I have been tanking on my druid for awihle now.
And I do come across a few dps DKers from to time. But for the most part, it seems the dps is really low. I am wondering if it’s the player’s fault or if the DK is just in a bad place right now. A lot of times, I am usually ahead of DK dps as a tank. What’s the deal? Is it the players or the class itself?
If it’s the class, I really hope Blizz fixes the DKs.
T’is a bit of both mate.
Frost is ‘Easy’. But all it’s damage is in it’s Breath Window. If you can’t prepare or sustain your Breath you’ll have no damage. Which means you MUST play very well and be on point in order to be ‘good’.
Unholy is complicated. You’re rewarded for using skill. But Skill means you can have a lot of Mediocre or poor fights for it. While the spec has more fun factor than frost, it’s still punishing to those that aren’t ‘good’.
So it’s that the class only gives excelling players the benefit of being good.
The rest are punished for it damage wise.
Blizz could tune the numbers up so that the mediocre still put out nice numbers but then that means the better players get a major advantage above everyone else for just being good at their class. Which isn’t fair to the other players that are good at their classes.
DPS DKs need mechanical changes to their rotation and fixing in more than just a numbers buff. Not something we’re likely to see until next expac…
This isnt accurate, you are suggestjng DK dos is a matter if skill which should not be considered. Affliction warlock and feral druid were obnoxious in terms of playing back in mop but produced high numbers.
In the case id Fdk and UhDK, the numvers arent there at all.
UhDK only does well in high aoe situations.
Depends on what you are talking about.
If you are taking mythic+ dungeons UH DKs should be able to hold their own, if the DK knows what they are doing and you can handle the pulls, the larger the pull the better they will do on trash, if it’s smaller and dies quickly DKs will do less well.
On dungeon bosses if they have Army up they again should do fine, better than fine honestly, if army is not available then DK damage will be meh.
In raids it will all depend on fight type and how the DK leverage their abilities, and also how quickly the boss dies.
Basically in the end DKs are viable, but not optimal in most situations, with the major exception being in extreme AoE where they are allowed to do use their full setup of abilities and the mobs live long enough to get loaded up with wounds.
You are looking at it wrong. DPS numbers change with the wind. One keystroke from a dev and the worst DPS becomes the best DPS. You really need to find a class you like to play and don’t worry about the current numbers.
That said, since you asked, frost is in a bad place. Blood and Unholy are fine.
That is ONLY with high trash pulls though, and aotd is on an 8 minute cd, so on any sustained fight, or fight where a transition MIGHT hinder your damage their dos drops.
There is a reason the logs show DKs bring near the bottom.
Too CD reliant, too poor at scaling.
No utility.
Better off playing a havoc or rogue id ypu want melee dps.
Not quite bad i think. Frost is not very good atm, Unholy is currently at it’s strongest thank to reaping. They just lack of utility, which is important in M+ enviroment. And Unholy is one of the most complicated spec to play. Player need to communicate and need a lot of setup from their teammates to be able to execute their rotation. That’s why in MDI an Unholy can pull more than 1M dps aoe. Otherwise, you can find most DKs in lfg are pretty meh.
Unholy is gsrbage and inflated numbers male them look better than they really are.
DK’s are a sort of high risk-high reward class. For m+, UH is better than frost, mainly because of all the aoe, but you need to set up and be ready. Proper CD, Festermight, Wounds, and Plague management on pulls and preparation for Reaping, etc. We can either be prepped and do insane numbers, or not be and don’t.
The issue is that while we can do great stuff with prep, other classes can do just as good without as much prep (Locks, DH, etc.). I personally place non mass aoe DK dps to be average to below average in M+, though not the worst.
It is worth looking at the Simulated Class DPS ranking there are several around one is http://www.noxxic.com/wow/dps-rankings/ on that site you see that the current rankings puts both the Death Knight specs very far down the order and essentially the lowest DPS spec’d class in terms of those available to that class. While other classes have alternatives that put them a little higher or significantly higher (Hunter or Mage for example). The DK is last for one spec and 19th of the other DPS spec
That one fact can’t be ignored and people can say what they like but it points to a significant failure in terms of the overall class when it does not have an effective DPS spec that is at least middle of the pack. Middle of the Pack in this case would be anywhere from 10th - 15th essentially.
Unholy DK’s appear good right now, but only because of reaping. Once reaping goes away, so does unholy return back to the trash heap. It’s purely superficial.
The reason why unholy sucks, and will continue to suck, on anything ST is because the damage is tuned around an 8 minute CD. Your damage is pathetic without army, and only stellar if army is used with hero/lust. This is what happens when you only tune based off of statics and simulations, and not on practical play-tested results.
Unholy also has a lot of anti-synergetic scaling this expansion. Because so much is centered around army, you need to stack stats that benefit the ghouls. Mastery is not one of these because, with the loss of artifacts, ghouls from army no longer benefit from mastery at all. Unfortunately, if you are not stacking mastery, your AoE suffers tremendously. So, you either gear for mediocre ST at the cost of AoE, or tank what little inherent ST potential you have for AoE. You can only have one or the other.
All of this, due to the same problems unholy had in early legion, where there wasn’t enough mastery scaling. Unholy’s nature necessitates mastery being its best stat. In the event mastery is not its best stat, unholy as it is will always be trash. This will only change if the spec itself sees a radical change where the value of mastery isn’t so integral to our ability damage, and other stats offer unique gameplay benefits.
You must be able to think on your feet and know when to burn a cool down or not to. If you stray too far to either side of that you fail. Its a fun balancing act OP in progression and M + keys. It is easy to blow past everyone on ae pulls for my build but ST takes perfect timing.