All 3 specs have massive weaknesses that can be quickly and easily addressed with a few code lines changed in the game. These don’t address any core issues with the specs but would make them actually playable in competitive content. (Dk has the lowest representation in the MDI and AWC of all classes. Many competitive PVPers consider DK the worst class in PVP in the game right now.
Blood is about 30% behind the top tank in damage. I think the spec mostly plays fine. We still can get 1 shot at times in high m+, but blizzard has been ok with this forever so I don’t expect and changes. Need another +20% damage aura to be competitive.
Frost needs major buffs to everything except breath. They just do terrible damage outside of that window. Our single target last row talent (obliterate) loses in single target to breath. This is obviously stupid. Just buff obliterate. For pvp, we do negligible damage outside of chill streak. The spec just needs better tuning
UH needs to have the mastery nerf reverted. Bliz way overreacted to heroic week nathria parses because every uh dk was getting 3 PIs every kill. The mastery nerf completely killed out ability to aoe competitively (were close to worst in the game right now) and we’re not even close to the top of ST. Revert the nerf and the spec is fine, and would actually see play at upper levels. (Not even going to try and salvage UH pvp because it is simply SO bad. Lost cause this expansion. You could give us 30% more damage and we would still get wrecked by everyone.)
Would love more damage. As a blood DK tanks and Prot Pally tank I’m amazed at the difference between the two. Makes me sad because blood is my fav but in many ways, especially during the current week, Pally is just so much better.
I’m not sure a direct buff to obliterate is the best answer as that benefits dual wield breath as well.
A buff or change to the obliteration talent and…I forget the name but the talent in first row that adds frost damage to obliterate could probably do better for the 2h single target build and helps keep the talent tree healthy by making us feel less bad for not using breath.
Buffing frost strike also would be good. Breath doesn’t use FS during its burst because its a RP spender. Also as a spender, it feels really lackluster to press.
Frost strike is super lame too, outside of obliteration and breath frost feels like it does very little damage, it’s certainly very strange to have all of our damage tied to the last talent row and feel terrible pushing anything without them up.
I’ve had the idea for awhile that increasing the cooldown of things like pillar and breath and rolling damage back into the rotation while keeping the CDs powerful but…not used every pull might make it feel better to play.
I personally like having a 1min CD burst rotation (12seconds on, 45seconds rest)…2min is a bit long for me. I would agree the down part during no CDs could be lifted a bit, because it is really low atm.
Another option of course is new talents, either another row or to replace a talent with a new one like shattering strikes or something similar to add additional damage into the core abilities.
Shattering strikes: obliterate will consume all stacks of razorice to deal X damage per stack.
Guile of Gorefiend: Increases the critical damage bonus of Frost strike and Obliterate by 45% and increases duration of icebound fortitude by 6 seconds.
Tundra Stalker: Frost strike and Obliterate deal 15% more damage to targets affected by frost fever.
The second two talents are straight from Wrath so the numbers don’t have to be exactly this it’s just an example.
Why do people keep saying that Obliteration is a st talent? It isnt, its just a way to force KM procs which can be used on Obliterate (st) or Frostscythe (aoe) making it either or. Just because Frostscythe is weak doesnt mean that the talent is single target.
And the
thing. By how much? And BoS uses Obliterate as well and its also pretty high in line when it comes to damage makeup.
You also have to watch by how much you buff obliterate due to KM rank 2.
This talent doesnt add damage to Obliterate, Obliterate acts as a trigger for Inexorable Assault damage to be applied to the target directly. It doesnt do anything to Obliterate and is a completely different damage source.
its a talent that forces our hardest hitting ST ability to consistently crit. not really sure how it could be interpreted as anything other than a ST focused talent, even though it does have some implications in AoE
the spec is behind in all scenarios, ST and AoE. they need a buff. obliterate is a great place to start because it helps them in all. they dont need to be careful at all. the spec is bad at everything
If there is one word to describe for each spec would be… Fragmented.
Blood just doesn’t do enough damage as well as have unfavorable aspects for the pug environment. I’m sure there are Blood Dks out there rocking fine but it’s just not my cup of tea along with a lot of healers that need to track runic power to determine their sustainability. But at the same time, there are also healers that completely trust the Blood Dk’s ability to top themselves off… and then there are Kyrian Dwarf Prot Pallies that tanks an 18 NW without a healer on a Necrotic Week.
Frost is perhaps the most well suited word for the three and buffing Obliterate would make Frost Strike feel worse to spend. While Frost has Cold Heart and FWF as a major damage spike, an Arcane Mage can do better with Arcane Harmony. Icecap is a mess and Frostscythe fell from grace pretty hard from BfA with Icy Citadel’s departure. Frost Dk has a lot of dead talents… Especially the Lv 45 talent row where Gathering Storm exacerbates the problem with Rune vs RP value: it’s far too the left.
Unholy, while the spec is complete, doesn’t scale well and if wanted to be a complete summoner spec, rather than a healthy mix of rot with it I’d rather play a Demonolgy Warlock and while it also have ups and downs, the spec feels like whole AND scales very well thanks to Implosion and DeCon. I don’t think Unholy has anything like that other than Army of the Dead/Apocalypse. I want Rot damage back to Unholy and not completely reliant on minions as a main source of damage as it currently stands… AND MAKE GARY BASELINE FFS.
There’s also covenant power difference of Dks that seriously doesn’t help… and wtf are things like Hypothermic Presence and Sacrificial Pact which is basically old Death Pact but worse.
The class is due to a rework as it is a class that’s perhaps one of the most complex resource in the game where you have to keep track of two resources and Breath of Sindragosa is allowing you to do that simutaneously is one of the reasons why the ability is so powerful along with Conversion in WoD (Except Conversion didn’t replenish runes so that was a drawback).
Because KM works on more things than just Obliterate. It can be used on either Obliterate or Frostscythe which means its either or. Again, just because Frostscythe isnt that strong because a few different reasons, doesnt mean Obliteration as a talent is the single target talent. Each talent in the last row is either st or aoe.
The spec is behind what and by how much? According to the statistics in all percentiles its around 500dps behind which isnt that bad when you are talking 10k average for the top performer. Thats a 5% decrease roughly (5.34%) and thats what blizzard aims for and even at 90th percentile its only 6.31% behind. Thats around what blizzard aims for. Thats for the entirety of Sanctum and not a breakdown of every boss. But just a quick look at how Frost would perform in SoD then its right on track, its not like its 20% or something, its 5-6%.
I think the priority damage is behind for frost. The only reason we are doing so well in logs is because there is a lot of add cleave is SoD. Obliteration defs needs some love, its on par with bos for ST but no where near it for aoe/cleave.
Its either on par or it isnt, you guys cant have both where its behind BoS on ST and AOE when its the “single target option”.
The DK community doesnt even agree on what is wrong with the class which makes it hard for not only Blizzard but for anyone to actually have any meaningful conversation about the DK.
Here, just for proof of me saying the community isnt in agreement
and you said
So which is it? Is the spec trash or not? You guys get your ducks in order because you are now trying to argue against what is being shown in the raid right now. Its 5% behind the top performer in all percentiles and 6% in the 90th.
This same thing “there is cleave though” was spouted last raid tier as well, its just you guys dont like how frost is balanced, well too bad, its within blizzards goal for balance.
its trash compared to other dps specs. BoS is only competitive with other specs because its strong cleave damage…so there is a lot of pad on boss fights with adds… Frost priority damage is low. Obliterations doesn’t get much benefit from multi target so its just left behind.
Other specs have cleave as well. So it cant be trash if its only 6% behind with the top players. Not all specs can have everything, this idea that all things should be equal is a utopia that doesnt exist.
If you consider 6% behind as trash then you just arent going to be happy with anything.
again, the fact that something has implications for both ST and AoE doesn’t mean that its perfectly evenly a ST vs AoE ability. Obilterate is a ST focused talent choice with the way the game currently is. no debate about it.
Since you want to bring up average logs, frost is actually about 30% below top performers in boss damage, which is realistically the only stat that matters. for many raid tiers in a row now, add cleave has been totally unimportant. 13-15 DPS of any comp will Zerg down any set of adds that come up in a fight. this is what rak meant when he said:
and he is right on point.
I was talking about overall output and rak was talking about obliterate compared to BoS in single target. our opinions are totally consistent with each other.
you have no idea when you’re talking about, and are not even understanding what we are saying. This isn’t much of a surprise, since you have essentially 0 experience playing ur DK in SL and it looks like you didnt touch it in BFA. not sure where you’re getting these strong opinions from when you dont even play the class. stop wasting everyones time