Feedback: Death Knight Hero Talents in The War Within

Classes Death Knight
183

I like a lot of what the tree is doing from an Unholy perspective, but I do have some concerns that I think will lead to the spec being less fun to play.

Blood-Soaked Ground adds more incentive for Unholy to play within Death and Decay in all content and that is already a frustrating part of the single target gameplay. Some kind of additional effect in the class tree somewhere that causes Death and Decay to move with you similar to how Unholy Blight functions would make the gameplay more palatable.

Infliction of Sorrow also seems like it will lead to gameplay that is really unfun in practice. I dont love the idea of pressing Outbreak more often in a rotation that is already tracking 3 resources, and feeling like you have to refresh your diseases before you consume them, only to reapply them just feels like a chore. I’ve come to terms with the spec being largely cooldown focused, but I don’t want the baseline rotation to become a hassle to perform while I wait for the next time it feels satisfying.

Originally I really didnt like the idea of a Sanlayn tree, but most of what is in this tree has turned me around on the idea. I think with a few changes these talents could be a really flavorful fun addition to the class.

1 Like
184

In the introduction post, they said in passing that they may tie it to Dancing Rune Weapon instead, but in so far as the preview, it is tied to Vampiric Blood.

2 Likes
185

But…but…blood DK???

186

This idea is partly coming from another player that I gave feedback on.

In terms of DND, can we have this be an aura? Or at least in the hero talent tree? instead of blood soaked ground, make it Vampiric aura, DND is changed to a bloody aura around the DK (along with the other benefits the talent would normally have).

This will fit the vampire theme, but also fix some glaring issues with dnd since we wouldn’t need to “stand” in dnd anymore, it also would help a ton for those who take defile to help actually see the ground around them.

2 Likes
187

The only problem with this is that each of the specs will want it to fix their own issues with DnD. Hence it becomes less associated with vampirism and hero talents, because not every hero spec would share the same talent producing this effect. To appease all the specs in regard to DnD, it would require this change to be a baseline re-work of the original concept of DK auras. Either way would be a good QoL fix, but it would be nice for it to just be a baseline change for all specs as opposed to vampiric specific.

188

I would totally be okay with that. If they ever do change our talents, it be nice to have it spec themed maybe? Or a glyph to to customize it.

189

Step 1 change every single thing that relies on standing in DND, either make DND move with you or change how things work

Frost cleave should be tied to RW, the specs as they are now need fixed before you worry about hero stuff down the road.

6 Likes
190

Drastically increase the proc chance of Vampiric Strike. 10% is insanely low. Even 15% is low which is why no one specs into Feasting Strikes.

And please no more haste buffs which yall got rid of in the first place. Make it straight damage or buff a specific rotational ability.

191

Long detailed post ahead.
I feel the current iteration of the San’layn tree promotes degenerate gameplay and exacerbates issues within both specs. If this tree continues with its current design I desperately hope the other two trees with be stronger so I don’t have to consider playing with it.
UH, and blood to a lesser extent, suffer from weak rotational damage and a reliance on cooldowns/Trinkets to do big damage… I don’t understand why this isn’t a tree that promotes a strong increase in rotational damage outside of CDs.

If I was to offer feedback on this tree I’d say to lean away from a haste buff and make talents that synergize with and remove pain points associated with death and decay.
Put down the pitchforks DK community and hear me out…

Vampiric strike: Instead of procing essence of the blood queen have Vampiric strike reduce the cooldown of death and by 1 seconds.

Blood-Soaked Ground: Add a component that Death and decay is now centered at the players feat and moves with them.
(Move with us like Remorseless Winter not like ravager, but as long as it moves quickly ravager gameplay would be fine.)

Frenzied Bloodthirst: Remove the Essence of the Blood Queen component.

Incite Terror: Rename it ‘Font of Blood’ and Rework the effect to extend the duration of Death and Decay.

Upper Choice Nodes: Both of these look like interesting and viable utility choices that I’m fine with.

Infliction of Sorrow: Rework this talent so Vampiric strike always causes diseases on the target to deal a single instance of damage and extend their duration by 3 seconds.
(having it deal damage based on remaining time will mean reapplying disease before every Vamp strike. No Ty.)

Visceral Regeneration: Replace with a passive that cause vamp strike to apply a disease that deals minor shadow damage. Rename the Talent to ‘Blood Tax’.

The Blood is Life: Most importantly this should not interact with UH mastery or talents that boost pet damage, otherwise it will scale poorly for blood or be too strong for UH or both. I would personally remove its AOE component and have it charge your current target before exploding for single target damage as this is significantly easier to balance and wont cause a significant swing in damage if it doesn’t proc during specific pack in M+ or add fazes in Raids.

Sanguine Scent/Pact of the San’layn: Remove Pact keep scent. (Potentially waiting to pop CDs till you see a blood beast or not getting a beast during the right part of the Gargoyle window sounds incredibly unfun.

Gift of the San’layn: Complete Rework. Have this talent increase the radius of death and decay by 5 yards and while death and decay is active you gain 10% speed and your auto attacks deal X% additional damage as shadow damage.
(The auto attack damage is meant to provide an increase to single target damage as my proposed changes drastically increase AOE damage with almost no boost to single target, and also vampires are quick and its thematic without causing gameplay issues.)

If it isn’t clear from what I outlined above the gameplay I am aiming for with these suggested changes is to aim for 100% uptime on a Death and Decay that will move with you, there by removing the pain point of being forced out of the area by mechanics and increasing its size to compensate for potentially not being able to get as many enemies within its areas as would be possible if it remained ground targeted.
The secondary goal of my suggestion was to remove an additional minor buff to track and almost all non deterministic damage from the tree. DK as a class has enough RNG and complexity in the base talents trees.
The trinary goal was to make it easy to balance. As this proposed tree has very little scaling and random damage it should be easy to buff or nerf as needed to accommodate the other 2 trees and the overall DK damage profile.
The quaternary goal was to synergize with the disease build for UH and dancing rune weapons ability to apply multiple diseases.
The quinary goal was to keep the Theme set out by the idea of a Vampire Knight completely intact without compromising on gameplay.

192

Something that I always say in order for these hero specs to be fully successful is the visual/flavor part. One really cool suggestion a friend mentioned is for San’layn’s, is an improved talent of Wratith Walk, could be to change the animation to that of Carrion Swarm of Mal’ganis of Hots (a swirling bat of clouds) and maybe make it heal you a little bit when it goes through enemies.

This makes sense from a mechanical point of view since they both basically make you an intangible entity with free movement but this one better reflects the flavor and theme of the spec.

Let me know of your thoughts!

3 Likes
193

Uh if you guys could just do a flat buff to frost damage that would be great. Frost strike and oblit both feel weak compared dto the numbers other classes are dishing out.

Ridiculous that ret got a 3% buff and we didn’t.

Also our current tier is remarkably boring and thoroughly unfulfilling. Nothing visually stimulating about it and sometimes it just fails because the mob it hits in the second bounce dies so the chain stops.

Make it more of a frost beam rather than a snowball.

1 Like
194

There’s a reason I’m full sending my Rogue. At least it feels satisfying to play, and the rework was generally good from a gameplay perspective.

3 Likes
195

After seeing some more of the talent trees - I want to bump this and add some feedback.

Although, I’m not fond of the Festermight design for the Frost/Fire Mastery stacks, Frostfire Hero talents have seem way more engaging than what was presented for San’Layn. (Disclaimer: I also don’t play a mage)

I do have to ask - what is the goal with the hero talent trees, because there seems to be quite a difference in them between the trees that have been presented so far. It genuinely feels like Frostfire is the peak of the design, while Oracle was a strong miss. San’Layn I would say falls in the middle of those two.

There is nothing engaging about this tree like seen in Frostfire. In fact, our rotation as Unholy is (imo) perhaps negatively affected by having a talent consume our diseases - even if we get some extra damage. But otherwise, Unholy will play mostly the same - where you may want to prioritize maximum stacks of Essence of the Blood Queen during CDs. Otherwise, the rest of it isn’t gameplay changing and simply does stuff passively that you don’t need to worry about. Or, if tuned poorly, you hold pressing Vampiric Strike to maximize uptime of Essence.

Just to hammer this point home again: I said it much earlier in this thread and so did many others. Doubling down on standing in Death and Decay is not fun for gameplay & modern WoW.

2 Likes
196

I think retuning Obliterate and Frost Strike (for Obliteration) to make Frost more of a double resource spec is a good idea.
In the #1 Volocross Obliteration log if you filter by KM there’s only 8 casts of Obliterate used outside of KM. And those deal at best half the damage KM Obliterates do, understandably so.
I think the # of casts should also be factored into your calculations, if you deincentivize blasting Obliterates even with full RP in favor of minding RP and pressing Frost Strike accordingly those # will have to change so the damage profile will also shift more than only with the % crit tuning and damage buffs to compensate for KM not being autocrit.
In the end your calculations only shifted the emphasis from Obliterate keeping the spam the same - it’s still 80 casts of Obliterate, 50 of Frost Strike and 60 Howling Blasts.

I don’t think just shifting the %'s a bit around like this is going to help a lot with Frost, it really needs a deep rework to figure out what Obliterate, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Remorseless Winter and maybe even Soul Reaper should be within the spec.
The questions in my opinion would be should Frost Strike be just a RP dump to not overcap or a competitive damage source to Obliterate? Should Obliterate be so dominant KM or not? Should Frost utilise RP differently, maybe tying Icecap to RP spenders instead of FS/Obliterate crits?
Frankly I think Frost is at the point where it’s a matter of taking runes, runic power, Obliterate, Frost Strike and Howling Blast and rethinking how exactly these should interact with each other. A much bigger and in-depth talent and mechanics overhaul compared to what’s mostly proposed.

3 Likes
197

Ain’t this about yo hero talents for Blood/ Unholy? So why even mention frost? Reading is fundamental

198

Thats rich with who this statement is coming from. Seriously, stop going around calling people morons and stupid and acting like people cant read when you are just projecting your failings onto others.

1 Like
199

Except he’s right… The entire point of this post is to discuss the Unholy Blood hero talents. Bringing up frost is pointless and potentially wastes dev time reading through it.

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200

It is pointless. I was probably the first one to say it in this thread.

But that toxic piece of work has been doing around just being a toxic piece of work, and if he would have actually read, which he said “reading is fundamental” he would have seen this was already addressed.

But you are also pretty toxic so I can see why you would have his back.

201

So you’re mad I made a valid point? You’re bringing up Frost on a post to discuss Unholy/ Blood hero talents. Why?

2 Likes
202

No… im not? Where are you getting this nonsense from?