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:
- 符文武器增效 has become what the 饥饿符文武器 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 符文武器增效 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.
- 冰霜之柱 has been removed baseline. Since the knockback immunity portion of it was moved to 死亡脚步, 烈焰之柱 ended up being a pretty bland 20% Strength buff. We've renamed the talent 湮没 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The next build you'll see will be just slightly out of date in regards to the Frost talent tree – the most current version is outlined below.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: 酷寒突袭, 冰冷之爪, 破碎之刃 – primarily single-target/constant value
酷寒突袭 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
湮灭's damage and doesn't benefit from
杀戮机器 (you aren't intended to play around it +
杀戮机器). 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: 符文调谐, 杀戮效率, 寒冬号角 – this row adds resources/speeds up to the rotation
符文调谐 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: 凛冬将至, 窒息, 致盲冰雨 – crowd control
窒息 has replaced
憎恶之力 in the talent tree, and now all 3
死亡骑士 specs have access to this single-target stun cooldown.
憎恶之力 wasn't very reliable and wasn't even always desirable as a random single-target proc stun.
Level 60 row: 雪崩, 风暴汇聚, 冰川突进 – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets
雪崩 has been redesigned to trigger from casting
凛风冲击 with Rime active, and is intended to be the simple passive option on the row.
Level 75 row: 永冻, 幻影步, 天灾契约天灾契约 has replaced the version of
酷寒突袭 from live, giving both damage specs access to this survivability talent.
Level 90 row: 冰冻之雾, 冰霜之镰, Frostwyrm's Fury – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets
冰冻之雾 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,
辛达苟萨之怒, with a slightly different name so that it doesn't sound too similar to
冰龙吐息. 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: 冰盖, 冰霜之柱, 冰龙吐息 – Damage modifiers/works in most situations
冰盖 now affects
符文武器增效 instead of
冰霜之柱, reducing its cooldown by 3 sec (pending tuning) when it triggers.
湮没 (the talent on live) has been renamed
冰霜之柱 as mentioned earlier, and has the same mechanics on the same 1.5 min cooldown.
冰龙吐息 is mostly unchanged. However, worth noting is that its 2 min cooldown lines up better with the new
符文武器增效, which now also has a 2 min cooldown.
纸条:
符文强化 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.
标记 my words. If Blizzard makes any valuable changes within 1 week I will literally a shoe. No bamboozle.