They basically made everything cleave though… Frost Strike has a cleave through Shattering Blade and its capstone, Obliterate cleave… hell even auto attacks cleave when they crit. Obliterate cleaves with a capstone through KM procs releasing GA, BoS is cleave, Howling Blast is cleave.
Nothing really looks cohesive and just thrown in and unless something is done with Obliterate in tuning or elsewhere, where are they getting the damage from for these things to even be meaningful?
I can only assume that “balance” is going to take care of it, but that just means a nerf to Obliterate.
It’s not wrong for players to prefer their damage to be derived from the original spell as opposed to passives that bluer the lines between the category/distinction of spells have between one another. And as consumers we should advocate for things we want not what a company finds to be easier to balance.
I think we see a lot of consumers wanting changes for such a long time and waiting for so long that the changes that they were expecting just became engrained in their minds. Now that changes have come and they arent the exact thing that they have engrained in their mind, they are disappointed and dont actually see that these changes are beginning to address the problems the spec has had.
These consumers who are malding about these changes genuinely refuse to see the actual good they are providing. Its doomer mentality through and through and I really dont think they would be happy regardless of the changes that were made.
My advice, open up your mind, think outside the box and see the potential new things the spec could do with these changes and get over the fact that the spec has a main damage button just like every other spec in the game and them completely voiding that will never ever happen. KM/Obliterate is here to stay because it has to.
It says in the tooltip you posted that killing machine reduces its cd. So I imagine based on how much we will be criting it will be on a very short cd.
This is a dismissive argument towards criticism that can be used in all circumstances regardless of merit and even if they are doomers you still engage with arguments presented otherwise no party wins and feedback becomes meaningless.
Same buttons. Still waiting on breath or frostwyrm for damage. This maybe some kind of starting point, but if this is it. This doesn’t change much. Just lots of blue letters and moving a bunch of stuff around.
Its not dismissive at all. Of complaints that I have read, no one actually offers any sort of meaningful insight, all they say is “its bad” and “we still just press KM”. Ignorance is what starts to degrade the feedback process. And the fact of the matter is, Frost DK’s main damage ability is KM/Obliterate regardless of what build you play. They cant gut that and spread it to all the other abilities or add even more buttons. The best thing they can do is offer to have the button interact in other interesting ways with our other abilities or add other interesting mechanics to it, as they have begun to do here.
There is so much I can pick apart with these changes.
2h isnt going to go Shattering Blade. Sorry, but dropping 15% damage when it piles everything into Obliterates is just a no go and it takes forever to stack unlike DW which can stack RI within a few seconds through auto attacks and ability usage like Obliterate and Frost Strike (yes these things apply RI to the target as long as the runeforge is on a weapon).
Crit is in a weird spot where its value goes up and down. When KM procs its value is effectively 0. When you use the new Frostscythe its value is effectively 0. But when you auto you want crits because now you have a even more things that interact with it. Basically Frozen Pulse off of auto crits, Pillar duration increase from auto crits, KM procs from auto crits.
Arctic assault just puts even more damage into KM procs which in turn is just more damage for Obliterate since its the only thing that can consume KM now. Just a bad idea when damage needs to come out of KM/Obliterate not more added or else other abilities will be suffocated out and not able to do enough damage, kind of like what is happening now with 2h Obliteration builds.
Obliteration hasnt been touched yet, and really the only thing they talked about is its resources, nothing else about it (so far at least) but I think when it comes time to actually do balance its not going to be easy and might even be next to impossible. 2h could quite easily be dumpstered in order for other abilities to do damage.
Where is Frost Strike damage coming from? You cant just increase it baseline because if we take Obliteration builds now into consideration (which again hasnt been touched yet for TWW) Obliteration builds would just be OP.
Some people arent thinking things all the way through and just looking at “ooo cool new changes!” just like when Rider of the Apocalypse was announced, and now most everyone is saying the spec is bland. Once the shiny new coat wears off in a week people will be finding the issues because its just something new now.
Would you call the stance of players not wanting damage to be derived from aoe effects that are added to single target spells to be not providing meaningful insight?
No, of course not. That is providing feedback instead of the examples I used of people just complaining that these are " just bad" and “just more damage to KM” without offering any sort of expansion on those thoughts.
I would argue though, that isnt all of our single target damage also our AoE damage anyway? And these changes also buff our damage in single target. At least now there are more things to modify and add something more interesting to these abilities.
I think they need to do the ret paladin approach when it comes to crit and change interactions. There are a few ways to go about it, but my thoughts:
An idea I had, since I also agree crit for Frost is janky, make obliterate baseline do partial frost damage, that way it won’t feel bad to hit without KM procs and will still have mastery scaling regardless. KM make obliterate do 100% frost damage, but without the auto crit. That way it still feels good to hit with KM, but doesn’t feel like dog water to hit without km procs.
This will allow the devs to balance obliterate easier imo.
Frost Scythe, since it auto crits regardless, I think perhaps adding a frost dot that does X amount of additional damage over 6 sec, based on your crit chance, could help, or just have crit chance increase the base damage itself to a certain extent.
I think Pillar should be looked at as well so the base kit can be balanced to have more sustain without it, but that may be a conversation for another time.
This has yet to be seen, at least from a pvp standpoint, it seems really fun to do.
You dont have to do testing. With Arctic Assault it might be better than it is now, but dropping 15% frost damage is not a smart thing to do with how 2h works with Obliterate.
DW can stack RI pretty fast without GA or Rime procs with Avalanche since it can apply RI not only from Obliterate but from Frost Strike as well. So you could get 5 stacks in like 3-5 seconds on average with DW, you arent doing that with a 2h that has to rely on procs.
What if DW had RI on both weapons? Thats the question. Would it stack up fast enough to get more Frost Strikes doing 100% more damage that would outweigh having Fallen Crusader? You can apply 2 stacks of RI with Obliterate and then autos will also stack it up extremely fast to the point you could have a 5 stack in around 1-2 globals depending on your attack speed. That would make it so more Frost Strikes would be doing 100% more damage.
It also depends on how strong will frost strikes be, can they even be any stronger? Are they going to cut down on Obliterate uses? Reduce its damage? Reduce KM procs? Something would have to give to allow Frost Strike to gain power, if not then the only way I would play Shattering Blade is with double RI, possibly arctic assault, and Avalanche because that would feel the best to play due to not losing the 15% as much and also gaining the 100% bonus as much as possible.
Watched Marcelian’s video on his testing and break down of the changes and he said during his testing Frost Strikes ended up being his highest damage ability in dungeons. Obviously damage will get adjusted but if thats the case, its looking like it could be very strong.
That is literally nothing of importance at this point in the alpha.
I could make Frost Strike my top damage in dungeons too right now… big wow no one cares.
Have you looked at an Obliteration log for a 2h at all? THAT is what I am talking about here.
I also dont even know who Marcelian is nor do I really care. What I care about is addressing the issues that we have now. That is Obliterate eating up 50% of the budget for Obliteration builds which keeps down the damage of other abilities.
Obliterate with 2h Obliteration does more damage overall than the next 5 abilities combined and that includes Frost Strike. I dont really care about padding in dungeons.
Oh, and 2h cant hold a candle to how fast DW can stack up RI on a target. I can stack up RI after consuming a 5 stack in about ohhhh… 1 Obliterate. 2h would be lucky to get it in 5 globals.
I was the one who brought up consumer interests so in the context it is not illogical for you to be referring to me. As for your point regarding the criticism it is true that most of our single target spells have aoe implications such as dnd cleave. However, I do think there is a difference between additional rng proc effects and damage that exist as a product of our actions. The practical example of this is a player looking at his damage meter and being proud of himself because he is good at tarping enemies inside of dnd getting high numbers vs the lethargic feeling ohhh… I guess just randomly shoot out aoe now.
Do you know how much easier it will be to AoE as DW than it would for basically anything else?
Its going to be padded numbers for sure, but im being absolutely serious when it comes to double RI runeforges. It would be absolutely INSANE.
People might not know this, but when you have double RI, and you consume RI stacks with Shattering Blade, you instantaneously get 3 stacks of RI (2 from frost strike and 1 from an auto) which means 1 Obliterate and you are at 5 stacks ready for another increased Frost Strike.
In all seriousness though, I would have wanted to see a capstone that would replace Obliterate with Rune Strike (2 rune spender making Obliterate like it used to be before SL but called Rune Strike) and having KM be consumed by Frost Strike instead. That could also give Frost Strike an independent tuning knob if Obliteration continues to be a problem.
Honestly I lean to the opposite of that. Devs and any sign of feedback have been radio silent for so long, the community thinks any change is good without proper criticism.
A lot of the new talents benefit DW oblit, or breath and will most certainly stir up arguments between the 2h v DW crews. Talents like the long winter and shattered blade/frost are objectively better for DW, and potential downtime during bos now. The AA focused talents also benefits DW infinitely more.
Then there’s the doubling down of maintenance buffs that further exacerbate the uptime issue frost has, compounded with icecap and cdr. The additions being AA buffs and the hero tree talent allowing for 7 total stacks of talons; heavily weighted towards DW (km procs rime procs, faster shattered blade/frost build and explode).
Then theres the potential for GA to become the new dead talent (in place of FSC) due to assault and the advantages DW has with building RI. Instead of using GA for damage/ri stacks, youll be focusing on tab targeting to 5xRI targets to pop stacks for AoE; thanks blizz for adding AoE elements to a strictly single target ability (oblit cleave…).
Tripling down on the DnD cleaving strikes is sad to see especially after the past year and a half of persistent complaints. The buff is certainly a compromise. I would strongly argue this was still a step in the wrong direction.
All in all it’s a lot more of the same problems with a new twist. Too many people are mistaking some of these changes as improvements or movement in the right (new) direction when a lot of them are just more typical bandaid fixes. You can only put so much lipstick on a pig.
Now it’s not all bad, but before I move on, if they want 2h to remain relevant they’re creating a potential mountain of work for themselves. I definitely see more jank talents and buffs for 2h that can also cause more headaches for them.
So what’s good? The frostscythe change is interesting, not what I imagined but it will definitely see play which is good. Then, personally, I find talents like cryogenic freeze very interesting and definitely a fresh spin. Last there’s the reduction to resource glut which in turn shortens BOS duration; early reports from alpha players are putting it at 48-60s with no raid buffs and very little haste, which may still be too long.
Overall, I’m pretty displeased with the direction of the changes even if the majority are temporary improvements. I just still see most of these changes resulting in very samey gameplay and with the same or similar pitfalls.
*Almost forgot AZ will never see play unless there are weird positive interactions between Rider and the reduced CD of FWF
It shouldn’t though. 2h players have exactly what they want: Big Obliterates. It’s completely self contained at this point and, if anything, getting Arctic Assault is more massive and outweighs a few of the talents being slanted towards DW.
Not having to take Avalanche for the 2% DPS boost and free RI is huge for 2h.
Definitely a problem but I feel it’s purely stemming from Icecap at this point. Longer Pillar without variable CDR is a much better gameplay experience than variable CDR Pillar and there’s still more builds that will hopefully address Icecap in some form.
I don’t see tuning 2h/DW as being a huge problem with this current tree going forward. They still need to add the gating Breath talent & resource tuning for Breath & Obliteration but I don’t see those change being large enough to impact my thoughts on this either.
Most of the new talents have an AoE focus that benefits DW over 2h. DW doesn’t get 30% extra Obliterate damage just for existing and the Shattering talents are pretty much exclusive to DW given how they function and can be tuned with that in mind to average out the ST & AoE profile to be similar to 2h’s.
So I don’t see much of an issue tuning wise since 2h will be Big Obliterates and DW will be Big Frost Strikes and they’ll both benefit equally from the remainders (Rime, RW, Scythe, etc). DW doing 3% less than 2h in ST and/or AoE? Buff Shattering Blade/Frost or Frost Strike directly. 2h falling behind by 7%? Up MoTFW’s Obliterate modifier. 2h falling behind in ST by 5% but ahead in AoE by 5%? Buff Obliterate and Shattered Frost. The inverse? Buff MoTFW and Shattering Blade and pull back on Shattered Frost.
It’s far from perfect and it’s clear that being weapon agnostic isn’t on the table, so this is really the best type of talents we could hope for that would preserve the Big Obliterates for 2h, not force that onto the rest of the kit, and still have the original design intent with RP being integral & important with DW.
And again, most, if not all the major remaining problems can be resolved with removing Icecap and adjusting things accordingly. Obviously that’d be a big change overall but it’s Alpha/Beta and the exact time that those sorts of changes should happen.