DK Talent Tree Preview

This exists in Improved Death and Decay. Although I’ll miss Blue DnD and the strength buff.

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Am I the only one here thinking…really Blizzard? The 4th expansion in a row of Breath of Singdraosa?

sigh

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Good observation, I missed Improved Death and Decay. But yeah, the blue runic circle was REALLY cool and really fit with Frost’s fantasy, and the strength buff (also the Phearomones legendary!) were very cool

Hope there will be a glyph for it.

Hopefully.

Also RIP Rampant Transference.

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Rampant Transference is something that would be great to see returning, too. Will add that to my list

We’ve made some minor fixes to the blog post since it was first posted.

  • (Frost row 3) Killing Machine now correctly says, “Your auto attack critical strikes have a chance to make your next Obliterate critically strike.”
  • Might of Thassarian: Increases Strength chance by [2/4]%. Two Rank Talent.
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My brain is a potato using a phone, so I can’t get a look at the talents with the rows.

Is Unholy good?

yay, i’m too lazy to go through everything so i’m glad you’re saying that kek

When you play UH and see 90% of your kit up there it’s pretty nerve-wracking. Heck seeing all of my utility up there as ‘options’ in the DK tree now really makes me unhappy since I use ALL of them at different times. Why is Outbreak, a normal ability I have right right now, a choice? So the only new things I can see is Slappy Hands and the ability to stand in your DnD for more damage(the Night Fae ability) and we loose everything else? Horray…

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Will be posting a more comprehensive list of my thoughts later, but on first look I’m not sure whether I’m excited or bummed out. Feels like there’s going to be a lot of points spent just getting things back that should already exist. Ie: Chains, DS, mind freeze. I appreciate that some of these options are high on the tree but i think one can infer some really scary scenarios happening with making things like an interrupt a choice? Especially in pugs.
I hoped the generic class tree would feel more inspired. Kind of feel like I’m just going to get my stuff back there, maybe even just have less because of point distribution. Would prefer things like chains and death strike which are pretty iconic to dk moved baseline and instead rework the tree to have more unique or engaging class utility. Ie: Gorefiends. Or my personal wishlist item: Dark Simulacrum.

Unholy has some cool returning favorites but still feels like it’s missing the mark for me personally. More on that later. But tldr for the time being: i like more pet interactions and wound interactions, would like more disease/dot ones though. Feels like the part of unholy that’s backburnered on design for the last while.

Also bring back Necrotic Strike. Please.

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“Might of the Frozen Wastes: Wielding a two-handed weapon increases Obliterate damage by 30%, and causes your auto attack critical strikes to grant Killing Machine.”

Are they just straight up giving 2h frost guaranteed KM procs from Auto crits?

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something else that occurs to me is that a lot of the tree design and talent layout is based on creating a sense of progression and power gained while leveling. problem is most of us only spend 1-4 days leveling at the start of the expac and that’s it for the next few years. 99.9999% of our time is spent at end game, why is so much emphasis made on making leveling feel good?

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Because some people play for the leveling experience, and have little to no interest in end game content.

I’m not one of those players, but I think they are trying to create a system that works for everyone

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Didn’t read every comment here but it just looks like they’re taking things we already have and making them talents. I was hoping they’d make talent choices more meaningful and allow use to expand on different playstyles.

The more I look at it the more baffled I am. On what planet should Mind Freeze and Chains of Ice be talents. They really need to make a lot of these talents baseline.

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Looks like it.

It also looks possible to get both Obliteration/Icecap and BoS if you wanted to.

Looks like there are a lot of things you can do DW Icecap build with Whelps and what was known as Icy Citadel.

There is no getting around picking up Frost Strike, Obliterate, Howling Blast, Killing machine, Rime, Remorseless Winter and Unleashed Frenzy. The 2 optional looks to be Runic Command or Improved Frost Strike to get to Pillar of Frost, which is another one that you will want to get. Thats 9 points. The 20 is where the build starts to get fleshed out and then the last part is the finalization of it if you even want to go that far.

The real hurt comes in with the class tree from the looks of it. A lot of those are just baseline that they are making into talents so you have to pick and choose. At best you can go down 2 paths completely and that leave a lot of utility on the table.

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So this thins the current toolkit, adds nothing new, and we don’t even get capstone talents that are… new.

So basically its pruning with extra steps.

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Yeah pretty much, except with pruning everyone still had their interrupt. Sure is going to be fun going into dungeons with that one dps who didn’t take it.

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Yep. Warned people that its what Blizzard has been doing for expansions and its probably going to happen again. They are looking at what they can potentially get, instead of what they have to give up in order to potentially have that.

If you are frost and go get Empower Rune Weapon and Soul Reaper you lose out on a lot of that can be really helpful.

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I haven’t bothered trying to plot a tree but if I understand this right the pieces that made the icecap build are back and that might bring me back to dk.

Yes, Icy Citadel is back under a different name, and Frostwhelps are back as well under a different name.

How they are going to balance this whole thing though, I have absolutely no clue.