Frost DK PVP

So I uploaded a video to give a glimpse into what frost DK pvp is like right now. Against a warlock that won't spam you with curse of exhaustion (which is now awesome btw!), I can actually catch up to them and do substantial damage.

This isn't going to be an in depth look at how well we function vs each class. It's just me vs lemonayd (who is playing as destruction + soul link), and some random clips of how useful Hungering Cold can be in a pinch, and how hard hungering cold + howling blast combos can hit. Granted, it's really, really hard to find any sort of organized pvp on beta right now. There are no BGs or arenas, so you really have to go out and stir up trouble if you want to test some things as you go. I'm not sure if 4-6k howling blast crits will be OP at 80, but it sure is fun to 1shot a bunch of level 60 newbs that you can round up in one go.

Anyways, back to frost: My melee damage is still pretty good. I went with this build. It has RP generation that can't be beat thanks to chill of the grave and dirge. It also has cheaper RP usage due to runic power mastery. Annihilation is great for keeping the disease synergies up. Icy talons I find to be pretty worthless outside of single target DPS. It's not a pvp talent, and is in no way worth the talent sink of 10 points with imp icy touch > icy talons. If you can't be glued to your target, haste is pretty shitty. This fact is driven home even more when you find out how little of our damage is actually white damage. Death chill not only works on howling blast combos, but also frost strike and obliterates. Deathchill is the burst you should save for when your target gets low. Double crit obliterates can really mess someone up if you save up your runes.

Acclimation is great against casters, and will be even better in the arean. Each stack adds 50 resist to the school that it procced off of, so if a warlock/shadow priest combo starts dotting you up, you AND your party be sitting at around at least 150+ shadow resist in no time. I also believe this affects party pets as well. This can actually be more effective and scale better than anti-magic zone. It requires no GCDS or resources such as runes or RP to activate. It's simply passive goodness. If this was changed to be made raid-wide, it would secure a spot for frost DK tanks in any AOE-intensive fight in pve, as Anti-magic zone only absorbs so much, in a limited area, consumes an unholy rune, and has a 2 minute cooldown.

Guile of Gorefiend is one of my favorite talents in the tree. However, they need to remove the crit damage bonus from mind freeze, and replace it with howling blast, if not icy touch. It's a great offensive + defensive talent in one. Letting icebound fortitude last 18 seconds instead of 12 is actually a very noticeable bonus. It's 18 seconds of taking 50% less damage from ALL sources, AND being immune to stuns. Take that, warrior RNG!

Hungering cold I could see being pretty clutch in the arena after people blow their trinkets. It's essentially an AOE hunter freezing trap. Any damage breaks the blocks of ice, and it's a wonderful way to set up some nasty combos in coordinated pvp, or to simply use as emergency CC. Think of it as an AOE repentance that lasts 10 seconds in PVP, and 26 seconds in pve with runic power mastery. My only gripe is that it uses your entire runic power bar. I wish it had a 60 RP cost (bringing it down to just under 50RP with runic power mastery), and lasted the full 10 seconds as well. In addition, it would be nice if it had a short 2-3 second "defrosting" period where people gradually recover full movement/attack speed. During this time, it would still be possible to land some combos via howling blast/frost strike. It IS a 51 point talent after all.

The other nice thing about this build, is that it's also pretty good for tanking as well. You won't be a 25man tank with this spec, but you will be very effective at 5mans and maybe even 10mans. Time will tell.

Video.