Moonblight
5 years ago
[Feedback][Frost DK][Detailed]
Frost DK Feedback

Disclaimer: I do know there is another thread but the OP is not updating it with relevant information. If someone has a suggestion that we can agree needs to be changed/fixed I will update this thread as often as I can.

Defensives

Death Knights have realistically two defensive abilities, Icebound Fortitude and Anti-Magic Shell. Both of these talents during BFA are nerfed to such a weak state that they might as well not exist. The traits from the Artifact Weapon really made our defensives useful and fun. Without those traits we are somehow the Harbingers of Frost who can almost not take a stubbed tow without dying.
We either need more defensives or for them to be bolstered passively like they are currently in Legion.

Rotation

Frost is lacking something that most if not all specs have which is thought behind its rotation/spell priority. When you're playing on either Live or on Beta all you are doing is pressing Remorseless Winter, Obliteration and Pillar on cooldown followed by spending runes on Obliterates and runic power on Frost Strike with the occasional Rime mixed in. This offers gameplay interaction on the levels of Getting Over It where your only mechanic is spinning your mouse in a circle. Does it function and allow you to complete the game? Sure. But there is almost no gameplay interaction.

Talents

56: The Frost Strike Row
This row has a talent that is only used at the beginning due to low haste (Icy Talons). A talent that functions decently, albeit very boring (Runic Attenuation). And a talent that is only chosen due to our current Tier Bonus (Shattering Strikes).

While Icy Talons always has a place at the start of the expansion due to low haste, the only way to make it work well past that is to buff it over time which you would just need to nerf again with another expansion. It needs work.

Runic Attenuation is boring and will always have some place throughout an expansion but there is no gameplay change occurring because of this talent.

Shattering Strikes is an entertaining mechanic because you need to watch the stacks as to not waste them but it just wont last without the tier set bolstering how many stacks we gain.
Potential change to this row could be adding in an AOE spender like Unholy has that is more fitting to the Frost aesthetic.

57: The Resource Row
This row feels like it wants to help you manage your resources as a DK but doesn't hit the mark with at least two of the talents.

Freezing Fog has on place in this row and needs to go. It's boring, uninspired, filler talent that doesn't fit the theme of the other two talents at all.

Murderous Efficiency is actually a very decent talent. It's gameplay is a little RNG but reliable at 50% and makes the spec more fluid, may need to become baseline.

Horn of Winter offers the same function that Icy Talons does in the sense that we will want to use this only in early expansions due to low haste/resource regeneration.

58: The Crowd Control Row
This row clearly is meant to give you CC but fails to do so in a meaningful way with it's useless talent (Abomination's Might), it's nerfed talent (Winter is Coming), and a decent CC that is better suited for PVP (Blinding Sleet).

No one takes Abomination's Might as far as I am aware. It's low chance to function on a single target ability that requires two runes is a poor design and offers little to no value.

Winter is Coming was fine as a talent if you took away the requirement of Pillar and left it as a stun. We are FROST Death Knights and we now have no AOE stun which makes us more useless than before in things like M+.

Blinding Sleet is a functionally good talent but it is much better suited in a PVP situation than a raid or even M+ situation

Continued below...
Edited by Moonblight 05/25/2018 12:30 AM
Seph
5 years ago
[Feedback][Frost DK][Detailed]
The next Beta build will include updates to Frost Death Knight. There has been a little more iteration since then (details later), but it will have the bulk of the changes, which are mostly focused on adjustments, rearrangements, or replacements for talents. The baseline spec and core rotation hasn’t changed much – Frost remains a fast-paced, proc-based rotation. The goals for the changes include:
  • Consolidate the multiple self-buff cooldowns available
  • Add the artifact active ability to the talent tree
  • Look for opportunities to update/improve the talent tree

The noteworthy change to the baseline spec is that the self-buff cooldowns have been consolidated:
  • Empower Rune Weapon has become what the Hungering Rune Weapon talent is on live (with tuning adjustments), granting 15% Haste and generating 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 5 sec for 20 sec, on a 2 min cooldown (down from 3 min on live). Now that Empower Rune Weapon is on the global cooldown, the full 6 Runes it instantly provided always felt a bit like you were wasting it – shifting it to resources over time to add to a pretty full rotation made sense.
  • Pillar of Frost has been removed baseline. Since the knockback immunity portion of it was moved to Death’s Advance, Pillar ended up being a pretty bland 20% Strength buff. We’ve renamed the talent Obliteration into Pillar of Frost to keep that name around on the spec.

The next build you’ll see will be just slightly out of date in regards to the Frost talent tree – the most current version is outlined below. Any talents not described are mostly unchanged.

Level 56 row: Inexorable Assault, Icy Talons, Shattering Strikes – primarily single-target/constant value

Inexorable Assault has been redesigned – it now periodically grants a buff (stacks to 5) that causes your next Obliterate to deal additional Frost damage. This additional damage is a flat, separate add to Obliterate’s damage and doesn’t benefit from Killing Machine (you aren’t intended to play around it + Killing Machine). The talent is mostly passive, but with the added bonus of providing some benefit at the start of an encounter or when you’re off-target.

Level 57 row: Runic Attenuation, Murderous Efficiency, Horn of Winter – this row adds resources/speeds up to the rotation

Runic Attenuation now generates 3 Runic Power on a more controllable procs per minute system, instead of generating 1 Runic Power on autoattacks (which didn’t have a good way for us to tune it). It should still feel like pretty consistent resource generation.

Level 58 row: Winter is Coming, Asphyxiate, Blinding Sleet – crowd control

Asphyxiate has replaced Abomination’s Might in the talent tree, and now all 3 Death Knight specs have access to this single-target stun cooldown. Abomination’s Might wasn’t very reliable and wasn’t even always desirable as a random single-target proc stun.

Level 60 row: Avalanche, Gathering Storm, Glacial Advance – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets

Avalanche has been redesigned to trigger from casting Howling Blast with Rime active, and is intended to be the simple passive option on the row.

Level 75 row: Permafrost, Wraith Walk, Death Pact

Death Pact has replaced the version of Inexorable Assault from live, giving both damage specs access to this survivability talent.

Level 90 row: Freezing Fog, Frostscythe, Frostwyrm’s Fury – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets

Freezing Fog is planned to be unchanged from live. The version you’re going to see soon includes an additional mechanic (which is probably being removed), that was added in order to make it fit better when it was on a different talent row.

Frostwyrm’s Fury is the artifact active, Sindragosa’s Fury, with a slightly different name so that it doesn’t sound too similar to Breath of Sindragosa. Its cooldown is 3 min instead of 5 min (like the artifact active) – a shorter cooldown as a talent feels better to be usable more often and allows it to be better tuned against its competitors without requiring a large damage reduction in PvP due to being a huge single damage event.

Level 100 row: Icecap, Pillar of Frost, Breath of Sindragosa – Damage modifiers/works in most situations

Icecap now affects Empower Rune Weapon instead of Pillar of Frost, reducing its cooldown by 3 sec (pending tuning) when it triggers.

Obliteration (the talent on live) has been renamed Pillar of Frost as mentioned earlier, and has the same mechanics on the same 1.5 min cooldown.

Breath of Sindragosa is mostly unchanged. However, worth noting is that its 2 min cooldown lines up better with the new Empower Rune Weapon, which now also has a 2 min cooldown.

Note: Runic Empowerment has been tuned down from 1.8%->1.5%. The spec often just had way too much resources to spend. This is the spec’s primary pacing controller and we’ll continue adjusting it in the future to what feels good.

Thanks for all the continued feedback.

06/05/2018 07:54 PMPosted by Moonblight
The changes will probably be announced to be on hold until a later patch or just next xpac in about a month. Mark my words. If Blizzard makes any valuable changes within 1 week I will literally a shoe. No bamboozle.

Edited by Seph 06/07/2018 01:15 AM
Seph
5 years ago
[Feedback][Frost DK][Detailed]
Lots of feedback on the first round of changes. Here’s the second iteration:

Pillar of Frost
Previous changes to Pillar of Frost have been reverted. While the ability is quite simple in a vacuum (20% damage increase with no other mechanics), there were clearly a lot of players who were uncomfortable with the idea of removing a core ability that’s been around for so long.

After reading all the feedback and examining the ability’s place on the spec, we think the ability did provide a couple valuable things to the Frost rotation. One is Pillar of Frost is a window to play around – it allowed you to occasionally pool/spend your resources for a gain in a way that otherwise Frost doesn’t really have baseline. Additionally, it was a damage amp that you could/would want to line up cooldowns for – Remorseless Winter, Frostwyrm’s Fury, etc. Straightforward, but felt good to use.

Pillar of Frost is now back, at 45 sec cooldown and 15 sec duration – shorter cooldown but same uptime. Since it’s providing some useful gameplay direction for the rotation, we’re leaning into it more and making it available a little more often. Additionally, to give it just a little more texture and gameplay, its damage bonus now starts at 15% and increases by 1% per Rune spent while it’s active. Pillar usually ends with a 25% damage bonus or more.

Talent Changes
  • Glacial Advance now costs 30 Runic Power (instead of 1 Rune), has a 6 sec cooldown (down from 15 sec), and also applies Razorice to all enemies hit. Glacial Advance overlapped a lot with Frostscythe in both use and cost, and we’re looking to differentiate it so it can find its own use case.
  • Cold Heart has replaced Shattering Strikes. It’s basically the same as the legendary but without the stun, and provides the spec’s talent tree with some single-target burst.
  • Obliteration is mostly back to its live design, but it’s now a passive, and triggered while Pillar of Frost is active. With Pillar of Frost being back baseline, we still want to avoid a setup where casing 3 self-buff cooldown consecutively was possible (Pillar of Frost, Empower Rune Weapon, Obliteration, in any order). We're still iterating a bit on Obliteration's cost reduction mechanic - it has some slightly awkward effects on resources which we'd like to make feel better.

Current talent layout:
  • Level 60: Avalanche, Frozen Pulse (now requires fewer than 3 full Runes instead of fewer than 2), Frostscythe
  • Level 90: Gathering Storm, Glacial Advance, Frostwyrm’s Fury
  • Level 100: Icecap (same as live, affecting Pillar of Frost), Obliteration, Breath of Sindragosa

Notes:
  • Icy Talons now triggers from Breath of Sindragosa, since it’s replacing your Frost Strike for a period of time.
  • Icebound Fortitude’s damage reduction was increased to 30% for both Frost/Unholy specs

As always, thanks for the continued feedback and we expect to hear more from you all.
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