Feedback: Rider of the Apocalypse Death Knight

Classes Death Knight
61

I… pretty much love everything here? There’s nothing here that’s going to make me pull my hair out because of added complexity, the theme is cool, riding in combat is just badass, summoning the horsemen is also neat.

For unholy though, we’ve got army of the dead, potentially two magus of the dead depending on talents, gargoyle, + your normal pet, and now the horsemen… that’s a lot? Maybe something to think about.

Nice to see that Death and Decay is being addressed, but I would also put my vote into turning into something that follows you, like unholy blight (or unholy blight outright replacing DnD? We don’t need both) as opposed to just making it so your casted DnD’s follow you. I think that’s the lazy way out of this issue, and frankly it’ll look a bit ridiculous unless you redo the animation.

Lastly, hoping to see some work done on the base DK specs in addition to these hero talents. Festering wounds may need to go, Frost needs some love, blood is okay but I feel it’s gotten a bit stale and frankly their animations and sounds are very unimpactful and not satisfying.

1 Like
62

My counter: DO NOT make me have to add buttons to my rotation so that I have to choose with horseman to summon. I’d rather it be random than add more buttons.

1 Like
64

Woo more tying the fantasy of the class to Nostalgia for a raid boss that like 1% of people did when it was first current…and aren’t actually Death Knights (Go look at the 4 Horseman Fight, none of them have actual Death Knight abilities lol)

The developers had to work really hard to make a Tree I would hate more than San’lyan but man they achieved it.

So for specific minor issues not involved with my hatred of the main theme of the tree itself and thus not really caring about the 4 abilities tied to making the horsemen more powerful.

Can we at least get a Glyph to remove the horse from Death’s Charge? I already dislike Divine Steed on Paladins and really don’t want it on my main.

If Unholy Blight is going to get a Cooldown Reduction in this tree…can we just make Outbreak and Unholy Blight a choice node?

2 Likes
65

So the blue post in the middle of the tree mentioning our cleave damage, is this also a not so subtle hint about a possible rework similar to what warriors got when theirs was announced?

I’ve swapped to a DH for S4 purely cos I’m so tired of DK playstyle purely being around a 3min burst window that makes us go brrrrr but then we cool down until army and gargoyle is ready again.

Please rework atleast the unholy tree, personal preference is all 3 spec and class tree gets a rework but we cannot always get what we want

66

Just delete Sanlayn from the game, and give this one to Bdk too, its pretty bland, but so is SL, and atleast this gets a pony

1 Like
67

Please allow us to choose or unlock different death charger models for On a Pale Horse and Death Charge.

4 Likes
69

Understandable, the most I’d want is for it to be a single button like Hpal’s seasons. But even then…eh… Def understandable.

70

I have to agree with what others have said here, I really think you should lean into the fantasy of mounted combat. You’ve laid the ground work already in Shadowlands, where the four horseman did mounted combat in an indoor instance, there’s no reason to not allow us to remain mounted in dungeons and raids, while reducing the mount speed to that of being unmounted.

Also, I agree with others, in doing this Hero Spec I think the Acherus Deathcharger needs an update, give it the appearance of the ones introduced in Legion. Someone mentioned a glyph to retain the legacy version, that’s a solid option.

5 Likes
71

This is an UH DK perspective, semi-hardcore Mythic Raider and M+ player for those that care.

Theme/Class Fantasy

This RULES. Actually 11/10. The idea of summoning the 4 horseman and having them turbo boost my opener and 3 min windows sounds fantastic. I’ve been asking for a pally horse for DK for at least 2 expansions now, so I’m in love with the way this is implemented and the choice nodes for the pale horse and Death Charge seem really versatile and cool. I can’t wait to see the horse models and effects for this and am extremely excited from a theme perspective.

Rotation/Gameplay

Its hard to predict exactly how this is going to feel without seeing how frequently horses spawn. A lot of this talent tree seems kinda RNG heavy for the exception of the guaranteed 4 on army. I would like to know how frequently these spawn and how they spawn. I have a lot of questions on how these talents are in practice.

  • Are the horses spawning on a rotation? Or is it completely random?
  • How frequently do the Horsemen cast AMS for “Horsemen’s Aid”? Does the amount of horsemen currently out scale the chance of it proccing?
  • Do points that buff DnD buff Morgraine’s DnD as well? How about Defile? How does that fit into this?

Ok, with questions out of the way, I would like to raise my concerns with this tree, as I really want it to succeed for UH.

Concerns

Mawsworn Menace - Why would you want to reduce the cooldown of Unholy Blight? Currently it’s a 45 second CD, so it lines up really well with DT + Apoc. Sure, Unholy Blight does not need to be synced, but it feels kinda lackluster to get CD reduction on an ability that is typically used in big packs when were popping those CDs. We would then be trying to shift and align it with 1:30s, which would feel kinda weird for me personally and adds to the little bit of jank we have with buttons like ERW that don’t really align with the others.

Nazgrim - It’s a good idea, and I always love more strength. But theres not a whole lot of gameplay here. It’s really just a stacking strength buff that will be more powerful in AOE vs ST. Kinda boring. Maybe he could also deal damage himself, since it seems like none of the horsemen’s themselves do dps.

Trollbane - I see the usefulness here; both in AOE and PVP. However… Given that DK struggles with bringing a required raid buff to raid, I think it would be cool if it increased the damage they take from my party/raid by like 1% or 3% or something. Sure it would be kinda RNG, but over the course of a raid boss or M+ encounter, it would still be pretty impactful and give raiding guilds a reason to bring us even if we’re under-tuned. I’m also concerned with Trollbane’s Icy Fury, which could feel VERY BAD if mobs are slowed by accident during Sanguine weeks or when the tank is trying to chain pull/pull larger groups and I still want to dps.

Death Charge - This, as I mentioned previously, is AWESOME. However I’m concerned that this might have a huge downside of not being able to cast abilities. Part of the beauty of DA is that its a movement ability that I can still cast spells in. I would like some confirmation that this is still going to be possible with death charge.

Festering Strike - Right now our biggest (Numerically) rune spender, and something that will increase our chances of proccing more horse bros, is Festering strike. But as it stands right now, Festering strike is a trash button to push. It does very little in ST because of how unviable wounds are right now, and is useless in AOE. I would’ve liked to see something either in this tree or TWW spec tree that makes this button a little stronger and more important to push. Maybe have a horseman burst wounds at 150% effectiveness or something so you have incentive to add wounds. Due to the RNG I don’t think this would force a particular build, since you would need that horse up for that to be effective. Without any changes to festering strike, we will most likely be spending runes primarily with scourge strike or clawing shadows, which is what were currently doing playstyle wise. It just feels bad to have one of our 4 core buttons be very bad and just press it for resource spending.

I would like to see something to increase chance to spawn a horse dude during our 45 second windows, as its become clear that its very healthy for us as a class to have some extra burst intermittently while we wait for our 3 minutes to come back up. Maybe the chance to spawn naturally is high enough to negate this, but just my thoughts on it.

Positives

I like that theres not additional button bloat. DK has quite a few CDs as it stands, even with our core rotation being very simple. Adding additional abilities would be rough, so thanks for that!

I LOVE the additional burst this will add to army. I know burst classes are controversial in the sense that many think its unhealthy to have a lot of dps front loaded, but personally I find it super fun. So the additional 4 horseman during 3 minute windows is going to be fantastic. Part of me is worried about the visibility of having army + garg + magus + DT + apoc + horses out, but it can’t be any worse than defile so its fine haha.

DEATH. CHARGER. DO NOT TAKE THIS AWAY FROM US.

Horseman’s aid is WILD??? just a free AMS??? So good. Plus having the choice to take pact of the apocalypse just in case the damage in a fight is physical is really nice and well thought out.

Im excited to see what kinds of adjustments you guys have cooked up with death and decay. I kept it out of my feedback here for the moment as I don’t know what that will look like in the future. (pls change defile visibility though, ive depleted enough ADs this season due to not seeing spiders under defile :sweat_smile: )

3 Likes
72

Continue this mechanical sht where the unholy has to sit his asss on the dnd. Develop note"blablabla" in short, let’s do sht.

73

i think this tree is fantastic. though i feel as if there needs to be something on deathbringer such as increased melee range(for the dk and group) to compete with the insanity that is deathcharge. uptime is a major issue that frost has, so we’ll likely be taking rider of the apocalypse in most situations purely for deathcharger and the other strong benefits of rider of the apocalypse.

74

So what’s the point of mounted combat outdoors, if dynamic flight is what everyone is going to be using lol?

Can we at least use them in delves since that is considered “world content”

1 Like
75

Would love a Mortal Strike effect on one of the Horsemen and please no more gameplay based around Death and Decay unless you make it an aura OR make a rotational ability proc it ie: Desecration back in WotLK

1 Like
76

To prevent the annoying gameplay as you mentioned, they just need to make “On a Paler Horse” be active both indoor and outdoor. Allow the DK to be mounted indoors as well, but at a reduced speed (at 110% of non-mounted speed).

3 Likes
77

The theme seems cool from a somewhat necromantic viewpoint (although we aren’t really raising the horseman), being able to attack on our steed is cool as hell and pbvioisly thematic, some ideas seem interesting, some seem unbelievably clunky like this chains of ice proc (why???) And you’ll likely be praying to rng to proc 1 specific horseman.

I dunno, just me, but I was hoping more for something that amped up the actual death knight and made them feel like a bringer of apocalypse instead of a slightly stronger torghast power… I’ll be interested to see how this gets iterated on

78

PvP concerns: Adding a proc based pet with AoE death n decay is going to be annoying unless it doesn’t break weak crowd control like polymorph. This makes setup kills RNG based, which isn’t fun.

Aesthetic concerns: On the left a left side I’d like to see a Lone Rider option. It disables the RNG component of the first talent and gives you an ability: X presence, where X corresponds on chosen rider like Mograine, giving his ability at all times with reduced effectivity. Apocalypse Now would be functioning as normal.

79

Yeah I mean flat str is boring, but I also don’t like the stacking %. Nazgrim should smash stuff or something, its his thing.

Relatively minor gripe at the end of the day.

3 Likes
80

Other than the damage increases that Frost will take advantage of seeming small, A lot of this hero talent tree looks amazing. Immunity to knock backs and slows while moving more quickly (on an instantly mounted mount) is a Ret paladins dream. I don’t know if we could possibly get some of that treatment, even without the horse animation would be great, we just want to move sometimes without a slow. I hear a lot, "DKs get grips, pallys gets range, the rest of the melee get instant mobility…ok Id like to trade in my Steed for this DK ability tacked on to Freedom and have it be unable to be dispelled and stolen if I cant borrow some of the other more useful instant mobility. DK has a stun immune button, and a charm/fear immune button. Ret CAN use some utility to provide a similar fuction, rarely due to long CDs on BoP/Divine shield and the forbearance they cause. By all means make Frost viable and Ill play that instead, or fix some of the glaring Ret design flaws in PVP.

81

I don’t mean to distract from hero tree itself too much but, first I admit I’m biased I hate breath of syndragosa play style.

We have a choice node here, feast of soul, that enchant rune spending abilities. Now if that affect breath, it’s going to be a problem, if it doesn’t, it’s a different problem. Either it’ll have to be nerfed because of that tree, or the choice node will be irrelevant because we don’t want to press rune spending abilities away from breath.

Personally I wish breath was reworked into something different. Maybe I am completely wrong here but I really feel breath play style isnt conducive to fun choices with the hero talents being presented

2 Likes
82

This tree is very disappointing, there isn’t really anything to write home about in terms of actual gameplay.

Aside mawsworn menace, maybe.

Maybe mograine death and decay also works on your abilities? That would be pretty cool. But still not enough to make this talent tree good.

1 Like