Hi everyone, i’ve been thinking about how blizzard is going to make leveling up work in the Midnight expansion, and i think its possible that they’ll expand our exisiting hero talent trees by another 10 points, so i wanted to visualise how that could look for my favourite hero talent, Deathbringer!
Going into this i wanted to immediately try and fix some of the problems with Deathbringer.
- Exterminate: No longer has a 30% chance to reapply reaper’s mark, now, every 3rd consumption of Exterminate applies Reaper’s Mark to its target with the first scythe swing.
This was done to remove the massive rng varience that Deathbringer builds have, and while it can feel really great to reapply reaper’s mark multiple times in a row, its not really healthy for the hero talent since the reverse is also true and it feels really bad.
Unused Choice Nodes:
- Pact of the Deathbringer: While talented, Death Pact no longer absorbs your incoming healing.
Pact of the Deathbringer is heavily outclassed by Rune Carved Plates at all times. removing the collosal downside from this talent might help it be useful in situations like pvp, or where newer players who need the emergency healing could benefit from it.
- Expelling Shield: increased the cast speed reduction applied to enemies who hit Anti-Magic Shell to 50% up from 10%.
This choice node is currently not optional. everyone takes Death’s Messenger because Expelling Shield is so horrible that no-one ever takes it. at least like this, it becomes a much stronger anti-caster tool for pvp, though i don’t play pvp so even with a buff like this it could still be bad.
Reaper’s Onslaught:
- When you apply Reapers Mark, your Obliterate and Heart Strike deal 20% increased damage for 12 seconds.
Desyncing cooldowns isn’t great for most classes, instead, adding a flat increase to the damage of your abilities during the reaper’s mark window could serve as a more enticing option over Dark Talons.
New Talents (Level 81-90 and placed underneath Exterminate)
- Death Scythe (Keystone node): Requires and replaces Frostscythe/Consumption
2 Runes
A Devastating sweeping attack that strikes all enemies in front of you for (85.47% of Attack power) Shadowfrost damage. This attack always critically strikes and critical strikes with Death Scythe deal 4 times normal damage. Deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets. and heals you for 25% of that damage.
Causes your Frost Fever/Blood Plague damage to occur 30% more quickly for 6 sec.
Consuming Killing Machine or a Bone Shield Charge reduces the cooldown of Death Scythe by 1.0 sec.
- Brutal Swing(Top Left node): Death Scythe grants Reaper of Souls.
- Efficient Exterminator(Top Middle node): Death Scythe now also consumes Exterminate. Consuming Exterminate reduces the cooldown of Death Scythe by 5 seconds.
- Frostbitten Wounds(Top Right node): Frost Strike and Death Strike reduce the effectiveness of healing on the target by 25% for 10 seconds.
- Mass Execution (Centre Left node): Soul Reaper’s initial hit deals 200% increased damage to targets below 35% health. When soul reaper explodes, it deals damage to nearby enemies. Deals reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
- Ghostly Sprint(Centre Middle node): Wraith Walk is no longer cancelled upon taking an action and now lasts 2 more seconds.
- Choice Node: Mangle the Living (Centre Right node): Death Scythe reduces the movement speed of targets by 50% for 5 seconds.
- Choice Node: Force Pull (Centre Right node): Death Grip instead pulls you to targets who are immune to death grip.
- Choice Node: Runeforged Terror (Bottom Left node): While wielding a 2 handed weapon, you automatically benefit from Fallen Crusader at all times. While wielding 2 weapons, Razorice deals 6% of attack power shadowfrost damage every second per stack.
- Choice Node: Death’s Gambit (Bottom Left node): When Exterminate is consumed, Bonestorm(Blood) or Breath Of Sindragosa(Frost) automatically cast at no cost for 3 seconds. If Bonestorm or Breath of Sindragosa are already active Bonestorm gains 3 seconds of duration and Breath of Sindragosa deals 100% more damage for 3 seconds.
- Satiation of Murder (Bottom Right node): Your Soul Reaper, Death Scythe, Obliterate, Frost Strike, Death Strike and Heart Strike deal 25% additional damage to enemies below 35% health.
- Choice Node: Shadowfrost Guillotine (Capstone node): After Consuming Rime 6/Crimson Scourge 4 times you gain a stack of Exterminate.
- Choice Node: Slaughterfiend (Capstone node): Gain 2 charges of Death Scythe. Using Death Scythe on a target with Soul Reaper causes Soul Reaper to explode instantly regardless of their health.
Thats all, I hope you guys enjoy my ideas even if they’re not balanced well at all.
2 Likes
They are going to add more hero tree’s, i do not recall them saying they will add more to existing tree’s.
that would be interesting, where did they say this? can you link it?
That was before expansion launch, announcing hero talents as an evergreen feature.
Should be on youtube, i may go look for it later for you.
regardless of that, adding more hero talent trees wouldn’t exactly solve the issue of what you’d be spending your points on when leveling up in the new expansion unless you got multiple hero talent trees.
The buffs to existing talents look pretty good. Some of them are crazy underwhelming right now.
Sadly you have failed at making Hero Talents.
Hero Talents do not exist to fix our Class Spec.
They exist to provide additional fantasy. You haven’t done that.
It only does the “Fixing” that the DK Forums want for our class.
It also forces players into playstyles this way that they do not want.
These would be better served as additions to our spec tree. Provided we get more points to spend in that tree.
also isnt there a level squish in midnight
so the talents may change and we prolly have to repick the talents they give us
i hope they will be better
I can understand your other criticisms however i don’t see how i haven’t provided additional fantasty here. I expanded upon the theme of deathbringer by providing additional execute fantasy via soul reaper and adding additional an additional scythe based attack that is rotationally powerful for the class expanding on exterminates existing scythe theme.
You added Mechanics. Not Fantasy.
You added Mechanics to an Existing Fantasy you did not provide Additional Fantasy.
Additional fantasy would be something like:
New Hero Spec: Necromancer
Your Rime empowered Howling Blasts and Killing Machine empowered Obliterates raise a Ghoul that attacks your enemies for 25 sec.
Consuming runes generated by runic empowerment raises a Skeletal Mage for 25 sec
As you can see this ADDS minion/army fantasy to frost which it currently doesn’t have. Whether or not this would be popular is entirely up for debate but it does what hero talents are supposed to do.
And I will reiterate I don’t think your ideas are bad, but Hero Talents are not the place for them. They mostly belong in the class spec tree.
3 Likes
They kind of have to. It’s not like they can add more talents to the class and spec trees without breaking them.
The thread is about expanding existing hero talent trees, not making new ones.
They will either add to them, or do nothing but fix issues within them. Them being evergreen just means they are here to stay and arent a borrowed power system.
Also, if there is a level squish which I doubt they will do and it would be a stat squish, then you can probably guarantee a lot of abilities being made baseline or you just get more talent points when you level.
i genuinely don’t agree that i didn’t add fantasy. i did through new mechanics. i’m sorry you don’t like them but that doesn’t mean i didn’t expand the fantasy which i litterally did do mechanics and fantasy are not mutually exclusive.
1 Like
You are not comprehending.
They are good ideas but the Hero Talent space is not the right place for them. They are ideas and mechanics better served being in our base talent trees.
If you feel that you did provide new fantasy please explain what new fantasy these add. As I see it you only expanded or fixed existing fantasy not added any new fantasy.
1 Like
i suppose i am not comprehending your original point because i saw adding and expanding upon the existing fantasy as the same thing when you mean to completely change or diverge from what they originally were. i don’t see why deathbringer would suddenly get a new different fantasy. i simply expanded upon the themes of scythes and executing. i didn’t seek to make a new hero talent fantasy. just to expand upon what was already there as i thought we might see them do. as for the talents i agree that expanding the rotational complexity might not be the best place for these types of talents.
Ah I think I see now, you are zooming in too much. Zoom out a bit look at the bigger picture.
Ask yourself, What does it mean to be a Deathbringer DK?
Where does the Deathbringer idea come from? What sources of this are there in the lore and world of Azeroth?
And then you kinda realize: There’s Jack all… We got ICC Saurfang and… that’s it.
Then as I think I already said for Midnight we’re more likely to get new Hero Talent trees than for them to expand the existing ones. IF they did expand them though, I think it would only be by five points not another whole ten. The extra work and bloat that ten points would bring in would be too much in the long term.
while i don’t disagree i just dont know how they would otherwise allocate points for when we go into the new expansion.
You make a good point as if we only level up the new tree, then why swap out of our existing complete tree and take the power loss? So that don’t work.
Reset all the trees? People are gonna complain to beggary and back over that.
Indeed I don’t see how they’d handle it either.
But let’s turn back to the discussion you want to have. Expanding Deathbringer’s fantasy.
Saurfang hasn’t got much else to take from him as Blood Beast is already taken by San’Layn. So what if we stole from another boss… Marrowgar’s bone spike perhaps?
Say we add something new a way to spread Reaper’s mark to multiple targets or apply it to many targets via some form of AoE.
Then is it explodes while the target is in our D&D a bone spike shoots up under them and does a bit of damage and CCs them for say 5 sec? (PvP value subject to change obviously) Say some kinda Silence or Stun?
Why not for big damage? Well reaper’s mark already explodes for big damage and making it AoE then is even more of that damage. So damage is already covered. Making the bone spike apply CC though is good useful utility for DPS and Tank. So it benefits both Frost and Blood.
See? Now we’re adding new fantasy aren’t we?
you’re only pulling from ICC when the listed fantasy included shadowlands in its flavouring. so something maw themed could work?