Blizzard
The next Beta build will include updates to Frost Death Knight. There has been a little more iteration since then (details later), but it will have the bulk of the changes, which are mostly focused on adjustments, rearrangements, or replacements for talents. The baseline spec and core rotation hasn't changed much – Frost remains a fast-paced, proc-based rotation. The goals for the changes include:
- Consolidate the multiple self-buff cooldowns available
- Add the artifact active ability to the talent tree
- Look for opportunities to update/improve the talent tree
The noteworthy change to the baseline spec is that the self-buff cooldowns have been consolidated:
- Renforcer l'arme runique has become what the Arme runique affamée talent is on live (with tuning adjustments), granting 15% Haste and generating 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 5 sec for 20 sec, on a 2 min cooldown (down from 3 min on live). Now that Renforcer l'arme runique is on the global cooldown, the full 6 Runes it instantly provided always felt a bit like you were wasting it – shifting it to resources over time to add to a pretty full rotation made sense.
- Pilier de givre has been removed baseline. Since the knockback immunity portion of it was moved to Avancée de la mort, Pilier ended up being a pretty bland 20% Strength buff. We've renamed the talent Oblitération into Pillar of Frost to keep that name around on the spec.
The next build you'll see will be just slightly out of date in regards to the Frost talent tree – the most current version is outlined below. Any talents not described are mostly unchanged.
Level 56 row: Assaut inexorable, Serres glaciales, Lame fracassante – primarily single-target/constant value
Assaut inexorable has been redesigned – it now periodically grants a buff (stacks to 5) that causes your next Obliterate to deal additional Frost damage. This additional damage is a flat, separate add to
Anéantissement's damage and doesn't benefit from
Machine à tuer (you aren't intended to play around it +
Machine à tuer). The talent is mostly passive, but with the added bonus of providing some benefit at the start of an encounter or when you're off-target.
Level 57 row: Atténuation runique, Efficacité meurtrière, Cor de l’hiver – this row adds resources/speeds up to the rotation
Atténuation runique now generates 3 Runic Power on a more controllable procs per minute system, instead of generating 1 Runic Power on autoattacks (which didn't have a good way for us to tune it). It should still feel like pretty consistent resource generation.
Level 58 row: L’hiver approche, Asphyxier, Grésil aveuglant – crowd control
Asphyxier has replaced
Puissance de l’abomination in the talent tree, and now all 3
Chevalier de la mort specs have access to this single-target stun cooldown.
Puissance de l’abomination wasn't very reliable and wasn't even always desirable as a random single-target proc stun.
Level 60 row: Avalanche, Tempête grandissante, Avancée glaciale – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets
Avalanche has been redesigned to trigger from casting
Rafale hurlante with Rime active, and is intended to be the simple passive option on the row.
Level 75 row: Gel prolongé, Marche spectrale, Pacte mortelPacte mortel has replaced the version of
Assaut inexorable from live, giving both damage specs access to this survivability talent.
Level 90 row: Brouillard givrant, Faux de givre, Frostwyrm's Fury – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets
Brouillard givrant is planned to be unchanged from live. The version you're going to see soon includes an additional mechanic (which is probably being removed), that was added in order to make it fit better when it was on a different talent row.
Frostwyrm's Fury is the artifact active,
Fureur de Sindragosa, with a slightly different name so that it doesn't sound too similar to
Souffle de Sindragosa. Its cooldown is 3 min instead of 5 min (like the artifact active) – a shorter cooldown as a talent feels better to be usable more often and allows it to be better tuned against its competitors without requiring a large damage reduction in
JcJ due to being a huge single damage event.
Level 100 row: Chape de glace, Pilier de givre, Souffle de Sindragosa – Damage modifiers/works in most situations
Chape de glace now affects
Renforcer l'arme runique instead of
Pilier de givre, reducing its cooldown by 3 sec (pending tuning) when it triggers.
Oblitération (the talent on live) has been renamed
Pilier de givre as mentioned earlier, and has the same mechanics on the same 1.5 min cooldown.
Souffle de Sindragosa is mostly unchanged. However, worth noting is that its 2 min cooldown lines up better with the new
Renforcer l'arme runique, which now also has a 2 min cooldown.
Note:
Renforcement runique has been tuned down from 1.8%->1.5%. The spec often just had way too much resources to spend. This is the spec's primary pacing controller and we'll continue adjusting it in the future to what feels good.
Thanks for all the continued feedback.
The changes will probably be announced to be on hold until a later patch or just next xpac in about a month.
Marque my words. If Blizzard makes any valuable changes within 1 week I will literally a shoe. No bamboozle.
