Can we all start making some noise about our ability animations and the complete lack of awesomeness our class has compared to our other plate wearing friends?
Paladin and Warrior abilities just feel and look good to press, you’ve got the Paladin exploding in light all over the place, cool special effects dazzling the eye and on the warrior side of the fence, you’re leaping and charging all over the place, rending foes in your whirling blades, unleashing earth shattering stomps.
Heres a list of things I personally find subpar animation wise, please feel free to comment and add your own.
- Death and Decay; somehow this ability animation is worse than its WotLK variant, where is the death and decay? We had cool red gas clouds and stuff once, now its a red rune on the ground. Both of which look nothing like it does in Warcraft 2.
- All Rune weapon strikes; We spam these abilities back to back very frequently and it is very jarring seeing me use the baseball bat swing over and over again on Scourge Strike for example. Can we please have our Scourge/Festering/Frost/Heart Strikes/Obliterate have alternating animations much like how the shaman Stormstrike works? Every sequential press performing an alternate strike animation? It will make the class LOOK so much better.
- Glacial Advance; a very visually underwhelming ability. I have just finished doing some transmog runs in Battle for Darzalor, and Jainas Frost Blast ability (scaled down in size a bit) would be a MASSIVE win visually for Glacial Advance. It looks so awesome.
- Breath of Sindragosa The visuals for this are lame. Why not have an actual frostwyrm unleash its breath on your target and have it deal its damage in AoE? Itll be a buff for those times you actually can’t face a target because youre running from mechanics which always feels bad with a BoS build.
- Clawing Shadows; needs shadowy claws and a proper cast like animation. Probably take Abomination Limb spectral claw or something. The baseball bat swing and somehow hurting my enemy at range looks terrible.
- Death Coil; it’s ok but I think it could definitely use some updated effects
On the topic of effects, why do we not have they very cool drust shadow magic effects? They’re significantly snazzier than the current ones we utilise.
14 Likes
Please yes, the class needs a rework overall but some new animations/graphics are way past due for MANY abilities.
2 Likes
Could not agree more, an issue even further amplified by things like diabolist warlock, or voidweaver S.Priest, all 3 mage hero specs, etc…
DK absolutely needs some visual updates honestly
1 Like
My biggest peeve is Glacial Advance. It’s the laziest and most budget animation job and needs a serious makeover. My second is Pillar of Frost, for such a powerful ability, visually it doesn’t make your character stand out very much like Paladin wings. I’d like to see a small beam of white icy light and/or turning your character completely snow white.
4 Likes
My biggest thing is this. Who takes the time to notice their animations in that detail? They are fine for what they do. None of them look overtly outdated or pixelated. Granted, I press the button and focus on the enemy instead of the ability.
Agree 100%!
To be honest, most melee attack animations in general need a solid rework.
1 Like
Defile is a compressed jpeg that they put into Microsoft paint and stretched/squished it four times.
And then they make it cover every ground effect.
Why???
2 Likes
AMS looks like a ceramic bowl made out of snot.
Death coil is a literal loogie.
I don’t want to be the booger class.
1 Like
It’s clear you haven’t pressed Glacial Advance.
4 Likes
Most people haven’t pressed glacial advance to be fair.
I think the point is you can’t see most of the stuff you do in the first place. In isolation visuals can be way better.
I like playing the GW2 reaper necro for that reason along with the pretty insane damage.
Reaper is so hot and everything DK should be. Harbinger also gets my jimmies rustling.
GW2 has unparalleled class flavor, it’s a shame they dedicate so little to dungeon&raid content.
Reaper or scourge Necro, Dragonhunter or Firebrand guardian, Mirage or virtuoso mesmer, Scrapper or Holosmith engineer are all pretty awesome and they all feel like their overall class, just an extension of it.
Thats the issue I have with WoW is a lot of times the spec ends up not feeling like the class especially for DK.
I dont know what they would do with AMS to have it look like AMS but be updated.
This has been my biggest gripe for a long time. I even made a long post detailing my observations on what spells and abilities could do with a little touch-up.
5 Likes
I’m glad there are others feeling and noticing this.
I rarely post on the forums despite being a fairly active player, but glacial advance has got me on here. Much more like copy+paste icicle crackle.