Please remove core abilities for specs from the tops of trees.
Festering strike, frost strike, aimed shot, ect…
Make talents simply improve or change those abilities. That’s a wasted point IMO to have to “learn” that ability/spell again. It’s also not an exciting choice.
Remove GCD from some basic spells/skills (like some paladin spells, druid shape shifts, etc. At least for PVE putting an aura for PvP)
So far my biggest concerns as a Feral Druid are with the Feral-specific tree. Namely the tree doesn’t have a lot of horizontal play in it so there aren’t a ton of interesting decisions to be made here. Especially in the early parts of the tree where the restrictions on how many points you have to spend before moving on force you to take a lot of talents that I wouldn’t otherwise. This compounds itself with another problem which is that synergistic talents tended to end up on opposite sides of the tree. (Lunar Inspiration + Circle of Life and Death for example). This means that both a “bleed build” and a “bite build” want to get nearly all of both sides of the tree, making both builds look very similar and making it so that both builds will end up feeling incomplete and disappointed at max level as they’re forced to take too many talents in order to reach what they want. I worry in particular about some utility like Predatory Swiftness since I enjoy the play style that brings but it’s very difficult to pick that up without also grabbing a lot of very specific damage talents.
One talent I want to call out in particular is Infected Wounds. Infected Wounds is placed in prime real estate in the middle of the tree branching off into several sections. The problem is… Infected Wounds is not a great talent to pick up and is one of the first things I would have dropped given the opportunity. It’s not a great feeling to have talents that deep and that central feel like a tax rather than a capstone. The even larger problem is that Convoke, an obvious capstone talent, is gated off by something like four mediocre talents that I don’t want to take. Convoke on its own not buffed by Niya or the legendaries is not worth 4 talent points so I’d sooner pass it. On a similar topic, splitting up Berserk into multiple talents makes it similarly unappealing. Berserk is already a very low impact ability for a 3 minute cooldown so spending a talent point to only get half of it is not super attractive. With how competitive the tree ends up being I actually find myself skipping on both Berserk AND Convoke, meaning a build with no long CDs whatsoever. Initially I was okay with this but with some other classes offering cooldown reductions for party members this feels like it wasn’t exactly intended. Berserk as a whole ability is simply too low impact as a 3 min CD and splitting it up into multiple problems just makes the problem worse, especially since none of the Berserk options are Sickle of the Lion.
The last thing I’ll mention is that the early talent which increases the amount of energy that Tiger’s Fury grants is mathematically quite small per rank of that talent. Meaning that spending 3 talent points just to get Tiger’s Fury back to what it is now is an extremely hard sell. Most likely Ferals will just run with a significantly nerfed Tiger’s Fury compared to now.
I do like the Druid class tree though. I like how much of the utility is on the outsides and thus easy to drop or buyback as it’s needed. I didn’t have an issue picking up all my “must-haves” as Feral though Guardian and Resto look a little more constrained. I’m also noticing that Remove Corruption in particular is incredibly prohibitive for non-Resto Druids to pick up which is an odd choice since that’s currently a very nice piece of utility for all four Druid specs. I’m also surprised that Feral in particular is still the only Druid spec that can’t cast Rebirth in our preferred form and it also did not get added back into Predatory Swiftness, making Feral objectively the worst Druid spec to use Rebirth on.
Haven’t gotten there yet. I can try and do DK next though, after I do Assassination for Rogue.
Here are the ones I’ve done for Rogue so far - Sub Rogue - Outlaw - Assassination
Unholy DK needs major Changes or even a Rework
There are so many issues with Unholy going into Dragonflight, and none of those are adressed, while new ones are added. Please take another good and long look at Unholy DKs.
Some of these Issues:
Cooldown Desync.
With Convocation of the Dead gone, and with todays changes to Apoc and Unholy Strike, there is once again major Cooldown Desync for Unholy DKs.
You will likely have most of:
Dark Transformation(60s+cdr),Unholy Blight (45s), Apoc(90s+ cdr if talented), Army of the Dead(8min+cdr if talented), Gargoyle(180s), Unholy Strike(90s), Empower Rune Weapon (120s)
The best alignment i can find would be a 45s/90s/180s cycle, but the core CD that is DT does not fit.
All of the potential alignments are also destroyed by the CDR added to the Tree.
Army of the Damned desync Apoc from the potential 90s Cycle, while not being renough to reach the 45s cycle for DT/UB.
DTs cdr got even worse than before, now scaling with target count. This is a fun addition if viewed in a vacuum, but as it stands, DT will roughly hit a 37s CD when there are two targets, and around 49s if theres only one target. This fits nowhere.
Please remove CDR from Unholy, and align those CDs in some form.
Alternatively, make our Cooldowns stand alone. They profit so much from being stacked that desyncing them is simply not an option.
As a side note: I have a huge fear that Outlaw Rogues new Utility will feed even further into these issues. We’re already struggling with huge Desync and CDR issues. I don’t want to imagine what could happen if even more CDR is added, which isn’t even in our own control.
GCD Bloat:
All our Cooldowns are on the GCD, and some even require additonal setup, or specific followup.
This is seen as an issue by many, though some would argue.
Some of the potential openers for Dragonflight UH bascially look at a set of 15-20 GCDs, that will always be the same when starting a single target fight.
This issue was tackled in Shadowlands, but has not been successful. Even after the Beta, when many abilities were removed from the GCD, Unholy didn’t get a single Ability removed.
Some changes that could help:
Revert DT to pre Shadowlands and take it off of the GCD.
Revert Unholy Assault back to Unholy Frenzy, and take it off of the GDC
Remove the Wound cost of Apocalypse, along with it’s Rune refund.
Wounds and RNG in the Rotation:
Wounds do not feel impactful in Single Target, and with the new changes in Dragonflight, might make the rotation horrible to play.
We get random rune generation in infected claws and Infectious Wounds. We can reach the Wound cap in a single Festering Strike. A single Festering Strike can generate anywhere from 2 to 6 Wounds, so you never want to press it, while there are still wounds on the target.
The issue here is Apocalypse. You need atleast 4 wounds on the target. But how many are you gonna get this time? Will Sudden Doom procc, requiring 2 more wounds? You’re at 3 Wounds and Apoc is ready. Do you spend some wounds and FS again, to not waste wounds? Do you just press FS again and waste wounds? Do you pray to your ghoul and hope he proccs a Wound?
In a Class that is so reliant on setup and Cooldown Planing currently, this rng just doesn’t fit.
I think the issue stems from Infectious wounds, which can easily be adjusted. Just let it give 1 extra wound, and increase the chance with each point spent, instead of increasing the amount of wounds.
Petreliance and Disease Identity:
This might be little more controversial, but why is all the Design and Power for Unholy in Pet Gameplay?
There were major Issues in Shadowlands, especially on the most important bosses of the expansion.
There were huge pet issues on Denathrius, Sylvanas and the Jailer.
Please give us the option to go petless, or atleast rely less on our pets to do everything for us.
Allow us to lean more into the disease, which were a HUGE part of Unholy from WOTLK until WoD. They have been futher and further phased out since then, leaving nothing of our fun disease gameplay back then. Why not bring some of it back?
There are many suggestions to implement such a playstyle, which relies less on pets to do the damage. Please make them an option. Unholy has been hurt by that reliance all expansion, yet there is nothing to adress it.
Utility and Baselinekit:
Another major issue, but this is a point for all DK Speccs, not exclusively Unholy.
DK is getting left behind in Terms of Raid Utility.
The only thing wa have is our grip Utility, which isn’t even readily available for DPS DKs.
Abominations Limb requires major throughput sacrifices in the Talent Tree. It’s unlikely to be brought outside of Blood DKs . Gorefiends isn’t even available for a DPS DK.
A dps AMZ is barely worth the GCD after it’s nerfs in 9.1. I can’t count it as something DK brings to a group, while Rallying Cry and DH exist, which get a Raidbuff in addition.
A Battlerez is the last thing, but that is brought by enough other classes that it doesn’t really matter. It also still costs RP, with no option to remove that cost.
After the Dragonflight Changes, there are only 5 Melee Speccs left without a Raidbuff: Survival Hunter, Sub Rogue and all of the DK speccs.
Why would you ever bring a DK Dps over another Melee class, if DK isn’t majorly overtuned? I can’t see any reason aside from fights that require grips, and even there you are more likely to bring a Blood DK, which can bring Aboms AND Gorefiends Grasp, without sacrificing Survivability or throughput to a Degree that Frost or Unholy would have to give up in order to take one of those.
To add to these issues, DK’s Baseline got pruned to an, in my opinion, insane degree. While other classes gain some form of Mobility or Defensive, along with some of their rotational kit, DK gets nothing. Just comparing Hunter or Rogue Baseline Kits to DK is a look into two different worlds.
I think some, not all, of the following should be Baseline:
Iceborne Fortitude, Anti Magic Shell, Death Strike, Death’s Advance, Mind Freeze, along with Obliterate/Heart Strike/Scoruge Strike upon selection of a Specialization, replacing Rune Strike, similar to the implementation for Rogue.
I believe some of these thing might already be addressed, but I still chose to mention them, since DKs have gotten no specific communication that anything is being worken on.
I would also like to hightlight these two threads, for many things that could be introduced or changed in the talent trees:
I sincerely hope that another look into Unholy DK will be taken. The general sentiment I can see in the Unholy DK Community is pessimism going into the Dragonflight Alpha, which I hope will be adressed in some way.
With that I thank you for reading and hope you have a great day.
Love the feedback man, love to see it. Keep it up, even if you’re screaming into the void (which honestly it feels like we are 99.999999999999~% of the time) it need to be done. Appreciate you.
This is going to be a huge problem UNLESS they are actually planning to build dungeon mechanics around the idea that interrupts are optional. If they change their design philosophy with the intent that only one or two people in the group SHOULD have an interrupt, and every one else should be taking extra damage or movement, and that that will be sufficient to optimally run most dungeons, then it’s completely fine to have them on the talent tree. If they are going to continue to design encounters that force reliance on round-robin interrupts from everyone in the group, then every class needs a baseline interrupt since there’s no serious case where you wouldn’t take it, and it’s therefore not a choice and doesn’t feel good to take.
Unholy cdr on every cooldown needs to go away. It’s fine for something with a major impact like Army of the Dead.
But cdr for Dark Transformation and Apocalypse is just causing issues. Not to mention its probably a nightmare for PvP Unholy DKs.
Just put Apocalypse, DT and Unholy Blight all on the same cooldown and adjust their damage/durarion accordingly.
While some covenant abilities provide good game play options, I would really like it if the animations and names were changed for some of the abilities. Convoke and slappy hands are fine and makes sense, but some of the other abilities are not inline with the class fantasy and have undeathly animations. For ex: adaptive swarm, echoing reprimand, death charkam, etc. With Dragonflight focusing on “High Fantasy” it seems slightly awkward to have these death themed abilites from the shadowlands carry over without an animation/name change. In short: I don’t want to see druids doing shadow damage and rouges doing arcane damage.
Honestly, I am more than a little worried that with 5 months or less left before the release date you still haven’t gotten at least alpha talent builds in place for all the existing classes. These are huge changes that will require tons of testing and reworking. I can already see that some classes are just going to be a complete mess and you won’t have time to fix them until well into the expansion.
Regarding interrupts, I feel classes that already have interrupts on all specs such as DK and Hunter should keep their interrupt baseline.
Classes where interrupts are currently not available to some specs (mostly healers) like shown in the druid talents they could remain in talents to allow for healers to get them if they feel it’s worth sacrificing healing to get it.
That would be Druids, monks, and paladins.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!
HEED MY CALL!
/10char
Bring Back Bubble Discipline.
holds hammers out to the side, arched back screaming, while lightning dances in the background
It’s more than a little concerning. These things should have been in place a year ago, and iterated on several times over. They should be close to done at this point, not “not even started yet” lmao
Hunters are under powered and need a global 4000% damage buff.
If you want to bring Lightwell back as a H Priest option please for the love of the Light do not make it the end talent option. Have it branch off Cosmic Ripple or something. Having this meme talent as our end of the tree option is awful. There is no synergy between it and the talents leading up to it either. Make that Guardian Fae or something and rename it appropriately with the Light. Doing this will also at the minimum make PW:S relevant to the spec.
Evokers need an earth warden-y tank spec.
You guys like redemption arcs? Don’t let the black dragonflight down.
I just wanted to say Thanks You for listening.
This is a really welcome change. Thank you for taking the time to communicate that our feedback is at least being heard. I think for a lot of us, thats all we’ve really been asking for.