Lets talk about the biggest issues plaguing frost death knight as a class, Specifically for PvP. This is not a PvE discussion in any way. Refrain from all mention of PvE in this thread
Frost has some of the strongest 2 target burst among all the classes in the game, Which you could argue is kinda the niche they intend for the class to fill which is fine. But currently you can argue frost does not even actually have this outside of a vacuum
Like sure, you could grip sleet, AoE stun, and sometimes land that picture perfect setup and omega burst down 2 people and kill them both before the stun ends. But this situation almost never happens once you climb past 2100 in ladder. The reason being its insanely difficult to lockdown 2-3 Good players in a tight enough clump to even have this dream setup. Most of the time someone still has trinket, and after using trinket they break the clump and your cleave damage quickly turns back into single target damage with light cleave.
Or even worse yet, your burst gets completely shutdown by 1 of the many disarms that exist in the game
I actually dont think a single class in this game gets shut down as hard as frost dk does from disarm. Disarm effectively is a 75% reduction on a frost dks offensive burst and renders pillar completely useless. You know its bad when trinketing disarm becomes a regular occurrence for frost dks. Put it into perspective, Frost Death Knight has a burst window that both ramps, and requires weave.
You literally need to spend runes to increase the power of your burst, to get those meaty oblits, And you have to weave froststrike/howling to proc your burst (obliterate)
When you use a 6second disarm on a 12s pillar, you are left with 6 seconds on your pillar, Doesnt sound to bad right? Until you consider that for the first 6 seconds of your pillar you couldnt ramp it nearly at all because you were disarmed, And also now that disarm is over, you have to spend 3 seconds of your total 6, to weave froststrike and howling blast to proc your oblits
1 single disarm, will net a Frost DK only a measly 2 obliterates for their cds because of how shortly lived pillar is. If you asked me, Disarm is FAR FAR FAR to powerful against frost DK, and it doesnt help that blizzard handed out disarms to classes like candy last expansion
Think thats the end of this forum? We are just getting started
Now lets talk about the deathstrike nerfs. Or rather in general lets talk about DK self sustain. Frost as a spec is almost pure melee, Howling blast is our 1 ability that does good damage and isnt a melee strike. Ever since the nerf to deathstrike frost has suffered immensely from survivability issues into melee classes, And even casters to a degree. Unlike unholy, Frost has no other abilities or defensives to lean on to survive a lot of the damage that exists in the game, and has been disproportionately destroyed compared to unholy for this change.
What doesnt make sense is the justification for the nerf, which is that Death Knight was far to unkillable especially into caster classes. I strongly dislike how the majority of players and even the developers are treating Unholy and Frost DKS the exact same, As if the 2 specs arent any different from eachother.
Unholy is a completely different beast into casters than frost dk is for example, And in the past, Frost was a completely different beast into melee cleaves than unholy was.
See what im poking at here? They nerfed Death Knight as a whole Because Unholy was far to powerful into casters
And the dk nerfs are justified dont get me wrong, all of them EXCEPT deathstrikes nerfs. Because that nerf specifically hurts frost way more than unholy and frost was already arguably no stronger than B tier. Also nerfing deathstrike does nothing to aid casters in killing DKs, All it does is make DK even weaker into melee, Which is already what DK lost to rather hard even pre nerf
Deathstrike should never have been touched, And if deathstrike was to be nerfed, it shouldve been nerfed exclusively for unholy dks, As they have another healing component built in via Necrotic wounds. But frost has no such luxury
Most players will agree, Spellwarden is the issue, Spellwarden is the reason DK has become immortal into casters, And blizzard, No matter how many times you nerf this talent it will still be played 100% of the time into magical classes, it provides far to many benefits even outside of just the pure shield it gives. It dips into 2 talents of our tree which effectively unnerfed it from your previous nerfs.
There is no tuning this talent, There is no saving it, The only solution to this issue is pruning spellwarden and replacing it with something that actually takes brainpower to use. No player in this game wants to rely on RNG to survive damage, And no player in this game wants to rely on RNG to land kills into other players either. You have created a toxic talent and its time to admit your mistake and fix it
Buff deathstrike, Prune and replace spellwarden, Thats step 1 to make DK as a whole healthier for the game and more enjoyable to play
Frost still has other issues we havent even got to yet and im gonna talk about those now
Even after you make the changes listed above, frost will still have 1 big issue, and that would be that its PvP talents are all almost universally bad, and contribute literally nothing to the spec
Rot and wither: Why is this a universal talent? Ive been asking this question since i first seen it pre dragonflight
Shroud of Winter: Why is this still in the game? Its the pathetic husk of what once used to be arguably the strongest honor talent in the entire game Heartstop Aura. Cut your losses here as well blizzard, Frost didnt need another weird -30% to X thing a player can do in pvp. This talent contributes nothing to a frost dk in 1v1s, 2v2s, 3v3s, or even RBGS. This talent suffers from 1 huge design flaw in that you MUST be in melee range to have it work, but if youre in melee range of a player to apply this debuff then you are also in range of their spells which you are supposed to be reducing the range of. There might be some bad players who argue that its good into casters because they cant land ccs on your healer if you train them, And not that this is entirely wrong but youre literally better off sitting in their face with almost any of the other talents that exist in your tree, Necro aura, Spellwarding, silence, dead of winter, etc. Even in Shrouds perfect niche scenarios, Its still simply superior to play the other talents available to you. The solution isnt to buff this talent either, Similar to spellwarding, It would literally be better to just prune and replace this with something else that actively assists a frost dks PvP universally
Deathchill: This talent is pretty bad as well but at least it has some niche uses, Like disconnecting fury warriors/demon hunters from yourself or healers. I think this talent has 2 main issues that if addressed, could allow it to see more play universally. First issue being that using chains of ice to apply the root will remove the application of chains of ice. It would be better if you didnt lose chains of ice to root targets. Problem #2 is it provides no real offensive value, its almost exclusively a defensive option. I think tundra stalkers effect should be reintroduced to deathchill and allow me to explain why. Previously this is what tundra stalker did in the past
“Damage of your Frost Strike is increased by 15% on snared targets, and critical strike chance increased by 50% on rooted targets.”
So if deathchill had this effect applied to it, anytime you had chains of ice on a target you would deal 15% more damage with froststrike, This synergizes perfectly with Bitter chill, a talent that refreshes Chains of Ice with each froststrike. This would make bitterchill and deathchill perfect talents to run together.
Reason #2, “and critical strike chance increased by 50% on rooted targets.” Having more critical strike chance on rooted targets encourages Frost DKS to strategically root their burst targets for increased critical chance. Now whether or not this crit chance is for all abilities, or just froststrike, wouldnt matter to me. But for arguments sake lets just assume its only 50% increased crit chance on froststrike (for balance reasons) that would still mean that you could root targets, have 15% increased froststrike damage, and most importantly because you have 50% increased froststrike crit chance you can now farm icecap AND Cold Blooded Rage more effectively
These kinds of design changes are what frost desperately needs, and making deathchill also have the effect of tundra stalker is a very good way to bring bitterchill into play more. But lets talk about bitterchill by itself for a second
Bitterchill: -8% haste with chains of ice. If tundra stalkers effect isnt added to deathchill, the only other suggestion i have for this talent to see more play would be to rather than reduce haste by 8%, maybe make it a haste steal for 6%. That way you could run AoE chains, and steal 6% haste per player you have in chains. encouraging you to froststrike and maintain chains of ice on the team and rewarding you with a large sum of haste to help you continue to do so
With honortalents out of the way, Lets talk about 1 more thing frost could see changed for its benefit, Soulreaper
Soulreaper has potential, And a LOT of it for frost DK. And should be slightly changed to suit frosts playstyle and be a bit more unique compared to unholys version
For starters Soulreaper must proc killing machine during obliteration. Until this change is made no matter what soulreaper will feel bad to press, and will get in the way of our rotation more than it will help us land kills in most situations. This change alone would likely justify picking the talent and personally i know i would use soulreaper almost always if it was changed in this way. But it doesnt have to stop there, For frost i also suggest making soulreaper cost runic power instead of runes. And i have a couple of reasons for suggesting this change
Reason 1: More runic power spenders means more agency to choose spending it on either damage via Froststrike and Soulreaper, Or self healing via deathstrike (unnerfed deathstrike of course) This makes it critical for dks to learn when its best to spend their runic power on damage or healing, And allows for situations where a Deathknight could die because he spent to much runic power on damage instead of healing, Or alternatively if the DK focuses to much on being that immortal juggernaught people hate so much, Because they opted to mash deathstrike all game they lost a very significant amount of damage throughout the game and thus, couldnt land a kill therefore losing the arena. Its a very good way to indirectly nerf deathstrike without actually lowering the amount of healing deathstrike gives you. It allows for insane skill expression in resource management
The other reason I suggest making Soulreaper cost runic power is because frost needs the runes for obliterate, as simple of a reason that might be. Considering that chillstreak was changed to cost a rune, and considering that death and decay allows for cleave obliterates, But also costs a rune, Now more than ever FDK might need as many ways to avoid wasting runes as possible. You already have to spend 2 runes for chillstreak and death and decay, soulreaper is a 3rd rune, and that would prevent you from using more than a single obliterate
It suits frost far more for soulreaper to have a runic power cost compared to a rune cost.
Personally i want soulreaper to activate instantly at somepoint as well, Like if a target reaches 10% health rather than waiting out the duration of the debuff soulreaper should automatically proc if the enemy gets close enough to death.
If you have 10% hp, and i press soulreaper, it should simply just explode right away dealing that finishing blow.
With all the changes listed above you might see frost dk go from the most pathetic melee spec and one of the most frustraiting and punishing melee specs to play, to a more enjoyable overall spec to play
As for tuning, Of course its always subject to change. I dont want to see anyone talk about how OP these changes would make frost because when you say things like that what youre assuming is that these are the only changes the spec will see, But understand this post is about the design of the class, Not the numbers you see.
If these changes make frost dk God tier in terms of dps, Obviously we can always just crank down some damage numbers and adjust for the improved overall design. But im sure many of you frost dk chads out there are getting sick over how poorly designed our spec is, and how we have very few synergies with our abilities/honor talents
Our class doesnt feel like it works for us, it feels like it works against us sometimes, Its far to easy to shutdown Frost dk damage with cc or disarms, And its far to easy to kill frost dks as melee post DS nerf with mortalstrikes, And over half of our honor talents provide almost 0 benefit for 95% of pvp situations, They are overly niche especially compared to other classes honor talents
. It’s really a problem that to many specs have it.