As it stands, FDK has suffered from glaring design issues that at least the majority of players on these forums and other WoW threads dislike.
We will address the elephant in the room first: Breath of Singragosa. This ability might be the single most polarizing ability in the game based on how many people absolutely either love or hate it. The primary issue it has is that it is the only good runic power spender the entire spec has, which creates a very unsatisfying level of balance in the game. I personally think this ability can be fun and has a bit of a high skill ceiling to it in terms of management and proper positioning, but we can’t deny that it feels completely awful to be forced away from your targets during your only meaningful burst window.
That’s why I would like to see this ability changed to something less punishing but slightly less rewarding with a channel that’s based on the rp spent when the ability is pressed (max of 130 by the looks of current runeforge and talent setups coming in DF) instead of a constant consumption of rp to upkeep the ability. This would still reward players for pooling rp without tremendously punishing them if the ability has to be dropped because of the next part: lowering the cooldown to 45s. Obviously, some damage tuning would need to be done here, but Frost as a whole suffers from long cooldowns that make up the entire substance of the spec. Making these changes to BoS could feel better for those who hate the playstyle while giving those who enjoy it a more satisfying gameplay loop, having access to their primary tool more often without the potential for massive dps losses due to repositioning requirements.
That brings us to Obliteration, which is still the same shadow of its former self back when pillar lasted longer. This ability feels great to use during the pof window but suffers from the same terrible downtime issue that breath does. Especially when obliterate only does decent damage on killing machine procs, that rotation outside of the guaranteed procs just feels bad. Why is so much of our damage frontloaded into our cooldowns with almost no sustained damage options to smooth out the feel of the class? (Especially when this is intended to be the pinnacle of single target damage and somehow can barely keep up with breath, the aoe channel.)
The easiest way to mend this issue is to allow us to combine this ability with icecap to add some interactive gameplay centered around upkeeping our burst damage rather than simply waiting for it to come around while we twiddle our thumbs and dance in front of our target for half a minute each time our cooldowns aren’t up.
Next up is icecap, the most awkward of our capstones because it seems to lack much single target function while being on the ST side of the tree for some reason. I won’t lie: the return of BFA frostscythe / whelps icecap build is pretty hype, but we have to consider how utterly ineffective this build will be in single target while forcing people to take mostly single target focused talents. I would personally love to see a more sustained damage profile work for all build types (dw, 2h, single or multi-target), but this build is pretty much limited to dw aoe just like breath is. Unless modifications are made to these build types, we won’t really see anything exciting or new but rather watered down builds of the great ones we remember. (Minus breath which somehow peaks eventually in each xpac to everyone else’s dismay.)
Simplest way to modify this is to combine with obliteration, but another option would be to change the ppm ratios to balance 2h and dw and make frostwhelps hit harder on the 1st target so it has some usefulness for single target. I’d rather see it combined with oblit and a new capstone take its place though.
With the caps out of the way, I want to address the two terrible rp spenders we have in frost strike and glacial advance. Neither of these feel satisfying to press and serve bland uses of weak st or aoe and the niche use of razorice application and now the terrible unleashed frenzy conduit coming to play as a seemingly mandatory talent for all builds. Why does our only single target rp spender function as a glorified rune-fishing button and have such an awful damage profile to it?
This ability is iconic and should feel like a strong part of our kit and not just a weak filler for when we don’t have any runes to spend. A simply buff to the damage and a modifier to replace unleashed frenzy that increases the damage of your next obliterate (idea from the threads here) in a fashion like a reverse eradicating blow (which I would also like to see as a talent) could make this ability feel more impactful in our rotation than how it currently functions. Glacial Advance can stay and deal 2x damage on the primary target and apply 2 stacks of razorice instead of just 1 when used with a 2h weapon, effectively cutting down the time required to fully stack razorice and justifying the cooldown that exists. I don’t personally like the current tier set bonus and its shoehorning of a talent like glacial that could be a satisfying part of our rotations if done right.
Up next is remoreseless winter, which is honestly a bloated ability with so many modifiers. I’m somewhat fine with this but also wonder why other abilities in our kit can’t get a similar treatment, which would really deliver what the devs intended with this new talent system with the whole “customize your build” ideology.
Gathering storm is actually a decent ability modifier that rewards sticking to a target and spending resources in a way that feels great compared to BoS because of the far less punishing cooldown on it. I don’t care much for biting cold and everfrost being here as they are just % damage increases that could either be baked in or allow for interplay with other abilities to make them more interesting. My main gripe here is that we can’t juice up: obliterate, frost strike, howling blast, or glacial advance in the same manner. RW will be THE frost damage source in its current implementation for all types of content instead of being an option like it’s intended to be.
But for the sake of keeping all things viable, I would propose removing everfrost, adding some of that damage into biting cold, and changing that node to a new one closer to the middle that affects Frostwyrm’s Fury and creates a direct path to BoS, which would have another sub-node that improves it in some way after said changes at the top to fill that niche.
Lastly, I would like to see some shiny new things, even if it’s just one new capstone or one new cooldown / rp spender to work with. As far as the talent tree goes, it’s clean and sufficient, but it really lacks a lot of options where a lot more could exist. Some ideas I’ve come up with are:
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Glacial Strike - shatters razorice stacks for x amount of damage per stack, exploding onto nearby enemies for a portion of the damage / 50rp cost. [Would be useful in single target and aoe scenarios. This wouldn’t hurt 2h builds so much if glacial was buffed appropriately either.]
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Hailstorm (replaces D&D) - Summons a flurry of hail in an aoe, applying razorice to enemies struck and dealing frost damage over time while slowing them from 80% down to 20% over the duration. [Gives another way to applying razorice and effectively makes D&D worth using as frost for at least some playstyles]
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Winter’s Grasp - Applies frost fever and does minor frost damage when using death grip on an enemy. Procs killing machine automatically on use for some extra upfront burst. [Adds a damage button to rotation without needing to create an entirely new ability.]
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Grim Incision - Filler ability that deals physical damage, costs no runes and generates 5 rp. [Functions like overpower for warrior; useful as a filler ability when resource starved to help alleviate downtime.]
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Cryophilia - Frost death knight channels inner cold to enter a frenzied state, empowering frost abilities for 15s. Obliterate causes ice to shatter from weapons and deal small frost aoe to target and enemies near it, howling blast sends icicles at target (like legion artifact), frost strike chills enemy bones and adds an independent frost damage debuff to stack with razorice, glacial advance shoots in a small cone in 3 lines and each of them stack razorice twice and deal additional damage to first target, remorseless winter grows in size to affect more enemies and explodes on final tick for extra damage. / 45s cooldown. [This would obviously require lots of tuning but is a more interactive capstone talent option that some might want to try out.]
If anyone has any ideas or feedback, it would be much appreciated. I’m posting this in hopes that it gets some attention and helps add to my favorite spec in the game both thematically and gameplay wise. Not all of this was calculated from a viability standpoint but mostly fun, so feel free to criticize or modify anything as you see fit to polish these ideas further. Stay chill.