Scourge Strike with a Wound does more damage than Oblit w/o KM. Oblit base damage is trash. ‘Tuning is in flux’ sure, and Obliterate is one part of the kit, not the entire kit, but nerfing Obliterate damage first is nerfing the reason people are hyped about returning to fDK. If fDK needs nerfed, nerf something else and buff Obit back up.
A spell called “Obliterate” should do name appropriate damage. It should regularly be in the same window as Mortal Strike and Templar’s Verdict in terms of power. r2 KM is a big boost to oblit, but I’m really not feeling like its enough. The spell’s baseline power is too low and it genuinely tickles when you don’t have KM active. If the top end of the spell is too high, and I think it is, with 2h frost’s Night Fae, nerf the borrowed power that actually makes the spell broken, don’t nerf the baseline spell.
I really don’t get why the spec’s damage composition, and the feeling of having a meaningful core spell, is held hostage by these borrowed power systems. It feels really bad to have your core spell neutered because one covenant can do stupid cleave damage with it, while you may not have even ran that covenant to begin with.
Buff baseline Oblit and MoTFW, and nerf Night Fae and maybe r2 KM, normalize the spell’s power, so that oblit power stacking builds are weaker, but the spell is stronger on a core level. Oblit should feel good as a core rotational spell, with or without Killing Machine. Right now it feels utterly and completely lacking as a core rotational spell, it fails to live up to its animation, it fails to live up to its name, and it fails to live up to its legacy as a reliable hard hitting chunk of a melee attack.
A spell you can spam 3 times on pull with no other action required will never do the same damage as a spell you need to build ressources before using like TV/MS.
L52 and L58 are not “borrowed power” at all though, they’re literally ranks of class spells.
It can and should do just as much damage, Frost DK is not op in pvp. They can be kited, or stunned out of their POF just like always. Having a bursty damage out put if they can get to you was Frost play style. Thier survival is medium and mobility is laughable, so let them hit scary hard. If they have to sacrifice more survival to balance it I’m all for it.
But, Howling Blast does a whole lot more damage than Obliterate now and you can spam it 6 times…
You can make the case with Frost Strike since it needs build up, but howling Blast does comparable damage to that, but Obliterate is laughable by comparison. I know this is pre-patch, but seeing the feedback from beta where people are also seeing how lacking it is, no amount of defending this saying what you just did can excuse it when another ability using the same resources does a lot more damage and can be, as I’ve said spammed 6 time compared to obliterates 3.
Right now on live as for some insight, my HB does 1.5 - 1.9k max while obliterate does max of just over 950 (1k with fallen crusader). I know it’s pre-patch, but damn
Maybe they should just remove the physical damage from Obliterate and either just make it do damage based on a percentage of attack power as frost damage or just all frost damage.
Maybe?
What even is the point keeping it physical right now?
How much mastery, RazorIce at 5 stacks, Rime procs ? What other modifiers do you even have to make Howling Blast do that much more damage ?
Tooltip wise, Howling Blast is 1/4 of Obliterates’ damage. And that first hit is pretty much “tooltip” damage, before you manage to get your 5 stack RazorIce going and start getting Rime procs.
I argue it would be harder, because you could just stack mastery to raise its damage, and it bypasses armor, so you could get 3 massive hits right out the gate.
Which is what people in these threads are complaining about in the first place though…
I don’t understand all of the people complaining on these forums that Obliterate should hit as hard as a Ret’s TV with wing’s, FR, Trinket ECT with a normal hit. It’s a builder ability, you can’t have it doing crazy damage on it’s own or it’s the only thing we would press.
I understand people want to feel strong or in the pre patch, no one want’s to feel weak but quit being silly and take things seriously or Blizzard won’t listen to your opinions. You would need a rework of the class if you want Oblit to hit really hard without procs and buffs.
You want them to nurf the borrowed power that would kill all of the other specs and builds so a single talent can over perform compared to the other two? It’s not even NF why they nurfed it. Both Kyrian and Necrolords have boosts that make it strong too. The 50 talent was just too good compared to the other choices and this was the only way to deal with it. They can’t just buff the other two also as they have guidelines for how powerful talents should be. How could they even buff icecap, let us have PoF up permanently?
They have not started balancing classes vs each other yet. All it takes is the press of a button for them to raise the damage with the aura system stuff they use now. If we are doing too little damage when they finally get to that phase of the tuning they will buff it, expect the classes over performing to get nurfed at the same time. They are still working on balancing talents with each other and need to deal with Lego’s and the other borrowed power before class balance can be looked at or they would need to do it all over again once they finish with the borrowed power systems. Blizzard already had to delay SL, they don’t have the time to worry about the Pre patch balance, not that they ever have worried about it.
Yeah it sucks FDK is not one of the better specs in the Pre patch atm but it’s not a big deal in the long run, all content has been nurfed and is super easy now. If your talking about PvE content like many people do here quit crying it’s fine. The only real problem is for people who PvP as it won’t be too fun with how over tuned a few of the other specs are. PvP in the Pre patch is a joke.
How is having 1 single “element” of damage harder to balance than something that sometimes is physical sometimes is frost? Eliminating a variable will always make balance easier. They could easily just lower the mastery value. Or better yet, just lower the ap value of oblit, and it would still be consistent.
I do agree it would be easier to balance if it was just frost. They would need to make changes because of mastery scaling yeah but it’s simpler in my opinion.
I get it. I just want the fantasy at any point in the game of being an undead juggernaut be… real. That’s for any point in the game pre-patch or not.
I’m not looking to be invincible or one shot bosses, but like Obliterate just feels like crusader strike. I do also get that it’s just one ability, so I can let it rest.
But, with that i will also ask, then why not have killing machine only affect frost strike and reduce Oblit cost to one rune?
