Obliteration FDK needs a few more adjustments

Classes Death Knight
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I believe a lot of issues regarding Obliteration is not necessarily the damage but rather the tip toeing around BoS balancing, resource inefficiency and lack of talent synergy of the gameplay style. Runic Power and Killing Machine procs tend to be wasted and the build loses out on a lot of damage.

In this case, we need to avoid buffing abilities that affect BoS otherwise BoS would inadvertently be buffed and overshadow Obliteration still. Thus it makes most sense to purely target Frost Strike/Glacial Advance (BoS uses very little of FS/GA due to their rotational windows), Killing Machine (BoS has minimal loss of KM procs as they are ALWAYS spamming Obliterates during BoS windows) and Runic Power usage (BoS is fuelled by RP and so the less RP they have, the worse their situation will be)

As it’s deep in to the expansion already and it is unlikely to see major overhauls, tweaking small talents and numbers is the direction I went with when putting some thought into this. One gameplay similarity both Obliteration and BoS play styles should draw from is that Runic Power should be used to power more damage through avenues of dumping RP - the difference being that BoS is the more proactive playstyle and Obliteration is the more reactive playstyle. That’s why the following changes are things I would consider extremely helpful towards 2H and Obliteration builds and would not deeply affect BoS builds:

  • Frost Strike buffed
  • Glacial Advance buffed
    VFX changed to that awesome alpha version or Jaina’s spell from Battle of Da’zar Alor
    In order to increase FDK damage, these abilities need to be buffed as the damage profiling for Obliterate is already very high and is in a good place. This is probably one of the few established avenues where we can buff Obliteration while touching BoS at a minimum.

Unleashed Frenzy
Duration increased to 10 seconds
As a maintenance buff, it shouldn’t be something we need to constantly think about for such a miniscule buff. UH got Plaguebringer to 10s, it is only fair that UF is increased to 10s.

Frostscythe
Rune cost increased to 2 rune cost and damage doubled. Damage normalised and doesnt require crit to cause 4x damage. MotFW now increase Frostscythe damage
I’d almost consider to remove Frostscythe from the game and turn Obliterate into the main cleave where DnD leaves a buff on you if you step out of it or have a completely new DnD like Defile where it instead follows you and increases duration by 1 second for every KM consumed

Biting Cold
Baked into Remorseless Winter
Gathering Storm and Everfrost moved up by 1 position respectively
Way too many talents to invest into Remorseless Winter - this should help ease the planning of talent builds

Frostreaper
Added: Increase maximum stack of Killing Machine by 1.
Obliteration suffers too much from wasted natural KM procs meaning there is a massive loss of potential damage due to RNG as well as latency playing a role. This should give players enough reaction and latency time to play effectively.

Might of the Frozen Wastes
Baseline. Possibly 15%+ frost ability damage that isn’t Obliterate. Dual Enchants allowed or Razorice baked into MotFW or Frost Strike.
Razorice is basically a part of the spec identity at this point and can be acquired without the rune through Avalanche and GA now. Flat 15% Frost damage buff assists with 2H AoE damage.

Icecap
Add Glacial Advance and Soul Reaper to the talent. Glacial Advance critical strikes reduce cooldown by 1 sec instead of 2.
These abilities should not be exempt from Icecap and should play apart within Frost synergy.

Shattering Blade changed to new talent: Hungering Blade
While you have 75 Runic Power or more, your next Frost Strike will consume an additional 25 Runic Power and deal 100% more damage.
Counteracts the RP overflow issue Obliteration builds would see. This will assist in making RP → damage conversion much more efficient while keeping the similar functionality of Shattering Blade. Could even be a Frost Strike replacer. Anything to help us maximise our Runic Power.

Or could even be this:

Shattering Blade changed to new Frost Strike replacer: Hoarfrost Strike
Replaces Frost Strike. Costs 25RP. Same damage as FS but for every excess 1RP, increase damage by 5%. Maximum excess 25RP consumed.

Cold-blooded Rage
Changed. For every 1 RP spent with Frost Strike/Glacial Advance, you have a 0.5%/1% chance to gain a stack of KM. This chance is increased by 100% for FS and 50% for Glacial Advance on critical strikes.
Adds value to the new Hungering Blade talent where it makes it more dependable as opposed to the RNG of a crit of a Frost Strike. Also assists with FDK Obliteration sustain. A talent needs to be here that either generates KM or powers up FS/GA.

Obliteration
Base talent unchanged. Soul Reaper added for granting KM on hit. Grants an extra maximum stack of Killing Machine during PoF.
New Frostreaper and Obliteration KM stack changes helps the Obliteration build to not waste KM procs. Total of 3 max stacks of KM if talented properly. This is a huge boon for low latency players and allows an easier time when putting out damage.

PvP Talent: Icy Grip
While Pillar of Frost is active, you are immune to disarm effects.
It’s one thing to be stunned but disarms are one CC too much and FDKs are heavily affected by physical comps. This will assist DKs to fight against them.

PvP talent: Unbreakable Ice
Increases the effectiveness of the Permafrost talent by 200%. Shield granted up to 10% of your maximum health.
120% shield of auto attack basically. Another talent to allow FDKs some survivability by fighting against melee comps by being active in the fight.

7 Likes
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Dude, dont waste your time…Blizzard wont do anything…

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I like it! Also hope soul reaper just becomes a heavy hotting dot or plain instant execute damage

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Those are some pretty good ideas.

I would change one thing though, glacial advance should work like it did with the shadowlands tier set.

But overall those ideas are excellent.

Especially the changes to frost strike, and cold blooded rage, because as it is now, it’s far too easy to overcap, and cold blooded rage is just terrible.

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Haha I know. I just thought I’d do some notes as I’m waiting to get into M+ groups or just before they key starts where the group is getting ready.

I thought about that, but then it would kind of take away the uniqueness of Soul Reaper as an execute. Another random idea I had was this:

Soul Reaper
Interaction added: If Killing Machine/Sudden Doom is consumed while Soul Reaper is active and the target is under 35% health, Soul Reaper is consumed and deals its final damage.

Having it being a popper that plays with the main procs of FDK/UDK as an on-demand execute while still being the ticking time bomb execute it was designed as. It certainly makes it much more interesting than just straight damage or a DOT in my opinion.

I was reading a few posts regarding the SL S3 tier set for Obliterate/GA and I do find there is a bit of issue packing way too much power into just one global but it did certainly feel great for the build - however BoS would end up benefitting from it as well.

That’s why I think GA being a global separates it from BoS but maintains itself in Obliteration builds.

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I like your idea, this is my take:
Make it cost runic power, interact with Obliteration, and be a powerful dot that can be applied at 35% or below health. Lasting 10 seconds, with SP having 6 second cooldown.

During execute phases, this is a dot you want to have 100% uptime on to compliment your standard rotation.

In PvP, if you get it off on someone that hit below 35%, you now got an additional damage ticking on them that massively increases the pressure on them.

Something that i’ve though of is to give it both a increase in Frost Strike damage, as well a chance on hit with autoattacks to apply Razorice. This would allow it to interact with the current Shattering Blade that we have, resulting in some nice Frost Strike damage and crits.

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I think so long as there is some sort of instant interaction with SR, it would instantly give the talent so much value in PvP. The added pressure would help a lot if FDKs can’t provide a Mortal Strike effect.

100% agreed on boosting FS damage. My thought on the flat %+ Frost damage increase was mainly for GA and RW included as well. With Oblit + FS taking the damage increase, GA could have it’s baseline damage increased instead. Razorice baked into MotFW is badly needed at this point, it just isn’t 2012 anymore.

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these are some really smart ideas…
man, I can already see… I can see Blizzard completely ignoring all of them and the whole spec entirely.
what a life

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But obliteration would benefit far more from it.

The problem is that you have both avalanche and glacial advance, and in terms of st performance avalanche is just better, so that leaves you with a choice, do i get both aoe and st at the same time, or do i spec full aoe.

If you spec for both you will do decent aoe, and excellent st, if you spec advance you will do good aoe and good st.

I would much rather have tier set glacial.

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Agreed, I can see the scenario where you put a SR on a target above 35% hp, but then manage to burst them down with Obliteration and get them below 35%, followed by a KM obliterate and SR bursting.

When it comes to PvP Talents, Rot and Wither have a excellent potential to be a really good healing reduction ability.
What if a certain % of your damage done while in D&D became healing absorbtion?

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The direction of Glacial Advance is that it is a spammable AoE ability - which in that case, should be made baseline for the spec at a minimum. Making it a ST ability would overwrite what Frost Strike is meant to do.

The one way to go about this, is to turn it into a big damage RP dump/45s cooldown ability like Enhancement’s Sundering or give the Tier set gameplay to Frost Strike otherwise hitting Obliterate would put it under a nerf radar I suspect.

Rot and Wither having it’s number tuned up more could really help DKs in PvP but it does promote the already clunky Obliterate + DnD cleave gameplay.

How about giving more reason to use Soul Reaper early? A PvP talent to modify it so that as long Soul Reaper is on the target, x amount of heal is absorbed.

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Actually that is brilliant. What if the target recieved a certain amount of % health in healing, SR would go off no matter the health?

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I agree with baseline, but it’s not about overwriting frost strike, the way it worked with the set was simply that using killing machine would also cast a glacial advance.

But yea, if they are gonna add a aoe spammable, might as well make it baseline, because with avalance, you don’t really wanna take glacial advance, because you lose st damage. While avalance gives both st and aoe damage.

Anyway your ideas are excellent, and i support them.

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I thought about that as well. It’s a cool idea and based on the damage, shouldn’t be too overkill.

Thanks! I think at this rate, the FDK community needs to be supportive for each other or we’ll never see changes. I really do love the spec, especially on 2H Obliteration, and just a few tweaks and we can really have a working FDK spec.

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Really need Buff dk frost more soooooooooooooo weak

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We’re in luck. We got some buffs.

I’m also suspecting we might see a few changes to our talents once 10.0.7 PTR notes keep getting updated. Guardian Druid received a few talents that had their numbers tweaked but FDK only had one talent directly adjusted which was Unleashed Frenzy duration. This is odd because talents like Cold Blooded Rage are really undertuned and were left alone.

Let’s hope fellow Frosties.

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That’s no luck, that’s just a bandaid. If those are the changes they are planning for FDKs, it’s just no use.
I rerolled to Shadow priest and while the class also struggles in some aspects, it’s just better than to cling to a dead spec.

I was a FDK main for over 8 years, 12 if we speaking private servers back in the days.
I loved the fantasy, but the spec is just having so many issues right now its sickening.
I’m gonna write from M+ perspective, since this is my main activity.
BoS is extremely punishing, and with 2 min cooldown it’s just not competitive with other classes - they can do the same amount of damage in a more consistent way.
Obliteration should be a more reliable, consisten build, but it’s absolutely brain-dead way of playing a class, it’s so simple and not engaging in any way it’s just sad.

I really hope they will see the fundamental problems Frost DK have, and they plan on doing some major changes. I mean like, cmon, they should be DEAD knights, yet there’s nothing deadly in this spec - those are just warriors wielding some frost magic, and are really mediocre in it.

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  • Frost

    • Remorseless Winter has been removed from the talent tree and now learned at level 19.

    • Might of the Frozen Wastes has been removed from the talent tree and now learned at level 25.

    • Frostreaper has been removed from the talent tree and now learned at level 28.

    • New Talent: Fatal Fixation – Killing Machine can stack up to 1 additional time. Replaces Frostreaper on the talent tree.

    • Biting Cold has moved to Remorseless Winter’s old position in the Frost specialization tree.

    • Everfrost has moved to Biting Cold’s old position in the Frost specialization tree.

    • Obliteration now causes Soul Reaper to also grant Killing Machine and have a chance to generate a Rune during Pillar of Frost

      • Developers’ note: Frost will be seeing a few updates to their tree in 10.0.7. Currently Frost feels 1 or 2 points off from being able to make more meaningful choices within their spec tree. To help ease some of this we are shifting a few talents to be auto-learned on level up and replacing them with a new or existing talent. The new version of the tree should offer a little more variety and feel less linear when allocating your talent points and give you more choice based on the content you are running.

I did say have hope. :smiley:

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Runic empowerment.
Pillar of frost stacking.
Frost fever runic power.
Rime still doesnt provide base runic power despite blood getting this on their free proc.
Frost damage on obliterate gimping the FDK damage flow.
Giga pvp nerfs.
Even more RNG resource talents.
Horn of winter being basically completely useless.
Literally only 1 shadowlands ability (the only one that shouldnt even be in the game).
2-handers gimping dual wield again.
Overpriced death strike for frost.
Still no worthwhile active defense against physical.
Presences still gone from the game.
No disease bonuses for frost.
No critical strike tailoring on a spec that would easily sync with them.
Theres a talent to literally half the cooldown on the dragon, don’t do that ever.
Effectively zero interesting gameplay points meaning no dk streamers/content creators.
Way too many stacking mechanics now
Basically dead talets like why waste points getting 20 RP when it will overcap.
Why is deaths advance passive effect still in the game?
The ability to literally macro all cooldowns into one because they are all irrelevant to frost.

Did I miss anything?

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