Nerf was to heavy handed and didnt address the actual problem with the ability.
People seem to be upset at the fact that Dks can death strike to near full health (which is only possible because classes do monkey dps and can do 140% of someones health in like 3 globals) So the natural response from blizzard was a bad nerf that didnt actually solve any problems and just left dk in a gimped state
Nerfing the base amount of healing we got from death strike from 10% to 5% was the heavy handed part. This change is unfounded considering death strike eats up a huge chunk of the dks damage. What really needed to be nerfed was the after effect from damage taken, This is the only aspect of the ability that deserved and warranted the nerf. This is the part of death strike that allows dks to massively heal almost to full.
I suggest nerfing the after effect even further and increasing the flat base heal back to 10%.
It gives dks more reasonable consistent healing while avoiding full health heals, It would still allow dks to heal a good bit of the damage their taking but it wont ever reach ridiculous full heal levels like it currently does.
1 more thing. Blizzard, If you dont want dks to just spam death strike i also suggest you maybe make it so the runic power spending dps abilities we have do damage. I mean come on, Frost strike hits as hard as a pool noodle and coil just about the same. These abilities should be the more rewarding abilities we press considering the whole point of our rotation is to build RP to spend it. It doesnt feel good hitting frost strike or death coil 4 times in a row for it to hit for like 10-20k. Dk already has a bad GCD and this puts to much time between the hits for them to actually matter. These abilities need to be hitting for 20k minimum and up to 40k-70k maximums. By making runic power abilities hit harder you give DKs incentive to spend the RP they have to dps instead of pooling it for healing which reduces our healing without nerfing us by itself
strike that heals for 5% maximum health and heals you for 30% of the damage youve taken in the last 5 seconds
Only one part of this ability is overpowered and its not the 5% maximum health part. My suggestion in this post was to rebuff the minimum heal to 10% and to nerf the maximum heal from the 30% in the last 5 seconds
My death strike would look like this
10% minimum health, 15% of damage taken in the last 4 seconds
furthermore to reiterate, By buffing runic power spenders like frost strike and death coil, Dks wont always have runic power to even use death strike if you catch them off guard because theyll actually be spending it to dps. The only reason that usually doesnt happen now is because Death coil and frost strike hit like wet noodles. Theyre both so bad
ah yes because dks shouldn’t have to think “did the enemy just do big dmg do I use ds”(althought death coil does little damage which should be buffed)
the flat heal makes zero sense lol it should completely be a reactive ability if u think it shouldn’t youre just an mongo idiot that wants to class to be even more simple than it already is
death strike needs no buff… if ANYTHING buff coil / frost strike the ds nerf was so justified
See i dont really disagree with your point of having death strike require some sort of thought to it but the issue is that in its current state its already like that. And thats why its a problem because dks can spike almost to full by themself with that mechanic. Having it be a flat 10% with a low reactive 15% effect would still encourage proper use of death strike, the reason being is because 10% isnt a lot for 90k bursts like some classes have and its not like the after effect is gone completely either
Additionally like you said by buffing runic power abilities you give dks a new way to think about death strike, “Do i waste large amounts of dps for a 10% heal or do i risk my life and le-pump dps?” That would be the thought we would need to have.
The ability would still require thought either way. But at least my way you dont see dks solo healing goes with 1-2 death strikes
Death strike has thought, yea bud this is BFA. Your class just saves runic power till it needs to death strike. DK damage being less based around runic power is the biggest reason it is aids. But since that isn’t changing anytime soon, death strike should be nerfed to its original proposed change.
Dks only pool runic power because our runic power abilities are awfully weak this xpac.
The after effect of DS is to strong and the base effect is to weak
The only solution to this problem is what i suggested, Buff rp abilities, buff the base effect, Nerf the after effect.
DS will still require thought because like said, it does still have the after effect but its much weaker, furthermore since our spenders now actually do damage, we would be giving up LARGE amounts of dps by pooling for heals or even just spamming death strike for the 10% health (which isnt a lot)
Why spam strike for 10% health when you can use coil or frost strike to do 15% of theirs, currently though you dont have that choice. In 1v1s dks dont get to use frost strike or even coil that much because even after the strike nerf its still more valuable to spam that than use our spenders because theyre that undertuned
NONE of our azerite traits that affect coil or frost strike are even good, theyre heavily nerfed in pvp and for frost strike one of the traits has a niche requirement for it to work, you need to have 3 runes or less which is a problem because one of our burst cds literally just feeds us runes. So its just bad design.
Unless there’s an unwritten change to DS in PvP, it scales off versa. With most players who wish to be competitive currently having 45%+ vers, a pre-nerf death strike would heal for close to 15% of your health due to versa scaling. A little absurd in my opinion, even for the base heal with how cheap it is.
I understand damage/class design as a whole this xpac is wonky, but that doesn’t mean death strike should still be busted just because other things are still busted
this can be said for pretty much every spec’s class abilities. again it’s obviously far from ideal game design but it is what it is, DK has access to the same corruption, trinkets/essences many other classes rely on for their killing potential. no need to have an overtuned DS allowing you to trinket ibf ams air on top of that and not be punished for it
this is big talk coming from a brain dead rogue player who trinket+ evasion/cloaks an opener because he thinks he can kill my priest.
then DR’s his own kidney into a random blind on the dk.
death strike IS a reactive ability it just does as much damage as death coil because of how death coil is nerfed in instanced pvp. it should heal more since you can do nothing and get a person to 15% with your infinite damage tendies and undeserved mortal strike.