[LEGION]: FROST Death Knight

[Deleted]

What do you guys think of the current state of frost death knight in legion?

For me, it feel really dull and clunky, i expected a spec revamp, a new mechanic and some spells to change/replaced.


Killing Machine could have been reworked
remorseless winter feels like...i dont know, really weird in a bad way
talent choices are oneway, and most of them are not near as cool as others
mobility is still crap
frostscythe's synergy with killing machine is out of place
artifact weapon abilities are lol


What's your opinion?



PS: Let's keep it FROST Spec convo only please guys

[Lex Icon]

i've not played it but from what i've seen i'm a little worried about hb spam still being a thing. other than that it looks pretty cool

[Nisth]

On single target you most definitely will not be using HB spam. Even in aoe you're going to be using obliterate for the rime procs (free 300% HB). At some target count, yes, you'll be dropping obliterate to just use HB, but you have to remember things like frostscythe and remorseless winter being thrown in as well.

[Deleted]

As the long thread can be a bit confusing merging specs and now is mainly about unholy thoughs, it's nice to open this as a Frost discuss place.

I don't have alpha access for testing, but my opinion is that Frost is still in a very early state of development. Blood and Unholy have received some work and Frost will (or at least should) get some in future builds. However, I'm almost sure that main mechanic and core design are not going to change.


I've posted a few interest points (for me) in the main legion thread some pages ago. Here u have them again for discuss. (in the main thread unholy issues have quickly overtake them).

1.- Is ok for me being a simple/easy spec, even prefer it because gives me more time to control my mates as raid leader, but it's just me. For someone who wants more deep or complexity there is plenty of space in the first 3 talent rows, mostly passive and kind of "pick the best of each row and forget the rest forever".
This way some of us could take the "easy path" and others add some deep to their rotation. Would be nice to see some "work" in this sense.

2.- Utility or not: Now our raid utility is basically single grip and battle rez, no more. Many things have been taken out from the spec and can't
see nothing good incoming.
Lv 60 row is terrible. Abomination's Might and Blinding Sleet are bad jokes, a chance to stun and a real 0,1 secs daze are not useful at all. Winter is coming is promising but i don't see the point in spend (or waste) our damaging cd for a delayed stun.

I propose Winter is coming: Increase the CD of Remorseless Winter by XX secs, at 5º aplication stun (as it is now) and each wave doing 15% more dmg (removing the talent in lv90 row and compensate the longer CD).
Remove the other 2 talents and give us some diferent utilities just for choose in each encounter. For example one of them could be Antimagic Zone, and the other a small raid wise buff or sprint for several seconds.

3.- Bit worried about this one. What if our eternal scaling issues are not fully solved?? All our spec is based around Obliterate, the problematic skill that doesn't scale. There shouldn't be problem with the artifact (all will have the same weapon) but... is difficult to trust.
In WOD we can more or less avoid this skill but in Legion is no way to not Obliterate.

4.- Too many AOE talents and skills. Up to 7 or 8 talents just do AOE or improve our AOE. Do we really need all of them?? Some should dissapear and give us some ST options. Now for ST we have just the first row in a passive way and Obliteration, who feels too weak for a 1,5 min CD (may be 30-40 secs for be considered as an option).


As said before, I don't have alpha. If someone who has is agree with some or all of this points, feel free to copy-paste or modify and put it/them into the official forums. Now, before beta arrives, is the right time for give feedback to devs.

[Deleted]

As I see it, the current Frost DK is the best incarnation of the spec there have ever been, and Frost was already one of the better specs to play on live.

The alpha have adressed the lackings Frost traditionally had, namely high single target burst, and high sustained singletarget damage. If we choose to, we can instead talent into even stronger AOE than we've ever had, cementing our place as the AOE king.
The loss of Gorefiends Grasp however, will put us at the same level of raid utility as a mage without timewarp. We are essentially only there for our DPS, which means that we'll need to be in the top of the DPS rankings, at the spot usually dominated by locks, mages and rogues.

Otherwise raidleaders will not have a reason to ever pick a DK, aside from lack of other options.

Credit to PreachGaming for making such a fabulous preview.

[Lex Icon]

On single target you most definitely will not be using HB spam. Even in aoe you're going to be using obliterate for the rime procs (free 300% HB). At some target count, yes, you'll be dropping obliterate to just use HB, but you have to remember things like frostscythe and remorseless winter being thrown in as well.

ah ok i just noticed that you can buff up it's single target damage like crazy and in some videos i watched it was pretty much the hardest hitting ability.

[nathrizarri]

On single target you most definitely will not be using HB spam. Even in aoe you're going to be using obliterate for the rime procs (free 300% HB). At some target count, yes, you'll be dropping obliterate to just use HB, but you have to remember things like frostscythe and remorseless winter being thrown in as well.

Stop spreading misinformation.

It is %400 total.

It requires a loooot of targets to equal the damage of HB spam vs Obli/rime.

Obliterate has multiple artifact traits both utility and damage. Utility like extra RP is irreplacable. Damage contributing traits give OB more edge over HB.

Any HB modifier will contribute to OB while OB modifier will not to HB.

Discussed/explained all of this in legion discussion thread yet 2nd post of Frost specific discussion thread returns the topic back to this dumb topic.

---

Frost needs more soul fantasy in it's core. Currently spec lacks identity because it is too much of a "Cool Warrior". Taking out some of the existing abilities and their tied mechanics, and replacing them with soul based abilities can open up more room for improvement/diversity. Gameplay is healthy, rotation is solid and straightforward.

1 thing I dislike about the talents is Icecap's current design.

Alpha levels of crit can provide you around 30-35 seconds in total, meaning 10-15 seconds more. However this spreads the damage over time, rather than increasing the burst. I would expect to get more % strength out of pillar of frost based on our Crit. This could create a more bursty spec by stacking crit. Although I like the potential 2x Remorseless winter stun with Winter is Coming, I find better burst more appealing. It creates a more meaningful windows of oppurtunity with higher reward for proper play, even tough it looks like a steroid boost.

I like the intention behind Obliteration, however it is executed poorly.

4 Obliterate(1 guaranteed)+2 runes left vs 3 Obliterate with 0 runes.

6 second limit will cripple us if Rime procs during that period, diminishing the value of talent. It needs some tweaking to provide meaningful/engaging gameplay.

[Icedcoffeee]

I don't have alpha access, but these are my thoughts from what I've seen.

1. Mobility is still a problem. Even if we are destined to be the slowest spec in the game (sigh), Wraith Walk is unduly punishing to use.

2. Artifact traits are meh. (I think these might actually be changed.) Crystalline Swords feels very placeholder, and is impressively boring gameplay-wise. The LK summoning thing is fine, but needs to be rebalanced to avoid resource overcapping. Summoning Sindragosa is very cool, but the ability appears to be pretty worthless right now. Tuning aside, I'm not a fan of 5min cooldowns. Maybe if it were something like Shaman's Fire Elemental, but a 5min cd for burst aoe feels off.

3. Talents are mixed. I like many of them, but there are clear poor options that should be replaced:

- Hungering Rune Weapon feels like what Empower Rune Weapon should have always been mechanically, as it just makes it easier to avoid wasting resources, so I would like to see that made baseline. (And it feels off in Tier 58 anyways, as it's just a resource generator.) Instead make the upgrade into a CD that summons the Fallen Crusader, or has a Razorice effect, or something.

- Tier 57 is fine by me as long as Horn of Winter is always a viable choice, I just worry that scaling will force me into choosing the RNG abilities.

- Tier 75, I dislike White Walker, because I don't want our only (already bad) mobility to be shackled to a defensive.

- Tier 100, Obliteration is bad, and Glacial Advance (while cool looking) seems too niche to be useful. I would like to be able to choose something other than BoS, even if it is the clear favorite.

4. More "soul" flavor would a bonus.

[Deleted]

CONS:
- Crystaline swords is a placeholder (99% certain but can't put my hands on fire for blizzard anymore), it's passive, boring, no animation on weapons. Very anxious to see what active ability they'll make.
- Sindragosa Fury is horrible @ 5 minute cooldown and terrible animation, realy laughable.
- All other artifact traits are realy realy bland and don't add anything, mostly passive things with a % attached to them.
- Survival could use a boost as DKs are generaly viewed as low mobility+high survival fantasy
- Mobility is bad but if it's the fantasy theme, than at least boost it's hardiness
- Having both Frost Scythe and glacial advance feels duplicated.
- Holding back Frost Scythe for a KM proc feels counter-intuitive with the short cooldown, although not sure if intended or not (!), prolly just me that feels it's a waste of potential ?!
- no KM visual UI proc? bug or intended?

Rest is just stuff that could be better, but honestly i can't complain too much


PROS:

- God damn Remorseless winter feels great. Great idea to replace d&D with it. It's a pleasure to press that button.
- Breath feels realy cool, very good cooldown to use. Not a big fan of pooling resources beforehand it, but i feel it's great to use.
- Frost Scythe + KM proc has got to be one of the most satisfying abilities to press in wow, period. BAM, reap your guts kinda feeling.
- AOE feels very nice and efective
- Visualy very apealing
- Dual wield gameplay (even though with baseline 1,5s GCD) still feels agressive, frantic and fun with not much downtime


All in all, i'm happy. What i'm most hoping is a new artifact active ability. That is my most anticipated urge atm.


P.S. Giev Strangulate back. Yes please. Miss it above all else. Fits class fantasy perfectly. please?

[Aeriel]

I wanted them to do something like with Warriors, or Ret, where you had a basic set of skills, and then could talent into more or alter your main skills. Making Frostscythe into something that could be ST rotational with a cleave for instance.

Also a tier that changed Obliterate somehow. For instance one version only hits with off-hand for one rune, but greater RP generation vs a version that used one rune, but more total DPCT. Something to play with the haste aspect of the class. Speaking of which: I hate the Icy Talons talent.

[Nisth]

Stop spreading misinformation.

It is %400 total.

Free 300% additional, my mistake.

It requires a loooot of targets to equal the damage of HB spam vs Obli/rime.

Yes this is true, what I said doesn't go against this. Though ultimately this is going to depend on tuning, so it could be 5 targets or it could be 12, who knows.

Discussed/explained all of this in legion discussion thread yet 2nd post of Frost specific discussion thread returns the topic back to this dumb topic.

Not everyone has the time to go through 3000+ replies in the preview thread, so it's okay for them to be brought up again and flattened out in 2 seconds.

Frost needs more soul fantasy in it's core. Currently spec lacks identity because it is too much of a "Cool Warrior". Taking out some of the existing abilities and their tied mechanics, and replacing them with soul based abilities can open up more room for improvement/diversity. Gameplay is healthy, rotation is solid and straightforward.

I wouldn't mind for frost to have more of a soul theme to it, especially since we're wielding pieces of Frostmourne after all.

What if they added another type of resource, soul fragments, that we would gain charges of whenever we use Obliterate/Frostscythe KM procs or something along the lines of that (I'll try to brainstorm ideas for this). Cap them at 5 and then we could add a new ability, perhaps soul reaper as someone suggested (I think you?), and rip their soul from them. When using soul reaper it could deal damage and maybe slow them for a short duration? I don't know, what do you guys think?

[nathrizarri]

I wouldn't mind for frost to have more of a soul theme to it, especially since we're wielding pieces of Frostmourne after all.

What if they added another type of resource, soul fragments, that we would gain charges of whenever we use Obliterate/Frostscythe KM procs or something along the lines of that (I'll try to brainstorm ideas for this). Cap them at 5 and then we could add a new ability, perhaps soul reaper as someone suggested (I think you?), and rip their soul from them. When using soul reaper it could deal damage and maybe slow them for a short duration? I don't know, what do you guys think?

Yes I did suggested that and I have posted couple ideas about how it can be implemented in the link at my signature.

Since you asked opinions, Your resource system+Runic empowerement may create overwhelming moments in rotation.

I would like to see Frost more on the; Proc/Setup/Burst model. Adding more buttons to press while not tweaking the uptime on GCD will stretch our offense thin in the given time. Less but heavier hits, more downtime.

[Bisque]

I don't have access to alpha/beta so at best what I can give is second hand. I honestly don't think frost is that bad- and maybe that is because I was not expecting some grand revamp for frost where they revamp it significantly like they did with unholy with their zit popping mechanic and blood as the "vampire" type thing.

Focus on DW only is good, the changes to KM and critical strike being relevant are not bad- so some much needed tweaks here and there but they did not reinvent the "frost wheel" and I think those expecting a reinvention of the wheel are going to be dissapointed.

And as Nathrizarri and others have pointed out the "fantasy" of frost can be a bit limiting when compared to what you can do with unholy and blood. Unholy you can go the route of "master of disease", "master of undead minions", blood has the whole "dark guardain, vampire thing going". What does frost have fantasy wise- warrior who utilizes cold-and that seems to be it, so that is what blizz has to build off. They can't use frost as "masters of the undead or "a vile and all powerful plaguespreader, spreading blight and destruction wherever he may tread"- Unholy already has that. So frost is stuck with some kind of "warrior who embraces the cold and chills his enemies to the bone".

The whole utilizing cold is covered with remorseless winter, glacial advance, frozen pulse etc...- so certainly frost death knights do feel more "frosty". At best all I can see blizzard do for frost now (outside of number tuning, hopefully reworking some artifact traits) is perhaps utlizing the whole soul reaping/soul stealing aspect of Frostmourne, now re purposed as a dual wield weapon. Maybe soul fragments, some sort of weapon strike, maybe a debuff (flayed soul, weakened soul etc...), at least something utilizing the whole "soul reaping" aspect of the frost death knight which seems to be completely ignored atm.

[nathrizarri]

They clearly had the intention of souls. Before current remorseless winter was implemented we were collecting soul fragments and exploding them, but that was a meh mechanic to play.

We still have a tiny piece of soul left in our build, that is the Soulbiter trait, but it is just a flat damage increase.

Crystalline Swords is too bad to be true. I am guessing it is a placeholder.

Frost Strike is just a RP dump now, only effecting our gameplay via Runic Empowerement. As my 2nd proposal goes in my Frost fantasy thread, we could get rid of them both.

They revamped Blood. UH is next and after UH I am expecting a good touch on Frost.

[Hemalador]

This line of thought that the fantasy of Frost is lacking at this point is 100% subjective. It is clearly hugely delineated from Blood and Unholy. If the fantasy is of a frigid, remorseless, unrelenting warrior that summons the very essence of Northrend, the home of the Lich King, then the Frost dk in legion is delivering. FFS if you stand still for a while, ice comes out of your feet.

Some people may feel that Frost should be something different than that but that is individual preference. What can't be argued is that Frost has a strong theme that is unlike other specs in the game (including frost mages) and Blizz have delivered on that theme in legion thus far.

[nathrizarri]

This line of thought that the fantasy of Frost is lacking at this point is 100% subjective. It is clearly hugely delineated from Blood and Unholy. If the fantasy is of a frigid, remorseless, unrelenting warrior that summons the very essence of Northrend, the home of the Lich King, then the Frost dk in legion is delivering. FFS if you stand still for a while, ice comes out of your feet.

Some people may feel that Frost should be something different than that but that is individual preference. What can't be argued is that Frost has a strong theme that is unlike other specs in the game (including frost mages) and Blizz have delivered on that theme in legion thus far.

Subjective ofcourse. That is what we do here. Sharing opinions. However can you deny the fact that we will be wield the strongest Soulblade?

I said it before, Northrend is not strongly built in with Frost.

Nerubians
Vrykul
Valkyr
Frost Wyrm

All of these are tied to Northrend/Lich King. When you summon Syndra-fcking-gosa, while holding reforged Frostmourne in your hands, you are more than a "Cool Warrior", in my opinion ofc.

I am not opposing the idea of "Icy harbringer of Doom" fantasy, It is just poorly built. RW is awesome, but that is it. Howling Blast/Frost Strike-which are base of our rotation- are very weak in terms of animation and general fantasy. Howling Blast better be Blasting a sharp wind through target. Frost Strike can go imo, It feels like a melee version of Frostbolt. Nothing interesting about it.

[Deleted]

Hello everyone!
Since I'm not very good like all of you but still I enjoy playing DK Frost, I have a question for you about Legion stats priority.
We won't have two-hand play style anymore and also Multistrike will be gone, so do you think the new stat priority will just be mastery > haste > vers >crit? Or since Obliterate will be more performing, crit will be as much important as haste?

[nathrizarri]

Hello everyone!
Since I'm not very good like all of you but still I enjoy playing DK Frost, I have a question for you about Legion stats priority.
We won't have two-hand play style anymore and also Multistrike will be gone, so do you think the new stat priority will just be mastery > haste > vers >crit? Or since Obliterate will be more performing, crit will be as much important as haste?

I expect Crit>Haste=Mastery. New Killing Machine+Talents/Traits+1.5s GCD will surely provide value to crit/haste.

Breath of Syndragosa builds will be Haste oriented, that is no brainer.

Obliterate builds will most likely have Crit>Haste as top 2.

I don't see mastery being dominant stat in Legion for Frost. It is a very boring flat damage increase and offer no gameplay changes through progress meanwhile Crit/Haste actually shapes up your playstyle.

All assumed tuning was made properly.

[Deleted]

Just my 2 cents about the new changes.

Overall, I think is a nice step in the right direction.


Possitive:

- Apparently, I remark this, apparently, with the talent changes, the intention is to give us an option for spec into a "build-resources" way, oriented mainly in BoS and another in "passive-buffs" choosing between Obliteration and Glacial Advance. Can't test or try (not Alpha ) if they will be solid or viable options but looks like we finally have options. Lets see.
- Obliteration is better than before, a valid ST option is really needed. No matter (just for now) if is enough or not, at least devs have noticed about this issue.

Doubts:

- Usage and value of Obliterate and/or frost skills (increased by mastery) as we equip is still uncertain.
- We received a Taunt recently. Will "Ice in Your Veins" trait increased heal wihile IBF be enough to allow us a 5-10 secs of emergency tank?. I've always counted this as a serious raid help, and one of our "utilities".

Negative:

- Its sad being the slowest turtle-spec, but someone has to be (resignation...)
- Lvl 60 Tier untouched... we can't go live with this 3 "useless utilities". Just compare with the rest of classes (warrior's Shockwave, dh's Fel Eruption, monk's Leg Sweep, retrys can have 2 at a time, ...). C'mon devs...


Sure there would be many other issues to discuss. So, in conclusion, just an step, but hoping only the first of many.

[Aeriel]

I don't see mastery being dominant stat in Legion for Frost. It is a very boring flat damage increase and offer no gameplay changes through progress meanwhile Crit/Haste actually shapes up your playstyle.

All assumed tuning was made properly.

Yeah I think this depends on how the passive damage talents work out. There is a lot of passive Frost damage in the talent tree, which may make Mastery=Haste for most builds. Frostscythe will be the weird one because you want crit to get crit? The old KM paradox.