Feedback: Death Knights

In Development The War Within Beta Test
208

Wanted to comment on cleaving strikes.

The community is clearly against it. I also think it is an outdated mechanic. If you look at pretty much all melee dps, all of them have an aoe ability they can spend with a short CD. I think that is the root cause of frustration for dk aoe.

What aoe spender do we have? Unholy has aoe RP with epidemic, frost has (imo a very underwhelming) aoe rp spender with glacial advance. But we don’t have a rune spender, which then causes us to have cleaving strikes required. This issue is even greater for frost due to all the power behind obliterate.

Warriors have whirlwind or cleave. Both on short cds. Paladins have divine storm, DH have blade dance, rogues have aoe combo point spenders as well (unless outlaw, which is just aoe regardless). I could go on, but I think you get the point.

The other issue, is the fact we have more power tied into the way DKs cleave. We are using single target abilities to hit multiple enemies. For Unholy, this provides mass aoe with exploding wounds, while for frost it causes insane cleave with obliteration. (Frost specifically already has too much power into obliterate in general). On top of this, we also have dnd causing other buffs like extra haste. No one likes cleaving strikes. Even with the 4 sec buff it still feels bad to play and causing too many issues (looking at your obliterate builds)

Can we please just have dedicated aoe spenders that costs runes? This would allow for better tuning overall for all the specs.
Even blood imo should have a new rune spender for aoe. But maybe that is just by opinion.

In cleaving strikes place, you could instead have a choice node with defile, or maybe (Heartstrike, Scourge Strike, Obliterate) automatically proc dnd at the targets location with a cd baked in.

Then add the RUNE spending aoe abilities that I am sure can easily be cooked up and you’re set.

For blood specifically, if they don’t want to make a new aoe rune spender, just make cleaving strikes baseline for blood.

12 Likes
209

The changes to the Blood tree are nice, but some of the San’layn changes have me scratching my head. Visceral Regeneration was overtuned, but Visceral Strength is just a copy & paste of Perseverance of of the Ebon Blade. Further, it revolves around use of DnD for a buff, but we already have a DnD buff in the San’layn tree with Blood Soaked Ground. In total, we now have 6 buffs tied to DnD: Blood Soak Ground & Visceral Strength in Sanlayn, Perseverance of the Ebon Blade & Sanguine Ground in the Blood tree, and Cleaving Strikes & Unholy Ground in the general tree.

Circling back to Visceral Regeneration for a moment, the change still misses the issue - we pop a defensive CD to acquire Gift of San’layn and then proceed to spam Vampiric Strike. In my opinion, this is not engaging gameplay and will be a balance headache for the expansion. I see the problem as arising from Gift of San’layn and Vampiric Strike being linked.

My feedback would still be to: (i) buff the proc chance of Vampiric Strike outside of Gift of San’layn; (ii) Gift of San’layn no longer replaces Heartstrike with Vampiric Strike for the duration; (iii) turn Gift of San’layn into an active ability that grants a cool buff with a duration based off the stacks of Essence of the Blood Queen; and (iv) have a trait where Vampiric Blood or Dancing Rune Weapon increases the proc chance for Vampiric Strike for the duration. I believe this setup would be easier to tune than the current iteration and further wouldn’t completely disrupt the rotation.

To elaborate on “cool buff” above (so technical, I know), it could be a strong, albeit temporary, buff to haste, leach, movement/attack speed, etc. I just wouldn’t have it buff Vampiric Strike further. Alternatively, you could go in the opposite direction and instead make Gift of San’layn into a damage ability, where you “gift” your curse to one or more targets (i.e., a nasty DOT/debuff). Regardless, not to belabor the point, but please reconsider the link between Gift and Vampiric Strike.

3 Likes
210

I love all your points, Blizz, please look it over!

3 Likes
211

The most recent Blood tree changes dont really feel like they met the goal of making it feel less like we are locked in to. There does seem to be a little more freedom then before, but so much is still locked in no matter what. It feels like there is no way to get all the stuff you need and the stuff you want because there is too much stuff you need.
Having Rapid Decomposition and Coagulopathy locked behind two talents that do functionally nothing (Perseverance of the Ebon Blade and Relish in blood) feels terrible. Reduce the power of RD and put that strength into blood plague by default, make crimson scourge worth caring that it even exists, or move RD/Coag up the tree.
I would be very happy if Coag just stop being a thing. its not hard to maintain, but the duration is too short to where it constantly drops between pulls in m+ and any time you have to do anything that’s not hitting the boss in raid. You loss a big chunk of stuff because the game forced you to. It feels bad. Increase the duration to 12 seconds, reduce the stack count and increase the power per stack, or just remove it completely.
Sanguine Ground should just be passive and not tied to D&D. Please stop making things tied to D&D. It feels bad and makes movement feel even worse.
Heartrend’s proc rate feels way to low for where its located
Please swap Purgatory and Bloodshot. Then make a connection from Red Thirst and Shattering Bone to them.
Leeching Strike and Blood Feast seem all but useless given where they are in the tree and what you have to give up to get them. Make them much more powerful to make the trade worth it, or move then to be more accessible and optional
Rune Tap should be baseline and generate the same runic power as heartstrike
2 talents buffing Dancing Rune Weapon isnt really a choice. They are required.
Mark for Blood needs to be looked at. Tombstone is too powerful to ever take MfB as it currently exists. I would solve this and the previous point like this: remove Insatiable Blade. Make DRW generate 5 bone shield charge by default. Move Everlasting Bond up to where IB was. Move Tombstone to where EB was. Add the DRW cdr per bone shield to the effet of tombstone. Change Mark for Blood to: Increases the damage of heart strike by 30% for 15 seconds. For the duration, Heart Strike will also cast a free Death Strike on all targets hit. Cap the total healing you can get to 1.5 death strikes if thats too powerful

1 Like
212

Really enjoyed reading this feedback. BIG ups with defile drowning out visual mechanics and you cant see things on the ground, this does not feel good whatsoever. would like to add itd be nice to see defile reworked a bit, changed to an aura (off gcd preferably) that does what it currently does but isnt so visually impairing and lets you move with it.

would also like to see something with popping wounds being able to lower cd on defile/dnd. maybe this replaces pestilence?

4 Likes
213

This is the first Frost change I don’t like or understand.

  • Obliteration is becoming an overloaded talent node. It triggers Killing Machines and refunds Runes and now makes Frost Strike consume more Runic Power.

  • The decision to use Glacial Advance or Frost Strike is muddied. Using GA in AoE and FS in ST is no longer simple. If I have 2 targets and 30 RP, I probably want to use GA, but what if I have 80 RP? It cannot be reduced to simple damage done either, as consuming more Runic Power will lead to more Runes through Runic Empowerment. This leads to more Obliterate casts, which bring their own knock-on effects.

  • Howling Blast will be pushed out of the rotation for Obliteration. Consuming Rime was already a lower priority for Obliteration builds. This is mainly because every other button available has additional effects. Obliterate also buffs Gathering Storm. Frost Strike gives Runes and maintains Icy Talons. Remorseless Winter is our strongest rotational button through all the talents that buff it. Meanwhile, HB with Rime is just there to fill gaps and stack Razorice. Most Obliteration builds don’t look to pick Icebreaker to buff it, so it falls down the list as one of our least potent buttons. Avalanche’s damage is nothing special, and with Arctic Assault, the Razorice stacking is no longer that special. Juicing our Frost Strikes will further encourage us to ignore Rime unless we have nothing else to press.

  • Cranking up Frost Strike damage inside Pillar of Frost feels counter to this statement from the patch notes:
    “We’ve also created a variety of new talents and added 2 new capstones that focus on your auto-attacks, which should help provide better-sustained damage outside of Pillar of Frost windows.”
    My very early TC indicates that without the bug causing every Frost Strike to be fully buffed, we wouldn’t see the needle a lot on damage in PoF vs out of PoF with this change. However, that is all down to tuning. When it comes to how I feel about Frost as a player, this feels like it’s pushing my damage back into Pillar of Frost.

If the goal is to reduce Runic Power waste in Obliteration builds, then Frost’s resources should be nerfed. Attacking the problem by consuming more resources does not work. It was done in 10.0.7, and those changes left the spec in a state where both builds continued to deal with resource flood. Murderous Efficiency accounts for up to 22% of Frost’s Rune generation, outpacing Runic Empowerment in some situations. This feels like a critical area contributing to Frost’s resource flood.

Nerfing resources would also make Breath of Sindragosa healthier and allow it to return to its original 16 RP/second cost. I put together some examples using SimC’s spell data overrides to illustrate:

SimC override input

override.spell_data=power.9067.cost_per_tick=160
override.spell_data=effect.306243.base_value=25

Average Breath of Sindragosa Duration
Current (fully raid buffed with Bloodlust) 32.1
Murderous Efficiency nerfed by 50% 30.7
16 RP/second BoS 43.3
Combined 41.0

41 seconds is at the high end of the desired 30-40 seconds, and keep in mind this is an average accounting for a longer BoS on pull followed by shorter ones. I think Frost players would enjoy a comfortable 30 seconds on every BoS, with a longer one pushing past 40 seconds when overlapping with Bloodlust and all resource cooldowns.

Crucially, reducing BoS’s cost would make it feel much smoother. Everyone I’ve talked to about BoS on beta mentions how quickly it reaches a frantic point where a single missed GCD will end it without a chance to recover.

How would this affect Obliteration? If we keep the latest change, it would be a medium nerf between 2-3%. However, reverting the latest changes reduces it to a 1-1.5% nerf. This difference would be easy to make up elsewhere with a different tuning knob if desired.

Of course, there are other ways resources could be reigned in for Frost. The above is just one potential avenue. I aim to convey that Frost needs fewer resources coming in, not more resources going out so that the rotation feels smoother.

16 Likes
214

Another odd interaction, this time while mounted and when using Wraith Walk.

https://imgur.com/a/vl5yhGN
2 Likes
215

I dont know what theyre thinking by overloading obliteration with even more effects… you could have added this to literally anything else, and it couldve been fine…

the whole purpose was to reduce our resources… now youve given obliteration even more ways to generate runes, through runic empowerment, meaning more resources overall.

Breath feels horrible to play right now at 18rp/sec. You mess up and it falls off immediately. Khazak brings up some very good points. Change the cost back to 16rp/sec…

I cant in good faith, continue playing this spec when all you do is buff obliteration from SL to TWW… im glad i will be tanking in tww…

5 Likes
216

Frost honestly just feels so divisive since developers started listening to the 2h big oblit crowd in SL beta/ DF beta. While I do get it listening to the bigger side of the spec player base, the spec quality has just gone so far down. Cleaving strikes surviving past nightfae was a huge mistake that we’ve paid for a year and a half. Obliterate was never supposed to be this big trucking machine that also hits OTHER targets. Thats what frostscythe was designed for. What I personally would have wanted was to buff FSc to 2 runes and call it a day but this current iteration is fun so we’ll take it (WOULD LOVE TO SEE FSc moved into a mandatory take and talents that modify it to be introduced)

This frost strike RP increase during SPECIFICALLY obliteration (obliteration/pillar do 90 things now) feels so half hearted and tone deaf.

  • Gut Murderous Efficiency (remove). Remove Frigid Exec AND Rage of the FC. Retune our base resources.
  • Make icecap a flat 15s reduction
  • Delete this entire auto attack + pillar capstone branch line.
  • In its place I would love to see either talents that modify rime/howling blast (echoing howl maybe…) or FSc to facilitate it as a ST nuke or more AoE perhaps.
  • or hear me out, replace it with Blood of the Enemy from BFA, move Coldheart and chillstreak down to the capstone as a choice node (probably bake in one chillstreak augment node) (retune cold heart so its always up for the last pillar global in a STATIC CD pillar icecap).
  • Fix soul reaper for frost. It feels disgusting to play as both breath AND oblit. Maybe 2 rune cost? Free during pillar if specced into oblit (but this just gives oblit yet another thing it does…)

The way the design is going right now it honestly might just be worth it to let the 2h oblit crowd keep frost(2h) and give the breath crowd a fire dk(dw) spec… not even kidding… The more you cater to the degeneracy that is current obliterate/icecap/obliteration the worse this spec becomes. This class was at its best when it was a BURST class with actual static Burst timings.


I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE WEAPON TYPE I LITERALLY BARELY TMOG MY CHARACTER, I JUST WANT A FUNCTIONING SPEC THAT IS DESIREABLE

P.S: GIVE DK A RAID BUFF

1 Like
217

I appreciate them trying (saying they’re trying…) to make harmful effects more readable, but yeah… Defile and DnD add so much visual bloat right now.

Anyways +1 to making them aura based

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218

Please stop baking more power into Pillar of Frost/Obliteration. This will only make damage outside of Pillar even worse, as stated by many others here. Power needs to be removed from Obliteration/Pillar or the two need to be separated again.

10 Likes
219

The way the design is going right now is that FDK will go from 60% of its damage in Pillar to 70%+. That’s not even a “2h oblit/big oblit” crowd request; that’s something even that subsection of Frost’s playerbase wants less of.

I really don’t understand what they’re trying to achieve - both with this change and a majority of the new talents. And from my M+ & Raid testing this weekend, I felt like I had too many buttons to press and too many things that “needed” to be used during the last GCD of Pillar for the huge damage amp.

Frost has quickly become a convoluted mess of a rotation and design and the people posting consistent feedback aren’t much help. They would rather make petitions about DND cleave and cry endlessly about it existing than about actual issues like the toxic Pillar-Icecap-Obliteration loop, 5/7 stack Icy Talons compounding the uptime requirement, Scythe/FWF/Cold Heart all fighting for the last GCD of Pillar, and Obliterate having a 3.34x (at the minimum) modifier with KM which suppresses its base damage and the damage outside of Pillar.

And all of the new changes have effectively made Rime something you just ignore in a majority of optimal gameplay. And I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that I, and most Frost DKs, don’t want their damage outside of Pillar to come purely from a free GA, a 2x damage Frost Strike, or some special auto attack effect. Obliterate, Frost Strike, and very much Howling Blast should just do reasonable damage baseline. If that means Shattered Blade has to be nerfed to 50% that’s fine. If that means Frostreaper has to be nerfed to 50% that’s fine.

But really I’m just tired at this point. I admire the people that’ll still take the time to give good feedback but unless they somehow reverse course hard with 5~ weeks left, I’ll just take the L on this one and play something else.

8 Likes
220

This 100%. At this point though, I am not sure there is enough time.

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221

I know we have disagreed in the past, and while I do overall agree with what blizzard changed. I do agree that there is too much “cooldown” in FDK. I Don’t want that either. I would rather change the scaling of pillar, cdr, extensions, and enduring strength rather than change the way oblit feels and functions. But as we have fundamental disagreements about the spec. but I do agree that pillar has too much power and it overrides the kit i just think the solution is to have less access to pillar via removing the things that make it available more frequently… and the weird scaling.

222

Coming back to simply say, as many have before me,
take damage out of frost cds and actually let our skills do damage. There is so much reliance on uptime with Pillar and more to the point it is actually insane that it has gotten this bad.

*Edit, can we also update our animations? It is sad we still have animations from over 10 years ago…

Can soul reaper be updated as well? This just doesn’t feel good to press in general.

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223

Soul reaper needs to interact with frost specific passives and also just fit into the rotation. It’d honestly work really well if it consumed rime to do more initial hit damage and be free.

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224

I always saw unholy as the fast hitting spec that didn’t hit hard, and would have a better fit with 1h weps. Whereas frost is the slow hard hitting spec that would synergize better with 2hs. But idk.

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225

Frost DK notes

So I reiterate, delete chill streak for sure, nobody needs or wants that. GA could also be deleted to free up the tree, the passive price of it through obliterate works fine and the aoe kit with frostacythe rework fills the gaps nicely

And I’ll echo a lot of other people; Pillar DMG amp sure, but scaling DMG through it should be removed. Let Pillar be the DMG high but don’t force the weird ability timing due to the increasing scaling through it. Make it a flat bonus.

Oh and DND, Mograine can carry his around, so should we. And let us tint our DND blue

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226

…I don’t play it because it is a crappy playstyle that no on plays because of this. That’s why Frost DK is the least played. It’s trash.

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227

They havent touched breath in expansions. Over 8 years… while literally everything else gets changed. Obliteration has had more attention on it for the past 2 expansions… they literally keep adding stuff to obliteration. Like if you dont play it, dont cry and complain about it when theres an entirely different playstyle built within the spec. Frost is essentially two different specs in one, with each wanting different things. And that other spec, not breath, has been catered to for the longest time. Sure it might not have been tuned high, but thats the tuning team to handle. And with them adding on effect after effect for obliterstion, its going to be hard to tune it for that reason.

It hasnt had anything done to it in the first place. The one change breath has had in the last 3 or 4 expansions, was reducing the rp cost to 18 instead of 16. So im glad theyre returning it back into an actual burst cd.

So instead of complaining about breath, which you think it the problem for some reason, despite it not getting any attention. complain about obliteration. Where they just keep piling ability after ability on top of it.

And im not saying they should change breath. It simply works. Ever since it was created, its always just worked. Cant say the same for obliteration, which gets changed every expansion, which leads to its own problem. Add more talents that buff breath, give us a option node to switch between long or short bursty breaths.

Happy that breath is bursty again and will rely less on having uptime. Sucks for obliteration, cuz your damage is gonna be dictated whether you can stay on the boss 100% of the time kek good luck with that