I just dont see unholy as DW. The only times I know of that people werent DW unholy were accompanied with bugs.
Is it important for unholy to hit with both weapons on scourge strike and festering strike? I dont know, with a lot of damage coming from essences and corruption probably not. But if they went back to the spec having the strength then it very well could.
Blood as well. Its one of those things that no one really DW as those specs since, ever as far as I know with th occasional person playing it.
I would rather just stick with Frost at the moment because thats just a can of worms that I dont have a lot of information on. For the 4 expansions before Legion there was really no serious talk of those 2 with DW other than the Sudden Doom bug.
Hi Kelliste, I think you’re asking very reasonable questions. But you’re asking the wrong people. I don’t think Blizzard has ever been very clear about the details of what happened to Ner’zhul or the details behind how he was merged with Arthus or how the helm was cleansed exactly… perhaps these are questions they will explore in Shadowlands… or in a novel. Or perhaps they will never answer these questions and just expect us to move on… Honestly who really knows? I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Re blood/unholy, I don’t think it matters in this case if they historically could DW. When they were making DKs initially they decided that they should be able to DW and probably didn’t want a bunch of redundant talents so they plopped the DW talent in frost. They also put the 2H talent in frost. They had to put the talents somewhere, and they decided that apparently weapon damage talents all went in frost. It’s entirely speculation unless there’s designer commentary somewhere that I don’t know about, but I think they intended both specs to be able to have the option of 2H or DW, just like all specs were able to tank or DPS.
So for me, in this case, it’s not a matter of they historically were known to DW, it’s a matter of class fantasy. If DKs weren’t in the game and all my knowledge of them was from WC3, then someone asked me, “Hey, death knights are going to be added to WoW, their specs are going to be blood, frost, and unholy, which of these do you think should have a preference for dual wielding?” My priority list there would have been blood, unholy, then frost bringing up the rear. Frost conceptually has just always seemed like the spec that would favor slow weapons, and blood conceptually has always sounded like some kind of raging berserker spec. Unholy has never sounded like something where the exact weapons mattered.
Sorry, that rambled a bit, but hopefully you can excavate the point out of that. The tldr is that all specs should be able to equip all weapon options.
Ill try to keep this shorter than what I wanted to put. 2h weapon specialization was in the Blood tree, Might of the Frozen Wastes came in with cata and was deep in the tree with ToT.
The only game that I know of where the weapons dont matter, and you use whatever has the higher stats on it, is Rift. They just turned their weapons into stat sticks for melee classes basically. I think they might have also given 2h weapons 2 enchant slots. Fury Warrior exists in WoW so that option gets a little more tricky.
But lets be truthful, Blizzard has glued themselves into a corner. Systems on top of systems on top of systems. Remember how straight forward it all used to be? Wrath, get hit to this, expertise to this and then focus on these stats. Oh you want to 2 shot people as Prot Warrior, heavy armor pen and T10 4 piece? Block rating and armor pen with the set piece bonus. 2 hits and dead.
Now look at the systems and everything they have to deal with. I just dont think its feasible to have everything at once. I would have said it expansions ago, but not now. They are trying to juggle class fantasy, world immersion, fun, balance, gearing, azerite gear, essences, corruption, pvp and its really just too much on their plate.
Looking back at the trees I guess 2H was in blood, but both DW and 2H specs were second tier, so any tree could plausibly take either, so no big deal. Point is that the talents had to go somewhere, and nothing about DKs from WC3 to that point in WoW would have ever made me think any spec would be a natural fit for DW, least of all frost.
This is true, and there’s probably a thread daily in general discussion asking why the heck gearing/progression has to be so complicated these days. I think they’re trying to keep things interesting, but it’s falling flat, people just want to be able to get stuff and put it on at this point instead of having to get a master’s degree in WoW gear and stay weights. It’s a corner that Blizzard put themselves in, so they’re the only ones who can get them out.
Not gonna lie, I’m 100% ok with flipping the game design on its head. Trying to e-sport simplify the game they’ve been doing is starting to wear on me, and while it’s still fun enough for me to give them money every month, if the trends continue I won’t be doing that for long. On the surface it looks like Blizzard is trying to add some complexity back to the game with the aforementioned systems, but they’re adding it in all the wrong spots.
If they don’t bring it back in Shadowlands they never will. It’s been teased now and expectations have been set.
Bring back the good times 2H DKs all specs!! They have an under-utilised class rune-forging system that is begging for an update, surely that can be adapted to allow 2H first to return like most of us want.
Just to let all of you know Classic is still eating up all of my game time. Been done with this crap shoot going on 10 weeks now? I’m a Knight Lieutenant and am pretty happy as a 2 handed holy Paladin. I can tank, i can heal. I have lackluster dps but I can buff my party and stun efcs like you wouldn’t believe ensuring victory for the group.
If 2 handed frost returns to retail maybe I will too. Until then I’m staying in the Azeroth of old.
But, it hasnt been removed because the passive is still active, thats the difference between being removed and baked in. Its not even really important like other passives because it doesnt do anything special. Killing Machine tells you what is going on with that passive, its important information so you know what it does when it procs. Its not even a great example, but its still something that should be shown to the player. Do you need to know the passive that is making both weapons hit when you use 2 abilities? No, you dont. Its baked into the spec.
Well blizz is looking at a tbc option so then they will look to wrath. I do hope the version of wrath is before they forced the specs to be specific. So people can play their dk the way they want. Want to dps blood have at it. Want to dw any of the specs have at it.
They forced the specs into certain roles in cata (cata pre-patch) and didnt exist in Wrath. Want to tank your dps as DW Blood or Unholy, go for it. Want to play 2h frost without Plague Strike? Sure have at it.
Unless you want to play what were best then sure you were forced into stuff. Want to get good dps, dont DW blood or Unholy and not even look at 2h Frost.
if it goes that far I think everything would be fine. Wrath was when I started playing wow. And I think Wrath should be the end of the wow story based on the old Warcraft games. Back when the lore made sense and before all the bad rewriting wow was a much better product!
