WoW: Huge Changes to Frost Death Knights Coming in Next Patch 7.3

The next PTR build will have a round of changes for Frost Death Knights that address various issues, focusing on Breath of Sindragosa, Legendary items funneling the spec with resources and general talent balance.

What will change?
  • All damage abilities increased by 27% (tFrost Death Knight)
  • Hungering Rune Weapon (L58) and Glacial Advance (L100) swapped positions
  • Breath of Sindragosa damage increased by 10%
  • Murderous Efficiency (L56->L57), Frozen PulseFrozen Pulse (L57->L90), and Runic Attenuation(L90->L56) swapped positions
  • Hungering Rune Weapon duration reduced to 12s (from 15s) and additionally grants 20% haste
  • Bugfix: Hungering Rune Weapon correctly generates a Rune every 1.5s instead of every 1s
  • Murderous Efficiency chance 50% (from 65%)
  • Horn of Winter cooldown increased to 45s (from 30s)
  • Koltira's Newfound Will generates 1 Rune (from 2) and now causes eObliterate to deal 10% extra damage
  • Icy Talons bonus increased to 15% (from 10%)
  • Shattering Strikes bonus increased to 60% (from 40%)
  • Freezing Fog effect down to 20% (from 30%)
  • Obliteration duration increased to 10s (from 8s)

The official post can be found below.

The next PTR build should have a round of changes aimed at addressing various concerns with Frost. The major issues we're focused on are:

The spec is too dominated by Breath of Sindragosa (which has knock-on effects on talent choice throughout the tree).

Breath of Sindragosa, when you do use it, can be maintained for far too long. In addition to causing the talent/legendary lock-in around it, it means the demand for continuous time on target is very strict for extended periods of time.

The spec has many talents/legendaries that (individually or taken together) flood it with resources. Breath contributes to this by encouraging you to take all of them, but it's also a problem on its own.
Talent balance generally has to be reviewed, especially after addressing all of the time.

We're trying to limit the scope of the changes in the patch, to address the above without opening up the core rotation for changes.

All damage abilities increased by 27%

Hungering Rune Weapon (L58) and Glacial AdvanceGlacial Advance (L100) swapped positions

Breath of Sindragosa damage increased by 10%

We want to preserve the identity of Breath of Sindragosa, including the steady resource drain being the main limiting factor, and the expression of skill in optimizing around that. So in trying to avoid less natural solutions like capping the duration or redesigning how it works, we're trying to limit the talent/legendary synergies that cause huge variance in how long Breath can be maintained. And breaking the Breath of Sindragosa/Hungering Rune Weapon interaction, on its own, goes a very long way toward making Breath's duration more reasonable again. DPS adjustment for the change is being put mostly into the baseline spec rather than into the power of Breath, because it's currently so far ahead of other setups.

Murderous Efficiency (L56->L57), Frozen PulseFrozen Pulse (L57->L90), and Runic Attenuation (L90->L56) swapped positions

Hungering Rune Weapon duration 12s (from 15s) and additionally grants 20% haste

Bugfix: Hungering Rune Weapon correctly generates a Rune every 1.5s instead of every 1s

Murderous EfficiencyMurderous Efficiency chance 50% (from 65%)

Horn of Winter cooldown 45s (from 30s)

Koltira's Newfound Will generates 1 Rune (from 2) and now causesObliterate to deal 10% extra damage

Using even a small subset of all of the above effects causes the rotation to be quite flooded. They are all being either weakened in power (with compensation to the baseline spec), or given non-resource-granting effects for part of their value. In addition, the two most egregious offenders (Murderous EfficiencyMurderous Efficiency and Horn of WinterHorn of Winter) can no longer be taken together.

Overall, there should now be a much broader set of talent combinations that produce a good-feeling rotation in which there are resources to do something on most GCDs, but you're still able to spend them down. Including, for example, during Hungering Rune Weapon, which is overly hectic or frustrating right now when you can't spend all of its resources.

In addition, the talent rearrangement puts Frozen PulseFrozen Pulse on a row with two predominantly AoE talents, which is a better home for it. The Frozen PulseFrozen Pulse /Icy TalonsIcy Talons ("machinegun") synergy is preserved, but can no longer be taken alongside Runic AttenuationRunic Attenuation as well.

NB: The Hungering Rune WeaponHungering Rune Weapon bug may be fixed on live shortly as well, after we test the fix and analyze the impact.

Icy TalonsIcy Talons bonus 15% (from 10%)

Shattering StrikesShattering Strikes bonus 60% (from 40%)

Freezing FogFreezing Fog effect 20% (from 30%)

ObliterationObliteration duration 10s (from 8s)

Minor talent rebalancing to match the above rearrangements and talent changes; numbers are likely to be updated as the rest of the changes settle into place.

Breath can retain its role as a talent that encourages building around it to some degree (and its synergies with things like Runic AttenuationRunic Attenuation, Koltira's Newfound WillKoltira's Newfound Will, and Seal of NecrofantasiaSeal of Necrofantasia are preserved). But without the overpowering Hungering Rune WeaponHungering Rune Weapon interaction, there is a lot more room for other builds to compete, and we've buffed the spec's baseline damage a great deal to shift the landscape towards all talents being closer together in DPS. As always, we'll continue to examine all of these changes based after people can start to test them on PTR.

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