Please consider removing DW from frost. As it stands there are plenty of classes that can dual wield already. Warriors, Monks, Shamans, Rogues and Demon Hunters. Am I forgetting any? I don’t see why DK’s should dual wield as it’s kind of out of character for them and immersion breaking. After all this is a role playing game. I’d say only a handfull of outlier DK’s DW in the lore and even then it was probably that way just to change up the NPC line up.
Not only it’s silly to have a lumbering “unstoppable juggernaut” running around with two tiny little one handers that dont look scary at all, DW is obviously getting in the way of 2H frost greatness. More than half the issues we run into is because DW’s only viable build is Breath and no one likes it really, but they’re just pigeon holed into using it because it’s the “best”.
Also, 2 of our specs are purely 2H, it’s weird that Frost is DW. Every class doesnt have to have DW options. At this rate I’m surprised Paladins aren’t DW as well. Why shouldn’t there be a class that specializes in 2H?
I am all for this idea. Can we get a rework? It is difficult for me to “slowly clank up to you in my plate gear, throw out an asphyxiate and smash you in the face” so I can live out my Darth Vader fantasy with two little toothpicks equipped.
Ice Cap DW would be immediately viable if they made glacial advance baseline and replaced it with frost whelps. Also get rid of Hypothermic Presence can replace with chill streak.
Not sure why it is so hard for blizzard to figure out.
Icy Talons also needs a buff… get some WotLK vibes rollin.
I like the option to do both. It does not bother me one might be better at one thing than the other. They both have viable builds for 99.99% of the WoW population and content. Min/Max sim craze is toxic, not in itself, but because the general player goes stupid over it.
I have to admit, that some of, if not all of my frustration, comes from the general lack of attention that DK’s receive. Especially Frost. It is aggravating to sit here and watch Druids, Paladins, Warriors, Mages, and Hunters get all the attention over the course of a full expansion.
I have played DK since wrath came out and have always loved unholy despite its frustrations. At some point I’d had enough of being a quasi pet class that didn’t seem to have any real solid idea of what it wanted. Diseases? Pets? Direct Damage? so on and so forth. Fast forward to now, and I was incredibly excited to have 2H returned to frost as many DK’s were, only to be disappointed by its early nerfs in PTR prior to shadowlands launch. Well, it looks like its just been mostly ignored the entire expansion.
While I generally dont mind classes having the ability to switch between weapon types, I think it’s clear as day that the way blizzard approaches balance is very rigid and doesn’t really leave a lot of room for experimentation or actual builds that can perform well. If they want us to play a certain way, then it doesnt make much sense to offer the illusion of choice. I wish they could balance in a way that makes the knobs they turn a little more forgiving in terms of balance so that talents like icecap or frozen pulse, or GA, etc could be used more often. I guess im at a point where im throwing my hands up in the air because the entire spec could use an overhaul that tries to satisfy both weapon types in a logical way.
I almost hate that 2H and DW are on the same spec. I almost wish they were subspecs of the spec, or the entire skill tree changed based on weapon selection so each weapon type could have a tree of talents that directly offers some choice for that weapon type, where half your selectable talents werent DOA like they are now. IDK, given the choice, i’d think players would like this rather than being hand held through meaningless talent selections. I could see multiple trees depending on weapon choice benefiting all classes that can use different weapon types. Many games have similar set ups like what im suggesting. I think deeper customization of your selected build is a good thing and adds to the depth and nuance of making selections that impact your gameplay. This can be deeply satisfying. If they spend half as much time actually developing the specs and placing the power in the spec itself rather than weird new borrowed power systems this game might actually be fun and engaging again.
Some of this is me just brain dumping, but i’ve been silent on the frustrations ive felt with Frost over the whole expansion and wanted to throw in some of my thoughts. Cathartic really.
Kind of comical that a big push for the talent tree revamp was to remove dead talents. It’s a choice, and it should matter, but they should all be viable.
Problem is, when they introduced that logic we didn’t have 6 quadrillion stacking systems that scale damage. We had gear, and talents. Now we have gear, talents, covenant, conduits, legendary lies, domination gems that all lead to scaling power that builds off itself.
Frost is the poster child for dead talents, because the difference from our best row slots and our 2nd best option is often very tangible. Weird that you have more issue with frost as 2h vs DW then fury has with 2 1h vs 2 2h.
These borrowed power systems have been headache for the longest time. Honestly I feel like they detract from character builds all together. It’s especially frustrating when a new expansion starts and those same borrowed power systems go away but the spec is left in shambles because the crutches built into borrowed power are suddenly kicked out from under the spec. Its like, “where do we go from here?” Honestly borrowed power and lack of focused attention on iterative changes to balance are just…I expect more I guess. It’s especially frustrating when you see other games that have half the budget that WOW has iterating on things quickly to smooth out issues. WOW just feels like they push it out, dump it in a corner and well, here you go, have fun. They obviously don’t care about the game anymore.
Begs the question I think a lot players have felt “do i really want to spend time and money on this?”
I agree, but having all these mini systems with smaller goal posts gives players something to log into and progress towards that doesn’t end up being just a gear upgrade. The talent system is kind of a one and done at max char level. The rest of these systems scale through an xpac. We point to talents, because they feel like the biggest offenders when in reality it would be nice to see these systems scale in harmony.
The talents are like a foundation. Everything you build is on that foundation. The better the slab the better the house. If they didn’t balance out the talents then when when we were adding the 5th course of block on the 10th story we wouldn’t be off by a foot from the design plans.
Frost is the only DW 1h str dps option in the game. Fury has the ability to, but still goes the DW 2h route.
And yes, 2 of our specs are already 2h, why not have DW? There are at least 3 main death knights that DW. Thassarian, Mograine and one of the first DK’s ever created from Arthas. The first 3 Death Knights that we know of is Arthas, Falric, and Marwyn. One of which was DW 1h (Marwyn) and the other was a sword and board user (Falric).
Currently, World of Warcraft is the game I know where leveling makes your character weaker rather than stronger unless you gain a major power spike for every row of talent you reach or an important passives like KM58.
Personally, I don’t think Levels and Talents should work that way.
Conduits have nice QoL things… It’s just the amount of grinding you need to do to level them is asinine. Same thing with Legendaries, except it’s not a QoL, it’s mandatory. Domination Gear is a short term power for a character. :L
EDIT: Actually, I lied. Some conduits are stupid strong.
Yes! I know low level meters don’t matter but it feels REALLY bad to be in the 40s and you level up and get a new ability or talent and you think “Okay NOW I’m gonna be doing some real damage!” And then you go hop in a dungeon and you’re managing 6 cooldowns and hitting all of your procs and maintaining dots and debuffs on all of the targets and you’re doing all of that just to be doing a third of the damage that the level 16 mage pressing arcane explosion is doing. The same goes for questing solo. I think Diablo does that really well, where you feel kinda like “Yeah I have to kill more things to level up but I can also kill more things at a time and quicker!” so instead of it feeling like it’s slowing down as you level, it feels like it’s almost the same leveling speed just more intense.
I absolutely loathe posts about 2H players wanting DW to be removed. I despise how slow 2H is, leave BoS alone because tons of people still play it myself included. Frost players all wanted 2H back and here you have it, still in the same place as you left it years ago. The tier set closes the gap between DW & 2H I’ve seen the results myself on the PTR I think the dps specs have more issues concerning talents being dead. If I could have DW unholy I would… monks don’t count as DW because those are stat sticks that are for show monks use fists. I do hope you enjoy 2H but as for me? Gonna be a no from me dawg.
Fair enough. Also hope you enjoy the 1 handers. I can agree to disagree in a civil way. It seems there are definitely two camps on this topic as there has always been. Death by a thousand cuts (1h) fast hits with steady damage, machine gun like. Or death by huge slow crushing blows, a rail gun if you will (2H).
And…there is no happy medium with the way blizzard does things. It really is an issue where certain talents in the tree are clearly designed for one or the other. There is no viable option for 2H to use breath, and there isnt really a compelling case for 1H to use obliteration. Or is there with the new tier set? Does that leave 1h in a position where they have a choice of style to play but 2H doesnt? I get that the new tier set is going to close the gap somewhat. but the tier set is only going to be temporary and doesnt address the underlying issues. When the tier set is gone, DW will go back to being superior with breath builds, because 2h doesnt have a way to realistically compete in AOE situations. I’d honestly settle for 2H oblit having some viable means of AOE (runic power dump anyone?).
DW isnt death by a thousand cuts. For many that implies that DW has more attacks than 2h, and 2h hits much harder. Thats just not the case even when comparing Obliteration to Obliteration.
The tier set isnt going to be all its cracked up to be. It plays pretty poorly people are thinking you might be able to run without RI on a weapon, but as it turns out in practice you should.
2h gets punished hard with the tier set in many ways. Bad luck of having over 15+ seconds of no KM procs and you lose RI, swapping targets and RI falling off the main one and it could take a minute or at least until your next PoF window to get RI stacked back to 5. DW has it easier, but it still feels like absolute garbage to stack RI through GA.
Everyone hates it on the PTR.
There is only one way to really fix the weapons, make them stat sticks and that would require a rework. Absolutely no 2h player all expansion has been happy even though they gave the playerbase exactly what they asked for when it comes to 2h. I havent seen a happy 2h player all expansion, always asking for this that or the other because MotFW and the increase to KM proc chance wasnt enough.
Its never enough and the true colors come out with people saying DW should be removed because its getting in the way of playing DW… who knew a DW spec would get in the way of an outlier option.
Thats unfortunate that the Tier set isnt being received well on the PTR. So Breath aside, do 2H and DW perform equally? Assuming 2H and DW were both using oblit?
I was using Obliteration for both, I was also using Icy Talons for both.
The issues I can see with both weapons are target swaps / add fights, or trash packs. 2h has issues of having 15+ seconds of no KM procs even at 40% crit (which includes the 2pc 8%) and 15% attack speed from Icy Talons since the generated Glacials contribute to Icy Talon stacks.
From my experience with it, 2h was either a hit or a miss.
The raid has a lot of fights that you have to fight adds or target swap to crystals or… wont spoil Anduin but its got adds as well. Other fights where you have high travel time because the boss room is so big and you have to kill a few adds and thats not going to feel well with the tier set.
I would just suggest people go use it. Everything is basically free, the tier set, pvp gear, any legendary you would want, gems, flasks, enchants, potions and so on.
Ive had RI stacks fall off right after a PoF window with 2h and that absolutely sucked and then it felt like I was just waiting on the final question of Jeopardy to be answered to get stacks back. Some might say RI stacks falling off doesnt matter, but to me they do. Its 15% frost damage thats just gone which impacts basically all damage except for autos and baseline Obliterate. Feels so bad.