Frost - Simple Changes That Bring Major Improvements

Classes Death Knight
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I’ve been thinking about Frost tweaks/ideas that address Frost’s current issues with as little effort as possible. The idea here is to re-use and recycle, with the intent to use existing tools to make the spec better.

Note: all suggested numbers are subject to tuning.

TL:DR - for those who don’t want to read a lot

  • MotFW passive changed to give Razorice buff when 2H weapon is equipped.
  • Obliteration talent also increases KM damage.
  • KM reverted to proc from auto attacks.
  • Obliterate changed to frost damage, baseline.
  • Icecap changed to a baseline passive that reduces CD of PoF and FwF, on Rune & RP spender crits.
  • Icecap replaced with a talent that is a combination of Frostwhelp’s Indignation and Icy Citadel from BfA azerite.
  • Buff Frostscythe so it’s worth picking up again for AoE.
  • Return Soul Reaper as an execute.

Now the long version for those who want the rationale.

2H vs DW

The first big issue is the disparity between 2H and DW. I believe that the current (re)implementation of MotFW was not a good choice. The return of 2H should’ve been an aesthetic change, in a vacuum, that addresses player preference, as demonstrated by TG and SMF Warriors.

For those who like the beefy Obliterates, the extra damage from MotFW should be provided by the Obliteration talent instead since that’s the capstone talent which defines that playstyle anyway.

Runeforges

The lack of an additional Runeforge for 2H is another major pain point. Luckily, Blizz has already solved this in Torghast via the Rune Hunter power, which allows Runeforges to be made available as buffs.

To this end MotFW will instead allow Frost DKs to activate the Razorice Runeforge buff, when a 2H weapon is equipped.

Killing Machine

KM for Frost is in the weird position of needing crit to activate while also guaranteeing a crit for Obliterate. Needing a critical hit can cause proc droughts, especially for 2H. I think we should revert back to the 2016 version that would proc off auto attacks. The mechanic for procs could remain the same (as explained in Bicepspump informative video) with some number adjustments.

Obliterate

Assuming that current MotFW’s damage increase is now a part of the Obliteration talent and that the above KM changes are in effect, let’s tackle Obliterate. The new KM effect that allows for Obliterate to do frost damage is very good but the ability still feels anemic outside of CDs/procs. Spending 2 runes on a main spender that does less damage per hit than a Frost Strike does not feel rewarding.

Allowing Obliterate to deal frost damage by default would fix this problem and go a long way towards making it a finisher that’s comparable with that of other specs.

Crit Scaling

Since We’re changing KM to work off of regular auto-attacks once again, crit scaling is diminished. To fix this I’ll make the first, IMO, radical suggestion:

Icecap is now baseline and allows RP & Rune spender crits to reduce the cooldown of Pillar of Frost by 2s and Frostwyrm’s Fury by 5s.

This will allow the spec to retain crit scaling, address the widespread dislike of the increased PoF CD, and who wouldn’t want more frequent use of FwF.

In place of Icecap, I’d suggest a talent that is a combination of Frostwhelp’s Indignation and Icy Citadel azerite traits:

Icy Indignation: PoF summons a frostwyrm that breathes on enemies in front of you for 2000 frost damage and increases mastery by 100 for each target hit. When PoF expires, your strength is increased by 300 for 6s (increased by 2s per Rune spender crits during PoF).

Supporting changes

With the changes to KM and Icecap, I think Frostscythe should get a buff and maybe have its target cap removed, but with a sqrt-formula for damage dropoff.

Soul Reaper’s return as a shadowfrost execute would also be quite welcome, since it’s one of the factors that contributes to UH being favored raid. Would prefer it as baseline (for both specs), but IMO it could easily take the place of a level 15/25 talent if necessary.

Conclusion

There is nothing new here. Almost all of these changes are tweaks to existing elements or something that already exists in the game, so they should be much easier to implement.

With the above suggestions in place, the difference between 2H and DW should be minimized. In addition it’ll open the door to 2H BoS which is currently quite suboptimal. Above all, I think these changes will make Frost’s playstyle more lively and fun.

Obliterate would feel better without KM, which would proc more frequently. The Icecap/Icey Indignation changes should bring back a sustained cleave / M+ build. Obliteration will be more fun because you’re spending more time in the PoF window. BoS, as our most raid capable capstone talent, would be viable for all Frost players.

6 Likes
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Where is the Slab, yo?

Nah, in all seriousness. The disparity between 2h and DW is a bit complicated one that has a lot of different solution to tackle the difference of ONE runeforge. You could make MotFW apply Razorice. You could make GA not have a cooldown. You could give or take losses depending on the weapon choice that you make as a DK. Fun fact, SSG would be a fun option for 2h Frost.

Right now, DW is like AoE option while 2h is ST option. Same thing could be said about Obliteration and BoS.

I don’t know about Obliterate dealing pure Frost damage. Bonemarrow and FeS both deal physical damage as well as it would just make this ability not too different from Frost Strike. Which was mentioned a little bit in this thread.

The most simple change for Icecap in its current state is just merge it with Obliteration and give Frost something else. That is the most simple solution in my eyes. Otherwise, we could go something else such as the one you suggested for Obliteration.

Also how does incorporating both Icy Citadel and Frostwhelp’s Indignation work with talents? Talents normally don’t grant flat secondary stat values.

I’m all for Shadowfrost Soul Reaper to return. In fact, I really want a talent row dedicated to Execute. This is what I mean by The Slab. Make a row a talent that has a choice between Merciless Combat, Reworked Avalanche and Soul Reaper.

Making KM not proc off crits and proc off AA sounds okay. You’re right on it being delating crit values. Making Icecap as a baseline is a bit too drastic of a change but then again… Fire Mages get free crits for pretty much existing and have an ability that ignores all global cooldowns and crits that contributes spec functionality for pretty much a press of a button.

and I agree, Frostscythe in its current state is doodoo :frowning:

3 Likes
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The thing is even with these changes, you probably wouldn’t see Icecap played, especially with the other suggestions you made. People played Icecap because of corruption, not just the azerite traits. And even then, you still needed the essences to make it work because the issue with taking Icecap (and Obliteration as of now) is that you have no AoE/cleave burst. You’d use Conflict and Strife major in order to have a burst cleave since Chillstreak was a short enough CD to warrant taking it instead of having the single target burst you’d get from Blood of the Enemy and spamming frost scythe.

An easy fix is just to for that then is to make Chillstreak baseline in PvE and have it as a talent instead of Frozen Pulse in all honesty. Introduce a new PvP talent after that.

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I’m not opposed to an execute row but that would be more work than replacing one talent with an existing ability.

Yah I don’t think weapon choice should decide ST vs AoE niche. That’s why we have talents.

So why not the simplest one that’s already in the game in the form of Rune Hunter.

Frost DKs have been asking for this for a long time. If anything FS should be the ability with the physical component. The same way Ret has Crusader Strike (phys) and Templar’s Verdict (holy).

We do have talents like that, a little thing called Seraphim for Paladins does exactly that.

In a vacuum maybe, but there are other changes such as more/better Obliterate/KM. It also depends on the tuning. It’s certainly possible that it would still be a good build for M+ without needing to have the same level of uptime as before. They could always have the new talent give a bigger stat buff or increase the CDR from the (baseline) Icecap passive to rectify this.

Chillstreak could certainly have a spot too, I like it better for PvE than PvP tbh.

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Icecap should stay as a talent but with Icy citadel and froswhelp as part of it, give a tunning to frostscythe dmg and we can see icecap as a viable option again.

I like the idea of having aa procs instead of crits, i always found weird this change. Also i like the playstyle of frost with more haste i think having less global fits the spec better since we have a pretty straight forward rotation.

The dmg of oblits outside KM feels pretty bad, maybe bc of the multipliers since its affected by mastery now, idk if i want it to be all frost dmg maybe go back to physical. And 2h being only cosmetic can be good or bad depend on who you ask, at least for me is ok.

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I like these ideas, but I can do it with just one change

  • Remove Breath of Sindragosa and add in a talent that isn’t awful to play

I have always viewed DK as being very similar to Warriors, and that Unholy = Arms (slower paced with diseases and wounds slowly decaying enemies from the inside out) with Frost = Fury (faster paced, lots of APM with our icicles/frost magic slicing into people). Breath of Sindragrosa isn’t even fun. One wrong button press and you’ve tanked your DPS. It’s a lot of set up and really defeats the purpose of the spec to base a good portion of your damage and rotation around it.

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Just give us the execute and walk away slowly!

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I suggested baselining Icecap to offset KM going back to triggering off of regular auto-attacks and therefore devaluing crit. Having CDR on PoF/FwF as a core part of the spec would also be a nice thing to have, since many well performing specs have similar mechanics on their main CD.

BoS is pretty polarizing, so I think it’s best left as a talent. As you mentioned, it does a good job of creating a high risk high reward situation for those who want it.

The best way of dealing with it though IMO, for those who don’t like it, is creating viable alternatives. Baseline Icecap + new Icy Citadel talent could create that for AoE/Cleave and Obliteration in ST (with the suggested improvements to KM and Obliterate).

2 Likes
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I think the best suggestion that I have seen for a KM change is, making it proc off frost fever crits. This way no matter what weapon you decide to use, the KM procs would be consistent. That along with making two-hand able to use two runeforges would balance out the two playstyles at least in theory.

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I personally like the idea of getting bigger oblits as a 2H and just getting more overall dmg as DW, even if there’s some disparity in dmg between the 2.

Then KM proccing off of FF ticks makes more sense to me to normalize the proc rates between the two and Keeping MotFW as is as far as 2H oblit dmg goes, feels better to me as weapon choice just being an aesthetic choice seems kinda boring.

Your ideas on runes and obliteration are great however, as it clearly needs something more to be in line with
-puke- BoS.

Also i don’t really know much about icecap in BFA so i can’t comment but the talent is clearly ridiculously undertuned so any change is more than welcome.

Any ideas on what to do with frozen pulse, icy talons and horn of winter?

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The frost DK ‘fantasy’, at least for a 2H build, is to build up to a massive Obliterate that will chunk the boss for a crazy amount of damage. I know the DW frost build works differently and is all about frost damage, but the 2h version was always different (at least when it was viable).

This may just be my personal nostalgia but having the one insane ability that does the most damage in the game was a fun concept and felt very satisfying. Currently, frost strike and killing machine seem like they are grafted on from another class/spec and dont fit into the massive obliterate playstyle. KM and maybe even frost strike in general should feel less like a filler and more as a way to build up to a massive hit. Perhaps they should increase the damage of the next obliterate in some way- be it through a consistent buff or through a massive proc.

Regardless, the number one reason frost feels like suck a crappy spec to play is because you have 3 abilities but have like 6 cooldowns. 3-4 cooldowns, a covenant cooldown, racial cooldown, 1-2 trinkets. Some of these need to be rolled into one or removed.

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Glacial Advance should have been made baseline when they made the same change with Epidemic for UH. Chill streak would have made a great talent replacement.

Change my mind

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This would be fine too but I didn’t suggest it because it’s not an existing mechanic (so probably harder to implement) and it would allow us to bank KMs from range which they might not want to allow.

You should try Ret because it’s basically what a Frost DK should be. Templar’s Verdict is a chunky hit that is lethal with CDs. A lot of my suggestions were aimed at moving Frost in that direction, however the disparity between 2H and DW needs to be addressed first.

Giving a few people their big obliterates is not a good enough reason to leave 2H behind in overall performance. That kind of playstyle preference should be addressed via talents as suggested in the OP.

GA being a band-aid solution to RI for 2H is bad. GA having a CD is bad. GA’s animation and glitchy nature is bad.

Would it be nice to have a RP spender for Frost? Sure, but there are higher priority issues for Frost. GA needs a redesign first anyway.

2 Likes
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KM off of FF was only suggested to make the procs more consistent between 2h and DW, it would suck however because you cant actually increase the tick rate of FF.

DW also had chunky hits with Obliterate and the spec was fast paced, its slowly gotten slower as each expansion has been introduced. The rune system doesnt change because you chose a certain weapon over another.

GA being baseline, and I agree, is a bad idea. If its intent is just to give 2h RI, it also gives DW RI so it doesnt actually do anything in that regard and now you are fighting for 2h to have the next runeforge. The issue wouldnt be solved and complaints would just be shifting around.

2h and DW is easy to fix when its all said and done. Remove 2h and just make it cosmetic. Could be like the green fire quest where you get the ability to change the appearance of your weapon to a 2h without actually impacting any spec design. Then you are able to design the spec without the worry for any different weapon input. Either that or redesign the entire spec from the ground up so that weapons are just essentially stat sticks and give 2h Might of the Frozen Waste which just gives a primary runeforge.

I really think people are making things much harder overall and it doesnt need to be that way. I think the question people are answering is “how do I fix x” which the real question is “how do I fix x without changing y”. There are 2 variables for frost and people are leaving one of them out because they dont like it, but it still exists so you have to account for it. So you either get rid of one of the variables, mainly the one that the spec hasnt been designed for time and time again, or you change what the variables would be interacting with which is the spec.