Let's Discuss: Resources in TWW... Again

Classes Death Knight
1

What can I say? I like writing long posts.

As I mainly play Frost, this will be written from Frost pov. If anyone has any insight on the other two specs, I would appreciate your replies greatly.

TLDR:
TWW changes pertaining to resources are a step in a good direction, with a couple stumbles backwards sprinkled in. I believe they should reduce our resource generation even further and that should happen as soon as possible.
End of TLDR.

The first blue post talking about TWW DK changes specifically promised a focus on resource economy for all 3 specs. But what would that mean? What would actually change? Apparently, not that much.

Here’s a list of resource generators that were removed for Frost DK:

  • Assimilation causing AMZ to generate RP
  • Rune of Hysteria
  • 2nd charge of ERW
  • Abomination Limb Rime procs
  • Cold-Blooded Rage (Frost Strike crits have a chance to generate KM, which in turn has a 50% chance to give a Rune back through Murderous Efficiency)
  • Invigorating Freeze (increased chance for Frost Fever to generate RP)

Nothing else!
As you can see, most of these are incredibly situational or random procs that give RP and specifically feed into Breath. But Obliteration has just as many, if not more, resource flooding problems, and nothing is being done about it.

Here’s a list of things we still have:

  • Runic Empowerment (necessary for the spec to function, it had to stay)
  • AMS still generates RP
  • Runic Attenuation (chance for auto attacks to generate 5 RP)
  • Runic Command (increased max RP)
  • Frost Fever randomly gives RP
  • Rage of the Frozen Champion (15% increased chance to proc Rime and it generates 8 RP)
  • Frigid Executioner (Obliterate has 15% chance to generate 2 Runes)
  • Murderous Efficiency (KM has 50% chance to generate a Rune)
  • Horn of Winter exists (instantly generates 2 Runes and 25 RP on 45s CD)
  • Obliteration (Frost Strike, Glacial Advance, Soul Reaper and Howling Blast all have 30% chance to generate a Rune during this)

From Obliteration standpoint:
Imagine this:

  1. you’re in the middle of PoF with Obliteration
  2. you press Obliterate with KM active
  3. it procs both Frigid Executioner and Murderous Efficiency, thus giving back 3 Runes instantly
  4. you now have more Runes than you had, and you got there by spending 2 Runes
  5. you don’t have KM or Rime, so you press Frost Strike to get a KM proc
  6. it procs both Obliteration Rune recharge and Runic Empowerment, thus giving you back 2 Runes instantly
  7. you now have 3 more Runes than you had 2 globals ago, and you got there by spending 2 Runes and 30RP
  8. add ERW Rune generation to this math…
  9. ask yourself how this is in any way different or reduced resources
  10. pain

I realize this is an extremely unlikely example, but it is possible. And not all of these procs need to happen all at once to overcap resources. All we need is one of these every global and we are overflowing everywhere.

Now add Icy Talons onto all of that, which currently has a maximum of 3 stacks, therefore 18% attack speed increase. This then gives you 18% more Runic Attenuation procs, as well as 18% more natural KM procs (leading to 18% more Murderous Efficiency procs).

Then imagine if you took the right talents in TWW, leading to a maximum of 7 stacks on Icy Talons, AKA 42% increased attack speed. After normalizing the current 118% attack speed as a baseline, the new 142% would be a nearly perfect 20% increase (142*100/118 = 20.3389). Which means 20% more Runic Attenuation and 20% more natural KM than in Dragonflight.

Add the new PoF extending talent that allows more uptime on Obliteration (thus even more KM procs, longer 30% chance of Rune generation on everything else,…) and you pretty much negate all the reductions we got. Maybe even gain back more than we lost.

From Breath standpoint:

All of the above also applies to Breath, especially the Icy Talons part.

There is also a NYI talent directly above Breath currently on Alpha. I would imagine it would have some RP generation tied to it, given how it feeds directly into Breath.

I admittedly don’t have Alpha access myself, so I can’t test this stuff. But from what I’ve seen online, others were able to get Breath into 30s - 40s duration windows. That is with Alpha stats (something like 20% crit and 14% haste).

What happens when we get to season 3 or 4 of TWW and we have 60% crit and 30% haste? That feeds directly into more attack speed and more of those attacks proc KM, which in turn generates Runes. Does that make Breath 1 minute duration? 90 seconds? Permanent?

We need much more work to be done regarding resources, otherwise we will be in exactly the same position come late TWW!

And I know this will be tricky to achieve because they need to be careful not to go too far. All 3 DK specs have a tendency to get resource starved with low gear levels and unlucky procs, so reducing our resource generation is a dangerous thing to do.

But I believe that doing nothing is much more dangerous than the risk of doing too much.

1 Like
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Nice write up. Its definitely a tricky needle to thread.

Its worth noting that on Alpha the runes spent on Frostscythe do not give runic power, so that’s a little more taken out if we assume it being used on cooldown. The base cooldown is 30 seconds and appears to be reduced by haste. On top of that it is reduced by a second for each KM. This could end up taking 6 runes and 60 rp out of the rotation every minute on its own.

Nobody wants to be resource starved, but being resource flooded might be worse. The logical course of action would be to make DK resource generation more consistent and less proc based. For instance, make things like Murderous Efficiency and Frigid Executioner give less resources more often. Anything with a chance to award runic power (usually five I believe) could be a guaranteed two. Stuff like that.

But then you risk getting a static rotation with nothing to react to, and I don’t think Blizzard wants that. Every spec I have played has variations to the rotation that the player has to react to, but that is difficult to work into a DKs toolkit (outside of little things like rime). Resource highs and lows are really the only way to add any variation to it.

They could go the other way as well, by making things cost more. They could increase the RP cost and relative damage of frost strike, or they could make KM Oblits cost three runes instead of the two rune cost of a normal Obliterate. Going this route would just make the resource droughts feels worse, though.

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That strikes me as a bug tbh. There’s never been a rune spender that didn’t generate RP. Even things like DnD, RW, Chill Streak, even freaking Rune Tap, etc. all generate 10 RP per rune spent. I don’t think Blizz are looking to change that now.

Completely agree, that’s why I ended my post saying that doing nothing would be more dangerous that overdoing it.

I don’t think anyone wants that. Players like to be excited. Seeing a button glow and pressing it to do something cool feels really good. Having a faster or smoother rotation during burst CDs also feels great. Random procs are definitely here to stay.

I feel like this completely defeats the purpose of resource tuning though. They can’t just keep making things cost more to keep up with the increased amount of resources we keep generating. At some point it starts being an endless arms race between increased resources and increased costs, with no practical benefit.

The only real answer is resource reduction and self-control later down the line when they think about adding more resource generating talents (like the ones on TWW alpha getting Icy Talons to 7 stacks).

And while most of what we’re writing about here is non-specific, broad commentary on our resource economy, I do actually have some specific ideas how to fix Obliteration resources, as well as damage profile and distribution between spells. But I think those are best kept for a separate topic that focuses specifically on Obliteration gameplay.

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It’s Murderous Efficiency that’s the problem for the entire spec and the rest aren’t even close.

They’re either reducing KM procs or they’re gutting ME. Everything else in the kit (barring Runic Empowerment) is generally pretty self contained and non-problematic (excluding Frigid Ex) and nerfing anything other than ME won’t ultimately fix resource generation. And the amount that they’d have to need everything else to keep ME as is would be so heavy handed that it’d just kill the talents. IE: why take FE for a 5% chance to generate 1 Rune or RoTFC for a 5% chance for 4 RP when you could just take something that’ll contribute actual damage like Cryogen, Inex, or FWF?

Nerf ME == resources fall in like pretty quickly
Nerf everything else except ME == keeps power in KM (bleh), makes ME more of a “must pick” than it currently is, makes the other talents & choices dead

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5

I tend to agree, but it only seems to have become a problem in recent times. I remember it being fairly ok in Legion and even early BfA (before corruptions pushed stats to the moon). I believe that ME became a problem because the whole game (and the whole spec as well) has changed, while ME stayed the same.

Let me explain my thought process:
Back at the tail end of Legion, we played a fairly similar build to the current Obliteration. Except Obliteration was a separate button from PoF and on a 90s cooldown with 10s duration. That’s only like 11% uptime, compared to 30% - 50% in current times (can wary wildly due to efficiency of play, lucky procs, forced downtime etc.).

Obliteration = guaranteed KM procs for the duration = ME is more powerful.
3 - 5 times the uptime on Obliteration = way more power in ME. Simple math.

Now add the fact that we had way less secondary stats during that time. In the current version of this game, we get so many secondary stats that it’s ridiculous. I mean, on 5+ targets, you can get 40% mastery from a single talent! In Legion, you had like 40% mastery total!

And if you’re playing Breath, you want as much crit as possible, to get more natural KM procs, because you don’t get guaranteed ones from Obliteration. You can easily get 60%+ crit now, while also having 30%+ haste and permanent fully stacked Icy Talons for even more attack speed. The amount of natural KM procs we get from all of that is insane!

All of those things pushed ME into being extremely overpowered, but I wouldn’t blame ME for that. I would blame the lack of thought and consideration for the fact ME exists when making those changes.

Now, I firmly believe that the game overall is not going to change any time soon. We are not going to have fewer secondary stats in TWW than we had in DF. We are most likely also not getting Obliteration separated from PoF, no matter how much I would personally love that change.

So taking all of that into consideration, ME should definitely get nerfed, since it has become very problematic (through no fault of it’s own).