2H Frost possible fix??

[Deleted]

So as I can see at this moment in time a lot of people dislike 2H Frost play style due to the large dependency on Obliti criits and all the focus on the Obliti's. I feel that this can be resolved by lowering the damage of Obliti by about 30% or so and making it apply a DoT for 6 seconds dealing 40% of damage done as frost damage. This could be done every time obliti is used or only on KM Obliti's. The same thing could also be applied to Frost Strike. I think this would also help 2H frost's scaling issue. As we all know 2H frost does not scale well with gear at all.


I would really like to hear how people think this would help (If at all) and also if anyone has idea's on how to improve the spec I would be happy to hear!

Thanks,
Goldyplod

[Deleted]

A lot of players like frost because of the huge crits you get from Obliterate. When you hit them, you hit em hard. Some complaints for unholy is that the sustain damage might be good but it feels a bit wishy washy, doesn't feel like your attacks hit for very much.

I feel this would add more to the feel of unholy and take away the brute force feeling of frost.

[Deleted]

You can choose to play a no-downtime 2H Frost and stop sitting on Killing Machine procs for little to no DPS loss. A lot of people don't seem to realize simulations are machines and don't reflect real gameplay performed by real people correctly. I love having a bursty damage spec available, because that's pretty much what PvP has been about since the first arena season. I don't see any major issues with the spec and enjoy it quite a bit more than unholy.

[Schizoide]

2H frost still has tons of downtime when you (correctly) stop delaying for Killing Machine. Pooling resources or delaying attacks has no effect on downtime at all, unless of course you cap resources. The only way to do anything about 2H frost's downtime is to spec Plague Leech, which every PvE DK in every spec should do, as it is essentially mandatory due to its damage delta over the two other options in that tier.

DW frost has much less downtime, particularly if you use the mastersimple priority, removing Obliterate entirely. Which you totally can do, again with very little performance impact.

[Deleted]

2H frost still has tons of downtime when you (correctly) stop delaying for Killing Machine. Pooling resources or delaying attacks has no effect on downtime at all, unless of course you cap resources. The only way to do anything about 2H frost's downtime is to spec Plague Leech, which every PvE DK in every spec should do, as it is essentially mandatory due to its damage delta over the two other options in that tier.

DW frost has much less downtime, particularly if you use the mastersimple priority, removing Obliterate entirely. Which you totally can do, again with very little performance impact.

That's not my experience. I play both 2H Frost and Unholy depending on encounter, and the time spent waiting for resources is pretty similiar for each spec. Haste isn't a bad stat for 2H Frost either, and has a positive impact on downtime. There is some downtime, but not tons.

[Schizoide]

That's not my experience. I play both 2H Frost and Unholy depending on encounter, and the time spent waiting for resources is pretty similiar for each spec.

This is a great example why personal experience is subjective. Save a 5 min combatlog for both specs on a training dummy, parse on warcraftlogs.com, and count the GCDs. Unholy has dramatically less wait time than 2H frost. They aren't even close. Without Plague Leech 2H frost can go over 40%!

Additionally, haste is a poor stat for 2H frost once you get past a rather low threshold-- last time I saw it tested, this threshold was around 450 rating at L100.

[Deleted]

I agree I would be screwed without Plague Leech, but it does exist and there are no other viable options. Not sure how much relevance training dummy data has, as it doesn't reflect the actual raid environment at all. Even Butcher has a little bit of movement, and it's an unusually static encounter. You can crunch the numbers on simulations and dummy combat logs all you want, but what use is the information if it can't be applied in the context it's being gathered for? You can say 2H Frost has objectively more downtime than unholy, but it doesn't mean anything.

Also take Haste in the correct context. Mastery is also a poor stat for 2H Frost, because of the emphasis on Obliterate's physical damage. Killing Machine devalues Critical. Versatility is universally considered amazingly meh. That only leaves Multistrike, and places Haste somewhere in the middle just behind versatility. I'm pretty sure sims support this, regardless of any haste soft caps.

[Sunnydee]

Additionally, haste is a poor stat for 2H frost once you get past a rather low threshold-- last time I saw it tested, this threshold was around 450 rating at L100.

euhm. been talked about in 2 other threads that while being "lesser" geared, haste is THEE go to stat

Softcap as we discussed a few posts ago is ~ 1k haste.

[Raikh]

Haste even goes higher for BoS as a talent, even with the current weak sim iteration on BoS where it does merely 5% of your dmg hastes rules supreme for me and I#m sitting at over 1,2k haste. If I now consider that my BoS uptime and dmg is in a worst case scenario, with almost no RC procs during BoS, twice the amount the sim suggests in dmg % and uptime and even can get up over 15% with some luck and the right fight durations haste should be worth even more, especially since longer breaths give you even more down time and breath lasts longer if you have more haste.

Haste is a fanatstic stat for BoS users, wouldn't also be surprised if it would get unholy's haste value up from the bottom, but its kinda hard to measure that from a few combat logs.

Mastery is a problem on its own and crit too. Both easy to solve without changing game play but they are unwilled to do so, so whatever.

[Schizoide]

You can say 2H Frost has objectively more downtime than unholy, but it doesn't mean anything.

Would you care to rephrase that? I'm sure after reading what you posted again you didn't mean it.

euhm. been talked about in 2 other threads that while being "lesser" geared, haste is THEE go to stat

Link with evidence substantiating that, please? I must have missed it.

[Deleted]

We seem to of diverted away from the original post here. There are plenty of posts about 2H Frost haste value's. I made this post to discuss other way's to improve the bursty play style of 2H Frost and move the game play away from Obliti whoring.

[Deleted]

Would you care to rephrase that? I'm sure after reading what you posted again you didn't mean it.

Sure. What I meant was that it even if I were to do what you suggested and get the exact results you described - that unholy has much less downtime - it would not mean anything, because any testing done on a training dummy is in no way representative of an actual raid encounter. That's what we're trying to figure out and that's what matters, right? Not how a spec performs and feels like on paper or when beating on a dummy, but how it plays in the actual endgame. Patchwerk-style sims say unholy spends 13.7% of the time waiting, while 2H frost spends 19.1%. Any movement works in 2H Frost's favor. On the dummy it may have 40% more downtime than unholy, but in a raid it does not. Which one matters? I don't know what exactly you're implying by saying personal experience is subjective, but that doesn't make it any less important.

[Schizoide]

When you're talking about damage dealt that's totally true, because you're missing all the raid buffs and debuffs. But when you're testing downtime, using a training dummy is perfectly valid, since DKs have the unholy aura haste raidbuff.

Of course if you lose time on target any spec will have tons of "downtime", but that's not what we mean when we talk about downtime. That's why the sim calls it "wait time", which is much more descriptive-- it's time spent waiting on resources, when you don't have any buttons to press.

If you don't find it annoying because you're running around out of melee range half the time anyway, that's awesome. But there's no contesting that unholy spends a lot less time waiting on resources than 2H frost.

[Deleted]

the downtime with frost for 2hand can be solved easy, make so your frost presence: if you are equiped with a 2hander it regens your runes faster(instead of the runic regen we have now that one you keep if you are in dual wield)

Reduces the damage of Obliterate numbers i will not go into due to balance i dont know exact, last thing i want is overtuned dk:s again getting another rework and not work.

change KM, Killing machine procc is activated everytime you use Obliterate and howling blast as 2hand, dw frostrike and howling blast.

Everytime you get KM you get a stacking debuff on the target that gives the target a debuff, once it reaches 5 it detonates shatters if you use obliterate or two frost strikes(dw) and an aoe blast that increases damage taken by all your abilities(not white hits) For a small number of time 6-8 seconds?, this would also up frost aoe damage a bit.

This would result making crit a more Desirble stat and not make crit a dead stat for DK:s, change mastery so it increases your damage by your abilities instead of just frost.

There Frost dk:s have been fixed! both dw and 2hand keep their playstyle without changing to much and making any to powerful.

ERW changed for frost

When used instead of reset all runes, it gives u a buff that increases rune regen speed, You would get more runes over the time, but it wont be instant. making it better, also balance and also fixes pvp issue with balance here imo.

So in result FDK would have less downtime, lose some damage, make crit a more desireble stat, mastery a more desireble stat, no dead stats anymore for FDK.

We would rather pick up mastery now then versitility, but it would still be viable.

Now its just for blizzard to fix Necrotic plague and maybe(BoS) not sure becuse when mastery becomes more viable BoS gets an umph.
Necrotic plague however needs a bit of fixing.

Also on 2hand frost, they dont have that much downtime becuse we dont use it becuse its better dps not doing anything, imo this is a bad method of playstyle, and should not be how any class plays.

Still this is the way DK:S are, if you would do your rotation without KM you would use runes more often and runes would become more an issue, KM balances that but also kills the class somewhat.

[Schizoide]

Oh it's super easy to fix the downtime. But the devs actually want us to have it. Originally because they thought it would free us up to delay attacks for Killing Machine. That didn't happen, but they figure it will at least stop us from being GCD-locked in this expansion. Which it definitely will, for 2H anyway. And that would be (marginally) OK, if:

1) It didn't make Plague Leech even more mandatory for its GCD-filling benefits, when it was already mandatory for being the best DPS choice by a huge margin. 2H frost downtime is ludicrous without Plague Leech. Over 40%!

2) Haste, as Frost's attunement, was actually Frost's best secondary stat, so we could stack it and improve the situation without hurting our performance.

[Sumatran]

So 2h frost would prioritize multistrike and haste?

[Schizoide]

Last I checked 2H was multistrike>versatility>haste>crit>mastery.

[Sumatran]

About KM procs. Say I have a KM proc but my next oblit isnt ready for 5+ seconds. Do I just auto attack till oblit is ready? What is the acceptable cut off time where it is okay to just use FS?

[Schizoide]

Don't delay attacks for KM at all.

[XRaDiiX]

in Tank gear with 300-400 Bonus armor i've been simming 19.5k-20k dps with Strength Flask and prepot/army with frost on the training dummy at the garrison

This is without raid bufffs i was able to sustain 19-20k dps for 5 mins. with 28-30k dps burst at the first 30 seconds or so

Basically if u fail at dpsing with frost its your fault its extremely simple to dps as frost and i beat most bads who have full dps gear when i have 400 bonus armor and sim higher than many people with full DPS gear bonus armor is completely worthless as a stat when u switch to frost spec. I was doing 25k dps on Kargath and 28k sustained dps on butcher when i raided and that was wearing my tank gear with some dps gear switched in and still had 400 useless bonus armor.

Imagine if i used 2 1 handers how ridiculous my dps would be. If what this thread says is true