12.0 Unholy - Worst Rework Ever

Classes Death Knight
1

When Alpha started, the Unholy changes were on the right track, then every update made the spec exponentially worse.

Festering Strike combo skill extended the already long opener, Soul Reaper added more tracking with its random proc, and the new Pestilence opener is 7+ GCDs long, with a chance of procs on procs that results in an RNG launch sequence that repeats itself into an infinite loop that doesn’t end.

Abilities Have No Identity

Some reworked abilities (Scourge Strike, Festering Strike, Putrefy, Sudden Doom, etc) have a convoluted 5+ bullet point list on what the ability does, reducing the ability’s clarity and identity.

Sudden Doom reduces Putrefy CD AND summon Ghouls. Scourge Strike 1) ALSO Summon Ghouls, 2) ALSO Reduces/Resets Putrefy CD, 3) Causes Pestilence, 4) Erupt Plagues, and 5) Adds +1 Chain Per Press. The reworked abilities do 5 totally unrelated things, have overlapping effects, causing them to have no identity.

Clean up them up. Have Scourge Strike focus on summoning Ghouls, Festering Scythe be dedicated to diseases, and Sudden Doom only resets CD on Putrefy, etc.

More GCDs, More Ramp, More Tracking, More RNG

12.0 Unholy is now based around low chance RNG that results in massive output volatility. It has more opener GCDs, and random damage ramps with RNG Soul Reaper, RNG Reanimation, and RNG Pestilence. It also now requires players to track Soul Reaper CD due to the random proc, # of Ghouls, and possibly Pestilence expiration if it interacts with Soul Reaper.

Putrefy has a 25% chance to proc Soul Reaper, it ALSO procs a free Scourge Strike. And Scourge Strike has X% chance to proc Putrefy, which procs Soul Reaper and another Scourge Strike. 12.0 design is a feedback loop of volatile RNG with the messiest opener I’ve ever seen (in no definitive usage order):

Outbreak > Army > Dark Transform > Festering Strike > Festering Scythe > Putrefy > Soul Reaper (25%) > Death Coil/Epidemic > Scourge Strike, Summon Ghoul > Pestilence (X%) > Extra Putrefy > Track Soul Reaper - Hold Soul Reaper > Scourge Strike, Summon Ghoul > Pestilence (X%) (Track Pestilence expiration to see if Soul Reaper procs first for more damage) > Extra Putrefy > Track # of Ghouls (as they die off or used on all the free Putrefy) > Soul Reaper.

And you will have to weave Festering Strike > Festering Scythe and Death Coils in this convoluted mess that varies wildly based on RNG.

Putting the RNG aside, the biggest culprit of this huge, horrendous launch sequence is the addition of Festering Strike combo skill and Soul Reaper. Remove Soul Reaper and just outright replace Festering Strike with Festering Scythe.

Slot Machine

The next problem is Pestilence being in an RNG feedback loop with Putrefy. In one opener, you’d get procs on top of procs (Pest > Putrefy > SR > SS > Pest > Putrefy …), going through a never-ending nuclear launch sequence, dealing massive amounts of damage, as though you just got a 777 on a DPS slot-machine; while in another opener, you are completely crippled with 0 procs.

If you get unlucky and get 0 procs, you still have a 7 GCD-long opener to slog through, dealing 0% extra AP DPS, and you are additionally punished with a Scourge Strike that still can’t even hit 2 targets after 7 GCDs.

Do something else with Pestilence instead of this slot-machine mess. Example, make consumption of Plagues’ duration reduce Putrefy CD. The more duration consumed, the more Putrefy CD is reduced. Build on this idea with Sudden Doom procs consuming Xs of Plague duration, and Pestilence consumes Ys of Plague duration. This defined Plague consumption mechanic to consolidate all the varying methods to reduce Putrefy CD makes ability interactions more understandable.

Then have Putrefy proc a free Festering Scythe, which refreshes the duration of Plagues. Remove the Clawing Shadows ramp, and just have Festering Scythe cause Scourge Strike to chain.

Worse Than 11.X

Other than the removal of Wounds, the Unholy rework is worse in every way. 12.0 Unholy abilities have no identity, the rotation/damage is a volatile slot-machine; it has more things to track, with a 7+ GCD launch sequence without procs, and a chance of procs on top of procs – creating an RNG launch sequence that never ends.

I have never seen a rework regressing a spec so far backwards; the result is actually the worst the spec has ever been in its entire history.

In another thread, people were wondering if we need to track Ghoul duration. Luckily, we won’t need to worry about that, as we will be too busy tracking Soul Reaper, # of Ghouls, and Pestilence Expiration (if it interacts with Soul Reaper), and the RNG on top of RNG to care about Ghoul duration.

Ideas for fixing this mess here.

2 Likes
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As excited as I was for the UH rework, it is becoming such a convoluted mess. I am again happy I rolled off DK in the latest season for DH, since DH is looking to be really good in midnight so far. (And Arms is looking dope af imo). Hopefully UH gets more love.

There are some easy fixes for some of the UH problems. But not all these would fix all the issues. The main issue with the UH rework is direction. They are trying to push pet or disease and they just don’t flow together with this design. They really need to just focus on one or the other at this point.

Starting with the ghoul issue and putrefy. Either give putrefy a small modifier that makes the ghoul explosion do X% more damage on your main target depending on how much time is remaining on the ghoul (So it makes up for using it on ghouls that are exploded early) or an easier solution, is to make it so the ghoul simply flares up and does the putrefy damage but still lasts until it normally would maybe.

The ghoul tracking imo is only an issue with openers. Once the ramp gets going, it won’t matter all that much since you would have them constantly rotating.

Festering Scythe really just needs to be a direct replacement for Festering strike, not a follow up imo.

Soul Reaper needs to go. Having it be a tool to modify pet and disease damage is just not fun. They should make it a real execute. Only usable when enemies have 35% HP or less. Whether that is as a hard hitting dot or simply up front damage, I am fine either way. But having it as another buff to track sucks imo.

The new unleash plague capstone sounds fun at first until you realize it is 100% rng. Why they just couldn’t add an agony stacking like disease is beyond me. Would be way cooler imo. If they keep this capstone, it needs some type of guarantee. I am okay with some rng to it, as that could be fun. But having it completely rng would feel bad imo.

Army being the UH CD also is so odd on where it sits in the tree.

There are plenty of other issues with the UH rework, but at least addressing some of the fundamental issues would go a long way.

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It’s got some issues with RNG definitely having to be another always needing to be observing and not a huge fan but I can work with it. Personally will wait till I can actually test the new design when beta testing starts before even fearing about what we will or will not need to keep track of.

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It seems like you guys haven’t fully read or understood all the changes that unholy got over the course of the alpha, so you’re drawing early incorrect conclusions in some regards.
Let’s go through each thing one by one…

  • Soul Reaper is a true execute now that does a lot of upfront damage, the dmg amp portion is more like a bonus. You’ll use it similarly to how you use other class executes that have procs etc.
    ALSO, one very important point to keep in mind is that you likely WON’T run both Soul Reaper as well as the new Pestilence disease capstone at the same time !

    You’ll probably go Pet build with Soul Reaper for raid, and Disease build WITHOUT Soul Reaper for Dungeons / M+

    Main thing to discuss would be the Reaping talent change that made the Putrefy reaper resets rng instead of guaranteed, which could be annoying if you don’t proc reaper in your cd windows.

  • The new Disease Capstone “Pestilence” is GREAT.
    I’ll explain some things you might have misunderstood.
    Scourge Strike DOESN’T consume the disease, what happens is that Outbreak transforms into Pestilence and that’s what consumes it when you decide to press it.
    Additionally, it’s important to understand that Putrefy APPLIES Diseases to all targets now when it detonates if you talent into Blightburst which you will as disease build !!

    On top of that, Pestilence grants a charge of Putrefy when you consume the disease so you immediately have a way to reapply your diseases through it.

    I will say that it should get a spell alert proc texture above us that’s similar to what frost dk has for Rime procs

  • All in all, the individual builds are going to flow decently well in practice and I’m happy that we finally got a new interactive disease capstone since before that there was virtually no disease playstyle and gameplay variance at all.

    Of course not everything is perfect yet but I’m sure things will still change and get ironed out over the course of alpha and beta.
    Like for example the Clawing Shadows ramp up time is not good imo, and I also already mentioned the reaper rng concern in my first bullet point.

10 Likes
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These new changes to unholy are looking really good. I am enjoying what I am seeing so far. Are there issues yes are there bugs yes but this is the whole part of Alpha and Beta testing. unholy getting a whole rework . I have seen very little testing of unholy in Alpha so I am not going to start talking all doom and gloom its not worth it. Until I can play it myself. I think unholy once bugs are fixed issues are worked out it will be a very good spec. Will there be issues yes but no spec will be 100% perfect.

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Wait, that’s not the startup sequence at all? You’ll need to setup for CDs, not just blast them on pull. Putting FS/Fscythe after AoT/DT doesn’t have any benefit, and wastes valuable time for RP spenders, Putrefy and Forbidden Knowledge extensions

San’layn is a little more complicated, but for Riders, assuming that you’ve gone full Apex talents, 2 charge putrefy, and the soul reaper proc, you’d open:
Outbreak > FS > SS > FScythe > Putrefy > SR w/ proc > DT/AoD together > RP spenders until you have 3 runes > Putrefy > SR w/ proc > normal flow

If Pestilence procs on that very first SS, you’d save it until you run out of putrefy charges.

and your normal flow would just be:
RP spenders when you’re about to cap on RP or SD procs
Soul Reaper when it procs
Putrefy when you are about to cap or in DT
FS when you are out of Ghoul charges
RP spenders when you have less than 3 runes
SS when you have extra runes

Once you get rolling, unless you never press FS, you will always have ghouls up when you need to putrefy; you won’t be able to spend your runes without having plenty up- and SD means that you’ll have even more.
Same thing with the debuff from Fscythe; it lasts 25 seconds, and you’ll need to cast FS more than twice in that period to keep up with SS.
On average, you’ll need 5 SS to 2 FS, and since Fscythe is free, that’s really only 7 runes/7GCDs. You’ll go through way more than that in 25s, even without any haste- and the free SS from putrefy in the tierset will just make sure of that.
AoD/DT windows might need another FS or Fscythe, but with the solo DT windows, if you go in with ghoul charges, you probably won’t need to cast them at all. DT is off the GCD as well, so it flows into your rotation seamlessly

The Soul Reaper proc is annoying if you cast putrefy back to back and get double procs, but otherwise is fine. That’s only a 6% chance of happening, and in that one situation, you’d hold off on recasting it until the debuff falls off- though absolute worst case? you lose 2 GCD duration on the debuff. It’s almost not worth bothering.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the pestilence capstone being a SS proc, but tbh I suspect that ability will be iterated a couple times. When it procs, you go down to 0 putrefy, hit outbreak, then putrefy again. It means you need to make sure you always keep 1 rune, plus 1 rune if you have a charge of putrefy.

There’s some clashing between soul reaper and Pestilence, but considering 1 is heavy ST and the other is AoE focused, I doubt you’ll take both together. If you do, you probably just hit putrefy way more aggressively, like as soon as it comes off CD.

2 Likes
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Soul Reaper is one of the best investment for 1 talent point, most likely, every build will take it.

I mostly PvP, so the order might be slightly different. But the order of the sequence is not the point. In fact, the rotation you proposed (which is probably slightly off, as you’d want to use 1 charge of Putrefy before SS, but that is all based on numbers) shows the exact problem that I am trying to point out.

Count how many GCDs that is, and look at how random it is. You will also need to weave in the free SS after Putrefy, so both our 8+ GCD rotations cannot even capture the randomness of it all. A month after 12.0 is released, people will complain about this exact problem.

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Given the effect is single target, you probably won’t in m+ builds.

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You can’t use Putrefy before SS in the opener, as you won’t have a ghoul to explode. And there’s no reason to force a SS when it’s not the optimal choice just because its free.

Its also… not that random at all? You have two procs that change your rotation slightly, and they both just boil down to “hit da shiny new button”.

if you look at the sequence for each of them, it’s pretty simple, because they don’t conflict- even if you want to maximize the pointless “free” SS

You press Putrefy. If Soul reaper triggers, press it.

If you have pestilence, press outbreak and then Putrefy.

If you have a free SS, press it

If you have less than 3 runes, press a RP spender.

If you don’t have charges to summon ghouls, press FS.

Otherwise, press SS.

For the vast majority of builds, you’ll only take one of those, and the focus will either be on hitting soul reaper when it procs, or hitting pestilence before you hit SS again.

If playing with both procs is too random for you, you should probably not force the AoE disease management talent and the ST execute talent together, and should just run more minion talents.

If one random proc in the opener is too random for you, I would recommend using the one-button rotation.

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Army summon Ghouls. And as I’ve said, it depends on numbers, if Pestilence has a high chance to proc, you’d press SS over anything else. At a high enough proc rate, you’d probably forego even summoning a Ghoul as long as you have at least one for Putrefy. If it has a low chance to proc (which I suspect), that is even worse, as the RNG will wildly swing DPS output.

Depending on Pestilence proc rate, it can be a huge single target talent, as it gives you a free 232% AP ST Putrefy. So far, the numbers doesn’t say anything about Pestilence and Soul Reaper being mutually exclusive for single target.

Let’s see what happens a month after 12.0. If nothing changes, people will complain about Unholy’s 8+ GCD RNG sequence with wild DPS swings. 12.0 Unholy is a slot-machine spec. You get a couple Pestilence procs or Soul Reaper procs? You are doing 1000% extra AP in one fight. 0 procs? 0% extra AP in another fight.

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An 8 button opener is nothing new, even with procs

Up until very recently we did that constantly, and unholy having a longer involved sequence has been part of the draw for years

San’layn was OB > FS> AoD> Apoc > FS > DT > (SS 3 times, weaving in 1 sudden doom), > UA > SS > SS

If you didn’t know about those openers already, you probably shouldn’t worry about them moving forward, because acting like a 8 gcd opener with procs is something new and scary just makes you sound like a noob. If you start looking into almost any class you can figure out a similar type of opener.

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This is completely untrue. For years, players have complained about the long opening sequence. I never said 8 GCD opener is something new. I said Blizzard’s 12.0 Unholy design is reverting back to launch sequence openers that they purposely steered away from since Shadowlands.

The example you provided shows the exact steps Blizzard have taken in recent patches to reduce the number of GCDs in openers. They merged Abom and Army, they merged DT and Apoc, among many other changes. How many GCDs is the San’layn opener now compared to the San’layn rotation you’ve written down? It is now FS > Abom > Apoc > UA. That’s 4 GCDs compared to the 8 GCDs that you wrote yourself.

Their new design philosophy is clear, look at the Frost DK opener:

Obliterate > (ERW (Off GCD) | Frostwyrm’s Fury) > (Pillar + Breath) > Oblterate

4 GCDs. You are arguing with air, as you just keep proving my point that the 12.0 opening sequence is just as bad as Shadowlands openers and pre-GCD-merge San’layn opener, which players hated and has been one of the most requested changes prior to the removal of Wounds.

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Which people dont like. Its been a complaint just as long as it has existed. They complained about the ramp up time with just applying dots. Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence was a complaint. Then they made it to where unholy applied both diseases with plague strike or outbreak.

1 Like
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Nope. Current San’layn opener is FS > Abom > Apoc > VS for 5 sec, weaving in the first SD proc > UA, and then you go to normal priority.
With our focus on haste, that usually at least 8 GCDs, 9 during lust/pots
You do that so that you have the extra wounds and damage amp in your highest damage period, when you have the SL buff fully stacked up.

The buttons that they combined recently were duplicates buttons that you always hit together, with some slight variance in the exact order.

What we’re talking about in the 12.0 build are our core abilities interacting with procs that boil down to “hit the shiny”.

If you were to simplify the current 12.0 opener the same way you have the SL opener here, it’d be:
FS> FS > AoD/DT > Putrefy
Look, we hit 4 gcds in the opener, we just had to stop thinking about what happens after we get our big abilities on cooldown!

Aaaaaand then if they’re running Obliteration as the meta pick, they go into a full proc based script that you can (and if you want to be as good as possible, should) plan out in advance, just like we can for Unholy. If you look at the rotation structures, they’re actually setting up Putrefy to operate like ERW, so Frost is a great example of how a proc based opening sequence works.

OB> ERW/FF > PoF/Breath > OB > FS (or HB w/Rime) > OB > Two FS (or HB w/Rime) > OB

If KM procs from your autos, you just do one FS or Rime instead of two, and if you don’t have enough runes you hit ERW for RP, a KM stack and to make your next OB free.

Hell, in 12.0, they’re actually making it even more deterministic b/c the Apex talents let you recast FF for two KM stacks, so you will weave a FF>OB into the sequence after you obliterate if you have enough runes.

Here’s what it boils down to: the rune/RP system is a very predictable engine, so randomness has to be introduced to add variety to the core rotation. The less randomness we have, the longer our openers can be optimized- if we had no procs or random elements, the entire rotation could be optimal (and thats not an exaggeration; many of FF14’s jobs are exactly that).
But since it is an engine, we need to kickstart it with the opener to get the resources and our cooldowns recharging.

If you want a more shorter/reactive opener, add procs
If you want a longer/predictable opener, add more long-CD abilities

You want to have a 4 button opener, but you also don’t want any randomness in the next 4 GCDs after?
Congrats, you now have an 8 button opener.

ooo, self burn, nice, don’t see those too often

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why do you think vet players never ask for reworks and argue anytime someone suggests one?

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Ah, now see this is something I don’t want to hear, cause I don’t like Frost. I don’t want my rotation to work in any way like Frost’s.

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You are claiming that a long opener is standard for DKs in 11.2, which is completely untrue.

Shadowlands ST opener:

  • Army > Festering Strike > Festering Strike > Unholy Blight > DT > Apoc > Abom Limb

Players complained about this Shadowlands opener, so Blizzard changed them to be literally 4 GCDs in 11.2:

11.2 ST Opener

  • Festering Strike > Abom > Apocalypse > Unholy Assault

11.2 ST Frost Opener

  • Obliterate > ERW + FF > Pillar + Breath > Oblterate

I don’t have time to guide you through simple counting. Just show me/everyone how you think Unholy ST 11.2 Opener is just as long as Shadowlands and the 12.0 Pestilence Opener. Use numbers to show the # of GCD to compare between Shadowlands, 11.2, and 12.0.

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Reading is hard, huh?

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You know this is a nothing argument being as Rider is just flatly better than SL right now, yeah?

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It’s not really the rotation is like frosts. It’s just that both abilities are a 30s ability that gets reduced by using our main proc, and have two charges to account for that.

Theyre entirely different in roles though; one is an ogcd enabler and the other is a payoff/nuke.

Sure! You’ll also notice, I never argued that Riders had a complicated opener in 11.2- I just replied to this with the current SL opener;