UH, UH, UH, Blood, UH, Blood... Where my frosties at?

[Mikar 2]

All I see as I scroll through the first 5 pages of posts (I'm bored yes) is UH this, UH that, Blood help, etc etc. Only one frost post, and it's basically, gg frost sucks. As I pointed out in my post I don't think that Frost is as bad as it's made out to be.

 

So my real question is, are we stuck in this 'I went unholy to have decent DPS, and now my artifact is to high to swap' stage? I mean I knew I wanted to go frost right from the jump off, regardless of DPS. My guild is inclusive and would only cut me (if i had low DPS) if we were on heroic progression. Even then, I know how to read about mechanics so odds are I wouldn't be cut because an low-mid alive DPS is better than a high dead DPS.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on UH, I just don't see many frosties, and it makes me sad. haha

[Andell 0]

Well you asked: "are we stuck in this 'I went unholy to have decent DPS, and now my artifact is to high to swap' stage?", and that was me... At first. I've been a DK for years and for about 95% of it, I was frost. I loved frost, and I hated unholy. When Legion launched and I realized that frost was for lack of a better word trash, I begrudgingly rolled unholy. I checked daily to see if frost would get buffed, but when it didn't happen (well it did later, but it took a bit), I realized I was too far into my unholy artifact for me to switch anyways. But eventually unholy grew on me, and now I can't even fathom going back. Unholy has turned out exponentially more fun for me once I got used to it and played it for a little bit. So for me, I was at first in the stage you described, but now I love unholy too much to swap, even if I could. 

[Zataron 5]

I think that after the buffs, Frost is not that far behind Unholy. However, for me personally, Frost just isn't fun to play. It feels like an incomplete build where your abilities have no real synergy and you basically just spam buttons without thinking. I think there aren't many threads about Frost because it's so simplistic that there isn't much room for theory crafting.

Unholy on the other hand is fun to play because it requires quite a bit of micro management and decision making, rather than just blindly playing your rotation. Consequently, there are reasonable discussions to be had about optimizations, gearing and talent choices.

[Mikar 2]

51 minutes ago, Zataron said:

I think that after the buffs, Frost is not that far behind Unholy. However, for me personally, Frost just isn't fun to play. It feels like an incomplete build where your abilities have no real synergy and you basically just spam buttons without thinking. I think there aren't many threads about Frost because it's so simplistic that there isn't much room for theory crafting.

Unholy on the other hand is fun to play because it requires quite a bit of micro management and decision making, rather than just blindly playing your rotation. Consequently, there are reasonable discussions to be had about optimizations, gearing and talent choices.

Ok, valid point. I guess having never played UH before I don't know what I'm missing.

[mgibbonsjr 2]

I wanted to try to Frost, but I do feel like I am too far behind on my artifact to go down that path now. Especially with already having gone to rank 13 blood. Now it's to the point of What if I invest that much AP in frost and then don't like it? I then feel like I would be pretty far behind on the unholy artifact. 

 

All of that said, in a little over a month or two when AP is plentiful and I have finished up the UH artifact, all of that will not matter and I'll give frost a try =) 

[demonardvark 554]

Don't worry after nighthold everyone will jump on the frost boat and unholy will become second place. Frost scales very well and even certain playstyles demand more stats then we can generate right now. Unholy is initially quite strong but after a certain part scales like trash. Especially with the planned 7.1 buffs to frost, we'll see frost pull ahead by large margins.

The issue with frost is that it was poorly designed, had limited changes from WoD and is in stat hell. People are struggling with sim work because its no longer just stack one stat and GG. Even then to make frost viable its a very high apm rotation. To get the most out of machinegun you really need to be hammering on your keyboard, even then once frostscythe becomes dominant it will be even high apm. This is classically not how frost played. Frost was either slow powerful obliterates or howling blast spam. It was never like gladiator warrior.

Even then although pulling ahead at this point frost still requires such a heavy investment and a whole lot of effort to be mediocre. yes, the lett frost dks are pulling good numbers, but you have to work your butt off for it. Frost right now, is be amazing to pull okay numbers, or be okay and pull garbage. 

So myself I was playing with reviving frost, I got my artifact only a couple nodes behind my others and the rotation is fine, im doing good dps. However, switching to unholy I see a 35K jump pushing only 3 buttons. So, currently it just not rewarding to roll your face on your keyboard to kill a single trash world enemy. Now as frost is corrected and scales better it will be more popular, however, at launch, and even a bit now, its in a questionable place. 

Granted moving forward it's already shown all dks are going to be in a bad place. We have classically scaled terribly and this expac its looking to be actually worse than ever. Especially not with huge utility loss, we likely won't see many dks in top progression runs. 

[Alexizonfire 1]

Now i don't agree that frost isn't fun to play. I've been a FDK since wrath release (i have FSK tatooed on my heart) so i might be a little biased, but to me frost is fun and engaging in just the right amount.

Yes we don't have as many many cds to keep track of... Or do we? Ours just aren't baseline and are acquired through talents, and while most aren't top tier choices (which is fine, most of them just need a little tuning) they offer the most variety of builds! And they completely change the playstyle/rotation along with it which makes frost the most fun spec in the game imo . I personally don't like UH, it feels really clunky, requires heavy build-up while requiring constant and taxing proc/cd/stacks/dot/ressources awareness and management.

Frost looks visually amazing and active, while UH is really just swing and throw dcs which is kind of boring.

Frost is in a slightly better place than before, and complaints have died down a little as fdks start to rise in dps. But just a little, most people start to realize that it's not really a question of ability dmg, but a mechanical thing. Killing machine is the core of the spec and yet is inherently flawed and self defeating. Most of our talent cds have too long of a cd, or too short of a duration. Same thing with our golden traits, too big a cd for SF, proc rate too low on hypo, and our artifact traits really are underwhelming and generally a mess compared to UH.

[demonardvark 554]

9 minutes ago, Alexizonfire said:

Now i don't agree that frost isn't fun to play. I've been a FDK since wrath release (i have FSK tatooed on my heart) so i might be a little biased, but to me frost is fun and engaging in just the right amount.

Yes we don't have as many many cds to keep track of... Or do we? Ours just aren't baseline and are acquired through talents, and while most aren't top tier choices (which is fine, most of them just need a little tuning) they offer the most variety of builds! And they completely change the playstyle/rotation along with it which makes frost the most fun spec in the game imo . I personally don't like UH, it feels really clunky, requires heavy build-up while requiring constant and taxing proc/cd/stacks/dot/ressources awareness and management.

Frost looks visually amazing and active, while UH is really just swing and throw dcs which is kind of boring.

Frost is in a slightly better place than before, and complaints have died down a little as fdks start to rise in dps. But just a little, most people start to realize that it's not really a question of ability dmg, but a mechanical thing. Killing machine is the core of the spec and yet is inherently flawed and self defeating. Most of our talent cds have too long of a cd, or too short of a duration. Same thing with our golden traits, too big a cd for SF, proc rate too low on hypo, and our artifact traits really are underwhelming and generally a mess compared to UH.

yeah you do make a good point i forget to mention some times, frosts golden traits are absolute garbage, even some of our baseline ones are questionnable, 3% armor? WHY!!!!!

In the past I really like frost a lot myself. Even hellfire citadel progression I stuck with frost (mostly because i thought bos was more of an exploit and hate the playstyle) but it was fun. I agree too appearance wise frost is quite the bit of eye candy at the moment. Even then sindragosas fury is glorious for world quests, pull all 20 adds you need to kill, pop pillar, pop SF, GG, onto the next one. 

Frost is in a better place yes but still not quite a good one. Even as we scale machine gun is punishing for both failure in rotation and time off boss. Nythendra as example, you have to run out rot, or eleth having to run out toxin, that is huge time off boss, where our IT stacks fall off, our pulse isn't hitting anything, its bad news bears. Now, frost is going to get much much stronger over time, however, its still going to favor machinegun, and frost has never been huge apm spec. Unholy does require a bit of buildup and micromanagement which may not appeal to all, but hammering my face on my keyboard isn't that fun either XD

[Alexizonfire 1]

1 hour ago, demonardvark said:

yeah you do make a good point i forget to mention some times, frosts golden traits are absolute garbage, even some of our baseline ones are questionnable, 3% armor? WHY!!!!!

In the past I really like frost a lot myself. Even hellfire citadel progression I stuck with frost (mostly because i thought bos was more of an exploit and hate the playstyle) but it was fun. I agree too appearance wise frost is quite the bit of eye candy at the moment. Even then sindragosas fury is glorious for world quests, pull all 20 adds you need to kill, pop pillar, pop SF, GG, onto the next one. 

Frost is in a better place yes but still not quite a good one. Even as we scale machine gun is punishing for both failure in rotation and time off boss. Nythendra as example, you have to run out rot, or eleth having to run out toxin, that is huge time off boss, where our IT stacks fall off, our pulse isn't hitting anything, its bad news bears. Now, frost is going to get much much stronger over time, however, its still going to favor machinegun, and frost has never been huge apm spec. Unholy does require a bit of buildup and micromanagement which may not appeal to all, but hammering my face on my keyboard isn't that fun either XD

Yea i made a rant about the whole frost artifact situation on the wow forums if you want to check it out Here. The simple fact that it is recommended we pick the hb dmg trait before our 3rd golden speaks volume about our situation.

I don't really feel im face smashing with either the it/ra/oblit build nor mg, because mg is all about that down time, which in retrospect might be worse than facesmashing lol. But zefyrk's build feels fluid, fast-paced and engaging.

Ofc i just HB spam when out of range/cc/mechanic/chasing which sucks but eh, might as well build the rp to get IT rolling again asap when we get back in. I personally think HB should deal tons of dmg, but its dmg would split between every target hit up to a set minimum (kinda like the meteor mechanic). It's a cool mechanic that would help our ranged aspect while preventing us from abusing it in aoe situations. Idk what to do with rime though haha.

 

[demonardvark 554]

2 hours ago, Alexizonfire said:

Yea i made a rant about the whole frost artifact situation on the wow forums if you want to check it out Here. The simple fact that it is recommended we pick the hb dmg trait before our 3rd golden speaks volume about our situation.

I don't really feel im face smashing with either the it/ra/oblit build nor mg, because mg is all about that down time, which in retrospect might be worse than facesmashing lol. But zefyrk's build feels fluid, fast-paced and engaging.

Ofc i just HB spam when out of range/cc/mechanic/chasing which sucks but eh, might as well build the rp to get IT rolling again asap when we get back in. I personally think HB should deal tons of dmg, but its dmg would split between every target hit up to a set minimum (kinda like the meteor mechanic). It's a cool mechanic that would help our ranged aspect while preventing us from abusing it in aoe situations. Idk what to do with rime though haha.

 

honestly howling blast would be amazing if it worked that way. Rime would be no different just a damage increase. Yeah following in zefs footsteps I prefer RA to FS any day of the weak, pure FS is too weak and hybrid obliterate FS builds are kinda .... awkward to play. FS requires a lot of stats now in the long run it will likely pull ahead but we have a ways to go yet. 

[Cassami 1]

I personally played frost from the start, was unholy in Wod  and somehow didnt like the changes.
To me it didnt feel too bad even before the buffs   but others were pulling ahead outside of aoe always ofc,
im at around 858 now and i recently tried unholy just to see how well i could do and after 3 days of trying i gave up, i personally do far better with frost  which i prefer aswell! ^-^   tho i like using 1 2hander more :/  but i shall deal with that     i fell in love with frost  and have had no problems with it  except finding mythic + groups (<.<)  

btw   no idea what buffs i had and no logs to prove it   and i dont get it on the training dummy  but when doing brh mythic today  while bloodrush and  my horn of valor(mythic6)  my dmg on the first boss went up to 380kdps  didnt ever see those single target numbers on my frost till today  maybe my skada was bugged?  i dunno   but that was pretty damn fun :D

Edited October 13, 2016 by Cassami

[Chouse 0]

8 hours ago, demonardvark said:

Don't worry after nighthold everyone will jump on the frost boat and unholy will become second place. Frost scales very well and even certain playstyles demand more stats then we can generate right now. Unholy is initially quite strong but after a certain part scales like trash. Especially with the planned 7.1 buffs to frost, we'll see frost pull ahead by large margins.

The issue with frost is that it was poorly designed, had limited changes from WoD and is in stat hell. People are struggling with sim work because its no longer just stack one stat and GG. Even then to make frost viable its a very high apm rotation. To get the most out of machinegun you really need to be hammering on your keyboard, even then once frostscythe becomes dominant it will be even high apm. This is classically not how frost played. Frost was either slow powerful obliterates or howling blast spam. It was never like gladiator warrior.

Even then although pulling ahead at this point frost still requires such a heavy investment and a whole lot of effort to be mediocre. yes, the lett frost dks are pulling good numbers, but you have to work your butt off for it. Frost right now, is be amazing to pull okay numbers, or be okay and pull garbage. 

So myself I was playing with reviving frost, I got my artifact only a couple nodes behind my others and the rotation is fine, im doing good dps. However, switching to unholy I see a 35K jump pushing only 3 buttons. So, currently it just not rewarding to roll your face on your keyboard to kill a single trash world enemy. Now as frost is corrected and scales better it will be more popular, however, at launch, and even a bit now, its in a questionable place. 

Granted moving forward it's already shown all dks are going to be in a bad place. We have classically scaled terribly and this expac its looking to be actually worse than ever. Especially not with huge utility loss, we likely won't see many dks in top progression runs. 

You gave me hope and then crushed it, all in one post.

[Zataron 5]

8 hours ago, demonardvark said:

Granted moving forward it's already shown all dks are going to be in a bad place. We have classically scaled terribly and this expac its looking to be actually worse than ever. Especially not with huge utility loss, we likely won't see many dks in top progression runs. 

Great, which class should i switch to then? :D

[Alexizonfire 1]

4 hours ago, demonardvark said:

honestly howling blast would be amazing if it worked that way. Rime would be no different just a damage increase. Yeah following in zefs footsteps I prefer RA to FS any day of the weak, pure FS is too weak and hybrid obliterate FS builds are kinda .... awkward to play. FS requires a lot of stats now in the long run it will likely pull ahead but we have a ways to go yet. 

Maybe but idk, i recall people saying our sets are all built around oblit, unless these bonuses also include FSC (It's kinda weird how FSC is included with oblit in many procs/traits/talents without actually replacing it)

[demonardvark 554]

14 hours ago, Chouse said:

You gave me hope and then crushed it, all in one post.

haha. well again unless we are talking mythic progression (which statistically most people aren't doing) it doesn't matter. But current sims are showing unholy and frost as dead last dps at 865 ilvl. So, the term I've seen others use is "viable not competitive".

14 hours ago, Zataron said:

Great, which class should i switch to then? :D

The true death knight endures the bad times. Albeit we have always scaled like crap and people are whining in mass on the official blizzard message boards, so i'm sure pre 7.2 there will be emergency hotfix patch buffs like we got in HFC. But if you are a fair weather friend, warriors and rogues are looking good :P

14 hours ago, Alexizonfire said:

Maybe but idk, i recall people saying our sets are all built around oblit, unless these bonuses also include FSC (It's kinda weird how FSC is included with oblit in many procs/traits/talents without actually replacing it)

Tier is built around obliterate however there are two issues. Issue one tier isn't powerful at all. 

• NEW  Item - Death Knight T19 Frost 2P Bonus   Obliterate has a 15% increased chance to trigger Rime.
• NEW  Item - Death Knight T19 Frost 4P Bonus   Howling Blast now generates 10 Runic Power while Rime is active.

It's all build around rime, which even with, howling blast is such a low part of our overall damage. The tier bonus really isn't worth anything at all, such a miniscule dps gain. The other issue is obliterate is physical damage that does not scale, at all. No scales. So, the damage you see now is the damage you'll see in 6 months (more or less). However, frostscythe both scales dramatically and has amazing synergy with our legendary items. It's just math, obliterate now and never has scaled well at all. Think end of HFC. 2h frost was dead, it was all dual wield which was howling blast spam and frost strike, why? Scaling issues with obliterate.

At best we'll see obliterate used without KM to proc rime as we kind of do now, but even that won't last long. A hard cast howling blast gets our frost plague up and after that howling blast is pretty much useless atm. 

[Alexizonfire 1]

2 minutes ago, demonardvark said:

Tier is built around obliterate however there are two issues. Issue one tier isn't powerful at all. 

• NEW  Item - Death Knight T19 Frost 2P Bonus   Obliterate has a 15% increased chance to trigger Rime.
• NEW  Item - Death Knight T19 Frost 4P Bonus   Howling Blast now generates 10 Runic Power while Rime is active.

It's all build around rime, which even with, howling blast is such a low part of our overall damage. The tier bonus really isn't worth anything at all, such a minute dps gain. The other issue is obliterate is physical damage that does not scale, at all. No scales. So, the damage you see now is the damage you'll see in 6 months (more or less). However, frostscythe both scales dramatically and has amazing synergy with our legendary items. It's just math, obliterate now and never has scaled well at all. Think end of HFC. 2h frost was dead, it was all dual wield which was howling blast spam and frost strike, why? Scaling issues with obliterate.

Omg these are god awful wtf???

No dmg buffs, just better proc chance... Big deal, even if oblit automatically procced rime it wouldn't be very good (actually it'd be amazing aoe, but that's not the point)

10rp on rime is cool, i can pretty much see this completely ridding us of downtime! Which would made fp bad... Ugh, maybe use the hb dmg talent? Ugh... These bonuses are creating more problems... At least for zefyrk build... This would make using oblit in mg much better right? Sure you waste a rune spend and a gcd on rime procs, but you get it back by not having to apply FF through regular hb. Man these are weird...

And yea but, oblit kinda scales with artifact ilvl yes? And str i suppose, but so does everything else, and much better... Man this is weird. The FP changes in 7.1 are going to benefit zefyrk's build so much imo, but i feel like the set bonuses might make mg better. I guess we'll see once we hit 7.1... 

Any other changes announced in 7.1?

[demonardvark 554]

3 hours ago, Alexizonfire said:

Omg these are god awful wtf???

No dmg buffs, just better proc chance... Big deal, even if oblit automatically procced rime it wouldn't be very good (actually it'd be amazing aoe, but that's not the point)

10rp on rime is cool, i can pretty much see this completely ridding us of downtime! Which would made fp bad... Ugh, maybe use the hb dmg talent? Ugh... These bonuses are creating more problems... At least for zefyrk build... This would make using oblit in mg much better right? Sure you waste a rune spend and a gcd on rime procs, but you get it back by not having to apply FF through regular hb. Man these are weird...

And yea but, oblit kinda scales with artifact ilvl yes? And str i suppose, but so does everything else, and much better... Man this is weird. The FP changes in 7.1 are going to benefit zefyrk's build so much imo, but i feel like the set bonuses might make mg better. I guess we'll see once we hit 7.1... 

Any other changes announced in 7.1?

 Death Knight

•  Frozen Pulse now triggers if you have fewer than 2 full Runes (was 1).
•  Frozen Pulse damage reduced to 60% of Attack Power (was 72%).
•  Glacial Advance now hits targets in melee range more reliably.

TLDR machine gun build more stable and will have higher uptime.  Choice really lies with obliterate vs fsc builds, but it sort of favors fsc in many ways, you don't need obliterate for its 2 runes anymore, so with scaling and such, fsc will over take obliterate even with tier around mid nighthold levels although by all means obliterate builds would still be workable.

And yeah the tier is garbage. For unholy DKs the tier really makes the rotation complex(er) and messes up a lot of things. The goal was for tier to no longer be 50K dps gains and do be more subtle buffs. I think they mispelled garbage in that message.

[Zataron 5]

On 14.10.2016 at 4:54 PM, demonardvark said:

And yeah the tier is garbage. For unholy DKs the tier really makes the rotation complex(er) and messes up a lot of things. The goal was for tier to no longer be 50K dps gains and do be more subtle buffs. I think they mispelled garbage in that message.

I agree that the frost tier is garbage. However, unholy 4 part bonus was changed on the PTR to generate a wound instead of bursting one: http://ptr.wowhead.com/item-set=1281/dreadwyrm-battleplate

IMO this makes the tier set pretty good for unholy. It's also nice to see that there are some changes being done to unholy, even if it's only an item set.

Edited October 15, 2016 by Zataron

[Azzy 0]

On ‎10‎/‎14‎/‎2016 at 7:54 AM, demonardvark said:

 Death Knight

•  Frozen Pulse now triggers if you have fewer than 2 full Runes (was 1).
•  Frozen Pulse damage reduced to 60% of Attack Power (was 72%).
•  Glacial Advance now hits targets in melee range more reliably.

TLDR machine gun build more stable and will have higher uptime.  Choice really lies with obliterate vs fsc builds, but it sort of favors fsc in many ways, you don't need obliterate for its 2 runes anymore, so with scaling and such, fsc will over take obliterate even with tier around mid nighthold levels although by all means obliterate builds would still be workable.

And yeah the tier is garbage. For unholy DKs the tier really makes the rotation complex(er) and messes up a lot of things. The goal was for tier to no longer be 50K dps gains and do be more subtle buffs. I think they mispelled garbage in that message.

So I have a question(concerning stats) given the ideas from this thread and previous threads on scailing. Near the beginning of the expansion it seemed like getting to the magical 30% crit threshold was key, so that FS could be used regularly regardless of KM procs. But with the recent buffs considering lower end to medium end frost dks would prioritize OB on all encounters that are one mob (and you would use RA instead of FS). But along with these changes haste become more valuble because it increases our procs from pulse+icy talons uptime which feeds into itself by that point.

 

With the buffs in 7.1 I would of assumed that OB with a high amount of haste, and a decent amount of crit (20-25%) would be preferred, and OB with RA would be best for ST encounters. But when nighthold releases, will OB+RA give way to simply FS spam regardless of a single target fight? And if this is the case, are we putting mastery somewhere higher in our stat weights, given FS only gains more value the more mastery we have since it scales the most of the improved frost damage?

[demonardvark 554]

5 hours ago, Azzy said:

So I have a question(concerning stats) given the ideas from this thread and previous threads on scailing. Near the beginning of the expansion it seemed like getting to the magical 30% crit threshold was key, so that FS could be used regularly regardless of KM procs. But with the recent buffs considering lower end to medium end frost dks would prioritize OB on all encounters that are one mob (and you would use RA instead of FS). But along with these changes haste become more valuble because it increases our procs from pulse+icy talons uptime which feeds into itself by that point.

 

With the buffs in 7.1 I would of assumed that OB with a high amount of haste, and a decent amount of crit (20-25%) would be preferred, and OB with RA would be best for ST encounters. But when nighthold releases, will OB+RA give way to simply FS spam regardless of a single target fight? And if this is the case, are we putting mastery somewhere higher in our stat weights, given FS only gains more value the more mastery we have since it scales the most of the improved frost damage?

icy talons doesn't proc at a apm or ppm rate, its an applied self buff that raw increases our attack speed, hence the synergy with frozen pulse. Now haste does have an implication on attack speed, however, the ideal base haste for dk is already 20%, icy talons gives us a 30% buff to attack speed. Stacking haste any further would lead to diminishing returns on investment. In addition we would start generating runes too quickly which would kill frozen pulse uptime even with the buffs to it.

As far as FsC usage, the additive 18 haste - 25 crit -45 mastery or ideal 20% haste 30% crit 45% mastery is still the ideal go to point. The issue is you need scythe to crit reliably and the mastery point is where FsC will 100% overtake obliterate. Now, for OBRA gamestyle you still want the same crit haste points, so that your obliterates that are non km can still crit. So the general idea is sub 30% crit OBRA is better, above 30%Crit Scythegun is better. 

So, frost dk requires a floor to stand upon that floor is 18% haste 25% crit mins. The basic optimum jumps to 20% haste 30% crit. After that mastery is what allows FsC to impove and allows frost to improve. So yes mastery is the most important progression stat, however, without the base floor to stand on its pointless. So, mastery will make you stronger but you need to maintain your floor. Think about the old days with reforge, if you were melee you HAD to have 7.5% hit and expertise baseline. Same concept here. you need 18% haste 25% crit baseline and can go from there.

So until you have the stats OBRA is the go to, however, even as soon as next week a lot of players will be able to full switch to FsC (mostly the super high end geared players), its just a matter of stats. So, at stat setup A rotation A, stat setup B rotation B, what is optimum will change. HFC for unholy dks 30% or less MS you went necroblight above 30% ms you went BOS, same deal here, 30% Crit or less OBRA, more FSC.