Frost Vs Unholy

[Mocha 2]

Hey guys. I recently decided to reroll to DK from Warrior.

With legion and devs pushing us almost to just choose one artifact to upgrade (thereby almost locking us to one spec) i think choosing a spec early on and keeping with it might be very beneficial if you want to progress in raiding, especially in the beginning of the xpac. 

I want to choose two spec. Blood as offspec and one of the DPS spec as main.

I know it is hard to say before getting the artifact, which do you guys plan on running? Frost or Unholy?

I have been struggling over this decision for a while. I have always been a frost guy but Unholy looks like its a lot of fun.

Here is my concern. 

Frost seems like it is more to my play style. I like burst, I like not having to put down any AOE on the ground. But Artifact weapon looks really dumb. The passive I get form it is really just a proc and it doesn't change anything in terms of my rotation or anything. Sindragosa's Fury is 5 min CD so it won't make much change in my DPS or rotation and probably will only be able to use once (or twice if fight goes long enough).

Unholy is very interesting. DK always had two resources, Rune and Runic power. Festering wound is essentially a third builder/spender resource which adds a huge depth to the play. Unholy definitely requires more set up than frost. So it takes a bit of time to ramp up. A huge seling point of Unholy is that artifact power actually seems super interesting and it seems like the most mobile spec out of the three since WW CD can be cut down to 30 sec. It also have some burst with DA and depends on if Scourge Strike crits and burst 4 wound at once. 

If you guys haven't gotten the feel, I am leaning towards Unholy but I can't seem to really make the final decision. For those who have more understanding of the class and what is to come in Legion, would you guys give me some insight to my understanding and feeling towards both spec? Is Frost Artifact really as dumb as it sound like? Is there something I am not seeing about Unholy that might be a negative?

I am excited to hear from you guys about the class I am really excited to play. 

Edited August 7, 2016 by Mocha

[demonardvark 556]

2 hours ago, Mocha said:

Hey guys. I recently decided to reroll to DK from Warrior.

With legion and devs pushing us almost to just choose one artifact to upgrade (thereby almost locking us to one spec) i think choosing a spec early on and keeping with it might be very beneficial if you want to progress in raiding, especially in the beginning of the xpac. 

I want to choose two spec. Blood as offspec and one of the DPS spec as main.

I know it is hard to say before getting the artifact, which do you guys plan on running? Frost or Unholy?

I have been struggling over this decision for a while. I have always been a frost guy but Unholy looks like its a lot of fun.

Here is my concern. 

Frost seems like it is more to my play style. I like burst, I like not having to put down any AOE on the ground. But Artifact weapon looks really dumb. The passive I get form it is really just a proc and it doesn't change anything in terms of my rotation or anything. Sindragosa's Fury is 5 min CD so it won't make much change in my DPS or rotation and probably will only be able to use once (or twice if fight goes long enough).

Unholy is very interesting. DK always had two resources, Rune and Runic power. Festering wound is essentially a third builder/spender resource which adds a huge depth to the play. Unholy definitely requires more set up than frost. So it takes a bit of time to ramp up. A huge seling point of Unholy is that artifact power actually seems super interesting and it seems like the most mobile spec out of the three since WW CD can be cut down to 30 sec. It also have some burst with DA and depends on if Scourge Strike crits and burst 4 wound at once. 

If you guys haven't gotten the feel, I am leaning towards Unholy but I can't seem to really make the final decision. For those who have more understanding of the class and what is to come in Legion, would you guys give me some insight to my understanding and feeling towards both spec? Is Frost Artifact really as dumb as it sound like? Is there something I am not seeing about Unholy that might be a negative?

I am excited to hear from you guys about the class I am really excited to play. 

Apocalypse is a stupid fun ability. For every festering wound popped you summon a zombie. Further upgraded, they explode when they expire. You also randomly can summon a super zombie that explodes as well. What about army of the dead zombies? They splode too once apocalypse is upgraded far enough. 

So in addition to unholys current toolkit, we basically gain a small semi perm explodey zombie army come legion.

Do I need to say more?

[Mocha 2]

Yeah thats what I mean i Ugess. Like Unholy Artifact weapon will change how Unholy plays quite a bit. It is every 90 sec too. It synergizes well with some talent as well (like Soul Reaper).

Frost just don't seem like it is going to be like that. The artifact weapon is just passive dmg/utility upgrade for other skills you already have and won't really change the rotations. 

I guess unholy just have a better edge. I don't know why they thought the artifact for frost was a good idea. They should have at least given the sindragosa's fury some mechanics, like it does dmg equal to the total dmg done in last 10 sec or something liek that so it influences some game play choices (like save the burst). I don't know. 

But thanks for the reply. I am definitely heavily leaning towards playing Unholy over frost.

 

[demonardvark 556]

6 hours ago, Mocha said:

Yeah thats what I mean i Ugess. Like Unholy Artifact weapon will change how Unholy plays quite a bit. It is every 90 sec too. It synergizes well with some talent as well (like Soul Reaper).

Frost just don't seem like it is going to be like that. The artifact weapon is just passive dmg/utility upgrade for other skills you already have and won't really change the rotations. 

I guess unholy just have a better edge. I don't know why they thought the artifact for frost was a good idea. They should have at least given the sindragosa's fury some mechanics, like it does dmg equal to the total dmg done in last 10 sec or something liek that so it influences some game play choices (like save the burst). I don't know. 

But thanks for the reply. I am definitely heavily leaning towards playing Unholy over frost.

 

Frost's tuning will determine a lot however, as far as what exactly they wanted gameplay mechanic wise it's rather unclear. Frost certainly has good cleave but the abilities are murky. It's like they took WoD frost and just threw as many frost abilities at it that they could think of. The artifact adds buffs to those but you are correct that it doesn't change much rotationally per say. Sindragosa's fury was even removed as the starting talent and a passive replaced it. Frost was much clearer before they altered the obliteration talent but now it's just shotty. It feels more like old enhance shammy now where you have a ton of various abilities you have to cast with only a couple feeling like they have any impact.

Now, don't get me wrong frost is solid. However, unholy was given just a big bag of mechanics and fun stuff to play with. So, it's like frost has an old box of lincoln logs. It's fun, you can spend hours with it, and its remained fairly the same over time. Unholy on the other hand was given a brand new laptop with an unlimited gift card to steam. The frost lincoln logs are fine, its just unholy has so much more to play with imo.

also blood is just really fun too 

[Gaderath 0]

Here is a small snippet of info from Apoc on a training dummy - I am only ilvl 810 at the moment :-

Your Apocalypse hit Raider's Training Dummy 172078 Physical. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 41681 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 83363 Shadow. (Critical) 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 41681 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 41681 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 41682 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 83363 Shadow. (Critical) 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 41682 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 41682 Shadow. 

...and here is the damage when the ghouls went pop (i left to two bunny kills for comic effect):-

Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Rabbit 1 Shadow. (1159981 Overkill) 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Rabbit 1 Shadow. (1159981 Overkill) 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 46399 Shadow. 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 46399 Shadow. 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 92798 Shadow. (Critical) 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 46399 Shadow. 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 92799 Shadow. (Critical) 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 46399 Shadow. 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 46399 Shadow. 
Army of the Dead Dragged to Helheim hit Raider's Training Dummy 46400 Shadow. 

The damage above is while *NOT* using the busting pustules talent......below is the same info with that talent selected.

Your Apocalypse hit Raider's Training Dummy 166348 Physical. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 125045 Shadow. (Critical) 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 62522 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 62523 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 62522 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 62523 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 125045 Shadow. (Critical) 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 62523 Shadow. 
Your Festering Wound hit Raider's Training Dummy 62523 Shadow. 

The pop damage is unaffected by the talent, so not going to paste that into this post again. Just on face vaule normal wound pops gain 20k and crits about 40k. Numbers aside though, it is really good fun on a boss fight though using Dark Transform just before you pop AotD, Gargoyle/Dark Arbitor and drop Apoc. Having 18 ghouls going hammer and tongs on something, for however short a time the Apoc Ghouls last, is rather entertaining to see. It is very much in keeping with how I always envisioned a Deathknight to operate, summoning legions of the undead to their bidding.

_________________________

On a personal note, I have been a die hard Frostknight since the main changes that main Frost DW pretty much the go to DPS Spec. I will be going UH myself based on my time in beta, wtih the cavaet that I will probably level as blood with a normal weapon collecting artifact power and relics for Apoc.....why you might ask?

Well simply, at the moment blood is so strong on survivability (even without an artifact) that it makes killing the zone rares solo actually doable without any stress. BLood DPS is still nice and strong so you can hammer your way through the quests without problem. As long as you remember to have your loot spec set to Unholy so the quest rewards will be viable to UH. I change back to UH when I need to dungeon. Some might say this is counter to the my reasons for chosing UH - however, I know the need for Order resources and my need to be able to quest without stress outweigh my desire to play the class in my chosen spec as I level.

 

Hopefully the info above will give you some insight into Apoc in action.  Just thought I would add to the conversation while I am in Beta right now.

Kind regards,

Gaderath.