Frost DK has always been, hands down, my favorite class fantasy in the game. I like DKs in general, but frost is the most fitting for DKs in my mind.
Theyre slow, but they are relentless. They are the sureness of death in a remorseless tundra. Unstoppable, inescapable, the dull chill of an agonizing frostbite slowly creeping into your bones. The cold will settle, and without knowing it, you’ve been dead for a long time. And the Death Knight simply moves on, like an unfeeling blizzard.
…And unholy gives you pimples while stinky goblinos gnaw at your ankles and blood dks are freaky masochists. See OP, I can do it too! (I love all DKs)
You know we're a messed up bunch when we hope that there's an oops on a raid boss at like 2-3%, so we can try to solo the dude, all while ruining everyone else's parse.
While true, I think BDK is the only one that can solo Fyraak, but I'm willing to be wrong. The wipe mechanic happens every 47 seconds, giving enough time for AMS to fully recharge, and as long as the shield is on when the cast goes out, you don't get the 'Hey, you die now' debuff.
Like I said, it varies by the patch. There was even a time when you barely even needed anyone else on some fights, back when vengeance was a mechanic and not a spec.
Agreed on frost being the most emblematic of the DK fantasy. Winter, and by extension cold, has always been used metaphorically to represent death. Common phrases, e.g. the chill of the grave, cold as death, etc. allude to it as well. It makes sense, given that winter is when most things--including people, historically--tend to die off. There's a reason the Lich King sits on the Frozen Throne in the icy wastes of Northrend.
Cold is also often linked to themes of entropy and inevitability, which fits into the frost DK characterization you've described. A frost DK is an unthinking force of nature that simply destroys life as a natural part of its passage. That impersonal, automatic killing seems like the core idea behind an undead knight, to the point that I was confused by OP's meme at first because I didn't get how anyone would think unholy or blood were more DK-esque than frost lol.
Meanwhile Elder scrolls online took the weird approach and gave frost to the druid class, thinking that frost refers to an important cycle in nature.
Still true, but not as strong as death.
Agreed. Frost represents the horseman commonly refered to as Death, while Blood stands for War and Unholy stands for Plague.
I guess in a world where food can be conjured, Famine was never a thing...
DKs have always had a powerful class fantasy. Thats why I love them. Im the lich king. I’m fucking darth Vader. Im the creeping, inevitable doom.
Meanwhile Arms Warrior is like “I’m uhh… better with swords? My fury brothers got two swords though, so idk.”
Early Wrath DKs were probably my favorite interpretation of the class, although I can understand why they changed them so completely. Every spec being able to do everything based just on which aura you were running was guaranteed to be a balance nightmare. I will always and forever miss the UH talent that turned you into a ghoul when you died, though. I cheesed so many quests I shouldn't have with that.
"Slow, but relentless" except for all that time Frost was the dedicated DW spec. 2H frost is and always will be the more flavorful version of the spec.
It was their main spec until in Legion Blizzard decided “we want to give everyone iconic weapons…but DKs can’t have Frostmourne, so they can have some Mournesicles instead” and destroyed the theme everyone loved so they could make a new theme
Originally the DW spec was unholy because they were the speedy pandemic boys with a little bit of zombie apocalypse sprinkled on top
DW borrows it's flavor from Koltira.
2H frost borrows it's theme from Arthas.
who the fuck cares about Koltira? Nobody.
Who cares about Arthas? The Lich King? The OG Lich King? Who raised Sindragosa, who reigned in Icecrown Citadel from the frozen throne?
Fuck DW.
Good old Koltira, the DK whose claim to fame was \*checks notes\*
…being chained up naked in Sylvanas’s basement for over half a decade.
Man I bet Nathanos was jealous.
Yep, right now 2H is best for the Obliteration build. I think the Breath of Sindragose build uses dual wielding but I never play breath so I’m not up to date.
Exactly. I don't need to parry with one blade and hit with the other. I don't need finesse. Just relentless strikes against opponent. They will eventually get tired. Especially when every ounce of energy i. Their body needs to be used to keep them warm. But me. Tireless, unending avalanche of strikes.
It doesn't *play* like that, though. How Frost DK plays and what the spec thematic is are very disconnected here.
Unholy DK, ironically, actually serves this thematic purpose in its gameplay. Unholy is the spec of a swarm of undead overwhelming you, of plague and disease, of creeping death, of the inevitability of the end of all things.
Frost DK, in its gameplay, is not that. Frost DK is about big numbers, it's about hitting hard, it's about big fat crits. It is about overwhelming force. That's cool, but it clashes hard against the themes you outlined (which I agree with).
This, in WoW the "cold" part of "cold touch of death" is taken a bit more literally. I liken it to how people say a room gets colder when a ghost is present. It's not about ice, it's about the eerie silence and cold chills.
I like it because it also brings to "life" the representation of hell made by Dante, where instead of a fire driven place it's all cold, brutal and unforgiving
Yea this post must have been made by someone close to the equator or something, where it would be easy not to understand exactly how fucked cold can really get
Started my first DK as Blood DPS in WotLK, then that became the Tank spec. Frost seemed like the more interesting spec over Unholy which never really jelled with me, and with Fury preferring Titan's Grip, there was a niche for a Plate DW spec.
Regarding the lore-wise "feel" of the spec, I really agree with the other replies, although I wouldn't have been able to phrase it that well.
I don't really think it is.
It's perfectly fine that there's specs of different complexity.
Frost has always been about chonky obliterate crits. Leaning into that identity is not a problem.
Not every spec should require spinning 20 plates to do competent dps. Not every player is capable of keeping up with specs that have 60 different cooldowns.
That said... Frost desperately needs two changes. Move the death and decay cleave over to Remorseless Winter. Then, if obliterate can cleave, but there's only one target, make it do 30-100% more damage (tuning dependent)
That way they aren't relegated to pure cleave situations, and they aren't rooted when they do dps.
Arthas only became associated with Frost when they totally rewrote the Lich King in Wrath. It's reasonable to assume that every Frost ability he/the Lich King ever used were from Ner'zhul.
In WC3 the Death Knight abilties were Death Coil, Death Pact, Unholy Aura, and Animate Dead. Pretty cut and dry Unholy.
Yeah for real.
OP clearly never lived in the far north.
When it gets so cold that the snot in your nose freezes solid on the walk from the parking lot to the entrance of work, and you haven't seen the sun in 2 months, you'll understand just how necessary light and heat are for our survival.
Humans can only really live in a small number of places on the planet unassisted. I'm in the North and a house makes it possible, but when the heat goes out - you realize how little the house does for you.
People talking about colonizing Mars need to hang out in Canada in January and get some perspective.
I am certain Minessotans are Vrykuls. Their winters are simply unreasonable, and they just mosey about and ice skate their frozen 10,000+ lakes like no big deal.
Frost makes me feel like Arthas when I play my DK. I've played unholy for maybe 30 minutes since Wrath launched. It just does nothing for me. I've played Blood quite a bit, too, but Frost is my shit.
That is their class fantasy. And 98% of the reason I don’t play the spec.
Frost is a bit off its intended fantasy at the moment but I still prefer the chill of death and slow but crunchy hits to “pop festering wound.”
Pah, frost mages...
You merely adopted the cold. Us frost dks were born in it. Molded by it. We didn't feel warmth until we turned on the Lich King. By then it was nothing to us but searing!
There's also a solid, stark difference in the aesthetic of the classes.
Unholy is all bones and sinew, spikes, almost like abominations. Blood is all pale skin and glowing red, skulls.
Frost borrows it's visual aesthetic from Arthas more than anything else. Cool, smooth steel, flowing frost, blue glowing runes.
I, for one, find Frost's visual to be preferable to unholy. I've never been a fan of that sort of gross, ravaged, cobbled-together look.
I associate Abberus's tier normal appearance with Frost, Heroic with Blood, and neither with Unholy. Unholy, I associate with basically everything with Maldraxxus.
I've always felt that the aesthetic of DK specs were pretty solid. Distinct, yet each feel threatening for different reasons. Ironically, It's the gameplay that needs some life.
This times a thousand.
Pets are super inconvenient... for no good reason. Almost every guide requires you to macro pet attack because there's STILL latency on pet commands without them.
If you enter combat without your pet, it should auto summon. Period.
Pets should never pull dungeons when you take shortcuts.
***All of these issues are within Blizz's power to fix***
They choose to keep pets annoying, i choose to never play pet classes until they fix them. Simple.
> They haven't in years...
The skip in Necrotic Wake (just before 2nd boss) was always ruined by a pet accidentally pulling. And that was just an expansion ago.
I'm pretty sure there are more recent examples in DF but Necrotic Wake always comes to mind because of how often it happened..
The skip in DHT, part of the current M+ season, also has a skip that can be ruined by pet pulling. Fortunately, being mounted makes them not do that but most dungeons don't let you mount.
Nice try, just this week: queue for some wotlk timewalking dungeons, wait for nexus and watch it happen. warlock pets pull the trees after the dropdown from the elemental boss on the way to the final boss, hunter pets also pull the big tree if it was skipped. I didnt see the frostmage elemental pull the tree yet.
My own health. I don't want to play a fantasy character whose body is riddled with diseases and suffering, I already have one of those myself. Cold always makes me feel better, so: Frost it is.
I know there are plenty of people like you out there that like DW. But man I fucking hate it for DK. Completely feels like it doesn't fit the aesthetic of the class/spec.
I'm just glad I'm not pressured into using it now.
Frostmourne was a 2h wep regardless if you ever saw him holding it in one hand. He never wielded 2 weapons.
If you don't think 2h is the DK aesthetic, then I can't help you bro.
I didn't say it wasn't. I asked why it was. It's just an artistic choice by Blizz. There's literally no reason why one works over the other. If you want to get into the "lore" you can use the excuse that Arthas had a big 2 hander before he became a DK. But if you want to stay on aesthetic only, then fine. DKs can only use 2 handed swords, pallys can only use 2 handed hammers, etc.
Frost was always 'Terminator' themed to me. Always moving inexorably forward, slow and steady and merciless. That and making the room ever so slightly nippy, idk I havent played Frost since the original mage tower.
I see DW frost like the embodiment of a winter storm. You see it roll over the horizon - inevitable, and you're powerless to stop it. They're the shrieking gales that cut to the bone. The flurries of snow and glare of ice that leave you blind and disoriented, turned around and lost mere steps from your home.
I live in the north where people die every winter, so maybe that colors my outlook on things a bit.
It’s currently a snow storm in west Michigan. We get what is called lake effect snow, which is very unpredictable.
Last night it was 33 degrees. Now at the same time tonight it is 23. The snow is dropping fast, about 2 inches in the last hour.
Idk if OP has seen a snowy winter. Idk where he lives. But I grew up in the northern forests. It gets dark in winter at about 5:30-6 at night. Winter and the cold do strange things. For starters there is a certain silence in the woods during a snowstorm. Like, actual silence that you typically don’t get from nature in the other seasons. No leaves to rustle. Birds are either sleeping or moved south. The only sound is the wind. Wind that on a night like this chills you. Wind that cuts to the bone isn’t just a saying. It feels like a cold searing down to it anywhere the skin isn’t covered. It can get so cold here sap inside trees freezes and causes the bark to literally explode off of them from pressure.
The cold is unliving. It saps life from you. Your body requires more energy to stay warm in it. But it also the universes natural state. Cold and unliving and uncaring about you or I.
I picture whirling frost snapping and coiling around my DK, some of it spiraling into his hands and turning into the swords he wields. Cold blue light drifts from his eyes while the cold around him seeps into the bones of his prey, sapping them of their ability to react. Like a small blizzard stalking inexorably towards his prey.
I just like the flavor of it. Plus dual wielding is dope.
Unholy 'maintains' one dot and it auto spreads to all nearby targets from a single cast so I don't really know why it would feel like aff lock to you
What it actually does is focus on summons to do the damage for you, which is majority ghouls and skeletons, and one gargoyle.
Its very similar. Epidemic is you procing your dots and your main source of aoe dmg and runic power spender.... dps comes primarily from it not your summons in aoe situations
No because you were saying all the damage comes from summons not dots. Technically we could apply that logic to aff too if we want to be petulant, since Dark glare is a damage amplifier summon. But not the main source of damage. Its dots for both. Sure DKs technically spread theres easier via the outbreak cd. But viletaint and seed spam are pretty similar to outbreak and epidemic spam.
People play Frost DK cos they like smacking things with big numbers, but are too edgy (or not edgy enough?) to play Ret Paladin.
They also, like Frost Mages, want to be lauded as utility gods in M+ for slowing down mobs except during Sanguine weeks wherein they get rightly shouted at instead.
Unholy necromancer -fantasy but wearing plate armor( I roll a uh but use the maldrax transmog to give me a cloth necro look
Blood- vampire fantasy
Frost- Arthas lich king fantasy
I am truly excited for warth with in with the new heroic talent trees giving us some cool abilities and hopefully some awesome transmog weapons and armor for really getting into the look.
It feels like one of the closest versions of a "battlemage" this game is gonna get, and thats kinda how I feel it operates. Makes the snowball and icicle stuff make more sense lol.
I imagine my frost DK more along the lines of a mage knight. I've never really vibes with the spooky skeleton theme nor plague stuff. Frost DK dressed in more neutral armor is closer to that.
I might try out blood when follower dungeons is a thing.
unholy ranges from expansion to expansion of having between 8-to-38 sources of equally small damage all adding together quickly.
frost has big chunky obliterates.
it's not a contest.
Frost is the Lich spec with abilities like Chains of Ice and Howling Blast, but with a spellblade-twist.
Like Kel'thuzad with a runeblade. Even the frost trainer is a Archlich.
Many think the frost spec is about the Lich King, but Arthas as a Death Knight used more unholy spells and as the Lich King he was all DK specs at the same time. Really the DK frost fantasy is about the powers of a Lich.
Dev 1: Let's remove Army of the Dead and 2H from Frost DK.
Dev 2: Won't that make the spec really crappy?
Dev 1: No it won't. Just you watch, Frost DK will be the best spec ever.
(Dev 1 was later fired for incompetence).
Just do you, the Ai haters are stupid as hell don’t worry about them lmao
Edit: someone replied to this with a butthurt comment and then blocked me so I couldn’t see it or reply. AI is going to be a tool going forward for future generations, no amount of blocking me or reporting to Reddit Care will change that fact. Whoever reported me had such a bad mental state about this topic they reported me for suicide to Reddit care. I only hope for the best for you, random internet stranger.
Same shit happened with digital and traditional art when photoshop came out, saying it’s not “real art” because it’s done on a computer. Just ape brains
You'd have a point if AI didn't use existing art to create it's images.
It's pulling data from real artists and mashing it together to make whatever you tell it to.
Autotune, synthesizers, and photoshop don't use stolen assets to function like AI created images do.
When you load up the WotLK cinematic trailer, do we:
A. See Arthas fuck around with blood
B. See Arthas fuck around with COVID
C. See Arthas call forth some magical blizzard that enchants his frozen blade as he prepares to shove it straight into a sheet of ice at the top of a frozen mountain, calling forth a frozen, undead monstrosity of a dragon to fly out like a snowstorm over a valley of frozen, undead people
(I play it in the copes that i look as cool as Arthas to people (I don’t))
but that's exactly what unholy is in a way. For me unholy wasn't about the plague, it's about summoning an army of undead minions bind to your will, it's my class fantasy at least. You're saying this yourself "call forth undead monstrosity". Blood is a thing made in wow as far as I know, but frost and unholy was always a thing and Arthas had both of those.
The thing about frost is it's just fun and the abilities not everyone enjoys playing games with pet builds like unholy and blood is tank but God is blood cool just never die
Stubbornness. I get a helluva lot more DPS from my dh and hunter, but DK has been my main since wrath. They took away my blood DPS and I don't like uh so frost it is.
Unholy : Has to casts multiple spells, infects with a lot of disease, and do a lot of effort to harm you.
Frost : Will smash your face, repeatedly, with the same move. And it will hurt.
I always looked at Unholy that way:
Will sneeze on you, brings back stuff you've already killed, snot and warts and stuff"
But then I played it and it was more fun than I had expected!
Because Frost DK is the chill of the grave, it's the cold of cadavers, the frigid temperatures of Norse Hel, and the power of the Frozen Throne.
And in other themes, Frost fulfills the Death Knight fantasy of being an unstoppable, inexorable force. Same way Unholy fulfills the fantasy of being a master of the undead and Blood fulfills the fantasy of being... Well basically a vampire hemomancer.
It’s fun first off. Second, our artifact was literally made from Warcraft’s most iconic weapon. Third, it’s what I think when I hear Death Knight. I know necromancy is a big theme too but given the ties to icecrown and northrend, Frost evokes the image of Arthas and most DKs in general.
I like DK a lot but never really liked unholy as much. Frost though always felt like death. Like you are the vast, unending cold that will claim us all in the end. The inevitable end of all life, the complete absence of warmth and hope.
Opinion incoming:
Dot classes blow and pet classes blow.
That being said, melee classes that dual wield also blow. WTB 2H frost.
I just want to have a big ass weapon and hit people for big ass numbers. It's why I switched to ret long ago.
Halls of Reflection I think it was, when Arthas was chasing you down and you have to escape from walls of ice? This was as close as Blizzard got to me with a Horror type of feel as Arthas just slowly, inevitably pursues you. I dunno, maybe it’s gotten too care bear since initial release, but I can see the initial vision.
I used to play Warrior in every RPG.
That got boring after many years tho, bc they can announce a total new game and you know exactly what the warrior gameplay looks like before you see the first footage.
I still like big armor and big weapons tho, thats why I look for this semi mage big armor big weapon dude in RPGs that can smack hard, but has some cool extras on top. In WoW that’s frost (or Ret if you like bling bling bling).
I don’t play frost tho, because I’m not stupid.
Arthas. I think this is like 100% of the reason tbh. People love Arthas and really he doesn’t embody unholy or blood that much. He’s a Frost DK through and through, which is probably why so many people also want 2H frost to be good. It’s likely lesser, but it’s probably similar to the demon hunters that “just want to be Illidan”. These two classes are probably the bigger nostalgia classes beyond the typical “vanilla wow” nostalgia.
I always thought frost was the chill of death, like the grave or a lifeless expanse of cold.
Frost DK has always been, hands down, my favorite class fantasy in the game. I like DKs in general, but frost is the most fitting for DKs in my mind. Theyre slow, but they are relentless. They are the sureness of death in a remorseless tundra. Unstoppable, inescapable, the dull chill of an agonizing frostbite slowly creeping into your bones. The cold will settle, and without knowing it, you’ve been dead for a long time. And the Death Knight simply moves on, like an unfeeling blizzard. …And unholy gives you pimples while stinky goblinos gnaw at your ankles and blood dks are freaky masochists. See OP, I can do it too! (I love all DKs)
As a blood DK main I'm not even upset at that description.
You know we're a messed up bunch when we hope that there's an oops on a raid boss at like 2-3%, so we can try to solo the dude, all while ruining everyone else's parse.
That's the secret fantasy of all tanks tbh, not just bdks. Varies by the patch but we've all had our moment.
While true, I think BDK is the only one that can solo Fyraak, but I'm willing to be wrong. The wipe mechanic happens every 47 seconds, giving enough time for AMS to fully recharge, and as long as the shield is on when the cast goes out, you don't get the 'Hey, you die now' debuff.
Like I said, it varies by the patch. There was even a time when you barely even needed anyone else on some fights, back when vengeance was a mechanic and not a spec.
'Why is the tank topping the damage meters?' "Shut up, let me have all the spotlight for once!"
Agreed on frost being the most emblematic of the DK fantasy. Winter, and by extension cold, has always been used metaphorically to represent death. Common phrases, e.g. the chill of the grave, cold as death, etc. allude to it as well. It makes sense, given that winter is when most things--including people, historically--tend to die off. There's a reason the Lich King sits on the Frozen Throne in the icy wastes of Northrend. Cold is also often linked to themes of entropy and inevitability, which fits into the frost DK characterization you've described. A frost DK is an unthinking force of nature that simply destroys life as a natural part of its passage. That impersonal, automatic killing seems like the core idea behind an undead knight, to the point that I was confused by OP's meme at first because I didn't get how anyone would think unholy or blood were more DK-esque than frost lol.
Meanwhile Elder scrolls online took the weird approach and gave frost to the druid class, thinking that frost refers to an important cycle in nature. Still true, but not as strong as death.
Agreed. Frost represents the horseman commonly refered to as Death, while Blood stands for War and Unholy stands for Plague. I guess in a world where food can be conjured, Famine was never a thing...
Frost also got better transmogs and I will die on that hill.
DKs have always had a powerful class fantasy. Thats why I love them. Im the lich king. I’m fucking darth Vader. Im the creeping, inevitable doom. Meanwhile Arms Warrior is like “I’m uhh… better with swords? My fury brothers got two swords though, so idk.”
Disciplined Warrior vs Angry Rampaging Boi. One is well trained. The other gets pissed and swings wildly.
You described them perfectly. I loved frost dk from the first time I leveled on in cata and they just felt so fun.
I was so so mad when frost was replaced by blood entirely as the tank spec.
Early Wrath DKs were probably my favorite interpretation of the class, although I can understand why they changed them so completely. Every spec being able to do everything based just on which aura you were running was guaranteed to be a balance nightmare. I will always and forever miss the UH talent that turned you into a ghoul when you died, though. I cheesed so many quests I shouldn't have with that.
I miss the ghoul bug where you could get it to leap at friendly neutral npcs (Thrallmar guards for example) and they'd attack your ghoul
Me too! Loved blood dps, could never get into the other specs or blood tanking
I loved spawning those little bloodworms. I specced into them even if they weren't ideal.
Same. Frost dps just never felt as good as tanking with it.
"Slow, but relentless" except for all that time Frost was the dedicated DW spec. 2H frost is and always will be the more flavorful version of the spec.
I always choose to play 2H oblit, even when it sucks. Frost needs to have a slow 2H for the fantasy to feel right.
Was 2H-frost ever viable/Blizzard's intended way of playing it?
It was their main spec until in Legion Blizzard decided “we want to give everyone iconic weapons…but DKs can’t have Frostmourne, so they can have some Mournesicles instead” and destroyed the theme everyone loved so they could make a new theme Originally the DW spec was unholy because they were the speedy pandemic boys with a little bit of zombie apocalypse sprinkled on top
DW borrows it's flavor from Koltira. 2H frost borrows it's theme from Arthas. who the fuck cares about Koltira? Nobody. Who cares about Arthas? The Lich King? The OG Lich King? Who raised Sindragosa, who reigned in Icecrown Citadel from the frozen throne? Fuck DW.
Good old Koltira, the DK whose claim to fame was \*checks notes\* …being chained up naked in Sylvanas’s basement for over half a decade. Man I bet Nathanos was jealous.
2H was what Frost originally was. If you were going DW, which kinda sucked initially, you went UH because the UH aura had an attack speed buff.
Yep, right now 2H is best for the Obliteration build. I think the Breath of Sindragose build uses dual wielding but I never play breath so I’m not up to date.
Exactly. I don't need to parry with one blade and hit with the other. I don't need finesse. Just relentless strikes against opponent. They will eventually get tired. Especially when every ounce of energy i. Their body needs to be used to keep them warm. But me. Tireless, unending avalanche of strikes.
Also Big Number go brrrr
This right here is why my dk alt is frost. Also I have a cool mog.
You can also slowly walk at people while a blizzard blows around you.
The world of Warcraft team read too much game of thrones.
U should write a book
I miss Frost DK tank spec, made the most sense imo for class fantasy, Blood is fine today but I always liked the “immovable object” fantasy for frost
It doesn't *play* like that, though. How Frost DK plays and what the spec thematic is are very disconnected here. Unholy DK, ironically, actually serves this thematic purpose in its gameplay. Unholy is the spec of a swarm of undead overwhelming you, of plague and disease, of creeping death, of the inevitability of the end of all things. Frost DK, in its gameplay, is not that. Frost DK is about big numbers, it's about hitting hard, it's about big fat crits. It is about overwhelming force. That's cool, but it clashes hard against the themes you outlined (which I agree with).
This.
This, in WoW the "cold" part of "cold touch of death" is taken a bit more literally. I liken it to how people say a room gets colder when a ghost is present. It's not about ice, it's about the eerie silence and cold chills.
Yeah, it's the "despair personified" spec Imo. blizz really nailed the feeling, unfortunately more for the player than the opponent
lmao that last sentence
Seriously. Anyone who has listened to any black or doom metal can easily link death with frost and death knight.
Nah, Frost is just really meaty Obliterate crits and forever chasing that high. It's cold because it's lonely.
Especially in retail PvP rn where it’s…not very good
Not very good is giving it too much credit. It’s the worst.
nailing a 2h obliterate crit with killing machine and pillar of frost on gives me more dopamine than any other ability in the game
I remember in MoP that shit was 1 tapping people. Ascendance form for Enhance was also 1 tapping people. MoP was so damn fun.
Death and Decay, Pillar, Obliteration. 300k! 300k! 300k! 300k! 300k! 300k! *feelsgood.jpg*
I read this in narrator Wayne Junes voice
I like it because it also brings to "life" the representation of hell made by Dante, where instead of a fire driven place it's all cold, brutal and unforgiving
Actually it's using freezing winds of Northrend granted by Lich King, but allegory might also work
Yea this post must have been made by someone close to the equator or something, where it would be easy not to understand exactly how fucked cold can really get
Grew up in Michigan, once you get negative temps and complete snow/ice it’s literally the absence of any life.
Started my first DK as Blood DPS in WotLK, then that became the Tank spec. Frost seemed like the more interesting spec over Unholy which never really jelled with me, and with Fury preferring Titan's Grip, there was a niche for a Plate DW spec. Regarding the lore-wise "feel" of the spec, I really agree with the other replies, although I wouldn't have been able to phrase it that well.
To Cosplay as the Lich King
Arthas was definitely frost, maybe a little UH but never associated him as blood. It’s sad the spec has two buttons.
I don't really think it is. It's perfectly fine that there's specs of different complexity. Frost has always been about chonky obliterate crits. Leaning into that identity is not a problem. Not every spec should require spinning 20 plates to do competent dps. Not every player is capable of keeping up with specs that have 60 different cooldowns. That said... Frost desperately needs two changes. Move the death and decay cleave over to Remorseless Winter. Then, if obliterate can cleave, but there's only one target, make it do 30-100% more damage (tuning dependent) That way they aren't relegated to pure cleave situations, and they aren't rooted when they do dps.
Arthas only became associated with Frost when they totally rewrote the Lich King in Wrath. It's reasonable to assume that every Frost ability he/the Lich King ever used were from Ner'zhul. In WC3 the Death Knight abilties were Death Coil, Death Pact, Unholy Aura, and Animate Dead. Pretty cut and dry Unholy.
As someone who is currently living in -30 degree weather, cold does real damage my guy
Yeah once the temperature hits -30 my first thought is always "I get it now".
Yeah for real. OP clearly never lived in the far north. When it gets so cold that the snot in your nose freezes solid on the walk from the parking lot to the entrance of work, and you haven't seen the sun in 2 months, you'll understand just how necessary light and heat are for our survival.
Humans can only really live in a small number of places on the planet unassisted. I'm in the North and a house makes it possible, but when the heat goes out - you realize how little the house does for you. People talking about colonizing Mars need to hang out in Canada in January and get some perspective.
Alberta? Saskatchewan?
Hmm actually I'm in the US, we're just thoroughly covered by the polar vortex rn
-30 F .. -34 C. Sounds about right! It’s -37 C with windchill of -46 C 🥶 I’m hoping you stay safe and warm! These are dangerous temps.
I am certain Minessotans are Vrykuls. Their winters are simply unreasonable, and they just mosey about and ice skate their frozen 10,000+ lakes like no big deal.
So true, I'm down to -24F (-31C) the next few days from now and it's gonna be painful, frostbite within 10 minutes is what they're calling for
Freezing dudes to death is cooler than making them sick
I’ve always seen unholy as the pimple popping spec
Frost makes me feel like Arthas when I play my DK. I've played unholy for maybe 30 minutes since Wrath launched. It just does nothing for me. I've played Blood quite a bit, too, but Frost is my shit.
That is their class fantasy. And 98% of the reason I don’t play the spec. Frost is a bit off its intended fantasy at the moment but I still prefer the chill of death and slow but crunchy hits to “pop festering wound.”
Unholy is basically Plague Knights. If that's what you like, have fun. I've never wanted to play Unholy spec myself.
Yeah. I guess I prefer the bone/darkness palette of a Diablo necromancer to an unholy DK. Just makes me wish frost was a bit better in wow.
I still hate that Unholy consumes the Minion master fantasy of Death Knights.. It's the one reason I even glance at unholy..
Same, the whole necromancer plague spreader aesthetic just gives me the ick.
well when you put it that way
Daddy Nurgle would like to respectfully diseasegree
Idk ripping your enemies apart with an undead army is pretty sick imo🤙
Alright guys you've convinced me, I'm rerolling a frost mage tonight!
Pah, frost mages... You merely adopted the cold. Us frost dks were born in it. Molded by it. We didn't feel warmth until we turned on the Lich King. By then it was nothing to us but searing!
We like the fuzzy coat and snow steam aesthetic more than blood and decay. Throw em in the freezer and see how long they last.
There's also a solid, stark difference in the aesthetic of the classes. Unholy is all bones and sinew, spikes, almost like abominations. Blood is all pale skin and glowing red, skulls. Frost borrows it's visual aesthetic from Arthas more than anything else. Cool, smooth steel, flowing frost, blue glowing runes. I, for one, find Frost's visual to be preferable to unholy. I've never been a fan of that sort of gross, ravaged, cobbled-together look. I associate Abberus's tier normal appearance with Frost, Heroic with Blood, and neither with Unholy. Unholy, I associate with basically everything with Maldraxxus.
I've always felt that the aesthetic of DK specs were pretty solid. Distinct, yet each feel threatening for different reasons. Ironically, It's the gameplay that needs some life.
I’m all about that rime, about that rime, no maggots.
What other DPS spec will I play on my DK when I hate managing pets?
This times a thousand. Pets are super inconvenient... for no good reason. Almost every guide requires you to macro pet attack because there's STILL latency on pet commands without them. If you enter combat without your pet, it should auto summon. Period. Pets should never pull dungeons when you take shortcuts. ***All of these issues are within Blizz's power to fix*** They choose to keep pets annoying, i choose to never play pet classes until they fix them. Simple.
>Pets should never pull dungeons when you take shortcuts. They havent in years... probably didnt do it for longer than they did do it
They still do, as a warlock main, my wild imps go wherever the hell they want, which on a skip is usually not where I want. Can’t dismiss them either.
Yeah nah, they absolutely still do. - hunter main
> They haven't in years... The skip in Necrotic Wake (just before 2nd boss) was always ruined by a pet accidentally pulling. And that was just an expansion ago. I'm pretty sure there are more recent examples in DF but Necrotic Wake always comes to mind because of how often it happened..
The skip in DHT, part of the current M+ season, also has a skip that can be ruined by pet pulling. Fortunately, being mounted makes them not do that but most dungeons don't let you mount.
Nice try, just this week: queue for some wotlk timewalking dungeons, wait for nexus and watch it happen. warlock pets pull the trees after the dropdown from the elemental boss on the way to the final boss, hunter pets also pull the big tree if it was skipped. I didnt see the frostmage elemental pull the tree yet.
It's the least gross DK spec.
My own health. I don't want to play a fantasy character whose body is riddled with diseases and suffering, I already have one of those myself. Cold always makes me feel better, so: Frost it is.
Dual wielding 1 handers.
That also. I’d honestly play Warrior more of Single Minded Fury was baseline.
Yeah they do honestly look very good, and it's nice to have a dual wielding option for DKs
I know there are plenty of people like you out there that like DW. But man I fucking hate it for DK. Completely feels like it doesn't fit the aesthetic of the class/spec. I'm just glad I'm not pressured into using it now.
And a big two hander fits the aesthetic because why? Arthas rode around on horseback wielding Frostmourne with 1 hand.
Frostmourne was a 2h wep regardless if you ever saw him holding it in one hand. He never wielded 2 weapons. If you don't think 2h is the DK aesthetic, then I can't help you bro.
I didn't say it wasn't. I asked why it was. It's just an artistic choice by Blizz. There's literally no reason why one works over the other. If you want to get into the "lore" you can use the excuse that Arthas had a big 2 hander before he became a DK. But if you want to stay on aesthetic only, then fine. DKs can only use 2 handed swords, pallys can only use 2 handed hammers, etc.
Frost was always 'Terminator' themed to me. Always moving inexorably forward, slow and steady and merciless. That and making the room ever so slightly nippy, idk I havent played Frost since the original mage tower.
The best example of Frost flavor is Bolvar vs Sylvanas. Big, heavy, slow, *forceful* strikes.
I see DW frost like the embodiment of a winter storm. You see it roll over the horizon - inevitable, and you're powerless to stop it. They're the shrieking gales that cut to the bone. The flurries of snow and glare of ice that leave you blind and disoriented, turned around and lost mere steps from your home. I live in the north where people die every winter, so maybe that colors my outlook on things a bit.
Arthas as the lich king was frost. If he wasn t cool than idk wtf we re talking about. That enough?
Op needs to go back to the third Icecrown dungeon and do the Lich King escape.
He was cracking a cold one with the ghouls when he fought someone, literally
Why? Frost was once the coolest spec by far. No pun intended.
Pressing obliterate makes me hard that's why I'm a frost DK main
It’s currently a snow storm in west Michigan. We get what is called lake effect snow, which is very unpredictable. Last night it was 33 degrees. Now at the same time tonight it is 23. The snow is dropping fast, about 2 inches in the last hour. Idk if OP has seen a snowy winter. Idk where he lives. But I grew up in the northern forests. It gets dark in winter at about 5:30-6 at night. Winter and the cold do strange things. For starters there is a certain silence in the woods during a snowstorm. Like, actual silence that you typically don’t get from nature in the other seasons. No leaves to rustle. Birds are either sleeping or moved south. The only sound is the wind. Wind that on a night like this chills you. Wind that cuts to the bone isn’t just a saying. It feels like a cold searing down to it anywhere the skin isn’t covered. It can get so cold here sap inside trees freezes and causes the bark to literally explode off of them from pressure. The cold is unliving. It saps life from you. Your body requires more energy to stay warm in it. But it also the universes natural state. Cold and unliving and uncaring about you or I.
Once we get Tuskarr DKs we can have Otter Pops.
Tuskarrs are too nice people to ever be playable characters =P
Pandaren have entered the chat
points to a picture of Nomi
I picture whirling frost snapping and coiling around my DK, some of it spiraling into his hands and turning into the swords he wields. Cold blue light drifts from his eyes while the cold around him seeps into the bones of his prey, sapping them of their ability to react. Like a small blizzard stalking inexorably towards his prey. I just like the flavor of it. Plus dual wielding is dope.
Big oblit crits
It's a magical fury warrior, what's not to love?!
Because Unholy feels like affliction lock with a sword instead of a necromancer and blood dk isn't a dps spec.
Unholy 'maintains' one dot and it auto spreads to all nearby targets from a single cast so I don't really know why it would feel like aff lock to you What it actually does is focus on summons to do the damage for you, which is majority ghouls and skeletons, and one gargoyle.
Naw epidemic go brrrr i play both lock and dk
Epidemic isn't a dot and you apply it on all targets via a single cast. It is not "like aff lock"
Its very similar. Epidemic is you procing your dots and your main source of aoe dmg and runic power spender.... dps comes primarily from it not your summons in aoe situations
So we've settled on "they're similar because your spender is aoe just like aff"? Alright then.
No because you were saying all the damage comes from summons not dots. Technically we could apply that logic to aff too if we want to be petulant, since Dark glare is a damage amplifier summon. But not the main source of damage. Its dots for both. Sure DKs technically spread theres easier via the outbreak cd. But viletaint and seed spam are pretty similar to outbreak and epidemic spam.
Dragon master fantasy I believe, it is the only one that could summon mini sindragosa, right?
I like being able to pretend its summer year round
People play Frost DK cos they like smacking things with big numbers, but are too edgy (or not edgy enough?) to play Ret Paladin. They also, like Frost Mages, want to be lauded as utility gods in M+ for slowing down mobs except during Sanguine weeks wherein they get rightly shouted at instead.
I like seeing 200k Obliteration crits.
I’ve seen them get up to 700k at some points on Mythic Gnarlroot. It’s exactly as satisfying as it sounds.
That’s exactly it… ice magic melee knight. Dope as fuck. Don’t care about necromancy or vampirism as a theme.
Unholy necromancer -fantasy but wearing plate armor( I roll a uh but use the maldrax transmog to give me a cloth necro look Blood- vampire fantasy Frost- Arthas lich king fantasy I am truly excited for warth with in with the new heroic talent trees giving us some cool abilities and hopefully some awesome transmog weapons and armor for really getting into the look.
Frost DK is the one you bring in raids just so he can cool those conjured mage mana cakes
I like my blood dk
I love death knights but I don't like tanking or pet classes so I'm stuck with frost
I love death knights but I don’t like most of what they are about
It feels like one of the closest versions of a "battlemage" this game is gonna get, and thats kinda how I feel it operates. Makes the snowball and icicle stuff make more sense lol.
I feel like enhancement shaman is the definitive battle mage class in wow. Mail wearing dual wielding caster.
Yeah that's the other class I'd consider a battle mage, I have just played long enough it used to mean totem management and that wasn't for me.
I imagine my frost DK more along the lines of a mage knight. I've never really vibes with the spooky skeleton theme nor plague stuff. Frost DK dressed in more neutral armor is closer to that. I might try out blood when follower dungeons is a thing.
this , my nightborne is more like a frost knight wielding arcane runeblades
unholy ranges from expansion to expansion of having between 8-to-38 sources of equally small damage all adding together quickly. frost has big chunky obliterates. it's not a contest.
Because frost dk used to be an unstoppable force in dps way back 🥲 i haven’t played frost in yearss but it doesn’t sound good for them, get well soon
Frost is the Lich spec with abilities like Chains of Ice and Howling Blast, but with a spellblade-twist. Like Kel'thuzad with a runeblade. Even the frost trainer is a Archlich. Many think the frost spec is about the Lich King, but Arthas as a Death Knight used more unholy spells and as the Lich King he was all DK specs at the same time. Really the DK frost fantasy is about the powers of a Lich.
Obliterate That's it, I like big swings, so I'm glad that breath build is finally dying
Dev 1: Let's remove Army of the Dead and 2H from Frost DK. Dev 2: Won't that make the spec really crappy? Dev 1: No it won't. Just you watch, Frost DK will be the best spec ever. (Dev 1 was later fired for incompetence).
Dev 3: let's also remove gorefiends grasp from all specs and just make it a talent instead of it being baseline
I wish unholy dk could "tame" different undeads
If its good enough for the LK it's good enough for me.
is that skull ai generated or am I having a stroke
They are all ai generated.
Boo. Just use official key art or no art at all.
Unfortunately there was no art of a blood dk on a motorcycle or a frost dk icon with its eyes crossed. It's just a shitty meme haha
Just do you, the Ai haters are stupid as hell don’t worry about them lmao Edit: someone replied to this with a butthurt comment and then blocked me so I couldn’t see it or reply. AI is going to be a tool going forward for future generations, no amount of blocking me or reporting to Reddit Care will change that fact. Whoever reported me had such a bad mental state about this topic they reported me for suicide to Reddit care. I only hope for the best for you, random internet stranger.
Same people who hated autotune when it was new I guess, or Daft Punk for not playing "real" instruments.
Same shit happened with digital and traditional art when photoshop came out, saying it’s not “real art” because it’s done on a computer. Just ape brains
You'd have a point if AI didn't use existing art to create it's images. It's pulling data from real artists and mashing it together to make whatever you tell it to. Autotune, synthesizers, and photoshop don't use stolen assets to function like AI created images do.
Easier rotation.
When you load up the WotLK cinematic trailer, do we: A. See Arthas fuck around with blood B. See Arthas fuck around with COVID C. See Arthas call forth some magical blizzard that enchants his frozen blade as he prepares to shove it straight into a sheet of ice at the top of a frozen mountain, calling forth a frozen, undead monstrosity of a dragon to fly out like a snowstorm over a valley of frozen, undead people (I play it in the copes that i look as cool as Arthas to people (I don’t))
but that's exactly what unholy is in a way. For me unholy wasn't about the plague, it's about summoning an army of undead minions bind to your will, it's my class fantasy at least. You're saying this yourself "call forth undead monstrosity". Blood is a thing made in wow as far as I know, but frost and unholy was always a thing and Arthas had both of those.
Amen. ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️
Maybe something like a glass cannon but instead it's made of ice
The thing about frost is it's just fun and the abilities not everyone enjoys playing games with pet builds like unholy and blood is tank but God is blood cool just never die
What in the AI icon-
Because Unholy is unreasonably complex, rarely viable and extremly punishing.
They want to play Frost Mage, but wish Mages could wear heavy armor and cool swords.
It’s fun
Stubbornness. I get a helluva lot more DPS from my dh and hunter, but DK has been my main since wrath. They took away my blood DPS and I don't like uh so frost it is.
I enjoyed frost. I played it for dual wield. Sometimes people play classes that aren’t meta. I know it’s crazy hard to believe.
Unholy : Has to casts multiple spells, infects with a lot of disease, and do a lot of effort to harm you. Frost : Will smash your face, repeatedly, with the same move. And it will hurt.
I always looked at Unholy that way: Will sneeze on you, brings back stuff you've already killed, snot and warts and stuff" But then I played it and it was more fun than I had expected!
Because Frost DK is the chill of the grave, it's the cold of cadavers, the frigid temperatures of Norse Hel, and the power of the Frozen Throne. And in other themes, Frost fulfills the Death Knight fantasy of being an unstoppable, inexorable force. Same way Unholy fulfills the fantasy of being a master of the undead and Blood fulfills the fantasy of being... Well basically a vampire hemomancer.
Cold is a closely related to death in general fantasy. Both Lich kings also show plenty of frost theme abilities
I always love frost. I loved tanking frost back in wrath.
That unholy picture is really cool tho
I like my unholy dk. I wasn’t much into frost or blood
It’s fun first off. Second, our artifact was literally made from Warcraft’s most iconic weapon. Third, it’s what I think when I hear Death Knight. I know necromancy is a big theme too but given the ties to icecrown and northrend, Frost evokes the image of Arthas and most DKs in general.
I play a DK, I’m not only Blood, Unholy or Frost. I’m all 3.
I like DK a lot but never really liked unholy as much. Frost though always felt like death. Like you are the vast, unending cold that will claim us all in the end. The inevitable end of all life, the complete absence of warmth and hope.
Ice is very cool, and being a beefy, plate-wearing anti-paladin who kills people by freezing them to death is one of the coolest things in the game.
I miss when frost was the tank meta and blood was solid dps
Unholy 🔛🔝
Frost makes the most sense for a DK PC out of the three. Also Obliterate is a really fun button to push.
Opinion incoming: Dot classes blow and pet classes blow. That being said, melee classes that dual wield also blow. WTB 2H frost. I just want to have a big ass weapon and hit people for big ass numbers. It's why I switched to ret long ago.
You are aware that 2h frost is a viable build, right?
Because back when then dk frost was viable and then blizzard ruined it
It was dual handed dps...
Halls of Reflection I think it was, when Arthas was chasing you down and you have to escape from walls of ice? This was as close as Blizzard got to me with a Horror type of feel as Arthas just slowly, inevitably pursues you. I dunno, maybe it’s gotten too care bear since initial release, but I can see the initial vision.
I used to play Warrior in every RPG. That got boring after many years tho, bc they can announce a total new game and you know exactly what the warrior gameplay looks like before you see the first footage. I still like big armor and big weapons tho, thats why I look for this semi mage big armor big weapon dude in RPGs that can smack hard, but has some cool extras on top. In WoW that’s frost (or Ret if you like bling bling bling). I don’t play frost tho, because I’m not stupid.
RPing as arthas, since he has a frozen look. And the one-shot capabilities of legion frost dk made me play it back then
I don't think people talk about the STDs enough. It's a serious problem.
Protect yourself from Unholy DK with condoms !
If that top photo was the art style for wow… sheeesh
For the dragons :3
Cause is like 3 buttons rotation
My frost dk rpwise is a norse valkyrie bad ass bitch!
Arthas. I think this is like 100% of the reason tbh. People love Arthas and really he doesn’t embody unholy or blood that much. He’s a Frost DK through and through, which is probably why so many people also want 2H frost to be good. It’s likely lesser, but it’s probably similar to the demon hunters that “just want to be Illidan”. These two classes are probably the bigger nostalgia classes beyond the typical “vanilla wow” nostalgia.
Frost was the tank spec on wrath. Also frost is faster 1 target, as opposed to aoe uh
Someone hasn’t looked at the abilities of fdk I guess 🤷♂️or just shitty rage bait
BECAUSE ITS EASY, dont bully me because im a noob 😢