Frost 7.3

[RuneDK]

I believe a few more updates actually made their way into the next PTR (some potentially still in progress):

--Obliteration now causes Howling Blast to grant Killing Machine, as well as Frost Strike. This should help with feeling like you can use Rime procs without interfering with Obliteration.
--The overall damage buff is 21%, not 27%. Just a new estimate of what's correct to roughly account for all the talent changes. Rest assured the goal is to find the accurate amount by which the talent changes would hurt total DPS and correct for that, even before looking into possible further adjustments for class balance.

Finally, the L75 row is generally redesigned. The overall situation seemed to be that Permafrost did a rather low amount of shielding, but was usually taken because the other options had so little use. Some of this might be a little preliminary, but the ideas on PTR are:
--Permafrost shields for 75% of autoattack damage (from 30%).
--White Walker redesigned to: "Wraith Walk cools down 100% more quickly anytime no enemy is within 10 yards."
--New talent Inexorable Assault (replacing Volatile Shielding): "For every 2 seconds spent in combat without melee attacking, you gain a stack of Inexorable Assault. Each stack causes your next autoattack to deal additional Frost damage."
(PTR numbers might vary slightly from the above)

Both of the new talents are going in a direction we want to better explore on slow melee specs like Frost: helping to address time off target, without power-creeping general movement capability. Overall, sprints and gap closers are very prevalent on melee specs (likely too much so across the game), and it's been increasingly hard to deliver on slower, heavy-hitter melee archetypes. Most of that discussion is much longer-term, but I wanted to give some context for trying to resist the direction of having every melee spec use a short-cooldown sprint/charge, and try to branch out into more class-appropriate ways of dealing with the problem.



updated blue post from the 7.3 frost discussion....yes...howling blast granting km is totally not what is needed....but i guess it does make it better....

[Schizoide]

The white walker and inexorable assault changes are interesting, but introduce the opposite problem. Now we have two talents worth DPS and one mitigation. Who's going to take permafrost?

Neither talent give me the slightest inclination to switch back to DK's glacial movement speed (pun not intended), but it's nice that they're giving it some attention. I guess I'll take the new white walker talent on my alt.

[Kluian05]

The white walker and inexorable assault changes are interesting, but introduce the opposite problem. Now we have two talents worth DPS and one mitigation. Who's going to take permafrost?

Neither talent give me the slightest inclination to switch back to DK's glacial movement speed (pun not intended), but it's nice that they're giving it some attention. I guess I'll take the new white walker talent on my alt.

Permafrost is better when you have 100% uptime on the boss ... but yeah but the looks of it I'm sure a majority of DK's will be going to Inexorable Assault. You'd only take White Walker if the shorter CD of Wraith Walk proved useful in the encounter.

[Baddok21]

updated blue post from the 7.3 frost discussion....yes...howling blast granting km is totally not what is needed....but i guess it does make it better....

The issue there ignoring is that we stacked so much crit, the whole point of Killing Machine is mostly dead. as it stands Killing Machine is working out to be a 16-18% crit bonus this only gets worse as we climb the ilvl ladder higher and higher

[Drakonskyr]

Ah man. I can't say in good conscience that these are bad changes (Inexorable Assault in particular seems pretty interesting), but I'll be sad if MG is how DK finishes this expansion. I mean, I had so much fun in NH playing with Breath, and now I'm having so much in Tomb playing with DA, so I just hope I can still say that at the end of Antorus.

[RuneDK]

The issue there ignoring is that we stacked so much crit, the whole point of Killing Machine is mostly dead. as it stands Killing Machine is working out to be a 16-18% crit bonus this only gets worse as we climb the ilvl ladder higher and higher

KM has been dead since they tied it to one ability(2 if you're speccing it which nobody is). Personally KM is one of the glaring problems with the spec and I hope they finally address it in the next expansion. I still think taking it away from howling blast and frost strike in cataclysm was a mistake....it should've never been put on obliterate. But ultimately I agree with everything you're saying

[Deleted]

Here's an idea for "slow melee specs" how about letting them do more damage than a rogue when they actually get to stick to a target?

[RuneDK]

Here's an idea for "slow melee specs" how about letting them do more damage than a rogue when they actually get to stick to a target?

I said that during beta and got laughed at basically so whatevs.

[Hctaz]

Talent choices are supposed to be meaningful. If they're all passive "OK, so you do more damage" who cares which one you pick?

I mean... the default design in MoP for most talents were that they were all utility passives mainly and I enjoyed that significantly better than these ones now. I don't think the spec should play different based on the talents you choose but rather have varying utility and defensive options based on your talents to suit the fight. The spec should always play like the spec is meant to be played. How can you choose to be a frost dk when you don't even know what that is going to entail. Prior to Legion and maybe WoD (I didn't raid in WoD), you picked a spec and that spec pretty much stayed identical from the beginning to the end of the expansion. That meant you could pick a spec you enjoyed or a class with multiple specs you enjoyed and not have to worry about everything changing when the next patch comes. I've never felt like rerolling prior to this expansion because, whether or not my favorite dk spec's damage was good, I always knew I would enjoy my spec's playstyle.

Talents that change the way a spec plays is bad and they should go back to utility ones or ones with less impact like if they paired up Runic Attenuation and Horn of Winter. Neither of those heavily alters the way your spec is played but they at least allow you to choose a way to regain some resource.

[Ange]

At least it can't be as bad as at the start of legion.

Forced to play unholy and still beeing dead last in DPS agains every other class and boy oh boy, what fun I had with the huge amount of Firemages and Demonhunters in the raidgroups. Nothing curshes your soul harder, than top 1-10 filled by green log DemonHunter and Mages just to see your character name with violett numbers way down the list.

You could even play 2h Frost in cataclysm - just because - and you would never drop to trash DPS levels like it happened in legion to DKs.

[Hctaz]

At least it can't be as bad as at the start of legion.

Forced to play unholy and still beeing dead last in DPS agains every other class and boy oh boy, what fun I had with the huge amount of Firemages and Demonhunters in the raidgroups. Nothing curshes your soul harder, than top 1-10 filled by green log DemonHunter and Mages just to see your character name with violett numbers way down the list.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/13#difficulty=4

I think it might be as bad as the start of Legion.

[Kaver]

my original idea from Beta was to completely scrap Obliteration for a different talent

Fury of Frostmourne
Instant
1.5 minute Cooldown
Requires Death Knight (Frost)

harness the power of Frostmourne for 20 seconds transforming your weapon(s) into Fostmourne for the duration while empowering the Death Knights abilities.

Obliterate - 25% of damage done as a DoT that deal frost damage over 6 seconds (this effect stacks)
Frost Strike - causes Hypothermia to instantly deal damage to your target
Remorseless Winter - increases the death Knights movement speed and mastery 10%
Frostscythe - causes Hypothermia to instantly deal damage to all targets hit
Howling Blast - Snares targets for 50% movement speed and generates 2 additional Runic Power
Anti-Magic Shell - generates 100% more runic power per magic dmg absorbed
Wraith Walk - this effect now lasts 5 seconds and the death knight can attack while wraith walking

I like the idea, but this would clearly be a "go to" talent. How in the hell would the other L100 talent compete with this bunch of awesomeness :P

[Quincey]

---
This is a good change because it will bring back people to Frost and still keep Breath good, so it doesn't alienate too many current FDKs. (They're still going to nitpick though.)

It's not nitpicking when they are completely destroying the *only* even slightly complex way to play our spec. MG might aswell be nothing more than whack-a-mole. Hit whatever lights up.

They are axing the specs potential in order to appease the LFR frost knights and frankly thats just wrong.

The only way the proposed changes would work is if A- the damage on bos is increased a fuck-load more than 10% or B- The cooldown is brought down to something closer to 45sec/1min. As the changes currently are bos is worthless.

[Nyel]

I am happy if I don't have to use BoS anymore. It's not that it's overly complex or challenging (it's not) but it's super boring to stick a huge amount of our damage into a 2min CD.

[Deleted]

I'm not much of an MG fan, but BoS is cancer. The sooner it is dethroned, the better.

[Icedcoffeee]

I'll update the orginal post too, but new changes announced:

--Obliteration now causes Howling Blast to grant Killing Machine, as well as Frost Strike. This should help with feeling like you can use Rime procs without interfering with Obliteration.
--The overall damage buff is 21%, not 27%.

--Permafrost shields for 75% of autoattack damage (from 30%).
--White Walker redesigned to: "Wraith Walk cools down 100% more quickly anytime no enemy is within 10 yards."
--New talent Inexorable Assault (replacing Volatile Shielding): "For every 2 seconds spent in combat without melee attacking, you gain a stack of Inexorable Assault. Each stack causes your next autoattack to deal additional Frost damage."
(PTR numbers might vary slightly from the above)

These I actually like, especially them trying to address our mobility problem.

[Nyel]

Another problem I always encounter when BoS is on CD (or you're not using BoS at all): what to do with Runic Power? During CDs like Obliteration you get so much Runic Power that you can't dump it. The same with HRW. That's an issue I'd like to see adressed as well. When using HRW I'm always capping Runic Power and I am not able to dump it because a) too much procs or b) priority of skills. Wouldn't it be possible to scale Frost Strike that you need 20 Runic Power to use it but you can spend up to 30, 40 or 50 Runic Power to increase its strenght? Even as a talent I would consider using this, I mean there are phases where you just waste Runic Power and that's bad class design imho.

[Schizoide]

I don't think the spec should play different based on the talents you choose but rather have varying utility and defensive options based on your talents to suit the fight. The spec should always play like the spec is meant to be played.

Your opinion is valid, but I feel differently. I believe talents should be meaningful. I believe every talent tier should be an agonizing choice between three awesome options I desperately want. That is really not the case today.

It's unclear what Blizzard's design goals are for talents. They've waffled on it over the years. That's just what I would do.

[Deleted]

Another problem I always encounter when BoS is on CD (or you're not using BoS at all): what to do with Runic Power? During CDs like Obliteration you get so much Runic Power that you can't dump it. The same with HRW. That's an issue I'd like to see adressed as well. When using HRW I'm always capping Runic Power and I am not able to dump it because a) too much procs or b) priority of skills. Wouldn't it be possible to scale Frost Strike that you need 20 Runic Power to use it but you can spend up to 30, 40 or 50 Runic Power to increase its strenght? Even as a talent I would consider using this, I mean there are phases where you just waste Runic Power and that's bad class design imho.

Normally when BoS is on CD you just use FS to dump RP?, You hardly ever overcap
Don't know if I understand you correctly, but isn't the whole point of Obliteration to spam FS and get KM? Again how do you overcap?
During HRW yes, you "might" overcap, but normally you pool runes/rp > BoS > wait till needed> then HRW

Also as the new HRW will give you 20% haste, your GCD will also be lowered, so you can spam faster

Your opinion is valid, but I feel differently. I believe talents should be meaningful. I believe every talent tier should be an agonizing choice between three awesome options I desperately want. That is really not the case today.

It's unclear what Blizzard's design goals are for talents. They've waffled on it over the years. That's just what I would do.

I could not agree more! I think the last time I swapped talents in Legion was in EN when choosing Oblit/GA and even then it did not matter that much.

I'm almost jealous when people HS out to Dalaran between bosses to swap talents to either "try" or based on the fight.

Every talent right now is set in stone.
Same with Legendaries, there is hardly any choice (If you have access to all of them) there is just BiS, and that's pretty much it.
You would maybe only swap them in/out to pad the meters

[Nyel]

Normally when BoS is on CD you just use FS to dump RP?, You hardly ever overcap
Don't know if I understand you correctly, but isn't the whole point of Obliteration to spam FS and get KM? Again how do you overcap?
During HRW yes, you "might" overcap, but normally you pool runes/rp > BoS > wait till needed> then HRW

Also as the new HRW will give you 20% haste, your GCD will also be lowered, so you can spam faster

More Haste means more Runic Power as well - in the end I don't think that you can dump it faster.

Sure, I use FS to dump RP but as I said, there are situations where I can't dump it because you've got to many procs going or you don't want your Remorseless Winter to run out or something like that and you just can't use FS.

Obliteration makes you spam Obliterate and most likely Howling Blast, I really don't have time to fit in FS. Especially when I want to get 10 stacks on Gathering Storm. Maybe I am doing something wrong but I read this issue from other DKs on the forum as well. In 7.3 HRW will be switched to the last row, right? So if I'm not taking BoS but HRW instead I will have the same issues with capping RP as I've got right now.