Kuddos to Khazak on us forum for this post, i wanted to post this in hope devs read it:
The spec has one of the lowest representation rates across all forms of content. When I look at stats across all forms of content that are counted, its competing for last place in number of people playing it. Even if its throughput numbers are decent, there is a serious lack of desire to play the spec from the community. When I talk to other DKs, the overwhelming feedback is that Frost just isn’t fun. The last changes Frost got were in October. The tree was revised from its initial draft in beta, and then shoved out the door. Frost was one of the only specs to not receive any changes to its tier set bonus after they were announced, despite the feedback that T29 hugely favored Obliteration builds. Meanwhile, Unholy gets large amounts of the given feedback acted upon during beta, changes to its tier, and some QoL fixes for 10.0.7 with an additional note that more changes are on the way. Complete radio silence for frost. No acknowledgement that our feedback has been taken. No assurance that things are coming but more time is needed. At this point it honestly feels like Blizzard would just prefer we didn’t play Frost. I’m going to list the biggest issues, but it frankly feels like pointless effort to give an exhaustive listing of the specs issues when it appears no one is paying attention.
- Talent diversity is almost non-existent. Frost does not change its talents in raid content. You have one point in the spec tree you can flex with, and it defaults to Bonegrinder because 1 point isn’t enough to make anything else really worth it. FWF, CS, and whelps are just severely underwhelming unless you have 2 points to invest.
- Despite trying to buff Obliteration to the moon, its still rarely seeing play. The biggest uses for Obliteration are pugging m+, and pvp. It might as well not exist in raid, leaving us with the left side of the tree below the 20 gate just wasted space. The talent needs a full rework at this rate. It is too dependent on full uptime so you can get PoF back faster through Icecap.
- The resource economy is severely out of balance. Runic power is basically ignored right now, outside of using it to fuel breath. Frost is so flooded with resources there is little penalty for ignoring RP to dump runes.
- Permanent breath gameplay is not fun. The risk vs reward ratio is off. It can feel rewarding to figure out how to play correctly to sustain breath for 90% of a fight, but it is incredibly unhealthy for the spec. Being tuned around that level of uptime makes us very dependent on the fight content. If the next tier doesn’t bring constant magic damage for AMS and AMZ to generate RP from then Breath will be severely behind without any changes. Frost is usually a decent m+ spec, but is consistently behind right now because getting that permanent uptime is very difficult in keys.
- Lack of meaningful raid buff automatically drops the pick rate. Insidious chill is a joke of a raid buff. Not once have I heard anyone say “oh lets get that DK, we need the boss to swing slower”. DPS AMZ is barely worth considering. My healers rarely ask for it. Its more useful as a RP generator than a way to help my team. Grip is useful of course, but only if the content allows for it to be. Despite having some of the best personal utility in the game, DK is rarely picked for it. Leaving us to fight for spots. Its hard to justify continuing to play this class when I could roll a DH and be highly desired in all content