5.4 Frost DW returns?

[Raikh]

Almost every fight mechanically favors Frost over Unholy, but in a very similar vein, Unholy is far enough ahead overall that again nobody uses it. If Unholy was nerfed another 5%, we'd all go Frost again.

Just the thought of another nerf to unholy makes me shudder.

For cleave encounters our scaling is actually not that, since hb scales okay with mastery and crit and even haste to an extend and constant aoe, but the nerf from 80% to 50% cleave was really redundant and really hurt, i mean it was the niche that made frost dw so good in t14.

Since our feedback is somewhat ignored I'm very interested if they let frost just die or do intelligent buffs. See the real cries coming when frost 2h reaches it's scaling death at like 20k (guessed number) haste, where we can spam oblit with many km proccs so that mastery and crit are completely worthless and start to scale like backwards with haste getting useless due to being nearly oblit capped with some filler left. Frost dw will slowly be buried by by its low base + below mediocre scaling and unholy, lets see, at least are our stats not devalued by our core mechanic. xD

[Kronik85]

Its amazing how a spec being tuned poorly and have selection bias can have such an impact on its perspective.

Frost, both 2h and dw, are amazing when burst is frequent and common, mobs to aoe are smaller and have less health, and have less opportunities for multi dotting.

Fights like Wind Lord heroic massivly favored dw frost compared to unholy. This fight in particular is interesting because on normal it is inverted. Longer aoe and a buff that has 100% uptime allowed for unholy to close the gap.

Its amazing how a fight like Stone Guards favored frost last tier, when a very similar fight in Council of Elders ( Less than 5 mobs stacked but for most of the fight) favors unholy, again, tuning.

Fights this tier that should favor frost if not for poor tuning or selection bias.

Jinrokh with frequent damage buff.
Council where cleave should trump aoe
Megaera with cooldowns up for every head and low health adds to burst on heroic
Jikun with low health adds to aoe and cds that should sync with every nutriment buff
Primordius lack of a pet helps when you have to kill your adds and passive cleave fluff. Unholy can actively fluff with cleave but plenty of ranking parses don't.
Raden is pure single target but has adds that need to be bursted down. Pillar of Frost should be amazing.

Festerblight has also caused an interesting development as a few fights that would normally favor frost, actually seem to favor unholy. ( Could just be tuning/selection bias).

My two favorites for this are the last 3 bosses on heroic:

Qon should favor frost since the aoe phase at the end is short enough that it can be done with cooldowns, however festerblight extension of diseases on the dogs as they fly away allows unholy to close the gap. Quite interesting.

Twins can perform festerblight and dot suen during phase 1. This allows for dots that continue ticking in phase 2. This favors unholy but what should favor frost is the adds that can be cleaved and bursted with cooldowns during and at the end of phase 1.

Lei Shen has frequent low health adds that can be bursted with cds however, people suggest the only dps that matters on this fight is in phase 3. Since unholy can roll powerful diseases from the start that last until phase 3, it became superior.

All absolutely correct but I'm more confused as to why Frost just doesn't compete at all in any circumstance. FB or not UH seems to beat Frost regardless once you reach 53X. I'm still holding out and hoping we ain't close to the Tuning phase yet, providing the numbers were better I kinda agree that there really isn't much value to redesigning Frost AT THIS POINT IN TIME (thought i'd put that in caps before someone jumps down my throat and tells me I'm some kind of apologist or some other such bollocks).

In the future I'd like to see FB firmly entrenched into Unholy, it's actually interesting and rewards you. Frost needs something similar, it could be in the form of making KM something you manage rather than spend (although that could be semantics I guess) or it could be something entirely new. Frost feels easy to pick up, fun to play if you like the whole twitch thing but once you've mastered the basics your not rewarded adequately for trying to take it to the next level.

[Deleted]

Just like back in Cataclysm, they're nerfing and buffing the 3 DPS specs as time goes. Unholy is lacking? +5% strength to Unholy Might. It's too good? -5%.
DW has too much cleave? Reduce HB damage to secondary targets from 65% to 50%. etc etc.

In the end, it doesn't matter because the nature of the whole class is wrong, obsolete and it only leads to a dead end (ressource system, damage scaling, stat weights, etc). After 5.4 comes the new xpac, and if there's not an entire overhaul of the class in 6.0, might aswell get an alt.

[Kronik85]

In the end, it doesn't matter because the nature of the whole class is wrong, obsolete and it only leads to a dead end (ressource system, damage scaling, stat weights, etc). After 5.4 comes the new xpac, and if there's not an entire overhaul of the class in 6.0, might aswell get an alt.

The fact that gear could do more is something that's relatively easy to fix....sort of....ish? My point I guess is that all you need to do to increase a spec's damage is move a few sliders and tada!

How we are fundamentally broken though is something I'd like to see you explain though. Rune's interact with Haste just like every other resource in the game with the exception of Mana and I at the very least think it's a good mechanic anyway. So what do you think is wrong exactly?

[Deleted]

In the future I'd like to see FB firmly entrenched into Unholy

Meh, not sure. True "festerblight" requires you to have an encounter that supports it and would limit our effectiveness on encounters that don't.

I agree that unholy should still have a focus on applying more powerful diseases during procs/buffs etc but then it's been like that since cataclysm anyway - it's just more important now due to having higher disease damage overall. I don't think tunnelling people down the "unlucky, you screwed up on the pull so you're buggered for the entire fight" or "unlucky, your trinket didn't proc so you're buggered for the entire fight" path is the best way of doing things.

A buff to scourge strike and nerf to festering strike would surely promote both the re-application of diseases during procs as well as more SS use... I dunno, Blizzard were initially going to do that last patch and then decided to just nerf UM so...

EDIT - On Topic, I really hope they're looking at doing SOME sort of tuning for frost in 5.4. There's been nothing in the patch notes so far and that worries me slightly. Like I've said in other threads we're not going to see an overhaul of frost this expansion but it does need something, even if it's a buff to howling blast's single target and cleave damage. It's not as if HB is even THAT good at AOE... Have you seen chain lightning recently?!

I'm also pinning hopes on the combination of the crit damage % trinket and the stacking crit trinket keeping unholy in line next patch.

[Deleted]

EDIT - On Topic, I really hope they're looking at doing SOME sort of tuning for frost in 5.4. There's been nothing in the patch notes so far and that worries me slightly. Like I've said in other threads we're not going to see an overhaul of frost this expansion but it does need something, even if it's a buff to howling blast's single target and cleave damage. It's not as if HB is even THAT good at AOE... Have you seen chain lightning recently?!

I'm also pinning hopes on the combination of the crit damage % trinket and the stacking crit trinket keeping unholy in line next patch.

Well.... do not succumb to your hopes. Pretty much seem to me, that some of the answers on PTR are "semi-official" somehow, and they think, that frost will do okay.
Have my reservations about that.

[fangless]

I really miss the 130 RP talent, for one.

Also, would be neat to have some way (maybe a glyph) for DW killing machines to work on hb/fs, and 2h killing machines work for obliterate/fs. Closest thing we'd get to Deathchill :P

[Schizoide]

The original idea was for DW and 2H to prioritize and wait on FS and Obliterate respectively with Killing Machine. That's how the devs planned for DW and 2H to play differently. That didn't actually work, because you're better off ignoring KM entirely. Then Masterfrost 2.0 arose, which accomplished their original goal of making the specs play differently, and they accepted it as the DW frost playstyle.

I don't see them changing KM in that manner for DW frost only while leaving it "broken" for 2H. And I'd much prefer they make it offer actual gameplay for both, anyway.

[Skarssen]

2H frost is just really dull now, with little reward for perfect gameplay as opposed to "decent" gameplay. I'd honestly rather have the old blood DPS spec back and let frost specialize in DW, but I don't want to open that can of worms again ;O

[Schizoide]

Yep, 2H frost either needs another button in the main single-target priority or a more involved priority. That's a 6.0 change, though, not something that'll happen mid-expansion.

Adding a button would be problematic, since DW frost doesn't need it, and I'm still hoping for a runic power-based AE ability at some point.