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:
- Attivazione Runica has become what the Arma Runica Famelica 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 Attivazione Runica 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.
- Pilastro di Ghiaccio has been removed baseline. Since the knockback immunity portion of it was moved to Ineluttabilità della Morte, Pilastro ended up being a pretty bland 20% Strength buff. We've renamed the talent Annientamento 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The next build you'll see will be just slightly out of date in regards to the Frost talent tree – the most current version is outlined below.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: Assalto Inesorabile, Artigli di Ghiaccio, Assalto Frantumante – primarily single-target/constant value
Assalto Inesorabile 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
Disintegrazione's damage and doesn't benefit from
Arma Letale (you aren't intended to play around it +
Arma Letale). 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: Attenuazione Runica, Efficienza Assassina, Corno Invernale – this row adds resources/speeds up to the rotation
Attenuazione Runica 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'Inverno Sta Arrivando, Asfissia, Grandine Accecante – crowd control
Asfissia has replaced
Vigore dell'Abominio in the talent tree, and now all 3
Cavaliere della Morte specs have access to this single-target stun cooldown.
Vigore dell'Abominio wasn't very reliable and wasn't even always desirable as a random single-target proc stun.
Level 60 row: Slavina, Tempesta Incombente, Avanzata Glaciale – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets
Slavina has been redesigned to trigger from casting
Folata Gelida with Rime active, and is intended to be the simple passive option on the row.
Level 75 row: Permagelo, Passo Spettrale, Patto con la MortePatto con la Morte has replaced the version of
Assalto Inesorabile from live, giving both damage specs access to this survivability talent.
Level 90 row: Nebbia Ghiacciata, Falce del Signore del Gelo, Frostwyrm's Fury – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets
Nebbia Ghiacciata 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,
Furia di Sindragosa, with a slightly different name so that it doesn't sound too similar to
Soffio di 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
PvP due to being a huge single damage event.
Level 100 row: Pilastro Invernale, Pilastro di Ghiaccio, Soffio di Sindragosa – Damage modifiers/works in most situations
Pilastro Invernale now affects
Attivazione Runica instead of
Pilastro di Ghiaccio, reducing its cooldown by 3 sec (pending tuning) when it triggers.
Annientamento (the talent on live) has been renamed
Pilastro di Ghiaccio as mentioned earlier, and has the same mechanics on the same 1.5 min cooldown.
Soffio di Sindragosa is mostly unchanged. However, worth noting is that its 2 min cooldown lines up better with the new
Attivazione Runica, which now also has a 2 min cooldown.
Nota:
Rigenerazione delle Rune 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.
Marchio my words. If Blizzard makes any valuable changes within 1 week I will literally a shoe. No bamboozle.
