I’d agree with you on a lot of those points, but I would say that most casual players don’t have the presence of mind to use death grip in those ways and then you have to consider if you’re trying to get into a group then its likely if the leader isn’t a DK they then don’t know that DG can be used in such a capacity. Can it be a really good piece of utility? Sure. However, it doesn’t matter what it can be. It matters what the community thinks it can be.
I definitely agree on our interrupt being stronk. Short cd, ranged interrupt is great.
I don’t really understand what Blizzard is doing sleeping on adding a buff or something to DK. It would be fairly simple to do. Revert horn to AP buff, create a “Lich King’s Fury” ability to give us a lust. Idk…lots of ways to solve the utility issue, it’s just whether or not they want to.
I know this is PvE-focused but I would like PvP noted as well. Can we please have Necrotic strike back, VP duration nerf reverted and abom made baseline.
Also making DnD an aura around the player would be nice as well.
All the problems spoken about in this post also apply to PvP (id argue even more so) I have no issue with this post otherwise.
The problem with Death Grip is exactly what Aerie said, it requires good situational awareness to use effectively, which is something most players don’t have, making it pretty much useless for most DKs. And for the DKs that do have the situational awareness to use it properly, most mobs are immune to it, which is another issue with it. Most of the important mobs that would either need to be repositioned or interrupted are immune to it, killing the usefulness it could have. The only dungeon I have found Death Grip useful for is Brackenhide for the small runner gnolls and Uldaman to get the small dwarf adds out of the big dwarf add’s shield and even then its not insanely useful in those cases. A knock back or stun would be just as effective in those situations.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, it does have decent synergy with certain affixes and mechanics in dungeons as I stated above, but its not useful enough in those situations and those situations do not happen enough for me to want it over something like a raid buff or cooldown. I don’t think its worth keeping DG since it is preventing us from getting a raid buff or cooldown, which blizzard has said outright they don’t want to give DK because of DG.
I really like death grip, its a fun ability, but it has too few use cases for me to want it over something else that could be way more useful all the time, I would happily trade DG for a raid buff or a good raid cooldown.
At the moment with glacial advance is being used more often in aoe situation, it seems fit that glacial advance is able to reduce Pillar of Frost’s cd through Icecap talent. and it seems that we still dont have enough talent points to make this build fully functional we either lacking 10% strength from enduring strength, 20% mastery from frost whelp’s aid, or simply 2 point in icebreaker where it fits with current 2 sets.
Big agree with most of this, most the spells on frost feel so unimpactful. Frost strike, glacial advance (where is that old animation seriously), obliterate out of KM. All these core spells feel awful to press.
Even if you don’t use it for half of those things, you basically get 3 interrupts back to back to back, that alone is exceptionally strong.
Also, just because a player doesn’t have the knowledge or awareness to do so, doesn’t change what it’s capable of. The utility is there, at that point it’s the players fault for not using it.
It’s less about awareness for those who post here, more about most important mobs being immune to repositioning. If grip would interrupt always, even if mob stays in place, it would see way way more use
the 6 seconds is fine, the actual problem is the cost of 1 rune, it’d fit perfectly well into frost’s rotation in execute if it was simply free or, even better, costed runic power. i’d like to have more execute power in pve to make obliteration feel more unique. i don’t care about army of the dead, that crap is only usable once per fight as well as majorly stepping on unholy’s toes as the undead army summoner. soul reaper is an okay capstone, it only needs a bit more support. all of the capstones in the tree that represent from each spec do a great job to not give the unique identity of each of the 3 specs to eachother. they give good options that fit every dk spec as a whole. frost is frost magic and frostwyrms, unholy is rot and undead minions and blood is life draining sustain and tankiness.
That’s still completely besides the point. Aside from prot pally, and spam rogue CC, no other class has the option to interrupt that many times let alone interrupt protected casts that do get reset upon displacement.
Again, I’m not saying DK utility is the the best, I think they absolutely need a group wide buff or even a lust spell, but deathgrip is hands down one of the best utility spells in the game.
If it cost no runes it would ironically become worse for frost because you would have less rp to maintain breath.
Even then you still have to justify using a gcd every 6 seconds over spending/generating procs outside pillar.
It has never been taken by blood or frost for the enitire expanion because it does not fit into their rotations without specific modifications for each spec.
Leaving soul reaper as a niche pick for 1/3 specs for class fantasy reasons is awful for gameplay. The capstones dont even reflect the class fantasy. Abomination limb is the capstone for blood and is objectively an unholy-themed ability.
Obliterate does too much damage with all damage modifers and too little without it which isnt fun. Breath gameplay is toxic and not fun because you have to ignore mechanics or lose half your dps. Runeforges shouldnt be on talents its really weird just have them be weapon enchants. Most runeforges are useless and hysteria sucks. Delete 2h frost its just a design and balance nightmare. Some talents are useless like why did they bother adding shattering strike back and then make dw oblit trash compared to 2h oblit. Frostscythe useless because of design overlap with cleave oblit. The fact we have to play around dnd now as frost is garbage. Soul reaper is a terrible execute. Rotation outside cooldowns is not fun to play. PvP talents are trash.
The day breath gets turned into a bonestorm-esque version is when i quit the game. Seen so many people trying to “fix” breath when its the spec as a whole thats an issue
This end of the world mentality is getting old honestly. Last season in M+ Unholy DK was in almost every comp doing stupid damage. Right now frost dk is at the top of damage in Mythic raids and near the bottom in heroic and normal with unholy being second in normal and 5th in heroic. That tells me that it’s likely a skill issue where people are still learning how to play the spec. There are things to complain about, but raw damage output is not one of them.
Unholy was not in most comps in Season 1 of Dragonflight. They were well represented in MDI where giant pulls are the norm, but they weren’t that well represented in live keys. The current mythic raid data is also of limited value, as many boss fights are included in the overall data but lack enough parses for a reasonable sample size.
Unholy is definitely putting up reasonable results in raid but it is also one of the most PIed specs in raid and it has a 3-minute damage profile. So, if fights are super short or around 3:30-3:40 then Unholy looks really good. Frost is probably ok, results wise, but more fight dependent and will probably see more play in farm than it will in progression.
However, Unholy has a pretty clunky playstyle and wounds are generally considered a bad mechanic. Even with Festermight and Apocalypse the spec doesn’t care that much about wounds. Unholy’s tree also makes it hard to have a spec that does good single target and good AoE. Frost has uptime issue of Breath and Obliteration, coupled with the heavy reliance on those cooldowns. Right now, both DK specs basically do really poor damage outside of cooldowns.
The biggest problem with DPS DK right now is M+. In general, we are a bad Ret Paladin in M+. We are both tanky plate DPS with 2handers and Brezzes but Paladin’s have way more additional utility. They can deal with afflicted, incorporeal, they have externals they can give to people, they can provide devotion or ret aura, and they can help heal other players. Now, maybe 2h Frost in the hands of a good player has them beat in terms of dps, but it doesn’t seem like they are so far ahead to make losing all that utility worthwhile.
The entire point of the main post is that Death Knight representation continues to slide down despite tuning sometimes swinging in its favor, and why that might be. (Samey gameplay, utility feeling janky, etc.)
Looks like someone on reddit (credit to u/FranckTanck) compiled data for PvP. seems the incredibly low population issues are presented there as well. Albeit, i will admit, this is an incredibly low sample size.
Did they say if this was within a certain rating bracket? (I tried to check but Reddit formatting is just, well ya know…) Those participation numbers seem astronomically low without context.
