TLDR: I have opinions, Ree.
Quite simply this post is a shout into the void hoping one of my favorite specs in the game gets some love.
Everything here is opinion based on playing all three death knight specs since wrath with little to no breaks from the game. These opinions are based equally around what I want and what I think would be the healthiest for the game as a whole.
Burst: Frost used to be a low burst high consistent damage spec. I miss and preferred the consistent alternative to Unholy’s burst. The scaling strength on pillar of frost seams to be the culprit and I would like to see it removed or made an optional talent with the ability to pick an alternative that enhances the consistent damage profile.
Capstone Talents: While fun talents most times I find that in order to maximize damage I am incentivized to stare at my bars and buffs to avoid making mistakes in the small PoF window. This leads to moments (Particularly in M+) where my focus being shifted from my character and the enemies causes missed stops undue damage or death. Overall these build defining talents feel unduly punishing towards mistakes.
Personally I pine for the days in BFA where frosts M+/AoE build was centered around Icecap interacting with Frostscythe for massive CDR on Pillar allowing you to shoot out numerous Frostwhelps Indignations and overlap Enduring strength with pillar of frost for high consistent damage with the skill based around skill shot abilities and positioning which incentivized looking at your character and positioning over your buttons.
Obliteration: I have come to hate this talent due to its interaction with PoF’s scaling strength forcing our baseline obliterates damage to be weak, the interaction with D&D and the punishing nature of making mistakes inside PoF window that other specs don’t have to deal with. Comparing how bad a misplaced ability inside Obliteration-PoF feels to specs like Ret paladin or Havoc DH is laughable.
Personally I want the whole talent to just go away. In its place I’d like a transformation style passive for obliterate that make it into a better version of itself inside the PoF window similar to Bladedance VS Deathsweeps (Even better if its a Giant hammer of conjured ice that you slam into enemies in front of you before it explodes into shrapnel for AoE damage.)
Breath of Syndragosa: Breath is more fun when you can keep it up indefinitely. The devs need to stop fighting this and embrace it. Obviously damage would need to be shifted to make it less of a burst CD. I’d like to see its cooldown reduced to 1 minute so there is still a punishment to mess up your resource balance while avoiding the huge ‘Feels Bad’ moment that a mistake can earn you currently. As well as making it more flexible to play with In hectic raid encounters or M+.
The above idea could lead to you having an active breath going strong with the CD completed and just sitting unused. This doesn’t seam like a bad thing to me rather it seams like a reward for good gameplay. Imagine You play well enough that you keep one breath up for longer than its CD before hitting a boss intermission or a long run in M+ that forces an end to breath and you know this means you will now have the fresh CD for when combat resumes.
Raise Dead: Taking this as blood and frost in order to get get cleave feels gross. Make this baseline for UH and replace it in the tree with D&D.
Talent Tree: It’s boring. Your options change little outside choosing breath or Obliteration. Having options to spec for a little more cleave, full AoE, pure single and so on is fun and frost fails at these interesting decisions entirely and feels like an early to middle iteration of what it should be.
PvP: The big issue with frost pvp as I see it is that UH fills almost every niche frost could better than it does.
My fix for this is to make them a much stronger spec for peeling teammates and give them a mild Mortalstrike effect and/or execute damage.
Essentially I would have frost fill a new pvp niches of the ‘Body Guard’ Spec where by being near allies they apply active and passive reductions and peels to enemies damage.
Examples
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(PvP talent) Blind Winter: Remorseless Winter’s CD is increased by 25 seconds and causes enemies inside it to have a 30% chance to miss attacks.
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(PvP talent) Frigid Ward: Place a ward on one ally. They emit an aura of frost that slows enemies within 8 yards by 1% for every 2% of max health they are missing.
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(PvP talent) Aura of the Necropolis: Allies within 8 yards of you while bellow 30% health have their damage taken reduced by 10%
Obviously numbers would need work as I simply threw them as close to where I think they should be on the spot.
I hope my two cents may reach the ears of some one and at least spark some ideas for how to make the spec more fun as it seams obvious it needs attention regardless of if anything I wrote gets implemented.