https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-death-knight-class-changes/490709/682
Thank you for listening Blizzard. Epidemic baseline was very welcomed, but removing DT would have removed a fun and interesting aspect of the spec. You’re doing a really great job with the UH changes, gotta give props where they are due.
this is nice but i still want my gargoyle back
I don’t disagree with you, but I personally don’t find Gargoyle to be the most exciting ability (especially on a 3 min CD). I probably would prefer it to be on the the 45 instead of the 50 row though, since I imagine it won’t get picked too much if it’s in the same row as Unholy Frenzy/Army of the Damned unless it’s tuned to be crazy high damage.
Garg should be baseline like what it was promised to be at blizzcon.
Epidemic shouldnt bebaseline so nightfae dont get to keep their defiled cheese AND have access to the aoe rp spender. They need a draw back and right now they dont
so what does this mean exactly? is DT going to be off the global? Is gargoyle a talent still? What about the apoc reduction?
It be cool to just have gargoyal baked into apoc maybe, but have it not as strong if they keep the cd reduction.
Okay cool, this is a great thing. All the other changes were great. That one was on the fence.
garg being a talent is terrible
dc reducing apoc’s cd is a feelsbad because it misaligns it with other cds even more
UP being a level 45 talent is good 
Epi being baseline is bad because nightfae get access to it AND defiled
I’d prefer baseline Epidemic over baseline Gargoyle any day, but it’s a bit subjective obviously. I personally never switch out of Epidemic because I find the spec feels like it’s missing something without it, so with these changes I feel like I basically gained back a talent row I never had before.
I get what you’re saying about Night Fae, but I think if you’re balancing specs around the possibility that they’ll have a specific covenant ability then that’s when they’re really becoming a problem. I’d rather improve the baseline spec (which I feel they did) and then nerf any clearly OP covenant abilities to bring them more in line.
Dude why do you think an ability that locks you into a haste build with systemic downtime is good? Garg is such a terrible ability to have baseline with the darbiter passive, and without the darbiter passive it’s a once every 3 minute passive damage source. I just don’t see the point.
I’m still not convinced that NF is opting out of an AoE runic spender for defile outside of single target, it actually just doesn’t make sense, when you could set up bigger burst windows without defile. You still get the DD buff regardless of defile, and I’m almost purely convinced entering a DD window with 100 runic power and Epi will have a higher yield in practical play than Defile will. If this is actually wrong, and Defiled Death’s Due has such a high damage load that it beats Epi in AoE when the two are a choice, then there’s a problem with Death’s Due and its tuning.
Epi’s strength is uncapped AoE. I don’t see where Defile can match that.
And also, the problem is with Night Fae and Death’s Due in the first place. Not only is it utterly and insanely dominant, it’s also thematically unfitting for a DK. I’d say the solution is to just gut Death’s Due, or its interaction with Defile.
i think the dev st forums just opened up for the public
Good change! now we need to get gargoyle back to baseline!
How about DT with no GCD & Garg back to baseline? i would be pretty happy with Unholy DK in that case.
I thought the DT change was kinda nice, thought it was positively recieved 
Guess not though. I’m still considering dk as a main in Shadowlands, but it just looks a little more GCD locked now which is unfortunate.
Unholy has about 30% free GCDs right now. It’s pretty far from GCD locked.
Combining the abilities reduced their utility and amount of available options. I personally don’t consider having more options & buttons to press a bad thing, but if you’re looking for something different from that then there is Frost, or other classes such as DH.
Depends on what the new build ends up being. I suspect it won’t be off the GCD, though.
God, one can only wish.
I honestly really hope they have other changes as well.
I personally would love to see Gargy back baseline, but without the runic power dump. Have it tied to apoc, and give the talent something new. Maybe make the talent have the runic power dump on it and something else. I dunno.
I also would love to see soul reaper baseline and something to replace it. Guess we will see. The upside of the most recent changes was the apoc coold down. That felt really cool to have it up so often
People forget that if they take DT off the GCD, they have to take all other similar abilities for all other classes of the GCD as well. Same for Summon Gargoyle. That’s why they are hesitant to do it, because it will cascade into other classes.
Just like when they did the “stat boost” cooldowns, the list kept growing and growing.
I’m not sure it’s so clear that allowing DT in particular would mean everything else would have to be brought with it. The pvp use case with pet kick is different from say, an ability like arcane power. DT is slightly more likely to be taken off than something like Gargoyle, for that reason, I believe. But overall, probably not.
I’d imagine that Beast Mastery Hunters would like to have a word with you about Beastial Wrath yes.
It’s also not the primary function of Dark Transformation, it’s a clever use of it. The primary component is making the pet temporarily stronger, which other classes have similar abilities to and would want off the GCD also, you know, fair being fair.
That’s why Blizzard is probably shying away from it. They don’t want players to return to the days of 1 shot macros.