Decent M+ buff, but far from enough

Classes Death Knight
1

I almost wish we didn’t get these changes as it’s a band-aid to a bullet wound.

How unholy can see multiple buffs while sitting in nearly 50 rank 1 dps parses is beyond me.

As many have said, oblit dnd cleave with glacial advance will be interesting to see, but honestly id have preferred a buff to remorseless winter as its a great single target and aoe.

A huge issue is the GCD’s for a spec that needs to get through abilities insanely fast without haste being a stat we need to focus on.

If blizzard would reorganize our tree to reduce what it costs to make Remorseless be viable for THREE talent points, remove it from GCD, and allow us to fully spec between either single target, or aoe, it would ve great.

Currently allowing us to get the benefits of both the bottom left and right tree would be amazing but because breath is effectively a top tier aoe its surrounded by those related nodes.

I doubt they ever intend breath to be used the way it is, which i honestly love/hate the playstyle.

I appreciate not being a massive burst class that is screwed once my haste is gone but i haye having to play perfectly or do a mechanic and my dps is zero

You simply can’t play FDK well enough to not lose damage without breath, either form the tree to allow to use breath as a single target ir aoe, and give more options to make obliterate builds actually capable of doing solid damage.

Were basically a gimped melee fire mage without any way to properly control out crits outside of pillars if frost, and frost strike is the worst button to press in the game at the moment.

2 Likes
2

Yeah it is truly baffling. Hell even Blizzard cant say their numbers were showing UDK falling behind, so wtaf?

What divine cosmic event happened that caused them to buff them even more while leaving Frost in a wake of neglect?

1 Like
3

The real problem with FDK is that the talent tree needs a rework.

The spec only lets you choose Obliteration or Breath. Also, there is the like no talent synergy and needed single target and AoE talents are all over the place.

2 Likes
4

Absolute zero should be baked into FWF, and the capstone should be spending x amount of runic power lowers the cooldown on FWF by x amount

Also would love a glacial advance choice node to be an aoe spammer or keep the original cooldown to make it hit a lot harder (gives single target applications).

1 Like
5

GA is your AoE spammer.
And if you make it hit hard enough to be used in single target, what’s the point of having Frost Strike?

6

The point is the cooldown makes it impossible to use as your only form of RP spending. I don’t remember the exact cooldown, but it was 8+ seconds, which would mean you’d cap out on RP frequently, especially during higher RP Generation moments like ERW, which you typically use during your Go to make sure you have Runes and RP necessary for your entire Go. Now, if they make the ST with a cooldown option a thing, it’ll likely only get used by Oblit builds unless they rework BoS.

The cooldown version would likely be weaved in whenever it’s available in place of FS to hit harder, at least if they let GA effect the same talents as FS.

1 Like
7

It doesn’t have a cooldown? It’s subject to how much RP you have and that’s it

Are you sure you’re talking GA?

Edit: my bad. In the event it went back to its original state where it did have a CD.

As it stands, it IS the AoE spammer.

3 Likes
8

He’s talking about when GA had a cooldown, before it was changed to the spammable version it is now. His goal is to have a choice node between current GA (maybe with some buffs, cause wow it stinks) and the old GA where it had a cooldown and hit like a minivan filled with rowdy soccer kids and one dead-on-the-inside soccer mom.

1 Like
9

Well it did get buffed a bit on Tuesday :slight_smile:

And wouldn’t it be a little broken if it hit as hard as FS in an AoE setting? Especially with Cleaving Strikes recent buff? Lol.

Remorseless Winter (with all nodes) + Pillar (and whelps) + Cleaving Strikes + FWF + GA hitting 8-10 mobs lol hello 300k spikes

1 Like
10

Wouldn’t that just make the single point obligatory, though? It’s not like it lacks for value-per-point in any dungeon at keys/affixes where large pulls are possible.

This I’m actually a bit okay with. It’s uninteresting, and therefore could be better, but when actually balanced, “synergy” is just a kindly euphemism for “dependence,” though with opposite damage profiles.

Whatever lacks synergy compared to other ways to fill a particular moment ought to be spread apart (see Survival wanting to unload everything else before CA), while whatever has synergy wants to be used together (see the damage-CDs-only-under-buffs-on-buffs-on-buffs of Ret, Arcane, etc.).

The more “synergetic” FDK would be, the more “stacked,” “boom or bust,” or “finnicky” it would be. Where palpable to gameplay, while that adds to the fun of a well-executed burst, there’s a point that becomes… athematic for FDK, which shouldn’t try to be Ret. And where not palpable to gameplay, it can simply further reduce build choice (A also requires B, C, and D, despite their not necessarily being unique parent nodes).

So, there’s a balance that probably ought to be struck there.

AoE talents being “all over the place” also allows (even if present tuning hasn’t capitalized on this) each individual AoE talent to be a bit stronger, since they can’t necessarily all be taken together. Which ultimately means that AoE builds can be less self-similar, sacrifice less build freedom, and sacrifice less ST throughput. Messy, but potentially quite useful.

I think the biggest problem is just that first one you said:

That, and tuning (overall and to the point that certain currently lackluster skills can again feel satisfying*).

* Glacial Advance looks and feels like a joke to me, Frostscythe feels like it should definitely be capable of more, at least conceptually, though part of that just has to do with our resource economy feeling a bit off, etc., etc..
1 Like
11

I dont get why Blizzard gave it a CD and cost RP in the first place. There are many things that just make absolutely no sense.

Like what Killing Machine went through. First it was auto attack crits, they changed it to auto attacks because guaranteed crits are less valuable when you have to build crits to get them through a proc, so they went with auto attacks which made the proc more valuable.

Then they swapped it back… for 2 expansions devaluing it again, gave it KM rank 2 (Frostreaper) to give it some value which lead to a nerf of Obliterate and Frostscythe was taken out back to be put down and now we are here.

12

Because you would have a cooldown and weave frost strikes in or specifically use fs for shattering strikes. I just want options.

13

2h oblit is gonna be pumpin come 10.0.7 (in m+ at the very least)