Lets talk about the state of DK in Dragonflight

Classes Death Knight
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So, I’m sure a lot of you guys have noticed that, well… there’s just, not too many of us anymore. DPS DKs seem to be a dying breed, Frost most of all. There’s a lot of things that pushed it towards this place, but, ill be the first to point out… it isn’t tuning. DPS DK has been tuned pretty damn well this entire expansion, yet, there’s barely anyone playing it.

So, lets talk about it, see if we can get to the root of “why is this happening?” Obviously, this is a super subjective question and everyone will have their own opinions. Lets start with my observations, and some data to back it up, as is usual with me. This wont be a super technical/math heavy post like i usually go for, instead its more opinion, inferred information (with references to that data where its presented).

My first theory, its just stale.
DK in general, hasn’t seen a rework, redesign or literally any substantial core rotational changes in nearly 7 years. Its the same old song and dance as it was in Legion. Of course there has been minor tweaks here and there, new toys to play with that shake things up minutely, but the core has always remained the same.
So, lets take a good ol journey down memory lane, to Nighthold. One of the most well loved raids for Frost DK.
Gotta use the ol waybackmachine to get the data from the time, but here it is
https://web.archive.org/web/20170606030111/http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19M_NH.html
And Aberrus data was taken from here
http://simulationcraft.org/reports/T30_Raid.html
So, lets compare to current Breath Frost, since that’s the build being used here in Nighthold.
So, lets start with % of globals spent on each ability

Obliterate
Nighthold - 39.77% of globals
Aberrus - 47.77% of globals

Howling Blast
Nighthold - 25.5% of globals
Aberrus - 29.43% of globals

Frost Strike
Nighthold - 15.97% of globals
Aberrus - 4.3% of globals

Total of these 3 abilities
Nighthold - 81.24%
Aberrus - 81.5%

All in all, really, not too different, these 3 buttons account for near identical portions of our overall global uses, about 81%. Only major difference is, we traded some Frost Strike casts, for Howling Blast and Obliterate casts vs Nighthold. But, all in all, its still the same 3 buttons being pressed in slightly differing quantities.

Well, how bout Unholy? Maybe its seen some changes…?
So, same experiment, this time with Death Coil, Clawing Shadows, and Festering Strike.

Death Coil
Nighthold - 37.06% of globals
Aberrus - 38.7% of globals

Clawing Shadows
Nighthold - 33.53% of globals
Aberrus - 28.87% of globals

Festering Strike
Nighthold - 12.7% of globals
Aberrus - 10.01% of globals

Total of these 3 abilities
Nighthold - 83.29% of globals
Aberrus - 77.58% of globals

Okay, unholys a bit more different! thats good, right? well… the difference here? its, well, just soul reaper, which accounts for that missing 6% of globals. Soul Reaper wasnt taken in Nighthold, so didn’t eat up those globals like it does today. Otherwise, would be scarily identical.

so, in comparison to when the sim was run… may 28th 2017, and today, may 27th 2023… nothings really changed in terms of the core rotation, like, really at all. Leading to this feeling of everything just being stale, out dated and really, really showing its age… and let me tell you, lots of things from the Legion redesign did not age well. And yet, havent been changed… and i have to question why?

When we look at the statistics on what DPS specs are being played in the last 3 tiers of raid, in heroic since heroic players are less likely to be chasing the meta. We see a drastic decline in the overall representation of DPS DK players from Sepulcher, to now Aberrus. To make it easier, i compiled that data here

If we click through the tabs, can see DPS DK represented around 7% of all DPS players in Sepulcher, not amazing, but, far from the worst. Compared to just 5% of all DPS players in Aberrus. The 2nd least represented class. Even classes with just 1 dps spec, Demon Hunter, Evoker, and Priest are more represented in the raid. Only one lower? Monk.

Then we compare it to Aberrus, and its abysmal. Frost DK down from ~4% of all DPS players in raids… to just 0.62% at the time of writing. This isn’t really a new thing either. About a year ago, i had a similar thought. Did tuning impact a specs representation in a given season? The answer was generally no. But, if youre curious, i do have all that data here. Its missing Shadowlands Season 4, since at the time i did it, Season 4 was unreleased. But, feel free to click through each season and check out the total population values that were seen across M+, Heroic and Mythic Raids. Might shock you.

Now, the interesting takeaway here. Given that DK has 3 specs, ideally, we would see a 33.33~% distribution across all 3 specs in terms of population. But, even in this massive sample i took (minimum of 4.5 million samples per season across warcraftlogs and raider.io), thats just not the case.
If we look at Shadowlands season 1. 68.33% of DKs recorded were DPS, 31.67% Tanks. Thats pretty close to expected. But, that was also DPS DKs time in the sun, the last time we were truly good, fun, before the novelty wore off, and we were nuked from orbit. Step ahead in time to Shadowlands season 2. Suddenly, only 60.83% of DKs recorded were DPS, 39.17% being Tanks. Thats a pretty massive drop for DPS representation, and skewed things heavily towards blood. Starting to get unhealthy for the class though… then, season 3 happened. Suddenly, 45.27% of DKs recorded were Blood. Nearly as many Blood DKs as there were DPS DKs, and DPS dks have 2 specs to choose from. Now, as you know, DPS DK was pretty decently tuned in season 3 of Shadowlands… so, what gives? Whyd it drop so much?

This leads us to theory 2. The fun factor.
Going back to the Sepulcher data from Shadowlands, both DPS DK specs were really quite well tuned. Both above average in the raid. Yet, the total DPS population for DPS DK barely increased. While Blood DK absolutely rocketed (a 70% increase from s2 to s3 of SL). So, whats the difference? Blood DK just got an absolutely banger tier set. Unholys tier set was too limited/niche in use, as was Frosts. So, the fun factor went absolutely through the roof for Blood DK, and people flocked to it in droves.

Now, some may get mixed up, that strong = fun. Well, for some people it is, but, majority of players find fun in just, playin the game the way they want to. And the data i gathered for the sheet in shadowlands, was targeted at about the top 10% of the playerbase in terms of skill. Pulling from raider.io and only heroic or higher in raids, and those who had made it into the m+ leaderboard for the week (thus able to be seen by raider.io). Yet, when DK was “overpowered” in Castle Nathria, it was the 4th lowest in terms of population. And had the healthiest spread of DPS and Tank players ive ever recorded.

Right now, DK has “insane” utility in grip, AMZ, AMS, one of the tankiest classes in the game. Yet, its representation is piss poor. People aren’t playing DK. If we account for Tanks and Healers as well, DK as a whole represents less than 5% of the total playerbase of the game. Theres 13 classes, if all things were perfect, we would expect 7.7% of players to be on each class in the game on average. Obviously, thats not the case. Players are instead moving towards whats fresh, whats new, whats fun.

So, whats fresh/new/fun right now? Evoker, Retribution, and Hunters. Something ive noticed in my many, many years playing WoW is, people LOVE new stuff. and find it incredibly fun to get into it, see whats new, see if they can master the new specs. Doesnt matter if its stupidly strong, its the new hot thing, they want a piece of it. Before some of them fall back to their main of choice (which statistically speaking, is probably hunter, druid, shaman or paladin, as these 4 made up nearly 50% of the population across s1-3 of shadowlands).

So, lets discard some theories, and clear up some misconceptions then. First one i want to press is utility. In a heroic specific setting, there’s no correlation to group/raid utility, and spec representation. Death Grip will ensure DKs are brought to raid, clearly false given this data, so, its obviously not as strong as people think it is. Tuning means a spec will be more represented, also provably false. Retribution paladin right now is insanely middle of the pack, not amazing by any means, yet, has 50% more players than the next higher spec, shadow priest, which is also decidedly mid right now.

So, whats that leave? well, People like new things, people like fun things. DK as a whole hasnt felt “new” since the reworks in legion, nearly 7 years ago.

So, im calling for it now. For the health of DK, for the health of the game, its time for a rework/redesign of DK as a whole. Keep putting it off, and the class as a whole is going to die out, as its already doing. People aren’t playing DK, and honestly, i think its painfully obvious why. Its flawed all around. Lots of the mentality around its utility, flawed. Lots of the design decisions around resources, flawed. The fact that its still acting as 3 different classes all under the same “class”, rather than being subsets, specializations if you will, of the base class is flawed. Frost DK ignoring half of its resources, flawed. Unholy being stuck with a mechanic that was objectively decided to be bad by the rogue designers back in WoD and changed (festering wounds vs target specific combo points), is flawed. Blood having objectively WAY more utility than the DPS variants, flawed. Unholy benefiting insane amounts from trinkets, flawed (youre fixing this for demo in 10.1.5, why the heck is unholy ignored? You mentioned wanting to flatten out the peaks and valleys for Demo, so lets compare. https://imgur.com/ccKXsAT … its the same picture.). The class talent tree having the choice between utility, and damage, flawed (and outright against what the stated goals were of the class trees). Unholy bricking 20% of its talents, and half its tier set(s) by using control undead, flawed.

So, lets get off this obviously out of control train ride to doomsville, and rethink things, please?

anyways, that’s all for me today. Ive given my opinions on why i think things are going the way they are, but, how bout you guys? What are your opinions on all this?

166 Likes
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Great post, i dont have much else to add.

It really pains me to see the state of DKs in every aspect of the game right now. Seeing other classes getting reworks while DKs and esp Unholy having to deal with the same design issues since Legion sucks hard.

12 Likes
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Good post. More than anything what keeps me from actively playing WoW is the feeling that my favorite class is just an afterthought for Blizzard. I play and enjoy other classes sometimes, but I struggle to dedicate myself to them.

Death Knights are also struggling really hard in PvP right now. I’m tired of ‘tuning’ changes that just adjust things a few % here, and a few % there, when the whole class just feels awkward to play.

I said this in another thread, but it feels like Death Knights are designed by someone who is more concerned about playing against Death Knights than as a Death Knight.

12 Likes
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I will be honest, i have been trying to force myself to go back and play Death Knight since Shadowlands, but while i have leveled it (multiple DK’s in fact) there is just something in it that stops me going beyond just a casual character.

And it’s a mistery for me because i fricking Love Unholy DK theme, its a pet spec, its a necromancer, it wields a 2-handed sword and it deals burst, but somehow i don’t have the same passion to it that i have for Demonology.

Without a doubt, you are right, this is a situation much more dire than what Warlocks had in Cataclysm and that triggered the entire class rework in Pandaria.

Yes, i feel like Class Tree Utility nodes just function so much better when they don’t have many damage nodes to compete against them, while feels rly bad to pick that 2% more damage flat node at the cost of sacrificing some utility you would rly want but Cant because “its 2% damage”.

7 Likes
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THANK YOU

I dared anybody to sell me the DK as a class and so far the answers are:

  • They can’t.
  • They won’t.
  • They pump.

But let’s be honest about something: You can pretty much pump as any class. It’s just so far, I just do not see any reason to bring a DPS DK like… at all. Even Biceps mentioned that you only really need to bring them if you just so happen to be in a group with no brez or a one-up.

And I do try something new every now and then to see what sticks: So far, I am currently leveling a Protection Paladin (I know, it’s a tank spec) and it looks pretty promising. I am trying to stay away from Damage Role for content accessibility at this point. I also like Prevokers too.

They also are shooting themselves in a foot by changing a spec that never needed change in the first place: That being Demonology by the way. So rather than tuning up the class that actually needs change for more representation (like us) by making Unholy have a lot less global bloat and Frost a lot less one dimensional and stagnant, they’d rather screw up Demonology with a problem that they themselves created. Fun!

Blood DK is still fun. Albeit damage is lacking, I think they are still pretty solid. Of course, I’m not saying this that they should not be included for a class rework. I am saying this to mention that it is currently most accessible spec of the three.

Because Frost and Unholy is just that questionable and nothing significant have been changed about them. Like why is Runic Power feels so bad to use as Frost if you’re not using BoS? How long is this problem still in question since the introduction of BoS?

Like… This… is just not okay.

8 Likes
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Big agree, been trying to blast as dps dk but without PI and other classes buffing us we feel weak. Wish i had a buff to group like a raid or party buff so i dont constantly feel the pressure to rero to a buff melee class that does the same dam but brings another buff.

7 Likes
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Also timmy doesnt know his way around the new raid or mplus dungeons and it been frustrating to control pets this patch.

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Nothing better than doing FH and two seconds later you realize he’s huffing training dummy outside the ring randomly :rofl:

7 Likes
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Based as usual, Taeznak.

I really thought the return of quadratic scaling aoe and arbiter-ish gargoyle would retain my interest for longer, but it didn’t. Probably to do with the (boring imo) M+ disease build being way more robust and gargoyle being balanced around external buffs (god i hate being reliant on a certain trinket and PI).

More than anything you’ve got it right with the word “stale”, I personally really like the juggle of resources of unholy’s base rotation (even if it feels ultimately unimportant because you’re doing tank damage without CDs) but they’re the same song and dance we’ve been doing for…

damn it’s really been that long huh?
A rework would be a breath of fresh air.

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Excellently said.

I just want to stop being berated for my class choice. Give us real utility.

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Always thought Unholy would be more fun if army was removed and the spec got more controlled minion summons on short cooldowns. Hate to copy Demo locks but you get the idea. Bring back Shambler, Abom, etc all on relatively short CDs would be infinitely more fun than this wounds mechanic.

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As someone who has been playing DK nearly every single patch since Firelands, I can’t agree more. The class feels pretty stale and needs a lot of help. The current state of Breath of Sindragosa feels especially terrible for the spec. I stay subscribed and keep playing the game in hopes that we’ll get something to breathe new life into the class, so to speak, but sometimes I wonder if my faith is misplaced and it’s time to move on from this seemingly ignored class.

8 Likes
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Here is my take on playing a Death Knight.

Man, I love Death Knights, their armor looks so awesome, their lore is awesome, their game play not so much ah screw it I’m going back to my warrior. Over the years I have created a few Death Knights, but sadly I get them to max level and then park them.

9 Likes
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wow what a master class

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This is the big one to me. We actually just spoke about this and I couldn’t believe how similar they are. Meanwhile warlocks get a rework before dk??

I don’t get it. Warlock representation is almost always high. Paladins too.

And yes you can definitely chalk this up to Warlock envy, but dks were supposed to get new pet models back in legion. We were supposed to get something new for All Will Serve and our ghoul. The new ghoul model made it on the ghouls in Acherus, but never actually made it to the DK ghoul. So we just ended up with nothing in the last 7 years.

The DK design atm is being largely held together, for dps, by just a few abilities.

Breath of sindragosa
Army of the dead
Gargoyle

Without those three abilities frost and unholy would basically be doing less than tank Dps.

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Updating WCL/Raider IO

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I agree with most, but disagree with 1 thing and thats why people arent playing it. While it is stale and you can trace that all the way back to Wrath to be honest, most people on these forums at least say the performance is garbage and it would also seem that the playerbase also has this mentality if people are getting kicked from groups before the dungeon has started.

Realistically, I wouldnt want a rushed rework mid expansion. I rather see them dumpster it like they did Demo, and put in the time for the next expansion. We also need to get people in the beta that arent just “MORE OBLITERATE DAMAGE NOW!” and focusing on pointless stuff like if Mind Freeze is a talent or not.

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I really hope blizzard do another rework for the spec. Frost really do need it. unholy does not need wound poppin mechainics. its not rewarding for a combo point to spend for abilitities.

8 Likes
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I really think that a large reason dk isn’t “fun” is because without CDS you do zero damage.

Obliterate without killing machine feels HORRIBLE, frost strike feels HORRIBLE, Howling blast feels BAD ( why is it aoe capped at 1 target?). The spells just feels bad out of cds. Most of this is frost reaper and cleaving strikes fault because it puts so much of you damage into those 12 seconds where only obliterate matters. This means that not as good players do very poorly with obliteration and that breath just feels bad in general play because if you are questing are you going to use breath on 1 plain strider and feel good about it?

The classes with the highest play rates are also the classes with the best questing experience. This makes sense right? People level up questing enjoy the flow and stick with something. DH, ret, hunter, and fury are all super fun and fast levelers that do decent damage without much set up. Ret used to have a ton of set up and was reworked because people hated it.

Set up classes are not inherently bad, but the issue is dk has ZERO ways to play sustained damage. Through ANY of its specs. Obliteration is not sustained, I’m talking like ret or hunter. You can go into a pack with no wings and do 100k dps and then 200-300k with wings. If dk doesn’t have cds, specifically frost, you are doing tank levels of damage.

DK NEEDS a good sustained dps option and frost used to have that but its designed has been mangled over the years. Frostscythe was once great and now it is useless, breath is unplayable in keys without coordination or sufficient key level, oblit feels awful if you tank moves at all, death and decay feels out of place in frost and causes too much set up time. The issues go on.

I really hope we can get some small things to hold us over before a rework like making frostscythe baseline or at least worth taking in m+ and shuffling a bit of obliteration damage profile out of the window and into the baseline kit like non killing machine oblit, frost strike, and howling blast.

Also why is shattering blade not baseline when 2h talent went baseline, it feels super out of place and bad to pick in such a tight talent tree.

4 Likes
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You forgot Warlocks. Demo and Destro are lit right now.

I agree with you, Frost needs some serious love, and they need to really boost the 2 handed version by a lot. The 2 1-handers just doesn’t feel good.

1 Like