Frost DK buff ideas

This isnt me calling for Frost buffs, just some thought experiemtns I had.

Many people claim Frost is too simple, so I came up with a system similar to Unholy DKs festering wound.

I’m taking it from Shadowmourne’s legendary effect. But basically, Frost DK would generate “Soul Fragments” for themselves from various abilities, and spend these fragments on other spells. For example, Obliterate would generate you 1 soul fragment, and your melee attacks would have a ~40% chance to generate a soul fragment. With a maximum of 10 generated

As for the new abilites;

Chaos Bane: (The Shadowmourne Legendary ability) Deals 15% attack power in Shadowfrost damage to up to 4 targets within 10 yards, and consuming all avaible soul fragements, dealing an additional 20% attack power Shadowfrost damage per fragment consumed. For each fragment consumed, you will gain 0.5% strength for 8 seconds, if all 10 are consumed, gain an additional 5% strength. 30 second cooldown

Hungering Rune Weapon: (A reworked ability from Legion) Your rune weapon hungers and strikes out at the enemy for 70% attack power frost damage, and draining 3 soul fragments from the target. Will drain 4 fragemnts from critical strikes. This attack benifits from Killing Machine. 20 second cooldown

And finally, “Frostmourne’s Fury” (A powerful offensive CD similar to UH Apocalypse, but in an opposite way) Empower your weapon with the essence of the Legendary Runeblade Frostmourne, and strike at the enemies soul dealing 250% attack power Frost Damage and instantly draining 7 soul fragments from the target. If the target dies directly from this attack, you will heal for 20% of your maximum health and gain an additonal 3 soul fragments. Generates 2 runes, 3 minute cooldown.

Similar to UH Apoc, instead of bursting Festering Wounds you created, this would be a more powerful attack that instead creates Frost’s similar version of that. For added flavor, since it seems most people who enjoy Frost are all about the Lich King vibe, your weapon could very shortly be replaced with a “ghostly” version of Frostmourne you strike with. Thought it might be cool.

This is just a thought, since for Frost 90$ of what you do is WAIT FOR KM PROC. WAIT FOR RIME PROC. And just spam your other stuff when needed. I thought this might be cool using Shadowmournes legendary effect to not only buff their damage, but make them more complex. And obviously I’m not devling super deep into this and trying to perfectly balance them, it’s just a fun thought.

As for some other ideas about abilites or changes;

A Change to Empower Rune Weapon to make it an attack: Empower your rune weapon, striking at the target for 60% attack power Frost Damage and re-generating all your runes and 50 runic power. Grants 20% haste for 12 seconds. Same current cooldown.

And lastly, “Inexorable Assult” One that actaully makes sense. If you don’t know “Inexorable” means unstoppable or undefeatable. And Death Knights are all about that unstoppable but slow juggernaut feel. So I came up with a new Inexorable Assault trait/spell/talent whatever to match that feel.

Inexorable Assault: Become on unstoppable force of death and destruction, clearing all root and snare effects and causing you to become immune to them for 8 seconds. While active, you take 80% reduced damage from all sources, up to 60% of your maximum hp prevented in damage, and your abilities generate 1 extra soul fragment. While active, Ice bound Fortitude will only give you an additonal 2% damage mitigation, but still make you immune to stuns. 4 minute cooldown.

I made it similar to warriors ignore pain, but more powerful on a long cd to balance it out. Let me know what you think, or if you think any of these would actually be cool/you think they would work

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Festering Wounds are honestly the biggest thing keeping me from playing Unholy, so I wouldn’t be a big fan of that concept being brought over to Frost. You did make it sound much cooler though, I’ll give you that.

The emp. rune weapon change is good, I like the idea of making it an actual attack, and an instant rune restore would be quite nice.

I really like the idea for Inexorable. It’s also always seemed weird to me that DKs don’t have some kind of immensely powerful defensive, since we’re supposed to be undead killing machines it’s very strange that we’re kinda squishy. I think the current iteration should be renamed and kept though.

2 Likes

Something Something with a lot more haste. Maybe it’s just 2H not being what I thought it would be

I really enjoy the thought you’ve put into this. Nice work sir.

Kinda sounds like (un)holy power tbh. Not saying that’s a bad thing.

Nice and fun mechanics, thematically cool but if its related to frostmourne in any way better forget about it.
Realistically nothing like this would be implemented after a launch also.
But we absolutely need another damage mitigation. IBF is realistically one of the worst def cd i’ve seen.

Thematically these sound cool on paper. But the execution seems kinda broken. Like adding Inverse FW for the DK adds complexity to the spec but not everyone will like that aspect of the class. Like people compare Unholy to Rogue’s combo points on enemies and this kinda sounds like that.

LIke Chaos Bane. I mean I guess this kinda synergizes with Pillar of Frost but what’s the difference between the two other than one benefit from runes and the other benefit from Shadowmourne’s passive effect?

HRW seems like a placeholder for 70% atk power frost damage. It looks like another button to press. Kinda reminds me of Vengeance Demon Hunters.

Frostmourne’s Fury will confuse people with Frostwyrm’s Fury. So I’ll differentiate it with FMF and FWF respectively. FMF does kinda look like similiar to Apoc? In fact, what benefit do you get from draining soul frags?

and idk if I want ERW work like Unholy Assault.

Basically… these changes make Frost more like Unholy but without pets and FW works on yourself instead of enemies. Right now, I’m kinda taking a break from Unholy and doing experiments on Frost… and I really like the simplicity of it. My build is not built around waiting for procs, rather aligning CDs.

Just my 2c. Overall, good suggestions on paper but I don’t think these changes are necessarily needed. The most simple solution for the Frost buffs is to revert most of the October nerfs Frost received.

2 Likes

Don’t draw ideas from former borrowed power systems dude.

Make something that uses RP like an execute ability similar to DKs antithesis: the ret Paladin. Available at 30% or lower target hp that resets rune CDs.

Edit:

Drawn from the paladin Hammer of Justice execute ability.

Please for the love of God, just buff Death Strike healing

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How about we just revert healing changes and buff obliterate and frost strike by 200% fixed, also give back our presences.

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Buff Death Strike, bring back Death Siphon, idc, the only reason people DON’T pick to take DK’s in comps is only because of our terrible self healing.

I love the damage I do as Frost, but when it comes down to 1v1ing a monk, its complete nonsense how their damage is ALWAYS bursty, and their self healing is 500% better than ours.

A single Vivify does more healing than 2-3 Death Strikes

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Sticking to the activision a time played = good game , each spell /ability cast will now have a gcd of 7 seconds

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