A comparison and suggestions DK vs Rogue talents for DF

Classes Death Knight
1

Let’s do a quick comparison between Rogues and Death Knight new talent trees and baseline abilities. I’m looking at this from an Unholy DK perspective as its the spec I am most familiar with on live.

ROGUE (16 Baseline abilities over One combat role)

Active attack abilities - Ambush, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate, Slice and Dice

CCs - Cheap Shot, Poisons (Crippling), Distract

Interrupt - Kick

Defensives - Sprint, Vanish, Stealth

Heal - Crimson Vile

Group Utility - Shroud of Concealment

Class Flavour - Pick Lock, Pick Pocket, Safe Fall

DEATH KNIGHT (9 Baseline Abilities over Two combat roles)

Active attack abilities - Death Coil, Rune Strike, Death and Decay

CCs - Death Grip

Interrupt - NONE

Defensives - NONE

Heal - NONE

Group Utility - Path of Frost (lol), Dark Command

Class Flavour - Runeforging, Death Gate, On A Pale Horse

Issues

1. Why is there a talent tax for DK’s? We need a HEAL, CC, INTERRUPT and DEFENSIVE ability baseline no questions. Death Strike, Icebound Fortitude, Mind Freeze and Asphyxiate should be baseline to bring parity at least.

2. Runic Empowerment/Runic Corruption talents. Make one the defacto rune regenerator baseline and give us something else please, one of these MUST always be selected for optimum play and whatever sims the highest will be slotted. Its not a choice if its mandatory for optimal play.

3. Unholy needs to spend 5 talent points before any REAL choice becomes available and those 5 points are just getting a working combat flow together. For those that are starting a new DK the first 9 levels will be auto attack central, then at 10 you can build wounds but can’t burst them until 11 unless you recklessly spec into Improved Raise Dead. Obviously not a big concern such a small time frame whilst leveling, but an issue regardless for the new player.

4. Would be nice to see some additional ways to spend runic power and some more Damage over Time effects.

12 Likes
2

Really wish they’d at least give us Strang back baseline

5 Likes
3

I would argue for a choice of atleast 3 Abilties to be made baseline Among these:

  • Death’s Advance - Mobility that offers multiple options for talents improving it:
    Take the Knockback Immunity/Slow Resistance and make it a Talent.
    Add Fleeting Wind as a Talent Optiion.
  • Icebound Fortitude - General Defensive
    Could remove the Stun immunity and put it as a Talent
  • Death Strike - General Purpose Healing for all Speccs
    Add Dark Succor as a Talent, or as Specc baseline for UH/Frost
  • AMS - More specific defensive, but a big part of the Fantasy for all DKs
    Could remove the RP component Baseline and make it a Talent
  • Chains of Ice - Some general CC for all speccs. Has an interesting enhancing Talent
  • Mind Freeze - Interrupt.
    * Could make it Baseline Melee, and add the Range as a Talent.

Additionally, one Runespender should be made baseline, by replacing Rune Strike upon Specc selection, similar to Rogues getting their Sinister Strike replacement simply upon specc selection.
I would propose Obliterate, Heart Strike and Scoruge Strike for that.

I don’t think all of the suggestions above should be seperated into a Baseline Ability and a Talent Node, especially not in the same spot they currently hold in the Talent Tree.

Things like Stun immunity, Knockback Immunity and Dark Succor are simply not relevant in all situations and should, in my mind, be optional choices that do not lie on the main path of the Tree, so they would need new spots.

Also, after Druid and Rogue Previews: Please give Dk some Raid Utility, or Buff AMZ back to atleast be viable. The comparison to Dh and Warrior, with a Raidbuff and an objectively better Raiddefensive, is laughable.
As it currently stands, assuming similar tuning, DK will simply be left in the Dust, unless Grips are mendatory.

Talents providing such utility could be added to fill the holes left , by making some of these Abilties baseline.

6 Likes
4

Let the Oppression Olympics continue!

You can have differing numbers and still come to the same answer / conclusion.

More talents and more baseline abilities doesnt necessarily mean better.

1 Like
5

You see a shirt/pants/shoes combination that’ll make you stand out, you go to buy these things and you do. You have now spent all your talents money which is a shame because the hat you really want is just out of reach, if only you didn’t need to buy those three other items you could have been able to afford it.

You look through the window to the exclusive dining establishment you intended to visit, but the bouncer doesn’t let you in because of the strict dress code for the encounter fine dining. If only you still had some spare talents money to spend. Inside you notice a rogue in the same clothes and a hat!!

What madness is this?!? We were all given the same amount of talents money?

5 Likes
6

don’t forget that you were able to wear the whole outfit last week, no having to choose which item to not wear.

4 Likes
7

Am I missing something? Because that analogy is really bad. Like really really bad.

A hat that is just out of reach because you dont have enough money? A talent point you want and just being out of reach and if you had less talents or talents cost less then you would be able to get it. So what do you want Blizzard to do about that? Remove the whole system and just give every class everything baseline? Thats the only way to really remove that “if I only have a little bit more for that talent” argument. Its to give everyone all talents and abilities.

Are people not being brought?

Also, things cost different amount of money. If you want what someone else has even though everyone has the same amount of money, you have the freedom to go buy that thing, or go play that class/spec. The specs arent the same and shouldnt be treated the same. The DK is doing really good right now with less than other classes. So really your talent points (money) is more impactful overall.

This is just people complaining to complain.

Shadow is forced into 3 talents throughout their entire tree. One you cant avoid and the other 2 you will have either one or the other or both and there is a talent that you cant access. If you look at the Mythictrap talent trees this one talent kind of breaks the whole tree. You can only get to this talent from below and you have to work from the top down so how do you get to this talent?

Such a bad analogy. Its an equity argument without taking in all the factors.

8

Long story short, both are melee dps. One has a working rotation, a CC, a heal, multiple defensives baseline. The other is a death knight, which has 7 less abilities baseline, and needs to spend points on said things which could otherwise be some nice new talents.

This is the problem, a DK will no doubt still be competitive with numbers tuning, but missing out on nice new things is kinda crap, on this you have to agree.

3 Likes
9

The Rogue talent tree is absolutely absurd. Other trees released so far need major revamp or rogue needs to be gutted.

5 Likes
10

No, actually i dont agree, and here is why.

Lets just say they want to hit at or around 1000 dps. So you hit that with a certain kit. Great, then you start adding stuff, the value of those talents will have to be pulled from what already exists. It happened with KM rank 2. There is no around this fact. Killing Machine rank 2 was introduced and the value of that added power was pulled from Obliterate itself where we seen a nerf to it.

So adding in more new stuff that value has to come from somewhere, and where would that come from? What we already have.

So what new things would be added exactly?

Say all these things you asked for were placed baseline… what goes in their place? Where is this added value going to come from? Just like with all this printing of money and handing it, the value of that money lowers the value of the money that is already in exitance.

This is some very basic stuff.

11

Er, the rogue trees are far superior to any DK tree, especially sub and assa.

As an assassination player on this alt, that tree is showing some real promise.

Oh yeah, and kick is baseline

3 Likes
12

And? It still doesnt make them better just because some people think its subjectively better. People were saying the shadow priest trees were better but it took all of 5 seconds that everyone would be funneled into 1 talent really high in the talent tree, and there still isnt a way to actually get to a talent.

More of something doesnt mean better. Not everything has the same value. The dollar and a peso have different values so if you have 1000 pesos it would still be better to have 500 dollars.

The power from these new talents or whatever else have to come from somewhere. Just like the increase frost strike damage talent, the power and value of that talent is probably just going to come from Frost Strike itself ending up to not be an overall buff, but just getting it to where it is now.

Oh, and Mind Freeze is basically baseline too. Going to be real hard to make any decent build without it.

13

As opposed to Sin that has to spend 6 talent points to make their poisons properly work.

And on a fully kitted out DK has 20% more health, the most mob control options out of any talent preview in the game, a ranged interrupt that can give resources, a raid defensive, higher burst self healing, and more personal defensive cooldowns.

And let’s not forget, all rogue specs have next to 0 energy regen baseline with them doubling down on resource generation that is deep into both their general and spec specific trees.

But for the mob control options (excluding interrupt, which we have ours at ranged)
-Blinding Sleet
-Death Grip X2
-Asphyxiate
-90% slow, with 2 charges on mass AoE/Double chains (strongest 1/target slow)
-Mass Grip through Hands

Absolute Zero Stun for Frost
Mass Grip for Blood
2nd ST stun for Unholy through the minion

We have SEVEN options. Half of which are unique or the strongest of any given option in the game that we’ve seen thus far. No one else has grips, 90% slow on initial AoE is the strongest in the game, 70% single target slow is the strongest in the game.

This is the only thing I can partially agree on. Most DK specs didn’t get any new shiny toys, what DK’s got and this is especially true for Frost and Blood is the ability to pick a ton of stupid broken and powerful borrowed powered options over the last 3 expansions, and we get to pick MULTIPLE of them at once.

But other specs aren’t happy with this option either.

If we did this, DK’s would be complaining about spending a talent point on a very situational stun immunity in row 3 of the frost general tree, when they’re required to get runic empowerment and and the 4% crit from the 3 points right below it. You’re still getting the same thing at the end of the day, that one talent point you’re snagging just feels far less bad to take long term.

Most Rogues are just straight annoyed they put an energy cost on Sap, just to have it removed from a talent point that they’re taking anyway. It’s two talent points for one ability to work the way it should, and it’s not like taking the energy cost removal is optional either with Shadow Dance being at least on the outlook of things, mandatory for all 3 specs.

And I fully state this looking at most of the classes. 90% of what we’ve seen holistically, the specs don’t “work” until around level 40-50.

14

As I said in my post, this assumes that the point would not be put back into the same place IBF was before, that would be absolutely pointless, yes.
It would have to be on a node on a side, an optional pick you do not have to pick up for anything else.

I believe there should be a choice WHICH Utility you want. You mentioned all our Crowd Control options, which idealy, you will have to chose between, or sacrifice throughput.

Things like Knockback Immunity for DA, Stun Immunity for IBF, could be on such optional nodes.

I would agree with the rogues there, and still argue that my proposal is different. Energy is simply good in all situations. A Knockback or Stun Immunity is more situational, and could work as an optional node, to allow you to chose between the utility you currently want.
Might be too little Utility on its own though, to spend a Talent poitn for.

1 Like
15

Not for PVP.

You have 3 outcomes of this solution.

-IBF goes baseline, the stun immunity goes on the node and that node feels bad because it’s always required for PvE players.
-IBF goes baseline, the stun immunity is on an optional node, they take the route of weakening one of our baseline abilities further and “fixing” it through an improvement node. PvE players end up with a weaker IBF, PvP players now have an additional talent point they have to put into utility. We take whatever they throw in it’s place because we’re going down for mandatory RE/ERW anyway.
-They change nothing and we get baseline IBF with the stun immunity for free, and every DK is going down that route anyway for RE/ERW.

For which we’re one of two classes currently that have viable flex points without breaking the core build. Shadow Priest lose the most throughput to get basic raid utility, most of ours is for free.

But your entire argument is fundamentally flawed from the case you not liking that we have less baseline abilities than other classes. They could strip more active abilities from the Rogue toolkit, they can put Crimson Vial on the talent tree instead of having it cost 2 additional points to make the baseline ability work as intended. They could put stealth on the top of the sub general tree instead of having 2 talents for sap, they could put slice and dice on the talent tree instead of the 3 required poison talents for all specs, and the 6 required talents for sin.

We spend talent points for buttons that work. 1 point to make asphyxiate as good as it gets.
They spend talent points to make their buttons work. 3 talent points to make kidney shot work as it should.

16

*** TRIGGERED ***

5 Likes
17

I don’t get comparing base kits. There is not a time where you would play this game in a way that matters without spending talent points. The leveling experience is so insanely truncated today that it’s not a meaningful time sink any longer.

Rogue isn’t burning up any rankings right now nor can they serve a group in any function outside of dps. I do think the tree looks pretty full, however. I didn’t look through that tree and think, man imma get benched and I can’t do more than a m8 now because I don’t have baseline kick. I did think, maybe we could have used 1-2 more fun nodes. Or, I like what they did with rogue poisons, can they do something similar to diseases maybe?

18

laughs in shroud of concealment you serious bruh

3 Likes
19

I’m talking tank or heal. Your role is locked, I’m okay with you guys having one or two solid trees.