UPDATED: 10-8-25
The Midnight changes to Frost & Unholy bring some good things and some problematic things. So far, I’m not a fan of the Apex talents; I feel like they could pigeon hole you into certain gameplay. I get that you want a hook, but I’m not sure why more regular talents wasn’t just fine?
Over all, the changes are another step forward, but there can be much more done to make the class feel fun and exciting. I am a visual person, so things make more sense to me when I can see concepts and play around with them. Therefore, I’ve made mock talent grids to outline potential changes that will improve the class. Links below:
Death Knight Utility Talents
https://www.rpgskilltreegenerator.com/tree/56e663d4-b3a9-4dbc-a6a2-221c0276ad00?mode=view
Frost Talents
https://www.rpgskilltreegenerator.com/tree/52ecd4ad-0e26-4be9-a9d9-8045efe1c6d1?mode=view
Unholy Talents
https://www.rpgskilltreegenerator.com/tree/05ac1613-0807-454e-a59f-bc3082eb4704?mode=view
FEEDBACK: UTILITY TALENTS
The 2-minute version of Raise Dead is just not fun or interesting; It’s actually kind of annoying. Furthermore, I believe that Raise Dead (permanent or otherwise) should be an optional choice (even for Unholy). I think permanent Raise Dead should be placed into the Frost and Unholy talent trees. Unholy would have their ghoul and Frost could get a Skeletal Knight (similar to Lurid). We’ve been waiting many years for that option.
Not sure why you put Asphyxiate and Death’s Reach together as a talent choice. They should not be combined. Death’s Reach is a nice quality-of-life talent that should always be easily accessible. Pitting it against our only stun is just mean spirited.
Death Defiance is a welcome talent. But I think the increase to healing should be 100%. That debuff is a real pain to deal with.
Purgatory should be a class skill in the utility tree. It was available to all specs before and should continue to be so. We need that flavor to define the class better.
Having a choice node between Gorefiend’s Grasp and Abomination Limb makes sense. What does not make sense is having them only available to Blood. Both spells have been available to all specs in the past. Putting them in the utility tree is not going to break anything. Once again, that was flavor lost that needs to be restored.
FEEDBACK: FROST
I do not like having spells like Glacial Advance and Sindragosa’s Fury being mandatory. These types of abilities are fine in raids and pvp, but become problematic in dungeons and delves where mobs are more closely spaced and you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. Glacial Advance should be put back into the talent tree and it should be optional. And these current Apex talents empowering Sindragosa’s Fury are extremely problematic for me.
Based on my above opinion, Frostbane should proc from Obliterate and Frostscythe.
Speaking of Frostscythe, we need a talent that causes Howling Blast to trigger Killing Machine when it hits 3 or more enemies. This is important. Currently for AoE, we just switch Obliterate with Frostscyhte and that is extremely boring. Having the above talent function in that manner would break up the monogamy of our priority rotation. Also, bring back the original and impactful animation for Frostscythe.
As I mentioned earlier, Frost needs Raise Dead: Skeletal Knight. Not a ghoul, but it’s own thing. An optional thing. Because I know that many play Frost specifically because it doesn’t have a permanent pet. It has to be optional, but the legacy of Thassarian would be complete.
It is time to just do it. Remorseless Winter should be our 1-minute main cooldown. Put it in the talent tree and have it grant us some strength for the duration, but go ahead and just delete Pillar of Frost. Also, we need the original animation back, but maybe make it less opaque. There were problems with seeing the fire we were standing in because of the thick frosty animation. The new animation just plain sucks though; It’s too glyphy looking.
Currently, Frost feels too weak outside of the Pillar of Frost / Reaper’s Mark window. We need better sustained damage. So shifting things around a bit is probably necessary.
Here is another bandaid to rip off. Just make Razorice a talent. It’s iconic and powerful and now has a lot of synergy with some of our talents. We have plenty of other options for runeforges. Lets change the paradigm and maybe make it easier to balance 2-Hand vs Dual-Wield Frost.
FEEDBACK: UNHOLY
I believe that most of us agree that removing Festering Wounds is a huge win. BUT, the new design leans too heavily into the necromancer schtick and not enough into the disease-stacking, plague-spreading theme. There are many of us that would like to play Unholy without any pets or summons at all with a focus on diseases/dots. That can be accomplished (see talent tree). But we need more non-pet focused spells and talent points in general. The new Apex talents just add more fuel to that fire.
Don’t get me wrong. The new lesser ghoul mechanics are very good and a lot of players will be thrilled. But it would be much better if they were optional. This is especially true for something like Putrefy; this spell is mandatory but will be a huge pain in pvp scenarios…which is exactly the reason why it should be optional.
Truthfully, Death Knight is a class that could benefit most with the addition of a 4th spec. That way you could better differentiate between disease vs pet focus by splitting that up within 2 specs. But that is something for another day.
I think it would be cool to have a talent that increases the damage of Epidemic so that you use that 100% of the time instead of Death Coil. Hence the Pestilence talent in my talent tree.
I really like my concepts for Infest, Plague Strike, Desecration and a reworked Soul Reaper. All of that would be a blast to play with Unholy, so I hope the devs take an extra long look.
Thanks for reading. Suffer well.
