Frost without breath

[Wardonis]

i've always hated specs that had rotational windows. It's why I abandoned arcane when cata dropped. I don't mind have a CD for a burst window but a regular rotational high damage window like arms and ret have i've always hated. I really hope BoS isn't like that but it sounds like it from what you guys are saying. I think i'm gonna mothball my DK till 7.2.5 so I can use frostscythe and hierlooms to level with. I'm not in a rush

[Super Kami Dende]

Yeah I greatly dislike BoS, would enjoy a build that didn't require it without sacrificing 150k dps.

[Deleted]

To be fair the standard BoS build is good at everything from ST to AOE and doesn't need to change talents fight to fight. Other specs still need to change multiple talents from ST to multitarget fights. It might be boring to be stuck with the standard BoS build at all times, and I get that many don't like it, but it does have advantages that other specs don't.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

And those complain about having to switch talents. Having to use 5+ tomes every NH clear isnt fun too...

[Deleted]

BoS is a smooth wrecking ball, front-loading huge damage when CD's are up. I remember having to go back to Unholy for Mythic Botanist to soak spores (for spell eater and to dps at range in the mean time as I soak them), the game play differences are astounding. Unholy requires so much planning and even to the point when you have to refresh your diseases, which require a GCD. BoS is working pretty much exactly the way I wanted it to do back in WoD for frost (Unholy was the go to spec back then, which required both skill and gaming mechanics when using BoS).

What BoS unfortunately does, is expose the 3-choice talent system when damage really matters. There is no 'real' choice when one spec is good for so many fight scenarios. The BoS playstyle is good for short, long, burst window-esque, cleave and aoe. You can virtually time your short and powerful CD's if you need to do mechanics and there are 4 good legendary items coupled with T19 that work very well together too. Unholy has too many GCD locked abilities that if removed would improve gameplay experience significantly (I'm sure many classes would feel this way), Frost and BoS is genuinely a breath of fresh air (no pun intended) and is miles better than the old and comparatively boring MG spec and Icy Talons buff watching.

[Deleted]

In the end nearly every spec ends at cookie cutter specs. Therr never was a balance.

Be happy that Frost DK is strong. You can be an enhancer with talents like (6% haste / 8% agi / 5% damage) and do crap damage with a crappy playstyle.

Or you can be a Frost DK with real strengths and weaknesses (mobility, keeping BOS up for a long time). Spec is absolutely fine - as long as you get along.

Unholy should be fixed so that those not liking BOS get an alternative.

[Brewhan]

And those complain about having to switch talents. Having to use 5+ tomes every NH clear isnt fun too...

preach brotha being aff lock having to switch talents sucks but now since i just pug heroic I don't even bother switching talents anymore its all on farm with pretty much every ilvl 900 group.

[Saybel]

Oh well, let me start.

DH Havoc:

LVL 99 : 2 Different options depending on how much AoE you need and what legendaries you have
LVL 100: Sames as before
LVL 102: All three options are valid depending on legendaries/encounters
LVL 104: All 3 options are used, but it's only defensive..
LVL 106: 2 Options once again, but one of those is a little tricky (momentum) but really good if you can master it.
LVL 108: 2 options are valid, some for M+, some for ST
LVL 110: 2 valid options ,arguably 3 depending on encounters.

DK Frost:

LVL 56: Only 1 option.
LVL 57: Only 1 option which changes depending if you have T19 4p or not
LVL 58: Only 1 option
LVL 60: Defensive, dosn't matter
LVL 75: Defensive, dosn't matter
LVL 90: Only 1 option
LVL 100: Only 1 option.

But this is an advantage of the class :s

[Nemesquish]

Not sure how its an advantage..We do one set thing, thats it. We cant talent for more AoE, cant talent for more ST. Its just plain bad class design.

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And those complain about having to switch talents. Having to use 5+ tomes every NH clear isnt fun too...

Maybe your guild should use the AoE raid one. We drop one before every boss.

[Deleted]

Not sure how its an advantage..We do one set thing, thats it. We cant talent for more AoE, cant talent for more ST. Its just plain bad class design.

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Maybe your guild should use the AoE raid one. We drop one before every boss.

Most raids are random so no raid is going to give you them. So what now?

I saw a lot of dds in my raid complaining they gotta switch talents. In some cases it is even changing macros, bars. Sometimes even playstyle.

Maybe you simply dont understand what this means.

Additionally many top players always plant to play optimal. They dont care about farm.

[Hctaz]

i've always hated specs that had rotational windows. It's why I abandoned arcane when cata dropped. I don't mind have a CD for a burst window but a regular rotational high damage window like arms and ret have i've always hated. I really hope BoS isn't like that but it sounds like it from what you guys are saying. I think i'm gonna mothball my DK till 7.2.5 so I can use frostscythe and hierlooms to level with. I'm not in a rush

Why are you leveling with BoS? ._. that's an end game raiding build. You don't need to level with the end game raiding build.

Yes it has a period where cool downs are super crazy but the base gameplay is basically the same as a standard Frost DK. If you don't like the down time that you experience then you wouldn't like the class period. It has some down time outside of Breath cycles and even during Breath it has down time, though usually when you're out of steam and Breath will fall off anyway. Regardless, Breath isn't like Arms or Ret really since the Breath cooldown is based around how you play. You can get a Breath that lasts for one tick if you pop it at 25 RP and have no runes, or it can go infinite and last the entire 2 minute cool down. Super rare for this to happen but it has happened to me in a raid. Mythic Tichondrius to be specific. Point is it isn't like Ret or Arms where "This is your time to shine, do it". The cooldown period is entirely up to your RNG and how you react to certain situations.

Also, I don't think much is going to change for Frost next patch. If you're waiting for Frostschythe to become "the new meta build" it probably won't happen. Just level the way you want.

[Nemesquish]

Most raids are random so no raid is going to give you them. So what now?

I saw a lot of dds in my raid complaining they gotta switch talents. In some cases it is even changing macros, bars. Sometimes even playstyle.

Maybe you simply dont understand what this means.

Additionally many top players always plant to play optimal. They dont care about farm.

Uh what? Most raids are Random? Changing playstyles has absolutely nothing to do with dropping an AoE tome and changing talents.

You're contradicting yourself by saying top players want to play optimally and dont care about farm. They absolutely try their hardest on farm. The only thing that keeps raiding relevant after clearing for the 40th time, is ranking.

[Deleted]

But this is an advantage of the class :s

Not necessarily.

Let's say they buff Obliteration to an absurd amount where it gives you 20% extra damage on ST compared to BoS.

You'll take Obliteration on strictly ST fights and BoS on AoE/Cleave fights.

You lost nothing on BoS but you now have an alternative, even a niche, but it's there for you to take advantage if you don't mind the hassle of playing that way.

Options are not there either to give you damage or survavility alone, they are also there (or it's at least the theory behind it) to give you different playstiles for different situations or at least different tastes, but they are non existent if they are going to GIMP your dps that much...

But hey, at least we are very competitive atm and this is better than a lot of bad alternatives like it was in the past.

[Deleted]

BoS makes the resource legendary items that are available very special and very useful.

Before BoS was a thing, you'd not want any sort of leggos other than the bracers, I remember when MG was the spec to go to during late EN and early ToV...the initial number of players jumping ship (including myself) to Frost was huge due to the fact you could pull decent numbers without the need for BiS leggos, in comparison to Unholy needing the bracers and belt at the time.

I just got the Frost Belt today and it's fantastic how useful the legendary is for a spec which allows you to not waste globals and runes (of course this still can happen).

The BoS play style is simple enough for anyone to pick up, work's well with the legendary items (Belt and Ring) we have and hugely benefits talents such as Gathering Storm, which requires a decent amount of RNG belt procs, rime management (when heroism is not up) to keep up the 10 stacks up as long as possible through multiple Remorseless Winter activations to maximise the deeps.

Going back to MG and Obliteration...I don't think the play style will be nearly as nuanced enough compared to Frost or provide the level of excitement that good RNG could factor into our damage. We do great damage without "good" rng and very good damage when RNG is on our side as it currently stands. It's not top tier sadly, but hey, coming from Unholy, it's a damned sight better.

[Saybel]

Not necessarily.

Let's say they buff Obliteration to an absurd amount where it gives you 20% extra damage on ST compared to BoS.

You'll take Obliteration on strictly ST fights and BoS on AoE/Cleave fights.

You lost nothing on BoS but you now have an alternative, even a niche, but it's there for you to take advantage if you don't mind the hassle of playing that way.

Options are not there either to give you damage or survavility alone, they are also there (or it's at least the theory behind it) to give you different playstiles for different situations or at least different tastes, but they are non existent if they are going to GIMP your dps that much...

But hey, at least we are very competitive atm and this is better than a lot of bad alternatives like it was in the past.

I mean we do nearly max aoe and max single target with the same setup. I see that as a huge benefit - I would rather BoS/GS stay the strongest version of Frost for all of Legion so we can continue to do high cleave without sacrificing ST - some classes have to talent for this and gimp themselves on ST or AoE.

We don't get the gimp choice because we are tuned to be good at everything. Better to be good at everything (though really I'd say frost is amazing at everything except mobility lol) then amazing at one thing and mediocre at everything else.

[RuneDK]

I mean we do nearly max aoe and max single target with the same setup. I see that as a huge benefit - I would rather BoS/GS stay the strongest version of Frost for all of Legion so we can continue to do high cleave without sacrificing ST - some classes have to talent for this and gimp themselves on ST or AoE.

We don't get the gimp choice because we are tuned to be good at everything. Better to be good at everything (though really I'd say frost is amazing at everything except mobility lol) then amazing at one thing and mediocre at everything else.

The real problem is the mobility, raid leads need to prepare their strat around DKs basically doing as little mechanics as possible to maintain the damage to reach the dps checks. I am kind of surprised blizzard didn't realize how dumb they were for making DK mobility as bad as it is...but hey class fantasy amirite?

[Utigarde]

I miss Frostscythe.

[kaesden]

Not necessarily.

Let's say they buff Obliteration to an absurd amount where it gives you 20% extra damage on ST compared to BoS.

You'll take Obliteration on strictly ST fights and BoS on AoE/Cleave fights.

You lost nothing on BoS but you now have an alternative, even a niche, but it's there for you to take advantage if you don't mind the hassle of playing that way.

Options are not there either to give you damage or survavility alone, they are also there (or it's at least the theory behind it) to give you different playstiles for different situations or at least different tastes, but they are non existent if they are going to GIMP your dps that much...

But hey, at least we are very competitive atm and this is better than a lot of bad alternatives like it was in the past.

Not really true. If they buffed obliteration as you claim, then obliteration would be come the mandatory talent for all single target fights. BOS has lost its ability to be competitive in ST situations. The problem is, no matter what blizzard does, they're either funneling us all into a single build, if one build is balanced and does everything well, or we're forced to swap talents to the best for any given situation. This isn't a choice, there is never a choice. As long as there exists a situation where one build is better than another in a given situation, there will be a correct choice and an incorrect choice. I personally am grateful that for frost DK, we are saved the expense of having to buy tomes constantly. We can run the same build in all of nighthold and its 100% optimal. Honestly i dont know what the solution is, beyond making all talents non-dps talents. The only way to allow choice is to make them not matter, or to accept that whatever play style you enjoy, may or may not line up with the best performing choices. If competitive dps matters, there will always be a single correct choice for any given fight.

[Deleted]

Not really true. If they buffed obliteration as you claim, then obliteration would be come the mandatory talent for all single target fights. BOS has lost its ability to be competitive in ST situations. The problem is, no matter what blizzard does, they're either funneling us all into a single build, if one build is balanced and does everything well, or we're forced to swap talents to the best for any given situation. This isn't a choice, there is never a choice. As long as there exists a situation where one build is better than another in a given situation, there will be a correct choice and an incorrect choice. I personally am grateful that for frost DK, we are saved the expense of having to buy tomes constantly. We can run the same build in all of nighthold and its 100% optimal. Honestly i dont know what the solution is, beyond making all talents non-dps talents. The only way to allow choice is to make them not matter, or to accept that whatever play style you enjoy, may or may not line up with the best performing choices. If competitive dps matters, there will always be a single correct choice for any given fight.

This is not the case for many other classes.

I get that it's easier to simply play the same spec and be decent all around but look at the top logs for Shamans, for Mages, For DHs, same boss, many people on the top 20 with different builds and a lot of variation between bosses.

[Deleted]

This is not the case for many other classes.

I get that it's easier to simply play the same spec and be decent all around but look at the top logs for Shamans, for Mages, For DHs, same boss, many people on the top 20 with different builds and a lot of variation between bosses.

Mostly it is a ST and a AOE talent. That isnt good design too...

The grass is always greener on the other side. Others complain about having to respec, you complain about having one spec that performs good in ST and AOE...

[Deleted]

Mostly it is a ST and a AOE talent. That isnt good design too...

The grass is always greener on the other side. Others complain about having to respec, you complain about having one spec that performs good in ST and AOE...

DHs have different builds depending on the legendaries they have.

Helm prefers Demonic build
Wrist prefers the bloodlet build...

I'm repeating myself now saying that I'm not complaining and we are better now than we were on 7.0. I'm just saying that it would be lovely if we could get some more options/customization..

I don't mind using the same spec but it would be nice if I had some options I can use dpeending on where my guild is progressing/wiping.