Tuesday, December 9, 2008 Hungering Cold...

Great name isn't it? I think so, which is why I made it the title of my Deathknight blog. However as an endline ability it's lacking...severly.

Purges the earth around the Death Knight of all heat. Enemies within 10 yards are trapped in ice, preventing them from performing any action for 10 sec and infecting them with Frost Fever. Enemies are considered Frozen, but any damage other than diseases will break the ice.
60 Runic Power, Instant, 1 min cooldown

This is Frost's 51 talent...looks decent on paper doesn't it? Well, in actual practice it's completely useless, not even worth the 1 point that it would take to get it because it doesn't have any situations where it would help.

Think about it...

Frost is the rune starved spec, to be able to have 60 Runic Power to use it you'd need to spec 3/3 Runic Power Mastery and 2/2 Chill of the Grave. So that's 5 points to even make it remotely possible to use. Now, take into account that it will break on any damage other then DK diseases and it becomes useless.

PvE Aspect- Heavy Runic Power cost, great way to spread Frost Fever except for the fact that Icy Touch (0 Runic Power, 1 Frost Rune) + Pestilence (0 Runic Power, 1 Blood Rune) is a must easier and faster way to spread Frost Fever. Specially as a Frost Deathknight you'll have Blood of the North so in essence it's more or less like spending 1 Blood Rune. I may not be a number cruncher like the guys over on EJ, but 1 Blood Rune > 60 Runic Power + 5 Talent Points.

PvP Aspect- Looks nice in PvP as a way to CC the opposition...oh wait...Runic Power cost again! As a Frost PvP DK you'll be spending your RP on Frost and Rune Strike...so again it fails.

My thoughts on making this end-line talent viable are...

Make Hungering Cold cost 0 RP...yeah that's right. Now this would help with PvE but could put a dimishing returns on the PvP aspect. PvP isn't balanced so why make PvE suffer because of it? As a tank I could then use it for when I need to CC group encounters if my AoE DPS of my party members is weak. Refer to the below diagram...(don't make fun of my Paint skillz!)


Ok, the red circle is the group encounter, I then pull them back to the blue X and Hungering Cold the group, CC'ing all of them. I then Icy Touch a single mob from the encounter and bring it back to green X for my group can beat it down. Rinse and repeat as needed.

This would make HC situational in the fact that it couldn't be used for raiding, and would be used mostly for pulling group encounters. Keep in mind that as a Deathknight we have huge aoe abilities, so this would only be used in situations where we could not live while 4+ NPCs are beating on us.

Here's the meat of this post - A lot of classes got "situational" end line 51 talent points in Wrath. Hungering Cold cannot even be classified as that. It's an ability that is completely useless because of the Runic Power along with the fact that it breaks on everything but diseases. I don't mind situational end-line abilities...just make sure there are situations in which they should be used for.