hey guys. even though you wouldn’t expect it, I’m an avid supporter of 2h frost, as I’m a huge fan of decision making and more gameplay styles being added to the game. I have always loved my theorycraft and my mastery of my class/rotation being very impactful and I’m extremely happy they seem to be going back in that direction with the redesigns that they’re doing.
how much they’re fleshing the class out with its old themes and mechanics, giving niche abilities back, iconic talents, and iconic playstyles is super exciting.
couldn’t really contain all the stuff I wanted to say, so I made my first like “news/talky” video ever, and ofc, it ended up being too long.
BUT I UPLOADED IT ANYWAY. so if you wanna relish in all the exciting new changes with me, or give your own input, please please do comment here or on the video or anywhere.
I’m super stoked and I hope everyone else is too.
(again, it’s too long)
(but maybe watch some of it)
(or don’t)
Great video as always Flark. Perfect balance is next to impossible, but hopefully they end up close to eachother. The runeforge issue seem to be the biggest challenge going forward if im not wrong, so we got to give feedback on theese things.
But holy damn. We did it. Blizz listened and after on it! Holinka i love you man. 2h is back <3 Dw is still here for those that want to play that too. This is a waaay better first step than i hoped for, but now ironing out the details going forward is just as important!
There is still a long long way to go. The ability to use a weapon is back, DW is still ahead mechanically though razorice and more km procs. The same issues keeping 2h behind. And now that both weapons hit for roughly the same, is there a reason right now in the alpha to use a 2h other than not getting 2 1h weapons? No.
Ya know just cuz dw is ahead so far in this build doesn’t really matter as long as 2h is enough so I don’t get kicked from the group by being a total DPS loss.
What would you call a merged razer ice and fallen run forge? Razer fallen?
@cuddlestime obv way too early to tell, but that adds so much damage to every oblit press because of the KM change, so seems much better to use, yes
@vyn thanks a lot man. yep, a lot of exciting things. loving the design direction, and you’re right, we do need to give feedback if there’s going to be so much response to it!
@kelliste right. like I said though, I believe if they’re going to take the time to add something in the game, and they’ve shown in the past that they know that this is a problem, I’m assuming they’re going to make a change. maybe it’s just in the way abilities function with 2h weapons. I’m not sure yet. I have confidence they will both be playable.
@kriss not sure lmao! I’m not sure they would merge either now that there are all these new runeforges in the game. it feels like a different solution is coming.
Well, just razorice is around 7-8% dps, so just right there 2h is already behind the 5% dps gap that Blizzard aims for. Then you have KM procs, and now more frost damage to Obliterate through the KM proc, which we dont know if that frost damage also crits since KM still provides a crit when consumed. The damage between the weapons are almost nothing so 2h abilities arent going to make up for this gap.
And while yes, its only alpha and its not done. So what, its the perfect time and place to not sit on your hands thinking “blizzard will make it right” and not actually put information out there.
Some things that have been released look good. But 2h, even though a lot of people just dont care about dps that supported 2h so why should they even care to make it balanced if the 2h advocates just dont care?
Be realistic, we are talking about an expansion that is going into alpha, that just followed one of Blizzards worst game releases in history with a user score of 0.5 the last time I checked, where most people probably got a refund. Its not a stretch, or outside of the possibility that the investors told Blizzard to get their act together because its costing them money and to get on the good side of their playerbase. They just gave back some things that were taken away. It was called expansions ago when things started to be taken away that they are just going to give the abilities back at a later date and try to make it look like they are doing something good.
Yet, the 2h community at large just doesnt care about the dps difference. They have been spouting it for months that “I just want the option back” so why would Blizzard be inclined to balance it? They have seen what 2h advocates have been asking for, just the option.
All this stuff is out there. “I just want the aesthetic” “I dont care about dps I just want to have a 2h weapon on my back” “I dont care about balance”. Its been said over and over. Though I will admit, not that some of them have stopped tunnel visioning this issue, some are worried about damage output.
I have held the same stance since at least BFA beta where people were trying to make 2h work, that to do it they would have to address the issues that have been holding 2h back since Wrath. All the things they did since wrath has not done a single thing to balance the weapon sets. MotFW added in cata that boosted melee damage by more than 10%, still 10% behind DW. The split in the spec in MoP and WoD, other than Highmaul DW was ahead and that gap kept growing.
You would think there would have been something. New runeforge that was announced with a lot of the other runeforges since its really just a combination of the 2 runeforges that would fix the runeforge gap… nada. Changing how KM procs for DW to just be based off of the main hand, simple change can be done in a hotfix like they did with Unholy where they just hotfixed the bug where sudden doom was proccing off of the offhand… still nada. Those are the 2 biggest things that create the dps gap. Has been expansion, after expansion, after expansion and its just crickets.
Do I have confidence in Blizzard? No. I dont, with good reason.
I think they would intend to balance it because they tried in the most recent iteration of the game where 2h frost was in the game. I’m not sure it mattered back then that people just played it for aesthetic, the options that are put into the game (especially now, that the game is older) are generally intended to be playable.
I think if they did a similar thing to the might of the frozen wastes passive like I mentioned in the video, but with killing machine dealing frost damage (to help with scaling issues) that would be a huge step in the right direction.
like you mentioned, it was decent for a raid tier in wod, and was rank 1 viable for 2 seasons. that’s not a bad place for a spec to be in.
Strikes do the same damage now that its ap based and not weapon based. and even if you can give 2h a form of applying razorice, it still will do less auto attack damage than dw.
It’s a nice option to be able to 2h again, but ultimately DW is going to pull ahead
yeah again, they would achieve this by having a similar passive to what they had before (might of the frozen wastes) which allowed simple and immediate tuning to keep the specs close.
they could also change the attk power% contributions based on the weapon type for certain abilities which would allow the same thing to occur.
it’s definitely doable, just remains to see whether they will!
And they tried it all the way back to cata pre-patch. They never got it right. In around 6-8 years they couldnt get it right eventually removing it because there were balance issues. You couldnt buff or nerf one without buffing or nerfing the other.
Splitting the spec just did not work, Might of the Frozen Wastes was a failure in 3 of the 3 expansions it existed. Even if they did it, Razorice still increases that damage by 15% so now instead of DW increasing the damage of most of its kit, now it would do all of its kit just through Razorice alone. DW scales because it increases frost damage an extra 15%, add more str that 15% does even more, add str and mastery and it does even more, str mastery and versatility and it increases even more. So you would basically be taking what 2h could do, and just increasing it by 15%, plain and simple.
The 2 sub specs werent even that close. With Might of the Frozen Wastes, cata edition, it was still 10% behind DW and that increased melee damage by 10% for 2h. Before that it was I think 13% melee damage increase.
These things havent worked out expansion after expansion because the actual issue isnt addressed. If you have a bad zipper on your pants you dont try to fix the button. Just fix the zipper.
Well this is the time to say that stuff. That’s why they dropped all this so early to get feedback. Detailed feedback like this about why it’s an issue is important.
Very true, the question is will they listen? Just because they brought back 2h, doesnt mean they would even want it to be balanced and it just take a back seat. Their mindset could very well be “here is your option that you wanted, have a good day” and leave it at that.