Frost overall feels sorta stale if you compare it to the updated UH and blood trees.
I think a part of that reason, besides talking about dw vs 2h, is the way the spec plays in general.
With how KM is designed, it makes crit a good stat, but also a bad one at the same time.
I have seen some great suggestions in other threads, and I wanted to make one that isn’t focused on dw vs 2h but frost as a whole.
I think km procs should proc based off of frost fever ticks, and make your next obliterate do 100% frost damage. This will help with not making crit a wierd stat, but imo be better than auto attacks.
I think the kit for frost should do more damage outside of the big breathe or obliteration windows.
Obliterate without km procs does laughable damage. My suggestion for this is to make obliterate to split damage( similar to scourge strike). That way it still scales partly with mastery, but will still hit harder with the km procs.
My second suggestion is to have power increased to our other spells. Frost strike imo should be buffed, or at the very least given something so it feels better to press. (Maybe it applies a stack of razor ice, I’m not sure).
Frost needs an aoe rp dump basline. GA imo should be changed to be baseline, a cone in front of the dk (not the line).
It feels like blood and UH both gained something new for DF while frost sorta just got back what we already had. I’d love to see something new added that can change up our rotation or gameplay in a meaningful way.
Lastly, I believe this next oen came from Chillpills, but make fallen crusader baseline for all 3 specs. That way dks can avtually experiment with rune forges they want to use.
Frost’s current state is not final and there will be changes to it as hinted from Horn of Winter. Mostly banking on improvements on left side of the tree as well as removing Unleashed Frenzy. It may or may not happen and I know I’m just beating a dead horse on this node at this point.
True, it used to be off AA before Legion. Making Crit the most undesired stat at the time.
I know Gorkorth suggested this and while I also like this idea, I don’t think this would happen.
I’m not sure how I feel about this suggestion but one thing is for certain is that damage outside cooldowns is supposed to feel like a joke that is not exclusive to Frost DK.
I think you know this already.
Agreed. I mean heck even WotLK Classic DK RP feels more impactful. Mainly because everything is much more slow paced, static and impactful. So slow paced in fact that RE/RC wasn’t really needed.
Right now RP feels like a means to an end to feed BoS and would use FS otherwise. I also recall you can’t dodge, parry or block FS either which they changed in WotLK classic which is interesting.
If Epidemic needs to be talented, so should GA.
If Epidemic is baseline, so should GA.
Heck, having 4pc into our talent tree after GA node should be most appropriate.
I could see them removing Fallen Crusader instead for your second statement. Much like what they did to Defiance Banner in PoE.
If something is too good from others to choose from, I wouldn’t be surprised if they simply removed that thing.
I suggested the whole FF ticks have a chance to give KM procs back in BFA or SL alpha/beta at the very least. There is an issue with it, you cant increase the number of procs so no matter what you will always have the same amount. No stat actually helps with this. So while we could get haste for more attack speed and Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons and Unholy Presence to boost attack speed to some pretty insane levels, you cant do that with FF ticks. They have a set tick rate and thats that.
Obliterate feels bad in or out of a PoF window if you dont get KM procs. Sorry, but that shouldnt happen.
Frost Strike used to hit about as much as an Obliterate prior to getting armor pen. As did howling Blast, but that also cost 2 runes. So in aoe you would just replace Obliterate with Howling Blast.
Blood and unholy have had their problems this entire expansion, they needed changes. Frost has done pretty well so I think Blizzard is going to be less likely to do any massive changes with it because it was pretty good. Why change something that is good in terms of dps?
I dont like KM rank 2 but if it doesnt hurt the overall dps of the spec why mess with it? Even though its the reason why Obliterate took a hit in base power, Blizzard probably wont do anything.
Slow paced? Maybe before you get Unholy Presence, but its pace is pretty quick. RE/RC came in because without it it was slow paced and had a lot of downtime without it because they changed how the runes recharged. Instead of all 6 recharging at the same time in wrath, it was only 3.
Wrath is not slow paced unless your build is bad or you arent doing the rotations properly.
I was gone from late cata until 9.0.5, so a lot changed, but Frost seems like a totally different spec than it started as- and not in a good way.
It used to be that Obliterate was front and center and hit like a truck, sort of like arms execute or even executioners verdict ret. These days it seems like it’s juggling too many plates- remorseless winter, frost fever, frost strike, howling blast, glacial advance, frostwyrm’s fury, dnd, and probably some I’ve missed.
For those who enjoy that, I’m all for icecap and breath being a thing, and there’s a full other DPS spec that offers similar CD management and dots, but I do wish 2H Oblit would go back to an ability that actually chunks.
And that Will literally never happen as long as KM either always allows a crit or allows Obliterate to do Frost damage and DKs are on 6 death runes instead of 2/2/2.
I wouldn’t call 70%~ of Frost’s damage being locked behind CDs good design or fun but the “good old days” of every button feeling impactful is long gone for DKs.
would be nice if on the base tree, they made soul reaper worth taking for frost.
would also be nice if they swapped the positioning of UF and Improved Killing Machine and gave us our current 4pc tier set bonus underneath glacial advance.
I’ve been playing wotlk the last couple of days and you really feel the difference. Oblit and FS hit super hard but you need to keep diseases up and you don’t have 6 death runes to just down whatever. Overall it feels like it’s paced a bit slower but those abilities feel big when you press them.
How? If you arent level 70 when you wont have Unholy Presence where the pace picks up due to a 1 second GCD I can see that, but you shouldnt be reapplying diseases through Icy Touch and Plague Strike, glyph of disease should be a priority. Glyph of Frost Strike is also something that will pick up the pace due to lowering its cost.
Hit rating, does a lot as well. Butchery gives RP for just being in combat and when you kill you gain RP which picks up the pace as well.
Horn of Winter in combat to fill in GCD’s. Blood Tap as well. Though if you dont have these yet then sure its going to be slower paced. Its far from a slow paced class when all things are said and done. It will be quicker paced while hitting pretty well with everything.
We can’t know for sure as we don’t know tuning numbers yet, but I feel like the talent tree suggests they ARE doing these things which is a step in the right direction.
There appears to be more sustain damage now.
The Enduring Strength talent gives us 10% extra strength for 6 seconds after Pillar, which can be extended.
Bonegrinder, Cold Blood Rage and Merciless Strikes are talents that give us more crit and therefore more Killing Machine procs. From a PVP perspective, Icecap might be viable over Obliteration to reduce the cooldown of Pillar, which benefits Enduring Strength.
It probably isnt supposed to be 20% or at least wont be by release.
But yeah, it would be at least 1% and thats still pretty decent.
Lots of talents provide crit so we dont need to actively go for that stat and will provide way more KMs than right now, buffing sustain and just making the rotarion far more enjoyable.
It isn’t a nerf when it’s supposed to be 1/2% per rank; Wowhead’s calculator is displaying it incorrectly.
It’s not though; talents that are just “occasionally you have a moment where you’ll do X% more damage” are incredibly dull.
Bonegrinder could be “Consuming 5 KMs increases Frost damge” and that’d be immediately better since it’d give the player agency over a 10/20s window.
Bonegrinder could instead be a cleaner variant of the Marrowed Gemstone soulbind trait and have actual synergy with the KM proc instead.
Bonegrinder could even be “Consuming 5 KMs makes Frost Strike a guaranteed critical strike for the next 10s”, and while that’d devalue crit even more for the spec, it’d instead make Cold-Blooded Rage not bad and double as directly buffing that specific trait that it’s currently gating, which created some actual synergy within the talents.
Bonegrinder isn’t good because it just shifts more power into Obliteration since that’s when the 5th KM within the 20s window will most likely proc. The idea should be to move the spec’s power out of BoS, Obliteration, and Gathering Storm, not in.
I really don’t understand Frost DKs players fascination with thinking that shuffling all of the specs power into CDs and procs so that everything feels pitiful outside of that is fun.
What i like about Bonegrinder is the potential to get more KMs and therefore more sustained damage outside CDs.
As long as KM is part of the spec with the frost damage obliterate part, Frost will have a heavy RNG element to it.
Personally i quite like having some ‘press this button when it lights up’ aspects to DPS rotations, the key is for us to get enough KMs to feel like we have good sustained damage which isnt the case in Shadowlands. There are a lot of crit and strength modifiers in the talent tree for DF so im optimistic.
Completely agree, especially for pvp. Waiting for long cooldowns just to have any sense of damage is the opposite of satisfying and part of the reason frost dk tends to struggle in single target and pvp scenarios. Shifting more power into the core rotation of the spec is the way to go.
