In April Blizzard said:
While we understand Breath is a very divisive ability it offers a very unique gameplay experience that not many of our other specs offer and while have no plans to remove that we do want to explore a potential alternative that feels fresh and exciting for players that wish to try something a bit different. Likely introduced as new capstone replacing Frostwyrm’s Fury which we plan to shift higher within the tree as a more easily accessible talent.
While it’s true that we got new capstone talents and Frostwyrm’s moved up in the tree we didn’t get “alternative that feels fresh and exciting for players that wish to try something a bit different.”
We have the same 2 builds, BOS and Obliteration with a few new passive talent nodes. We get RI so fast with arctic assault, avalanche and RI runeforge it’s barely worth tracking as every frost strike is at 5 stacks.
As of now there is no way to make a viable build NOT using BOS or Obliteration.
What at least would be new would be a build where you path into long winter, shattering blade and Hyperpyrexia but it has no way of getting into arctic assault.
I feel like Arctic assault would be better suited moved to be pathed into by Icy death torrent and shattering blade. Obliteration will always go down to get the long winter anyways.
Frostyrms fury should become baseline and Absolute zero replaces it.
Icebreaker damage should be doubled and also be applied to all targets.
Rage of the Frozen champion could also increase howling blast damage by “x” percent.
This at least would be “something a bit different” that focuses on big frost strikes, getting and consuming rime procs and AA damage. It also wouldn’t be focused on cleaving strikes for aoe.
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What would a build that isn’t centered around BOS/Oblit look like, and what would be the ‘focus’? Because as it is big frost strikes look like they could be a thing already.
Asking to forward the conversation not to be contentious.
Could potentially create multiple ice swords and shoot them, they could work with our KM procs…
Or maybe something that works around our RW making the size incredibly large, even create a large ice storm
The way it could work could possibly be something like eating KM procs and instead of using them you store them then use it to enhance an ability such as RW…
Just a thought
Sounds a bit similar to frost mage, no? Just melee instead of ranged?
Where did they say there was going to be an alternative? I only seen additions to like they meant for there to be the BoS or Obliteration option and then you can add on other capstones.
Their are many abilities that are similar, even dk is getting the horse ability through deaths advance from paladin just with minor alterations.
Though honestly I’ve barely played frost mage so I honestly didn’t know ha
A potential alternative is not a promise though. That potential alternative apparently never worked out. No point in talking about it.
I get what you’re saying OP, but I can’t see hem cramming a 3rd identity into the frost tree tbh. I never expected a new playstyle, I just expected better tuning between some of the interplay talents.
IMO the split between DW Obliteration, 2h Obliteration, BoS, and Omnifrost, leaves Frost DK in the healthiest place that it’s basically ever been in.
I see little room for critique so far, tbh. We’ll hit the pain points and edges of the system eventually, but right now, with 4 potential viable builds, on top of a second spec that also has strong spec diversity, we’re eating pretty good IMO. DK DPS is absolute fire right now. Good players have a buffet of options in terms of damage profile and combat approach.
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