12.1 Frost DK: They Removed The Best Part!

[00:03] Frost Death Knights next season, but nothing can compare with the now historically repeatable roller coaster performance that Frost Death Knights performance that Frost Death Knights have had in the past too many seasons.

[00:16] Will this continue in 12.1? Let's first see what we're working with. patches in general, Frost Death Knights actually haven't gotten a single talent

[00:31] rework to introduce. This is likely one of the best signs that Frost might be sitting in its own shoes and identity as a specialization. It did receive a lot of nerfs and buffs, but more on that in a second. We won't talk about the tier

[00:45] set here just because it is really the only new thing coming its way in season 2. First of all, the two-set bonus buffs Remorseless Winter to give you a stacking buff when it hits at least one enemy. That buff is called Freezing

[01:00] Tempest and gives you 2% attack speed and 4% more damage to Icy Death Torrent lasting 5 seconds. With this bonus alone, it looks like we will be looking at picking up probably all of the major Remorseless Winter talents in all

[01:15] situations. Something that hasn't been done currently in season 1. This gets even better. The four-set increases the damage of Remorseless Winter by 25% and the buff it gives you last 5 seconds longer. Despite this, Remorseless

[01:30] Winter's damage isn't anything mind-blowing, although welcome. The killer is clearly the buff that seemingly does not have a cap on how high it stacks. Now, this could mean that we will be looking to keep Winter

[01:43] up as much as possible. Not sure how realistic it is with the modern class design to be fair. Blizzard really doesn't like dynamic cooldowns, whether it is in their uptime or frequency of casting. But, there was a time when we

[01:57] could carry over one Remorseless Winter into another in the past. This depends on Gathering Storm, a talent that extends duration based on rune extends duration based on rune consumption. On paper, this sounds like

[02:10] we might want haste as a stat more. The thing is, we need some math on this first since if the haste contribution does not guarantee a high enough up time to matter, we might still play the exact type of

[02:23] gear we have been playing for the past 3 years or more. Change is good and we've been changing our content for some time now and hope you've enjoyed it. If you had, consider checking our Patreon page. We don't have exclusive content there,

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[02:52] grateful for. Thanks for all the times you stuck around with us. going to keep on happening, let me bring you up to speed. First, to keep in tune

[03:08] with the philosophy of the end-game design of season 2 around player health and enemy damage, Pillar of Frost was buffed to grant you a shield equal to 35% of your damage dealt up from the previous 30%. That's because mobs will

[03:22] do 25% more damage flat out, but you will also have 25% more HP. Now, onto the not-so-fun parts. Pillar of Frost now increases strength by 20% down from 30. This is the biggest example of the second thing that devs are looking to

[03:37] change in 12.1. A lot of specs will have their burst damage reduced significantly. As a compensation, we will get damage into our basic abilities and generally to outside of cooldowns gameplay. So, of course, Breath of

[03:51] Sindragosa and Frost Whelp's Fury are also nerfed by 20%. Additionally, to distribute the damage across other abilities and unused talents, we are seeing a Blood Strike nerfed by 25% and Frost Bite nerfed by 30% as

[04:05] compensation. We have a lot of other buffs in Empower Rune Weapon boosted by 30%, which is my favorite buff. The gameplay surrounding Empower Rune Weapon is the only one that has any decent amount of interactivity with both your

[04:20] resources and cool down reduction through consuming Rime. Now, we get decent damage on it as well. Glacial Advance was buffed by 30% and Frost Strike by 25. These address the standard consumer does way less damage than the

[04:34] generator talking points. To be fair, this has been the theme of Frost DK for ages and you can think of Obliterate as a consumer as well since it consumes runes. But, hey, Frost Scythe was buffed by 20%.

[04:48] I'm not sure to which degree Frost Death Knights would have prioritized Obliterate in AoE on low enemy count encounters over Frost Scythe, which would make sense to see this one buffed to be the obvious AoE replacement. If

[05:01] that's the case, the buff is great because it makes the rotation more intuitive and not force people to do single target in AoE just because of tuning. Big buffs are coming to Remorseless Winter, Frost Fever, and Icy

[05:14] Remorseless Winter, Frost Fever, and Icy Death Torrent, all increased by 100%. These last one, particularly Winter and Torrent, makes sense since it's the tier set interaction. If anything, the buffs are oddly suspicious since I cannot

[05:27] shake the feeling that they were buffed just to make sure the tier set is good. Death Knights and Icy Death Torrent completely took over the damage profiles. Likely, more tuning will be coming in the future. The hero talents

[05:42] have received some changes as well. Death Bringer has Wither Away buffed Death Bringer has Wither Away buffed Sindragosa by 75% faster ticks rather than 100%. Deathly blows will increase Frost Strike damage even further by 25%

[05:55] instead of 15. Reaper's Mark damage reduced by 25% and Exterminate reduced reduced by 25% and Exterminate reduced by 17%. You would think these last two are there to bring Rider closer to Deathbringer, but Rider also received a

[06:08] 30%. Although it does seem Deathbringer was smashed harder overall. At the same time, every Frost Death Knight on PTR that is destroying the meters is still playing Deathbringer. So,

[06:22] playing Deathbringer. So, I don't know. gone now. The nerf was also a bit on the nose, kind of telling us to play Icy

[06:34] Death Torn more so their tier set is not ignored. Likely, you will never not take Obliteration as a capstone. The spec just doesn't seem to feel good without it. And because it's good still, you are left with Breath of Sindragosa as a

[06:48] >> Currently, everyone on PTR is playing it. That doesn't mean it's good or that it will remain good when season two starts, but it does mean that we likely just don't have better options. I can't imagine anyone would feel good with

[07:02] [music] Breath being nerfed. This is one of the most iconic abilities for Frost Death Knights and something that is supposed to deal damage. Sure, the uptime gameplay on it that made so many people hate it is more or less gone, but

[07:15] it is still a melee cone ability on an immobile class with relatively strict conditions when it comes to exploiting its full value. All I'm saying is that Frost Death Knights still needs work hard to keep this going and having it

[07:27] nerfed is a bit of a bitter taste. I understand damage was moved to other abilities, but that doesn't stop me from feeling worse by pressing it than before. Not to mention, Pillar being nerfed means Lonely Winter, the

[07:41] forgotten capstone, will be even more forgotten since who wants to extend the duration of a cool down that wasn't worth extending when it was stronger. done testing this and have been looking at other Frost Death Knights on the PTR

[07:57] and it seems that lonely winter is the way to go at the moment. Now, whether this will change when it hits live, we'll just have to see. Other than this, The tier set giving you more attack speed might be interesting if it turns

[08:11] into you having way more killing machine procs and feeling like it matters. I doubt it might be that. I personally haven't felt it. I mean, you definitely get more killing machine procs mathematically, but more is a relative

[08:24] term. 55 killing machine procs per minute is more than 53 killing machine procs per minute, but are you able to tell the difference?

[08:37] design issue with specs like Feral Druid or Prot Warrior. They play great. They feel great, but they have close to no gameplay variety. Their talents are very cookie-cutter, which is not a great selling point to veteran players that

[08:51] want a reason to keep playing it or new players excited to try out all the stuff Frost has to offer. As much as people dislike it, Breath of Sindragosa was really the only thing Frost Death Knight did and I guess still does that is

[09:04] remotely engaging and different from other specs. Everything else is just a simple builder-spender gameplay with no payoff moments. Pillar of Frost will never work without Obliteration. In the past, when you didn't always choose to

[09:18] play Obliteration, Pillar of Frost had a whole other slew of mechanics working >> [music] >> like shooting a blue dragon whelp to hit enemies and give you mastery or build up a damage amp off during the course of

[09:33] its uptime that extended differently when Pillar dropped. Like I mentioned earlier, you could even work on getting close to 100% Remorseless Winter uptime. I'm not saying Frost is not fun to play, but I am seeing the signs that slowly

[09:49] are pushing the class into more passive gameplay that just happens because you hooked up your keyboard to the central unit and not because you made a meaningful gameplay choice. Frost Bane was one of those choices where you would

[10:02] get procs that would slightly alter your moment-to-moment rotational decisions. That is gone. The tier set is also incredibly passive. It does not add a neat interaction for you to play with. Nor does it force you down a unique

[10:17] talent build you never tried before. It's just passive numbers that make default numbers slightly bigger or slightly faster. I also cannot help but mention that we had tier sets just last expansion that

[10:30] had an effect for both hero talents. Balance issues aside, at least that offered some gameplay variety. What I am saying is that Frost Death Knight is one of the biggest success stories when it comes to reworks. So much so that we

[10:43] have seen Unholy go through about three of them in the span of Frost's only one, and still Frost feels better to play than Unholy. I just don't want to see more and more passive gameplay being reinforced or even forced when we

[10:58] clearly had good examples of the opposite less than a year ago. A good example, maybe the best in season 2, is Ret Paladin. Between the two specs baseline, Frost plays miles better than Ret, where it is the embodiment of what

[11:13] I just mentioned, passive predictable [music] gameplay with a 45-second loop. Yet, Ret Paladin received an amazing tier set that not only addresses a core proc of its kit having direct content with player decision-making in

[11:27] moment-to-moment gameplay, but also alters it slightly where you have to rethink your proc consumption before proceeding. How is a snooze fest spec like Ret that cannot hold a candle to Frost in terms of gameplay get such a

[11:42] banger tier becoming way better to play than Frost Death Knight as a whole? Either way, we made a video about it right here. You can check it out and have your opinion made up by Ret if you haven't made it up just yet because we

[11:57] might have made up a different opinion about Ret in season 2. More on that in about Ret in season 2. More on that in future videos.