Death Knight TWW Feedback

Classes Death Knight
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Death Knight feedback

Hi all with 11.1 on the horizon I wanted to put out some of my thoughts on potential changes to Death Knight. We just got a rework however I do think there are a few issues amongst the specialisations that I would like to see addressed.

Frost

Frost is in a good spot right now gameplay wise. I think the breath/obliterate hybrid build is super fun in both keys and raid. Blizzard nailed it with their goal of trying to turn breath into something 30 – 45 seconds and finally escaped from the perma breath issues that plagued the specialisation during dragonflight.

One big issue I have with frost is the amount of RNG in the spec, particularly:

  • Bonegrinder – this talent encourages cancel aura macros on some fights to make the bonegrinder 20% frost damage buff line up with CDs. I think this talent needs to be reworked.
  • Reapers mark resets.
  • RNG on resource refunds when going into pillar. Particularly on pull when you are not using breath / empower rune weapon. It is a super bad feeling on certain fights like Silken where you run in instantly pop pillar then hit two obliterates and two frost strike and then have to sit there for 3 seconds waiting for your resources because you low-rolled rune refunds.

Unholy

Unholy is ok but it feels very simple especially on single target. I would really like them to lean into two game play styles similar to frost where one is based around your minions and the other your diseases. I think they need to add just a little bit more complexity to the specialisation.

I think a bit issue for me is that Frost and Unholy are both 45 second classes at the moment which I think causes them to not have distinct enough damage profiles. They tend to at the moment be both good at sustained cleave with frost being better at low targets and unholy better at higher targets. Both specs have fairly average to bad single target at the moment.

There is a bit of button bloat for Frost and blood now. Personally, I think soul reaper should return to being an unholy only ability. This would allow Blizzard have unholy lean more into the execute damage profile to distinguish it from frost.

Blood

I really don’t like the current iteration of blood. This makes me quite sad because at many points in WoW’s history Blood has been my favourite spec. I had a lot of fun playing Blood in legion / S3/S4 of shadowlands and back in WoD. Honestly, I have been unhappy with thestate of Blood since the changes in Dragonflight particuarly the focus on being in your DnD at all times. Something I have really hated about blood is also the loss of the gameplay of timing your death strikes appropriatly. I think Dragonflight was probably the worst state Blood I have ever experienced blood being in.

I think the many of the capstone nodes are boring particularly the passive talents in bloodshot and umbilicus eternus. I also think playing around bonestorm / tombstone and bone shield charges feels very janky to me. Especially now that the extra bone shield stacks from abomination limb is gone.

Blood has probably improved in war within from dragonlight but I don’t really think Blood got the rework it needed they just took the base class from dragonflight and added a bunch of bells and whistles onto it. I personally think Blood needs a fundamental rework.

I suspect one of the issues is the greater focus on blood shields which occurred because of the Dragonflight rework. Previously blood shields felt a lot more like a bit of a bonus you got to help smooth out damage. However, since Dragonflight having a massive blood shield at all times became the norm. Blizzard obviously considered it to be an issue because they ended up reducing the blood shield cap. I think this was a mistake as I think it is the blood shield generation that needed to be nerfed not the cap. Overall I think blood shield generation needs to be nerfed, death strikes should heal for a lot but be less frequent so you need to use them strategically and Blood DK passive tankiness should be buffed to compensate for the blood shield generation nerf and to help against one shots in high keys.

Raid Buff

The raid buff issue for DK has been discussed a lot recently. I personally think that blizzard should just throw in the towel on grips being DKs unique utility. I think it restricts them from exploring other cool ideas with other classes because they can’t put in any abilities that could overlap with DK grips (e.g. warriors using a chain to hank an enemy to them or a mage summoning a black hole that pulls everyone in). Furthermore, it also basically forces Blizzard to create a grip fight every tier (which usually just ends up creating mandatory blood DK requirements for guilds).

Grip Consistency

If blizzard insists on grips being DKs unique class utility then their needs to be consistency between the tank and DPS specs. At the moment when you need grips the default is to bring a blood DK and DPS death knights are usually not considered. Blizzard needs to make it consistent to gives guilds flexibility on bosses like Ovi’nax to be able play different variants of death knights when grips are needed.

Gorefiends should be on the class tree as a talent node. I think it would be good to be a choice node with abomination limb. Also, regular single target grip for blood needs its baseline CD increased to match DPS death knights however there should be a talent node for both roles to reduce it. This can replace one of the numerous defensive nodes Blizzard introduced in TWW.

DK Tankiness

Death Knight is very tanky at the moment and I suspect it will inevitably get nerfed. Mostly it is driven by DK being given a whole bunch of extra passive defensiveness from talent tree changes and hero talents. I personally think active defensives shouldn’t be nerfed and instead the number of passive defensive talent nodes needs to be addressed.

Anyway, just my thoughts on DK at the moment. I am sure some people will disagree with me but wanted to put my thoughts out here as I have been thinking about the state of DK for a while.

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I agree the bloat on frost is tough rn. We have a ton of defensives that could possibly overlap, but i do think the number of passive defenses need to go down. At 30% you become almost unkillable. Honestly i may be wrong here, but personally i dont even use soul reaper because my gcd and rune could be used better in other areas. My idea for the raid buff is change horn of winters ability back to what it was in wrath.

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I agree with your assessment on unholy, the only viable spec being the pet spamming spec really bores me, both because I don’t like classes that emphasize cooldowns, and because short term uncontrollable minions provide no chance for someone show off how skillful they are, it’s too automated.

Would love to move away from being a 45 second spec and leave the short burst windows to frost, while instead leaning into something that does relatively high damage all the time but doesn’t gain much from cooldowns. A soul reaper/execute themed unholy would be significantly more fun for me personally.

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I think something like a hunters kill command would be a great spell for unholy to have. Maybe without the damage increase tho. Right now they have both dps specs in this awkward 45s/1.5m rotation with both being aoe based specs. There should be a bit. More of a variance in playstyles i think because right now they feel way too similar with unholy having even less to do than frost. I was thinking making the unholy a single target dps burst class with the minions and “kill command” while frost keeps their aoe with their lines of frost and blizzard. With unholy its really bad. They are both an aoe and single target and they dont excell really at either unless its a massive pack.

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Very confused by this, the best spec in m+ ignores apocalypse, uses festering scythe, virulent plague is usually top dps makeup… and the major CD (Abom) is 1.5 min?

I feel the other way, I wish apoc was bettwr in m+ and we had volatile zombies.

Aside from that Unholy is a banger spec tbh.

Maybe some graphic updates.

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Was gonna say, Unholy feels great. Rotates on a set of 45s and 90s cooldowns. Much better than desperately trying to squeeze CDR on Army (and DT I think?) out of Coil/Epidemic like in Dragonflight.

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Wth are you smoking? Add complexity to unholy? I’m assuming your ignoring unholy’s 20 button opening? and 4 button CD use every 90 seconds? Or the fact that you have 3 resources to manage?

Sure, going commander and hitting death coil, PS and FS with DnD for a primary rotation for single sounds simple, but frost is even worse… A lot of classes have simple main rotations, they cast or cooldowns or look at ret paladin.

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I think it would be nice if they got rid of the rng procs on reapers mark and just guaranteed it would be reapplied up to three times or so. Numbers would be tweaked to keep things balanced of course.

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I just wanted to say you have an inaccurate statement concerning Blood Shield. I have a weak aura to track blood shield. It barely fills up as of war within, at least during m+, it will only fill up while off taking in raid. That’s because the math is that it saves a % of Death strike heals, which has been changed to a % of damage taken. So at 30% mastery, Blood Shield is (25%)x(30%) = 7.5% of all damage taken, assuming a Death Strike occured every 5 seconds. So 30% mastery is like 15% versatility. Blood Shield doesn’t need to be toned down, it’s become a trash stat going into war within.

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My focus is on PvP not M+, haven’t even tried a M+ since SL? Legion? I don’t like timer gameplay.

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Death Charge available to Blood as well.

Soul reaper reworked into something exciting and powerful with a longer CD.

Blooddrinker changed to HP% based to make it relevant. This use to be a strong and fun ability.

DRW no longer needs a target.

Buff Frostscythe! I was hoping this would be a Wake of Ashes lite.

Menacing Magus moved or baked in to work with Doom Bidding without having to do down Apocalypse path.

Runic Power removed from battle rez.

Tons of visuals need updating. Ghouls, Bone Shield, AMS, San’layn tree are the standouts.

Red and green eye options.

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Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! That would make the most infamous user here take a massive L!

We can’t have that!

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No way you PvP saying that the only viable spec is pet spamming

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The dot/death coil cleave got nerfed into the ground. Works fine at lower end play, but it won’t get you anywhere in higher end. UHDK’s ladder rep was already bad before those nerfs, but now… hoboy.

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Fix Bugs and add resource management talents or damage buffs. If they feel ambitious, rework skill trees to make for AoE or Single Target focus so we have something to play with.

Big thing, fix bugs!!

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This design philosophy was a mistake to start with. Players should not have to choose between an AoE or single-target focused build. They should be able to do either without sacrificing the other.

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It does seem like they attempted to do ST vs AoE already, but AoE is off the charts and single target is mediocre at best.
I’m talking about further refinement, like a choice between Glacial Assault procs on Killing Machine, or we can pick Killing machine gives a stack of fridged cold, forming a giant ice spike we can use as a projectile after 4 stacks, instead of death coil. Or remorseless winter can stay as it is, or give us 15 seconds of obliterate being all frost damage. Fun stuff like that, if not that stuff specifically

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Very rude to jump to ad hominem. Unfortunately for you I do PvP, and I do think the only viable spec is pet spamming.

If you want to put your money where your mouth is and put forward a viable spec for me to try that doesn’t feature apoc, army/abom and riders I’m all ears.

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I just live rent free in your head dont I?

You have had more Ls than I could ever even hope to have. But way to stay on topic… oh wait… looks like you literally attempted to derail yet another thread.

Just do everyone a favor and just shut up about me. Dont hint at me, dont do your crappy little jabs, just shut up.

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+1 for this. Idk how to accurately describe it but somehow pressing that button as yet another filler feels a bit janky for me. I’d rather have Soul Reaper in a 35s cooldown but it would hit like a truck. Bonus if they would make it visually outstanding, you know… as an execute should.

I’d love this too. Feels weird that we can’t customize that. I know that the color of domination magic is Lich King blue, but the Ebon Blade DKs have been autonomous for a long time. How about finding a way to change that?

Ever since Lightforged Draenei could find a way to wield Fel magic, I suppose they’re would be open to write in lore that kind of thing, anyway.

6 Likes