WoD Death Knight Changes

[Raikh]

The question is what purpose does conversion serve. Conversion does not scale with resolve, therefore conversion is no huge part of your heal. It can also not counter spikes, nor is it sufficient to stop you from slowly dropping to your death. It may be able to nullify some periodic raid dmg but that has barely any relevance for your survival.

In the end I don't see any important niche for conversion, especially since DP can really save your life and already did multiple times so far in mythic raiding. It may look awesome statistically, hey conversion healed THAT much over the course of the fight. But hwo much of that healing was really effective.
You sacrifice dmg after all, so even if you spared your healers some heals, if they leave the fight with 50%+ mana, you could have better used that to deal damage and shorten the fight.

That dps loss is even bigger if you look at infinite breath which deals tremendous amounts of dmg on its own and may even heal you if the boss deals magic dmg.

For conversion to be an effective choice I would want to check the following points: 1.the probability of DP saving your life are very low. 2. The healing of conversion is absolutely effective -> healers are at their limits by either gcds/mana for the time conversion is used. 3. The (soft)enrage of the encounter is lightyears away from the expected kill time.

For any other scenario I would consider it a gimmick and the otherwise lost dmg to be worth more. Haven't found a boss where that applies so far.

[Schizoide]

In a tanking model where spike damage was a huge concern, conversion would be ill-suited, I agree. WoD is (as were the past 2 expansions) supposed to be different, with a triage healing model where tanks aren't always either about to die next hit or full health. Now whether they hit that target is another question entirely, but certainly high-uptime Conversion has a place if they did. It basically means each 1.6s boss hit deals 3.2% less of your total health.

[Wrien]

Changes i would like to see if sub-specs are to stay

-Might of the Frozen Wastes
Wielding a two-handed weapon increases Obliterate damage by 65% (up from 50%), and all melee attacks by 25% (down from 35%). DW part unchanged.

- Rune of Razorice
Increases vulnerability to your Frost attacks per stack by 5% (up from 2%), stacking up to 3 times (down from 5 times).


The change to MotfW is a small buff/nerf to 2h. Obliterate damage has been increased a little, and the additional melee damage has been decreased. This is done to make DW's Frost Strike (DW's main skill) feel significantly stronger than 2h's, just as it should.
Razorice change is a QoL change and a small buff to DW. This is done to bring DW and 2h closer together in terms of dps. Like 9/10 Frost DK's are using 2h right now (based on experience), these changes should bring 2h and DW closer together and make DW more appealing in PvP.

[Kraeth]

It's not even IF they are to stay, they've been there for over four years now and I don't see them going anywhere. But it's nice to see you're giving up your old crusade. Here's hoping you won't start copypasting this to every other thread about frost...

[RuneDK]

I think they should just add blood dps this expansion with the success that glad prot is....then get rid of 2H Frost, and make frost a DW only tree. while it would basically be a massive overhaul it's one i think that would be absolutely worth doing. They could finally balance frost without subspecs and potentially bring heart strike back to the game.

[Sunnydee]

I think they should just add blood dps this expansion with the success that glad prot is....then get rid of 2H Frost, and make frost a DW only tree. while it would basically be a massive overhaul it's one i think that would be absolutely worth doing. They could finally balance frost without subspecs and potentially bring heart strike back to the game.

Prob the most reasonable thing ive read in many years when it comes to DKs

[Raikh]

That would be ssumign that the subspecs cause frosts problems which they absolutely don't. The only "problem" which is not shared amogn the subspecs is mastery value for frost 2h which is rather low.
Frost subspecs also essentially existed before blood was removed, the increased difference between both specs came with MoP, not cataclysm. And MoP brought both specs also way closer together in terms of output than they were before, which was quite positive.

I also looked at the stat weights of quite some dps specs and frost is as of now definitely not the absolute worst scaling spec. I would rather say that there are outliers which are totally nuts in scaling but thats not quite the majority.

The current state of frost isn't a result of subspecs but the general unwillingess of blizz to change mechanics and they stated that. Regardless if that is good or bad it ha snothing to do with subspecs. Both are close and both are specialized so that one stat is a bit better and one is a bit worse. Haste for 2h and mastery for dw. Crit is screwed by general mechanics and the other stats are neutral for both specs.

I would welcome the return of blood dps and depending on how you look at it, it already is there since bloods cleave and AoE capabilities are insane. But I don't see the connection to removing frost 2h. Getting another dps doesn't have much to do with removing one subspec, especially if they're set apart by a single passive specilaizing around certain abilities which just contains shifitng percentages around to balance it.

Its wishful thinking something would drastically change if one subspec were to go. That would really only make sense if they wanted blood to be a carbon copy of frost and I highly doubt that especially since they learned that removing spec options like blood dps in cata is generally welcome in any way and I think they wouldn't go through the hassle of returning blood as a dps spec only to get frost 2h another color.

[Wrien]

That would be ssumign that the subspecs cause frosts problems which they absolutely don't. The only "problem" which is not shared among the sub-specs is mastery value for frost 2h which is rather low.

Mastery was not an issue for 2h frost before sub-specs came in MoP, when 2h didn't focus only on Obliterate. Frost played identical in Cata with 2h and DW, and Mastery was equally as valuable for both.
Sub-specs causes lots of problems. Talents are not balanced for 2h and DW either. Death Siphon sucks for 2h, Conversion sucks for DW, BoS is not very good with DW, Plague Leech and Blood Tap is must-have with DW etc.

[Raikh]

Mastery wasn't equally valuable. Frost 2h generated alot more RP than dw in cata, causing Frost 2h to stack mastery and dw wanted haste to a degree. Frost lost a lot of value of haste due to that high rp gain and now its simply vice versa, frost 2h wants haste and dw wants mastery. Mastery is a bit more gimped for 2h than it was for dw in cata as it was for dw still good as OB/FS dmg ratio was closer than now.
Its still no unsolvable problem, nor direly needs adjsutment. Hell, look at WW monk mastery, thats a terrible stat, mastery is good against that for frost 2h.

PL is mandatory for every spec and thats not problem of the spec but rather that both PB and UB are almost no gain while PL is a considerable gain. Its like comparing a dps CD with optical decoration.
BT is no straight just have for dw either its somewhat better but its not crucial. The gap may widen a bit later into the expansion but that is not outright a problem since it on't make or break your output, it didn't in MoP and also won't in WoD. PvP and BT is ahwole different story, though and is the same across all specs again-

DSi is a smaller trade-off for dw, conversion a smaller for 2h, thats ok in my opinion, DP is neutral again and thats also pretty good choice currently. I would call this a minor problem if at all. BoS for dw is a bit different since it shares the role of dealing dmg but that is in theory easily fixed without changing more than adding a X% dmg modifier to the dw BoS.

Absolute equality is never achieved and would be actually terrible if it ever was and the disparities between 2h and dw are absolutely in an acceptable range. They're really close, have their own little niches without something fundamental and still express their own character. If a few thign actually worked out with changes of the dk class in the past years this wa sone of the things that worked rather well.

[Schizoide]

The obvious choices for adding DPS specs are paladins, monks, and priests, because they each only have one. They "deserve" it the most. And of those three classes priests only fill two roles so if fairness came into play, they'd come out on top.

Anyway, Blood DPS was nothing special back in WOTLK. People liked it primarily because it offered top-tier performance stacking ArP, but you sacrificed a ton of AE/cleave getting there.

"Absolute" equality is a silly target. 2H and DW frost could be much closer with a few simple changes. The devs just didn't bother.

[RuneDK]

That would be ssumign that the subspecs cause frosts problems which they absolutely don't. The only "problem" which is not shared amogn the subspecs is mastery value for frost 2h which is rather low.
Frost subspecs also essentially existed before blood was removed, the increased difference between both specs came with MoP, not cataclysm. And MoP brought both specs also way closer together in terms of output than they were before, which was quite positive.

I also looked at the stat weights of quite some dps specs and frost is as of now definitely not the absolute worst scaling spec. I would rather say that there are outliers which are totally nuts in scaling but thats not quite the majority.

The current state of frost isn't a result of subspecs but the general unwillingess of blizz to change mechanics and they stated that. Regardless if that is good or bad it ha snothing to do with subspecs. Both are close and both are specialized so that one stat is a bit better and one is a bit worse. Haste for 2h and mastery for dw. Crit is screwed by general mechanics and the other stats are neutral for both specs.

I would welcome the return of blood dps and depending on how you look at it, it already is there since bloods cleave and AoE capabilities are insane. But I don't see the connection to removing frost 2h. Getting another dps doesn't have much to do with removing one subspec, especially if they're set apart by a single passive specilaizing around certain abilities which just contains shifitng percentages around to balance it.

Its wishful thinking something would drastically change if one subspec were to go. That would really only make sense if they wanted blood to be a carbon copy of frost and I highly doubt that especially since they learned that removing spec options like blood dps in cata is generally welcome in any way and I think they wouldn't go through the hassle of returning blood as a dps spec only to get frost 2h another color.

The subspecs existed before cata sure, but once they buffed dual wield frost dps to make it viable Frost essentially became the DW spec. I feel with all the complications of simplifying Frost and trying to make KM matter when it in fact doesnt still would be fixed by essentially adding blood DPS back into the game. This way they only need to worry about one play style for Frost. It would give 2H DPS two options and 1H DPS one option. There are plenty of ways they can balance the subspecs that we've talked about in this very thread and like schiz said the devs just chose not to implement any of them yet again. The only logical choice at this point with the way the devs think is removing one of the subspecs and making it blood dps. It wouldn't make sense to make blood dw dps so 2H is the one that would be moved over.

[Raikh]

If they wanted to add blood dps back, frost 2h could still stay, at worst they would homogenize the playstyles but keep both weapon types available. I personally wouldn't want to see the outrage of the people prefering to play frost 2h wake up and realize that they can't play frost with their current weapons anymore. Thats just not going to happen and it also wouldn't solve anything.

You've reffered to it yourself they don't want to change anything about the classes core mechanics. So regardless of blood dps coming back or not it won't change a damn thing about frost. The subspecs are no problem at all, if one thing is a problem it is that there are no acknowledged problems concerning frost form blizz at all. And if I look at quite some specs and their scaling frost is definitely not rock bottom and therefore in its current environment not problematic on that side at all and again they're ofcourse outliers which scale insanely well but that is far from the majority of specs currently.

The only point where I see us significantly dropping on the dps ladder in comparison now is when we get to setboni because ours are for both specs practically non existent. I've never seen SO bad boni, it is fit for an april's fool.

Offering solutions is not often something which actually works, especially not when there ar eno acknowledged problems. Bringing blood back and implicating that there should only be 2 2h specs isn't going to solve anything. Even if they somehow decide that frost 2h goes in favor of blood dps that doesn't mean that they fix dw and its remaining problems. They could simply remove 2h and leave dw as it is because it seems fine to them and at that point we simply make a portion of the player base angry for no reason. Its simply not working like that.

[Deleted]

the biggest misstake blizzard did was when they changed the trees in wotlk, they should just balanced it out.

and keep it the same, everything took a huge ass hit after wotlk luckily i quited.

its better now as ive heard but still a mess.