With the upcoming World of Warcraft: Shadowlands expansion, Blizzard is bringing more than a couple of hundred changes. One of the most reworked classes will be the Death Knight class, first implemented back in Wrath of the Lich King.
Remaining one of the most popular classes, the Death Knights have taken a few hits over the years. Back at release, Frost was the tanking spec, but soon was switched to a more damage-focused role instead, though Unholy remains more popular in most cases.
Part of this was because Frost had been changed to make it so that players needed to dual-wield one-handed weapons. Many players weren’t a fan of this, preferring to stick to the two-handed method that Unholy and Blood both were centered around instead.
Because of this, one of the most popular announcements coming with World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was that they’d be given the ability to return to two-handed Frost. Players will be given the option between dual-wielding one-handers or wielding a single two-handed weapon.
But one of the perks of dual-wielding is as simple as the name – you get to have two weapons. This makes some buffs, such as enchantments, much more effective. Players are able to mix and match two that bring powerful buffs instead of a single weapon’s enchantment.
We’re looking at the new Leather Armor Sets from Castle Nathria coming in the #Shadowlands expansion. https://t.co/slw19xxAsd #Warcraft pic.twitter.com/BWLi689QKh
— Icy Veins (@icyveins) October 10, 2020
Players get around this with weapon-swapping, letting the enchantment on their weapon stack before switching to another weapon with a different enchantment to earn both perks. This can be done on the fly, or in between pulls in a dungeon, depending on the enchantment.
Blizzard’s latest change removes the ability to do such a thing, though. The developers have added in a new passive called “Off-Balance”, which will stop players from being able to benefit from Runeforging perks on their weapons after a quick change.
Runeforging, in case you haven’t played a Death Knight, is a class-specific enchantment system for a Death Knight’s weapons. With the Off-Balance passive, these enchantments won’t have their buffs given for thirty seconds after a change to stop players from switching.
Thirty seconds isn’t a long time, obviously, and this is clearly meant as a direct nerf to the weapon-swapping system that two-handed players have brought in. Some might be seeing this as a nerf to Frost as a whole, making it so that players can’t utilize more than one rune.
But at the end of the day, everything comes with a trade-off, and it only makes sense that players would need to take the cons that come with having a single weapon. Either way, players are still excited to get to sink their teeth into two-handed Frost Death Knight gameplay again.
