ability such as Obliterate. Choice is always an amazing avenue in MMO’s/RPG games and I do commend the recent abilities to make Frost be able to play Obliteration/Shatter/Breath, but it just seems messy still at the moment. The fact you can select both talents creates some scenarios that do not feel desireable which leads me into my second topic.
Rotation and design to me matters more than just the number input at the end of a key or raid boss. Frost has this incredible scenario of some really min/max situations where you’re fighting to keep your breath alive or you’re counting the amount of globals achieved in a pillar window or tab targetting for shatters and it can lead to some very pleasurable gameplay, but resources continue to be an extreme pain point within this spec as some situations resources just either don’t matter or lead to some extreme frustration. Breath of Sindragosa in my opinion is one of if not the most interactive talent choice in the entirety of wow in terms of its action vs. decision making. Coinciding above with my points about identity. Now don’t get me wrong I understand the idea of being a slow-moving, hard-hitting juggernaut and I love that idea for Frost as well. I just do not believe it should be a spammable like thing. If Obliterate did the damage is does now, but was rerouted to say Frost Strike or Obliterate was changed to a spender ability say within an Obliteration window Obliterate now is empowered and consumes RP and applies a breath dot (cool design talent). I would totally understand that more and like it. This leads me to just believe Obliterate is an overtuned button that Blizzard just doesn’t really know what to do with. I think design of the spec in recent times has also led to a very niche/catered damage profile where your single target cannot be deciphered from your aoe. I think this really does come to DND/Oblit cleaving, and if propose we just kill this honestly. The entirety of the kit just is both things and it feels unenjoyable to be just that. The single target damage of this class that should be able to wittle away and become that juggernaut later in fights as start chunking just isn’t apparent. It’s like it’s completely lost identity of the spec/class due to design.
Lastly, I want to dive into the buffs/playability of Frost. We cannot simply come to the understanding that Death Grip is a justification for not having a raid buff at this point in time. It is an egregious offense to say the class does not deserve a buff due to utility that cannot even entirely be used in most scenarios. Now I’m not oblivious in knowing that Death Grip/Abomb Limb/GG have given Dk’s a raid spot, but I propose at this point that if the hill Blizzard is willing to die on is that we have utility. Dive head on and just give every single spec of DK Gorefiend’s and be done with it. For the majority of the community dk dps specs will always be playable, but I want it to be known that these recent buffs no matter the number do not fix the core issues with this spec. If you’re truly tied to balancing the spec to just be an AOE juggernaut, then label it as such. Heck if you really need to open up your window into designing something new and exciting for this spec just delete Breath at this point as we’ve been playing for like 10 years. At this point Frost just feels like a forgotten past time of a spec that blizzard doesn’t know what to do with and has too many layers of added on RNG with Hero Talents that create frustration and have led to this spec being the way it is. I am begging you to look into the actual core identity, rotation and design, and playability of this spec in all your game types. Frost was nerfed in S1 due to M+ and the highlighted performance on realistically two raid fights. These buffs are just leading to a repeat scenario of what we’ve already felt in Season 1. I honestly do not know if this spec continues to survive or if it will eventually fall back into the playerbase/parse number of say Dragonflight (sub 2000 likely by the end.)
Anyways, in ending I love dk and especially Frost and there’s some amazing highlight moments while playing the spec, but it just feels chaotic anymore and lost with a path unchosen. I will likely continue to advocate and play DK honestly, Breath is my favorite talent and I am telling you, you can get rid of it if it means DK gets a BREATH of freshness to the spec.