It’s fair to say a not insignificant number of Frost DKs dislike how the Breath of Sindragosa talent works and there are, I feel, several valid arguments justifying this mindset.
Probably the biggest issue from my personal perspective is the runic power cost attached to it which is, in a word, excessive.
Not only does the ability require a full runic power bar to use properly which is a hefty price to pay all on its own, but then it requires the DK to frantically spam a string of Obliterates to generate more runic power in order to extend the effect as long as possible.
To me, this is just bad design on so many levels.
Number one, fight mechanics that require lots of movement can ruin this so easily and see a big chunk of your damage be wasted along with your resources. If your target suddenly moves far away, you’re screwed.
Two, it makes it pretty much impossible to use in PvP because our damage mitigation is mostly built around Death Strike which requires a lot of runic power on its own. Not only would all our damage mitigation go down the drain if we tried to use it on another player, what if they just run away or CC us? Boom, damage wasted and no resources to heal which makes us a sitting duck.
And while it might be a minor issue compared to the previous one, the CD is just too long. Because unless you’re in a high keystone or mythic raid content, BoS pretty much has to be saved for bosses. And for the amount of damage it does coupled with the exorbitant resource cost, it is too infrequent to be used in situations where by all rights it should be.
And this brings us to the subject in question: why it should work like Blood’s Bonestorm.
In comparison to Frost’s BoS, Bonestorm can be used twice as frequently with its far more reasonable 1 minute CD. But the biggest difference is that while it also requires a full runic bar to use effectively, once used it will deal damage for a time frame based around how much runic power you used on it.
So one has to ask…why doesn’t BoS work like this when the mechanics are so much more efficient by comparison?
Get rid of the constant runic power drain in favor of just dealing set damage based on how much was used on it and reduce the CD to 1 minute and boom, it’s almost a brand new ability.
Admittedly it still wouldn’t be very viable for PvP because of the runic power cost, but it would work a LOT more effectively in this regard if someone wanted to use it as such and, most importantly, make it far more viable as well as flexible in PvE.
With its more reasonable CD alone, it could be more readily used on multiple adds where it would do the most good and still be ready for use on bosses with astute preparation.
All in all, I personally feel like this would make the ability far less clunky and more flexible in how it could be used.
