I’m a Multi-R1 Frost DK main in Dragonflight and I want to talk about some flaws that infest our spec talent tree, some boring talents and I also want to talk about the idea of replacing some of them with our really cool and well designed tier set bonuses we’ve had during this expansion. My experience and opinions are mainly focused around PvP but I really feel like this would be beneficial to the frost spec tree in PvE as well.
Piercing Chill and Enduring Chill - I feel like chill streak could be a lot more fun and interactive if they just baked one/both of these talent choices into the baseline Chill Streak ability, and instead they replaced the choice node below it with the Season 3 FDK 2pc tier set bonus (Chill Streak’s range is increased by 4 yds and can bounce off of you. Each time Chill Streak bounces off an enemy your damage is increased by 4% for 10 sec, stacking up to 5 times). Not to mention that using Chill Streak without the extra range and ability to bounce off self can be very frustrating in many scenarios and over the years of talking to other DK’s is what i’ve heard to be the biggest turn-off for most people who avoid playing Frost over Unholy and other melee specs. Most people don’t want to play around a gimmicky ability that is so easy to avoid and mess up in most forms of content.
Cold-Blooded Rage - (Frost Strike has a 20% chance on critical strikes to grant Killing Machine) this talent is so underwhelming and that’s not even the worst part, you have to dump 2 talent points in to this garbage to get to Obliteration. There’s no reason why this needs to be a chance within another chance to proc, it should be changed to a flat 20% chance on Frost Strikes to grant Killing Machine, not 20% chance on Frost Strike crit. On the other hand though, instead of buffing this talent, what if we just had this completely replaced with the Season 1 FDK 4pc tier set bonus (Obliterate and Frostscythe have a 15% chance not to consume killing machine), as a follow up to Bonegrinder and as a pre-requisite to Obliteration it makes perfect sense to have Cold-Blooded Rage be replaced by this much more interesting obliterate focused talent which compliments Bonegrinder and Obliteration’s playstyle WAY BETTER. It also has GREAT synergy with Fatal Fixation which now feels very out of place ever since the removal of this tier set bonus.
Absolute Zero - This is a cool talent but it has the same predicament that the Chill Streak talent has, there’s no reason why the base ability should be underwhelming without talents that upgrade it. Absolute Zero should be baked into the Frostwyrm Fury baseline talent and it should be replaced by the Season 2 FDK 2pc tier set bonus (Howling Blast damage increased by 20 percent. Consuming Rime increases the damage of your next Frostwyrm’s Fury by five percent, stacking 10 times. Pillar of Frost calls a Frostwyrm’s Fury at 30 percent effectiveness that cannot Freeze enemies.), I really feel like this tier set bonus is not only fun and cool but it’s also fundamental to the frostwyrm thematic that defines frost dk vs other specs that use frost based abilities and the other dk specs.
Invigorating Freeze - (Frost Fever critical strikes increase the chance to grant Runic Power by an additional 5%) such a boring and noninteractive talent. Both the condition to proc this talent and the reward for procing it are underwhelming. Maybe they can replace it with something to further buff Howling Blast or Rime procs since that’s what the talent node before this one does, I feel like even with all the howling blast talents that rime proc is still a very underwhelming proc when compared to the procs that other specs have, frost could use some more single target damage outside of burst cd’s so it could be something as simple an extra damage modifier or a runic power generation increase, anything they can do to make this iconic ability more meaningful to press when it lights up. A more interactive Frost Fever talent is also not a bad idea since it’s a very boring dot to play around.
Horn of Winter - (Blow the Horn of Winter, gaining 2 runes and generating 25 runic power) this talent is a shell of it’s former self, I would really love to see the attack power buff aspect of this ability come back to the game. I don’t get involved too much in the PvE side of the class but i constantly hear about how DK struggles to keep up with other classes in the utility department, I would imagine that giving Frost a unique team wide strength/attack power buff that is a short duration and cd similar to the old version would be a super cool way of incentivizing people to bring Frost DK’s to their Raid groups and Arena comps. Just like frostwyrm’s fury I find this ability to be super important to frost dk’s theme considering it fits that vikingish vrykul theme having horn of winter as a way to rally your team rather than as an unimpactful personal resource generator.
Frostscythe - A cool idea and animation but unfortunately almost completely useless when we can make our Obliterate cleave to 2 extra targets for way more damage. A cool idea for this talent could be that it replaces Death and Decay similarly to Defile for Unholy but instead it could be a passive ability that allows us to cleave Obliterate during Remorseless Winter. This would remove the positional requirement of DnD and with it all the complaining everyone does about DnD in PvP and Mythic+. I think this is necessary because DnD has so many extra talents for blood that make it feel good to press and Unholy has Defile which is way more interactive and lower CD, so then you just have Frost which is left with a very very bare bones Death and Decay. This is a signature ability for the DK class as a whole and if they aren’t going to bake in the cleaving mechanic into RW then they should give Frost a talent that makes it feel a bit better to press like the other specs have.
Glacial Advance - Not really sure what they should do with this ability but I will say, the old animation this ability had during the PTR before it went live was SOO CLEAN. we need blizz to bring back that animation with the huge jagged spikes shooting forward and maybe that gives them the opportunity to make the ability do more damage since it will look stronger or something idk LOL. Maybe if they want to keep Glacial Advance as a way to get Razorice without using the runeweapon itself, maybe they should just make this a passive talent that gives us Razorice without needing the runeforge itself so we can use some of the other cool ones without needing to be stuck with RI, this would be especially great for 2h Frost since you can only use 1 runeforge with a 2handed weapon. Just an idea since I don’t really know what they should do with this ability, I feel like it’s more focused around PvE anyway and IMO Avalanche does a much better job at making Razorice stacking actually feel fun and not clunky.
Anyways, i’m aware we still have 1 Season left of Dragonflight and Blizzard likely won’t bake in any of our current tier set options into the talent tree considering they’re playing around with the idea of choosing one of our past tier set bonuses for Season 4. However, this doesn’t mean they cant use The War Within as an opportunity to fix one of the few specs left in the game with a really badly designed spec talent tree. Especially with the Hero Talents being added in to the game maybe they could reintroduce the tier set bonuses through that.
There’s some issues with the DK Class talent tree as well like Permafrost (Absorb is too weak), Blood Draw (Heal is too weak and long CD), Abomination Limb (Should deal Shadowfrost damage for Frost mastery) and Assimilation (The Shadowlands Anti-Magic Zone radius and duration conduit should be baked in to this talent as well to really make it worth the talent point) but overall I think Blizzard did a much better job with the Class tree than they did for the frost spec tree and if they aren’t going to give us a full on rework then the least they can do is replace the failed talents with some already existing options or buff them so they don’t feel so underwhelming if we’re going to be stuck with them.