There’s a lot of negative feedback about it, has been for a while, I’m personally not playing DK right now because of it.
It feels slow on the gcd, visually covers ground effects, limits your movement, and creates an extra keybind that just doesn’t need to be there on frost, while simultaneously clashing with the theme and visuals of the spec.
I’d like to hear from someone, anyone, who actually enjoys pressing DnD as a frost DK at the start of the obliteration sequence.
Just for a little peace of mind so I don’t go insane asking why it still exists.
It’s probably the #1 complaint for dps dk right now. It’s very much disliked.
With how many aoe talents frost has these days it would be nothing to simply delete cleaving strikes and move the damage elsewhere. Or let d&d move with you. Or let remorseless winter trigger cleave. There’s many solutions but blizzard thinks death and death cleave is bees knees.
I mean for frost it doesn’t really fit visually. It’s just a red circle on the ground. It’s just not a fun ability to press.
If they insist on keeping cleaving strikes the least they could do is make dnd fun to press for frost. Imagine this:
“Death and decay now triggers an icy explosion at its location, dealing heavy damage and leaving a frost patch on the ground for the duration. Casting death and decay triggers killing machine.”
You get the idea. Id press that button with a smile all day long.
What really gets me is that the simple solutions would be to remove the cooldowns on dnd.
It would mean you could have 100% uptime on DND but you’re rewarded for positioning your dnd correctly because you won’t have to cast it as much. And if the tank moves out of your aoe (and everyone else’s) it means the group will do less damage.
The down side is the dnd slow. This would certainly have issues in pvp so I’d say you’d have to make no cooldown dnd a choice node with dnd slow.
I wish it was off the GCD and maybe had 2 charges baseline but it sure does feel strong in PvP when you cleave a whole team. I don’t mind it in PvE the 4 secs helps a lot.
It created weird design along with visual and gameplay pain points exactly like this one, that’s why they prioritized spec identity in Legion, one of the most legendarily good expansions for class design.
They brought stuff like this back in Shadowlands to tie retail in with classic, contributing to one of the most universally disliked expansions full of button bloat and weird spec design.
Sounds way cooler than what we have now but really I think covering the ground and cleaving strikes are the main gameplay problems
Taking it off the gcd would feel way better, step in the right direction to not having to press it at all.
The vast majority of death knights hate the current iteration of death and decay for numerous reasons. Yes, making it more exciting and visually appealing would go a long way in making it more enjoyable. What is it about its current implementation that you like so much?
I actually don’t like it, but that’s mainly due to tank design which Blizzard agreed with and is attempting to tone them down. Tanks being self reliant impacts the gameplay of things at a major scale and that goes into a lot of the issues that DPS players have. The design of the majority of DPS specs are 5-8 mobs not a constant pull of mobs with hardly any downtime until you get into the higher levels of play.
While there isn’t much to tie the DK classes together, the things that do tie the specs into an actual class shouldnt be forsaken in favor of spec identity.
Cleaving Strikes impact has been reduced quite drastically. While it will help to use it, it’s definitely not as punishing.
That’s fair. And to be quite honest I do think the new cleaving strikes will play much nicer with the grace period.
I do like it as a flavor spell. Putting down a nasty “defiled” spot on the ground that should be avoided is pretty flavorful. It’s just a bit boring for frost, imo.
The problem with this is that you will be holding RW a lot to ensure you have it for your pillar window. It will also prioritize RW extensions a lot in M+ which is much easier for BOS users especially in lower gear values.
I think tying it to POF, even Obliteration is the quickest easiest fix. Don’t have to worry about the wasted gcd during your pillar window too.
Following you would work well but I feel like they would need to make dnd trigger KM during obliteration. Also would be nice if there was a glyph to remove the visual. Too much ground clutter for DK.
I would argue that remorseless winter can be adjusted so you don’t have too much downtime with cleave. Lower cooldown, multiple charges, etc. With damage tuned to make it not overpowered, over course. Just ideas. I think theres alot of ways they can go about it.
I wouldn’t want it tied to pillar. Theres simply too many things stacked into pillar windows at the moment. This is being remediated with the current changes in tww quite nicely i think though.
Not everything is going to be interesting in terms of gameplay. There are auto attack chains in GW2 that aren’t interesting and it’s something you don’t want to interrupt because the last hit in the 3 chain strike is worth it.
There are going to be things in WoW that are the same. Are DK diseases interesting? No. Hell are they even really useful like they used to be? Absolutely not. DnD was just put down DnD and let it go but there wasn’t all this other stuff going on. It was much more simple and more people enjoyed it.
Cleaving Strikes was a mistake from the very beginning and people on here advocated for it to be more punishing by making it hit more targets which means more damage lost due to bored tanks. It has other implications as well.
I guess my point is, I don’t understand why cleaving strikes has to exist at all for frost, when frost has been fine in the past without it, and it’s been pretty universally disliked since it was implemented.
Was really looking for someone to come in and tell me that they genuinely preferred this iteration of frost.
Kinda the same thing can just adjust the timing to make it work - if cleaving strikes must exist, I feel like it could be fun if it was just less cringe.
I actually enjoy the way they’ve iterated on DnD, interactive gameplay is good, it just has these glaring problems that have gone ignored for too long, issues that existed for unholy long before it was added to frost. Just doesn’t make sense to die on the hill of “class identity” when the ability is all but unrecognizable since its original iteration and has even completely removed for frost before - and it was better.
Regardless, my problem is not with the ability DnD, death knights need that, it’s core.
Cleaving strikes is not core, cleaving strikes is not class identity.
When you think of a death knight you might think “yes, that man is about to bring death and cause decay”
You would not think “yes, that man is going to draw a circle on the ground, stand in it, and then hit multiple people at the same time”
The issues aren’t with the DK or even cleaving strikes. It’s with tanks. The changes to tanks is an attempt to slow them down and you see many classes saying things like “good now maybe the rest of us can enjoy the game as well instead of feeling like we are being dragged through dungeons”.
That is the biggest issue with the playability of cleaving strikes. Many tanks just have no clue how to tank and increase the DPS of the group. Minimal movement, create death balls which DKs are great for with grip which is an offensive utility button so all enemies can be in the death all to get cleaved down with aoe and tanks are just bored. A tanks primary job is to soak damage, keep threat, and plays a role in making the DPS as effective as possible.
From leveling dungeons all the way until higher M+ levels people aren’t getting to play the game because tanks are 1 man army’s. That is the single biggest issue with any ground targeted spells or even casting.
Cleaving strikes should absolutely be removed completely. Its detrimental to Frost at the very least through balance alone and the increased target cap that happened in DF just made it that much more important.
Death and Decay was originally designed as an AoE with moderate threat attached to it. So, that might give you an idea of what it was originally intended to be used for. It was always used by unholy for added damage during Aoe rotations (min/max) cause the threat it generated wasn’t significant by itself. It was also used by tanks, the moderate threat combined with other threat generating abilities allowed for DK tanks to tank in every spec and got the most use from tanks. Just a bit Blizzard DK history.