My one worry about maining frost

super hyped for 2H on frost and i plan on maining my dk for shadowlands

however im worried the max level build will only be BOS and personality i hate that
talent

anyone else feel the same way?

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It is very likely that DW BOS will be #1 for boss dps (due to being able to hold the breath for longer). 2H/DW oblit will be viable pvp due to more frequent threat windows. I doubt it will be huge in pve but for lower tier content it is likely to be viable (up to mid mythic raid)

blah i would rather do pve 2H without BOS

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BOS is always going to be balanced around mid range windows like 40 seconds but players will look for ways to extend the breath as long as possible (without colliding with boss mechanics). Which means if you get longer breaths than the expected window you will perform better.

I have a good feeling about Oblit PvE for 2hand, might get a consistent DPS.
Havent seen much on it to give some actual opinion tho

It will be consistent as long as you optimise your pof windows, but its ranking will depend more on average breath lengths than anything else.

BOS is a harder to use skill, it should be better than Oblit.

More than likely if BOS is ahead, it is because of that reason, that the skill cap is slightly higher for BOS than Oblit. The question is then how much far behind would Oblit be from BOS? A few points where going BOS or Oblit really won’t matter unless you are pushing the highest of end game content or would the Oblit playstyle be so far behind that you are “gimping” yourself if you go with Oblit.

but here is the thing if its say 2% better people would not touch the skill. the effort alone is not worth a dps 2% gain, now 10% better or even say 7% better to me is more ideal. IDK I personally feel that there should be a trade off of dps if you are opting for a simpler way to play

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Its the same scenario for Masterfrost in cata. It was technically better, but the perfect play required for a small percentage of DPS gain wasnt worth it and you should just play normally. If you couldnt play it perfectly I think it was a dps loss but playing normally didnt have the same downside.

Another instance where there was a trade off for a simpler way to play is in Wrath for Frost. In 3.3 there were 2 playstyles (not 2h and DW) one played the spec how it should be played. Keep both diseases up, convert blood runes to death runes, and then use Obliterate and Frost Strike until you need to do those previous requirements. Then the other playstyle was basically the same, you just ignored Plague Strike for a more simple spec so you just had to worry about converting your blood runes. Obliterate would proc rime and that would take care of Frost Fever. So your rotation was significantly easier, but you took a dps loss for doing so because both Obliterate and Blood Strike did more damage based on the amount of diseases on the target. Remove the disease and you lost that disease damage and the boost it did lowering Obliterate by like 15% if you kept both diseases up, and also lowering Blood Strike damage by 50%? Looks like the Bonus damage it received from diseases was increased to 50% per disease in patch 3.2.

BOS is probably going to be the best path for 2h, simply because of its damage windows and damage potential.

Obl. 2h is always an option, but its not going to be as powerful.

Icecap 2h isnt a thing.

I’m really hoping they make both viable similar to the last raid in legion. Sadly no SS coming back.

Anything with severe downtime or cleave I personally think BOS should be better.
Pure ST obliteration should be better.

Sadly no big changes for icecap so looking to be dead at the start of SL.

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The only skillful part of BoS is knowing when to use it optimally which can be said for Obliteration as well to a lesser extent.

But if BoS is higher ST and on cleave, why take Obliteration? BoS being the strongest ST option makes Obliteration a completely dead talent. Again. There needs to be some equal pros and cons here.

Obliteration being the best ST and having a lower skill requirement is offset by it being extremely lackluster for any kind of cleave.

BoS being the best at cleave while simultaneously being the strongest ST option after the nerfs isn’t offset by its marginally higher skill requirement.

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It will be interesting to see where blizz goes with Oblit vs BOS, I don’t know if they share the mind set of “well BOS is slightly harder to use than Oblit so BOS should do more dps”.

As for Icecap, Idk… when the azerite traits are gone it seems Icecap will go back into hibernation.

I think anyone still under the impression that competitive 2H in PvE will be a thing isn’t paying attention at this point.

It’s obvious Blizzard’s goal with 2H Frost in PvE is to be “Decent”. But the focus and the spec is still built around DW.

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I think its just the philosophy of AoE vs ST.

It could be worse, we could be like SMF and be unviable.

But the run speed my dude!

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Like I get the idea that its a 1% differenial overall, but its mostly going to come down to stats and ilvl. Usually, 2hs have better stats come high end content than 1hs. Like even rn, there isnt a 1h sword that competes with Devastation’s Hour in terms of raw stats.

SMF was more “convenience” than it was a build. 2h Frost is a different build. (This is from looking in Shadowlands).

SMF doesnt need a lot of work to pilot, because Fury is a dual wield spec. 2h Frost does, because its a dual wield spec.

Ion talked about talents and Blizzards view on active vs passive talents. Icecap is completely passive, Obliteration is somewhere in the middle where its not entirely passive but you are basically just ability weaving, not actually that hard. Pop all the things and ability weave. But BoS on the other hand takes more to keep it going, its the most active since you are actively keeping it going, you have to increase your RP generation to get the most out of it.

So if that is the case then by Blizzards standards BoS should be the best.

Just go watch the discussion that Preach had with Ion, that is in there where he talks about those types of talents, and that is where the #pulltheripcord came from since he said if they had to pull the ripcord because covenants just arent working out that they could do it. Which I would think if they do have that in place (which many dont think they actually do) that they would do it when people get to 60. Technically they arent done with the covenant systems. I dont think it will work out, but if they do have that ripcord that would fix everything, at least see their idea for their finished product. If they dont have that ripcord then tear into them. People are tired of giving Blizzard chances at this point.

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