All three Death Knight specs should be changed

Classes Death Knight
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I played a DK pretty much since they were first available in the Wrath Beta. But to be perfectly frank, I think that while they have had their ups and downs, I think the fantasy of each Spec has been fundamentally misunderstood, and could be far better worked.

Here’s how I would redefine these three specs:

  • Frost: The “Arthas” spec, Tank

I don’t care if “most of his skills were Unholy”, when you think about Arthas, you’re thinking about Frostmourne and the Frozen Throne. I would dive fully into that fantasy, with Frost wielding a single 2hander, a juggernaut that is meant more for taking punishment than necessarily doling it out.

Not only does it better fit the “fantasy” of a Frost Death Knight (a slow-moving, hulking behemoth of a man), but I think by tying its identity directly to Arthas (much as Havoc DH’s are to Illidan), it would inspire more players to take up the mantle of Tanking, which is always helpful in MMO’s.

  • Unholy: The Necromancer, WC2-style Death Knight

In a more startling shift, I would change Unholy to be more of a traditional “Necromancer”. Not totally traditional, mind you; just more so. During Legion, the Unholy artifact, Apocalypse, did an absolutely incredible job of capturing the fantasy of being a melee-oriented Necromancer, where your attacks had you summoning a constant barrage of one-off undead for sometimes a single attack.

That was a really cool fantasy anyways, and this could bridge the gap a little more with the WC2-era Death Knight, who was also quite cool in his own right. If you had to put a specific name to it, I suppose Teron Gorefiend is about the only well-known WC2 Death Knight.

Also, by being a bit more “ranged” focused, it paves the way for a more unique interpretation of…

  • Blood: The “new” Death Knight

While Frost and Undead serve as solid callbacks to Arthas and the WC2 era Death Knight, respectively, I would use the opportunity to reinvent Blood spec a bit.

It would be the more pure Melee DPS-spec. I would throw a spin on things by perhaps coupling their ability to drain blood (health) with abilities to also expend it. I would go entirely Dracula/Vlad the Impaler for inspiration for the spec, depicting Blood DK’s as mighty, bloodthirsty warriors, but also with a dark, supernatural/vampiric quality.

To give the spec a bit more defined “personality”, I’d say you’d want Blood spec represented by either some kind of bloodthirsty Orc (perhaps re-defining Nazgrim as a Blood DK?), or maybe a Blood Elf or one of the San’layn.

  • In conclusion…

I think these specs would feel far more distinctive and iconic that the current ones we have. Sure, the current specs “work”, but honestly I don’t think any one spec is particularly exciting. They just don’t seem to convey a sense of identity anymore.

Speaking of which, now that we have so many dual-wielding classes in the game, I would legitimately propose removing dual-wielding entirely. I simply don’t think it fits the Death Knight class. As for the Legion artifact, just retcon it to a singular “Blade of the Fallen Prince”, and increase the size of the 1hander models to be suitable for 2handers.

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I was thinking Unholy mainly needs a change, cause its been boring for a long time, and thought if it was more like the new Demonology it’d be more fun. Like make it have 3 pets, the Ghoul for lower DPS but moves fast, the bulkier thing that you turned the ghoul into for high DPS, and the big guy from the PvP talents as a tank pet, but without the aoe cloud that’d be a PvP talent choice, and the revamp of Unholy be more ranged based, cause I think a ranged plate wearer be pretty cool.

I don’t know a lot of these by name cause I haven’t MAINED DK for a LONG time cause of how Blizzard just keeps them under powered for last 3 expansions. I mean it is not fair that WW Monk is still SO POWERFUL after all these years, I think Blizzard just hates DK’s.

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Meh.

/10mehs

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I’ve been a little salty at Blizzard since the Frost tank change. What made me fall in love with the DK at Wrath release was Frost tanking. Dark Knights in general have been a favorite of mine across most lore. The whole Frost tank thing just fit so well in my mind, I loved it. When they changed it, I didn’t play my DK again for a long time lol. It still stings.

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I just think, in terms of “themes” and “fantasy” of each Spec, these changes honestly make a lot more sense.

Like… there’s absolutely NOTHING about a “Frost” spec that would imply “big melee damage”. Blood, by contrast, seems a lot more fitting, conjuring to mind images of a warrior fueled by blood rituals, siphoning blood from his enemies. A lot of people STILL mentally equate Blood with the DPS it used to represent, being quite cleave-heavy.

With Unholy, I think it’s clear players still love the idea of a “Necromancer”, and Unholy really fits that niche incredibly well. As a Death Knight, I imagine you would still maintain a certain amount of presence in melee range, but as mentioned, maybe you spend MOST of your time at a range, building up resource for your “big hits” for melee range?

And of course circling back to Frost, I think thematically, it’s just a natural fit. I might even lean into it even harder, with defensives that also slow you. In my mind, THIS is what I imagine for a Frost Tank:

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Yeah frost would be a good tanking spec. But I also like how blood currently plays with the self sustain, which is unique compared to other other tanks.

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As much as I love the idea of eventually having frost tank back, blood tanking is very thematic to me. Siphoning the life force to sustain my own fits an undead character. Vampiric blood, death strike, blood boil all feel very on theme. I wish consumption was more competitive, because it’s a cool ability even if it’s just a slightly juiced death strike.

I would like to see some more frost abilities in the mix instead of just ice bound fortitude and chains of ice. That being said, the only unholy abilities in the kit are death coil and ghoul (and you rarely ever have a reason to coil as blood). Lichborne is more class identity rather than spec identity to me. Roll in too many and it muddies the specs though, which I understand.

I’m not stoked about how clunky 2h frost was for s1 and s2 though, so I’m very skeptical we’d get something that feels good and is competitive. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the new trees, and I think you’ll be able to get the vibe you want more so than today.

There would also be a ton of overlap in the specs. Blood is so fleshed out now I can’t see them scraping it. If anything frost would be like what feral used to be for Druid’s, 2 specs in 1.

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As much as I hate to admit it, because I truly loved Frost tanking, you are right. Blood is unique, Frost would be more similar than different I think to the other tanks.

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At this point, it’s unlikely Blizzard would even CONSIDER changing the specs so dramatically, let alone whether they would ACTUALLY do so.

But I still maintain that changing the specs could be really interesting. I think the idea of a slow-moving juggernaut just SOUNDS like a perfect fit for Frost. Remorseless Winter, for example, maybe slowing you and enemies for the duration, but also slowing attacks and/or increasing Dodge chance (sort of like what Bolvar does during the Shadowlands cinematic).

Building up defensive ice over your body, it could honestly make for an interesting dynamic to change up tanking with purposely exchanging mobility for survivability (especially since the current meta seems to be favoring high mobility, especially in Mythic+).

At the same time, Blood could be a playground for the idea of actually playing around with sacrificing your OWN health, and then subsequently draining it back. Hell, this even makes a direct connection to the “Blood wing” of ICC, in which getting bit by the San’layn would increase your damage.

As it stands, there really isn’t anything super thematic to Blood. Especially when even WARRIORS have strong self-healing. Dancing Rune Weapon – an ability where you literally summon a FLOATING COPY OF YOUR WEAPON – is a DEFENSIVE cooldown? It just seems like going all-out Melee damage would make a more natural fit.

Plus, Bone Shield really SHOULD be an Unholy spell. In fact, I’d probably tie it loosely to “Corpses”. Like, enemies that grant XP/honor that die nearby grant you an additional “bone” of Bone Shield, which can be expended either for summoning minions or things like Death Coil or even a new Bone Spear attack.

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Obviously, Wrath Classic is on everyone’s minds now, and I gotta say, it really reaffirms where I personally feel like the entire theming of “the Death Knight class” has just kind of lost its way. Not so much Unholy, but I think the in-game version of “Frost” feels surprisingly sort of bland and totally unrelated to Arthas, which is crazy as he really SHOULD be the poster-child for what Frost is all about.

Similarly, I think committing Blood to being a DPS spec is a lot more interesting than just being not terribly unique from any other tank. I like Vampire/Sanlayn themes, and the visuals mesh super nicely with the Venthyr, but otherwise at least to me, it doesn’t really jibe.

To me, “Frost” makes sense as this powerful, mighty frozen warrior, where Blood should be the deadly DPS tree that needs to siphon health to refuel resources for its devastating blood-fueled attacks.

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I think if we moved away from this Blood/Frost/Unholy naming convention which results in a ultra narrow ability focus where a Frost DK can only use Frost abilities etc.

Changing the spec names and opening up their ability list to more thematic options would allow our tank spec for example to be able to utilise more varied abilities instead of Blood this and Bloody that.

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Well, I think the specs are so intimately connected to those specific NAMES (all the wings in ICC are named after them, as well as the Runes attained for Shadowmourne), I think it might be difficult to stray away from them. Not a bad idea, by any means; just would take some work to really come up with good ways for changing them.

I’ll say, I kind of wish Frost played around a little more with the “blue-fire” aesthetic that permeated so much of Wrath and Frostmourne specifically. I definitely agree though, Blood has way too many abilities just called “Bloody " or " Blood”. I was always a fan of the Legacy of Kain games, Defiance had a skilled called “Cadaverous Laceration”. I always thought that was just a SUPER cool name for a skill.

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Already more lore work than any dev has shown to any class in the last decade of wow. I like the ideas mate.

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I appreciate it!

I really do wish there was a way for us fans to actually feed our passion for these classes and races, into actually helping create content for the game. I think that’s one of the things the game has struggled with in recent years, it rarely feels like the Devs absolutely love these different classes or races.

It doesn’t feel like a “labor of love” anymore. At least, it hasn’t in a while. Holding out hope that perhaps Dragonflight changes that impression. My knee-jerk reaction, though, is it seems very reminiscent of the starting quests in Bastion; cool on their own, but not really feeling like “Warcraft”.

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i like the idea if Frost was to change. Maybe to something called RuneBlade. hey guys im playing the Dk RuneBlade class, see rolls off the tongue :smiley:
Idealy the class is about big melee hits empowered with Runes and runic power! so its still intune with current dk lore
howling blast replaced with Runic blast or runic wave and change the animation to the character plunging the weapon in the ground when rime is proced. Frost strike to runic strike(already ingame), RPower is blue so really not many changes needed
could have a little more interactions with runeforge enchants

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Maybe adding a 4th and 5th spec?
Death and Rune

Frost getting a return to Tank.
Rune being DPS. Using heavy focus on powered strikes and runic power dumps.
Death being the very necromancery stuff from Unholy, and a ranged spec.
Unholy being diseases and unholy might.

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If they added a new spec, make Unholy focus on minions, and make the the new spec diseased focused, maybe make it also take a few aspects of 2h Frost. Then Frost can be the DW spec some believe it should be, and Unholy wouldn’t feel like, to me at least, that it’s trying to divide its attention between the pet and diseases. Make the new spec about empowering diseases and strikes that interact with them.

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You might be onto something there, although I’d still stand by my above points. But Unholy could become more of a true Necromancer (maybe even converting to using Int and being able to wield a Staff), I could see potentially having a dual-wielding spec that focuses on spreading diseases. I know it’s currently the name of a skill, but I could genuinely see “Pestilence” being a good name. Or Gnolls are using some kind of similar dark magic in Dragonflight called “Decay”, that certainly fits.

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I always felt that this should have been unholy from the beginning. A necromancy powered dps caster as a twisted counterpoint to the paladins light based healing caster.

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Amen to that, great ideas. I’d love to see some major changes for DK sometime soon

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