10 / 12 / 2022
This is my Hail Mary for just a few more changes to the Death Knight talent trees. I realize that time has almost ran out. But there are some minimal important improvements that would make all the difference, so I'm being laser focused with this feedback.
Death Knight - Core Tree
1. The single most important issue is that Cleaving Strikes needs to be placed into the bottom tier of the talent tree. This talent allows Frost to cleave with it's highest damage attack. You can not pass that up when the choice is that versus a utility option. It becomes mandatory. And because it is so powerful, that means we also need to pick up Unholy Ground and Death's Echo to support that playstyle. This in turn causes multiple problems.
First, this severely limits our choice of utility talents because we will need to talent down both Frost and most of the Unholy side of the tree. This whole talent concept was supposed to offer better customization.
Second, Frost hasn't been forced to use Death and Decay in their AoE rotation since maybe Wotlk. But you want to start now? Again, where is the customization?
Oh, and nevermind the fact that Cleaving Strikes completely devalues Frostscythe which is one of our signature talent abilities.
And finally, having only 3 capstone abilities feels very weak and limited. Adding Cleaving Strikes to the bottom of the tree helps to offer more choices which is important.
As a side note, I actually want to take Death's Echo for the extra charges of Death's Advance and Death Grip. That's an awesome utility upgrade for all specs. So no matter what, I still don't like Death's Echo being hidden so far out of the way on the Unholy side of the tree.
2. Raise Dead needs to be the permanent Ghoul version if it's going to be in the core tree. I've already explained why many times. This needs to happen.
3. Blinding Sheet and Proliferating Chill need to swap places. You shouldn't be able to take Proliferating Chill without having taken Chains of Ice, yet you can as of right now.
Below is my mock core talent tree outlining how things could look:
I tried to change as little as possible while achieving the above goals. Moving Cleaving Strikes down to the bottom tier required an additional readjustment of a few talents. But in the end, things work so much better this way.
Suppression is an extremely bad talent so I replaced it with Dark Succor since that is still missing from our current toolkit. That is the only new talent that I added besides the separating of Death's Reach and Grip of the Dead to fill out the tree.
The connections around Anti-Magic Barrier and Veteran of the Third War were changed slightly to accommodate the addition of Dark Succor. It should be optional and not mandatory in order to move down the right side of the tree.
Frost - Talent Tree
I'm keeping this one very simple. Frost has issues, but there is one single problem that absolutely needs to be solved. The prerequisite talents for Empower Rune Weapon are beyond problematic.
First, Horn of Winter is absolutely worthless. We are going to have plenty of resources. Maybe if you spec into Breath of Sindragosa, then maybe it might be worth the talent point but I doubt it. It definitely is not if you're building around Obliteration.
Second, Frostwhelp's Aid can't reliably be used in M+ because the damn ability has a 40 yd range and we as melee don't always have control over how we can position. Many keys were killed the last time we had access to Frostwhelp's Aid because of this reason.
The most simple solution is to switch the positions of Everfrost and Horn of Winter. And if you want to allow for additional options, then you could also switch the positions of Enduring Strength and Frostwhelp's Aid. The most important thing is that we aren't being forced into taking a talent that has zero value. That would feel super bad.
One last thing... It would be super cool if Icecap were to extend the duration of Pillar of Frost by X seconds instead of the current cooldown reduction. We will finally be able to line up Empower Rune Weapon with every Pillar of Frost for the first time ever. So it makes very little sense to mess with that newfound synergy with the way that Icecap is currently designed.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers!
