Death Knight Frost tree changes in latest Wrath Beta build
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jul 27th 2008 at 12:00PM
Between Blood's lack of downtime and Unholy's AE abilities and Ghoul control, Frost is starting to feel a bit like the unwanted orphan of the Death Knight trees. While it's heavy on the tanking talents and has some burst potential, we've been there done that, perhaps, already have Frost Mage alts, and so on and so forth.
Luckily, Blizzard recently made some changes to the tree on Beta which look like they may be nudging the tree in the right direction toward equality with the other two trees. Here's a concise list of the changes via MMO-Champion:
- Improved Icy Touch now increase the damage of your Icy Touch by 10/20/30/40/50% and its damage against Frozen Targets by 20/40/60/80/100% (Old version : Reduces the cooldown of your Icy Touch spell by 1/2/3/4/5 sec and increases its critical strike damage bonus by 10/20/30/40/50%)
- Nerves of Cold Steel has been moved from Tier 3 to Tier 2.
- Annihilation has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 3.
- Aneurysm has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 7.
- Merciless Combat has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 6.
- New Talent - Blood of the North - Tier 8 (5 Points) - Whenever you use a Blood Strike there is a 20/40/60/80/100% chance that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates
- Frost Aura increases your Frost Resistance by 32/65 instead of 22/45.
- Frost Strike prerequisites have been removed. (Merciless Combat was required before)
The Nerves of Cold Steel and Annihilation changes are probably made primarily so that Blood and Unholy Death Knights can have a chance at grabbing them. Annihilation should be especially nice for Unholy Death Knights, since it will allow them to use Obliterate for massive damage with a very low chance of removing the massive amount of disease that they use to do most of their damage and debuffing.
Of course, a build that takes Annihilation will probably have to give up Vendetta, which could make grinding a bit more difficult, though Death Strike, Death Coil, and Death Pact may help make up for that somewhat.
Blood of the North should also be very helpful for Frost Death Knights, as they've probably suffered the most from the decision to forego runeswapping and standardize runeblades at 2/2/2. With all the talented Frost moves they use, being able to activate an extra Death Rune should be very helpful in giving them some leeway to set up massive freeze damage combos.
The Improved Icy Touch change's benefits are a bit more nebulous. At the least, it should allow for a quick freeze damage combo with Chains of Ice, but overall, Frost Knight freezes are still rather random, and Hungering Cold's Freeze will likely always be saved for the Deathchill/Howling Blast combo, so it's hard to say how much mileage a Death Knight will get from this change.
Of course, Ghostcrawler's still actively seeking feedback on the changes it seems, and has said that they're looking to make Frost Death Knights less dependent on rotating all their abilities and keeping more of them situational, so it's likely that Frost will see a few more changes before live for sure, as Blizzard contines the painstaking process of building and balancing a new class fom the ground up.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Expansions, Talents, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
STereo Jul 27th 2008 12:10PM
Sounds like the other trees need nerfing not frost needs buffing.
Willias Jul 27th 2008 12:23PM
Wrong. The death knight doesn't have nearly as many abilities as other classes, so they rely more on their talent trees to increase their power, and Frost is the one that is the weakest. None of the death knight trees is specifically for tanking, but they all improve the way the death knight fights. Frost is the worst in that regard.
Even with these changes, Frozen Rune Weapon and Frost Strike need buffed so that the Frost Death Knight functions along the same power that Unholy and Blood Death Knights function.
Heilig Jul 27th 2008 2:39PM
Yeah, all those DK videos show how clearly underpowered the DK is as a class. Being able to solo your way through Andorhal at 55 without having to drink, eat, bandage, or stop for any reason is just unacceptable. I mean, his health got down to 80% one time. EIGHTY PERCENT! That is clearly unacceptable and needs to be buffed badly.
Charlie Jul 27th 2008 11:54PM
1) Its beta.
2) I'm not even sure if those mobs are elite in beta.
3) Its beta.
Calm down.
Badger Jul 28th 2008 11:58AM
Heiling,
I don't know where you found that video, but it's clearly misleading in the extreme. If the DK were that amazing, my group of 5 DKs wouldn't have had a near wipe two nights ago in the first ten minutes of Stratholme.
dan Jul 28th 2008 2:04PM
Badger
The video he's talking about was one of the many videos made by Jadefury and posted here on wowinsider. Not sure why your group had a hard time but there was nothing misleading about the video in the slightest. The player *tore* through andorhal.
Why that's a problem however is beyond me. Those mobs should be like wolves and pigs to DKs. They're their starter mobs after all.
Zakk Jul 27th 2008 12:09PM
I really hope Frost ends up being a viable DPS tree. I already have a tank, so I'm DPSing with my DK, and I just love the idea of frost spells over shadow/nature/fire/etc.
dan Jul 28th 2008 2:04PM
Good luck with that. People are going to expect DKs of all stripes to tank stuff.
Tirion Jul 27th 2008 12:19PM
Interesting I guess. I'll be specing into whatever the best tanking tree is. Don't really care which one it ends up being. I'll let the theorycrafters figure it out for me once we get a little closer to live.
hpavc Jul 27th 2008 12:39PM
So much candy in these trees, much like rogues. Luckily itemization is already in the game to support the DK fundamentals unlike what rogues have gone through for so long trying to find a weapon that was on par with their spells.
Its also seems like there will be quite a few builds that will be viable for many play styles. Unlikely other classes that have perhaps one or two for leveling and just another one or two afterwards.
They really don't have much that doesn't suck, such as clear waste of points talents just to unlock a must have talent.
Cetha Jul 27th 2008 12:39PM
One of the odd things about playing a death knight will be the rather steep learning curve since the class will be starting at 55...with other classes you get time to learn each skill/talent/spell individually, but this time around it's just gonna be a flood of new stuff...I look at these new trees and just /shrug, they might as well be written in another language given the low amount of meaning that they have for me, and I've been playing WoW for almost 3 years...it's great that they are jumping the start lvl so high, I just think it'll be interesting to see all the people wandering around ebon hold having no idea what they are doing lol
Kaphik Jul 27th 2008 2:20PM
My DK has just hit 58. I can tell you the learning curve is not bad at all. You gradually get your talent points, and have some time to play around with some of the different abilities.
Although Frost does seem like the deicated tanking spec, I'm not sure if there really is going to be ONE tanking spec. Which I find very interesting.
So many people are trying all sorts of specs, the general consensus is that a heavy Frost build is the weakest of the three tree for grinding. I have 33 points in Blood, and 16 in Frost. AoE grinding mobs in the plaguelands makes paladin AoE grinding look silly by comparison.
Like a lot of beta Dk players, I'll be respeccing several times, especially once I hit Northrend, to see how various builds can work. I'm mainly playing DK in beta to get an edge on playing the class.
Kyane Jul 27th 2008 3:30PM
The learning curve is really much easier than you'd think. Blizzard did very well easing you into the class and their abilities by giving you talents through quests.
vlad Jul 27th 2008 1:12PM
this was mentioned yesterday on mmo-champion. copy and paste someone elses news a day late as usual "wow insider staff" nice try to hide your personal identies on lame news
Havitech Jul 27th 2008 1:17PM
They're not hiding behind "WoW Insider Staff." Read:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/24/aol-makes-big-budget-cuts-across-blogs/
"I don’t know what’s going on with Engadget and co., or the lifestyle blogs, but the gaming bloggers were told yesterday to STOP ALL POSTING. Now, after the network bosses went into the fray, our two biggest sites are cleared, but the rest of the sites are working on a 5 posts/day deal, so long as those aren’t written by international bloggers, but only US writers. Anything above and beyond that is unpaid and will be written under a staff account. Nearly everyone has agreed to post for free, including columnists, in the hopes that we will all still have jobs come August 1, when they’re telling us we’ll be back — just on a smaller budget."
Eluss Jul 27th 2008 1:35PM
Bad troll is Bad. They credit MMO-Champion as the source. News is shared all the time. Ever heard of the AP? A majority of the news from your local newspaper comes from the AP. If there were no news sharing, your local paper would be over half empty.
jbodar Jul 27th 2008 9:53PM
Perhaps they should just make troll posts on MMO Champion and direct people to WI to debate them. Where's all the ground-breaking original content on your blog, vlad?
http://vladsucks.wordpress.com/
You seem to understand the point of a blog -- as a way of aggregating info from multiple sources and providing commentary/discussion -- but only when it suits you. You deride WI for "riding the coattails" of MMO-C, but you do the exact same thing on your blog. Are you just pissed that no one is paying you to troll more established blogs?
DirtyPriest Jul 27th 2008 11:42PM
I just heard that frost is only good if you spec deep into it. So for leveling everyone is going unholy or blood. So I think part of the reason for moving some of these talents up is so people would go frost early on.
Egma Aug 1st 2008 1:34AM
"I don't know where you found that video, but it's clearly misleading in the extreme. If the DK were that amazing, my group of 5 DKs wouldn't have had a near wipe two nights ago in the first ten minutes of Stratholme."
Well you also have to remember most of the vids people are watching are either speical quest vids where you get awsome buffs just to learn your class and not true gameplay or are 70+ DKs farming lvl 61s... I have seen both the vids that make DKs look way powerfull and the ones that make them look like any other class at that level... I do most the "OP" DK vids are one of 3 things, certine quest that gives nice buff to learn skills, farming grey or near grey mobs, or PRIVATE servers that are unoffical and where if they wanted to they could make all mobs worth 100,000,000 xp and 200G due to it being a unoffical (illegal at that) server.
Diyon Aug 24th 2008 10:13PM
Could Frost DK's be viable AOE farmers?
think of this combo.
first be in blood to reduce global cooldown of spells to get the most in.
(use lichbourne when gathering enemies, +25% chance to miss to them all and immune to many effects)
First: Plague Strike (plagues an enemy consuming 1 blood 1 unholy)
(with more enemies near)
Pestilence to spread that disease to the other two
DnD (Consumes two unholy, however in using 1 blood you gained a death ruin if spec'ed deep frost which thsi requires)
your now left with 2 frost ruins, 3 DnD affected targets, and all of them have diseases on them
Use Frost Stike (consuming one)
Then Hungering cold freezing them * More importantly giving them the Frost fever debuff
use Deathchill if killing machine has not proc'ed, or if it proc'ed on your frost strike.
Use Howling Blast. Howling blast will crit (because of deathchill or killing machine), and deal double damage (because of your Frost Fever debuff) + any other modifiers in your frost tree, easily doing 4k to all your victims.
now hopefully a blood rune will be up, use Blood boil (because of frost, there is a very good chance your disease will not be stripped off because of this spell (90%) so in case some are, just respread with pestilence and continue. this is all theory craft because i am not in the beta, but this could be powerful.