FROST TH vs DW Legendary Solution

Classes Death Knight
1

Greetings fellow Death Knights

Like many of you I’m stoked about the return of the ability to use two handers on frost.
Unfortunately it seems to be only cosmetic change right now unless they do something about it.

Here’s one potential solution that could come in a form of a Torghast Legendary.

For example:

Legendary item 1 - Gauntlets of the Frozen Waste ( Obliteration does X% more dmg while using two handed weapon)

Legendary item 2 - Gauntlets of Thassarian ( Off-Hand weapon has X% chance to generate X Runic Power on hit while using dual wielding)

With these items we could see a return of some old playstyles and those sweet big obliteration crits.

What do you think about this ? Do you think something like this would introduce new and different playstyles or lead to new imbalances?

2

Make possible to use dual-twohanded, muahaha.

3

yeah, and congratulations on proving that 2h, once again, needs removed from frost.

and shadowlands isnt even out yet…

This effect, the dual wielders will want, but you are just stonewalling them out of it for no good reason, the exact same problem why 2h needed removed in the first place.

3 Likes
4

Exactly, 2handers will hit for more so such effect should make up for using Dual Wield, not empower 2h even further.

5

As to the technicaly stuff, I feel it has been explained already but.

What I really have to say is Legendaries are bad, bad solution. Sure it’s not like Blizzard hasn’t done it in past but ok, you get Lego for SL and suddently you make this thing work, okay all technical stuff ingored lets pretend it works perfectly and has no problems.

Now imagine SL just ended. What then? I don’t care Blizzard has done this in the past, I don’t care they’re brining Lego’s back, it’s just a temporary solution and temporary solutions are bad, especially if you want to use this temporary solution to solve something as important as the ballance of the entire class.

Borrowed power is bad design, designing spec around borrowed power is even worse design and after SL you’d be left with once again a broken class.

6

thats all it needs to be

5 Likes
7

If one class, or 2 classes or 5 need legendaries with added effects to become more competitive or more fun or more engaging, then that class is badly designed in the first place. Classes is what should be fixed, not legendaries that we borrow power from. And sure its cool to have an insanely powerful item that has an extra cool effect that gives it an edge, but the design around how legendaries work since Legion has been dumb. If Frost for example, needs a 15% chance for Obliterate to refund 1 rune, then it should be baked in the ability itself rather than be a passive from an item.

1 Like
8

agreed

they should add effects like if they were talents, like RW deals %more dmg to targets with frost fever or OB cleaves a second target for 50% dmg

and not effects that make gameplay functional

2 Likes
9

What you should be more concerned about is not wether 2x 1h hits harder than 2h. But runeforges instead. Dual Wield will be able run two vs. one for 2h.
Rune of Hysteria coupled with Razorice is looking extremely tasty for dual wield frost, especially if Breath of Sindragosa remains a thing in Shadowlands.

(rune-of-hysteria) Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that increases maximum Runic Power by 20 and your attacks have a chance to increase Runic Power generation by 20% for 8 sec.
3+Haste RPPM

(rune-of-sanguination) Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that causes your Death Strike deals increased damage based on the target’s missing health. When you fall below 35% health, you heal for 48% of your maximum health over 8 sec.

(rune-of-spellwarding) Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that deflects 3% of all spell damage and has chance to create a shield that absorbs magic damage equal to 10% of your maximum health. When an enemy damages the shield, their cast speed is reduced by 10% for 6 sec.
3+Haste RPPM

(rune-of-unending-thirst) Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that grants 10% Haste and movement speed and heals you for 5% of your maximum health when you kill an enemy that yields experience or honor. Additionally, increases your movement speed while dead by 10%.

(rune-of-the-apocalypse) Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that gives your ghoul’s attacks a chance to apply one of the following debuffs to the target, Death: 1% Healing Reduction, War: Increases damage taken by the Death Knight by 1%, Famine: Reduces damage taken by the Death Knight by 2%, Pestilence: Slows the target by 15% and deals (30% Attack power) damage over time.

10

A lot of people have quit Frost DK specifically because of the dual wield and BoS meme.
Reminder that DW only became truly relevant to Frost when blizzard messed up a Cataclysm update that allowed players to stack so much Mastery that Obliterate was a dps loss, and the rotation went HB>HB>HB>HB>FS>FS.
Then for some ungodly reason they decided this was cooler than the actual class fantasy of Frost DK (using magic and disease to empower melee strikes), took the disease damage multiplier off of Obliterate, transferred most damage from HB into Rime procs, and sh*t up the entire spec until this frost damage meme finally culminated in braindead BoS where you just spam Obliterates for 30s. Really engaging gameplay to pray for Empowered Runes to proc off 16RP ticks while pressing obliterate.

If 2H is actually good and this BoS nightmare is over you will see everyone who moved away from DK come back to it.
The amount of people who care about squeezing 2s out of BoS for their Mythic parse is extremely tiny.

11

lol sorry to laught but you put to much praise of “2H” to make people come back to frost, the majority come back if they see frost on the top charts as they didnt care about DW during the openess in nighthold

adressing, the disease removal from OB and other strikes was done to prevent players from being useless in pvp as the deseases was done super fast and sometimes automatic.

Obliterate focus builds was BAD because it stops scaling way to fast and thus why u needed to stack mastery after the first month of each expantion (still and ongoing issue atm) and back then frost strike was the attack that actualy scaled well paired with howling blast.

they are taking the right steps to make 2H not fall behind dw, ur dmg will still come from frost dmg and not obliterate dmg, it will be just a “cosmetic” feature

you complain that howling blast had to much power and scaling and then complain they actualy balanced it out into rime so u can use OB as builder instead of HB… make up ur mind on what u dislike

but that is exatly what 2H frost does, spam OB for 30s, 1min, forever, again, make up ur mind on what really bothers u.
you dont like breath, that is fine, i also dislike it when its the only viable option, because it is not taken into account on boss mechanics, not because u keep doing exactly what u been doing before pressing the breath button for “30sec” (except press frost strike)

need to look into it but i think KM will make OB deal frost dmg or bonus frost dmg which is already good to help scaling.
EDIT: confirming, Killing Machine rank2 will make obliterate crit and deal frost dmg

they already made big changes to frost to acomudate 2H into spells, basicly making weapon dmg (ilvl) being really little impact of obliterate dmg

the 2 runes will be a thing but then again, they are already “fixing” frost so 2H/DW not be as much diferenciated.
most likely breath builds will use DW for obvious reasons and 2H will have to use icecap build with gathering storm + RW as main dmg source (not olbiterate)

cant blame them from trying to balance it out at least

12

Cant post links
shadowlands.wowhead dot com/spell=317214/killing-machine

rank2 of killing machine will make obliterate deal frost dmg, so OB will crit AND scale, thank god for that

have to take my hat off to SL class balance team (clearly not the same as BFA) for trying to fix the big stone in DKs dmg, scaling

unholy mastery increasing pet dmg also and KM making OB deal frost dmg is great and both will be able to go for mastery more early in the expantion and people will be able to freely play 2H frost at their will

time to get those SHADOWMOURNE boys

13

If you switch your main based on wowlogs you’re either progging mythic with a real tryhard guild, or you’re a complete scrub who is never going to have fun.
I would take a bottom-list performing spec that is fun to play over a FotM spec that is not fun at all, and so would most people.

I’m not sure what you mean by that.
Without breath you just use your entire kit, which is still 4 buttons but at least it’s not 1 button.
What exactly about 2h would make FS, HB and RW bad to press?

I’m not expecting 2H to change the damage weights, probably all the damage will still be evenly distributed among every spell, which is really boring and not satisfying at all, but at the very least with 2H I’m not going to need an addon to see how much Obliterate hits for.
I’d really like to see Frost get some mechanic that lets us work toward the big hit, something like Glacial Spike on Mage, or Rampage on Warrior.
Hitting bosses for 5m+ straight is just boring on Frost, there’s no hype moment or anything, you just hack away at your 4 buttons over and over and do mechanics.

14

the only diference when u got breath active or not is you do not press frost strike, u will still use RW(GA stacks)/rime and use obliterate, u do not actualy change how you play that much, u just need to make sure boss mechanics dont keep u away from melee range during breath

which is why i dislike breath, because we already seen how it can be gimped in raids like ToS was, plus its pointless to use in pvp as it is easily countered and thus i want icap and obliteration to be viable builds, builds that u can use as 2H or DW regarless

old obliteration (legion version) made all FS/HB give u KM and make ur next OB cost one rune BUT it still counted as 2runes for gathering storm stacks instead of the lame 30% chance to get a rune refunded… bleh

with obliteration granting KM, KM rank2 making OB frost dmg and mastery stacking i see ur wish come true, for those 15sec of pillar the big OB numbers will be poping on the screen

maybe obliteration + 2H will be a viable build with some refocus from crit into more haste and stacking mastery (tbh i see this being viable in PVP)

15

The problem with BoS is that Rime HB does not generate RP, which means you will very often be in a situation where you’re forced to ignore the proc to extend your breath, thus spam Obliterate.
You only want to spend your Rime procs around >50RP depending on your haste, or if you don’t have runes, and generally RW should be used as your first GCD after popping it to load it up with Obliterates through the talent.

I think a lot of the Shadowlands stuff does look good for Frost DK, it’s the whole reason I’ve come back to it despite the lack of QoL of the class. I just hope they actually follow through and give Frost a good look rather than keep it in limbo for another expansion.

16

Correction mate, the tooltip says Obliterate ALSO deals frost damage, meaning that it will still do physical damage and a bonus frost damage. Dont get me wrong its already cool, but i think that it might be too powerful if OB did its full damage as frost.

17

think the “also” is refering to ranks, rank1 makes OB crit and and rank2 makes OB also deal frost dmg. so the “also” word there.

but anyway its a good change

18

Would return to maining fdk in a flash if breath os syndragosa as well as remoreseless winter were removed. Both are such badly looking skills in my opinion :confused:

19

remorseless winter is great

1 Like
20

Two handed users should come with a passive that gives buff similar to Rune of fallen crusader to balance the fact that players will lose 1 runeforge enchant.
(similar how single-minded fury for warrriors used to gave dmg bonus when u use 2x1handers instead 2x2 handers)
And with some stat balances and tweaks i think things will come in place and we may legit have a obliterate or icecap build that plays differently than breath and focus around big numbers and consistant dps. I hope so.
Right now with the new rune of hysteria+razorice breath spec is clear winner and will probably be better dps spec… specially in early expansion with the reduced haste values. Also atm breath seem way overpowered… but thats fixable easy. People that have tested 2hand frost note that it feels very slow and clunky.
But ye, as people said… i guess some legendaries may come to help as well. We will have to wait and see.