Is it any good? How is it compared to unholy?
Frost Dks have the best survivability Ive seen so far in BfA. At no point, in all of WoD or Legion have they had such stellar survivability. The reason you see none in pvp is because their damage is the lowest ive ever seen it be. They perform well in PVE due to Sindragosa, Cold Heart and to a lesser extent frostwyrm fury. Theses abilities do not compete in pvp because of blanket damage nerfs (reduced by more than %50 damage in pvp)
Frost has very little utility and CC and pillar only given 10% str is very weak in pvp. Unless they get damage buffs, they do not impact an arena match sufficiently for them to outshine unholy at the moment
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Eyy, someone around here actually gets it. But I would like to dispute the damage thing, idk how it is compared to previous iterations, but that’s kinda hard to compare.
But as for how the damage compares to other specs right now, if you dont use any of those crappy pvp-nerfed abilities (breath, cold heart, FwF) then your damage will be fine, even relatively high compared to most other classes.
With the proper build (obliteration, gathering storm, and inexorable assault instead of BoS, FwF, and cold heart) then you can end up doing some pretty solid dps. Better against melee cleaves where you can get that aoe in, but pretty decent regardless of situation.
The only time frost dps is bad in pvp, imo, is if you for some reason are still using those heavily pvp nerfed talents.
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can you really throw down with 2/3 BF stacks? those oblit crits and rp dump shoudl put some good pressure, idk. Anyone tried?
I never tried battlefield focus but I can tell you with full cooldowns and my on use trinket activated, my obliterates crit for a combined damage of 11k and then inexorable assault adds up another 5k. So that means you can juice a few global cooldowns at 16k dmg a piece. Frost fever dot ticks every 3 seconds and with full cds activated, the ticks can crit for 5500-6000. Add frost strikes (with tradewinds up and full cds, with one latent chill trait and necrotic aura) can crit for 15-16k combined damage as well.
If you want a more realistic depiction of frost dk damage though, frost strike hits for 6k combined damage and obliterate closer to 8k combined damage (less on plate classes like arms warr in dstance or warlocks or bearform druids. I love my dk but i often feel like I used to be able to compensate for my limited toolkit with sheer damage and pressure, Nowadays, some experienced teams will simply ignore you and cross cc one of your teamate while they go for a kill on the other.
I’ve been playing frost dk and ice skatting up hill in pvp this who xpac so far. The beginning of this xpac i was a easy kill. I feel like I have no burst damage what so ever, so I have to go for fights of attrition. For the most part, I can 1v1 mostly any class, but its only cause I can out survive their damage, and wear them out with mine. But inside of pvp, you rarely get that 1v1.
Azerite traits, I was running 1 of Frozen Tempest, and 2 of Echoing howls and was getting some decent echoing howl crits of close to 20k a pop. But generally wasn’t having the greatest of ease rarely killing anyone. I have since swapped to 3 Archives, and my damage over all feels better, but my burst is no existent. I still have to run breath to really have any kill potential, but you really have to bait out any kind of CDs defensively from your opposition. That isn’t easy to do, but if your get it you can easily secure a kill in a breath, but most classes just rope a dope you, and either get you to pop breath and try to go toe to toe with you, and for the most part a DH will get you in burst 1v1 cause they can force you to use Death strikes and a CD during breath, and you’ll either cut it short, or they will just run away. As for most other classes, they just CC during breath or simply move away from you.
TL; DR is playable just isn’t viable in most comps, and just know you’ll have your backup against the wall in most situations. The azerite traits don’t really support any build, and the minor reworks they did with in the spec make other builds not competitive. IE moving Ice Caps to the same tier as Obliteration and Breath, with out buffing Ice Caps with anything like an increase of Frost damage done or something like that.
Should I spec out of BoS for pvp then?