Haven’t done those in quite a while. Ideally, I would like to try and put all negative feedback in one place and hope for the best. I don’t claim to be the best person for the job, but feels like we have lots of threads highlighting one specific issue or random idea how to fix something and not enough “we’re not ok” threads. I don’t think “toxic positivity” from certain communities brings a lot of good in reality. Yes, we’re still very good in M+. But what about raid-focused players, who enjoy competing with the boys on meters and knowing their performance matters for progress? Sometimes even Death Knight can die in the fight, do you enjoy being #1 priority for CR or hearing “res pala” from RL?
So, trying to summarize more or less facts first
- High-end PVE build diversity is non-existent (warcraftlogs, mythic, top 500 for each boss, only 5 non-DB+BoS parses from almost 4k logs)
- ST damage is among the lowest of all on all 3 raid difficulties N-M
- Target design of less bursty, less uptime-hungry was not fully realized and lost a ground again with latest changes which leads to the following points
- Damage highly dependent on random uncontrollable factors - courtesy of DB hero talent tree
- Boss design promotes ST or frequent frontloaded burst AoE on low-health adds, which are not the best damage profiles for frost
- Boss design in current tier is rather heavy with forced disengage group mechanics on random timers
- Unholy is not doing much better and due to different weapon type and very different stat priorities and a new myth track upgrade system changing specs between raid bosses is not a viable option
- Utility in raid is severely lacking
Now to personal and more subjective “feels bad” observations
- Cooldown timers are all over the place and options to sync everything to 30/60/90/120 sec are non-viable
- Resource economy - necessity to sit on procs and waste them to pool resources for pillar burst windows
- In the same vein - fairly long setup for pillar windows and dependency on good rune resets for satisfying execution
- Almost no opportunities for a cool “hero moments” in raid, partially due to class tools such as AMS and DA being for the most part irrelevant in context of personal performance and boss mechanics execution
- Reverse “scaling” with group performance - the more damage group does, the more we lose in personal dps
- A swing from one of the best raid dps to one of the worst in the middle of the season doesn’t bring much joy, especially with how many more players decided to main a spec based on power. And especially heartbreaking for those who stuck with it for years and expansions.
Solutions to problems
Apparently, we as players are good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them. I generally agree with this statement, 4-page essays with ideas how to completely change half of the talents, rotations, damage profiles etc never worked.
Still, I would like to highlight a few things:
- Frostwhelp’s Aid has too much power on 5+ targets and holds back any fair ST tuning
- DB’s Wave of Souls and Exterminate randomness is excessive
- Rider could be a reliable boring ST-focused non-BoS tree
Let’s discuss, please? How do YOU truly feel about RAID performance?
8 Likes
Agree with everything and just going to add in once again that Breath of Sindragosa needs an Office Space styled printer treatment. For the love of Arthas redesign it or get rid of it.
3 Likes
I wish Frostwhelp was just removed. I hate having to worry about pulling mobs 30yds away when just hitting my pillar.
The reset mechanic needs to come off of DM and it needs to be 25% crit per 10 stacks. to take the RNG out of it.
Our single target defiantly sucks but theres such little pure single target abilities to buff besides rime. Cleaving Strikes needs to be brought down to 80% so that Oblit can come up for single target and be the same for cleave. Same with Shattered Frost. Nerf it so Frost strike can be buffed.
On the spec tree i would like to see ice cap just be baked into pillar and long winter be brought up to its place. Ice cap is still an option for the idea of 1 min pillar working with BoS but we just take 45s anyway so make BoS and ERW 1.5min CDs. Replace long winter with “Cryo Blade” AA crits do frost damage to go along with the column theme and give some single target damage. Cold heart sucks and chill streak needs buffs.
On the class tree Soul Reaper still sucks and needs redesigned and slappy hands needs some juice.
Make razorice a stacking MS.
1 Like
Well written post. Single target boss damage is horrible.
Bake Fallen Crusader into MotFW.
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It needs a rework in general. KM, frost reaper, and janky crit scaling will forver hild the spec back.
Why even have abilities when they hit like wet noodles.
2 Likes
This has been the DK MO for literally years. Its why this time around, I’m not bothering whatsoever with anything past LFR. Why bother? The class simply can’t even compete with the top specs. I wanted to get KSM in Dragonflight S1 and I was getting close but I couldn’t match every other classes damage output outside of bosses unless the entire group played around me. I ended up quitting and didn’t touch the rest of the Xpac. So screw it. Just staying casual until they fix it which looking at the track record, isn’t happening.
If they don’t give any good changes to DK for 11.1, I might just quit again and see how next xpac goes. All my friends said DK was doing great at the start so I got the xpac and here I am. Duped.
I really wish they’d just go back to the original Rune regen design. Them changing that has been the worst change the class ever got.
Frost was actually great for the first few weeks. The damage was good, you had Oblit/Shattering builds as a general M+ and for raids. Then you had the usual boring breath builds that did better damage in raids or M+ if your group pulled around it.
For god knows what ridiculous reason, they nerfed everything except breath and we’re back to where we were during most of DF(outside of the legendary making Obliteration builds shine on par). AFTER THE FACT that they even stated they wanted viable options outside of breath of sindragosa going into TWW acknowledging that a large population of the community despises the talent and refusing to remove/redesign it (there are people that actually like it, and they should not be punished for it to be honest).
Sadly the only other class I enjoy really is Monk, and they’re doing a horrible job with them too so I’m stuck with Unholy for another expansion unless I decide to be yet another paladin.
2 Likes
Yep. Thats exactly what I was told which is why I even got TWW in the first place. Then a week after I buy the xpac they pulled out the nerf bat like they always do.
I refuse to play BoS and I’m getting pretty bored of Unholy pet spam and DW just being blatantly better.
Being able to play Frost without BoS made me be fine with dual wielding with the shattering builds. It was that much fun that I could let it go. I even forgave the stupidity of cleaving strikes because I was enjoying frost so much.
If any blizzard devs are reading this. Whats the point of having other talents then if you’re going to force everyone to play the exact same way? Did it bother you that much that people dropped BoS the second another viable option was available? You -knew- we hated it so what’s the problem exactly?
1 Like
Read patch notes for next tuesday.
Beggars can’t be choosers really. But the changes are so miniscule, it will have no effect on either spec relative strength or build variety. Could potentially become less agravating to play on pure ST Sikran and Ky’veza since fight length is not optimal for BoS anyway and Obliterate SB with shorter burst windows will feel better.
Its really not going to change Frosts standings at all. They might be in the 19th spot instead of the 21st in single target. The average players isnt going to really see any improvements.
Everything does aoe damage in some way so they cant really do much for single target.
I really wanted to avoid talking about suggestions and ideas, but for the sake of the argument 3 examples of different solutions: 1) Isolated Prey talent in Havoc DH spec tree; 2)Havoc’s Eye Beam and WW Monk’s Fists of Fury once used to do 100% damage on main target and 50% on all others targets; 3) Mass Disintegrate from Evoker’s Scalecommander or Delivered Doom from Rogue Fatebound hero talent trees.
Our to main single target abilities which are Obliterate and Frost Strike cleave with talents Cleaving Strikes and Shatter Frost. If Cleave is fine and ST is low all they have to do is low cleaving strike from being 100% to 2 extra targets to ~80% then buff Oblit. Then lower Shatter Frost to like ~50% and buff Frost Strike. Other than that rime feels to weak.