DKs in casual PVP - is /that/ bad?

I’m going to be real with you, death knights are garbage right now, however it won’t sting as much if you haven’t played it in past expansions and don’t have the expectation of being able to carry a game.

When you start to get close to full conquest gear it will feel better, especially as many players in random battlegrounds are just farming honor gear themselves, so you can wreck a lot of people through strait gear advantage, but this is also true with every class and spec.

You won’t be able to win key battles, contest key objectives, or do other match defining activities. We are less efficient at support than most other dps classes, and even though we have a decent number of CC options we don’t have the spike damage or pressure to get the job done during this CC like a mage or rogue can. We instead have to pray that other players take advantage of these openings, which is rare AF in casual settings. I regularly get frustrated locking down a healer only to have no one die or even get close.

Our AoE damage in large team fights is good for a melee class, but honestly lands around half the damage a boomkin or hunter of similar skill can deliver, you might see yourself on the damage rankings in an epic battleground, but you won’t be first even in a great game.

On the flip side, a good death grip is so impactful that to a certain extent we will always remain viable in a team vs team situation.

I used to carry battlegrounds, now I just pray that my team can carry me, as I can contribute very little to objective play.

I used to love seeing other death knights on my team, now I get worried that our team won’t be able to carry more than one of us.

On the flip side, I find it really easy to farm enemy death knights, so that’s a silver lining I guess?

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I just got some entry level gear, and playing in a casual setting, this is something that I’m really noticing.

I get to be a major annoyance in bgs with so many grips, interrupts, etc, but most of the time it’s really for nothing. Kind of sad, really, and with so many warriors with their MS is not like I’m even able to keep a steady flow of Death Strike healing, since I need to be engaged with them to heal.

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the “norm” for unholy AoE in epics is to have 2-3 times the damage of the next nearest boomkin. haven’t seen that since SL. one of the main culprits is the lack of a crit proc, BFA and SL both had some sort of crit proc every 45 seconds that let you stack mastery and burst with epidemic during the crit window. we don’t really have anything like that nor do our dots do any meaningful damage if we did.

a boomkin can press 1 button and pass us on the meters, its absolutely demoralizing to put everything you have into pushing damage output only to see other classes fly past you to the top of the meter without even breaking a sweat.

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Not that their aribtrary nerfing of our dots was exactly helpful in this matter. They weren’t great before the nerf. Now they’re a minor annoyance at best.

Seems to be the fate of DKs. We’re generally forced to play a different game from a lot of the other classes. The consistent undertuning (and quickness with which nerfs come when it turns out we aren’t undertuned) has forced a lot of us to get extremely good at our class.

DK dots were never this high portion of your damage or even great damage. They used to be a higher % than just single low single digit figures, but they werent pushing up at the level of strikes and pets. Necrotic, maybe, but they arent and werent effective damage.

Single target virulent plague is doing like 1.2-1.4% of your total damage.

Hm, so I suppose going for a disease centric build isn’t a very good option for UH? I wouldn’t really mind having to resort to the right side of the spec tree with pets.

i agree, VP needs a 1000% damage buff

A disease centric build still wouldnt have your diseases being the top damage. Even when I looked at people using superstrain the disease damage, while higher than not going for a disease build, just wasnt enough to write home about.

It doesnt mean that it wouldnt work since the disease stuff does make your diseases stronger, but that power has to come from somewhere so its more like a redistribution of damage than anything.

They are a set it and forget it damage type though so, I mean, try it out. If you find more success with it than what you were doing then thats a good thing. The only thing that can happen is you change your build which costs nothing anymore.

They were for frost DK actually. Everyone was sad that obliterate did nothing and top damage was frost fever lol

I just had a captain cook at pvp leader boards put of curiosity
Not good reading.
I know original post is about casual pvp…but gee
Ive put a fair bit of time into DK for nothing I feel
The struggle is real

No they werent unless you were literally doing nothing.

This is a PVP discussion, and yes, frost fever was no1 damage.

And if I was “literally doing nothing”, I would be doing zero damage. Literally.

I know

No it wasnt unless you just applied FF and ran around doing nothing else.

At no point in time was FF doing enough to overtake any active ability unless you just werent doing anything to allow it to happen.

About frost:

If it’s to do random BGs, it might be viable. Otherwise, it’s not worth it. I had a 1300 rating in solo (already struggling to get the minimum number of wins possible), but after two matches with 1 or 0 wins, I simply left the last one. I lost 200 rating, but I was very happy not to continue the suffering.

Before anyone says anything, with paladin and DH (my experience), you can easily reach at least 1800.

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Frost fever did tons of damage in dragonflight. There were many, many games where frost fever was first on my damage meter, especially vs caster heavy teams where melee uptime can be low.

Try playing the game some time and maybe you’ll finally realize how wrong most of your comments are.

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So you weren’t doing anything but letting FF tick… Exactly what I said.