wow Upcoming Frost Death Knight Changes on BfA Beta: Jun 12

[Stan 5,240]

More Frost Death Knight changes are coming in this week's Beta Build. The latest changes to Pillar of Frost will be reverted (the ability will be baseline again), and level 60/90/100 talent rows will be adjusted.

Upcoming Frost Death Knight Talent Updates

Beta Build 26788	Future Beta Build
Level 60 Talents Icecap Avalanche Glacial Advance	Level 60 Talents Avalanche Frozen Pulse Frostscythe
Level 90 Talents Gathering Storm Frostscythe Frostwyrm's Fury	Level 90 Talents Gathering Storm Glacial Advance Frostwyrm's Fury
Level 100 Talents Freezing Fog Pillar of Frost Breath of Sindragosa	Level 100 Talents Icecap Obliteration Breath of Sindragosa

Here's the full blue post highlighting the recently-announced Frost Death Knight changes.

Blizzard (Source)

Lots of feedback on the first round of changes. Here’s the second iteration:

Pillar of Frost

Previous changes to Pillar of Frost have been reverted. While the ability is quite simple in a vacuum (20% damage increase with no other mechanics), there were clearly a lot of players who were uncomfortable with the idea of removing a core ability that’s been around for so long. 

After reading all the feedback and examining the ability’s place on the spec, we think the ability did provide a couple valuable things to the Frost rotation. One is Pillar of Frost is a window to play around – it allowed you to occasionally pool/spend your resources for a gain in a way that otherwise Frost doesn’t really have baseline. Additionally, it was a damage amp that you could/would want to line up cooldowns for – Remorseless Winter, Frostwyrm’s Fury, etc. Straightforward, but felt good to use.

Pillar of Frost is now back, at 45 sec cooldown and 15 sec duration – shorter cooldown but same uptime. Since it’s providing some useful gameplay direction for the rotation, we’re leaning into it more and making it available a little more often. Additionally, to give it just a little more texture and gameplay, its damage bonus now starts at 15% and increases by 1% per Rune spent while it’s active. Pillar usually ends with a 25% damage bonus or more.

Talent Changes

• Glacial Advance now costs 30 Runic Power (instead of 1 Rune), has a 6 sec cooldown (down from 15 sec), and also applies Razorice to all enemies hit. Glacial Advance overlapped a lot with Frostscythe in both use and cost, and we’re looking to differentiate it so it can find its own use case.
• Cold Heart has replaced Shattering Strikes. It’s basically the same as the legendary but without the stun, and provides the spec’s talent tree with some single-target burst.
• Obliteration is mostly back to its live design, but it’s now a passive, and triggered while Pillar of Frost is active. With Pillar of Frost being back baseline, we still want to avoid a setup where casing 3 self-buff cooldown consecutively was possible (Pillar of Frost, Empower Rune Weapon, Obliteration, in any order). We're still iterating a bit on Obliteration's cost reduction mechanic - it has some slightly awkward effects on resources which we'd like to make feel better.

Current talent layout:

• Level 60: Avalanche, Frozen Pulse (now requires fewer than 3 full Runes instead of fewer than 2), Frostscythe
• Level 90: Gathering Storm, Glacial Advance, Frostwyrm's Fury
• Level 100: Icecap (same as live, affecting Pillar of Frost), Obliteration, Breath of Sindragosa

Notes:

• Icy Talons now triggers from Breath of Sindragosa, since it’s replacing your Frost Strike for a period of time.
• Icebound Fortitude’s damage reduction was increased to 30% for both Frost/Unholy specs

As always, thanks for the continued feedback and we expect to hear more from you all.

[Whisla 76]

Like this is amazing communication from blizz, solid and quick work... Now where is it for demon hunters?

[SMOrcMan 76]

I wish they'd release the pre-patch sooner rather than later. I want to play demonology lock but the bfa version is pretty different to the point where I feel I'd be wasting my effort learning the legion version.

[PatrickHenry 293]

On 6/12/2018 at 2:53 PM, Stan said:

Icy Talons now triggers from Breath of Sindragosa, since it’s replacing your Frost Strike for a period of time.

 

On 6/12/2018 at 2:53 PM, Stan said:

Frozen Pulse (now requires fewer than 3 full Runes instead of fewer than 2)

*borat voice* Very Nice, Very nice.

[Notcs 0]

i thik dk frost need use two handed weapon too

[Seksi 208]

Really nice, does make me want to play frost DK for the first since since WoTLK.