Frost Death Knight - Concept

[Sinzaram]

thats been mostly the same since wotlk

I disagree, every expansion has been a different iteration, and become effectively two specs with two different rotations for most of its lifespan from Cata until Legion.

Wrath:
In Wrath the rotations were defined by applying two dots, and keeping to a strict rune spend cycle as there was no hasted runes or Runic Empowerment procs, just put those runes on cooldown as fast as possible. Every Rune regenerated at a fixed 10 second cycle the second you spent it, so a Rune waiting was DPS loss now and later.
We had 2 Frost Runes, 2 Unholy Runes, and 2 Blood Runes. We had a Talent deep in the Frost tree that changed Blood Runes to Death Runes (which could be used by any ability) when you used Blood Strikes or Pestilence with them.
Killing Machine was a crit on a Howling Blast or Frost Strike, not Obliterate.
Howling Blast had a cooldown and cost 1 Frost Rune and 1 Unholy Rune, unless it was free via a Rime proc which also reset the cooldown.


Cata
In Cata we had the first major Rune revamp where Runes regenerated slower in pairs, but faster with haste and Runic Empowerment was added to give Rune procs in the gaps as a result. The Blood Rune into Death Rune conversion was removed and the Blood Runes were made perma Death Runes for Frost spec.
They added Outbreak, so no more slow Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Pestilence, dot application and spread rotation every minute.
Howling Blast was reduced to 1 Frost Rune in cost.

This was also the first time DW and 2H split bonus'. DW hitting with both weapons, and 2H hitting 12% more melee damage. (then nerfed to 10% harder to make up for it being strong in PvP.)
By the end of the expansion Masterfrost rotation was rearing its head for DW encouraging a Howling Spam and Frost Strike focused rotation with Obliterate only being used to spend the Unholy Rune.


Mist of Pandaria:
In MoP they double downed on the DW and 2H split in the classes rotations and added more active talents like Plague Leech and redesigned Blood Tap. It also added 1 second GCD baseline for the class instead of it previously being built into Unholy Presence only.
DW's passive had a 50% Frost Strike damage bonus added to it, encouraging Masterfrost further, spend runes asap on fast Howling Blast spam to get Runic for giant Killing Machine Frost Strikes.
They tried 2H's passive giving a Runic Power proc on auto attacks (hello Runic Attenuation), and adding 10% extra melee damage which was buffed to 30% extra melee damage by the end of the expansion to try to outscale Dual Wield. This extra RP wasn't even worth anything in PvE because you had to spend Runes to generate RP, and RP generated Runes, so the extra RP just resulted in a full RP bar or full Rune bar. In PvP the extra RP helped survivability with the Conversion healing talent. They even had to nerf RP generation by 30% while Conversion was active at the start of the expansion, before hotfixing it to only work on Rune generated RP.

MoP also added our old execute version of Soul Reaper. This was a giant rotation change.
Soul Reaper cost a spec specific Rune, so the execute rotation would be slightly different for each spec, holding back runes to make sure Soul Reaper was pressed instantly on its 6 second cooldown. Blood holding back a Blood Boil, DW Frost holding back a Howling, 2H Frost holding back a Obliterate and Unholy holding back a Scourge Strike. Heck Blood's Soul Reaper even still had the healing bonus to Death strike from Blood Boil built in, so it wouldn't be lost during executes. Blood Soul Reaper

Unholy Blight got added as a talented AoE Outbreak. So now we had two 1 min cooldown abilitys to apply Frost Fever and Blood Plague without spending Runes on Icy Touch/Howling Blast and Plague Strike.
Plague Leech got added as a 30sec cooldown ability that removed Frost Fever and Blood Plague, and gave Death Runes as a result.
These were both in the same talent row.
They added "choice" in the Rune regen types via a talent row.
Either Runic Empowerment from Cata vs Runic Corruption from Unholy vs a revamped Blood Tap,
The revamped Blood Tap was big, it gave manual Rune regen when you pressed it instead of procs, with the added bonus of Death Runes.


Warlords of Draenor:
In WoD they went even more balls to the wall with the DW and 2h split. This was also where Dual Wield was made a Frost spec only feature.
2H gave 50% extra Obliterate damage and 35% melee damage, and the RP capping auto attack proc was removed.
DW gave 50% extra Frost Strike damage, which was buffed further to 100% in 6.2.

This was where they also removed the damage bonus on strikes for having diseases on the targets. Until now Obliterate did 12.5% extra damage per Disease on the mob. So there was always a ramp up to strikes doing their highest damage.

They added a DPS rotation changing talent row, something every other class had in Mists.
Every Spec had Defile, Breath of Sindragosa and Necrotic Plague.
Defile replaced D&D and grew in size and damage by 2.5% every tick.
Breath was a 15 RP drain at the time.
Necrotic Plague replaced both Frost Fever and Blood Plague (which both still needed to be up 100% for damage), this doubled its damage every tick and spread at its current stacks to one extra mob every tick. Necro Plague capped out at 15 stacks and couldn't be refreshed until it dropped off (unless Unholy but this is a Frost thread)

This was where they started pruning:
Raise Dead temporary ghouls were removed from Frost and Blood.
Necrotic Strike gone until it returned as a PvP talent in Legion.
Pestilence the ability to spread single target dots to all targets was removed and the spread was put into Blood Boil for all specs, and then to confuse everyone it was renamed Pestilence again.
Blood Strike got removed, even through it had long been removed from the Frost rotation back in Wrath.
Death Coil for ranged Runic Power spending got removed from Frost.


Legion:
This was where everything was thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up.
Dual Wield and 2Handed split? Gone. Dual Wield only for artifact reasons.
Masteryfrost rotation and Frost Strike focus of Dual Wield. Gone.
Going forward the 2h Obliterate focused rotation would be used.
Spam Obliterates for Rime procs to apply Frost Fever and damage. Spend RP on Frost Strike.
Fit in the extra talents like Gathering Storm'd Remorseless Winter, Breath of Sindy etc.

Icy Touch and Plague Strike and Pestilence, aka the single target dot application and spread kit. Gone.
Outbreak and the MoP-WoD talented Unholy Blight for instantly applying single target dots on a 1min cooldown. Gone.
Necrotic Plague. Gone.
Plague Leech removing dots for on demand Runes. Gone.
Blood Tap for on demand rune procs. Gone.
Death and Decay for an ground based AoE dot. Gone, and reworked on Blood and Unholy to allow their main strikes to AoE.
Army of the Dead. Gone, Unholy only.
Defile. Gone, Unholy talent only.
Soul Reaper execute for all specs. Gone. A new haste generating from Wounds, Soul Reaper would be invented as a Unholy only talent.
The Healing row talents from MoP-Wod, Death Siphon. Gone. Conversion. Gone. Death Pact. Gone until BFA.
The Control row talents from MoP-Wod, Mass Grip. Gone to Blood. Remorseless Winter aoe stun. Redesigned as a core damage ability. Desecrated Ground CC immune cooldown. Gone.
Purgatory. Gone, Blood only.
Deaths Advance. Gone until BFA. Replaced with Wraith Walk.
1 second GCD. Gone. Replaced with a 1.5 GCD that scales down with haste.

This also marked the second major Rune revamp, where Rune Types were thrown out the window, everything would now have only a Rune number cost.
Howling Blast cost 1 Rune instead of 1 Frost Rune.
Obliterate cost 2 Runes instead of 1 Frost Rune and 1 Unholy Rune.
Death Strike was made Runic Power cost instead of 1 Frost Rune and 1 Unholy Rune.
And I don't think there is any other baseline abilities left that cost Runes.

In response to all this pruning of not "frost" abilities, we had Remorseless Winter redesigned.
The Mists-Wod talent was a free cost 1 min cooldown that did no damage and slowly debuffed the mobs ticking until 5 stacks when they got stunned.
Legion and BFA Remorseless Winter had 1 Rune cost and a much shorter cooldown as the "main AoE ability".
We got Frostscythe added as a 1 Rune Cost 180 degree aoe.
We got Glacial Advance added as a 1 Rune Cost forward aoe, which no one uses to this day even when it costs RP in BFA.
We got Sindragosa's Fury added from the Artifact as a 3min cooldown forward cone aoe.
We got all the artifact passives, and the new talent passives and the new legendary passives but none of those affect the core class really.
They added a passive to each spec's now single dot, Frost Fever got its Runic Power generating proc.

BFA:
The main changes were to cooldowns as a result of their GCD goal for the whole game.
Empower Rune Weapon was remade into a neutered version of the Hungering Rune Weapon talent from Legion.
Just compare the tooltips:

Hungering Rune Weapon:
gaining 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 1.5 sec, and granting 20% haste, for 12 sec.

VS

BFA Empower Rune Weapon:
gaining 15% Haste and generating 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 5 sec for 20 sec.

Compared to the version of Empower Rune Weapon that has existed since Wrath, which refreshed every Rune and gave Runic power instantly.

Initially they were gonna prune Pillar of Frost and to leave Empower Rune Weapon as the main GCD cooldown, but the outcry was too great so they remade it into the ramping buff we have today.
Just compare the tooltips:

Old Pillar of Frost:
increases the Death Knight's Strength by 20%, and grants immunity to external movement effects such as knockbacks. 
Lasts 20 sec. 1 minute cooldown.

VS

BFA Pillar of Frost
increases your Strength by 15% for 15 sec. 45 sec cooldown.
Each Rune spent while active increases your Strength by an additional 1%.

We kept Sindragosa's Fury as a talent.
We kept Cold Heart legion legendary chest as a talent.
The only other real changes were the swap out of Artifact Weapon Traits and the swap in of Azerite Armour Traits.
The remaining talents just got a bit reshuffled and retuned. But no real rotational changes from Legion for BFA.
Initially by removing the Artifact Weapon Traits and Legendarys we lost a 20% bonus to Runic Empowerment, and 10% proc from Obliterate for 12 more Runic Power, the legendary belt had a 15% proc from Obliterate for 2 Runes and the legendary ring gave a second charge of the 2min cooldown old Empower Rune Weapon full refresh or Hungering Rune Weapon's fast drip of runes and RP.
This loss massively slowed down the spec and gave us 40% downtime waiting on Runes/RP until they fixed it in 8.2.


Shadowlands:
Now the only changes we know are the unpruning list from Blizzcon and stuff from interivews close to Blizzcon, this includes a "would like to do" regarding Two Handed Frost.

The Blizzcon unpruning List:
Death Coil
Will this just be an extra button to press to spend RP at ranged for Frost like it was in the past? Fish for those Runic Empowerment procs while the boss mechanics make you run away? Do we get to heal our temporary guardian ghoul again? Yay...

Raise Dead
Will this just be the same old 2 minute cooldown, raise an uncontrollable guardian pet that just auto attacks and claws for its temporary duration? Yay...

Death and Decay
Will this be the same old ground based AoE dot for 1 Rune cost that Frost had before they made Remorseless Winter our pulsing aoe damage? Or will they mess with it and add the same strike cleaving from Legion Blood and Unholy to it?
I fear a world where every spec has to stand in its Death and Decay to cleave its single target strikes, instead of having dedicated aoe buttons.

Anti Magic Zone
This ability has had so many different tuning levels throughout the years which will define if this is great or pointless.
Wrath/Cata had 75% spell damage reduction with a absorb cap or lasting 10 seconds, but it would realistically last 1 raid spell before reaching the cap and ending.
Late MoP it had 40% spell damage reduction with no absorb cap, but only lasted 3 seconds, so had to be timed well.
WoD it was only a 20% spell damage reduction for 3 seconds. It's something i guess???? Very weak and pointless.
Current Legion/BFA PvP talent is 60% spell damage for 10 seconds.
They could easily give it back at WoD power levels and just say "look we unpruned something".

Chains of Ice
Was mentioned in a interview, Blood lacks Chains atm, so yay Blood getting Chains back...

As for the 2H Frost interview:
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands interview — Fixing Battle for Azeroth’s biggest problems

GamesBeat: Will Frost Death Knights be able to use two-handed weapons again?
Day: I want to say that’s on the “would like to do” list. I can’t promise anything, but I know that’s something we’ve heard a lot of feedback on. People are excited about it. That’s a great example of something where we’re taking this as an opportunity to reevaluate those things.

Does this mean they will split the rotations again? Would that even work with the weak rune system we currently have? Most of Dual Wield's rotation worked around the fact you had to spend the Unholy Runes with either Obliterate or Death and Decay.
Or just rework the spell animations to work with both weapon types and use the same rotation?
I think spell animations and weapon math is probably their biggest challenge. Even when the spec had both options, Raiders always preferred Dual Wield's higher output and PvPers always preferred WoD era 2H's bigger Obliterates or Mist's free Runic Power to feed into Conversion healing.


Its a lot to consider in light of comments like these:

is in DESPERATE need of a complete overhaul

What exactly would you say is a complete overhaul though?
Rename every ability?
Turn it into a completely different role?
Remove half the spells? (JK that was mostly done between Wod and BFA anyway)
Remake the resource system? (JK that was done in Cata and it was again done in Legion)

Its important to remember where the class has come from in order to suggest where we go from here.
Thanks for coming to my Frost DK history TED Talk :P

[Xkiller9000]

I disagree, every expansion has been a different iteration, and become effectively two specs with two different rotations for most of its lifespan from Cata until Legion.

Wrath:
In Wrath the rotations were defined by applying two dots, and keeping to a strict rune spend cycle as there was no hasted runes or Runic Empowerment procs, just put those runes on cooldown as fast as possible. Every Rune regenerated at a fixed 10 second cycle the second you spent it, so a Rune waiting was DPS loss now and later.
We had 2 Frost Runes, 2 Unholy Runes, and 2 Blood Runes. We had a Talent deep in the Frost tree that changed Blood Runes to Death Runes (which could be used by any ability) when you used Blood Strikes or Pestilence with them.
Killing Machine was a crit on a Howling Blast or Frost Strike, not Obliterate.
Howling Blast had a cooldown and cost 1 Frost Rune and 1 Unholy Rune, unless it was free via a Rime proc which also reset the cooldown.


Cata
In Cata we had the first major Rune revamp where Runes regenerated slower in pairs, but faster with haste and Runic Empowerment was added to give Rune procs in the gaps as a result. The Blood Rune into Death Rune conversion was removed and the Blood Runes were made perma Death Runes for Frost spec.
They added Outbreak, so no more slow Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Pestilence, dot application and spread rotation every minute.
Howling Blast was reduced to 1 Frost Rune in cost.

This was also the first time DW and 2H split bonus'. DW hitting with both weapons, and 2H hitting 12% more melee damage. (then nerfed to 10% harder to make up for it being strong in PvP.)
By the end of the expansion Masterfrost rotation was rearing its head for DW encouraging a Howling Spam and Frost Strike focused rotation with Obliterate only being used to spend the Unholy Rune.


Mist of Pandaria:
In MoP they double downed on the DW and 2H split in the classes rotations and added more active talents like Plague Leech and redesigned Blood Tap. It also added 1 second GCD baseline for the class instead of it previously being built into Unholy Presence only.
DW's passive had a 50% Frost Strike damage bonus added to it, encouraging Masterfrost further, spend runes asap on fast Howling Blast spam to get Runic for giant Killing Machine Frost Strikes.
They tried 2H's passive giving a Runic Power proc on auto attacks (hello Runic Attenuation), and adding 10% extra melee damage which was buffed to 30% extra melee damage by the end of the expansion to try to outscale Dual Wield. This extra RP wasn't even worth anything in PvE because you had to spend Runes to generate RP, and RP generated Runes, so the extra RP just resulted in a full RP bar or full Rune bar. In PvP the extra RP helped survivability with the Conversion healing talent. They even had to nerf RP generation by 30% while Conversion was active at the start of the expansion, before hotfixing it to only work on Rune generated RP.

MoP also added our old execute version of Soul Reaper. This was a giant rotation change.
Soul Reaper cost a spec specific Rune, so the execute rotation would be slightly different for each spec, holding back runes to make sure Soul Reaper was pressed instantly on its 6 second cooldown. Blood holding back a Blood Boil, DW Frost holding back a Howling, 2H Frost holding back a Obliterate and Unholy holding back a Scourge Strike. Heck Blood's Soul Reaper even still had the healing bonus to Death strike from Blood Boil built in, so it wouldn't be lost during executes. Blood Soul Reaper

Unholy Blight got added as a talented AoE Outbreak. So now we had two 1 min cooldown abilitys to apply Frost Fever and Blood Plague without spending Runes on Icy Touch/Howling Blast and Plague Strike.
Plague Leech got added as a 30sec cooldown ability that removed Frost Fever and Blood Plague, and gave Death Runes as a result.
These were both in the same talent row.
They added "choice" in the Rune regen types via a talent row.
Either Runic Empowerment from Cata vs Runic Corruption from Unholy vs a revamped Blood Tap,
The revamped Blood Tap was big, it gave manual Rune regen when you pressed it instead of procs, with the added bonus of Death Runes.


Warlords of Draenor:
In WoD they went even more balls to the wall with the DW and 2h split. This was also where Dual Wield was made a Frost spec only feature.
2H gave 50% extra Obliterate damage and 35% melee damage, and the RP capping auto attack proc was removed.
DW gave 50% extra Frost Strike damage, which was buffed further to 100% in 6.2.

This was where they also removed the damage bonus on strikes for having diseases on the targets. Until now Obliterate did 12.5% extra damage per Disease on the mob. So there was always a ramp up to strikes doing their highest damage.

They added a DPS rotation changing talent row, something every other class had in Mists.
Every Spec had Defile, Breath of Sindragosa and Necrotic Plague.
Defile replaced D&D and grew in size and damage by 2.5% every tick.
Breath was a 15 RP drain at the time.
Necrotic Plague replaced both Frost Fever and Blood Plague (which both still needed to be up 100% for damage), this doubled its damage every tick and spread at its current stacks to one extra mob every tick. Necro Plague capped out at 15 stacks and couldn't be refreshed until it dropped off (unless Unholy but this is a Frost thread)

This was where they started pruning:
Raise Dead temporary ghouls were removed from Frost and Blood.
Necrotic Strike gone until it returned as a PvP talent in Legion.
Pestilence the ability to spread single target dots to all targets was removed and the spread was put into Blood Boil for all specs, and then to confuse everyone it was renamed Pestilence again.
Blood Strike got removed, even through it had long been removed from the Frost rotation back in Wrath.
Death Coil for ranged Runic Power spending got removed from Frost.


Legion:
This was where everything was thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up.
Dual Wield and 2Handed split? Gone. Dual Wield only for artifact reasons.
Masteryfrost rotation and Frost Strike focus of Dual Wield. Gone.
Going forward the 2h Obliterate focused rotation would be used.
Spam Obliterates for Rime procs to apply Frost Fever and damage. Spend RP on Frost Strike.
Fit in the extra talents like Gathering Storm'd Remorseless Winter, Breath of Sindy etc.

Icy Touch and Plague Strike and Pestilence, aka the single target dot application and spread kit. Gone.
Outbreak and the MoP-WoD talented Unholy Blight for instantly applying single target dots on a 1min cooldown. Gone.
Necrotic Plague. Gone.
Plague Leech removing dots for on demand Runes. Gone.
Blood Tap for on demand rune procs. Gone.
Death and Decay for an ground based AoE dot. Gone, and reworked on Blood and Unholy to allow their main strikes to AoE.
Army of the Dead. Gone, Unholy only.
Defile. Gone, Unholy talent only.
Soul Reaper execute for all specs. Gone. A new haste generating from Wounds, Soul Reaper would be invented as a Unholy only talent.
The Healing row talents from MoP-Wod, Death Siphon. Gone. Conversion. Gone. Death Pact. Gone until BFA.
The Control row talents from MoP-Wod, Mass Grip. Gone to Blood. Remorseless Winter aoe stun. Redesigned as a core damage ability. Desecrated Ground CC immune cooldown. Gone.
Purgatory. Gone, Blood only.
Deaths Advance. Gone until BFA. Replaced with Wraith Walk.
1 second GCD. Gone. Replaced with a 1.5 GCD that scales down with haste.

This also marked the second major Rune revamp, where Rune Types were thrown out the window, everything would now have only a Rune number cost.
Howling Blast cost 1 Rune instead of 1 Frost Rune.
Obliterate cost 2 Runes instead of 1 Frost Rune and 1 Unholy Rune.
Death Strike was made Runic Power cost instead of 1 Frost Rune and 1 Unholy Rune.
And I don't think there is any other baseline abilities left that cost Runes.

In response to all this pruning of not "frost" abilities, we had Remorseless Winter redesigned.
The Mists-Wod talent was a free cost 1 min cooldown that did no damage and slowly debuffed the mobs ticking until 5 stacks when they got stunned.
Legion and BFA Remorseless Winter had 1 Rune cost and a much shorter cooldown as the "main AoE ability".
We got Frostscythe added as a 1 Rune Cost 180 degree aoe.
We got Glacial Advance added as a 1 Rune Cost forward aoe, which no one uses to this day even when it costs RP in BFA.
We got Sindragosa's Fury added from the Artifact as a 3min cooldown forward cone aoe.
We got all the artifact passives, and the new talent passives and the new legendary passives but none of those affect the core class really.
They added a passive to each spec's now single dot, Frost Fever got its Runic Power generating proc.

BFA:
The main changes were to cooldowns as a result of their GCD goal for the whole game.
Empower Rune Weapon was remade into a neutered version of the Hungering Rune Weapon talent from Legion.
Just compare the tooltips:

Hungering Rune Weapon:
gaining 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 1.5 sec, and granting 20% haste, for 12 sec.

VS

BFA Empower Rune Weapon:
gaining 15% Haste and generating 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 5 sec for 20 sec.

Compared to the version of Empower Rune Weapon that has existed since Wrath, which refreshed every Rune and gave Runic power instantly.

Initially they were gonna prune Pillar of Frost and to leave Empower Rune Weapon as the main GCD cooldown, but the outcry was too great so they remade it into the ramping buff we have today.
Just compare the tooltips:

Old Pillar of Frost:
increases the Death Knight's Strength by 20%, and grants immunity to external movement effects such as knockbacks. 
Lasts 20 sec. 1 minute cooldown.

VS

BFA Pillar of Frost
increases your Strength by 15% for 15 sec. 45 sec cooldown.
Each Rune spent while active increases your Strength by an additional 1%.

We kept Sindragosa's Fury as a talent.
We kept Cold Heart legion legendary chest as a talent.
The only other real changes were the swap out of Artifact Weapon Traits and the swap in of Azerite Armour Traits.
The remaining talents just got a bit reshuffled and retuned. But no real rotational changes from Legion for BFA.
Initially by removing the Artifact Weapon Traits and Legendarys we lost a 20% bonus to Runic Empowerment, and 10% proc from Obliterate for 12 more Runic Power, the legendary belt had a 15% proc from Obliterate for 2 Runes and the legendary ring gave a second charge of the 2min cooldown old Empower Rune Weapon full refresh or Hungering Rune Weapon's fast drip of runes and RP.
This loss massively slowed down the spec and gave us 40% downtime waiting on Runes/RP until they fixed it in 8.2.


Shadowlands:
Now the only changes we know are the unpruning list from Blizzcon and stuff from interivews close to Blizzcon, this includes a "would like to do" regarding Two Handed Frost.

The Blizzcon unpruning List:
Death Coil
Will this just be an extra button to press to spend RP at ranged for Frost like it was in the past? Fish for those Runic Empowerment procs while the boss mechanics make you run away? Do we get to heal our temporary guardian ghoul again? Yay...

Raise Dead
Will this just be the same old 2 minute cooldown, raise an uncontrollable guardian pet that just auto attacks and claws for its temporary duration? Yay...

Death and Decay
Will this be the same old ground based AoE dot for 1 Rune cost that Frost had before they made Remorseless Winter our pulsing aoe damage? Or will they mess with it and add the same strike cleaving from Legion Blood and Unholy to it?
I fear a world where every spec has to stand in its Death and Decay to cleave its single target strikes, instead of having dedicated aoe buttons.

Anti Magic Zone
This ability has had so many different tuning levels throughout the years which will define if this is great or pointless.
Wrath/Cata had 75% spell damage reduction with a absorb cap or lasting 10 seconds, but it would realistically last 1 raid spell before reaching the cap and ending.
Late MoP it had 40% spell damage reduction with no absorb cap, but only lasted 3 seconds, so had to be timed well.
WoD it was only a 20% spell damage reduction for 3 seconds. It's something i guess???? Very weak and pointless.
Current Legion/BFA PvP talent is 60% spell damage for 10 seconds.
They could easily give it back at WoD power levels and just say "look we unpruned something".

Chains of Ice
Was mentioned in a interview, Blood lacks Chains atm, so yay Blood getting Chains back...

As for the 2H Frost interview:
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands interview — Fixing Battle for Azeroth’s biggest problems


Does this mean they will split the rotations again? Would that even work with the weak rune system we currently have? Most of Dual Wield's rotation worked around the fact you had to spend the Unholy Runes with either Obliterate or Death and Decay.
Or just rework the spell animations to work with both weapon types and use the same rotation?
I think spell animations and weapon math is probably their biggest challenge. Even when the spec had both options, Raiders always preferred Dual Wield's higher output and PvPers always preferred WoD era 2H's bigger Obliterates or Mist's free Runic Power to feed into Conversion healing.


Its a lot to consider in light of comments like these:

What exactly would you say is a complete overhaul though?
Rename every ability?
Turn it into a completely different role?
Remove half the spells? (JK that was mostly done between Wod and BFA anyway)
Remake the resource system? (JK that was done in Cata and it was again done in Legion)

Its important to remember where the class has come from in order to suggest where we go from here.
Thanks for coming to my Frost DK history TED Talk :P

i quite honestly dont care nearly enough to counter every point in this, but a LOT of what you claim was a "change" was stuff like DnD becoming Defile, which is literally an identical spell pretty much. a LOT of what you named was minor changes, ability replacements that changed nothing or the 2H vs DW or hte meta rotation.

I didnt say it was identical, its had changes, but when you compare it to previous iterations, it boils down to for hte most part, the same oblit, FS, HB spam weve had. BOS is the only really big change i see and its a horrible ability

[Sinzaram]

but a LOT of what you claim was a "change" was stuff like DnD becoming Defile, which is literally an identical spell pretty much.

The main point was it was a row of talents added in Warlords that has had massive change, maybe not Defile specifically, but Breath has carried on to become the signature of the spec. No matter how much it is loved by some as the only deep mechanic or hated by others for being a "horrible ability".

The 2h vs DW rotations was a big deal, because from Dragon Soul until Legion most DKs didn't use

the same oblit, FS, HB spam weve had.

There was more to it than what we have now.

Lets just list the priority rotations now vs the middle of MoP.

Now outside of cooldowns straight from Wowhead:

Obviously we can add Use Pillar of Frost and use Cold Heart and Dragon at the end of Pillar to this.
And we can add in Breath of Sindy rotations, or Obliteration.

MoP Dual Wield priority (from some old dodgey website i googled and memory):

1. Frost Strike, if you are near 90 RP or Killing Machine is up.
2. Howling Blast, if both Death Runes or both Frost Runes are up.
3. Soul Reaper, if the target will be below 35% health in 6 secs.
4. Keep Dots up
- Outbreak cooldown or Unholy Blight cooldown if talented
- Plague Strike for Blood Plague, only if you have 1 Unholy Rune up, not a Death Rune.
5. Howling Blast with a Rime proc.
6. Death and Decay
7. Obliterate, if you have 1 Unholy Rune up and Killing Machine is down.
8. Horn of Winter, cos it gives Runic Power and is a raid buff gasp.

This doesn't even cover Plague Leeching to get 2 Runes, or when to spend Blood Tap charges to regen runes, or using Pestilence to spread Blood Plague in AoE.
Add in Breath of Sindy in Warlords on top of this, with Plague Leeching and Blood Tapping for extra Runes at specific moments when you're running dry on RP.

They are both very different playstyles, even if the names might be the same.

[Ruunicus]

I added the MoP version of Soul Reaper back in as a baseline ability. I loved how it worked back in MoP and I think it could be a solid addition. It would definitely give Death Knights some extra flavour

[Ange]

MoP Dual Wield priority (from some old dodgey website i googled and memory):

Not sure how you could forget the howling blast spam, the low priority to even spend unholy runes since the DPS inpact was so onesided. You played "masterfrost" in challenge modes and raids for a very long time in MoP.

Honestly it was one of the most boring DK iterations of the spec.

Just because you had more abilitys, it does not mean it made an impact or even mattered at all for 99% of the optimal DPS. The fact that you could SIT on 1/3 of your runes while doing optimal DPS was ridiculously stupid.

Playing MoP Frost was a really good way to get people into TANKING. You see this reaction from the current DH playerbase aswell. If a DPS spec is so hollow that even a number overtuning is meaningless at some point the players switch to alternative specs or classes.

I dont really get why the MoP iteration would ever be used for a concept. It was a failed design and maybe the worst one in the history of the class.

[huynh995]

OK. Thank you for sharing

[Ruunicus]

I've just re-reviewed my concept and I feel it's where I want it to be (save for the PvP stuff - I will look to finish that at some point).

I have a few idea for Unholy and Blood so I'm going to flesh them out now (Unholy first I think... as it's involving some true playstyle changes i.e. wounds) Thanks so much for the feedback everyone and I'll open up the floor again when I post another concept.