Frost DK = BoS DK

[Darktbs]

What do you guys think of a talent like "Shattering Strikes" and potentially enchanting both weapons with Razorice. Could this be a fun playstyle?

I used exactly this during leveling and a little more before eventually switching to BoS build.

Its...Ok(In gameplay)...but can be frustrating

Sometimes you will have 5 stacks and no Runic Power to use FoS, meaning you have to use Oblit losing stacks in the process meaning you just lost potential dps.

You also need to use your other spells on the moment you have 5 stacks so you can do max damage before use FoS.

[Hctaz]

Breath of Sindragosa is a huge DPS cooldown that also happens to cleave everything in front of you for upwards of 75 seconds. The other talents are completely outclassed in every way. Breath is a better cleave ability than GA, and a better DPS CD than Obliteration.

No 100% not. Breath is virtually single target damage. I don't know if they altered it much from the way it worked in WoD, but during that expansion it dealt full damage to a single target and 50% of that damage split among all secondary targets. Adding a second target only increases the damage by 50% and adding more targets than that does nothing. Glacial Advance doesn't have the same limitation. Breath is just huge because it does a lot of damage to one and two targets and allows you to go ham with your abilities without needing to ever use a global on Frost Strike. It's basically giving you free globals for more obliterates and howling blasts while your RP ticks down completely off the GCD.


On topic: I think a lot of our talents are pretty bad in terms of fun. Frozen Pulse and Icy Talons both suck imo. I hated just sitting on no runes letting my auto attacks deal all the damage while I waited at 25-45 RP until my Talons buff was less than 1 second active and then refreshing. Obliteration is the clunkiest piece of shit I've ever experienced. Glacial Advance is kinda fun but... it just is so weak. It doesn't feel like it should be an option in our final row.

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30-80 seconds if you want to not be able to enjoy the encounter and stare at your keyboard to make sure you dont miss something.

Yeah if you can't do both at the same time I dunno what to tell you really. You have to multi-task and optimize your abilities in ways that allow you to keep Breath going even during downtime. On Krosus, I can keep Breath going even when I'm soaking adds outside of melee range. Save AMS, Arcane Torrent, Remorseless Winter, and throw up a Hungering with howling blasts from range if you need to. I hardly have an issue where the fight makes me drop my breath outside of a time when it would drop anyway.

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Should Obliteration be buffed or removed completely to be replaced by a more interesting talent which fit the rotation better (Rime procs)?

I would like a strong AoE cooldown. Somebody suggested making your Frost Strike and Obliterate do AoE explosions. Maybe Obliteration could make Obliterate cost 1 rune, have a 100% chance to proc Rime, and cause rime procs to automatically cast a free howling blast on your current target off the GCD. Stuff happening off of the GCD is a big reason why Breath is so strong. It removes the needs to use Frost strike for the entire duration.

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You're saying don't play Frost if you don't enjoy Frost. I'm saying BoS isn't Frost and I don't want to play BoS.

The problem is that this IS frost now. This is the way Blizzard wants you to play the spec. If they didn't, they would buff other parts of the spec to be competitive. They've even admitted to doing this with other specs or classes. Marksmanship Hunter has a talent in row one that removes their pet but buffs their overall damage. They've admitted that they purposefully made this talent the strongest in the tier because they imagine the MM spec being a petless sniper spec but didn't want to remove pets from the spec because it was a class thing. Instead, they made it the only competitive option in the tier in order to pigeonhole players looking to optimize their damage into the exact playstyle that they want. They also admitted to making Demonology Warlock shit in 6.2 in order to get people to stop playing it so they could rework it in Legion.

[Beamrgurl]

na machinegun was much better. Bos is not under the 'skill' category. it is under the everything important happens for a few seconds every 2 mins category. that is not fun.

I do agree with you 100%, its to bad machinegun isnt as viable in raid as bos.

I have seen some big changes to the class. Blood was the awesome dps spec (loved it). I enjoyed the "machine gun" build..Bos build is ok but I dont like it for the same reasons as other people. I can run my breathe for a good length of time but there is the times you start your breathe and then say with Guldan you get bonds...and you get annoyed because you just wasted it, and now have to wait 2 mins to do it again. Mobility would be another thing that would be great, even with Wraith Walk its bad. I always have my teammates teasing me about how slow I am...always the last one to the party.

[Deleted]

Crybabies. BOS is tuned around having weaknesses. It is okay as long as it is tuned around the disadvantages it has.

And AMS is quite strong. We are slower, yes. But we have advantages and your raid should have DHs and warriors for stuff requiring mobility.

If you dont like it. Fine. There is unholy and there will a more competitive nonBOS Setup. Or reroll if you want mobility

[exeetor]

Should Obliteration be buffed or removed completely to be replaced by a more interesting talent which fit the rotation better (Rime procs)?

Man would be cool to make Rime-proccs auto-hit and Oblit free or something. Something really bursty (for 10-15 sec).
a tad booring rotation but man the dmg burst

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All speccs a viable in raids ppl. Aslong as u dont do high end mythic-raiding. BoS HAS to be the strongest talents as long as it got the downside it has. Misstime a few skills and bam, no more BoS and no more DPS. As long as this is the case then BoS have to be the best talent cause it got such a big downside.

[Deleted]

And nearly every spec has big mandatory talents...

[Kaver]

I really like how Blizzard is buffing the tier 100 talents for Unholy DK. Both Defile and Dark Arbiter is going to be much more viable in 7.2.5. I just wish they would do the same thing with Obliteration and Glacial Advance.

[Radaney]

I hate BoS, I'm too retarded to use it effectively.

Spamming Frostscythe in M+ like a derp. was much more fun.

[Rixarius]

No 100% not. Breath is virtually single target damage. I don't know if they altered it much from the way it worked in WoD, but during that expansion it dealt full damage to a single target and 50% of that damage split among all secondary targets. Adding a second target only increases the damage by 50% and adding more targets than that does nothing. Glacial Advance doesn't have the same limitation. Breath is just huge because it does a lot of damage to one and two targets and allows you to go ham with your abilities without needing to ever use a global on Frost Strike. It's basically giving you free globals for more obliterates and howling blasts while your RP ticks down completely off the GCD

???

It still functions the same way as it did in WoD pretty much. 100% to primary, rest split evenly. It's a better cleave ability because 1) it hits everything in a cone in front of you, instead of in a line directly out from your character. Very few bosses have situations where you can hit all targets with GA. 2) Because the damage from BoS scales down for every target hit, but it is constant damage off the GCD. If your GA has a 6 second CD, and you're hitting 4 targets, you're still doing more damage to all targets with BoS than with GA. The only time that GA outscales BoS is in massive AoE... which there isn't any in NH.

But you are quite right about the best perk being using RP without GCDs. Rime will still be your biggest contributer to cleave damage, and you get more of those (in a roundabout way) with the BoS build because you don't have to spend those GCDs on FS.

[taek]

Be careful what you ask for.

When Legion & EN launched, Enh Shaman was a top raiding spec but was narrowly focused into one build path.
Blizzard "improved" enh shaman by nerfing top talents, buffing weak talents, and in NH Enh. Shaman became a very mediocre (if not low performing) melee spec.

Moral of the story:
- A top performing spec is generally propped up on the pillars of very powerful talents, creating a high performing but rigid spec
- It's easy to create a spec with multiple talent build choices, if all choices are mediocre.

EG Affliction is currently the top performing DPS spec. 97.8% of logs use Malefic Grasp.
OTOH WW Monk has a debatable choice between Serenity (32%) and WDP (67%). The choice can be situational, and WW is near the bottom of logs.

Performance well above the median is usually based on somewhat unbalanced powerful talents. Blizzard will never buff all talents for a spec to be overpowered, they'll do the opposite.

[Hctaz]

???

It still functions the same way as it did in WoD pretty much. 100% to primary, rest split evenly. It's a better cleave ability because 1) it hits everything in a cone in front of you, instead of in a line directly out from your character. Very few bosses have situations where you can hit all targets with GA. 2) Because the damage from BoS scales down for every target hit, but it is constant damage off the GCD. If your GA has a 6 second CD, and you're hitting 4 targets, you're still doing more damage to all targets with BoS than with GA. The only time that GA outscales BoS is in massive AoE... which there isn't any in NH.

But you are quite right about the best perk being using RP without GCDs. Rime will still be your biggest contributer to cleave damage, and you get more of those (in a roundabout way) with the BoS build because you don't have to spend those GCDs on FS.

In WoD, it didn't split the damage evenly though. It does 100% damage to one target and 50% of the damage split among secondary targets meaning it is significantly weaker as an AoE talent than you think it is. Breath does 287.5% of AP to your single target and half SPLIT among the rest. Glacial Advance deals 375% of your attack power to everything within a line and doesn't have the same limitations. The only limitation is the 20 target limit they implemented in... Cata? Maybe? I don't remember. It was so long ago. Basically any normal AoE skill does full damage to everything around it unless there are more than 20. Basically, 20 targets is your maximum AoE cap.

But the point is that at 20 targets your Breath would be dealing something like 431.25% of your attack power per second and Glacial Advance would be doing 500% per second (7500% AP every 15 seconds not taking haste into account). Obviously that's a huge amount of mobs but the damage also happens instantly. Glacial Advance deals more upfront damage than Breath does, so against something like Eyes of Guldan which have huge hitboxes, can easily spawn in positions that you can hit most of them, and die usually within 4 seconds you'd end up doing more AoE damage with GA than BoS usually. I'm not sure how many eyes spawn but say you can hit 6 of them plus Guldan and they die in 4 seconds. Specifically with Breath you would deal 1725% AP over the course of 4 seconds. Glacial Advance would deal 2625% AP in one cast. It would take six seconds of Breath damage to match that. Burst AoE is usually more valuable than slow, drawn out AoE.


Also: you have to consider how mastery and versatility work with each ability as well. They're multiplicative with the value of the abilities. Breath is weaker baseline so when multiplied by mastery it gains less value. 375% of AP multiplied by 30% mastery is an increase of 112.5% AP. Breath with the same mastery value is 287.5% multiplied by 30% which ends up at an increase of 86.25%.

So basically I'm just saying that Breath alone is probably usually worse at actually AoE-ing things down but the damage combined with the value you get from Rime procs still happening and Breath damage not needing a GCD is why it outshines Glacial Advance in all situations. Breath is really, really good at cleave though since the value is basically the same regardless of if you have 2 or 20 targets and it IS better AoE than Glacial Advance when you take into account the benefits from the practical use of the ability and not just the damage of a person using an infinite Breath while standing there doing absolutely nothing.

[Bisque]

I do enjoy the BOS playstyle yet at the same time I would like to see the other choices be viable. While there may be some hope that blizz will look at obliteration and GA come Argus patch-I very much doubt it. I am honestly thinking that BOS will be the way to go until legion ends for it seems that as long as FDK have at least one playable talent then "It's good enough" and GA and obliterate get tossed on the back burner.

GA and obliteration need more effort than increase damage by X and I don't see blizz making that effort. Though I hope I am wrong.

[Kaver]

Be careful what you ask for.

When Legion & EN launched, Enh Shaman was a top raiding spec but was narrowly focused into one build path.
Blizzard "improved" enh shaman by nerfing top talents, buffing weak talents, and in NH Enh. Shaman became a very mediocre (if not low performing) melee spec.

Moral of the story:
- A top performing spec is generally propped up on the pillars of very powerful talents, creating a high performing but rigid spec
- It's easy to create a spec with multiple talent build choices, if all choices are mediocre.

EG Affliction is currently the top performing DPS spec. 97.8% of logs use Malefic Grasp.
OTOH WW Monk has a debatable choice between Serenity (32%) and WDP (67%). The choice can be situational, and WW is near the bottom of logs.

Performance well above the median is usually based on somewhat unbalanced powerful talents. Blizzard will never buff all talents for a spec to be overpowered, they'll do the opposite.

For me it is not important if my spec is overpowered and on the top of the charts. I am more interested in getting a spec with multiple playstyles. If this means mediocre talents all around it is fine by me, as long as i can rotate between the talents day by day and try different compositions.

[Deleted]

For me it is not important if my spec is overpowered and on the top of the charts. I am more interested in getting a spec with multiple playstyles. If this means mediocre talents all around it is fine by me, as long as i can rotate between the talents day by day and try different compositions.

The specs are there. You can play them if you dont care about performance...

[Kaver]

The specs are there. You can play them if you dont care about performance...

When I say that I dont care about performance it is related to the specs placement between the bottom and the top of the charts. But i still need the spec to be viable. I said that I was fine with mediocre talents, but Obliteration and GA are not mediocre. They are really really bad. And if you use them, you are going to be a burden for your group. So I dont care about performance as long as the spec is not a burden for other players.

[Lucrece]

When I say that I dont care about performance it is related to the specs placement between the bottom and the top of the charts. But i still need the spec to be viable. I said that I was fine with mediocre talents, but Obliteration and GA are not mediocre. They are really really bad. And if you use them, you are going to be a burden for your group. So I dont care about performance as long as the spec is not a burden for other players.

So you would nerf all upper echelons of frost DK's who don't mind using BoS just so you can have your precious variety and be mediocre in all of them.

[Deleted]

So you would nerf all upper echelons of frost DK's who don't mind using BoS just so you can have your precious variety and be mediocre in all of them.

With the final result of frost dks rerolling to unholy or other classes.

It is always the same. There are so many classes and specs so you can pick another one if you dont like BOS.

[Kaver]

So you would nerf all upper echelons of frost DK's who don't mind using BoS just so you can have your precious variety and be mediocre in all of them.

Stop with this ignorance. I would never want to worsen the experience for other players and I never stated that. So please stop.

All I said is that I wouldn't mind a more diverse spec even if it would reduce the performance (a little). But this is just my opinion. I would never want Blizzard to fulfil my desires at the expense of other players.