DK Death Gate and Portals needs upgrade for 8.2 and beyond

Classes Death Knight
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Death Gate…it’s when the DK can summon a gate to return to the Ebon Hold Sanctuary for one main purpose, Rune Forging their current weapon(s) others include Mission Table, Quartermaster, Troop Reinforcements etc.

Quality of Life…it’s the smallest things that have the biggest impact to a players gameplay experience.

I’ve decide to create a new Unholy DK almost a week ago and managed to level to 120 in that time. During that time from WoTLK through Legion, I had the displeasure of constantly porting to EH to Rune Forge new 2H weps and Port Back to Dalaran, fly to the last Broken Shore area I was currently at and resume questing. It may seem “convenient” during WoTLK and Legion but not for WoD, Pandaria and BFA. Here’s why…

During WoD, when I would receive a new 2H weapon and when I had some time, I threw up my DG, port to EH, rune forge (Fallen of the Crusader for Unholy DK), finish, then use Garrison HS, FP Fly (I do not have PF for WoD unlocked) and return to my area I was currently questing which took approximately ~10 min just to Rune Forge a weapon and get back into action! Yikes!

During BFA, pretty much the same run around, but this time it’s more like, DG > EH > Dalaran > SW > Boralus > Fly ( I have flying unlocked for BFA) > resume questing. Still, lots of running around.

I believe it would be of interest if Blizzard updated the Death Gate for DK’s so we are caught up with the current expansion. Here are my two suggestions.

  1. Enable Ebon Hold to have SW and/or Boralus portal. This would make the transition back 100x better than to EH > Dal > SW > Boralus > Najatar.

Although, that may be “more” convenient but let’s not forget Zandalar. EH > Dal > SW > Boralus > Ship > Zandalar > FP (or fly if unlocked) > Resume questing.

  1. Enable Death Gate to be left open for a 3 minute window to return to the previous point of origin. Let’s say you are in the middle of Zandalar and you receive a new and upgraded weapon and you need (want) to Rune Forge it.

Open the Death Gate, return to Ebon Hold, forge and when you are finished, the Death Gate that is left behind at Ebon Hold will be open for you to return to your point of origin for 3 minutes. I say 3 min because this will also work for WoTLK and beyond expansions where as players will also utilize other amenities within EH that may take up to 3 minutes. This way, not only will it negate the portal idea, it will also return the player back into action and resume play in a much expedited way.

So, fellow DK’s, what are your thoughts and if anything, what would you add or change from my suggestions? Like to hear it!

If anything, I would hope to think this would reach Blizzard’s class development team, but, I understand there are more concerning and pressing matters presently counting down to WoW Classic and 8.2.5. If any "Blues’ find these suggestions worthy of bringing to the table, please do so, it would be much appreciated. Thank you!

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You can use your death gate again when in ebon hold to return to the original location.

7 Likes
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adding to what Biceps said, deathgate did lose a lot of it’s old functionality and was arguably better before they changed it in BFA.

currently if you leave acherus at all, even if you just fly from the first floor up to the second floor, your return functionality is reset. return functionality also no longer works from old acherus in EPL.

return functionality is also reset if you log out, so you can no longer gate to acherus, log out for the night, then gate back to where you where questing the next morning.

the only thing we gained with the change was porting back to the exact spot we gated from, except for instances, where you are ported outside the instance door(wtf?).

the older deathgate functionality was way better and honestly i would love it if this was reverted.

2 Likes
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Well said. This is why we need the Death Gate not to reset when we are in Ebon Hold Sanctuary if we transition from floors, this way we can port back to our place of origin, hence why I’ve suggested a 3 min window. I don’t think many DK’s realize we lose this functionality of our gate when we transition floors and then stuck to port to Dal > SW > Boralus > fly to point of origin > resume play.

Death Gate needs a upgrade tbh for now and for the future of WoW patches. Fix it now so there’s less work or worry later.

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you can take the televator between the 2nd floor and the roof and it won’t reset, the reset happens when you leave the acherus zone. the problem is the boundary for this is all of 5 yards off the edge of the balcony, so if you fly instead of using the televator you cross that boundary and get your return functionality reset.

as long as you stay in acherus and don’t leave the zone or log out, the current return target will stay active for hours. which is crap compared to the old one which was just permanent, i think the longest i held an old return target was 9 months when i unsubbed in wod.

i wouldn’t say it needs an upgrade, they just need to revert the recent change to it.

1 Like
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This functionality of returning to the original location was was added back in late mop or early wod (it would send you to the closest graveyard to where you ported from) as for it reseting when you left acherus I’ve left acherus numerous times only to return (from dal) to port back to somewhere like spires of arak Back in legion. What was the old functionality of this spell again? Port to epl and fly from there?

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the original functionality was to only send you to EPL Acherus, no return.

it was later changed to port you back to the nearest graveyard from where you ported from, or if you were in an instance, the beginning of the instance, or whatever progress checkpoint you had reached.

in legion what changed was the addition of BI Acherus. once you learned the new deathgate spell you would always port to BI instead of EPL. however, the return functionality from EPL still worked.

the importance of that last part was that the return area around EPL Acherus was large enough to reach Lights Hope Chapel, which functions as an inn and you can set your hearthstone there. meaning you could hearth to LHC and then hit your deathgate inside the chapel to activate the return port.

so in Legion what changed was we could set our hearth to LHC, then gate to BI acherus, take a the port to dal, and from there go where ever, then when we were ready to return to questing, hearth to LHC, then open your deathgate and boom, nearest graveyard from where you were questing.

this felt legit, like you were using your deathgate to port around the way NPC deathknights do in lore.

the other factor with the old return system was that it returned you to the nearest graveyard and not the exact same location, which was always nice when you got too deep into a cave or were being camped by someone in wpvp.

all of this was trashed in 8.1.5 when they gutted all of this functionality in exchange for returning you to the exact spot you ported from. a change nobody asked for and one that was neither announced or documented (bad dev behavior in any industry)

not only did we lose our ability to travel like deathknights, but they basically made it worse by killing the return memory storage, moving you to an exact spot instead of a graveyard, and not even porting you back inside a raid instance.

that last bit is important as well, because before they changed it, you could get a weapon drop while in a raid, port to acherus to put a rune on it, then port back to your raid inside the instance and go back to raiding. now you are put outside the raid, which may be harmless, unless of course you have warmode on, now you might be wasting your raids time with some graveyard runs to collect your corpse.

edit, also, the original original functionality at wrath launch let any dk use anyone else’s deathgate. the best use i remember for this was a botched raid on ironforge, where one of our dks got a gate open and the rest of us used it to escape.

2 Likes
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Thank you for the well-written info here, Inemia. I’m quoting this section specifically because - thanks to you - I will forever associate Paladins with CERN and he Large Hadron Collider (LHC) :smiley: