11.0.5 Death Knight Feedback

[Velrys-azgalor]

@Linxy

Class Changes

• Death Knight
  • San’layn: Vampiric Strike chance to trigger increased to 25% (was 10%).

@Linxy

DEATH KNIGHT

• Blood
  • San’layn
    • Gift of the San’layn has been updated – While Dancing Rune Weapon is active you gain Gift of the San’layn (was Vampiric Blood).

This is one of the “better late than never” situations with a change that I and many others asked early during beta, namely buffing the proc rate of Vampiric Strike to a meaningful number. Managing uptime of the Essence of the Blood Queen (EBQ) with an ability that can proc every ~10 Death Strikes was basically impossible, every ~4 DS is now doable.

This change, combined with swapping VB to DRW as the activator of the Gift of the San’layn removes the degenerate gameplay tha forced BDK to use defensive CD offensively on cooldown to keep EBQ up. We can now safely keep VB for defensive purposes without detriment to the damage benefits of the hero class.

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@Linxy

New Talent: Reaper of Souls – When you apply Reaper’s Mark, the cooldown of your Soul Reaper is reset, your next Soul Reaper costs no runes and it explodes regardless of the target’s remaining health. Soul Reaper damage increased by 20%. Choice node with Grim Reaper

While Deathbringer was working fine, these are decent changes that fix some issues that the hero spec had and streamlines the usability of the keystone talent. The quoted change is especially welcome as a choice, especially for non-Unholy specs that have no talents that interact with Soul Reaper (Unholy having Reaping). This is definitely a step in the right direction for this ability.

The only problem I see here is that this should be a cheery on top of a cake, instead it’s a cherry on an otherwise empty plate. Unlike other execute abilities of all classes, Soul Reaper has no procs or interactions within spec trees (apart from aforementioned Reaping).

Soul Reaper still feels hollow compared to Warrior’s Execute, Hunter’s Kill Shot, or Paladin’s Hammer of Wrath, all of which have multiple interactions or even hero specs themed or tuned around them (Slayer, Dark Ranger, and both Templar and Herald of the Sun, respectively).

There are fun interactions that could be added for each spec, for example:

• [Any] If a target dies while affected by your Soul Reaper, the affliction spreads to up to 5 nearby injured enemies. This effect can chain off of itself but cannot critically strike.

• [Any] Dealing damage with Death Coil/Death Strike/Frost Strike while enemy is affected by Soul Reaper increases Soul Reaper’s explosion damage by 15%, stacking up to 3 times.

• [Unholy] Soul Reaper’s explosion bursts up to 3 Festering Wounds on the target.

• [Frost] Soul Reaper cast consumes Killing Machine, causing the explosion to critically strike dealing 3 times the normal damage.

• [Blood] Soul Reaper explosion weakens the target, causing it to deal 5% less damage to you.

• [Any] Soul Reaper deals up to 100% more damage based on the current health of your target. Lower health targets take more damage.