DK Feels Outdated

Classes Death Knight
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Intro: I mained DK from Wotlk through to the middle of BFA where I switched to DH, and in DF I have primarily played Evoker, Warlock, Warrior, and Paladin. I’m leveling DK right now to get the current and upcoming 1800 elite sets and maybe make my new main next patch to get the leggo 2h axe.

I feel that DK needs a massive class redesign next expansion and I hope that the redesign gets us away from the Legion style of DK design. My main gripes are with Unholy. I and many others do not like the addition of Festering Wounds and feel that it adds nothing fun to the spec, and is instead an annoying thing to keep track of on top of dots, death coils, and other damage.

I would redesign Unholy as such: Festering Wounds are removed.
Festering Strike (new): increases the damage of your Virulent Plauge for the remainder of its duration by 10%, stacking up to 3 times. Only one target can get this debuff at a time.
Death and Decay (new): no longer gives Scourge Strike cleave. Deals more damage over time than the current version. This makes death and decay feel meaningful by itself.
Apocalypse (new): instantly causes your Virulent Plague on all targets to explode for 150% of their total damage - this is buffed by Festering Strikes debuff. Summons ghouls and regenerates runes like the current Apocalypse.

New talents:

Rapid Decay OR Pestilence in Proximity:
Rapid Decay makes it so Death and Decay causes Virulent Plauge to deal its damage 5x faster and last 5x shorter on all targets in Death and Decay. This could be designed so that you could get off more than one Virulent Plague in the duration of DnD.
Pestilence in Proximity: removes Death and Decay. When targets with your Virulent Plague stand within 5 yards of each other, they all take 20% more damage from Virulent Plague.

Shadow Cleave OR Mark of Gorefiend:
Shadow Cleave: your Festering Strike now applies its debuff to two additional nearby targets and you can now have the debuff on 3 targets at a time.
Mark of Gorefiend: your Festering Strike now instantly applies a debuff that makes the target take 60% more damage from Virulent Plague, but Virulent Plague can no longer be refreshed on the target.

I would also increase the base damage of Scourge Strike a little bit so it feels a bit more impactful. The reason I think this design works better than the current one is so you no longer have to worry about applying Festering Wounds before using Scourge Strike, no longer have to wait for Dark Transformation ghoul to apply AoE festering wounds before you death and decay into scourge strike, all the while trying not to go over Runic Power cap and spend Epidemic at the same time. Currently I feel UH DK has too many resources, often spams Scourge Strike in AoE situations even at the risk of going over runic cap, etc. This would also bring back the iconic design of plagues dealing the bulk of your damage and trying to buff those plagues.

The UH section is the part I thought out the most. As for Frost, I think they could experiment with doubling the RP cost of Frost Strike but making it hit much harder and regenerate more runes per hit. At the moment it feels like you’re constantly spamming these tiny Frost Strikes in between your Obliterates and Rime procs that don’t do much damage and cause finger fatigue. I think you could even have a talent that makes Frost Strike cost 100 runic power and deal a ton of damage, similar to Fury warrior’s Rampage.

For Blood DK, I’m not sure, but maybe bring it back to WoD class design where Bloodboil and Death Strike hit HARD. The main complaint I see from blood DK is they hit like a wet noodle, meanwhile Veng DH absolutely nukes everything with Spirit Bomb. Give Blood DK something hard hitting.

I would also replace Wraith Walk. The new version would be a talent that replaces Death’s Advance if you choose it, and blinks the DK 10 yards while removing all snare and slow effects. Does not break stuns or other CC, so it’s not as powerful as mages blink. Could have 2 charges on a 20 second CD.

Anyways, that is my idea for how to improve DK, mainly UH DK. I miss the days when UH was more about applying dots and then relaxing while their enemies rot over time instead of the Legion design where we are constantly popping Festering Wounds that do little damage anyways. I just don’t like or see the point of Festering Wounds.

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I agree, we have been playing almost the exact same way for 4 expansions now…we need to change.

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Festering Wounds in its current form is terrible. However I’d rather not remove it but make it a disease that increases its’ damage over time.
Virulent Plague should be buffed drastically.

And very importantly pet damage scaling from mastery should be removed so our abilities can deal actual damage.

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Wound has to go. It still take long time for unholy to ramp up. By the time that arena gate open up, you are running using army, dark trans, blight, two festering strike, apoc and monitor wound. dots, plague bringer and other buffs. It just take too long for us to start the damage when for ex: warrior can just simply press warbreaker and avatar for damage.

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with the wound gone, unholy doesnt need festering strike. virulent plague should apply dot and something similar to wound and scourge strike should be use to maintain that debuff, just by doing that it would save so much time to ramp up and gcd.

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Ngl, this sounds pretty trash and I’d 110% drop UHDK if this ever came to be.
FW now is miles better than before when you were forced to spread it around to even do anything. I like your idea of it buffing your DoT dmg but on a single target thats terrible. If anything, I’d make make Clawing Shadows baseline to feed into their melee/ranged niche while also giving them a dmg buff.
The problem with DnD isnt how “meaningless” it is to press rather that Defile obscures so much of the ground AND its an ability youre forced to stay in. Id much rather them give it the aura treatment and make it so you can move around, vastly improving its QoL in terms of mobility.
Another issue is their CD timings + the fact that they just hit like a wet noodle outside of them.
Before our new tier set dropping in 10.2 it was almost never worth using Apocalypse if they dont live the full duration but now that we summon a cleaving Magus, it will.
I personally think theyre heading in the right direction, theyre just taking their sweet time lol
Also, PLEASE give us Abomination in PvE T^T

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My literal reaction:
“Festering wounds feels bad” ok yeah I agree
“Remove cleave from death and decay” ok hold up no. Just no. It’s so fun hitting 8 targets are you crazy? Just make death and decay match the cooldown of blood dk. 30 seconds is too long when it’s our main source of aoe.

Edit: also changing deaths advance to be a blink like mage is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. No. Just no.

But I can agree Blood DK needs buffs (totally not topping dps charts in 80% of the dungeons I run, and topping healing charts in 100% of the dungeons :joy:)

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Blood needs new animations. Tombstone just makes a sound, Bone Shield is still the goofy bones going around you. I want cool looking stuff like Red Mist from SL.

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I hate the idea of buffing virulent plague and playing around it. If I have dots i just want to put them up and not think about em. Scourge strike empowering virulent is strong enough already.
A rework means more creative ideas can be had. Boo virulent plague.

I prefer that unholy lean more into the armored necromancer rather than the disease spreader. The new 10.2 tier bonus is a step in the right direction. Maybe every 10 death coils/epidemic summons an exploding ghoul or having an abomination talent would be neat. Summoning my own lich or a lich form would be cool too.

Ditch festering strike for a kill command type abilty that controls my minion. Death and decay empowers my minions gives them cleave. Idk :woman_shrugging:

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The last thing Unholy needs is to be a worse version of Demo lock/ BM hunter.

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Don’t kid yourself. It already is a worse version of Demo/BM. The fact that people in this thread are complaining about Fester Strike which is what is supposed to offset the difference of being a bad pet class makes the situation even worse.

If it’s going to be a pet class at least bring it up the level of the other pet classes.

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I didn’t think this post was gonna get so much attention. Having gotten my DK to 70 and having done some content on him, I think my main issue is really with having to place Death and Decay before getting to cleave Claw of Shadows or Obliterate. I think Remorseless Winter should do that for you, not Death and Decay, and remove Death and Decay from Frost like it was in Legion / BFA. I see a lot of people like AoE clawing and festering wounds, so maybe just make Death and Decay an Aura of Decay kinda like Remorseless Winter and keep the cleaving claw of shadows.

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or take gcd off from DnD. solves problem cause you can simple macro into festering strike.

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I love the idea of it being off GCD. additionally please fix defile colors.