Now, this could make for a cool potential idea for the “Rider of the Apocalypse” Hero talent tree. I love the idea of playing as a WC3-style Death Knight, and being able to actually ride a Deathcharger in combat (even briefly or much more slowly) would be genuinely awesome.
My thinking is that Death’s Advance is a super boring skill anyways. Perhaps visually just having it temporarily ride your Acherus Deathcharger. Perhaps vendors at Ebon Hold offering Glyphs to change which Deathcharger is summoned, if you’ve unlocked Rivendare’s Deathcharger, Midnight from Karazhan, Invincible, or the Crimson Deathcharger (might be nice to finally add that unused Blue version, as well?).
Another idea, which would be a lot cooler and more thematic, would maybe be unlocking some kind of toggle-able ability to mount up in combat. It obviously wouldn’t move at full speed, but maybe just ever-so-slightly faster than your normal speed, maybe replacing Death’s Advance as a static speed increase, but without breaking free of movement effects?
Again, that might be too much, but it would be cool, imo.
True, and it’s certainly a super useful skill. But it just feels really strange to click a button, and literally nothing happens except you move a tiny bit quicker for a couple seconds. I legit can’t even tell whether I actually used it most of the time.
You could do something like temporarily make your character transparent with black smokey effects (kind of like a Shade), which could also be cool. Like I said, I just really dig the idea of a mounted Death Knight like in WC3, and thought this would fit well enough.
no thanks. Unless riding the horse itself is a glyph.
Pally horsies are a aspect to that class I don’t care for either and now I’m somewhat concerned that RotA hero spec will force mounted riding. Which would be just as questionable imo.
The only way I would ever get behind forced mounted skills is if we can select the exact mount we want to mount for it.
I mean, it’s pretty central to what Death Knights are and have always been. Even WC2’s Death Knights rode mounts, as did all of the Death Knights in WoW up until Wrath.
They tried mounted combat, and it looked and felt clunky so they scrapped it entirely. Would rather have Death’s Advance at any time. Even pallies wanted Steed Charge removed its that bad.
Its all so vague who really knows what these things are. The only one that might be accurate is San’layn. Deathbringer and Rider of the Apocalypse could literally be the same thing since the Riders of the Apocalypse were death bringers, its the apocalypse, not fluffy bunny fun time.
Anything like the steed charge needs to stay away though.
Yeah, I’m still kind of mulling over my thoughts for the “Hero talent tree” names. They’re obviously all names we’re vaguely familiar with, but aren’t anything super specific. Since Death Knight was the Hero unit in WC3, it’s probably hard to find much fertile ground to delve even deeper into a specific fantasy.
I suppose one idea could be for the Blood-Unholy tree to be something like “Animation” or “Necromancer”, focusing more on bringing more of the zombie-themed undead units to life, like the Abomination being there. Although I’m assuming that’s the general vibe of the San’layn, which although cool, seems like it would be more Blood-specific (in the core talent tree).
I’m assuming Deathbringer will be Blood-Frost, since that kind of checks out with Deathbringer for ICC, leaving Rider of the Apocalypse as Frost-Unholy. Since the latter one is the two DPS specs, I could see it maybe offering some mobility options, but who knows?
But seriously, agree to disagree. I love the WC3 Death Knight unit, and if we’re truly getting a “Rider of the Apocalypse” Hero talent tree in WW, then I think this would be a much more interesting, flavorful shift.
Totally keep the option to Glyph it to not have a horse if you want, but I think Deathchargers are very much core to the Death Knight theme.
In a perfect world, there would be a brief animation of your skeletal horse “climbing” out of the ground as you move, and abruptly collapsing into bones when the effect ends.
But it feels far more unusual, to me, to be “run a tiny bit faster” with zero context, other than “I pushed a button that does that”.
Another idea might be something where you temporarily become a Shade, which I think would be a lot more thematic.