It’s like a bad joke. They tease a rework of 2 classes needing a serious update and they fix absolutely none of the things that were wrong with it. They just made it much worse.
It’s like watching someone fix a broken car by drawing doodles and putting stickers on it then calling it a day…
I’m surprised they just flat out removed Horn of Winter instead of reworking it into some sort of raid buff considering DK’s lack of utility in both PVP and PVE.
Like you said, it really is insulting that they didn’t prune or nerf any other displacement abilities for other classes yet they still want us to believe they care about making Death Grip feel powerful and unique…
The utility nerf feels backwards and yet Blizz seems to treat it like a buff. I don’t want DKs to only be there to grip something. Give us real utility. Death grip does not count.
Just give us a raid buff like we used to have when horn of winter was basically battle shout. I don’t mind both my warrior and dk bringing the same raid buff like how it used to be. 2 classes with battle shout (if we had the old horn of winter when it was a raid buff) is fine. I say that as someone who plays both classes.
Both warrior and DK need more utility. Nerfing DK utility and requiring death grip is not the solution, especially after progression ends and alts are brought to raid when there is no guarantee that one of the toons in the raid is a DK.
Unholy design needs to be ground down before it can be built up, the current gameplay loop is unsatisfying since it feels like you’re endlessly building up to nothing. In arena damage feels useless unless you are actively cleaving 2 or more people. Which in itself is difficult since Desecrate is more than easy enough to run out of. Wounds have enough generation to the point where it feels useless to pop them when you are already capped on resources. Relying on Diseases isn’t great either since it is pad damaged that holds no real weight. Thank you for taking the time to outline the major problems as well as proposes fixes. I hope they read this and highly consider giving the “rework” another go. Since right now it is more of a talent shuffle than an actual gameplay rework.
I propose that Abom Limb be moved to the Blood DK talent tree rather than removing it entirely. I acknowledge that this ability can completely trivialize raid mechanics, however this feels like an unnecessary punishment to M+ players - specifically tank players. Each tank spec brings something unique but Abom limb feels like it has become an iconic and synonomous part of playing Blood DK in M+.
Moving Abom limb to the Blood DK tree would mean that a raid group would have a maximum of two players with the ability and so any add-management mechanics could not be simplified with a large number of DPS DK’s.
I enjoy playing both M+ and raid, but removing Abom Limb from Blood Death Knight feels like removing a core part of the spec. Please reconsider this change.
that just makes the issue worse, you’re proposing to widen the gap even further between dps and blood dk. the solution has always been to replace abom limb with gorfiends in the dk tree and take it out of the blood tree but they don’t listen to feedback so 
Dear god, please do not make Apocalypse replace Dark Transformation. That’s the worst possible choice of combining cooldowns. Ideally, stop trying to fix the part of Unholy that doesn’t need fixed. Focus on rebuilding it without Festering Strike/Wounds as a core component of the spec. They’re the most egregious outliers as far as enjoyment of the spec goes, and it’s not close.
If you want to give DKs a raid buff, just bring back Horn of Winter and either make it like Battle Shout again, or figure out a buff that’s useful for it to bring. Death Grip isn’t raid utility, it’s barely utility at all when Blizzard forgets that they’re supposed to design fights with it in mind in a years time anyways.
Genuinely, we need the DK dev to have a sit down with some of the voice of the community. This isn’t addressing DK issues nor is it resolving raid issues.
A lot of these feel so lazy.
I wanna add my voice to this. It really seems like the devs are missing the mark when it comes to listening to player feedback.
Throwing my support in for everything Taeznak said, especially about the raid buff. Its a major slap in the face to say that Death Grip is our raid buff when there are so many other tools for displacing mobs, all of which come pretty close to what Death Grip can do. Stop beating around the bush, stop gaslighting us, stop telling us we are wrong for wanting this. We have been saying this for years and we will keep saying it till it happens, you will not stop us from asking for this blizzard, its up to you how much pain to go through before finally caving because we won’t cave. Same thing goes for Wounds on Unholy.
Taez is the absolute voice of the DK community.
Everything he has said is yelled to him every day by a very passionate community of DKs on the achereus discord.
I agree completely that the very foundations of UDK’s core design and rotations are fundamentally flawed and in dire need of a true, honest looking into.
Wounds just dont work.
They have so much baggage and bulk baked into them,they still behave like rogue combo points, festering strike has never been fun to press but is mandatory because every other generation is completely random.
what’s crazy to me is the amount of time and effort spent trying to prop up wounds as a mechanic
it feels like half of our tree is there to make wounds feel less terrible.
but that’s precisely the problem. wounds is fundamentally flawed just like prewod combo points were.
there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make wounds engaging, and the last 9 years of wound iterations is the most clear evidence to attest to that.
A very nice write up.
To add my personal takes as feedback to Blizzard:
Desecrate:
What is the purpose here? Is this intended to be a button you push when the tank and/or mechanics move targets out of DnD? Or is it intended to be a drop and immediately detonate?
Just reading the description it looks like the best option is to detonate instantly, to get the 150% modifier on all the damage. Of course that assumes the “Grants you the benefits of standing in Death and Decay” is for the same duration as you would have in a full DnD. If that is the case, why is it two buttons? Aren’t we trying to reduce wasted extra buttons? If this is a burst option to address movement, why not just have it be a single button? If not, when do you see the detonation happening. Because you can’t really balance this. Depending on how long the ‘effect of DnD’ persists there will always be an ideal time to press it, and tank/environmental/mechanics/etc. will always cause a dps loss. And worse will require non-intuitive theory crafting to find the exact best time to press it, that most player wont know AND will require mod timers to track.
And that is before we even touch on its damage balance against defile.
Legion of Souls:
Again, what is the purpose here? This effectively creates a THREE WAY choice node(that just happens to cost 2 points). What role is Legion of Souls supposed to fill? What role is Abom? What role is Army? Best case scenario of balancing is one is the best single target and one is the best AE. And that means the 3rd might as well not even exist, other than as a trap for players not up to date on theory crafting. Worst case, we don’t take any (subtlety looks at our current M+ spec). There is no good solution to this 3 way choice.
And, on Legion of Souls, why is this not the DnD replacement option? Honestly, this skill basically reads like DnD. Shadow damage to all enemies in a radius over time. This is really just a DnD that follows the player. Reduce its CD to the same as DnD, add the DnD benefits to the spell, and make it the choice node with defile instead of Desecrate. IF you then also want to let players detonate as a burst option you can. But it can be balanced around just being a DnD replacement that follows the player. Balance its damage so defile is slightly more damage at the cost of mobility and you would have an actual choice.
Then you can do what you always should with Army and Abom and make it a choice node instead of requiring 1 point for Army and then another point to replace it.
Which of course leads to the whole Dark Transformation:
Why are we doing this again? Why are we required to pick up one talent to then replace it with a second talent?
I can see the argument for making it one button. I don’t believe that is needed. But, if you feel it needs to happen just make it a single talent. If you want to just remove the Dark Transformation and let Apocalypse just be its thing, just do that. If you want players to choose between them, just make it a choice node. There is no reason to have a 2nd talent replace another one that is also taken.
IF you want to reduce an extra button in the ramp up, merging Unholy Assault with Apocalypse would be a FAR better option. And again, as a single talent.
I swear there’s a monkey’s paw in charge of unholy at this point.
Players: dnd cleave sucks, can we have it as a mobile aura?
Devs: sure thing, here is it is on morgraine but not for you the player.
Give us necrotic plague back!
Here it is… on whitemaine!
Give us grip parity and a raid buff!
We have removed abom limb and gave you… a personal haste buff! Your normal grips are super special now and we’ll triple down on having exactly 1 encounter where you’ll need to grip adds, well, except if you bring ROP, typhoon, thunderstorm, sigil…
Bonus round: why do we need to take both army of the dead and then an additional talent for a better version?
We hear you and have baked absolute zero into frostwyrm’s fury!
Or hear me out, we just let all DKs have access to Abom limb or Gorefiend.
Btw, take my like Taez. You clearly have not gotten enough of them.
Here are ideas on how to improve the rework:
Death Grip is unique in that it doesnt displace the player doing the displacement. People bring up other abilities but those abilities largely force the player to get into a position they might not even want to be in. Like Thunderstorm, this requires the shaman to be in a position to knock away. While it technically does the same thing, you arent going to bring a shaman for Thunderstorm when you can bring a DK and do everything much easier. The same with Typhoon. While technically can achieve the same thing, you wouldnt bring a druid when you just bring a DK since what they can do is achieved much easier.
The “combine Apoc and DT” has been player feedback for a while.
So should they listen to the players or should they not? Because 1 instance you are saying the players are right, the other instance you are saying the players are wrong.
I do not put a lot of stock into what the playerbase wants especially when they end up complaining about their own suggestions when they are implemented. Or they complain about a consequence elsewhere when their proposed change gets implemented. The playerbase largely cannot take criticism of their suggestions, especially when their suggestions have been explained why they are bad or that it doesnt achieve the thing that they want it to achieve. People have been saying for years why combining Apoc and DT is a bad thing yet they continue to ask for it.
So when exactly should Blizzard listen to the playerbase. It seems like the only thing that the playerbase overall wants is the removal of wounds.
Agreed. I loved unholy up until the Legion rework. Every now and then I try to get back into it, but zit popping is just not fun.
Jumping in here to say I have not loved unholy DK since pre WoD and it is my oldest played class. We used to work to stack diseases in order to hit hard with scourge strike. As a whole, we provided buffs with horn of winter, abominations might, unholy frenzy (the DK PI), ebon plague bringer, and improved icy touch. The gargoyle was awesome and impactful as a CD, as well as army of the dead.
Now we are rogues pre WoD building combo points without a big finisher, and lose them when the target dies, provide NO RAID BUFFS, and you must chose between diseases or minions but not both. Largely San layn makes you spam one button and ignore all of what the class is even designed for and its ALL because of the wounds design.
#nowounds