Feedback: Death Knights

In Development The War Within Beta Test
285

I’ve noticed it’s usually people playing FDK as an alt or never actually posting on their DK in general that “love” the bad design choices that were made for Frost.

You can see it above with the FS change and if you spend a few minutes digging on the DK forums, you’ll find people praising DF Obliteration builds rarely having to spend RP and massively overcapping.

The FS-Oblit functionality was a bandaid. Nerfing ME is the actual fix.

Pillar having uncapped ramp was a bandaid. Putting the damage directly into the CD and baseline is the actual fix.

Icecap not being mutually exclusive with Obliteration was a bandaid, specifically one for non-Breath builds. Making it flat CDR is the actual fix.

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286

Frost:
Back to say again, appreciate the frost changes. Asking for the lone winter change to either be a flat 4-5 sec duration increase, or simply removed and a new SUSTAINED capstone added, maybe to buff Howling Blast.

One note, I do think removing the increased FS amp from obliteration was a good idea. I would like to see a FS in general talent to increase the damage like this overall instead of just during cool downs would be nice to have in general. Though I am not entirely sure where it would land in the tree. But this in general would make it so you may ignore rime procs ect. Which we don’t want.

I want to point out a couple talents that kind of just feel dead atm.

Chill Streak: Feels a little out of place. Visually doesn’t look that great, and isn’t a “feel good” skill to press. I’d be all for this being removed, or made baseline with something else in its place. (maybe the FS mentioned above could replace it)

Cold Heart: Like Chillstreak, doesn’t feel like it would really get much use. The concept is interesting for sure. But I can’t see this really being picked much.

Inexorable Assault: This talent feels really bland and doesn’t add much overall. I would love to see this redesigned. Maybe make it have some howling blast interactions, or FS?

I think frost is going in a much better direction than it has in a while.

Unholy:
Why is raise dead even a talent for UH in the spec tree? UH should just have the ghoul pet be perma based on the general tree.

Festering Scythe is a cool ability in concept. I would much rather have it as an active skill we can use, rather than one that procs based on how many wounds were already popped. That way we wouldn’t be forced to not pop wounds if we know we are close to the cap and the pack is about to die. It was mentioned before, but replacing Vile contagion with Festering scythe (maybe on a shorter CD) would be a nice change.

This however, would not fix the issue of festering strike feeling good to press. The current design of Festering Scythe also doesn’t fix that issue. The issue at hand is wounds aren’t a fun mechanic in general. The player base has been asking their removal for years now. At this point it is too far along for that to happen.

With wounds being so passively added now, why even have them at all? I’d kill for wounds to be gutted and real disease play brought back.

Currently, I feel in the UH tree, there are far too many choices with a few dead on arrival talents (Ruptured Viscera is a good example of why would I ever pick this)

That being said, I do think DK is in a better spot than before.

In general DK needs updated animations like really bad. Even the ghoul we have looks so outdated.

On note about the general tree, Unholy Bond, can this just make fallen crusader baseline for all specs? It will still be the go to choice, even after the rune forge updates from a few builds ago.

I am sure it will be mentioned again, but let’s talk about utility and cleaving strikes.

I am not a fan of cleaving strikes. I think the update with the 4 sec grace period is nice, but let’s be real. Majority of the player base hates this. An easy comprise is to just make dnd be an aura around the dk. Make it a choice node if you have to, but it will solve so many complaints and issues.

As a blood tank, I use macros to place it at my feet anyhow. For frost and UH, the rider we summon has it as an aura… why can’t we?

Utility wise, I think grip is very strong when needed. When it isn’t needed, unless dk is popping off in damage, why even bring one to raids?
Maybe DKs should get something like Death Presence or something like that. Increasing mastery or haste by 2% for the raid.

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287

The Frost changes are absolutely great. Currently the DPS from this week’s M+ testing is worse than the prior, but that’s purely a tuning issue. From a gameplay standpoint, this is a massive improvement to the fundamentals of the spec.

There’s still some talents that could use some love; here’s some examples (with some example changes):

Cold Heart
Every 2 sec, gain a stack of Cold Heart, causing your next Chains of Ice to deal (11.235% of Attack power) Frost damage. Stacks up to 20 times.

This will never be taken. Even in 2 target scenarios, it costs a point and isn’t really worth it over Scythe.

Something that could make it better could be:

Cold Heart
Every 2 sec, gain a stack of Cold Heart, causing your next Howling Blast to deal (11.235% of Attack power) Frost damage. Stacks up to 10 times.

Reasoning: Moving this off of Chains and onto Howling Blast would have a talent that’d make Howling Blast always good with Rime and something that’d feel good to press, instead of just being something we press because there’s nothing else. Procs should feel good and be engaging and Rime is failing on that front.

Avalanche
Casting Howling Blast with Rime active causes jagged icicles to fall on enemies nearby your target, applying Razorice and dealing (22.47% of Attack power) Frost damage.

This just exists as a talent tax for the Shattering Suite. It’s entirely boring and unimaginative and adds nothing of real value - especially after AA’s addition - to the spec.

Something that could make it better could be:

Avalanche
Casting Howling Blast with Rime active causes jagged icicles to fall on enemies nearby your target, applying Razorice and dealing (22.47% of Attack power) Frost damage and causing it to deal 100% of its damage to 4 additional enemies and reduced damage to the rest.

Reasoning: For the same as above, Howling Blast (and Rime) feel horrible in ST. Avalanche specifically feels meh at best to get Shattering Blade, and bad at best when you need to get Shattered Frost. Making Avalanche have some actual AoE implication would do wonders for the talent without putting any extra ST damage into it.

Shattered Frost
When Frost Strike consumes 5 Razorice stacks, it deals 50% of the damage dealt to nearby enemies. Deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.

This talent has just been horrible from the start. It requires 2 talents to get to and contributes around 6% damage for DW Obliteration builds from my M+ testing. Not only that, it’s only hitting with the mainhand, requires Razorice on a weapon to effectively use, and has no benefit in ST scenarios. For comparison, I could take GA and just use that in AoE and get that same 6% damage boost, if not more.

Something that could make it better could be:

Shattered Frost
When Frost Strike consumes 5 Razorice stacks, it deals 50% of the damage dealt to nearby enemies and grants you Shattered Soul. Deals reduced damage beyond 8 targets.

Shattered Soul
Your next auto attack is guaranteed to critically hit, trigger Icy Death Torrent at X% effectiveness, and [generate a Killing Machine stack / generate a Rune / generate X RP].

Reasoning: Shattered Frost has 0 single target benefit and is pretty weak in AoE as well. If the % is tuned up then it just becomes a strictly better GA. Something like this would give it both a ST benefit and a separate tuning knob to boost its AoE damage.

And lastly, these Frost changes are indeed fantastic; however, 2h Frost is now very behind from DW, instead of being relatively equal.

With that I propose something like:

Might of the Frozen Wastes
Wielding a two-handed weapon increases Obliterate damage by 30%, and your auto attack critical strikes always grant Killing Machine.

Additionally, while wielding a two-handed weapon, activating Pillar of Frost, Frostwyrm’s Fury, or Breath of Sindragosa grants a stack of Killing Machine, and your RP spending abilities encases your next Obliterate in ice, shattering when cast and causing icy stalagmites to hit the target for X% additional damage and nearby enemies for Y% damage. Stacks N times. [Xms CD]

Reasoning: 2h Frost is going to be behind on KM procs and losing the degenerate Icecap-Pillar combination essentially tanks the damage. Having something like this would help stabilize the lack of KM procs a bit (but not too much!) and gives additional damage to Obliterate casts but not Obliterate directly, similar to the Thronebreaker artifact trait with Crystalline Swords.

Again, really glad you’ve decided to not tune FDK around 70%+ Pillar uptime and that more of the base kit and/or capstones will have the power in them instead. And it’s clear that Frostreaper is here to stay at 100%, so now seems like a great time to put power back into some “forgotten” abilities (like Howling Blast/Rime) and create a healthy way for 2h to be an option instead of forced into only Obliteration.

6 Likes
288

I really like these suggestions.

*side note, I do really want the lone winter to be changed.

Devs:
From a pvp standpoint, any chance Frost can also get some type of necrotic wound like pvp talent or ms affect? One of the tiny remaining specs that doesn’t have some type of MS or healing asorb.

Rider: Please give us an option to toggle a red version of the horse for those who completed the shadowmourne quest chain. This would be such a cool addition.

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289

agreed, most of us asked for these exact changes lol

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290

With the rebalancing of damage back into abilities, we saw these 2 changes, the math works out so that when playing dual wield obliteration, frostscythe is only worth pressing in 4+ target cleave situations instead of Artic Assault cleaving strikes killing machine obliterate. this feels really bad for this skill, seeing as people were extremely excited to use it rotationally in single target. in order for it to beat out Artic Assault Killing Machines, it needs to do like 12% more damage in order to match it. Frostscythe also should have recieved a 23% damage buff, not a 5% one. this does not bode well for the health of this ability seeing as its a 20-25 second cooldown depending on killing machine consumption rates.

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291

Urgent! Emergency! Emergency! Emergency! Urgent! Emergency! BUG ！！！！！！！
Serious bug in San’layn after today’s update ！！！！！！！！！
Infliction of Sorrow’s second effect, Scourge Strike, consumes Plague, deals 100% of the remaining damage, and is no longer affected by Defile and Death and Decay inflicting this effect on up to eight targets, but now only inflicts this effect on one target.
This is absolutely inexcusable, this is a very serious bug ！！！！
Must be fixed immediately ！！！！！！！
We in no way endorse this change ！！！！！！

292

I second this.

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Hello Designers.
Your changes to Frost DK have been seen by our DK players in China. We have collected some opinions from Chinese DK players to give you feedback on these changes:

Firstly, the changes to Ice DK are devastating, it has destroyed the cap, playability and options of this profession, which is totally unacceptable.

Second, the change to Frost Pillar does not take into account the fact that this skill once weakened Frost DK’s base power bonus during the Battle for Azeroth 8.0 test due to its stackable power, making the current Frost Pillar burst very low quality.

Third, Icecap’s tweak is actually a nerf; before the tweak, as long as you played Pillar of Frost normally, even if you hung out for the rest of the time afterward, you were able to reduce the cooldown by 15 seconds, and by reducing the cooldown by 15 seconds, you guys completely failed to take into account that Frost DK’s other skills can’t be aligned with Pillar of Frost in the timeline, for example: Remorseless Winter (20 seconds), Cold Heart (40 seconds), Breath of Sindragosa (2 minutes), Empower Rune Weapon
(2 minutes), which pretty much kills the possibility of a play style built around Breath of Sindragosa.

Fourth, the removal of Frost Strike’s new mechanic (consuming 45 Runic Power in exchange for increased damage) is also puzzling; it would have been a great solution to Frost DK’s Runic Power overflow during Burst, making Frost Strike not only a useful skill, but almost as important during Burst as Obliterate, which is a very healthy change, and I don’t see why it would be removed.

Fifth, Breath of Sindragosa needs additional balance, especially for the CD; Breath of Sindragosa is now the equivalent of recreating the previous Unholy dk, and wasn’t Unholy dk optimized for 11.0 because there were a lot of burst skills and none of them aligned in the timeline?

To sum up, I think this change needs to be rolled back as a whole, this change is already destroying the specialization, it’s a very disappointing change, I hope you guys can reconsider, do you really want the Ice DK to be a newbie-only specialization with no depth? I’d like to ask you one question in particular, is the so-called rework of Frost DK just going back to 10 years ago?

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294

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Numbers tweaking for base kit needs to be adjusted still, but this is the healthiest change for frost dk in quite some time. You will actually be able to do damage outside of CDs. I don’t understand in what world that is a bad thing.

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295

horn of winter going back to to attack increase with some rp again

296

Agreed. We asked for this and got what we wanted. I’m very positive on these changes, though I’m not happy with the adjustment to frostscythe being so small that it removed it’s place as a fun 25 or so second cooldown button in single target for obliteration builds

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297

I am happy overall. But I do agree. I think frost scythe should have damage up. Using it as a rotational button added some fun flair.

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298

I like that I have a DK talent to be a somewhat off tank type DK if I want with some crit reduction. Not enough to be a tank, but enough to definitely off tank it seems. It feels nice having tools and flavor talents like this to adjust my playstyle, especially in solo Delve content.

If the old system still applies under the hood then I think it was 6% crit reduction or so makes you able to tank and not be crit? Or it was some weird math like that.

I don’t know what the plate armor reduction value in pve is but it felt kinda bad in DF. Not sure when/if armor reduction got tuned down but it feels like plate doesn’t matter as much these days… maybe I’m remembering wrong. Instead of more armor by 10% multiplicative of what you have why not you get 10% more reduction additive on what you have for example.

But I suppose with things like M+ and pro gamers out there I can’t have this cause the meta would dictate plate wearers are now the best option to push. Especially with the reduced value from leech and avoidance.

I say this cause in the old days for me at least it felt truly heroic to have a plate wielding, pet using, dot class that heals through damage. Was a cool rule breaking theme, or unique one back during Wrath and felt awesome (kinda like you were cheating in a way). Especially if I’m not currently spec’d as a blood dk and using frost/unholy you know?

Anyway just my morning blurb as I’m waking up.

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You’ve said this a lot in your post but I think that’s you (and the people you’re speaking on behalf of’s) bias.

Blizzard very clearly took everything you’ve written into account. They specifically decided that they didn’t like how the Icecap-Pillar-Obliteration experiment played out, or how the Icecap-Pillar-TLW experiment played out from the weeks before of beta testing.

There’s nothing wrong with liking the current DF design but not recognizing how toxic the design is & how that’s directly resulted in suppressing the entire spec’s damage, and then trying to pass that off as good or even reasonable design is unacceptable.

Damage tuning aside there’s still.some changes that need to happen - mainly to keep Obliteration builds equal to BoS ones - but Icecap returning to just a flat “You do X% more damage for Y seconds” is entirely the right move. If you want ramping damage, RNG, and skill expression, Breath is quite literally right there and has been for 8 years now.

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300

Devs… pick a direction and go with it…frost is trying to do so many things and fails at each. So much so, that with these changes, the best simming build is playing obliteration+arctic assault and bos at the same time… you need to buff the nodes up to shattered frost and the last winter, so we arent forced into playing oblit+ bos at the same time. the nodes to The last winter and shattered frost just dont do much when theyre capstone talents…

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301

Replying to my original post to bring it back into the limelight. Obviously, iterating on the mechanics come first since everything in Beta is subject to change. Id just like to see some spell effects tied to the mentioned talents though once everything is more concrete.

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302

The current best simming build is “Omni-Frost”, named because it takes both Obliteration and Breath. Looking at the existing tree, there’s not really much that can be done to fix this.

The Long Winter & friends and the Shattering Suite are all too weak, and buffing them to make them more enticing for Breath results in Obliteration falling further behind, unless talents explicitly start mentioning Obliteration having different functionality which just sounds incredibly messy.

So, I’m proposing a radical change: remove Icecap and put a choice node of Breath of Sindragosa / Obliteration in its place instead.

Inside of Obliteration, I also propose an additional change:

Obliteration
[Same as now], Pillar of Frost’s cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds, gain a stack of Encroaching Storm every 3 seconds, and when Pillar of Frost ends, your next X Howling Blasts becomes Hungering Cold, based on Encroaching Storm stacks.

Hungering Cold
1 Rune
Expel the frozen winds of the storm, dealing X% AP Shadowfrost damage to all enemies in a cone in front of you and apply Frost Fever. Deals reduced damage after 5/8 targets. Can consume KM to crit and gains half the benefit of Rime.

Reasoning: The talents didn’t need to be mutually exclusive before; CBR and Invigorating were both horrible for the other capstone and kept them independent. However, now that there’s talents that are good for both of these abilities, making them exclusive is the only real way to balance them effectively.

By making them mutually exclusive, it lets more power be out into Obliteration that can be independently tuned. The idea would be that Breath and Obliteration would function the same while giving Obliteration a “burst” effect at the end, which is now lacking with the Pillar ramp being removed (still a great change :+1:).

Additionaly, if the two powerhouse abilities were moved up and made to be mutually exclusive, Hyperpyrexia coudl be moved above Arctic Assault and align that side as the “RP and Frost damage” part, TLW being the “Auto Attack” part, the Shattering Suite being the “Strikes” part, and then beneath Icebreaker could be talents to alter other abilities, like Howling Blast or Remorseless to make it the “freezing effects” part.

My personal preference there would be something like:

Hypothermic Hysteria
Frost Fever is now affected by haste and each time it deals damage, it has a chance to erupt and deal X% AP to all targets within 8yds.

And/Or

Frozen Soul
The first time Remorseless Winter damages an enemy they are afflicted with Frozen Soul. Casting Obliterate on a target affected by Frozen Soul shatters all Frozen Souls within 8yds, dealing X% AP damage to all enemies that were afflicted and generating 1-2 RP per soul shattered, up to Y RP total.

Regardless, something needs to be done to make Obliteration either exclusive with Breath OR to make Obliteration unappealing to Breath but still strong enough to not be bad on its own.

Another idea would be just moving Obliteration or Breath to the other’s point and making them exclusive that way and then just adding a single talent (maybe DF season 2 4p FWF on Pillar cast? :wink:)

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303

An Obliteration/Breath Choice node would completely solve omnifrost. I agree with this

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304

Quick bug report (reported it in game for a few weeks already): The Glacial Advance from Arctic Assault will apply a stack of Razorice and that stack immediately falls off if Razorice isn’t on a weapon or if you don’t have Avalanche or Glacial Advance talented.

Steps to reproduce:

  • Talent into Arctic Assault and not GA or Avalanche and don’t have Razorice enchanted on your weapon.
  • Get a KM proc through any means.
  • Consume KM proc on the target.

Expected Result: GA should fire through the target and apply Razorice.
Actual Result: GA fires through the target, applies Razorice, and then Razorice falls off a GCD later.

2 Likes