DK TWW changes. The good, the bad, and the ugly

Classes Death Knight
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Here is my feedback for the updates to the class tree and UH tree. I’m a CE raider (usually in the 300s somewhere) and I usually wind up in the top 1% of dks in m+ by raider io score. I have been a DK main since cata and love the class. I am really hoping that this “first round” of changes is not also round, and that you listen to the feedback on these forums.

The Good

Class Tree:

Many two point talents have been converted to one point (icy talons, UH bond, veteran of third war, et al). Awesome – conceptually this is a great idea, and lowers the restrictions that have been put on our build variety. Do more of this!!!

Soul reaper is in a great place in the tree! Relatively easy to get when you want it, and easy to skip if you don’t.

Null Magic: this is a great talent – totally worth a point at the capstone level. My only concern is that there are MANY times where you would NOT want a debuff to have its time reduced on you (every single debuff that does something when it ends or healing absorbs that need to be healed off of you). We will need you to whitelist abilities like this to ensure that every DK isn’t wiping raids/killing themselves because of these shorter debuffs.

UH Tree:

CRD: No more CRD for abilities and no more wasting talent points just to have our spec’s cooldowns work together! This is an excellent change that will remove some of the unnecessary headache from playing UH.

Disease + wounds can be played together – I know there is a lot of distaste for wounds in general (I personally dislike them in ST, but enjoy them in AoE), but it is nice that ebon fever/bursting sores is no longer a choice node.

Vile contagion – 45 seconds probably makes this pickable. This talent probably would have seen some play in DF even at 1:30, but when you nerfed bursting sores to irrelevance, it never saw the light of day. Please don’t make the same tuning mistake in TWW!

The Bad

Class Tree:

Not only do we not have kick baseline (why again?), but we are not required to use 2 points on it (why?). Shorter kick should be the talent point that we may want to pick situationally. If you are set on us putting a point into kick, then you can solve a lot of the tension in this pathing by putting IBF at the top of the frost tree and moving both the mind freeze talents down one.

Move raise dead from the top of the class tree to some other location. This effectively robs UH of a talent point, as we have to go reselect raise dead again in the spec tree. UH is already handicapped by losing all value from control undead because we cannot have two pets for some reason (Hi, BM hunters!).

Osmosis – This is a bad talent. AMS is very powerful. The one niche scenario for this actually being useful is on a fight with pure physical damage (Sludgefist), where you can turn AMS into a healing amp for yourself. However, in such a scenario, you would never actually take buttons that increase the power of what is essentially otherwise a useless button.

UH Tree:

Pathing – there are a few weird pathing issues that should be cleaned up: Eternal agony should be swapped with reaping. Bursting sores should be swapped with Ebon Fever

Wasted point in tier 1: If we want access to the left, right, and middle sections of the tree, you have to put an additional point in the first tier of the tree than is necessary. This is caused by improved festering strike and runic mastery (redo this talent please) both costing two points. This two point cost is totally unnecessary. Super easy fix: reduce these both to one point.

The Ugly

Class Tree:

The pathing for the capstone areas needs to be totally redone, as in, we need an entirely new shape for the bottom part of the tree. The current shape just does not functionally work, especially if your plan is to have only three capstones. You really need to put MORE things in our 3rd level talents. We have a total of 11 options to choose from. Monk, by comparison, has 19. Please don’t neglect us!

You also keep putting terrible unnecessary 2 point talents to throttle us from getting to spells we actually would want to use, purely because we do not have anything else to choose from, and you have arbitrarily decided that we cannot access all 3 capstones. This is sort of ok now since blood draw is probably tied for the worst talent in the game right now, but we really need to get more items to choose from in the third tier. I do not want to waste points in subduing grasp (discussed below) to access the actually useful abom limb.

UH Tree:

Improved Death Coil: This needs to be a 1 point talent. The first point gives 88% of the value of the talent, while the 2nd point gives a measly 12%. This is poor design, and the fact that it is 2 points unnecessarily restricts pathing. If you want it to be 2 points, the 2nd point should give the functionality of Coil of devastation, and then something else should go where coil of devastation was (maybe a good spot for eternal agony, as it is also death-coil-buffing themed?).

Army/Abomination: Army and Abomination need to be on a choice node. It would be absurd to make us pay a point to get army, and then pay another point to have you take army away from us and give us a different CD.

Nuke it from Orbit (so bad they need to be deleted)

Class Tree:

Cleaving Strikes: Delete all need to ever stand in DND. No one wants this mechanic. It is unhealthy for the game and frustrating to play with. You have already shown you are willing to removes these terrible mechanics from other classes (ret pally’s consecration, rune of power, et al.) Why do you feel the need to shove this down our throat in particular? Just get rid of it!

Subduing Grasp – I am assuming that this actually requires that you actually pull the mob, rather than just cast death grip on it. This is how the original (terrible) version of the damage amp for the SL necrolord legendary worked, and this tool tip is using similar language. Almost every single mob that is threatening is not greppable, but even if it works on any attempt to grip/pull, it is still a terrible talent (a global for an 8% DR that takes a charge away from you potentially being able to grip something else OR hope for random RNG abomb limb grip would never be worth taking in any circumstance). Locking Abomination Limb behind this is a totally unnecessary throttling. This talent needs to be deleted and replaced with something else.

Compare this to the DH capstone talent Demon Muzzle (8% DR on everything hit by your sigils). This is a SINGLE point, and provides 8% DR in AOE. That talent infinitely better in its point cost, functional value, AND in the fact that it does not have to be taken in order to get something else that is often mandatory for certain content (abomb limb in our case).

Justification for a bad tree based on leveling experience: You have several times mentioned that part of the reason DKs have had to buy so many abilities back that would otherwise have been baseline on a regular class is because of the different DK leveling experience. Or, translated, you intentionally decided that it would be better to have a poorly functioning class tree than have slightly funky ability acquisition for the first few hours of playing DK. This thought needs to be completely deleted from any consideration whatsoever. Retail wow is an endgame focused game. Please have our talent tree reflect as much. People who want to have leveling be the primary gameplay experience can go play some version of classic.

Blood Draw - If I could permanently delete one talent from the game (and send it back to the abyss from whence it came), it would be blood draw. It is vomit inducingly bad. At least we don’t need to take it to get to actual talents anymore, but it is shameful that this talent ever existed. It will see a 0% pick rate in all scenarios. Please delete this piece of trash and keep the person who thought of it away from the DK class tree forever.

UH Tree

Defile Visual Effect Covers Mechanics - Please please please please give us a glyph that lets us make defile look like dnd or make defile EXCLUSIVELY appear below dungeon/raid mechanics. It is absurd that this is still in the game in in its current state. Imagine how quickly you would have deployed a hotfix if mage’s flame patch covered up ground mechanics. Please do not neglect this request that we have been making for years.

Ruptured Viscera - No no no no no no no. Effects that happen at the END of cooldowns are always bad. Remember when you tried this with the Shadowlands season 3 tier set for feral druids and walked it back because it was a terrible idea? Remember when you made the DK Venthyr legendary cause an explosion at the end of swarming mist and then no one ever played it? Remember how ruptured viscera was an azerite power and a talent for all of DF and no one every picked it? This needs to be deleted and replaced with something else or buffed to give some effect during the CD. We haven’t complained much about it because it was a choice node with something actually good, so we could essentially ignore it. It now sits in a high value position, connecting the center set of talents to deathrot. If you absolutely MUST include this talent that no one ever will pick by choice, please don’t put it somewhere else (maybe where all will serve is?).

Sorry for the essay and thanks for reading if you made it this far!

9 Likes
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Lot of stuff i agree with. A coulple I dont.

Soul reaper is a must take now that its in the middle of the tree. Its not really an option. You have to path through it, as it provides an execute for us for any content. And passing up on extra damage is a horrible idea when the other options are just mediocre utility.

Cleaving strike is fine with this new change. 14 sec dnd effect and being able to move around and still cleave while out of dnd is really big. Having effects with dnd last a couple seconds out of it is a great change.

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You don’t need to path through SR at all. We probably will most often end up taking it, but Grip of the dead and wraith walk both give you access to everything SR leads to, and you certainly don’t need to take the talents above SR. I can definitely see scenarios (fortified m+ namely) where you may not take SR in favor of other options, especially if they make more changes to the tree to give us other attractive utility options (please do this @blizzard)

I agree that the cleaving strikes change is a massive QoL improvement, but a turd is still a turd no matter how much make up you put on it

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You wont pick utility over damage… and soul reaper is still useful in m+ as its the only thing in that row that does provide damage, whether it be used on priority targets or simply for bosses regardless of tyrannical or fort. There is zero chance you pick dnd slow over SR…

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If the utility is good enough, you absolutely might take it over damage, especially when the damage is somewhat niche, like an ability with little to 0 value in aoe. For example, you would not take it on Primal Council in vault of the incarnates, and could take wraith walk instead as an extra movement ability. And the position it is in currently allows you to do so without denying you access to talents you would otherwise want

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Lmao… we have no utility that has insanely more value than an execute, especially in the tier SR is in… and regardless of aoe or st, its still the only thing that offers damage. Continuing this seems pointless. There is just no world where you wouldnt take soul reaper over utility. The only way thats gonna happen, is if that utility has much more value that its just broken, and that case wont ever happen to begin with.

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Raise Abomination is back… juicy.

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0% chance. You don’t drop free DPS talents for utility. If that actually worked in practice then Paladins - particularly Rets - would be the most overloaded class in the game with the amount of utility they could get by ignoring their DPS talents.

0% chance. Even on Council fights Soul Reaper has value.

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And then you proceed to continue arguing a wrong position lol. But that’s beside the point

I’m not suggesting that you should not take soul reaper in aoe. I’m saying that IF you were in a pure AoE scenario (for example on a council style boss) where soul reaper was not giving you as much value as another talent, you have the OPTION to forgo taking it if you want to, without being penalized because of talent tree pathing. Imagine if they make another sylv style fight where the boss never drops below 45%. For that situation, we don’t have to waste a talent point on SR

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You had me until mentioning Cleaving Strikes is fine.

This antiquated design does not fit with the current pace and design of encounters. You cannot tell me that having the majority of your AoE capabilities tied to an immovable area of the ground is fine.

Almost every other class just hits buttons to AoE whenever the situation demands for it (bar Spriest, yet they still do excellent AoE damage).

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When that aoe is comprised of a single button doing >50% of your damage in aoe, yes having to give miniscule thought of placing dnd is fine. If obliterate wasnt so overloaded, we wouldnt be in this situation.

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It’s literally “a majority” purely for Obliteration. Breath & variants of Unholy maybe push 15% on their overall damage through DND cleave It’s entirely an Obliteration problem at this point and DKs/Frost shouldn’t de redesigned to make a capstone work when 99% of that capstone’s problems come directly from how it’s designed in the first place.

Not every class needs to be designed the same way. And changing how Cleaving Strikes functions will entirely change how much damage Obliterate/SS or CS/HS do in some form, but specifically Obliterate.

Contrary to the popular belief on these forums, there needs to be some real constraint to allow Obliterate to cleave for 100% damage in its current form.

Kinda crazy that this needs to be said when things like Rain of Fire and Flamestrike exist. Like sure, let’s just let DK press a random button and then cleave for 10-15s “like other melee do”. Enjoy your 50% cleaved damage Clawing Shadows/Heart Strikes and 25% Obliterates.

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Total false equivalency and a negative IQ take. Flamestrike, earthquake, and rain of fire all have no cooldown, and do not activate their respective spec’s aoe. Imagine if flamestrike had a 30 second CD and mobs needed to stand in flame patch for mages to spread ignite. Imagine if earthquake was a 30 second cooldown and mobs needed to stay in it for chain lightning to hit them. Imagine if rain of fire was a 30 second cooldown and warlocks needed targets to stay in it for havoc to work. These would all be terrible design decisions. Your poorly thought out arguments for why cleaving strikes should stay in the game would be equally applicable to all of these. Tying so much of the aoe power of a class into a static ground mechanic with a moderate CD is a terrible idea, and needs to be deleted from modern wow.

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And your take on that talent is a bad take

Yeah, and for pvp in which this talent is so so good for, very great design from the devs actually deserve some applauds for once

mmmmmm subduing grasp <3

Unless you play the parts of the game where you fight real human beings, with an organ called a brain inside of their skulls that requires you to actually play the game in clever and crafty ways to succeed, rather than fighting brainless scripted robots that repeat the same action over and over again, only succeeding when players stop paying attention or when they are tuned to be obnoxiously stronger than players

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Whatever the numbers would end up being is one thing however if I can position myself better and can adjust on the fly as needs be I’d take that trade any day of the week. Oblit not cleaving is fine, our AoE being tied to 30second burst windows is fine, being stuck in a patch on the ground at the mercy of mechanics, pug tanks etc is not. DnD is still on the bloody GCD. Makes for a very static unfun experience that just should not come with playing a melee.

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DnD isnt small so tanks not moving mobs in a way for either the enemies to stay in it or for you to stay in it is a skill that has been lost somewhere between Wrath and DF. Its partially everyones fault, Dk’s not anticipating the movement of enemies (if you are always placing it and things are getting moved out of it, then your placement is probably 100% horrible) and tanks just thinking constantly moving towards the next boss is progress even though you are cutting DK aoe by 1/3 (Obliteration) by doing so.

Cleaving Strikes is probably the worst thing to ever happen to DK, more for the DPS specs. Unholy aoe is probably somewhat nerfed due to cleaving strikes + vile contagion. I would suspect wounds and even clawing/scourge strike is kept a little low because of this potential to the point Vile Contagion should be much higher in the spec.

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The bottom third of the class tree is absolute garbage. Those capstones are a joke and so very niche. Point requirements are nutty and it just makes no sense.

They said this was the first round of changes so we should expect more changes to come through. Hopefully they actually take into account player’s feedback.

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Great QoL change but Cleaving Strikes shouldnt be a thing in the first place. We shouldnt have to rely on a 30 sec CD static AoE on the GCD just to be able to do 14 secs of AoE damage. Its poor design plain and simple.

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I can play it well enough, I don’t find it fun. Ultimately that’s the reason I subscribe.

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When that aoe is comprised of a single button doing over 50% of your aoe damage, yes it is fine… if that wasnt the case and it was just some worthless attachment to our aoe, id agree with you guys about it. But its not. Having to give a little thought on dnd placement is a fine tax for having one strong ability that does everything for you.