Legion - Frost vs. Unholy

[Bearded Sith]

Curious what everyone thinks. Pros/Cons? Which spec do YOU prefer?

Which has the best, and why:

Playstyle?
Story?
Damage?
PVP?
Artifact?
Theme?

[threeks]

I'll bite.

Playstyle?
Frost. Fast paced, though with the Rime fix not nearly as fast paced as it was before ...

Story?
Don't see how the story between them is all that different (though I guess there is with the atifacts? but you get to do them all.)

Damage?
No way to know yet.

PVP?
Don't pvp.

Artifact?
Frost. You are literally reforging frostmourne.

Theme?
Unholy is probably a little better here, I like Frost sure, but Unholy feels more 'dk' If blood went a bit more 'vampire' I'd swap to that. but I feel like blood barely has a theme honestly.

[Echoic01]

Playstyle - Both are great fun, disease/stack management for awesome explosions or a fast paced pretty cool looking moveset. Unholy seems to require more planning and setup to get the most out of it

Story - If we are talking artifacts I think frost is cooler, feels more lich king oriented whereas unholy is pulled out of nowhere. besides artifacts there is little difference and all comes under the dk umbrella

Damage - Tuning is still in process but the way unholy is designed it seems it will always be stronger for aoe (apart from the current state of sindragosas fury). The setup required for unholy will also means theres a bigger margin for error and thus dps loss

PvP? Frost seems stronger for quick hard hitting dps. Unholy with diseases and set up again makes it more difficult. Clawing shadows for unholy does help a lot and the talent tree can give some strong dps for aoeing groups down if people are stupid enough to stack

Artifact? Frost, like said previously frostmourne reforged. But Unholy has a cooler base ability.

Theme? Unholy. Fits the theme of undead stronger with the raising of pets/ghouls, especially with Apocalypses artifact abitility.

My personal preference is to Unholy. The rotation of Frost gets dull rather quickly, similar to DH, you need to the take active ability talents in order to add some meat to the spec. Unholy has so many cool moments with epidemic and overall it feels like there is more skill required. It is slower than Frost and this shows with questing/leveling/start of bosses. The set up of festering wounds on a target and also the runic power build if you decide to use dark arbiter can be a bit tedious at the start of a fight. Once this initial setup is done the fight flows smoothly and can be pretty simple to manage. Overall, both specs are in a good place right now and I think will be competitive in dps if tuning is done correctly.

[Piz813]

Curious what everyone thinks. Pros/Cons? Which spec do YOU prefer?

Which has the best, and why:

Playstyle?
Story?
Damage?
PVP?
Artifact?
Theme?

After 11 years of loyalty I finally got a beta key Friday!!!! Starting as frost and so far I died to every mini boss on my way to get the weapons even as ilevel 750. Shits no joke in ICC...

Ditched GA for BoS as of now. Will update after I play until Monday morning. Have not tried UH since it was claws of shadow spam 2 weeks ago

[psyquest]

After 11 years of loyalty I finally got a beta key Friday!!!! Starting as frost and so far I died to every mini boss on my way to get the weapons even as ilevel 750. Shits no joke in ICC...

Ditched GA for BoS as of now. Will update after I play until Monday morning. Have not tried UH since it was claws of shadow spam 2 weeks ago

you are doing some wrong or not using cc and defensive. Have you used control undead?

[Vicus]

After 11 years of loyalty I finally got a beta key Friday!!!! Starting as frost and so far I died to every mini boss on my way to get the weapons even as ilevel 750. Shits no joke in ICC...

Ditched GA for BoS as of now. Will update after I play until Monday morning. Have not tried UH since it was claws of shadow spam 2 weeks ago

It's funny, the weapon quests/phases are, by far, the hardest part of leveling I found. Even at 110, I need to go searching for trouble in Suramar to come close to the downtime I had doing the artifact quests. Due to the fact you can pick up and do the other 2 artifact quest lines at any time after 102, I am sure they are all scaled to ilev.

I was looking for a undead gnome buff bot to control, didnt even think about other npcs being useful, with control undead having been fairly useless since ICC.

[Deleted]

It's funny, the weapon quests/phases are, by far, the hardest part of leveling I found. Even at 110, I need to go searching for trouble in Suramar to come close to the downtime I had doing the artifact quests. Due to the fact you can pick up and do the other 2 artifact quest lines at any time after 102, I am sure they are all scaled to ilev.

I was looking for a undead gnome buff bot to control, didnt even think about other npcs being useful, with control undead having been fairly useless since ICC.

I am also quite confident they are scaled to ilvl/lvl. I also had a easier time doing the frost one ona llv 660 DK than a 730

[seamusmc]

After 11 years of loyalty I finally got a beta key Friday!!!! Starting as frost and so far I died to every mini boss on my way to get the weapons even as ilevel 750. Shits no joke in ICC...

Ditched GA for BoS as of now. Will update after I play until Monday morning. Have not tried UH since it was claws of shadow spam 2 weeks ago

Take Permafrost, you'll take very little damage. LOL when it was broke the absorb would build in the millions for me. I've leveled to 110 twice as Frost, (as new toon with 680 gear and with my main copied, mythic gear), and never, ever had an issue while leveling. Taking on packs of 5 no problem, downed all rares easily.

However, when doing the artifact quests take off rings and neck. Scaling is based on item level and its seriously broken.

[Piz813]

^^

All great advice when doing the Frost weapon quest!! Did not think of any of the above, especially Control Undead... think the last time I used that was H scolomance in MoP?

Have not looked at the UH side of things yet. Tried Arms last night as I am undecided to what to main come Legion. Still praying Frost will be great but sad I lost Gorefiends...

sorry to derail thread. Lets hear some UH opinions. I have not seen anything past 3 weeks ago Claws of Shadow spam on the PTR

[GodEmperor]

PvPer. I play Unholy always. Never cared if Frost was/is stronger. Gonna continue with it.

Only thing I wish is that obtaining Apocalypse was a bit more unique and not shared with specs like Affliction and Boomkin. Frost is better there. But I'll be alright.

From what I hear in Beta, both DKs are very strong in PvP with Unholy being better due to the ranged pressure with CS, Epidemic. However people are starting to complain and I foresee a nerf. Imo I do not like the idea of Clawing Shadows and traits like Scourge of Words/Necrosis and I hope Blizzard changes them. A melee class shouldn't be able to do almost all their damage through instants attack from ranged.

I like that Unholy got some well needed tools and Utility.

[Saracens]

I go where the DPS is, as a raider, that being said I've not raided with a DK before. I've PvPed with one since wrath, but this xpac I'm making the full switch. I like Frost, I love Unholy, but it's looking like Frost is going to be quite a bit higher on the damage. From what I've tested in beta, and from the more recent AMR sims (I know I know it's too soon blah blah) Frost is well ahead by almost 20-30k dps. So we'll see as we get closer to launch.

[Coldvibes]

The Frost Artifact questline was pretty funny, I don't think I've ever used Death Strike that much as a Frost DK since, ever.

[Christhammer]

I play what i think is fun and what i enjoy, and would never switch spec because the other spec might be better. I play a game for fun, guess i'm weird that way. So yeah, Unholy for me. Really love the changes they made in Legion. In WOD, both specs were boring as hell.

[threeks]

I love when people use 'fun' as an excuse for playing something worse ... do you think we play the best spec because we hate it? Fun is doing the most damage to some of us, so we use what we need to in order to do that.

[Christhammer]

I love when people use 'fun' as an excuse for playing something worse ... do you think we play the best spec because we hate it? Fun is doing the most damage to some of us, so we use what we need to in order to do that.

I know many ppl that were forced to switch to Combat Rogue in WoD even though they hated it. I will never understand those people. If you hate a spec, don't play it. Play what you enjoy. Very simple.

[nephzor]

Well some of us dont really have a choice because if a spec is much better for an encounter we have to switch to it(ie: unholy on mythic gorefiend).

[Fenrkyr]

I love when people use 'fun' as an excuse for playing something worse ... do you think we play the best spec because we hate it? Fun is doing the most damage to some of us, so we use what we need to in order to do that.

So without damage meters you would quit the game?

[Triji]

Frost has been great I honestly really enjoy it. Unholy I can't even complete the quest it breaks every time so I haven't gotten to test it out.

[Starsinn]

Well some of us dont really have a choice because if a spec is much better for an encounter we have to switch to it(ie: unholy on mythic gorefiend).

You absolutely DO have a choice.

[nephzor]

You absolutely DO have a choice.

Yeah raiding heroic or competing for rankings in mythic raids that's the choice you have.