That’s quite a misrepresentation of what people were asking for. I can think of myself and maybe one other person who ever specifically admitted to not caring if 2H frost was balanced as long is it came back. A far greater amount of people said that they wanted it back for big obliterate crits, which it looks like they’re getting.
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We are certainly getting closer to the 2H Frost many of us want.
- 2H is back
- Now Obliterate hits ‘bigger’ numbers with 2H
‘BUT’
MoTFW for all its nostalgia is still not a complete solution and never really was. Don’t get me wrong I am super happy to see its return but unless the 2H specific numbers get buffed to the moon DW will still pull ahead for reasons already stated by many.
“If” Obliterate damage for 2H does get buffed to point its dealing most of a 2H Frost DK’s damage it goes beyond ‘big crits’ and into the problem category of hitting too hard for a single ability that can be cast back-to-back-to-back.
Point is, MoTFW is cool but the Devs need to look into the other tools they have to help get 2H and DW within touching distance of each other.
No, I do not buy into the idea 2H should just be a transmog thing. While that might deliver aesthetically it does not create a bond with a class/spec. If they did that they should just make Frost a 2H spec and have DW as a transmog effect.
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A lot of them are still going to be physical… sooo
Which they didnt understand wasnt exclusive to 2h outside of the major steroid that was MoP/WoD for 2h. 35% melee damage, 50% obliterate damage, resulting in 85% increased obliterate damage. If razorice does increase KM rank 2 then DW obliterate damage will be 8.33% behind 2h per press.
Its a gross mischaracterization on the spec since frost as a whole during this time was pretty bad on overall damage output compared to other classes.
This is a completely falsified narrative. Many posters may have declared the DPS as being chronologically “secondary” to the actual re-implementation of 2H, which makes sense because the concept has to exist before it can be worked on, but I don’t recall reading more than a raindrop of posts actually professing satisfaction with a mere transmog option.
2H is what a portion of the community wanted, so that is a “core issue”. And last I checked, 2H Frost was a part of Frost, so that makes it a Frost “issue”.
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You screamed aesthetics at people.
And most people thought that ability damage scaled off of the weapon that you had equipped and thats why they wanted 2h back as an option.
The citation that we have for 2h performing worse than DW is the history behind the passive MotFW and WoD where class design was at its peak during this expansion and prior to it.
MotFW was a passive. When you wield 2h weapon as a Frost Death Knight. Your melee attacks deal 35% increased damage as well as increasing Obliterate damage by 50%. A total of 85% damage increase on Obliterate and just Obliterate alone. Sounds pretty bonkers, right?
Well, keep in mind prior to ability normalization happened in Legion. Obliterate scaled with Weapon Damage as it did Physical Damage. 2h Frost was more Physical Damage oriented that is mitigated by armor as well as it wasn’t very kind to it since Necrotic Plague was a thing that scaled everything out of proportion. Even before Necrotic Plague was a thing, 2h Frost still had its issues with not Obliterating hard enough to compete with the sheer scaling advantage that DW has. This was also prior to PoF started to become a thing.
DW had 15% more Frost Damage AND 15% more Strength. They both multiply very well with each other and the logs in WoD reflects on this. 2h Frost had only 15% more Strength with a useless stat that you’ll definitely miss out on for not using NP in WoD. NP was crazy good in WoD and was the reason why 2h fell behind in WoD in a competitive raiding environment. Even if NP wasn’t a thing, 2h Frost still fell behind in MoP because of Festerblight and… Whatever the spec we did in SoO was still better than 2h Frost. 
They kept buffing MotFW again and again and again and again until 2h Frost becomes bonkers with raw damage. A walking juggernaut that heals itself from Conversion that, once again, did not scale with Mastery. It was fun but it was nightmarish to balance. 2h did better than DW in a very niche situations and that’s single handedly and literally obliterating someone like Darius dunking someone in League of Legends with full stacks of Hemorrhage.
Look at this objectively, an 85% damage increase on one ability with 15% more strength against enemies that will most likely have armor to mitigate all of that and not scale with Mastery at all. Versus, 15% more Frost Damage, 15% more strength, a mastery that also multiplicatively scales with both of the latter. Which one was objectively better? Do the math.
Now since MotFW returns in Shadowlands and is a completely different era. KM58 allows 2h Frost Dk what they never could have done: to make Obliterate scale with Mastery as well as 25% damage boost. PoF is now a normal cooldown that multiplies your strength. The passive itself shows much promise for the future of 2h Frost Dks.
… also MotFW should apply to Frostscythe as 2h Frost revolves around KM usage.
Maybe you should do some math?
What if I take razorice instead of fallen crusader as 2H? Also fallen crusader is not a straight 15%
Okay 15% more strength procs, happy?
The point I was trying to make was 2h Frost did not scale well in WoD compared to DW Frost and Unholy.
I know I have. I know you like math too. This is not about MotFW in SL era. This is MotFW in MoP/WoD era.
EDIT: FC procs so much that I forgot about that it is a proc after all. xD
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I am glad we have something different in SL then.
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Exactly!
Don’t get me wrong. I advocated for it to return and I knew that it would return. Because otherwise, 2h Frost will be straight up trash in Shadowlands.
I have nothing against it. I like the concept of 2h Frost. I like that big daddy number showing on my screen when I hit Obliterate. 
At least hopefully so because this DK wants to gather as much strength as possible.
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Thanks for the history lesson but i was just referring to the comment i quoted which as a refresher claimed FROST (not 2h) was objectively worse and cited a reason based on pure speculation.
Many of us, like Raiimir stated, had an expansion as well as my historical explanation of why DW was better than 2H.
If you won’t take the history of MotFW or past logs in MoP and WoD as a cited reason why 2h was objectively worse than DW, then it is at your discretion to whether or not to accept that 2h was objectively worse and had its own struggle.
Kusarii always had a point that 2h had its own issues and they always have. That’s why she stated that it is objectively worse. I agree to that testament despite that it was fun.
EDIT: oh, she said Frost was worse. Then the answer was pretty much NP and Festerblight as Unholy had a lot of bonkers mechanics. LOL
Snapshotting was there too and 2 minute disease dots was bonkers.
I don’t know how this could be any clearer but maybe seeing the two together helps. One of these things is not like the other…
Edit: i noticed you noticed 
Sorry, I overlooked that. I kinda thought Kusarii insinuated that 2h Frost was worse but saying that Frost was WORSE in general.
… Unholy was still ahead in the past too. Thanks to snapshotting and NP but it’s whatever I guess.
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I for one can’t wait for the tuning pass that’s “any day now” to see what Blizzard’s true intention.
I don’t expect them to reverse course on their untold “We pick what specs work” philosophy and as such, I don’t expect much for things like SMF Warriors, 2H Frost DKs, Feral, Survival.
I hope to be pleasantly surprised, but with low expectations, you can’t be mad when Blizzard sticks to their tried and true formula.
Sadly, I am not so sure we will get the tuning we want. There are still so many dead and or boring talents for frost in general. I am not optimistic at all.
It has already been covered, they are pretty even in power, but Fallen Crusader offers more in terms of survivability and damage that is physical damage.
It does not matter which one is technically superior, the point is DW gets both and 2H does not. Unless something drastic has changed Fallen Crusader is the better option if you had to pick one.
The issue being pointed at is that MoTFW targets only Obliterate so the balance for 2H comes to bigger and bigger Obliterate numbers.
This sounds counter intuitive because as a fan of 2H Frost I always want my 2H weapon attacks to hit big numbers (feels great). However, the risk becomes Obliterate hitting so hard that it becomes a balance nightmare. This is an issue for AOE where Obliterate is primary single target and in PvP where one shotting people might be fun for us, but its not great for the game. That is not even touching on the issue with physical and frost damage within the spec.
Put simply, 2H Frost should swing slower and deliver big chunky damage. However, Obliterate should not be the only lever that gets pulled to create this play-style IMO.
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This is exactly what it was for MoP. The 2h frost rotation revolved around getting those gigantic KM Obliterates. Obliterate hit REALLY DAMN HARD with a 2h. DW frost was all about pumping out Frost Strike as fast as possible. The difference now is that you add in Remorseless Winter and possibly Chains of Ice (depending on your talents) into the rotation, and Horn of Winter serves a somewhat different purpose as an additional rune generator instead of strictly as a runic power generator.