Death Knight 6.0 - The Proposed Redesign - Version 2

[Clash the DK]

Design updated 5-19-13 (Page 4 / Post 64 & 70)

I have taken some of the constructive criticism of my first design and implemented a few changes. Thank you to everyone who participated in the last thread. And as always, I would love any feedback you have on this particular design. The talent grid accompanying this design can be found at the link below:

http://mop-talent-grid-maker.appspot...&gridId=586002


It is my opinion that we need to redefine the purpose and function of Death Runes. The idea is for each spec to have access to 2 permanent Death Runes to compliment 4 spec-specific runes. Blood spec would have access to DD-BB-BB. Frost would be DD-FF-FF. And Unholy would be DD-UU-UU. But.....Death Runes would only be usable with specific abilities that cost Death Runes.

This accomplishes quite a few things. Our rune system would be much more visually organized. There would be more abilities that cost Death Runes. But, our ability usage would actually flow much better. The clunky rune problems of Unholy would be remedied (Rune isolation and ridiculous AOE ramp up time). And the general whack-a-mole feel of Frost would be improved. Furthermore, this change to Death Runes allows us to have a real choice in our rune regeneration talent tier. Although Runic Conversion might be a very enticing choice for PvP or tanking, Runic Empowerment and Runic Corruption would be equally competitive, allowing two distinctly different game styles. And that's because all runes would now play an important part. Below is an example of how our current abilities would fit with the new system.



BLOOD


-----------OR-----------


1 Blood Rune - Blood Strike - (Applies Blood Plague)
2 Blood Rune - Heart Strike - (Single Target Strike)
1 Blood Rune - Blood Boil - (AOE + Spreads Blood Plague)
1 Blood Rune - Rune Tap
1 Blood Rune - Dancing Rune Weapon

30 Runic Power - Death Coil
25 Runic Power - Massacre - (Cleave Ability) (Functions like current Heart Strike)

1 Death Rune - Death Strike - (Blood Shield Mechanic with Self Heal)
1 Death Rune - Death Siphon
1 Death Rune - Necrotic Strike
1 Death Rune - Army of the Dead - (Channel time reduced significantly)
1 Death Rune - Rune Strike - (Starter strike)




FROST


-----------OR-----------


1 Frost Rune - Icy Touch - (Applies Frost Fever) (Procs Rime) (First priority and main ability for Frost runes)
1 Frost Rune - Howling Blast - (Applies Frost Fever)
2 Frost Rune - Frost Strike - (Consumes Rime)
1 Frost Rune - Pillar of Frost

30 Runic Power - Death Coil
20 Runic Power - Obliterate - (Consumes Killing Machine)

1 Death Rune - Vanquish - (Execute Ability) (Shadowfrost Damage) (Double damage to targets below 25% Health) (Consumes Killing Machine)
1 Death Rune - Deathchill - (AOE ability) (Damage to all who stands in the affected area) (Frosty Desecration)
1 Death Rune - Death Siphon
1 Death Rune - Necrotic Strike
1 Death Rune - Army of the Dead - (Channel time reduced significantly)
1 Death Rune - Rune Strike - (Starter strike)




UNHOLY


-----------OR-----------


1 Unholy Rune - Plague Strike - (Applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague)
1 Unholy Rune - Scourge Strike
1 Unholy Rune - Soul Reaper - (Delayed damage would activate after 3 seconds instead of 5)
2 Unholy Rune - Shadow Slash - (3 Target Cleave Ability) (Weapon strike, but full Shadow Damage)
1 Unholy Rune - Dark Transformation - (30 second cooldown, 15 second duration) (SI damage built into DT)

30 Runic Power - Death Coil
10 Runic Power - Pestilence - (Spreads diseases and activates Wandering Plague)

1 Death Rune - Festering Strike
1 Death Rune - Death and Decay
1 Death Rune - Death Siphon
1 Death Rune - Necrotic Strike
1 Death Rune - Army of the Dead - (Channel time reduced significantly)
1 Death Rune - Rune Strike - (Starter strike)




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NOTES:
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~ We need more Death in Death Knight!
~ Death Runes would only be usable with abilities that cost a Death Rune.
~ Blood would only have access to Blood Plague and Frost would only have access to Frost Fever. Unholy, being the master of diseases, would have access to both.
~ Blood Strike would now apply Blood Plague.
~ A majority of Unholy's AOE would be from their diseases + Wandering Plague. Potent enough.
~ Only Frost would have access to Icy Touch; Therefore, the Glyph of Icy Touch would be removed from the game for balance reasons.
~ The talent Chilblains would be removed from the game. A new glyph would be implemented (Glyph of Disease?); This new glyph would cause any target affected by any of our diseases to be slowed by 50%.
~ Chains of Ice would be moved into the talent grid, altered slightly and renamed Chains of Death. Each spec would apply their spec-specific disease(s) with this ability.
~ Lichborne would no longer work as a self-healing mechanic.
~ Purgatory and Gorefiends's Grasp would be baseline for Blood spec.
~ New raid cooldown in the form of AMZ, but on the same tier as Bone Shield. Very useful choices.
~ The duration of our diseases might need to be backed down to 20 seconds in this specific model.
~ Horn of Winter would no longer grant Runic Power. We are Death Knights. Not Bards. Fire and forget for 5 minutes.
~ A few new abilities. Shiny.
~ Frost ability damage heiarchy on a single target: Vanquish(ExecuteRange) > Obliterate > Frost Strike > Icy Touch > Howling Blast > Vanquish

[Stir]

I do not want rune homogenization. I think it's a really, really terrible idea. Having to choose what to use based on which resources you've got and what resources you're saving up for makes things interesting.

Seriously; you're suggesting simplifying everything. Dumbing everything down even further. I don't agree. It's not what I'd like to see.

[Deleted]

Make them start at level 1 and remove the ability to solo everything in the game. Tired of seeing threads about, DK Solo's HC Madness and the like.

Very very constructive...

---

While I agree that some mechanics are a bit clunky. I would much rather see an actual use of existing abilites in the specs (for instance Soul Reaper in Blood, there really isn't any reason to use it at all).

Removing Gorefiend's Grasp from every spec except would severly reduce the viability of DKs in a PvP setting.

I can get behind the disease seperation you are proposing, because it would make sense from a lore standpoint.

Why change around Frost Strike and Obliterate?

The T6 Talents are kind of neat I guess, except a controllable pet for Frost, I don't play Unholy because of the pet.

[Clash the DK]

I do not want rune homogenization. I think it's a really, really terrible idea. Having to choose what to use based on which resources you've got and what resources you're saving up for makes things interesting.

Seriously; you're suggesting simplifying everything. Dumbing everything down even further. I don't agree. It's not what I'd like to see.

How would you not choose what to use based on which resources you've got and what resources you're saving up for in this design? Can you explain further.

---------- Post added 2013-05-13 at 06:20 AM ----------

While I agree that some mechanics are a bit clunky. I would much rather see an actual use of existing abilites in the specs (for instance Soul Reaper in Blood, there really isn't any reason to use it at all).

Removing Gorefiend's Grasp from every spec except would severly reduce the viability of DKs in a PvP setting.

I can get behind the disease seperation you are proposing, because it would make sense from a lore standpoint.

Why change around Frost Strike and Obliterate?

The T6 Talents are kind of neat I guess, except a controllable pet for Frost, I don't play Unholy because of the pet.

The idea is to improve DKs in PvP without the need for a gimmicky talent like Gorefiend's Grasp. I would like to see us viable in all areas of PvP including arena. Many of the problems with RBGs extends way beyond our class though. Hopefully changes happen to make them more melee friendly.

Frost Strike and Obliterate were switched for a couple of reasons. With Frost Strike costing runes, it makes it easier to keep Rime as a useful mechanic throughout a whole xpac. We don't want our FF applicators to outscale our frost rune strike due to Mastery. Otherwise, we would be back in the boat of spamming IT or HB and never utilizing Rime.

Also, I like the idea of the RP ability of Frost hitting harder than regular rune abilities in order to better distinguish the three specs. It makes more sense that Obliterate should hit harder than Frost Strike. I mean....it's called Obliterate.

The idea with T6 is that the controllable pet for Frost would be totally optional. I completely understand that a lot of people do not like playing with a permanent pet. In those cases, the Deathbringer talent would be the way to go. I admit that T6 would be a nightmare to balance. But, I'm sure that Blizz can get them close enough. The priority should be that petless Frost should always come out ahead if they are having a hard time with balancing.

[Aventhos]

The t6 talents are going in the right direction, besides that I don't seem much improvement here other than some needed talent level adjustment.

[Wrien]

I know i've posted something similar before but here it is again


Add a new passive skill named Frostbite:
Frostbite is DW's version of Rime. Your Howling Blast and Icy Touch have a 45% chance to reduce the cost of your next Obliterate or Death Strike to 1 unholy rune.
This will make unholy runes feel more useful for DW frost and letting us use Obliterate again. Rime will only work with 2h, Frostbite will only work with DW.

or

Add a new DW-only skill that uses unholy runes.

[Clash the DK]

I know i've posted something similar before but here it is again


Add a new passive skill named Frostbite:
Frostbite is DW's version of Rime. Your Howling Blast and Icy Touch have a 45% chance to reduce the cost of your next Obliterate or Death Strike to 1 unholy rune.
This will make unholy runes feel more useful for DW frost and letting us use Obliterate again. Rime will only work with 2h, Frostbite will only work with DW.

or

Add a new DW-only skill that uses unholy runes.

It is my opinion that DW and 2H Frost should play the same. Having them play differently sounds great in theory. But, in the practical world, one will always be better than the other. It's hard enough to just balance DW and 2H weapon strikes without mixing in all the other factors. Hopefully Blizz comes to their senses and removes the problems in ToT and MotFW.

With that being said, I do like your idea.

---------- Post added 2013-05-13 at 07:23 AM ----------

The t6 talents are going in the right direction, besides that I don't seem much improvement here other than some needed talent level adjustment.

The changes to the cost of some of the abilities and the addition of brand new abilities for each spec brings some subtle differences.

For example, Killing Machine is more interesting because you have two abilities that can use the proc. Which one you want to use with KM depends on whether or not you are in execute range. Furthermore, because you are using more abilities in your regular rotation, you will actually be able to optimize your KM procs. This is different from live where it doesn't make a difference because you're mainly hitting only Obliterate or Frost Strike to keep the feedback loop active.

Also, the Festerblight playstyle of Unholy would be preserved with this current design.

[Wrien]

It is my opinion that DW and 2H Frost should play the same. Having them play differently sounds great in theory. But, in the practical world, one will always be better than the other. It's hard enough to just balance DW and 2H weapon strikes without mixing in all the other factors. Hopefully Blizz comes to their senses and removes the problems in ToT and MotFW.

With that being said, I do like your idea.

I agree. Frost should focus on runic power and Frost Strike primary for both DW and 2h. Unholy and blood are the rune-based specs. Obliterate, Howling Blast and the other rune-skills should primary be used to build RP for Frost Strike. i think 2h focuses way to much on obliterate now. DW is better, but it doesn't use obliterate at all. There is a balance between this. Some Obliterate should be used, but Frost Strike should be the main-focus, as it always was (imo). Using anything else then Obliterate (2h, pvp) should punish your damage as much as it does with 2h now.

[Stir]

How would you not choose what to use based on which resources you've got and what resources you're saving up for in this design? Can you explain further.

Basically, what you are proposing is a nigh 100% uptime of optimal resources, making everything other than 'optimal' not longer a part of your playstyle. Resources you're 'saving up' are, at the moment, simply the runes you're planning to use. Let's say you have a strike you want to use; one rune you have, the other you don't. You wait until you've got both runes, rather than just popping the next strike that requires the rune you've already got. Instead, at the moment, you choose to do something else that saves the one rune you've got and will need. You use a 'less optimal' ability in order to be able to pop an optimal ability seconds later.

Now; I don't know how this works with Frost. I think, personally, that Frost is already heading in the direction you'd like it to be. It's much more smashy, after all. Personally, I don't like that. I don't like the idea of always having two death runes without having to unlock them. I don't like the simplicity of it.

So yeah... How would you not choose what strike to use? Well; with your idea (for Blood and Unholy), you just hit whatever strike's rune comes off cooldown. The only 'choice' you make is whether you go for single target or multi target. Anything that deals less damage is off the table; it's not a choice. The concept feels like 'whack-a-mole' rather than a 'flow' playstyle. Now; I'm not saying my preference is mechanically better than yours, but what I AM saying is that I really do not like yours.
Personally... There's different specs/classes that do what you want. Sure; they're not Death Knights, so they don't have the same 'feel' in looks, animations and spells and all... But if you care for mechanics over fluff, and you want a whack-a-mole style with more emphasis on twitch-mechanics, then there are classes that provide that.

Please don't take offense, and don't think that I find your idea bad in all... But there's just a huge gap between playstyles, here. Twitch-mechanic playstyle is a 'stupid' playstyle only in that it requires no (personal/internal) strategy... But that doesn't mean that the playstyle is easy, or not demanding. After all; FPS games focus entirely on twitch-mechanics, and they're really, really hard. With twitch-mechanics, losing even a single second on your activation could cost you very dearly; much more dearly a cost than you'd have with an internal strategy style, and as such, twitch mechanics are more attention demanding. Again: It's preference. I don't like twitch-mechanics.

[Clash the DK]

SNIP

I am not 100% sure I follow your train of thought. Where are these sub-optimal resources that we have right now? Are you referring to Unholy spec and their need to convert frost runes? Or Frost spec and their unholy runes? I do not see what you have explained in our current design.

When you say smashy, I assume you're talking about 2H Frost. Well, I hate the 2H Frost playstyle. It is indeed too "smashy". All runes can be used for your hardest hitting strike, so you're left without options. We basically bang the Obliterate and Frost Strike button back and forth with no consequences. It's awful gameplay.

And once again, where is this choice to use an ability that does less damage with current Blood and Unholy? That doesn't make sense.

Death Knights = Twitch mechanics these days. It's been that way since they implemented Runic Empowerment during Cata Beta. It was reinforced during MoP Beta when all specs were given a 1 second GCD. We are a long way from the original design of the class. Back then, yes, there was more "strategy" in how you played the class. Not so much now. And for the record, I do prefer the WotLK style rune regeneration. It was very smooth.

[Schizoide]

2H frost plays fine, except that we can ignore Killing Machine. Without that bit of gameplay it's extremely simple.

Thing is, if we did have to worry about Killing Machine, like we thought in early beta, that's a problem too. It has a high procrate and procs on autoattacks, so we have zero control over it. It felt like we were constantly failing, very negative gameplay.

One way to address that would be to change Killing Machine to work like Monks' combo breaker, which offers perfect control.

Killing Machine
Your rune-consuming damaging abilities have a X% chance per rune spent to grant a 100% damage bonus to your next Obliterate or Frost Strike.

Another way would be to give it stacks.

Killing Machine
Your main-hand autoattacks have a Y% chance to grant a 100% critical strike bonus to your next Obliterate or Frost Strike. Damage is increased by your base critical strike chance. Stacks two times.

Or you could make Obliterate/Frost strike a choice, so 2H doesn't always want to spend it on Obliterate, and DW doesn't always want to spend it on FS.

Killing Machine (2H)
Your main-hand autoattacks have a Y% chance to cause your next Obliterate to deal an additional 50% damage as Frost or your next Frost Strike to instantly refresh a fully depleted rune as a Death rune.

Killing Machine (DW)
Your rune-consuming strikes have a Z% chance to cause your next Obliterate to increase your Runic Power generation by Q% for 20 seconds or your next Frost Strike to deal an additional 100% damage.

And so on and so forth.

[Clash the DK]

Thing is, if we did have to worry about Killing Machine, like we thought in early beta, that's a problem too. It has a high procrate and procs on autoattacks, so we have zero control over it. It felt like we were constantly failing, very negative gameplay.

That's because we don't currently have any abilities (other than Rime) to use in between Obliterate and Frost Strike. And that's one reason why my proposed design succeeds. By having two rune pools with different abilities, we can have two conflicting abilities that consume KM with enough room to maximize that gameplay. The fact that the priority on which ability you should want to use KM changes based on your current targets health is just icing on the cake.

-----

Some of your ideas for KM are interesting, but I see some flaws.

If KM just gave bonus damage to Obliterate or Frost Strike, when they did crit things would explode. This could be problematic.

Having the damage increase based on crit strike chance sounds really fun in theory. But, the problem is we have very little crit. My biggest concern with our secondary stats is getting the value of Mastery bumped up to number one for the whole Frost spec. Since all of our secondary target damage is based on Mastery, it needs to be a very strong stat for us IMO.

I really wouldn't want to use KM as another route to add additional RNG into our resource generation. Although, I think it would have been more interesting to add a RP generation talent into the grid instead of Blood Tap.

[SSHA778]

2H frost plays fine, except that we can ignore Killing Machine. Without that bit of gameplay it's extremely simple.

I would point out that DW Frost also ignores KM, however, this is because of the rotation. This would be a matter of perspective, but I consider it a failure as well. The rotation would be unchanged if the proc were removed, as it doesn't affect your priorities.

Killing Machine
Your main-hand autoattacks have a Y% chance to grant a 100% critical strike bonus to your next Obliterate or Frost Strike. Damage is increased by your base critical strike chance. Stacks two times.

Letting KM stack accomplishes nothing, for the problem with KM is not with the overwrites. In fact, those are minimal (occurring mid-GCD or in resource dead-zones, the latter of which haste removes), even when my sim was performing the rotation flawlessly. And by minimally, I mean barely once per 2 minutes for either rotation. While adding a second stack would likely eliminate this, it still does not encourage stalling. Why? Because overwrites weren't the driving factor on why KM-stalling wasn't a gain; lost potential GCDs were, and these remain unchanged.

As Clash1 pointed out, one of the reasons the KM mechanic fails for 2H should be pretty obvious once you grasp that GCDs matter. The 2H rotation consists dominantly of OB, FS, SR (execute range), Rime-HB, and basically nothing else. Every single one of those abilities except Rime-HB (which is proc-driven) consumes KM (with DPS T15-4pc). In order to not consume KM, you have to bring your rotation to a full halt. If you compare that to Unholy's Sudden Doom (which is entirely different, but serves the point nonetheless), while saving that proc (such as if DT is fading), any rune-based attack is still available to use. This is why you simply cannot afford to delay with KM, because any delay with KM is a delay to your rotation (i.e. resources). According to the rune layout in the OP, frost runes are free to use if KM is procced to serve as a filler, so that issue is at least addressed.

However, there is really no way to make KM in its current mechanical implementation engaging. If you remove it from RNG and make it controllable by players, then they'll just tag a macro line before OB/FS, depending on the spec.

Personally, I would like to see KM affect FS and OB differently and in some manner that is more rotationally significant than simply increasing the critical strike chance and/or damage (which, of course, doesn't change the rotation--hence my point), in essence requiring you to "weave" KM-FS/KM-OB (but not necessarily in an alternating fashion) for optimal DPS depending on the situation (the last two ideas being on a similar track). Very short buff durations on consuming KM (less than 50% of the average proc interval) would be one route, as in, KM-OB granting one buff and KM-FS granting a different one (preferably also implemented with a decrease in PPM, and absolutely a decrease in PPM for DW if so). Short buffs (relative to the average proc interval) would make 100% uptime impossible, thereby making the buff choice significant in the short-term since having both up is an unlikely outcome. This would require the player to think ahead to determine which buff would be more useful. For example, something along the lines of a 10s buff occurring roughly every 25s. If one buff enhanced AoE, and the other single-target (but if they were truly this clear-cut then the model would be a failure, so this is just for demonstration purposes), then you wouldn't want to gain the AoE buff during a single-target phase. To fix accidental consumption from procs right before OB/FS, they would need to switch KM to proc from OB/FS (or HB if converted to RPPM) as opposed to auto-attacks.

I would also like to see disease dynamics return. As much as players probably hated it, I saw quite the potential in the early WotLK rotations that involved disease consumption: if they had simply made the act of consumption trigger various mechanics depending on which diseases are present and the strike being used--and no, I don't mean flat % damage modifiers per disease on the target; I mean effect "A" happens if BP is up, effect "B" happens if FF is up, and effect "C" (which is neither "A" nor "B") happens if both BP and FF are up. Some strikes consume diseases, and some don't. That would ramp up the complexity of the rotation significantly and bring back disease dynamics.

Returning to the OP, as for the proposed talents, raid cooldowns as talent choices are the bane of DK tanks. All you need to bring is a DPS DK for that raid cooldown. Also related to Blood, I would point out that in this redesign, Blood does not have any ranged abilities. This is a crippling disadvantage for tanking.

As for the proposed rune redesign, I am not a fan. Death runes were implemented to give flexibility to your rotation; their name simply is inconsequential. Your proposed design removes that capability. I have to agree with Stir that having strikes be gateways to death runes is a more rewarding design, as it makes the death runes actually special. What makes a blood(death) rune better than a blood rune? The fact that it's a death rune, and the fact that they are exclusive. If an AoE phase is coming up for Unholy, you use FeS to stockpile death runes (Reaping alleviates this somewhat), and that's a sign of skill. Previously as Frost, you would do something similar if you wanted high-burst with OBs. There's an art to making that line up well. I'll agree that Blood Strike for Frost felt forced, but I opposed permanent death runes. Your proposed design eliminates this nuance entirely, and this nuance is one that adds depth to the rotation.

Overall, I really see no need to overhaul the current rune system (except, eventually, I would like to see permanent death runes for Frost go away, but as long as 2H's main strike is a 2-rune strike, this won't happen).

Also, the developers want 2H Frost and DW Frost to feel and play differently. Proposing something that flies in the face of that is not likely to catch on. The developers are competent; they can balance the sub-specs. Of course, that's going to be within probably around 3% or so, but that's more than enough tolerance, regardless of what players think.

[Stir]

I am not 100% sure I follow your train of thought. Where are these sub-optimal resources that we have right now? Are you referring to Unholy spec and their need to convert frost runes? Or Frost spec and their unholy runes? I do not see what you have explained in our current design.

Well; it's one example, yes. The 'optimal' strike, for instance (let's take a Blood example) would be Death Strike. The only runes you've got up are 1 Death Rune and 1 Blood rune. The choice you have here is: 2 Heart Strikes/Blood Boils, or 1 HS/BB and waiting for another rune to follow it with DS just that much earlier. With your design, it takes that choice away by pretty much ALWAYS allowing the optimal strike as soon as even single rune is off the cooldown.

Death Knights = Twitch mechanics these days. It's been that way since they implemented Runic Empowerment during Cata Beta. It was reinforced during MoP Beta when all specs were given a 1 second GCD. We are a long way from the original design of the class. Back then, yes, there was more "strategy" in how you played the class. Not so much now. And for the record, I do prefer the WotLK style rune regeneration. It was very smooth.

Now; I skipped replying to the middle part... I'm not overly familiar with 2H frost (never liked the spec; surely on the surface, it would seem that you are correct). I kind of answered the question regarding Blood/Unholy is the first paragraph's response (at least, to me. The fact that it's a big deal to me doesn't mean you experience it the same way, of course).
I, too, liked WotLK rune mechanics better. Sure; you could burst like hell at the start if you didn't mind getting locked afterwards... But that was a choice. In PvE, at least, going that route wasn't optimal, though I can imagine that in several tiers of PvP, it was really problematic, since a burst-engage could mean you'd burst through opponents just before you ran out of resources... Especially in a Battleground scenario, this is indeed problematic.
Runic Empowerment, by the way, is a choice. On the whole, Blood Tap is a really good alternative that allows you to pool runes, and use manually, increasing your internal strategy. While it grants less runes over time than the other two, it does grant you those runes when you need them (meaning that you don't 'lose' procs) due to current rune uptime.

[Clash the DK]

Returning to the OP, as for the proposed talents, raid cooldowns as talent choices are the bane of DK tanks. All you need to bring is a DPS DK for that raid cooldown. Also related to Blood, I would point out that in this redesign, Blood does not have any ranged abilities. This is a crippling disadvantage for tanking.

As for the proposed rune redesign, I am not a fan. Death runes were implemented to give flexibility to your rotation; their name simply is inconsequential. Your proposed design removes that capability. I have to agree with Stir that having strikes be gateways to death runes is a more rewarding design, as it makes the death runes actually special. What makes a blood(death) rune better than a blood rune? The fact that it's a death rune, and the fact that they are exclusive. If an AoE phase is coming up for Unholy, you use FeS to stockpile death runes (Reaping alleviates this somewhat), and that's a sign of skill. Previously as Frost, you would do something similar if you wanted high-burst with OBs. There's an art to making that line up well. I'll agree that Blood Strike for Frost felt forced, but I opposed permanent death runes. Your proposed design eliminates this nuance entirely, and this nuance is one that adds depth to the rotation.

Overall, I really see no need to overhaul the current rune system (except, eventually, I would like to see permanent death runes for Frost go away, but as long as 2H's main strike is a 2-rune strike, this won't happen).

Also, the developers want 2H Frost and DW Frost to feel and play differently. Proposing something that flies in the face of that is not likely to catch on. The developers are competent; they can balance the sub-specs. Of course, that's going to be within probably around 3% or so, but that's more than enough tolerance, regardless of what players think.

You do not think that Dark Command and Death Grip would suffice as ranged abilities? I could put Death Coil back into each spec, but I honestly didn't think it would be a huge deal. But, I don't tank that much these days.

You say that Death runes were implemented for flexibility. I think that sorta worked well with the WotLK design. But now, take Frost for example, we're just spamming Obliterate with all of our runes. That's taking flexibility too far. On the other hand, Unholy can still run into rune isolation problems with their setup due to their need to convert Death runes. And the ramp up time for AOE is ridiculous. If you need burst from a cold start (Ji-Kun), that presents a big problem. And it can be a visual nightmare when you look at your runes and see 4 different colors on your palette at the same time. At this point, I don't think the benefits out weight the complications that "flexible" Death runes bring to the table.

The point of this exercise for me is to highlight the problems with the specs and offer simple solutions. And it's less about exact solutions. Fully understanding the problems with the class can lead to solutions that I would never even consider. I'm sure the Devs have a few different design directions they could take the class at any time.

And I fully understand their passion to offer two different playstyles within one spec (Frost). It is just my opinion that it has never worked. One always comes out ahead. And that is where everyone flocks. I think if they really want to offer more playstyles within a class, then they need to create more actual specs for each class similar to Druids. Lots of discussion on that topic in the other forums here.

[Schizoide]

Personally, I would like to see KM affect FS and OB differently and in some manner that is more rotationally significant than simply increasing the critical strike chance and/or damage (which, of course, doesn't change the rotation--hence my point), in essence requiring you to "weave" KM-FS/KM-OB (but not necessarily in an alternating fashion) for optimal DPS depending on the situation (the last two ideas being on a similar track).

Yes, that is essentially what I was getting at in the end of my post.

[Wrien]

Also, the developers want 2H Frost and DW Frost to feel and play differently. Proposing something that flies in the face of that is not likely to catch on. The developers are competent; they can balance the sub-specs. Of course, that's going to be within probably around 3% or so, but that's more than enough tolerance, regardless of what players think.

Let's hope that they revert the changes made in MoP.
Let's hope 2h Frost will also be based around Frost Strike and building RP once again.

- Remove the damage bonuses from ToT and MotFW. Revert them to what they were in Cataclysm (10 damage bonus and 45% chance on auto attack to get 10 runic power for 2h, and hits with off-hand + extra runeforge for DW)
- Increase Frost Strike damage from 105% to 155% by default
- Increase Obliterate damage from 235% to 280% by default
- Give us one short-CD dps-skill. Like 15 sec, just for a change to our rotation.

Frost should be based around Runic Power. We have 2 rune-based specs (unholy and blood). Rune skills should primary build RP so you can Frost Strike.

[Kraeth]

I for one celebrate the two playstyles of Frost. In Cata it was mostly a cosmetic change (although 2h wasn't very viable.) Frost had the same OB-heavy rotation even back then, unless you mean pvp. In that case especially I'm vehemently opposed to the idea; I hate nothing more than PvE changes based on PvP.

[Clash the DK]

I for one celebrate the two playstyles of Frost. In Cata it was mostly a cosmetic change (although 2h wasn't very viable.)

The part about 2H not being viable is precisely what I am talking about. And that's the #1 reason why DW vs 2H should just be a cosmetic choice.

Assuming everything is completely balanced on a single target (rare occasion), the problem for me isn't the fact that the two play differently. The problem for me is they value our secondary stats differently. This creates large discrepancies between the two sub-specs in situations where you are engaging multiple targets. And that's due to our Mastery.

If they could create different playstyles between DW and 2H Frost while keeping the same secondary stat preferences, then maybe it would be less of an issue for me.

[SSHA778]

You do not think that Dark Command and Death Grip would suffice as ranged abilities? I could put Death Coil back into each spec, but I honestly didn't think it would be a huge deal. But, I don't tank that much these days.

I don't tank either, but I do know that only having two taunts (which mobs can be immune to) and DnD as my ranged abilities is very inflexible. If mobs come from different locations (or staggered), there's not really much you can do. You may be able to taunt mobs, but if the mob doesn't reach you before taunt is over, then that mob is gone. Of course, the tank does have legs, but I like to be nice to my melee DPS when reasonably possible.

You say that Death runes were implemented for flexibility. I think that sorta worked well with the WotLK design. But now, take Frost for example, we're just spamming Obliterate with all of our runes. That's taking flexibility too far. On the other hand, Unholy can still run into rune isolation problems with their setup due to their need to convert Death runes. And the ramp up time for AOE is ridiculous. If you need burst from a cold start (Ji-Kun), that presents a big problem. And it can be a visual nightmare when you look at your runes and see 4 different colors on your palette at the same time. At this point, I don't think the benefits out weight the complications that "flexible" Death runes bring to the table.

To be honest, and I don't say this to dismiss your paragraph entirely, but I think Frost is without a doubt the worst example of death rune flexibility and shouldn't be mentioned. Blood Strike was such a useless ability that the developers felt the need to just give the spec permanent death runes instead of trying to make Blood Strike more appealing. Bringing the spec down to (essentially) a singular rune-based ability has eliminated all the flexibility. You don't need death runes for their true purpose if the only rune ability you use is OB (2H) or HB (DW). If they had simply replaced blood runes with frost runes, then the end result would be pretty much the same (not exactly for 2H).

The best example for death rune flexibility currently, to me, would be Blood. They can substitute for IT, PS/DnD, and HS/BB/SR or be spent on DS. How often you actually do that is irrelevant; the possibility exists and is one that you will make use of. The Blood Tap talent also goes in line with this by returning a death rune.

I'm aware that Unholy has some rune issues when it comes to AoE scenarios. These are primarily the result of when you don't have the setup time available to you, and I don't think that's necessarily a flaw in the rune system but in encounter design. The developers have done their part in trying to alleviate these issues with PS applying both BP and FF as well as adding BB to Reaping. To me, when you can properly set up for AoE, it is an incredibly rewarding feeling. The rotation with RC feels incredibly fluid, and this is why I don't think there is an issue with the rune system here.

And I fully understand their passion to offer two different playstyles within one spec (Frost). It is just my opinion that it has never worked. One always comes out ahead. And that is where everyone flocks.

The way I've always seen this is that it is borne out of ignorance, deliberate or not, and it is only becoming more widespread with the availability of sims. Even though computers are awesome and getting them to do stuff for us is awesome, that does not make them immune to giving stupid results, so they should always be verified. When the developers design two sub-specs, how much of a difference is actually significant? 1%? 2%? 5%? 10%? The margin of error? Under what fight conditions?

In order to answer that question, you have to first define what is significance, and then you have to somehow define a threshold at which it begins to exist, and that definition will not be universal. I would maintain that differences of even up to 5% don't matter for anything but world-first progression, and conservatively 3% works for everything. How did I arrive at that? Purely arbitrarily, but by looking at fight-length-extension deltas from changing DPS and low sample size DPS variances (and time variances) that would be more realistic than 50k iterations from sims. Others maintain that only 1% will suffice. Sims will tell you statistical significance, and something that is statistically significant may not be significant at all. If one spec does 100,002 +/- 1 DPS and another does 100,008 +/- 2 DPS, one is statistically significantly better than the other. Is one actually better?

Finally, and even more so, sim users need to consider the fight conditions being used and the effort that went into priority optimization, especially and absolutely when considering inter-class balance. Not all priorities are optimized to the same degree, and this will affect how classes will rank relative to others. Not all priorities are simple. Not all priorities (nor modules) are bug-free. And, as a reality check, sim users need to realize that the sim is simply better than they are--flat out--and will always overestimate actual gains, which can further magnify differences between specs.

In short, sims are good for trends, and that's about it. Exact numbers should always be extremely cautioned, and if you (generic person) don't know how the sim works, you really shouldn't be using it for analysis. Sorry to put it that bluntly, but the availability of SimC deludes people into thinking that everyone can be a theorycrafter by simply running a sim; sims are merely a part of theorycrafting, not the entirety. A current case in point would be people arguing over strength versus haste for Frost.

Because these above factors aren't considered, most of the forum users are deluded into being more confident than they ought to be. They then post with this confidence and convince others to believe that they are, in fact, correct (regardless of whether they are or not). Hence, the "flocking." This flocking will further skew data from RaidBots or other sources, further reinforcing (falsely) the belief that one spec is superior to the other.

Let's hope that they revert the changes made in MoP.
Let's hope 2h Frost will also be based around Frost Strike and building RP once again.

As you can already tell by the post below yours, your feelings are not shared by everyone. I prefer the two to be different, but that is purely a preference. The developers are the ones calling the shots; not me.