Basically the title. It’s a spell that was introduced in WOD and has become half of the identity of Frost DK specialization.
And two, what can Blizzard do so that Breath is not hated (or as much) by other players? What can they tune/change, etc.?
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I reckon if you could actually do good runic power spending based damage outside of it eg: frost strike/glacial advance, it’d probably be seen a little bit better by the community. Frost strike is useless on a breath build. And it’s even worse that you cant take improved frost strike on it.
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I agree. Having to basically semi-afk is not fun while you watch your runic power go down just to hit Obliterate again or howling blast with rime. I could be mistaken on the spells, I have not played BOS in years.
Do you currently play BOS? If so, what do you like about it?
So the last time I played breath was during mythic Tindral and i swapped to 2h Obliteration on Mythic Fyrakk until we got the kill (my first cutting edge!).
The things that i enjoyed about breath was the enjoyable feeling that i was doing well maintaining breath uptime, with my eyes mostly flicking between my place on the meters, my runic power bar and the fight in front of me. Its like a sense of mastery if that makes sense. Infinite breath was fun for sure, but when it dropped for any reason, downtime, mismanagement etc, it was probably the most horrible feeling and so I’m glad it’s going away. However, with that, the runic power spending needs to feel good outside of breath, so I’m really worried about that right now. If it feels like crap outside of the 1/4 breath uptime, I’m not going to enjoy it as much which is a shame considering we have all of these runic power spending tools but breath builds only use them on breath itself. I’m mostly excited for dual wield obliteration with shattering blade. Since that build feels like every insance of damage is worthwhile besides rime howling blast, which feels very lacking. Soul Reaper and Frostscythe are a bit undertuned right now too, but soul reaper should probably consume rime procs
I totally get it. I played Shadow priest back when Voidform was not a c/d but something you had to maintain, basically like BOS. Although I did enjoy it when I pulled it off, I didn’t enjoy the times I could not, such as mechanics getting in the way, etc.
They weren’t able to balance it and turned it into a cooldown with a fixed duration. It was fun but draining.
Yeah it was very similar from what i heard. I only started playing just before shadowlands and only started raiding in sanctum of domination
The people that hate BoS are always going to hate it.
At the moment the goals are the same for either BoS or Obliteration.
Want to hit Obliterate as much as possible because it generates the most runic power to keep BoS up while doing a good chuck of damage as well.
Want to hit Obliterate as much as possible because it does the most damage / damage contribution.
People just hate BoS to hate it. They think its causing the problems of the spec and why other ability damage cant be tuned to be higher yet cant explain why this is the case.
I dont like BoS, but I dont really like current Obliteration either.
Most BoS hate is because the damage you lose when Breath is interrupted is enormous and a lot of the time out of your control. It also encourages degenerate gameplay like eating mechanics and wasting defensives to keep breath up as long as possible. This is not an issue with oblit builds because the opportunity cost is not as high.
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What I’ve always liked: I enjoy breath when I first started getting to the point where I could maintain it for an entire pull. I like feeling rewarded for class knowledge and rotation to that degree. The visual is fine, I don’t hate it. I feel like I’m doing aoe damage. I like RP build specs and having to time my abilities in short windows.
After a week it’s just frustrating when that becomes the expectation and I can’t do it. It was like this in SL for me too. Tank pulls too small, sandbag my breath CD. Tank pulls too big and we wipe, waste a breath CD. Group over gears farm content, breath window being long is irrelevant.
I also don’t enjoy mechanics that become punishing because of mistakes you made 10+ globals ago, which up until the most recent beta builds has been the case for frost for a long while. I can’t really think of many other specs where you have a mistake get compounded over the next 15+ seconds. Oblit is the same way, because you want to go into each pillar with the perfect amount of resources without over capping runes or rp. Miss a RW cast or mess up your pillar window and it’s very tangible damage lost.
Both specs have an ideal group damage range where you keep your CDs up for most of the fight (in m+ or raid). Longer than that they feed bad, shorter than that and everyone is popping off and you get lost in the sauce.
And the same goes for Obliteration.
Same for Obliteration.
Game mechanics working as intended. If AMS gives RP its going to be used whenever if it will give a DPS increase. This isnt the first instance of this happening either. When there was more downtime you would do this same exact thing to gain RP to use on Frost Strike in hopes to gain runes back and get back into doing damage.
Currently you lose a lot more as Obliteration. Screw up a pillar window for any reason and you lose a lot.
Its not even misplaced hate, its just hate to hate and they try to justify the hate for whatever reason.
I don’t like BoS for a few reasons. I think it feels very static and bland. Having so many open gcds doesn’t feel right. I also strongly dislike how a two minute cooldown can be completely borked by something out of your control.
I also find it to be very anti-thematic. It is supposed to mimic the breath of a powerful frost dragon, but the dragons in this game don’t hold their breath attacks for that long. Overall there is just nothing about it that I find enjoyable.
How could it be fixed for me to enjoy it? Reduce the cooldown to somewhere between thirty and sixty seconds. Make it cost a fixed amount of runic power (80-100), and fix the duration to five or ten seconds.
To me that would feel like a powerful cooldown that you have to build up to and be ready to use, and it would actually mimic the breath of in game dragons.
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honestly core wise the ability would be better if it wasn’t on a huge cd, benefited from Frost strike bonuses, how I would see a better up time on it is every Obliterate use would reduce the cd of it, while in turn extending it, through runic power generation. (now people would say that’s op.) to whom exactly? Frost aint great in PvP, and why does it matter if it would be able to parse better in dungeons? going from another post I saw Obliterates aoe from DND just is abysmal, and we need something outside of the “glorified chill zone” (literally tired of just that being my Prime rotation with tht one ability just to do aoe.) and another thing why don’t we have the crystaline swords passive from legion either? loved that ability to some degree to aid in rune down time (possibly could make that also generate RP as well to help with some manner of uptime for abilities.)
Those are part of the problem for sure.
Experience with Legion/BfA void form led to me not liking that kind of mechanic where I spend insanity/sec (or rp/sec for BoS) to maintain the cd. I prefer a shorter term, fixed duration cd w/ a specific cost (if there is a resource cost). It wasn’t fun for me trying to maintain void form, and it felt even worse after it ended.
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What if they made it like bones storm. A big 100+ runic power spender that you hit and it goes for a set time then you just go about your rotation as normal.
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It’s a fun ability both visually and dps wise in big pulls, thats all I’ve ever enjoyed about it. The all or nothing play style more often than not ruins it, with many “feelsbad” moments entirely out of your control.
I’ve always thought a more ebb and flow idea behind the ability would be more healthy. Something along the lines of when spec’d into BOS you have build and burn phases were you have 10-15 seconds of build, and then can toggle BOS for a burn phase for 10-15 seconds. Then active abilities can modify it in a variety of different ways (during build or burn portions) and you can still spend runic power during the BOS channel.
The more it moves back towards a short duration, higher than DF damage, and longer cd, the more akin to unholy burst it ends up being.
Pillar is less than half the duration of BoS. The opportunity cost of missing a GCD in your pillar window is also less than half of BoS.
From what I’ve gathered so far, it seems that everyone enjoys the “mastery” aspect of Breath. Being able to last as long as possible and pulling big numbers. However, some have mentioned that when that “mastery” aspect becomes the norm and you cannot do it, then it feels bad—especially because of BOS long cooldown and dps downtime.
I can definitely see the appeal to this playstyle, since it’s very similar to the old voidform. Granted, the old voidform had no cooldown so it wasn’t as punishing. Additionally, some of you guys mentioned that it promotes a “degenerate” playstyle for the sake of keeping BOS up in spite of mechanic.
Furthermore, a few suggestions I read noted that some talents could not be used with BOS making them dead talents, such as improved frost strike.
I guess what my follow question will be, if BOS mastery is the “norm” required for the talent, is it still fun to play? It feels like a lot of pressure to place on yourself for little reward.
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So?
Messing up Pillar is huge and keeping BoS up is much much easier now that it has ever been. Messing up Pillar uptime is much more impactful.
So theres less than half the opportunity to screw up a gcd in your cooldown window, and youre eating mechanics to keep uptime for less than half the duration of BoS.
BoS is punished much more for screwing up a gcd. Even if its easier now its still way more punishing since 1 missed gcd lowers the overall duration, and the cooldown is 2 minutes not 1.
Not necessarily.
Obliteration is punished much more. The math has been thrown around here to prove it. You screw up stacking strength while all the damage is being pushed into 1 ability = you can screw up your damage very easily. Why do you think they are removing the strength ramp on pillar?
People just dont like the long duration that BoS has, no one is saying its hard or very punishing but a few people throwing around the idea that BoS is more punishing when its not.
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