Lets Fix San'layn!

Classes Death Knight
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Hello friends, it’s no secret the San’layn have been poorly received, so I figure lets try and identify all the issues and present possible solutions as a community. This way we can all be disappointed together when blizzard inevitably ignores our suggestions! Feel free to add your experiences with problems, or you own ideas for solutions in the replies below. I do ask that you please be specific about whether you are talking about the unholy version, the blood version or both.

I’m going to kick this off by listing off what I believe are the top issues holding the talents back and creating awkward play experiences. Then I will try my hand at suggesting fixes for these problems, anyone can feel free to build off of this or to come up with their own list of problems and/or solutions. I have roughly organized these with what I consider the most severe problems at the top, and what I consider the least severe on the bottom.

– ISSUES –

Maintaining Essence of the Blood Queen (Unholy & Blood)
Essence of the Blood queen is a really strange buff, hypothetically it could be maintained 100% of a fight, but RNG can make this impossible even with perfect play. This also leads to an issue where as a blood DK you may be inclined to use Death Strike even though you don’t need the healing just to hope for the Vampiric Strike proc to maintain your 7% haste for another 20 seconds, which clashes with the design of Death Strike and wanting to save it for reactive healing after taking a large amount of damage.

Cooldown attachment to defensive cooldowns (Blood)
The only way to guarantee Vampiric Strike is to use Vampiric Blood (or the preposed change to DRW), which means this is the only way to ensure your haste and damage buffs is to use a defensive cooldown offensively. This clashes with timing these defensive cooldowns to specific mechanics or using them reactively to pull yourself out of a bad situation.

Double RNG of Blood Beast (Unholy & Blood)
Blood Beast being a proc on a proc is kind of ridiculous. If the RNG to get a vampiric strike wasn’t already bad enough having that Vampiric strike also have a small chance to proc a Blood Beast is worse than the Casino Strike of old. Powering up the Blood Beast with your shadow damage and having it explode for 1/4 of that damage as AOE sounds neat in theory, but considering how random this proc is you can get an extremely variable amount of damage from it. Even when using your cooldowns to spam Vampiric Strike there is a good chance you will not spawn a Blood Beast, or you will spawn one at the end of your cooldown spike, or even spawn one on the last hit on an enemy or pack of mobs, in all cases effectively wasting the proc.

Standing in Death and Decay (Unholy & Blood)
Requiring us to stand in our death and decay to get the damage reduction and a higher proc chance for vampiric strike is extremely limiting. The class already suffers from mobility problems and this just exacerbates them. Furthermore the other two competing hero talents (RotA for unholy and Deathbringer for blood) give you their damage reduction just from normal rotational activities and thus allow you to stay fully mobile while benefitting from them.

Ignoring Festering Strike (Unholy)
During your Dark Transformation cooldown there is currently no incentive to use Festering Strike, or to worry about festering wounds. This is because Festering Wounds do not receive any sort of damage buff, and they also do not extend the duration of your cooldown window like Death Coil can.

Infliction of Sorrow desyncs your Superstrain diseases (Unholy)
Vampiric strike increasing the duration of your diseases during your usual rotation doesn’t provide any real benefit as we still have to reapply our diseases at the same timing to reset Blood Plague and Frost Fever for about half of our disease damage. On the other side of things, consuming Virulent Plague at the end of our cooldowns to deal all of it’s damage at once leaves our target(s) with just Frost Fever and Blood Plague at nearly full duration (Thanks to unholy blight) which we must refresh to regain our Virulent Plague damage. In both cases you are required to use outbreak to reset about half our disease damage, meaning the cast of outbreak is at about 50% effectiveness, mitigating the value gained from Infliction of Sorrow.

– POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS –

Make Vampiric Strike reliable (Unholy & Blood)
Instead of Vampiric Strike being a 10/15% chance per Death Coil/Death Strike/Epidemic just make every 3rd Scourge/Heart Strike a Vampiric Strike instead. This solves the issue of needing to rely on RNG to maintain your Essence of the Blood Queen indefinitely, the issue of Blood needing use Death Strike sub optimally to fish for procs and the issue of San’layn not feeling like it is adding anything while you are leveling. I would also change Sanguine Scent to just make every strike into a Vampiric strike when your target is below 35% hp.

Allow us to use Blood Beast when we want it (Unholy & Blood)
Instead of Blood Beast being a proc on Vampiric Strike make it just replace Dark Transformation for unholy and Raise Dead for blood, switching out our ghoul for a Blood Beast for the duration. This allows us to gain from the Blood is Life and Pact of the San’layn talents when we actually need them instead of almost never seeing a Blood Beast, let alone when we actually want it. Furthermore Raise Dead is not a defensive cooldown for Blood and could thus be a good place to attach the Gift of San’layn talent that wouldn’t encourage use to use defensive cooldowns offensively.

Attach our damage reduction to Essence of the Blood Queen (Unholy & Blood)
Make each Essence of the Blood Queen increases damage reduction by 0.5% per stack. No more standing in death and decay, we are now free to use our limited mobility to it’s maximum potential just like we can do with Riders of the Apocalypse or Deathbringer. Also increase the max number of stacks gained from Frenzied Bloodthirst from +2(max 7) to +5(max 10). If the Blood Soaked Ground talent needs a bit more spice, add in extra movement speed in the form of the speed tertiary stat per stack of Essence of the Blood Queen.

Integrate Festering Wounds into San’layn (Unholy)
Make Essence of the Blood Queen increase single target damage of Festering wounds by 5% per stack, this way there is an incentive to use festering strike during our cooldown window instead of just ignoring our core rotation. This also secures San’layn as the shadow damage/“enhance the Death Knight” hero talent while keeping Riders of the Apocalypse as the generalist/“bury them in pets” hero talent.

Change Infliction of Sorrow (Unholy)
This is the suggestion I have the least confidence on, and would appreciate the opinions of other Unholy Death Knights. Infliction of Sorrow for unholy has a weird sort of synergy with our diseases that both penalizes the use of Superstrain, and pigeonholes us into Plaugebringer even for pure single target damage. I would suggest avoiding both of these problems and changing the talent into a new dot that deals significant periodic damage to any target inflicted with at least 1 festering wound, and does NOT increase in damage with additional festering wounds. My logic is that this would bring back the more traditional dot heavy unholy without overkilling our current spammable AOE dots, while adding some value to the Pestilence talent for AOE encounters. This would also uncouple us from the Plaguebringer talent for single target while still making it the optimal choice for multi target. Finally this would further encourage us to keep at least 1 festering wound up, even during cooldown windows meaning there is more reason to press festering strike.

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given that i also suggested the DRW change im on the fence about this, in pvp DRW is a 30 second CD, so it makes sense for me, but that isn’t the case for pve and VB does work better.

additionally, in pvp it also works to spot who is on the up and up or just plain scripting as its not normal for a player to pop a defensive and run away when you pop a defensive.

not really an issue. part of the magic of unholy is that you can lean into certain aspects of the toolkit to the point you can just plain ignore others. this is one of those cases, this is just an optionable playstyle for unholy and really only lasts during burst. you can take talent points out of wound based talents and put them into other stuff to compensate.

i would make it both, leave the remaining proc chance from RP spenders, but add the 3 stack thing to the single rune spenders. this way you can force a proc if needed, but won’t feel forced to stop and HS/SS in the middle of a bursting RP dump.

nah, the async between superstrain and infliction of sorrow is a non issue, if anything unholy would rather have dispel protection. nothing worse than watching 1m+ damage just get dispelled away with no consequence to the dispeller.

as for plaguebringer, i’d rather it just not be a choice node with clawing shadows, i’d would be nice to have both at the same time. they could just merge improved coil with coil of devasation to make room in the talent tree.

and as i have suggested in a few other threads, i want to see vampire wings with double jump and glide, with you going into a fast moving hover like evokers while you are under the effects of gift of the sanlayn.

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All nice suggestions, but I don’t see anything aside from a ground up redesign of San’layn that would bring people back to it. If I would make suggestions, it’d be the following.

An auto D&D talent kinda line paladins consecrate.

Talents that buff wounds or buff disease and change the playstyle to complete ignore the other.

Possibly add group healing to the mechanic, sharing blood or something along those lines.

Just my 2 cents.

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I love this idea, I like having good diseases and having some ranged pressure and having to choose almost feels like having to pick a favorite child.

Cool! I think this sort of thing would go a long way in increasing the spectacle of San’layn (something I have seen many users complain about), and it harkens back to the Blood Queen Lana’thel fight back in ICC, which fits the theme as she is the Matriarch of the San’layn.

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Laughing and crying so painfully true

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Solid suggestions overall. I had drafting my own thread on this topic, but I think this would be a great discussion to include them. Unlike many others, I actually don’t think that the San’layn tree needs an entire overhaul to be competent if not competitive (at least from the perspective of a Blood DK).

I would say the core issue is a lack of focus, which is compounded by the insane RNG strings needed for the tree to work optimally. As others have stated, the tree encourages us to prioritize a filler spell (Heart Strike) over more rotational abilities. The problem is that there isn’t nearly enough payoff for doing so. I think this could be remedied by consolidating some talents into the core Vampric Strike (VS):

  • Sanguine Scent: Effect rolled into base Vampiric Strike effect → I think this is an intuitive effect for the ability to have on its own and not really worth an entire talent point, especially on a choice node. This change alone could serve as a solid buff to the tree by simply increasing VS’s uptime.

With that change, we now have some wiggle room to make that choice node a little bit more interesting.

  • Sanguine Scent (NEW EFFECT): Reduces the cooldown of Vampiric Blood by 30 seconds. → I actually believe that Vampiric Blood is the right cooldown for Gift of the San’layn to be tied to because of where it fits in our list of defensive CDs. Being tied to that ability opens the door for a more differentiated playstyle that I personally find interesting.

  • Pact of the San’layn (ADJUSTED): Now stores a percentage of ALL damage dealt (was only shadow damage) into the Bloodbeast → This is more targeted towards Blood because the gameplay loop promoted by the tree involves spamming two spells that both deal physical damage. If it is to stay as only shadow damage, then there needs to be some incentives for pressing Blood Boil during those windows.

I’m not as versed in the Unholy perspective here, but maybe Sanguine Scent could grant Dark Transformation an additional charge? Overall, the idea is to present a choice of increasing uptime on Gift of the San’layn vs. making the Bloodbeast more impactful.

Speaking of the Bloodbeast, I personally like having it tied to a proc rather than being a modified Raise Dead simply because RNG can be fun when properly funneled. The problem is uptime:

  • The Blood is Life (ADJUSTED): A Bloodbeast now spawns upon casting Vampiric Blood/Dark Transformation. Bloodbeast duration increased to 15 seconds.-> Given the uptime the tree currently has with VB, I think this slight adjustment would give us the reliability we need for the bloodbeast without sacrificing the fun that comes from proccing one.

I have some other wishlisted items that I think would make the tree a little bit stronger, but overall, these 3-4 changes would go a long way towards smoothing out its gameplay loop. I really like the idea of the tree being about modifying existing cooldowns. I just think it needs to lean into that a little more.

As a side note, the San’layn tree’s tagline claims to be about “Weakening enemies”, but the tree itself doesn’t really fulfill that…at all. If that line is to remain, it might be cool to explore incorporating that into the tree a bit more. Maybe the Haste buff from Essence of the Blood Queen can involve sapping the same amount from affected targets? Maybe the Blood Plague talents can ramp up the Leeching element?

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Personally, I always thought that vampiric strike should just replace scourge strike/heart strike. And make it that you can build up essence of the blood queen and unleash all at once and go on a feeding frenzy.
for instance outside of your DT or whatever you want to tie it too you get a stacking buff of essence, then when you use your cooldowns you gain a huge omega giga buff that makes you big and have red eyes and idk other vampire stuff and that makes you do big dmg. Of course this does just pigeon hole unholy into being even more reliant on cooldowns, but could be interesting for blood.
I also thought blood beast could be an end of cooldown thing, that after your DT or VT end you would summon a blood beast based on different factors, like perhaps the more vampiric strikes you use during your cooldowns could make it last longer, or maybe the more festering wounds, or perhaps your over healing done.

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I’d use either or, but I need the damage reduction .

I also need the reaper’s mark damage to get aggro on everything quick. For whatever reason, bloodboil and D&D aren’t enough sometimes and melees around me will sometimes drop, especially paladins. Then I have to listen to them complain. Sanlayn damage does decent damage as well, but it won’t grab aggro on everything like reaper’s mark does for me.

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I’ve pondered a similar system, but ultimately I think that procs simulate that frenzy a bit more cleanly. I feel like replacing Heart Strike permanently kind of compounds the issues that the tree face because it doesn’t change the fact that Heart Strike is a filler spell. Having Vampiric Strike up permanently would require it to take center stage, which would certainly require many more changes to the tree than what has been presented here.

I’m wondering what kind of payoff it would require to incentivize disrupting the rotation to stack up the buff?

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You are probably right, and I believe that someone else mentioned a better alternative in having some bad luck protection, such as u are guaranteed a proc after your x deathstrike/deathcoil, but still have the potential to get procs before then. In regards to you idea on the leeching element, that interests me alot more. I think the main issue with a debuff would be target switching or going pack to pack. Would probably be better to have it be a buff or just an applied dot instead of a stacking one

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The San’layn werent just blood hungry vampires and really have nothing to do with Death Knights. The San’layn could be anything from Blood Knights to mages like the BPC were to rogues. We already have Blood… so I dont see the point.

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The big thing that got me to resubscribe and try TWW was the implied promise of a DPS DK spec (San’layn Unholy) that could heal itself in PvP like the good old days. I don’t want my entire play experience to be following around a healer, as not only is this not DK fantasy I sign up for, but if I wanted that playstyle then there are plenty of other classes and specs I could play instead.

Unfortunately I think they really missed the mark on self healing. Vampiric Strike being nerfed down to 2% health right before launch made me excited that maybe our self healing was so good it was causing issues, but after trying it out in PvP the change just has me confused. One of the main draws of playing Death Knight for me has always been the self healing, we were the original self healing “melee” class, our tank spec is designed around self healing, and we had an entire row of our MoP/WoD talent trees dedicated to self healing. yet our current self healing potential seems to have fallen off a cliff.

But this thread isn’t just about problems, it’s also about suggesting solutions! So how would I go about fixing this issue?

First suggestion is the most obvious, just increase the amount of healing vampiric strike gives you, but do so by a lot, like in the ranged of 10% health per Vampiric Strike. This sort of change would make me excited to get a vampiric strike proc. This would also give more value to blood for pressing what is essentially a filler button. Finally this would help give San’layn it’s own identity, at least mechanically speaking as it would be nice for Vampiric strike to be more exciting than Fallen Crusader procs when it comes to self heals.

Second suggestion is just a callback to the classics, give us back Death Siphon. By far my favorite ability in any version of WoW Death Siphon is an ability where you trade setup and damage for life steal at range, the end result healing you for far more than the damage it deals to your target. It could be an alternative way to consume festering wounds, though they suffer severely from target swapping, and this wouldn’t be useful for blood. If Vampiric Strike was more reliable then it could consume essence of the blood queen charges for on demand life steal healing, but if Vampiric Strike stays as is then this would be unreliable at best, and useless at worst. Could also make it consume runic power, though if this is the case it would need to balanced in a way where it situationally competes against Death Strike, or just strait up be a ranged Death Strike upgrade/replacement. I’m open to other suggestions as well, I do just love Death Siphon a little too much.

Third suggestion is to just make San’layn increase the potency of all of our self heals, at least while engaged in PvP. It would likely need to be different amounts for blood and unholy but something like +100% self healing for unholy in PvP would go a long way to making the class actually feel like the king/queen of self heals once again. And yes this would include Leech.

As usual, comments and critiques welcome, These are just my opinions :slight_smile:

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Aside from its clear design problems, I’d say my main issue with San’layn is that it doesn’t feel very “vampiric”. The blood beast and Infliction of Sorrow in particular are guilty of this.

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I definitely think that Vampiric Strike could use a little more “bite” on cast, especially since it is a procced ability. The ability clearly wants to be spammed to feel powerful, but that’s only possible within a small window tied to another CD. Outside of those windows, the ability still needs to feel impactful to press, especially since it is tied to a filler ability in the rotation.

I’d say that’s why having the rest of the tree impacted by varying degrees of RNG feels bad/clinky. Talents exist in the tree to help make Vampiric Strike feel more powerful, but they are either undertuned or unreliable.

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Good post.

What I hope for is better survival via damage mitigation for this spec.

Play-style issue i have when I play this spec:

  1. More buffs to track and upkeep to the already heavy upkeep blood gameplay. We need to keep haste upkeep, death strike every 8 seconds to buff to dots, DnD, and boneshards. That is on top of other resource management between runic power and runes. Compare to Deathbriner, boneshards needs additional attention since Exterminate for Deathbringer pretty much made sure we are at 100% upkeep with optimal rotation. Death Strike buff should be extended in general to make the class smoother, and Vampiric Strike proc should be more consistent and rewarding. I find myself looking at addons and play whack-a-mole with button a lot more with San’layn, but none of these additional workload feel like there’s any payoff.
  2. Blood beast is too random, infrequent, and unreliable.
  3. Burst window is ruined by the fact that you cannot satisfyingly focus on burst, but also all the other multitude of buff upkeep and resource management and survival. Compare that to warrior, pretty much everything for prot is press on cooldown, defensive rotation upkeep is off GCD, and only pop defensive CD when needed.

San’layn is a spec that adds a lot of work with nothing to really show for it, and the spec has worse survival both naturally due to the lack of damage mitigation, and forcing us to cast death strike in more situations when otherwise we want to save the runic power.

Maybe make vampric strike grant 100 runic power regardless to number of targets hit, grants 1 boneshard, and makes your next death strike free? During burst window you can still maintain 100% boneshard upkeep, and sit at max runic power. When you are force to death strike in rotation for the proc, it is rewarding like hitting the jackpot because now all the runic power you wasted is back, and you have a free death strike.

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Despite of many San’layn improvement discussions on the forum, solution we got from Blizz is nerfing Deathbringer lol.

Yes I knew that and we knew that.

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I am curious what your rationale is behind upping RP gains? If anything, I’m feeling like we need more ways to spend it with the tree because it stacks so quickly.

I do really like the idea of Vampiric Strike generating a boneshield charge. One of the key reasons, Deathbringer is so much better as a tree is because of its interaction with Marrowrend. It enhances what Blood already wants to be doing in a given button press.

I personally like that San’layn deviates from that a bit by empowering a filler ability instead. However, It leans that way a bit too much. During Gift windows, its clear that the idea is to spam VS to stack up Essence followed by a final Heart Strike to proc Infliction of Sorrow. Even with the Boneshield we get from DRW, the Rune expenditure during Gift of the San’layn can make it feel a bit clunky to stack boneshield back up. A change like that could help smooth out the rotation.

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Honestly just make Vamp Strike replace Heart Strike / Scourge as an ability.

Can change Sanguine Scent to just make it do more dmg below 35%.

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they would just nerf its damage.

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a walking dnd with swarming mists would be rad, Anyone who comes into it will get a buff. enemies will get siphoned.
i enjoy the blood beast. what if when he explodes, he summons leeches?
replace raise dead with blood buddy.
someone brought this up in another thread but id love a mass blood suck. kinda like a harvest life from warlocks but a channel that you can walk with. This giving the queen buff would work too.

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