Are they relatively easy to play compared to other melee specs? I know DH probably takes the cake for easiest. I’m just really getting bored and want to try out an entirely new class.
If I recall, I am pretty sure Frost is the easier spec out of the two. But I don’t think they’re easy in terms of other melee specs, such as Arms warrior is pretty easy, same with survival hunter.
DK is a lot of fun because it’s very ranged. If you have to move for mechanics you can basically just keep DPS while moving.
Unholy has a lot of stack potential, increasing their damage exponentially, so it’s a bit harder. You can chain detonate with abilities for massive damage.
Frost is fun, simple, and full of big numbers. I don’t play it much because I absolutely hate Breath of Sindragosa with a passion. It acts way too quickly- if you fat-finger one button you lose it.
Both DPS specs have a sort of “Ride the whirlwind” style of play with most of the damage being autonomous from pets and abilities. Things spin around you and you watch things melt.
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i dont think thrs an easier spec to play than frost dk considering theres only 3 rotational abilities you have
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Name them. o,o
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Havoc DH, BM hunter, and Frost DK are essentially the “turn your brain off” specs unless you build into the slightly higher skillcap playstyles. I wish they would revamp the options a bit to keep them simple for those who prefer that but let more hardcore players go nuts with options. I specifically ran glacial advance and cold heart with a 2h just to give myself a few more things to manage and only wish it was a more viable way to play.
(Thankfully, gathering storm and biting cold will be pretty free and easy to take next xpac, but it hardly addresses the other issues of having no satisfying rp spenders or obliterate feeling awful without km procs.)
See I just prefer to turn my brain off as I usually just watch a show or something while playing haha. I’ve always been so intrigued by DK but never gave one a fair shot to play.
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Play frost dk with obliteration and you can pretty much do just that. The only part that requires thought are lining up your burst windows from pillar of frost effectively. The rest is pretty set and forget because it depends on rng, but you simply try to hit obliterate as much as possible in any given window at any given time.
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If you don’t mind, what is a brief rundown of a general rotation for this? just as I’m leveling it doesn’t seem like many moves overall. I’m also interested in raiding, thoughts on dk’s for raiding?
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Frost
Obliterate
Frostrike
Rime (howling blast)
Remorseless winter (every 15 seconds)
Unholy
Scourge strike
Death coil
Festering wound
Soul reaper during execute (I forget the cd)
Both specs are incredibly simple to play until you really min max.
At the extreme top end I’d say obliteration w/pharamones is by far the hardest spec. The gcd goes so low you have to be a computer to react properly. After that I’d say it’s BOS frost, Unholy then normal Obliteration.
I played unholy all of castle Nathria mythic prog and it was significantly easier than frost.
Unholy doesn’t get punished like frost does by mechanics and it’s a very straightforward playstyle with little to react to. Frost is heavily punished if you mis time CDs and you are constantly playing whackamole and reacting.
You could maybe argue unholy has a more complex rotation as it changes for aoe?
There is no “hard” spec to play in the game right now but I wouldn’t say frost is the easiest.
It’s legitimately as simple as: pop remorseless winter with pillar of frost, spam obliterate and frost strike until runes are empty, use howling blast when rime procs, cast frostwyrm’s fury at the end of pillar of frost for burst, use frost strike when runes are empty to dump runic power and get runes back via runic empowerment passive outside of burst window, refresh remorseless winter on cooldown, twiddle thumbs until pillar of frost is up again, rinse and repeat.
Raiding as frost is a bit awkward because it tends to run the dual wield breath of sindragosa build, which can be heavily punishing for poor timing and positioning, but if you’re raiding, you can’t exactly turn off the brain anyway. That playstyle is about pooling runic power to start breath and extend it by generating more (which is basically just spamming obliterate as much as you can in a given window). Same general idea as the one above, only you aren’t pressing frost strike at all during your breath channel.
You can also run two-handed obliteration, but it falls behind and only keeps up somewhat because of the tier set bonus.
I think the big thing that stands out between the two is pet management. More so in a pvp environment.
Skill ceiling is much higher for unholy imo.
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I played as a frost dk for years but then in shadowlands just felt bored n tired if the same buttons being pressed over n over no matter the enemy or situation.
I went to unholy and I have lived it ever since. Easy but bit more complex. Love the feel, look, and overall of the spec. Will continue to play unholy unless they truly overhaul frost some day then maybe will try it again.
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Desperately want a frost overhaul. Wounds are not fun, the ramp-up style is okay, not a fan of having a pet in general, and I would like to have a good damage profile that’s more front-loaded but not so braindead.
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Frost if you’re new for sure. It has far less CD dependence, it’s easier with better uptime and is currently just better overall damagewise.
What? Unholy has far more cooldowns with much smaller CD windows. It’s far more punishing to play UH and waste any CD. If you wanted to perform as UH you have to line up unholy blight with cooldowns that based on timers that don’t line up. As frost you just press the three buttons as they come up for you and use everything off CD.
As for the actual baseline rotation there isn’t even a comparison, UH has debuff management and has to track festering wounds with pet management vs just using procs with half as many buttons. Frost has always been a low button reactive spec that’s comparatively simplistic and that’s fine.
Fairly sure they’re referring to breath build. Drop your breath, wether it’s from bad gameplay or having to do mechanics, and you loose a ton of damage for the next 2 minutes.
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Same thing would happen if you used AOTD/limb without lining up other cd’s, plus there’s a larger general rotation behind it.
I did a side by side comparison at the start of shadowlands and BFA. Unholy ends up having one or two more buttons via CDs that you press one after the other. Go in game and see for yourself. You can set up your bars almost identically with rune spenders, RP spender etc. unholy gets an extra button for aoe but that’s it for the core rotation.
People always say “unholy has so many more buttons”. It really doesn’t.
The core rotation contains the same amount of buttons as I showed in my last post.
I wouldn’t say pressing DT, Unholy Blight and then apoc requires a ton of skill. Even when we didn’t have the conduit for shorter apoc cds there was a WA that held your hand to know to press it or not. Wounds/combo points are not complicated in the slightest.
Unholy isn’t punished by movement anywhere close to as bad as frost is. Shorter CDs also allow for more flexibility and less punishment if you mess something up.
Frost is way easier to learn, unholy has a few things you’ll have to remember.
But frost like others have said, is a brain dead class to play, but at the same time, if you want to min max it and play it well, it becomes a lot more difficult.
I was a WW main and though I’m not that good, topped the charts by just pressing all the buttons consecutively while high and watching TV. There is no thought in playing monks, but if I do the same for Frost and I mess up, my damage falls off a cliff and I can’t recover.
Frost is fun though
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If blood is not an option then I would go unholy. Specifically, night fae for covenant. I enjoying running a defile build with deaths due.