It is becoming painfully obvious at this point in time that if we don’t see any big changes coming out of Blizzard in the next month or so, then there is probably no Death Knight rework coming to save us from another 2 years of bland gameplay and terrible visuals.
Anyway here is some ideas I’ve been thinking about on how we could make Unholy Death Knight signficantly more fun and unique. Hopefully this reaches some Dev eyes and inspires whoever is in charge of the Death Knight design, because frankly it has been terrible for years now. The only reason I still play it is because I like many others have invested SO…MUCH… time into it.
This tree builds off my DK General Tree Rework I wrote up a few weeks ago.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/dev-for-a-day-dk-rework-general-tree-edition-v2
Lets begin.
Baseline Talents/Abilities
- Mastery: Festering Wound
Your Virulent Plague/Necrotic Plague cause Festering Wounds to form on the target. Each time a target suffers damage from these effects, it gains 1 wound, stacking up to 8 times. Bursting a wound deals Mastery% Shadow damage to the target. Additional wounds generated over the maximum automatically burst instead.
Thoughts: Blizzard wants Festering Wounds to remain, so I went about redesigning them in a more interesting way. You no longer need to be spamming out Festering Strike and setting up your damage. Now you get your diseases rolling, and you’re good to go. As your diseases spread, you can switch targets AT WILL with practically no dps loss unlike the current design punishing us as the rogues and feral druids of old suffered with target swapping before the combo point redesign.
- Dominated Undead
6 sec channel
20 yd Range
Dominate an undead to be your minion. If you lose the undead’s attention for any reason, the domination process will fail.
You must dismiss any active undead minions and have an empty Summon Undead slot before you can begin dominating a new undead.
Thoughts: Copy and paste of the Hunter Tame Beast ability but for undead minions in the wild. Undead minions do not have any specialisations like Hunter pet.
- Summon Undead
You have mastered the basics of necromantic arts, allowing you to summon a single undead minion to your aid, unlike your lesser undead minions its power does not wane, serving you until you or it suffer a final death.
Thoughts: Functions exactly like the Hunter Call Pet ability. Instead of a stable, you have a Book of the Dead ability summoning a dreaded book of dark magics to change your minion slots etc.
- Death Rune Etching
Consuming your Frost runes will cause them to regenerate as Death runes. Consuming a Death rune also deals X% of the abilities damage as Necrotic damage over 3 sec.
Thoughts: Some people seem to not like this idea of Blood, Frost, Unholy runes returning but I never hear a single reason from them as to WHY? The only thing I can think of is it allows a bit more reactivity in ability usage. However, we operated more than satisfactorily all the way up until Legion with 3 rune types, and I would argue Mist of Pandaria Unholy was the best iteration of it other than the original WotLK variant before the patch that ruined Scourge Strike lotto damage.
- Plague Strike
1 Unholy Rune
Empower an unholy rune bathing your weapon in plague and strike your target, dealing X Shadow damage and infecting them with Blood Plague.
Blood Plague
A disease that corrupts the targets blood, dealing X Shadow damage over 15 sec. Heals the death knight for X% of the damage dealt.
Thoughts: Spreading diseases is now significantly harder than pressing one button, the trade-off is significantly increased damage and utility from your diseases by being limited in the number of active targets they can be on at once. Unholy will have additional ways to apply diseases and AoE solutions for them.
- Frost Strike
1 Frost Rune
Empower a Frost rune covering your weapon in foul ice and strike your target, dealing X Frost damage and applying Frost Fever.
Frost Fever
A crippling diseases dealing X Frost damage over 15 sec. Each time it deals damage it gains 1 stack. Each stack both increases the damage it deals and reduces the movement speed of the afflicted target by 10%. Stacks up to 3 times.
Thoughts: The default Frost rune spender and applies Frost Fever.
Talent Tree
1:1 Festering Strike (Replaces Blood Strike)
1 Blood Rune
Strike the target dealing X Physical damage and increases the duration of all diseases on the target by 3 sec and causing all diseases on the target to immediately deal one tick of damage. This damage triggers all normal disease effects.
Thoughts: A return to form and now extends your diseases duration as it once did in ages past. Will also add a Festering Wound if it triggers Virulent/Necrotic Plague damage.
2:1 Scourge Strike
1 Frost 1 Unholy Rune
An unholy strike dealing X Shadowfrost damage and bursts 1 Mastery: Festering Wounds.
Thoughts: Pops wounds as it currently does but as wounds are no longer applied with Festering Strike, nor are they “wasted” over cap, the race to apply/spend them is gone. This ability should be the go to single target rune spender with or without Festering Wounds to pop.
2:2 Raise Dead (Upgrades general tree Raise Dead)
Your lesser minions last 50% longer.
Thoughts: Raise Dead / Army of the Dead abilities conjure lesser undead and are gained via the General Tree (see General Tree Rework). TLDR; Consume 10-30 Runic Power on a 20 sec cooldown, to summon 1-3 lesser undead to assault your target for 10 sec. Deals more damage than a Death Coil or Howling Blast at the same RP spend but has a SIGNIFICANT increase in visual goodness in summoning the dead.
3:1 Outbreak
Your Plague Strike and Frost Strike also applies Virulent Plague to the target.
- Virulent Plague
A disease dealing X Shadow damage over 15 sec. Each time it deals damage it jumps to a nearby target at its current duration.
Thoughts: By limiting how many targets can have diseases active at once means we can MASSIVELY increase the damage and utility of diseases. Virulent Plague needed some additional love as the Unholy spec disease and having it jump to nearby targets as a bit of passive cleave seemed like the right choice. Blood Plague and Frost Fever do deal a bit of damage, but they are mostly utility diseases with self-sustain and slowing enemies respectively and as such there is no need to be tab targeting having them up on multiple targets as that would ideally be a DPS loss vs the proper dps rune spenders for each scenario.
3:2 Dark Transformation
1 min cooldown
Empower your dominated minion with dark magics increasing its size, speed and damage by X% for 15 sec. Whilst empowered, dark magics radiate from your minion dealing X Shadow damage every 1.5 sec. THIS ABILITY IS OFF THE GCD
Thoughts: Having my skeleton somehow turn into a plague beast always annoyed me. Now your minion swells in size and power. AoE shadow explosion to account for the AoE effect you minions currently get whilst in DT. Sprinkle some shadowy explosions emanating from it and we’re good to go. Cooldowns that DO NOT DEAL DAMAGE on press should NOT be on the GCD. <-FULLSTOP
4:1 Rupture Wounds
30 Runic Power
20 yd Range
6 sec cooldown
Unleash a tendril of necrotic energy at your target dealing X Shadow damage to all nearby enemies and causing up to X of your Mastery: Festering Wounds to violently rupture dealing their damage to all nearby targets within 10 yds. Deals reduced damage beyond X targets.
Thoughts: Epidemic whilst being very effective with its quadratic scaling always looked lame, and in situations where large numbers of enemies weren’t present it felt meh to press. Now you select a target with bulk wounds, and you explode those bad boys for big damage. I’d like to reuse the corpse explosion graphic effect for this as well as that chunky noise it makes.
4:2 Improved Scourge Strike 2/2
Scourge Strike deals an additional X/Y%
Thoughts: Changed from Festering Strike dealing extra damage to Scourge Strike. The new Festering Strike with its disease interaction will always generate 1 Festering Wound on a target provided VP/Necrotic Plague are on the target, and is effectively a builder, and shouldn’t be directly damage orientated.
4:3 Runic Mastery 2/2
Maximum Runic Power increased by 10/20. Increases the Runic Power generation of your runes by 10/20%
Thoughts: I have removed most of the passive runic power generators from the general tree and Runic Corruption is now baseline with no RNG mechanics. This will result in a remove the feast or famine resource issues we face. TLDR Runic Corruption triggers for every 10 RP spent for X secs increasing rune regeneration by Haste %.
4:4 Infected Claws
Your dominated minion’s energy spending attack has a 30% chance to apply a Mastery: Festering Wound.
5:1 Unholy Blight
Death and Decay also conjures an Unholy Blight within its area of effect for its duration.
Thoughts: Unholy has WAAAYYYY too many cooldowns, if you can merge or trim them then that option should be taken. Working in with the DnD talents in the general tree, this will become a strong AoE cooldown without the need to AoE Scourge Strike (cleaving strikes gone woohoo). Unholy Blight would function identically to how it does now, but over the entire duration and area of effect of your DnD/Defile.
5:2 Replenishing Wounds
Your Mastery: Festering Wounds have an X% chance to add an additional wound instead of being consumed.
Thoughts: Removed the Runic Power gain from wound popping so that runic power generation is uniform regardless of target count to reduce those feast and famine moments regarding resources. This ability now gives your Mastery an additional chance to deal its damage, would tie in well with Rupture Wounds as there is a chance that the target explodes but retains its stack of wounds allowing you to smash it again.
5:3 Choice Node
- Castigator
Festering Strike critical strikes cause your diseases on the target to trigger their damage twice and each Scourge Strike critical strike bursts 2 additional Mastery: Festering Wound.
Thoughts: I liked this talent back in Legion, mostly because I did not get Instructors Fourth Lesson until LONG after it was nerfed. Talents that give additional strength to certain secondary stats that can change up gameplay are fun.
- Bursting Sores
Your Mastery: Festering Wounds burst more violently, dealing X Shadow damage to all nearby enemies. Deals reduced damage beyond X targets.
Thoughts: Not much changed from the current talent, but with a little extra spice. This choice node determines how you want your Mastery to play out, more AoE or more single target. When it comes to dealing damage you shouldn’t be able to do everything, you should have builds focused on doing one thing that fills out your teams capabilities, there should never be a one size fits all build that excels in both single target and AoE, because that really just makes talent choices less critical IMO.
5:4 Apocalypse
Bring doom upon the enemy, dealing X Shadow damage and consuming up to 4 Mastery: Festering Wounds on the target. Each wound consumed applies a stack of Crypt Fever to the target.
Crypt Fever
A debilitating disease dealing X Shadow damage every 1 sec for 6 sec and causes all other diseases to deal their damage each time it deals its own damage. Healing effects on targets with Crypt Fever refresh its duration and add an additional stack.
Thoughts: There are enough minions running around with other talents/abilities options, so I wanted the baseline Apocalypse to be purely about dooming the target to death as quickly as possible. Your dots will be supercharged whilst this ability is active and turning healing effects on the target into additional damage. PvP wise, healers will no doubt want to dispel this damage, and the existing Crypt Fever PvP talent would be retrofitted with some kind of Dispel This At Own Peril functionality.
5:5 Choice Node
- Plaguebringer
Your Plague Strike becomes a 2 part combo.
- Plague Strike slashes the target applying all your diseases to the target and dealing X Shadow damage. Now consumes 1 Frost and 1 Unholy Rune.
You have 4 sec to continue the combo.
- Pestilent Strike lashes the target and all nearby enemies dealing X Shadowfrost damage and spreads your current diseases onto all damaged targets at half their normal duration.
Thoughts: The Ret paladin Templar Strikes ability is great fun, and I adapted its use for Unholy. Plague Strike now costs two runes and Pestilent Strike is free to use within its window. This talent will remove the need to use Frost Strike entirely, another GCD freed.
- Blighted Rune Weapon
Festering Strike replaces your auto-attacks and deals X Physical damage and triggering its effects every X attacks. Your Blood Runes are permanently replaced with Death Runes.
Thoughts: Clawing Shadows has been moved way down into the tree. Blighted Rune Weapon will save you on GCDs, free up a keybind, allow an additional Scourge Strike with the two additional Death Runes and with the right tuning allow you to keep your diseases and Festering Wounds indefinitely on your main target without refreshing. Seems pretty strong but is offset against a very powerful AoE cleave option.
5:6 Sudden Doom
Your auto attacks have a chance to make your next Death Coil or Rupture Wounds cost no Runic Power.
5:7 All Will Serve
Any ability that conjures lesser undead minions to aid you conjures an additional 2 minions.
Thoughts: The skeleton archer was always gimmicky, and always had me stuck in combat. Now you summon more minions when you summon minions.
6:1 Defile (No change, but now also works with the new Unholy Blight talent above it)
6:2 Ebon Fever
Your Blood Plague and Frost Fever increase the damage the target takes from Physical and Magical damage by X% respectively.
Thoughts: Removed the duration/tick speed of the current iteration as I don’t want diseases to become desync’d whilst also taking into account other talents that reduce the tick rate of diseases. Now some additional damage for the death knight rewarding keeping these two diseases up on targets.
6:3 Unholy Command
When activating your Dark Transformation your dominated minion now charges to the target dealing X Shadow damage and rooting it in place for 2 sec. Additionally, reduces its cooldown by 7/15 sec.
Thoughts: A little bit of extra oomph for this talent, pure cooldown reduction was a bit expensive at two points IMO.
6:4 Choice Node
- Magus of the Dead
Your Apocalypse ability also conjures 1 lesser undead minion per Mastery: Festering Wound consumed. Additionally, anytime you raise lesser undead minions to serve, also raise 1 Magus of the Dead, the magus empowers all other lesser minions causing their attacks a chance to apply a Mark of the Horsemen (Rune of the Apocalypse effects) and blasts your target with Shadowfrost bolts for 10 sec.
- Apocalypse Now
Reduces the cooldown of your Apocalypse ability by 45 sec and it also grants Dark Transformation to your dominated minion for 6 sec or extends the current Dark Transformation duration by 6 sec.
Thoughts: More minions with a magic skeleton to empower them (i’ve been playing some D4 necro and the skeleton priest is a cool idea) or reducing the cooldown of Apocalypse with a little bit of extra oomph, especially if used with Unholy Command, you pet will rush to whoever you unleash Apocalypse on, setting them up for a world of hurt.
6:5 Improved Death Coil (No change)
6:6 Rotten Touch
Sudden Doom causes your next Scourge Strike after using Death Coil to deal X% increased damage or causes your next Scourge Strike after using Rupture Wounds to cleave an additional X targets.
Thoughts: Having to track maintenance buffs on yourself and targets is very annoying, especially with the default UI and having to use a Weakaura to do it is not something talents should be designed around to get the most out of them. Now the new rotten touch will make Scourge Strike and Rupture Wounds glow after a sudden doom proc, and you’ll know exactly what’s happening.
6:7 Unholy Pact (No changes other than removing the flaming chains for actual SHADOW effects as per the description, the flames look completely out of place for a death knight (unless you plan on giving us some kind of Bolvar, Shadowflame death knight!?)
7:1 Vile Contagion
Your Death and Decay/Defile deals an additional X% of its total damage instantly and applies 2 Mastery: Festering Wounds to any targets suffering this damage.
Thoughts: The original vile contagion ability seemed good, but when you look at it’s cooldown time, the fact it’s on the GCD you had to ask yourself, why do I need 8 globals to setup for AoE dps? Then you look over and your ret Paladin friend just hits wings and goes. This new version will increase the damage of DnD/Defile and apply some wounds to get the ball rolling in AoE faster.
7:2 Critical Wounds
Virulent Plague/Necrotic Plague critical strikes apply 2 Mastery: Festering Wounds instead of the usual 1.
Thoughts: Critical strikes are fun and talents that allow certain stats to have interesting interactions with abilities is always fun.
7:3 Eternal Agony
Increase the duration of Dark Transformation by 0.33 sec (recurring of course) for each 10 Runic Power spent.
Thoughts: Quality of life change to now affect all your runic power spenders.
7:4 Coil of Devastation (No change)
7:5 Harbinger of Doom
Sudden Doom activates 30% more often and grants your Death Coil and Rupture Wounds an additional effect. Can now stack up to 2 times.
-
Death Coil residual energies arc off the target, reanimating a Skeleton that attacks for X sec.
-
Rupture Wounds arcs off your original target to a nearby enemy, triggering a second Rupture Wounds.
7:6 Reaping
Your Rune weapon strikes and Runic Power spenders deal 30% additional damage to targets below 35%.
8:1 Soul Reaper
1 Blood 1 Frost
6 sec cooldown
Strike not only at the targets body, but their very soul dealing X Physical damage and dealing X% of that damage as Frost damage.
Afflicts the target with Soul Reaper. After 5 sec, if the target is below 35% health it will cause all diseases on the target to tick 100% faster for 6 sec.
Thoughts: I think having Soul Reaper as a talent choice for all specialisations in each spec tree is a good idea. They can each perform a different function and be tuned around their respective kits.
8:2 Unholy Assault
Your Apocalypse now unleashes 4 devastating attacks dealing X Shadowfrost damage. The first three weapon strikes applying 2 Mastery: Festering Wounds before the final slash detonates 4 wounds and triggering Apocalypses normal effects. For each wound burst by Apocalypse increase your damage dealt by 5% for 10 sec.
Thoughts: Unholy Assault is cool as it currently is, but its another bloody cooldown you need to bind and track. It can easily be incorporated into the ability you normally lined it up with anyway.
8:3 Summon Gargoyle
3 min cooldown
Summon a gargoyle to bombard your target for 15 sec. The gargoyle gains 2% increased damage for every 1 Runic Power spent over its duration.
Thoughts: Current gargoyle design exacerbates the main UH dk issue MASSIVE ramp up time, there is never any burn phase that lasts 25 seconds. By the time you have ramped up, the target is dead, immune to damage or whatever other madness the instance designer dreamt up. In PvP, 25 secs is an eternity, not to mention it is able to be completely shut down by LoS or numerous class abilities. The power just isn’t there for where it sits in the tree. Now hopefully it is.
9:1 Metastasis
Your diseases deal 15/30% more damage to targets below 35% health.
9:2 Ghoulish Frenzy (No change)
9:3 Festermight
Popping a Mastery: Festering Wounds grants you X% Strength for 10 sec
Thoughts: Lines up with the Apocalypse middle part of the tree, which 9/10 you would always want to combo together anyway, synergies and all that.
9:4 Wandering Plague 2/2
Each time your diseases deal damage, they have a X% chance to deal 50/100% additional damage to the target and all enemies within 8 yds.
Thoughts: The old WotLK talent returns.
9:5 Unholy Aura (No change)
10:1 Necrotic Plague
A powerful disease that deals X Shadowfrost damage per stack every 1.5 sec for 15 sec. Each time it deals damage, it gains 1 stack, and infects another nearby enemy within 8 yards if possible. Each stack increases its critical strike chance by X%.
Replaces Virulent Plague, and is applied by any ability which applied it. Reapplying this ability does not refresh its duration but instead adds 1 stack. Festering Strike may extend its duration further.
Thoughts: The disease to rule them all. Has synergies all over the place. Increased Festering Wound generation thanks to increased tick speed, CHECK. Critical Wound synergy for more wounds? CHECK. Speads to bulk targets fast, CHECK. Should reward the player for keeping this up.
10:2 Clawing Shadows
There is no target death cannot reach. When targets are out of range, you have your wraith form attack in your stead, attacking from the Veil before returning to the realm between life and death.
Your Scourge Strike, Festering Strike and auto-attacks are now usable up to X yds.
Thoughts: The above abilities can be used whilst you are not in melee range, when doing so, your wraith form rushes out from your body, performs said attack before fading away. You NO LONGER baseball bat swing and somehow deal damage to the target.
10:3 Mastery of Undeath
You have mastered the arts of necromancy and are able to raise much more powerful dominated minions to aid you permanently.
Thoughts: Think of this as the Beast Mastery but for Unholy, you can now dominate more powerful undead units such as Abominations (Grappling Hook), Lich (Frost Nova), Death Knights (Unholy Frenzy aka Blood Lust) etc.
And we are done. Can we expect to see anything like this in our possibly upcoming rework? Doubtful. Time and again we have been let down and have been living the Death Knight motto of Suffer Well. I hope I am wrong, but I don’t expect to see any real changes for our class anytime soon.
Feel free to add your thoughts, add your own suggestions on how things could be. Who knows what could happen if this finds the right eyes.