Brainstorming Ideas for Frost Changes

[Deleted]

Those are good Ideas and im also not a fan of "Obliterate now directly deals some more of Frost dmg" either but that shattering strikes changes sounds REALLY good even the that you slowly incase the target in ice and then Oblierate them "shattering" the effect.

that sound cool, and better could be both FS and OB do it and has different effect for each. say OB does extra dmg on target and for FS the singletargte dmg with it is lower but does aoe dmg?

[Deleted]

that sound cool, and better could be both FS and OB do it and has different effect for each. say OB does extra dmg on target and for FS the singletargte dmg with it is lower but does aoe dmg?

I would have suggested something like a Shattering Strike'd Obliterate reduces a targets armor by x%. But Frost only has 1 source of physical damage :/

[Maxweii]

I'm less convinced Obliterate not doing Frost damage is a big deal, but it would certainly be easy to add in.
- Shifting the Shattering Strikes mechanic to Obliterate could be interesting.
- Changing Crystalline Swords to be an obliterate focused mechanic. (e.g. your obliterates hit with two additional swords, which deal frost damage.)
- Technically buffing Rime adds some mastery scaling.

We could also make it a go-to by adding an "obliterated" debuff, or something of the sort.
But honestly I'm not beholden to the ability, and I'm fine with it being the button I press when nothing more interesting is up.

That Shattering Strikes change is about the only good idea I've ever heard in favor of having OB deal Frost damage

[Deleted]

I would have suggested something like a Shattering Strike'd Obliterate reduces a targets armor by x%. But Frost only has 1 source of physical damage :/

it has 2 if you count auto attacks

[Icedcoffeee]

That Shattering Strikes change is about the only good idea I've ever heard in favor of having OB deal Frost damage

Hire me now Blizz, DKs will never want for mobility again!

[Hctaz]

Frost Strike was the more iconic ability of DW Frost, you spent your RUNES on HB, and you spent KM on Frost Strike (NOT Obliterate)

That was only because of the poor damage of Obliterate previously. I don't think Blizzard intended that design and I strictly remember them even saying that they wanted to kill that playstyle long ago. Like back in Cata even. They just couldn't do it and design the class to have both two hand and dual wield for some reason. There are so many other DKs telling you that you're wrong that it isn't even funny anymore. Just accept it. Frost Strike is like the slam of old Arms. You hit it because your main abilities aren't able to be used yet. It's filler. It isn't any more iconic than slam.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm less convinced Obliterate not doing Frost damage is a big deal, but it would certainly be easy to add in.
- Shifting the Shattering Strikes mechanic to Obliterate could be interesting.
- Changing Crystalline Swords to be an obliterate focused mechanic. (e.g. your obliterates hit with two additional swords, which deal frost damage.)
- Technically buffing Rime adds some mastery scaling.

We could also make it a go-to by adding an "obliterated" debuff, or something of the sort.
But honestly I'm not beholden to the ability, and I'm fine with it being the button I press when nothing more interesting is up.

Would be interesting. I guess I just see the issue of Mastery causing your other abilities to benefit but not our main rune spender. I feel like at some point, acquiring more mastery is probably going to be considered. With the way things are right now, I see crit and haste being good up to a certain point but I feel like there isn't anything in place that keeps these stats being relevant forever. Depending on how large these ilvl gaps in tiers are (and I'm expecting them to be pretty big with the LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic plus ilvl upgrade model they are keeping) won't we acquire too much haste or crit? At some point you'll be getting so many KM procs that you can't spend them all and then why even have more crit than that? I don't think you'll ever feasibly hit the haste cap for GCD but I have a suspicion that somewhere down the line there will be a point where you just have too much haste to make effective use of all your abilities. Maybe I'm wrong and haste will just be the go to stat after a certain amount of crit. I just wish that Killing Machine had SOMETHING done to it to make crit valuable regardless like a flat damage increase. And even if not, having killing machine make Obliterate deal frost damage would give mastery something to look at even more.

Potential alteration on my original KM idea: What if instead of additional damage, it simply caused a percentage of Obliterate's damage to become frost damage, based on your crit chance? So for example: If KM hits for 100 damage and you have 25% crit then with a KM proc your Obliterate would deal 75 physical damage and 25 frost damage. The frost damage would bypass armor, benefit from mastery, and potentially give you a reason to value crit.

[Shiira]

I don't think Blizzard intended that design and I strictly remember them even saying that they wanted to kill that playstyle long ago. Like back in Cata even.

They went ahead and gave dw a huge frost strike damage bonus in mists. Blizzard's vision of what each spec should be like isn't constant, dual wield wasn't even an intended playstyle for frost for half of wrath but look at it now. Also the supposed consensus against maxweii in this thread is an utter fabrication, and even if it wasn't using that as an argument would be an appeal to popular opinion fallacy, try again.

[Hctaz]

They went ahead and gave dw a huge frost strike damage bonus in mists.

That doesn't mean that Obliterate wasn't intended to be used/our iconic ability. The hardest hitting ability isn't always the iconic ability. Even if it were, why then would DKs not have the goal of hitting Frost strike more often than not? It was good with Killing Machine but if it were really our go to ability then DKs in MoP wouldn't have had the goal of spending every single rune on Howling Blast before even considering a Frost Strike. Yes, you would use frost strike if you had one of each of your runes on CD and had a Killing Machine proc, but even still you were better off casting another Howling Blast otherwise. You really only used it when you were out of other options. That doesn't sound like a primary move to me. Even now it's not used over Obliterate unless you have 2 or less runes and a 5 stack of Razorice with Shattering Strikes. Anything else and you'd rather use Obliterate.

Blizzard's vision of what each spec should be like isn't constant, dual wield wasn't even an intended playstyle for frost for half of wrath but look at it now.

Frost was always the dual wield dps spec in Wrath. It was just outclassed by Blood dps for the most part until ICC when it took over as the dominant spec. The lack of tank runes for 1 handed weapons made Frost tanks stick to two handers. They finally came out with the tank runes for one handers but it was too late. Frost dps was better and... tbh I don't even remember if Dks were viable as tanks at that point. I only ever ran with pallys, druids, and warrior tanks during that tier.

[Shiira]

I was responding to your description of the situation where frost prefers to spend killing machine on frost strike. Back in mists frost did have the goal of spending as much time as possible casting frost strike, the fact that it was not our highest priority ability is irrelevant. You had more frost strikes than you had killing machine procs to use them with anyway, pissing away all your runic power and having to cast howling blast for more when killing machine procs isn't what you wanted to be doing. As for what is and is not your "main ability", that discussion is irrelevant because it's influenced too much by opinion. Is it your hardest hitting ability? The one you spend the most time casting? The one that deals the largest portion of your total damage? Your best cooldown? The one that stands out the most in the class fantasy? The one you start with when you make a new dk? Who knows, it doesn't matter.

As for dw frost in wrath, every dps spec was capable of dual wielding and producing results back then because the class was a mess. It wasn't until the addition of threat of thassarian in 3.2 that cemented frost as the spec that is intended to dual wield.

Edit: Back is a strong word, I'm just checking out how things are in the pre patch to help me decide if I want to buy legion or not since I didn't play alpha or beta at all.

[Maxweii]

Holy crap Shiira you're back

[Saltysquidoon]

I don't care if obliterate deals frost damage or not, the continued relevance of the argument just shows how mishandled the spec has been in regards to secondaries.

Something I have noticed in this thread is people being knowingly disingenuous about frost's design direction, the implication being that simply because FS is the hardest hitting spell now that it's the fruition of grand design vision and clearly always the intention when that is just not the case.
The reality is that blizzard has been consistently a step behind the game since frost came out (using cata as the marker). Masterfrost was an unintended consequence of pvp nerfs and blizzard not understanding how strong mastery would be since crit and haste were almost pointless in cata, a consequence they tried multiple times to kill with stuff like hb nerfs, rime changes and the like. Just because they gave up and embraced it in MoP doesn't make it 'intended'

On a personal level it will always feel incongruent to me to have an rp dump as the primary source of damage the whole 'hook' of the rune system is that it's something of a reverse system in that we use our headline abilities up front to build our filler. Sure you could try and twist it and be like but RP is frost's fantasy but meh.

[Shiira]

Sure you could try and twist it and be like but RP is frost's fantasy but meh.

Well frost used to have bonus max rp and bonus rp generation talents, frost fever generates rp, frost has three talents affecting runic power generation and one that spends it. If you were going to make an argument for any of our specs being focused on rp spenders it would definitely be frost.

[Baddok21]

I don't care if obliterate deals frost damage or not, the continued relevance of the argument just shows how mishandled the spec has been in regards to secondaries.

Something I have noticed in this thread is people being knowingly disingenuous about frost's design direction, the implication being that simply because FS is the hardest hitting spell now that it's the fruition of grand design vision and clearly always the intention when that is just not the case.
The reality is that blizzard has been consistently a step behind the game since frost came out (using cata as the marker). Masterfrost was an unintended consequence of pvp nerfs and blizzard not understanding how strong mastery would be since crit and haste were almost pointless in cata, a consequence they tried multiple times to kill with stuff like hb nerfs, rime changes and the like. Just because they gave up and embraced it in MoP doesn't make it 'intended'

On a personal level it will always feel incongruent to me to have an rp dump as the primary source of damage the whole 'hook' of the rune system is that it's something of a reverse system in that we use our headline abilities up front to build our filler. Sure you could try and twist it and be like but RP is frost's fantasy but meh.

Agreed.

Its actually kind of funny because since Legion Beta Blizzard has gone through the same set of missteps that lead Frost to its MoP/WoD masterfrost incarnation.

-In the beginning of Legion Obliterate was once again the premier dmg ability of the spec (and we had the talent to give it 25-30% additional frost dmg).
-Then that talent was suddenly removed and we were given a new build that had an ability "frostscythe" which had a cooldown
-Then they decided to nerf Obliterate dmg alittle
-Then they decided nerf baseline rime proc buff and baseline howling blast dmg (reducing the overall value again of Obliterate)
-Then they decided to buff Frost Strike
-Then they decided to remove the cooldown on Frostscythe

At this point they recreated the Masterfrost playstyle inadvertently because you were going to spam FSc and Dump RP on FS (instead of reverting some of the prior changes they instead elected to Iterate on the current path) almost like driving into a dead end alley way and instead of reversing out you instead try to find some rope and scale the walls to get out.

-then they added the 4x crit modifier to Frostscythe and nerf its baseline dmg so that we only use it on KM
-Due to the KM change proccing off auto attack crits, Frost was going to hit a point where it had enough crit that it would use FSc regardless of the KM mechanic and just hope it gets natural crits on 2+ targets

and so they go on and one right back into the same scenario they built since wrath

Its very interesting if you draw the comparison from our original killing machine on use CD and how we used it for Howling blast (which had a CD as well). Its almost like they dont know how to avoid the very visible pitfalls that leads to a Masterfrost playstyle.

[Clash the DK]

I got a good laugh regarding the Shattering Strikes discussion. That was one of the many ideas I threw at the Devs during Beta before they made the big change to Killing Machine. Although my exact idea revolved around Obliterate dealing extra frost damage by way of Razorice stacks instead of affecting Frost Strike. It's funny that myself along with most who have chimed in here think that would be a much better design. But anyway, this is just another example of how much they do not want Obliterate dealing any frost damage whatsoever. Their game, their prerogative...

Its almost like they dont know how to avoid the very visible pitfalls that leads to a Masterfrost playstyle.

This is so true.

[Icedcoffeee]

In some respects it makes sense to devalue Obliterate. Considering how bad our mobility is, it makes sense to have us rely more on abilities with more range. FSc, FS (with trait), GA, etc. We've been leaning towards being a ranged melee for a while now. (And clawing shadows with Unholy basically made it ranged, at least until the recent nerf).

Now all they need to do is change the way Rime/HB works, and we can get rid Obliterate completely . . . again.

[Shiira]

For a while now I've been saying that since so many casters have stuff to do while moving we should be able to melee from 40 yards away.

That was a joke and I'm amazed that blizzard have given us this many new ranged options, but unless something drastic happens with auto attacks and killing machine we aren't ever going to like being outside of melee range.

[RuneDK]

I got a good laugh regarding the Shattering Strikes discussion. That was one of the many ideas I threw at the Devs during Beta before they made the big change to Killing Machine. Although my exact idea revolved around Obliterate dealing extra frost damage by way of Razorice stacks instead of affecting Frost Strike. It's funny that myself along with most who have chimed in here think that would be a much better design. But anyway, this is just another example of how much they do not want Obliterate dealing any frost damage whatsoever. Their game, their prerogative...




This is so true.

I don't get that logic though...It would then make all our abilities scale for the entire expansion and that's a good thing right? Wait no, must not have good things. Wonder when/if we're going to be compensated for the ambidexterity/rime bug fixes that inflated our damage pretty significantly.

[Deleted]

it has 2 if you count auto attacks

Not quite the majority of a Frost DK's damage

[Deleted]

Not quite the majority of a Frost DK's damage

true but still is physical dmg

[Deleted]

true but still is physical dmg

That's true. Perhaps with the 10% auto attack damage ring, and stacking haste, armor reduction might be good