DK Shadowlands Changes...2H Frost! :D

Classes Death Knight
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So buff 2h to buff 2h even if it wouldn’t need buffed because it was in the game before. 2h to focus on physical damage when armor reduces physical damage by around 30-40% when DW bypasses it more with more km procs resulting in higher crits more often.

Working, and balanced are 2 different things. It works right now in Shadowlands. Im not going to go into playstyle yet again, you are just wrong, or being purposefully limiting. I will just say this, the playstyle even for DW was the playstyle you listed for 2h. Limiting the playstyle experience to 2 expansions that completely screwed up DW is not a fair assessment and makes it look like DW took over the 2h playstyle which is just flat out false. They were the same, then MoP and WoD introduced masterfrost and mastersimple for DW, most hated it, and the playstyle returned to what it was in Legion.

Why limit obliteration to just 2h with those changes? It looks like you are trying to just sneak in 2h buffs everywhere after things have been normalized to kill DW. Sorry, but frost is an intended DW spec.

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Hopefully the Livestream event on Wednesday addresses some of the 2H Frost concerns.

But otherwise I agree, SL will be moving into beta soon with release likely this fall…if no big changes soon, 2H Frost might be DOA.

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I don’t think it needs a complete rework

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I was just trying to add spice. My suggestion for adding MotFW was just one of adding uniqueness like Warrior has with SMF/TG. I believe we were in agreement that just adding two runeforges and removing proc rate on off-handed attacks would solve most of the problems. Blizzard should focus on that.

With the proposed changes, we’ll get both.

2H Frost focused on Weapon Damage for meaty crits and used KM procs on Obliterate to do massive amounts of damage. Plus with Armor Penetration it made a good old time. They ignored Frost Strike until it needed to RP dump. DW focused on KM procs on Frost Strike and only during cata, completely ignored Obliterate. using their runes on Howling Blast spam since it did more damage with Mastery scaling. HB was later nerfed but if I remember correctly, the DW community found away around it.

I know the history. I shortened it. The changes to Legion made it so that we were using the 2H playstyle with two 1H weapons. I wasn’t wrong. I would like to point out that Frost has needed band-aid fixes since the change. I think they got better at the balance since BFA. However, I would say that Frost Strike doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it use to and neither does Obliterate.

Not everywhere, just that talent. Realistically just couldn’t think of what to give DW in that situation. I also assumed that as long as BoS exists, DW will always gravitate to it. I would love to see more interesting talents as a whole. Also, maybe saying just 2H was a bad thing. I could see DW benefiting from those buffs too. Little tired when I wrote it and was looking back on the old days so I might have been a little bias.

Realistically, I just want more interesting talents, 2H and DW to be basically the same in terms of damage and Frost to be engaging again.

Also want them to remove festering wounds from Unholy but that probably wont happen.

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I wouldn’t waste words here. You made some good points :slight_smile:

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Warrior is not getting SMF back technically. The ability to use 1h weapons is what they are calling SMF. While nerfing DW solves the overall problems, it removes what was intended for the spec to support something that has taken a back seat, or when they tried to split the spec, it just dragged the entire spec down.

Oh how wrong you are about the playstyle. Going back to Wrath with armor pen, both DW and 2h played the exact same. It’s how the spec functioned. You would keep your diseases up or you lose out on passive damage from them ticking, and you lost out on ability damage because there was interactions there. There was a rotation of sorts. 2 oblits 2 blood strikes on one then dump, then 3 obliterates and dump. It went back and forth like that except when you had to apply blood plague again, or if you had rime procs. KM literally didn’t matter since it procced so much and was just in the background. You didn’t even need to know when you got a KM proc.

Cata, you used obliterate as DW as well. There wasn’t this DW focuses on Frost Strike and 2h focuses on Obliterate until MoP and it was poor design because compared to other specs, it was dragged down.

And why is it just that one talent only being applied to 2h. That cuts the talent choice by 1/3rd for DW.

This making each weapon set “special” is why these things were removed in the first place. Not to mention covenants are having huge impacts already and the entire system isn’t even complete yet. What did preach say the % difference they are seeing… like 40% dps difference? That’s where their focus is going to be heavily because if they don’t get it right Shadowlands is going to be a complete fail. People asked for the ability to use a 2h, they got it back… so if nothing is done it’s no ones fault but the people who asked for the choice back.

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I mean, they are getting a nerfed version of it back. SMF: When you dual-wield one-handed weapons, all damage is increased by 35%, and your off-hand weapon will deal an additional 35% damage. They replaced “and your off-hand weapon will deal an additional 35% damage.” with movement speed.

No. DW was subpar to 2H in DPS and was only used for tanking. Both were out dpsed by Blood. That was, until Threat of Thassarian was introduced. Then Mastery in Cata tipped the scales towards DW. 2H was always better in the beginning of the expansion then pushed out because of it’s terrible scaling. With all the changes being made to the game, DW not procing KM on off-handed attacks is fine and necessary. Honestly, it is the best solution for balance.

And are you really giving me the “gotcha” when I didn’t mention diseases? Every Death Knight should know to keep their diseases up. Come on now.

After looking into this more instead of going off memory, you were right that it was MoP. I had to dig to find it. Apparently, I can’t add a link to it, so if you need, will give. In the MoP rotation, you only used Obliterate to use the Unholy runes, then spammed HB.

And it is also why the game is arguably less enjoyable to play now. Removing weapon damage, different weapon speeds, weapon choice and interesting effects all in the pursuit of balance has ruined the game. BFA had little to no RPG aspects. Loot is boring and gameplay is stale.

Yeah and it is also a huge waste of their time. Class balance and making sure your character feels amazing to play should be the focal point of this expansion. Covenants should just be cosmetic and a story point. Soulbinds, covenant abilities and conduits are just a balancing nightmare that they are not going to get right. Plus, if those are the things we need in order for our class to work correctly, I don’t want them in the game at all. Once they are gone, we are back to BFA. This is what it felt like after the Artifact weapon and it’s going to happen again.

No, it would be Blizzard’s fault. It’s like if you show up to a party with a gift and when the recipient opens it, they find that it is empty. You can’t just say, “Well you asked for a present. You can’t expect me to fill it with something you wanted.” Going back to SMF and TG Warriors, they can play both of those with no problems. Sure, TG gets more damage, strength and stamina and SMF gets 8% increased damage and movement speed, but the class still works for both parties. DW Frost overpowers 2H because it has more at it’s disposal than 2H.

Now say it with me.

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Um, no, you are just flat out wronG, entirely. Preach got rank 1 dps as frost in Cata and didn’t do this spam HB stuff that came to be in MoP. And if DW was subpar, why was MotFW introduced in Cata as just a melee damage boost for 2h? and there wasn’t anything for DW. And the only reason why DW would even get mastery is because the of Razorice which is applied after mastery since it is a debuff on the enemy. So a 15% increase in frost damage, on top of say 60% mastery is absolutely huge. And do you want to know the reason why HB was nerfed? Because DW players wanted to play how the spec was designed and didn’t like that you had to ignore half of the spec that you didn’t ignore before which started in MoP with the changes to ToT and MotFW where frost strike got a steroid with ToT and MotFW got a steroid with obliterate. So getting mastery, plus this ToT boost, plus Razorice, plus frost damage bypasses armor pushed DW into this masterfrost/mastersimple playstyle.

Not to mention in Cata if you did try this masterfrost build, it wasn’t worth it over how you should normally play. Which is what you refer as the 2h playstyle which in reality it was just the frost playstyle.

Let’s see what this masterfrost build feedback was in Cata. “Yes it is viable, but the difference in single target is very very small, and only if you manage to play your rotation perfectly and get lucky with runic empowerment procs. If you mess it up, you’ll get low dps.”

some didn’t even know what this playstyle was. Or it wasn’t worth the effort since it was such a small gain over the normal frost spec. Even here DW dk’s sometime had to use agility 1h weapons because str 1h weapons were rare.

Another quote of, don’t bother with it. So no, DW did not get ahead due to masterfrost at this time. It was barely better, very punishing where you had to play perfectly, took away a portion of the spec so the overall thought was, play normally.

In MoP is when it got its strength. You still had to game the rune system in which you either only ever used 1 unholy rune on plague strike all the time, didn’t even mess with unholy runes (mastersimple) or used obliterate once with a km proc to use the 1 unholy rune to force frost and death runes. Since runic empowerment could only give a rune back if both of the same runes were on cd, if you only ever used 1 unholy rune while the other sat at full, you would always either get a frost or death rune. The playstyle sucked.

In Wrath the only different way you could play is ignore plague strike which was a flat out dps loss. It was a playstyle to make it easier and could be used by either DW or 2h. I also brought the disease thing up because it was a part of the wrath playstyle which you got completely wrong. Wrath 2h had the same exact issues that SL 2h has, it’s just worse in SL because how KM procs has changed.

Personally, I don’t think they should nerf DW to compensate for 2h. If you want to dps, then get the intended weapons. They shouldn’t ruin one thing to bring something back that was removed for some pretty serious reasons.

Frost dps wise is absolutely fine. It’s upper middle of the charts which is a good place to be. It means nothing really needs buffed, or nerfed. If they are looking at the rankings, why would they change what is working? It’s not giving any problems even though people might not like certain playstyles so there is absolutely no reason to do anything to it. The only thing that is hurting is a weapon type that you do not need to use.

This isn’t really an RPG. It’s a team based game. This RPG thing has been thrown around like the game is just a story and how your character looks and screw the people you play with.

And no, it’s like showing up to a party with a present specifically asked for and when the person opens it it’s exactly what they asked for but are still unhappy because it’s not actually what they wanted but they didn’t tell the person what they actually wanted. You can’t blame Blizzard when people were screaming they wanted the choice because aesthetics and they don’t like playing with “toothpicks” when what they actually wanted was something completely different.

Again, yes, those changes, which I was the one to bring up in how to actually fix it, don’t think they should nerf something that is intended for some people that want to RP as a watered down Arthas.

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Seems like you didn’t read this.

Because after ToT was added in 3.2, it was better than 2H for the reasons we are experiencing now.

So the same issue we are having now with the runeforges.

People played whatever simmed higher. What’s this about them caring which weapons to use? Need sources.

How was it suppose to be played?

How does this add to the discussion? Old build is gone. Lets move forward.

Agility was a completely different stat back in the day. Or are you saying they were using agility 1hs in Cata or even worse MoP. I would like to see this so please link a source.

Then you would lose passive dot damage because you wouldn’t be applying Blood Plague.

Sounds like something that would be great to improve then.

Then it is good for the 2H community that Blizzard didn’t listen to you. Personally, I think it was a huge mistake to make Frost a DW spec. However, I don’t advocate for its removal.

Just wait till corruption, azerite and essences are gone. We have no idea what it is going to look like when actual number tuning hits.

Its a MMORPG. You build up your character from a nobody to a hero. The whole point of the game is to try and build yourself up so you can take on the big bad. Yes, you and a group of heroes do this hence the MMO part. The RPG is you ROLE PLAYING.

Some wanted it for looks and others wanted it as a viable option to play. If you play all three specs, which weapon choice do you think would benefit you the most? Probably not the two one-handers. I wanted a 2H because it made obliterate hit like a truck and with the new KM change, it’s going to be ignoring armor. I just want a viable option that allows all of us to play how we want. Blizzard is really close to this.

You weren’t the only one to bring it up. If Blizzard wants to make it completely balanced with just 2% disparity, then they need to nerf it.

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So if DW was better in Wrath, and still better in Cata though 1h weapons were rare (Firelands had 1 1h weapon and I don’t even think it was a str weapon with a low drop rate), then how exactly was it sub par? It wasn’t sub par dater highmaul. Wasn’t sub par in MoP either… soooo just saying things to support your argument or something?

What don’t you understand that DW players didn’t like ignoring half of the spec in MoP and WoD and how do you mistake that for people caring about weapon choice? It was all over the place in WoD. No rime procs in DW, not using a staple ability of the spec which DW used often and it provided a lot of damage, still footage of a DW dk getting a 28k obliterate and other footage on private servers where DW frost is constantly getting 25-27k obliterates, that DW playstyle is dead and the original is back with some tweaks to it.

How was frost supposed to be played? Seriously?

Old build is gone yet 2h people still cling to that old WoD era and want it back… um… what?

Agility did almost nothing for a DK back in wrath. Str was far better, it’s why if you didn’t gem armor pen, you gemmed str. And yes, people were using 1h agility weapon in Cata. What weapon were people trying to get for frost in Firelands? Wasn’t Mandible of Beth’tilac, it was a tank weapon. Wasn’t Eye of Purification that had int on it, wasn’t Firethorn Mindslicer, wasn’t Ko’gun, Hammer of the Firelord. It was Gatecrasher that people were talking about. Even the mace Shatterskull Bonecrusher had agility but there was some reason why they weren’t going after that weapon which was probably weapon speed at the time. Bone Warden’s splinter used to be a bad dk weapon because it was a fast weapon, while Frost Giant’s cleaver was slow being the proper choice.

I said the leaving out blood plague was a dps loss for an easier rotation. But people did play that way. Look up 2h frost pvp from wrath with Shadowmourne and the guy isn’t using plague strike and just trying to pump out as many obliterates as possible. It was not a good playstyle because it would completely screw up your opener.

Yeah, it’s great that Blizzard listened to people that wanted 2h, it’s in such a great position right now… oh wait, they are just complaining, trading one complaint for another like I said would happen. Oh and I never said 2h shouldn’t come back. But they shouldn’t nerf DW to accommodate 2h. Going to bring everyone down to a worse form of play so 2h players, which mind you they don’t call themselves frost players, don’t feel like they behind. Yeah what a great idea, make frost feel even slower.

Everyone is losing those things so it’s kind of a pointless thing to say. Everyone is losing azerite gear, essences, corruptions so what’s the argument? There has to also be at least some sort of balance for testing or things can’t actually be tested.

What am I role playing? Most people don’t actually role play, and you aren’t creating your own class, it’s developed by the game designer and they have to be able to balance stuff to some degree or you get complaints and complaints and complaints resulting in a catch 22 scenario.

What weapon do I think would benefit me the most? Hmm maybe what the spec supports and I would look over and read the specs to see what is what. You know like you should do. oh I get this this and this if I DW, looks like it’s a DW spec. Oh I get this and that in this spec with a 2h and there are no benefits for an offhand… looks like it’s a 2h spec.

DW hit just as hard with obliterate until the MoP and WoD change. So that point doesn’t hold up.

And blizzard shouldn’t nerf something that is intended… why would they?

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DW was better when ToT was introduced in 3.2. Although it was only used for Tanking and both DW and 2H were outclassed by Blood. The firelands 1h was [Obsidium Cleaver] str one-hand and it was easier to get because it was a BoE and could be bought on the auction house (if you had the gold of course).

I didn’t say it was subpar in Cata-WoD. I said 2H Frost starts out better then nosedives. That’s what we are trying to stop in Shadowlands.

I asked for sources of them saying that they didn’t like it.

Depending on who you ask, it could mean different things.

Probably because it is the closest memory of the playstyle one has. If you are referring to

that’s not just a WoD playstyle. Just want the power of old. If they wanted to add the old runes back, then we can get into WoD discussions.

Provided dodge and armor.

Because Shadowmourne made people explode.

Would be a great time to implement that “once used runes recharge thing” that everyone has been asking for. Might make the spec a little faster. Increasing proc rate would also help. Blizzard is literally God in WoW. They can redesign the spec however they want. Perhaps they don’t need to remove the off-handed proc rate. Perhaps they just add 150% more damage for 2H and add the two runes. There, a good trade off. You keep what you want and we get the hard hitting spec back.

Some specs work a lot better than other after losing those things. Look at Shadow Priests, terrible. Look at Fury Warriors, amazing.

It’s a form of escapism. Just because you don’t role play, doesn’t change the fact that it’s a role playing game. And as a matter of fact, the only reason I came to the forums back in 2016 was because my 2H was gone. Once its back, I’m back to playing the game.

Great idea! Guess what Frost Death Knights get to use in Shadowlands? 2H and 1Hs!

Negative. Obliterate scaled off of weapon damage. 2Hs provided more strength, more stamina and more weapon damage. 2H does more dmg on the first auto attack strike. First dual-wield attack strikes only with your main hand and then it takes ~2 sec until your off hand strikes. Consequently Dual-wield does more sustain dmg while two hand does in the first few seconds more dmg on a target.

For that nice ole balance they are trying to achieve all the time.

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I just want to say also the problem isn’t that blizzard added 2h back. That is objectively good, but they need to do more to make it reasonably competitive to dw. Idk why the guy you’re replying to is so vehemently against people grtting what they want

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My guess is that they are afraid that Blizzard will destroy the class in hopes of balance. It’s a fair fear.

I honestly fear that they would too but they are so close to making 2H and DW work cohesively. Just hoping they try a build that tries the following.

  • Two Runeforges on 2H weapons.
  • Removing the proc rate on off-handed attacks but also increasing the proc rate. (This will help both sides).
  • When you use a rune it immediately begins to recharge. Remove the only three runes can recharge at one time.

I think these will make the class feel amazing, competitive and engaging.

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that was how the old rune system worked minus the rune types. basically means any time you have runes up and are not spending them you are losing dps.

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It’s a suggestion I see alot on here, wowhead, reddit. I just want to try it and see. Do you think it would be better with a limit of two? Or would you keep it the same?

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current system allows you to bank runes for km oblits without losing anything. with the old rune system if you tried that you were losing dps and much more likely to munch km procs waiting for runes to come back up for the reason i mentioned before.

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Interesting. Still, would be worth a test.

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No, DW was not only used for tanking. No clue where you got that from but it wasn’t from reality.

No, you said DW was sub par. You have been all over the place it’s getting very hard to know what your position even is. It was sub par, but it wasn’t sub par because of the issues that is in SL existed in Wrath, but DW was just for tanking even though that is flat out wrong again. You are completely all over the place.

People said it in forums that no longer exist. It’s the entire reason the base damage of Howling Blast was nerfed and rime gained a boost to amplify Howling blasts damage, killing the masterfrost build that people hated to play.

What do you think they meant by you should just play the spec normally? If you didn’t notice, they didn’t say play the spec like you were using a 2h. Because there is no 2h playstyle unless your experience is limited to MoP or WoD, especially WoD when it became real popular because flavor of the month.

You said to ignore an old playstyle because it is gone, but it’s ok for 2h players to do it. Hypocritical much?

So what I said about agility was accurate, it does basically nothing for dk back in wrath. No DW dps player cares that they get a little armor and dodge that amounts to nothing.

No, they were ignoring plague strike to have an easier playstyle. The person just happened to have shadowmourn, but he was playing in a way that results in less damage. Here was the problem with ignoring plague strike in wrath for the easier rotation. You lost passive damage, obliterate lost damage, and in your opener since you can’t start a fight with rime active, means you would have an unholy rune that went unused. Howling blast or Icy Touch to apply frost fever, 2 blood strikes to convert runes, and one obliterate that’s only 5 runes and your obliterate would be missing damage. You are better off just applying both diseases, getting the extra passive damage, the damage boost to obliterate and then continue. But the entire point of bringing that video up was to show people would ignore diseases.

The proc rate of KM isn’t the problem, it’s the amount of auto attacks. From what people have found is you have an increasing chance for each crit you have and your km doesn’t proc. So first auto crit has a 30% chance, second has a 60% chance, then 90% and then last is 100%. DW just has more chances with the same stats. It has always had more chances. Oh and another problem with masterfrost was the shear amount of km procs not being able to be eaten by frost strike which meant wasted damage.

And that’s real smart, bring back what got 2h removed in the first place. Not to mention, the more you increase obliterates damage the more damage that gets mitigated by armor because it’s not seeing km procs which bypass armor. And I don’t see why you guys can’t understand that DW did hit hard with obliterate. It’s all over the place. It hit as hard as 2h specs.

If losing 2h made you stop playing, your interest in frost was really shallow. It was removed because it was causing problems. Even high end players recognized these things were removed for good reason. People like to just say it was because of the artifact weapon system.to try to go around what actually happened because if it isn’t due to the artifact weapon, then you have to face that there were significant issues going on. If there were significant issues going on then it’s probably not a smart idea to try to bring it back without trying to do something about the issues that were never addressed. And that is exactly what people are seeing currently.

Just because you can use something doesn’t make it a good idea. The spec still points at DW due to mechanics.

Um, no. DW did hit as hard as 2h, even blood. 28k obliterate crit from back in Wrath, and it wasn’t on a 2h. This was already explained to people long ago by other people. Not to mention you can look up private servers, that look pretty accurate, and compare blood dps damage numbers and DW frost damage numbers. Death strike did about 25-27k on average, and DW obliterate did 25-27k on average in ICC. Slow 1h weapons, having 2 of them, even without str, allowed for big crits.

Frost is pretty balanced when compared to other specs. When they tried to balance against itself frost suffered. Sometimes doing half the damage of other specs, mainly unholy which didn’t have to be balanced against itself.

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But remember, back in Wrath you didn’t just use km procs on Obliterate. In fact it happened so much you didn’t care what you used it on. It all depended on where you were in your rotation, the RP generator portion, or the RP dump portion. If it was the builder it would be used on Obliterate, if it was the runic dump it would be used on frost strike.

Right now it’s a singular spell that eats KM unless you have Frostscythe so you want resources for when it does proc. Not to mention haste did nothing for runes, the recharge time was a set time so the system worked and there was blood tap, horn of winter gave runic power, rime gave runic power as well. So resources wasn’t an issue.

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Oh you sweet, summer child. I see you’ve met our forum’s resident negative nancy, Kelliste. Just put them on ignore and go about your day. It’s like playing fisticuffs with a brick wall arguing.

Personally, I don’t think they should nerf DW to compensate for 2h. If you want to dps, then get the intended weapons. They shouldn’t ruin one thing to bring something back that was removed for some pretty serious reasons.

Personally, no one cares what you think because you just regurgitate garbage you read on blogs and YouTube videos and don’t even play the class at a respectable level. You’ve been asked to link videos, logs, anything to support your viewpoint and 2+ years later not one.

Constantly putting down 2H supporters because you’re just padding post count being a contrarian lol.

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