My ideas to change the awful Frost DK talents

[Akitosh-sargeras]

I posted before on why I think the Frost DK talents, especially compared to other classes are boring, most of them borderline useless, and the ones that are useful are just basic forgetful damage increases to your abilities like Avalanche or Inexorable Assault.

15 Bracket-

Icy Talons: Frost Strike and Death Strike increase your haste by 0.5% and attack speed by 1% when used, stacking up to 6 times. Reason for change: It’s current state is basically useless in pve and pvp, in addition to a melee attack speed increase and Death Strike proccing it, it will also grant you some haste.

The other two are fine, Inexorable Assault, although very boring and painfully simple, is a nice magic damage increase to Obliterate.

25 Bracket-

Runic Attenuation: Guarentee’d generation of 5 runic power per auto attack, rather than a chance, since it’s useless if “sometimes” your auto attacks produce a very, very small amount of usuable resource.

Horn of Winter: Take it off the GCD

Murderoes Efficency is fine how it is

30 Bracket-

The talents here are fine how they are. A combination of utility/cc talents

35 Bracket-

Avalanche: Cause jagged iciles to rain down on targets around you after you cast howling blast with rime, AND every 3 seconds when Pillar of Frost is active. Reason for change: The damage can stay current, but instead of “X forgetable damage on this ability” it also increases the potency of Pillar of Frost and causes it to deal some damage.

Frozen Pulse: (Ability) For 15 seconds, Obliterate, Death Strike, and your auto attacks deal an additonal 15% increased damage as Frost Damage, and you regenerate 10 runic power per 2 seconds while active. (2~ minute cooldown) Reason for change: Frozen Pulse is probaly the worst talent in the game IMO, dealing minisucle damage only half the time. This is just a creative thing I came up with to actually add an ability to the tree, especially since we only got 1 new one with SL

Frostsycthe is fine how it is

40 Bracket- The defensives

Permafrost (Ability) For 25 seconds, 70% of Frost Damage you deal is converted to an aborsption shield on your health. 1-2~ minute cooldown, and a hard maximum on the aborsption shield of 75% of your maximum health. After Permafrost expires, the shield decays at a rate of 5% every 1 second until gone. Reason for change: Because of the very pathetic ““shield”” it gives to you almost anyone will take Wraith Walk or Death Pact ESPECIALY for pvp. Not only would this add a cool ability, but increase survivability in unique way as well.

Wraith Walk is a perfectly fine root breaker/movement speed increase

Death Pact: Reduce the healing aborbsition to 25%, and reduce the time to 10 seconds. Mainly for pvp since sometimes the healing is actually LESS than the healing aborb on your hp making it literally more hurtful than helpful.

45 Bracket-

Gathering Storm is probably the strongest talent besides Obliteration and is actually useful/interesting

Hypothermic Presence: Upon activation, either your next 2 Frost Strikes, Death Strikes, or Death Coils will be free and deal 25% increased damage or 35% increased healing. 45 second Cooldown. (This obviously isnt set in stone, just a creative thought. You could do something more simple like reduce Runic Power consumption by 50% instead)

Glacial Advance is seemingly okay. Useful in pve and also provides Razorice, cant come up with anything super special for it however.

50 Bracket-

Icecap is a highly medicore talent that does NOT belong in the 50 bracket. I can’t think of anything for it besides outright replacing it or moving it. Preferablly replace it with Hungering Rune Weapon from Legion

Obliteration is also a good talent, useful and has a cool effect

Breath of Sindragosa. Once again can’t think of anything big for it. Literally nobody uses it in pvp and it can be good for pve, most people who play Frost agree on the fact that well… simply put almost noone uses it. It isnt uniquely strong or anything, just a fairly basic AoE. From a PVP perspective, I’d remove the 70% pvp damage nerf, reduce Runic Power cost to 13, and give it a 40% slow, but even then Obliteration would be 4x as viable in arena

[Yeastyloins-tichondrius]

Honestly for the 15 row they should just delete Icy Talons or make it baseline. I’d say the move would be to have Glacial Advance in its place for AoE fights in PvE.

The 35 row, I think the same thing for Frozen Pulse since it was originally chosen as a single target damage amp but even then most are just choosing avalanche even in single target while playing DW. In its place, I think Chillstreak would be an awesome option for PvE. You then have this nice row to choose between Single target (Avalanche), 2-3 target cleave (Chillstreak), and AoE with Frostscythe though they would need to tune this current iteration or increase the target cap to 8 targets.

Permafrost should just be Spelleater like Unholy.

As for BoS, I’m a fan of making it a 1 minute CD and just cutting the damage in half (maybe a tiny bit above half) given that PoF is a 1 minute CD. Sameish output overall but having it a 1 minute CD would pretty fix the downtime issue with BoS functionally, you’d also still have your 2 min burst window with PoF, BoS, ERW, and Abom. One of the reason people like Obliteration in PvE and Unholy is that every minute you get to blast damage. Something like this for BoS would also improve their performance in M+ and make the damage profile much more consistent.

I do realize most of my suggestions are for improving PvE but I don’t PvP enough to make informed ideas about what to do for PvP.

[Svayndif-kelthuzad]

Interesting changes, though it doesn’t solve the most glaring issue I have with frost. I think talents need to have a greater overhaul than this.

@Akitosh-sargeras

Icy Talons: Frost Strike and Death Strike increase your haste by 0.5% and attack speed by 1% when used, stacking up to 6 times. Reason for change: It’s current state is basically useless in pve and pvp, in addition to a melee attack speed increase and Death Strike proccing it, it will also grant you some haste.

Currently, ALL RP spender procs Icy Talons. Personally, I’d just make this baseline that passively increases atk speed and replace this with something else.

@Akitosh-sargeras

Runic Attenuation: Guarentee’d generation of 5 runic power per auto attack, rather than a chance, since it’s useless if “sometimes” your auto attacks produce a very, very small amount of usuable resource.

@Akitosh-sargeras

Horn of Winter: Take it off the GCD

@Akitosh-sargeras

Frozen Pulse: (Ability) For 15 seconds, Obliterate, Death Strike, and your auto attacks deal an additonal 15% increased damage as Frost Damage, and you regenerate 10 runic power per 2 seconds while active. (2~ minute cooldown) Reason for change: Frozen Pulse is probaly the worst talent in the game IMO, dealing minisucle damage only half the time. This is just a creative thing I came up with to actually add an ability to the tree, especially since we only got 1 new one with SL

@Akitosh-sargeras

Hypothermic Presence: Upon activation, either your next 2 Frost Strikes, Death Strikes, or Death Coils will be free and deal 25% increased damage or 35% increased healing. 45 second Cooldown. (This obviously isnt set in stone, just a creative thought. You could do something more simple like reduce Runic Power consumption by 50% instead)

Glacial Advance is seemingly okay. Useful in pve and also provides Razorice, cant come up with anything super special for it however.

These changes, especially to RA and HoW, while I understand the poor state of HoW, these changes would leave Murderous Efficiency in a poor spot. The reason why ME is seemingly the best right now is because Runes are far more valuable for Frost than any other specs. Making RA a guarantee RP would actually make the RP economy out of balance along with the BoS talent which you suggested.

@Akitosh-sargeras

Breath of Sindragosa. Once again can’t think of anything big for it. Literally nobody uses it in pvp and it can be good for pve, most people who play Frost agree on the fact that well… simply put almost noone uses it. It isnt uniquely strong or anything, just a fairly basic AoE. From a PVP perspective, I’d remove the 70% pvp damage nerf, reduce Runic Power cost to 13, and give it a 40% slow, but even then Obliteration would be 4x as viable in arena

BoS is currently the only thing that gives Frost RP any sort of value and when BoS is on CD, you only have Frost Strike for reliable damage (unfortunately, the most reliable consistent damage) when everything else fits in an unreliable situation. GA needs to be baseline, gets its CD removed. If RI baseline would be too strong with no CD, it should be a talent that competes with GS.

Hypothermic Presence is just a useless ability. I know you’re trying to make this talent useful but there’s just isn’t a redeeming quality of this talent. Remove it and replace it something else that’s more interesting.

None of these changes address how awful Frost Strike feels to cast. There’s more I could say something like Wraith Walk replacing Sacrificial Pact and reverting Death Pact into what it once was, merging Icecap and Obliteration and give something else that’s interesting, Permafrost, implement Soul Reaper as well as reworking Avalanche or current state of Frostscythe. But all these changes would do is drastically inflate the value of RP which just doesn’t feel good to use as Frost spec.

Discounting BoS along with this would pigeonhole people into playing this talent even more when people already don’t like playing this ability.