Am I crazy for thinking Unholy has button bloat?

I do like that we get new skills (Vile contagion namely) but i dont like that it feels like I have to play the spec with both hands on the keyboard per say. I havent done m+ and I haven’t had the chance to even LFR raid this season, but just from flying around and doing general open world or doing just heroics or even time walking dungeons, it feels like there’s so many buttons to press.

I saw a post earlier about Frost AoE and how DnD makes it clunky. I agree, because its the same with both Blood and Unholy AoE. I think Unholy would be better off with removing DnD entirely from it. Just focusing on Virulent Plague and popping wounds with Scourge Strike for AoE would be fine and would take one less button off the skill bar for Unholy to help with button bloat.

Keeping Epidemic or removing it is honestly up in the air for me but I think I’m leaning more towards removing it. Ebon Fever and even Plaguebringer (if you spec into them) work well for continuous ramp in damage for Virulent Plague. You wont have to worry about upkeep on Plaguebringer since you’ll be hitting Scourge Strike fairly often to pop the wounds in both ST and AoE. So thats 2 buttons removed from the kit thus far.

If anyone with more experience on the spec has any other buttons that could be compacted into one skill or even removed entirely, I’d like to hear about them.

I do understand that the pruning of the DK as a whole wont happen, but its nice to have a discussion on it.

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Unholy does not have button bloat in PVE.

In PvP with all the extra pet stuff sure but Unholy really doesn’t have that much in PVE.

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Ive got 8 level 70s and out of all the classes and specs i play, unholy has about 50% more relevant buttons for dps. I enjoy the spec and feel ive got it down but i don’t think it can be argued that it doesnt have a bit of bloat.

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Everyone has their own idea of what they would call button bloat.

Generally** though in PVE when looking at core rotational skills that have less than 20 sec of a cd you want a range of 3-5 skills with 5 being the high end (again were talking the short cd less than 20 sec stuff here).

So with Unholy they easily can hit that core 5 with just Festering strike, Scourge Strike, Death Coil, Disease dot, and if talented Soul Reaper/D&D/Defile. And that does not even include buff/dot management, energy management, and minion management.

Now if you compound that with the longer CD skills they have available it can be a mess managing all the skills they have. It’s not quite like Ret paladin where many talents just bake into their Wrath button so they only have 1 skill despite some 5+ talents to boost it.

Unholy has their Dark Transformation, Apocalypse, Army of the Dead, Gargoyle, Unholy Blight, Unholy Assault, and even if you miss 1 or 2 of those out of the tree are all separate compared to the Ret pally and each need to be timed and managed appropriately.

Don’t misunderstand my point: not saying we need to be a ret pally copy BUT there is something to be said about have some of those dps boost CD’s being condensed together.

In addition you also have to consider the buffs/debuffs to manage, energy, wound stacks to burst, procs, pet management, and runes to spend. So it can add up to a lot once you start looking at everything.

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I completely glossed over the extra CDs we have. I think Unholy Assault could very well be baked into Dark Transformation or done away with entirely. Sure the extra strength is nice but we don’t really need a cooldown that applies 4 Wounds when we already have a dedicated button for it. Gargoyle, to me, just seems like another cooldown to manage and throw in if you spec into it. Which you need to if you choose to complete the spec line and get the Commander of the Dead passive. I believe we could make it a permanent summon minion if you would happen to want a ranged minion. Unholy Blight is nice but, correct me if I’m wrong, I dont believe we get the bonus pet damage from it anymore like we did in Shadowlands. So again, its just another cooldown to manage and toss into the ring if you spec into it.

I love Unholy as a spec. But man, its a lot of cooldown buttons that feel like extra throw ins or just things that could be put into an already existing skill.

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Unholy does suffer from bloat. Mostly because it’s inherited a bunch of cooldowns and abilities without any oversight.

The rotational buttons are mostly fine…SR is kind of a sad excuse for an execute though and I’m on the fence about epidemic like you. They could attach the flare up effect to casting Death Coil and save us a bind.

DnD is clunky for all specs, though I wouldn’t remove it. Just buff up its utility and use it as such.

As far as streamlining, I think Army should be changed to a passive that just summons minions based on some rotational mechanic (VP tick, wound pop, etc.). We have Apoc as the ghoul summon cd and Gargoyle for a 3min single target cd.

I would also make Unholy Assault an upgrade to ERW to provide more haste on a 1.5m CD.

I’d like to see Vile Contagion gone. We don’t need another 1.5m cd that’s situational to boot. Let FeS cleave some wounds and buff pestilence.

Unholy Blight is not interesting enough to be its own ability anymore. They should either make it a real disease cooldown or have it trigger off DT or Apoc when talented, preferably both.

Having to chain together so many cooldowns is a chore in raid, m+, and pvp.

Unholy has one or two more buttons than frost and I don’t think anyone would say frost has button bloat. 50% is a bit of an exaggeration.

I remember doing a side by side in SL because someone said unholy had soooo many more buttons than frost.

Oblit = SS
FS = DC
GA = epidemic
RW = FS
POF = DT
Etc.

I play unholy in pug raid and frost in keys.
Neither specs really have that many buttons.
Most of Unholy’s extra buttons are just every 3 mins. Staying awake between those three minutes is the hardest part of the spec.

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The core abilities sure, but unholy has so many CDs that are considered part of its typical dps:

Abomination limb
Apocalypse
Unholy assault or whatever
Enchanted rune weapon
Monstrosity
Unholy blight

Then army as your major CD.

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It does and its a problem since Legion. I have no idea why Blizz is ignoring this issue… and on top of all they put all CDs on GCD.

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  • Frost Core abilities: Howling Blast, Remorseless Winter, FS, Obliterate; AoE specific: GA, DND

  • Frost Core CDs: ERW, Pillar, Abomb Limb, FWF purely for AoE (tier notwithstanding)

4 for ST, 2 extra for AoE. 3 Cooldowns total, 1 for AoE. BoS can also replace GA/FS as essentially another CD.

7 buttons total for both BoS & Obliteration for ST, 8-9 for AoE.

  • Unholy Core abilities: VP, SS, DC, Festering Strike; AoE specific: Epidemic, UB, DND, possibly Vile Contagion
  • Unholy Core CDs: ERW, DT, Apoc, AoTD, Unholy Assault, Garg

4 for ST, 3-4 extra for AoE. 5 for ST if you’re doing a mostly ST fight since you’ll use SR over Limb then. 6 Cooldowns total. 7 for Abomb if you’re doing more AoE/cleav since you’ll use that over SR.

11 buttons total for ST, 13-15 for AoE.

  • Ret Core abilities were: 1) Crusader Strike, 2) Judgment, 3) Blade of Justice, 4) Consecration, 5) Radiant Decree/Wake, 6) Templar’s Verdict, 7) Divine Storm (AoE only), 8) Hammer of Wrath
  • Ret Core CDs were: 1) Avenging Wrath, 2) Final Reckoning, 3) Seraphim, 4) Divine Toll

11 buttons total for ST, 11 for AoE (Divine Storm replacing TV). Possibly 12/12 if you played Exorcism though that generally had fallen off before the rework, which had a specific goal to address the button bloat Ret had.

Unholy 100% has button bloat by all account. It actually has more button bloat than 10.0/.5 Ret did. You can enjoy the spec now but saying it doesn’t have button bloat is objectively false by Blizzard’s own metrics.

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What is kind of funny, is Taez showed if you just dont press Outbreak, you lose less than 1% of your overall dps. And then if you left out wounds and only pressed Festering Strike before Apoc, you lose 2%. This was using the same build across all 3 tests and just changing things slightly in terms of gameplay.

So VP and Wounds arent that important when it comes to ST.

He also got these things to a negligible dps loss by changing the build up some to focus more on DC and Clawing Shadows. Thats basically removing 2 things you have to kind of keep track of.

So you can cut down on stuff though he didnt go into AoE.

Unholy does have bloat, but you can change some stuff around and not lose much.

spend all of your time with setting up your cooldowns just for you to spam epidemic and death coil

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I agree with you.

imagine the situation:
A rank 1800 game starts… on the other side I have a hunter, an arms warrior and a monk healer. On my side, a warlock and a healer paladin.

I already needed to change a talent to increase the warlock’s magic damage by 8%.

When the fight starts, I need to pull the warrior 2x, due to his 2 charges, apply slow, defile with 90% movement reduction to TRY to keep him away from the warlock, for the warlock to be able to do something.

I usually do this after a leap+charge, so the warrior won’t be able to move for a while.

From then on I have 7 setup skills to start doing something.

With defile on the ground and a slow warrior, I need to use blight, outbreak, 1 fastering strike, 1 scourge strike to make the deseases run faster, assault, apocalypse, dark transform. army of the dead, maybe abomination limb, and start using death coil and always reapply deseases and 1 scourge strike to make them run faster while keeping defile on the ground, always trying to catch someone and positioning myself in an advantageous place so they don’t get off defile.

i.e :
check enemy positioning for everything to go well;
chains of ice ;
defile;
outbreak;
1 faster strike;
1 scourge strike (fast wounds);
Blight (important - it helps if abom. limb. manages to grab the 3 enemies so positioning and death grip + blinding sleet are key here);
army of the dead;
assault (burt moment);
apocalypse (with 4+ stacks of wounds);
dark transform. (which can be used in conjunction with racial depending on race, with macro);
abom. limb.
empower rune weapon
death coil + scourge strike checking always virulent plague on enemy and stack wounds.

yes…it’s a lot of buttons and a lot of things.

Now, going deeper:

A key to use the pet’s stun, without leaving it on automatic because that’s not interesting.
Keys to Suffocate, AMS, AMZ, ice bound fort.
key for blinding sleet.
key for death strike.
key for mind freeze…and I’m probably forgetting a couple more skills here.

after all that, find that abom. limb. and death strike are nerfed in pvp, it explains why a good unholy DK complains so much about these nerfs, because of the difficulty of playing with the class in pvp.

And of course, with the fastermight nerf, we were left with the impression of being clowns because look at THE SIZE OF THAT ROTATION. Nerfs on this class are idiots, it’s a tough class to play.

to finish: returning to the arena, after using all this, go positioning the defile, checking runes, runic bar, deseases, pulling healer + hunter (in this example), suffocating when necessary, doing the rotation, looking at the burst skills CDs in case of not killing enemies and always using fastering strike + scourge strike for deseases run fast + wounds with defile holding characters, chains of ice, scourge strike, mind freeze on the healer at certain times, blinding sleet when you are clearly sure of a kill… .

It’s a class that I love, but it’s complicated…

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oh, keeping death coil and fastermight stacks too, to take advantage of those bonuses. Forgot that detail.

That is, attention to diseases, wound stacks, death coil and fastermight.

Pretty easy class to play, huh? (no)

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The most abilities I’ve had is outlaw rogue in Dragonflight. Unholy DK I think has a few more than the simple classes, but still less than outlaw R and resto shammy(totem utility belt!). This is all from PVE, as a disclaimer. I stopped pvping ages ago.

i forgot to mention death’s advance and lichborne…lol
also AMS and AMZ for comps against casters…

yeah, resto shammy wins this dispute of how many buttons there are for spec.

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yeah, resto shammy wins this dispute of how many buttons there are for spec.

I drag all my totems around in a knapsack

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try resto shaman.

theres so many stupid buttons AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH like twice as much as any other spec i ever tried

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Holy canoli. It seems like a fair amount of classes need their abilities pruned down from this feedback.