As requested, Frost DK GCD Feedback: issues and perhaps solutions

Classes Death Knight
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Recently Morgan Day did an interview with PreachGaming, during which he requested some feedback for the classes, specifically for instances where the GCD abilities feel terrible to press and it’s no secret Frost DK is one of the most affected by this, so I’m going to attempt to give some opinions and perhaps some solutions.

Big disclaimer: I’m not a mythic raider.
I played Legion a lot, but BFA has been a swing and a miss for me.
So my feedback will be mostly from the point of view of a harcore-casual player who switches classes a lot and does a bit of everything, not an hardcore one who sims to optimize 0,5% extra damage out of Breath of Sindragosa.
If you are one of those players, you’re welcome to give feedback where I cannot.
I also do not have access to Alpha, but I am following Frost DK and outside of the RP reduction talent, the new runes and the (maybe) ability to use a 2Handed weapon again the spec seems mostly the same.

  • GCDs that feel “Empty”
    The biggest offenders here are obviously Empower Rune Weapon, Pillar of Frost, Breath of Sindragosa and Remorseless Winter(AKA half your hotbar).
    The issue here is not that the abilities aren’t powerful, they are meta-defining, but that they don’t provide feedback, which is a common issue for Frost DK as a whole.
  1. Empower Rune Weapon seems to be a parallel to Avenging Wrath right now, however Avenging Wrath has always looked impressive and it causes your next Templar’s Verdict to critically strike.
    In other words, the way Ret Paladin makes hitting the buff spell satisfying is Visual Feedback + Numerical Feedback as your next TV will hit like a truck guaranteed for a single big number, which is easier to track and evaluate for the player, AKA it’s easier to feel.

Possible solution: Empower Rune Weapon looks boring but gives feedback in the form of Haste and resources, Remorseless Winter looks amazing but lacks any gameplay feedback > Simply put them together in one button.
This would significantly expedite the burst window and open up the way for interesting talents.
This solution can easily be extended to Blood and Unholy as well, by tying Bonestorm/Dancing Rune Weapon to it for Blood and Army of the Dead/Gargoyle for Unholy, to unprune one of the most iconic DK spells and create fertile ground for Legendaries, Covenant abilities and Torghast shanenigans.

  1. Next on the list is Pillar of Frost, which is a beloved and iconic Frost DK spell, but it is not only heavily redundant with Empower Rune Weapon, it is also just a boring button to press.
    It does absolutely nothing for the rotation, you just press it because it’s extra damage and then proceed as you normally would, it is essentially rotational busywork.
    The Azerite Power “Frostwhelp’s Indignation” makes it feel a little better by providing some visual feedback, but it’s more of a band-aid than a proper fix.

Possible Solution: Frost Strike shears chunks of frozen flesh from the target, Pillar of Frost pulls up to 10 of them to the Death Knight to increase Strength by X% per chunk and restore X Runic Power.
Same philosophy here, visual feedback + gameplay feedback makes the GCD feel satisfying.
This is also aimed at eliminating the lulls in Frost’s rotation ,where RNG hates you and you’re stuck with no runes or RP, waiting 5 seconds for your next Obliterate, for this purpose specifically it should have no cooldown and be something you keep up at all times that you don’t want to hit unnecessarily, but that you can still press to remedy getting your rotation stuck in the mud. An emergency generator tool that cannot be spammed + an upkeep buff that gives Frost something extra to do and look out for.
It would also open up a path for some more interesting talents (EX. Frozen Flesh pulled to the Death Knight deals X damage to enemies in its path, or Frozen Flesh provides a shield for X% Health) Legendary effects, Torghast powers, etc.

I realize this is a tall order, but it’s either a rework or a prune in my opinion, not just because it is an “empty” GCD, but because it’s redundant with ERW. Pulling it off the GCD would address only half the problem.
Some would say this cannibalizes an iconic Demon Hunter mechanic, I say we’re peers with a common storied past in the soul-eating business.

  1. Breath of Sindragosa: Why is it here if it’s not on the GCD?
    Breath currently causes a similar issue by causing GCDs that are actually empty.
    It forces a burst window that consists exclusively of Obliterates, often even forcing you to ignore a Rime proc because Rime’d Howling Blast generate no RP (unless you’re about to overcap), in an effort to keep the breath going.
    It is fun to get a super long BoS… the first couple of times. It’s not so fun to spam Obliterate for 20-40 seconds for an entire expansion and being left with 2 runes by the end of it, which leaves you with a 50% chance to get a lull as you Obliterate>Frost Strike and hope for Runic Empowerment or for other runes to be coming off cooldown in time.
    I’m confident the team understands this as is evident by the fact that it generates 2 runes at the end as a bandaid, and I’m confident they also know that the community does not like being pidgeonholed into BoS+Obliterate spam meta.
    Other problems with BoS include the usual lack of feedback as the damage numbers quickly disappear in a deluge of other numbers and a lack of visual feedback as I don’t think anyone is really sure what the hitbox for it actually looks like. These two issues combined often make players feel like they don’t know if BoS is hitting, which is extremely bad for your biggest DPS cooldown.

Possible Solution: Breath can be fun to optimize to see for how long you can do it for, but it cannot define the meta while breaking the rest of Frost’s kit.
It is essentially a meme gone too far.
It would be boring to just remove it, or to make it work similarly to how Gathering Storm works for Remorseless Winter to preserve the rotation.
Either keep it in the dunce corner where Icecap has been, or alternatively make it more interactive:
Reduce the constant damage to 20% of its total damage output, have it consume no RP, and have the rest of the damage be funneled into activating it again for a high amount of RP to cause a bigger “burst” of it that generates 2 runes.
It would essentially function as a bigger and cooler AoE Frost Strike with a higher chance of generating a rune, due to the higher RP cost and little additional AoE constant damage.
The aim for resource generation would be 2 runes per burst of breath generated, 2 obliterates required per burst (4 runes), + occasional Runic Empowerment + ERW generation to bring it all together.

Big recognizable numbers, visually appealing, interactive, not a nightmare to balance due to an unpredictable length or frustrating to use for that same reason, really the same car but with better handling as the player can control when and where to rip fat clouds, and no significant way to leave you stuck in the mud after you’re done with it since it doesn’t demolish your rotation, but shifts its priority system around.
The optimization meme would be how many bursts you hit in that window.

  • BONUS ROUND: 2-Handed Frost
    Please make it actually viable and not a pretend-feature that cuts your DPS by half if you decide to use it. Have us be able to put 2 runeforges on a 2hander, or something. I would even be happy if 2handed Frost was something you made viable with a legendary item.
    Let us use it.

There are other issues with DKs in general, such as Survivability VS Damage, mobility, and a general lack of QoL or reasons to play one over a complete hybrid like Paladin/Druid/Monk who just do everything (and better), aside for the class fantasy, but the feedback requested was about the GCD and that’s what I’m going to stick to.
That’s all I have, hopefully this wasn’t too tedious to read and it helps to some extent. Again, as a mostly casual player I’m more concerned with the feel and fun of it rather than the potential for interesting minmaxing scenarios, although I recognize those are fun as well.

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Your suggestions will only add to the problems that frost death knight has in that we have alot of completely unneccesary mechanics that don’t actually add anything to the frost dk I will tell you what needs doing.

Empower rune weapon’s haste buff needs to be removed as it makes no sense to have this on an ability that is about generating runes, not increasing your damage output, the biggest mistake they ever made was changing the base Empower Rune Weapon to Hungering Rune Weapon, this needs reverted asap to give frost back its on-demand burst cooldown.

Runic empowerment, this does nothing for the dk as a whole and should have been abandoned on the very first day it was considered as it takes the class out of the players own hand and automates it.

Pillar of frost needs to have something like the current frostwhelp baked into it and because they are going to keep runic empowerment as a mechanic, remove the stacking strength in favor of a static value, making it easier to balance and actually making sense as you cannot reasonably expect anyone to like a stacking mechanic that also relys entirely on RNG.

Breath of sindragosa as my last point for now pretty much needs to be removed until they can come up with a solid limitation on the ability, In terms of frost dk mechanics it is overpowered and yet is still garbage compared to other classes cooldowns, for this reason it must be removed. You cannot put mechanics with an unlimited top-end into the game and expect them to not ruin a massive amount of it.

2 Likes
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My rationale was to first and foremost add visual and gameplay feedback back to the spec, which lost it as its damage started getting split into a hundred little things.
The suggestions are mostly there to try and explain the issues I see in a more practical manner, pinpointing exactly what is bad and how. I don’t assume the dev team is going to take any of these ideas and implement them, obviously.
Re-reading this you could TL;DR it as “Less but bigger numbers and big visuals on DPS cooldowns to make them feel satisfying to use, 2Handed viable please”.

I disagree entirely with removing Breath. I do not enjoy it personally because it has become the core of the spec, but it is an interesting and open-ended talent, one of a handful in the entire game.
If you put a leash on it, that’s as good as removing it entirely, the point of it is that it has no ceiling, like the Haste buff on Priest’s Void Form, or the old Combustion.
Breath would be fine as either a meme talent similar to how Glacial Spike was in Legion, or as a more interactive ability that doesn’t break your rotation, but switches the priority system around.
I also disagree with turning ERW back to the way it was, as the team would 100% keep it on the GCD, and nobody would enjoy hitting old ERW on the GCD. I’ve tried to provide solutions that don’t remove the GCDs entirely because I don’t think they want to remove them from the GCD, otherwise they would’ve just done so in 8.1 and this post wouldn’t exist.

I’m not sure what to make of “unnecessary mechanics”, because aside from stacking Pillar of Frost (by playing as you normally would) and Breath, Frost really has no mechanics. Last time Frost had anything to worry about was when Obliterate damage stacked off Icy Touch and Plague Strike.
Unholy’s mechanic with Bursting Sores has had its wings clipped since Legion launch, but at least it’s a fun mechanic that interacts with almost every button the class has.
Frost really has nothing right now that isn’t “Spend runes to make X stronger” which you wouldn’t notice if it wasn’t there.
I don’t think any Frost main would be bothered by having something to work with rather than nothing.

As for the RNG baked into the rotation: Yes, this is the biggest issue that Frost has had from Cataclysm onwards. I think something like the PoF solution I wrote, or anything that could help you get out of an RNG rut would at least make it more bearable. A little on-demand push to get the RNG ball rolling again when it stops is what it needs, barring any complete redesign of the resources.
It wasn’t the feedback requested so I didn’t go into it, this was mainly about “empty” GCD bloat and buttons that generally feel bad to press.

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What you are missing is that sometimes the old fashioned way is often the best: grabbing a giant club and womping whatever you want womped.

But blizzards current frost dk, grabs that club, adds a portable drinks dispenser to it, with an icecream generator and chocolate fountain while spewing out pure sugar and then topping it of with a chance that it won’t swing how you want it to.

You see, even if you add 100 good things to something that can inherently make that thing bad, eating 100 chocolate bars every day would be enough to make almost anyone sick even though they would normally like chocolate.

Blizzard is essentially making things more complicated than they need to be and in turn are detracting from he actual experience of the game because of it rather than keeping things straight forward, there is nothing worse than a class where everything looks like it does the same thing because it all has to have 10 effects attached to it. This is why the old pillar of frost was loved, it was simple, it was straight forward and thus did what you wanted, when you wanted and did not need random bonus effects attached to it do be a loved ability, if for example it was just the legion 20% version but without the knockback immunity then it would still be liked, add an infinite scale to it and you have effectively ruined something that was already working.

The reason you cannot put infinite scales into a game is because they are inherently broken and someone WILL find the way to break them, this translates to whatever has them needing to be locked down with a ball and chain or else it will be overpowered by design alone. Frost dk has not 1 but 2 of these now.

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Again, I agree with that, I’d rather have fewer damage buttons and a lot of interesting situational tools, but that’s not where the game has generally been for a decade now.
This was mainly about removing those 4 “empty” GCDs required before you even start playing, and maybe alleviating some of those core issues on the way there.
That kind of discussion about general class design deserves its own thread and it’s a much larger thing than just the GCD.

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