I know this is blasphemy, since killing streak isn’t optional, but I decided to try dropping it to see how things went. Bane + Breath does sim lower single target than a killing streak spec, but against the AOE dummies I saw a pretty decent jump. No surprise really, trading a talent that’s just as good for single target as for AOE for a talent that shines primarily on AOE. Still, I was just thinking… M+ you fight more trash than bosses, ya know? And it’s fun to try something different. So I know it’s a stupid idea, but the question is how stupid is it? Will I lose my DK card?
Nothing wrong for experimenting, pretty much both are focus on AoE than single. I been trying out DW for bane and it is pretty good for Trash
The issue is that in order to capitalize on Breath you ideally need Killing Streak and Long Winter - that’s because you want to squeeze in as many Killing Machine consumptions as possible to maximize BoS uptime.
The bigger problem is that in order to get both Frostbane and Breath you would have to give up not only Killing Streak, but also either Obliteration or Long Winter, which will severely harm your Pillar burst window.
(It’s a bit frustrating because as is I wish I could run Hyperpyrexia with Frostbane. It’d be nice if Hyperpyrexia was a gate talent instead of being on one of our four capstone rungs)
But you don’t; you just avoid Avalanche and take the same sub 20 point talents, swapping TLW + IDT for Shattering + Frostbane.
It won’t really be good of course because you’ll gimp your ST and lose out or IDT but you’re not required to lose Obliteration/KS and TLW, just one or the other.
IDT is extremely strong for DW DPS. That + TLW is going to be a big loss and very unlikely to be worth losing for Breath.
I was hanging onto IDT + TLW, was dropping Obliteration + KS. Obliteration somewhat balances out, since without KS you burn KM procs way slower, and have more to throw around. Still get nice long breaths. KS is the more noticeable one. Sims about 200k lower single target, obliterates are noticeably less potent. It’ll get worse once I pick up 4pc, since it has a significant Obliterate buff which I’ll be undercutting. The AOE is great, no notes. ST isn’t bad, but is lower than it should be, and will get worse, comparatively, with set bonuses. It’s fun for now but I doubt it’ll feel that way when I have my 4pc with its focus on Obliterate.