When I read the Patch Notes yesterday, I was excited to see FDK getting some changes.
However, after seeing some damage breakdowns and talking to some other people on the DK discord and playing some PTR for myself, I felt the need to make this post.
The changes as they are will essentially remove a lot of the skill expression from playing FDK.
Just about 2/3 of our damage is now passive in our auto-attacks in single target. Right now it makes pressing buttons feel completely apathetic, where your damage is based around your auto attack crits, which you have no control over.
In AoE the problem still remains, about half of our damage is in IDT and Remorseless Winter.
It now also means that we are going to have be glued to the boss if we want to maximise damage, even more than before. Previously this was still a problem with breath, but because of the burst profile, it meant that you didnt feel too punished for moving away outside of your cooldown window to do a mechanic. Now, moving away from the boss at all means your overall DPS will be significantly lowered for the rest of the fight.
Before these changes, Frost DK was in a good spot - the Manaforge Rework is still fresh in everyone’s heads, and it felt rewarding playing the spec. These changes are a buff to our damage - but they are a nerf to playstyle. It promotes the use of the single-button assistant in a negative way, because most of our damage is passive, it is unaffected by the GCD debuff from the single button assistant.
Id urge whoever is working on FDK at the moment to consider reversing these most recent PTR changes. Frost currently feels really good to play, and I’m saying this as someone who has mained Frost since I started playing at the end of WoD. These changes, if they go ahead, I feel will lessen how much impact my button presses are to our damage profile, with the most influence I can provide just being what gear I currently have equipped.