DK is dead

The ~15% nerf will kill it in pvp, better reroll right now

did some maths behind it:

Assuming a dk did 10 Million damage in an arena game which consists of:

  • 40% Necrotic Strike absorb (4.000.000)
  • 10% Abomination Damage (1.000.000)
  • 50% other attacks (5.000.000)

Then 50% of the DK’s total damage is affected by the nerfs.

Necrotic strike gets a nerf from 7% to 5%, meaning a 28.6% (rounded) reduction in damage (healing absorb).
This means that Necrotic strike damage (healing absorb) will go down from 4.000.000 to 2.856.000

Abomination gets a 51% reduction in damage, since it does both 30% less damage and has 30% less attack speed.

This means that Abominations damage would go down from 1.000.000 to 490.000 in the same period of time.

This means that DK’s new damage will be 8.346.000, which is 16.54% lower than the damage it used to have

Now, DKs damage will consist of

  • 2.856.000 Necrotic strike healing absorb
  • 490.000 Abomination damage
  • 5.000.000 other attacks

Assuming that every attack (besides healing absorb) gets buffed by 5%, the damage would change to

  • 2.856.000 Necrotic strike healing absorb
  • 514.500 Abomination damage (5% increase)
  • 5.250.000 other attacks (5% increase)

Which leaves us at a total of 8.620.500, which is a 13.8 % (rounded) damage reduction

(these numbers are generous because DK also loses burst potential and a few necrotic strikes per match since abomination applies less wounds with less attack speed, therefore the actual number would be closer to 14%, but I didn’t want too complicated)

10 Likes

what nerf?

ten characters

2 Likes

it’s not a nerf at all. frost and unholy are getting a flat 5% damage increase across the board, so necrotic strike should remain about the same. i have no idea about raise abomination, so i can’t say anything there. but it’s not a 15% nerf like OP claimed.

5% damage does not translate to the heal absorb of necrotic strike. the nature damage portion will be boosted sure, but that’s not why you use necrotic strike, you use it solely for the heal absorb. if you do the math, 7% to 5% is a ~29% nerf to the absorb function.

the abomb is getting a reduction in both damage and attack speed, which means it will also apply festering wound 30% slower, reducing our peak pressure significantly.

pvp is about more than just damage output.

14 Likes

i don’t do pvp so i can’t argue there. i haven’t bothered with it since burning crusade.

Yeah it’s a pretty big nerf to our effective damage while they buff the fluff.

That 5% aura buff is going into a 20-70% range of damage dampening when targeting players, while having a -8% on our overall damage still. One of the big reasons Unholy has bad numbers is these aura adjustments.

I’m hoping they code the aura as -3% instead of just multiplying the buff against the -8%.

We’ll see how it goes, but if they were going to buff the aura they should have brought it to neutral and looked at tool tip buffing single target abilities one at a time. That way they don’t go overboard buffing passive damage while performing meaningful changes to the spec that players have been asking for.

4 Likes

They why would you even post or argue with a guy who theorycrafted the post?

6 Likes

because the post is titled “DK is dead” and doesn’t specify pvp or pve or anything. even if they nerf it a little bit for pvp, it’s still not dead, it just changes things up a little bit.

3 Likes

time to be frost.

1 Like

I knew this would happen.
Unholy gets nerfed and everyone loses their minds and jumps ship.
I’m sticking with Unholy, it has the utility and quality self-healing to always remain a threat.
Keep adapting and stay hungry.

4 Likes

No one is losing their mind , some people just upset how they handle DKs “balance” in pve and pvp. I dont think they are wrong

2 Likes

Frost getting mad buffed. Which means they were in a HORRIBLE spot, and imagine if you lost to a frost DK before. You were immensely bad

Of course is dead. What part of “Death Knight” don’t you get?

10 Likes

Abom nerf was completely uncalled for, its very easy to avoid it completely. Necrotic is understandable with the aura buff.

4 Likes

Maybe fixing Risen Skulker so its not completely passive in Pvp might have been something to focus on as well.

1 Like

What’s that, undead OP?

Death knights are dead?

Golly gee!

Just wanted to point out how funny the title is considering the context.

6 Likes

They did the same thing to BM hunters within days of season 1. Basilisk is super avoidable and can be controlled but they still nerfed it. Gotta help the people who do nothing but stand there and let massive AI pets smack them.

2 Likes

What “aura,” buff?

but his post is talking about specific PVP talents. op also specifically mentions “healing absorb”, not damage.

like others have said, healing absorb is not affected by damage buffs, the absorb is based on max hp.