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Frost DK: First Impression of the New Death Knight Talent Trees in Dragonflight
Dragonflight
Publié
10/07/2022 à 04:15
par
Bicepspump
With the reveal of the Dragonflight Death Knight talent trees, our Frost Death Knight writer provides initial reactions and first impressions to this revamped system. We break down the DK and Frost trees, discussing the new talents and providing some sample builds. Join us as we predict how this class could play in Dragonflight!
To learn about the best PvE talent builds in Dragonflight for this class, and export these builds into the game, please check out our Blood, Frost, and Unholy Death Knight class guides:
Blood Death Knight Talent BuildsFrost Death Knight Talent BuildsUnholy Death Knight Talent Builds
Death Knight Dragonflight Class Tree
Death Knight Dragonflight Talents - What's New?
The Dragonflight expansion has introduced a completely new take on talents and abilities. Instead of learning spells as we level and picking one out of three talent choices in set of rows, we now have talent trees that do both. You get one generic tree shared between the three Death Knight specs, as well as a spec-specific tree. The points you gain as you level will both be used to build out your ability toolkit as well as picking up passives that empower your abilities.
The Frost Death Knight will see some completely novel spells in the class-specific tree, as well as abilities previously only available to the other two Death Knight specs. We can now pick up , and from the Unholy and Blood toolkit. I think specifically is interesting since it's such a strong defensive!
We'll also be able to choose from any of the completely new spells: , , , and (ignoring the dull % gain passives). I think the most interesting one of these will be which has a cool synergy with , increasing the value by a factor of two in any cleave scenario. is also looking really strong, synergizing really well with any Dual-Wield playstyle. Runeforges are really strong for us, making a 30% increase to them significant.
Death Knight Dragonflight Talent Tree - First Impressions
I believe Frost will have access to a lot of good stuff from the class-specific tree. We'll be able to stack resource-talents that were previously mutually exclusive ( and ) and pick up lots of utility.
My very early thoughts bring me to the following general tree for Frost DKs:
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
The first thing you might notice with this tree is me not picking up . This might seem unintuitive but I actually believe it won't be a DPS upgrade to pick up this talent! The Frost Death Knight resource-economy is built on using 2 Rune abilities. Whenever you add an ability that costs less (thus generating less runic power), you will break the resource flow. To provide an example of the cost of having 1-Rune abilities in your rotation, consider the current
Cœur froid
vs
Assaut inexorable
.
Cœur froid
generates
twice
as much raw damage in a minute, but is essentially
equal
in overall DPS! This is because using that 1 GCD every 40 seconds has such a high cost. Now imagine pressing an ability once every 6 seconds... I might be wrong here but I simply don't think deals enough damage to be worth it.
I think it's really nice that we'll essentially always pick up ] that gives us cleave. This is a big boost to our cleave and is really fun and satisfying to use. I'm very happy this functionality made it through from Shadowlands and that you can now pretty much always have it.
In a similar manner to Unholy, Frost also gets the short stick in terms of utility. The Blood part of the tree simply holds so much good stuff, culminating in . It's not as bad for frost since we don't need to go all the way down in two branches. Still, if we have to go all the way in the Blood tree we have to sacrifice . This will most likely be a downgrade vs but it won't be nearly as bad compared to Unholy (that loses both
and
). Still, I don't like Blood getting the upper hand on utility which I believe should be shared equally amongst the different DK specs.
The amount of choice in the tree is also interesting to consider. Unlike Unholy, I don't think the last 11 talents have much wiggle room for Frost. We can pick up all the DPS increase talents and still get for a very good defensive option. Above the final portion, we have one point which can go pretty much anywhere. I currently have it in but I would definitely pick up for cleave scenarios, or maybe when interrupts are frequent, or even to generate a ton of Runic Power whenever your group takes a ton of magic damage. You might even sacrifice for even more utility. This will obviously make us significantly slower and should only be done in specific instances. It does open three talent points and brings a lot more options overall.
Finally, I feel like one must mention the amount of baseline abilities the Frost Death Knight receives. It's strictly lower compared to Druids and Priests that we have also seen talent trees for. It's likely that they see more baseline spells due to having four specs (for druids) as well as healers for both classes. Still, it would be nice if DKs had a bit more baseline spells and retrieved some more rank2-type abilities in the class-speific tree. I think both
Frappe de mort
and
Gel de l'esprit
should be baseline if I had to only pick two.
Frost Death Knight Spec Tree
Frost Death Knight Talents for Raiding - What's New?
The spec-specific tree contains some completely new spells, as well as a couple of returning ones.
- A weaker version of
Rune d’hystérie
, allowing us to increase our Runic Power cap up to a total of 130 with both the talent and the Runeforge.
and / - YES, previously a PvP talent we now have
Séquence glaçante
back in PvE! Previously only accessible in BFA with the Conflict and Strife Azerite Essence but now accessible to anyone that fancies it.
-
Citadelle glacée
has returned again! This has great synergy with due to the increased frequency!
-
Indignation de dragonnet de givre
has also come back from BFA. Insane synergy with in AoE where we'll be able to send dragon after dragon into our enemies.
- A completely new passive that synergises really well with high frequency. I think it'll work especially well with due to all the guaranteed s.
- Similar to the
Givre funeste
azerite trait, this will generate a significant amount of procs throughout a fight. Importantly, the amount of procs it gives will be independent on weapon type, empowering 2H builds.
- A completely new interaction that increases the Runic Power generation of
Fièvre de givre
. Will synergise well with builds utilising .
I'm so excited about the old stuff they've brought back to the Frost Death Knight!
Citadelle glacée
,
Indignation de dragonnet de givre
and
Séquence glaçante
are all really fun spells that enable new and interested builds for the Frost Death Knight.
Chape de glace
AoE build is 100% back.
The completely new talents aren't too exciting but I don't mind too much. The things they've brought back are just so awesome and I'm really hyped.
Frost Death Knight Dragonflight Talent Tree - First Impressions
I'm just really excited about the Frost Death Knight tree. It has so much fun stuff in it and I think we'll be able to run a couple diverse and interesting builds. There are some negative aspects to it that I'll get to later but overall I'm really happy.
Example Builds
When it comes to builds, I believe we'll see three major ones: a versatile build, a single-target focused build and a full AoE build! To start off, I believe the build focusing on would look something like this:
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
This build goes all the way down in two branches to pick up and . We focus on all the talents buffing as well as picking up a ton of resource-generating spells like , , and . In conjunction with all the resource-generating spells in the class-specific tree we'll have an absolute ton of resources. I believe this build will be able to have insane upkeep on , becoming a beast in cleave scenarios. It's interesting that we'll now be able to pick up as well, fitting in multiple within each Breath window. I do think this build is
very
rigid when it comes to choice. All the spells are so impactful that there really isn't anything to swap away from. Possibly you can choose to run instead of ] but I'm hesitant that it would actually be better. There are possibilities where you wouldn't traverse as far down into the left branch, opting to pick up more AoE through talents like , , and .
Furthermore, we have a more single-target oriented build that works well with a 2H weapon. It focuses heavily on and big damage.
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
This build will most likely not require a lot of Runic Power, meaning that we can simply ignore going far down into the right branch. This allows us to prioritise more spells in the middle portion of the tree! will also be a must-have for any Frost Death Knight planning to wield a 2H weapon. The loss of a Runeforge is really impactful and we need a big spell like this to help make up for it. I believe we can make some interesting choice for this build. We can go down to the right after Pillar of Frost, picking and for more AoE, or go for on the right for huge cleave, or pick up for some big AoE, there are a lot of options. I really think we'll see see more play in Dragonflight, mainly because it no longer directly competes with .
We can also choose to go all the way down to . This generally doesn't hold that much value in PvE but I think it'll see a lot of play in PvP. Overall, there's just so many options and interesting paths you can take with this build. So many things on the tree are fun and exciting and I really think we'll see some big build diversity here.
Finally, the previously very popular AoE build is back! This focuses heavily on incredibly short cooldowns and all the talents that synergise well with this:
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
I've picked the essentials for this build, leaving out 4 points that I'll talk about further down. To start off though, let's discuss why this build can be so powerful. It's all about the synergy between the following 5 spells: , , , and . reduces the cooldown of
significantly
. When paired with , you'll have a high chance of proccing the 4 seconds of Cooldown Reduction on
every
GCD as long as there are enough targets. has an independent chance to crit on anything you hit with the ability, making the likelihood of getting at least one crit really quite high as long as you have a lot of targets. This effectively makes a 20-30 seconds cooldown in some scenarios. In conjunction with and that significantly buffs every use of , you have a great combination that does a ridiculous amount of AoE damage.
This build will not do quite as well on single target since you're much less likely to crit on any given GCD so it's a tradeoff you need to consider. You'll be able to fill the "trash-killer" role in the Mythic+ group and someone else will have to kill the bosses. Still, you can pick up some spells that will help with single target. Allocating the remaining 4 points in the left branch will significantly boost your single target throughput. , ] and are great for single target. You can also opt to simply live the AoE dream and pick up a full AoE setup! This means talenting into , and .
I'm not too sure if this build will be more or less powerful compared to what we saw in BFA. The cooldown on has increased from 45 to 60 seconds, but the cooldown reduction from has also increased from 3 to 4 seconds. I can guarantee that the build will be a ton of fun to play, I just don't know how powerful it will actually be...
Overall Thoughts
I believe my biggest gripe with the Frost Death Knight tree is that I cannot allocate more talents to all the fun stuff! Most builds will have quite a lot of situational choice depending on situation where you can pick more single target, more cleave or more AoE! I feel like the three builds I covered have their own distinct identities and I think they'll all be fun to play. I do think is quite a weak final-row talent which most likely won't see much play in PvE. It's a great pick for PvP though so I don't mind it being there. Furthermore, sits in quite a weird spot and isn't that strong. It helps with Breath uptime and allows you to waste less resources but it's just no very exciting. Another talent I'm not too sure about is . I did pick it up in my example build but I don't think the talent is that great. The current legendary
Faveur de Koltira
derives a significant amount of its value from the increase damate to . Removing this from the new talent just makes it a weak and uninteresting choice.
Frost Death Knight Dragonflight Talents for Raiding - How Strong is it?
Having three distinct builds to choose from will most likely be a great attribute of the Frost Death Knight. Varying how much you focus on AoE vs Single Target will a meaningful choice you make depending on situation. Furthermore, we have a very cleave setup by default. This generally means we'll be able to bring a ton of overall damage to any encounter with adds. I think the largest negative aspect of this is that classes with good cleave isn't generally the best for pure single target. Monks in Shadowlands is a good example of this. I feel like their single target isn't prioritised as much from Blizzard's side since they have such great AoE. This makes them really good in Mythic+, but also very lacking in a raiding environment. My one worry is therefore that Frost Death Knights might end up in the same situation.
Final Thoughts on the Death Knight and Frost Talent Trees
I'm honestly so hyped about the Frost Death Knight talent tree. I believe Blizzard brought back a lot of fun stuff from previous expansions and created a tree with a relatively large amount of meaningful choice. There are so many talents that I want to pick in any given build! I'm excited to see which build will become meta. Will finally become meta? How powerful is actually in AoE? Will we have permanent with all the extra resources? Lots of fun questions that I can't wait to figure out the answer to!
Interested in playing Frost Death Knight now? Check our out live guide for Frost Death Knights!
Frost Death Knight Guide for Season 3
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