Hey there, I’m Vairuh, I’m GM of DMG top 20 US guild, and an Unholy title player. I along with everyone else have dealt with Defile and it’s vision obscurity for many seasons now, but I firmly believe that this new Defile is something that needs to be looked at urgently as it’s the worst it has ever been imo.
As the title says, something needs to be done about Defile. The new animation paired with some of the new aoe circle animations make mechanics wayyy too difficult to see, especially on top of all the normal melee clutter and spell effects that I’m forced to look at, both generally and from other classes (specifically firestorm, earthquake, and frost mage abilities). In almost every key I zone into it’s like I’m playing with an extra affix that only I am forced to deal with. And to be honest, it’s not just Defile that needs fixing but I also think that Abomination Limb should be looked at as well, if you pair Defile + Abomination Limb I can promise you you’re practically playing the game blind as your surrounded by complete darkness. Reducing or increasing graphic settings does absolutely nothing, if you have particle density on, which you should always have on, this is the hell you are forced to live in. So I am asking for this to be looked into.
Possible solutions that I’ve come up with are,
- Reducing the darkness density towards the center and making mechanics discernible, while making the outline more clear
- Giving us a glyph to alter our Defile and change it to regular DnD animation
- Taking inspiration from our Rider Morgraine’s DnD animation but make the Defile animation black/dark to maintain thematic value, this is probably my favorite solution as it’s a very transparent ability and allows full visibility of any ground mechanics underneath your character.
- Or instead of fixing just Defiles animation, maybe the way that overlapping textures/animations needs to be looked at as a whole prioritizing dangerous abilities.
Some of the biggest offenders where I see this issue happening the most, and are the most deadly that I can think of off the top of my head:
Cinderbrew Meadery
- Tasting Room Attendant - Cinderbrew Toss
- Chewie - High Steaks
Workshop
- Rocket Tonk - Rocket Barrage
- Machinist’s Garden - Roaring Flame
Floodgate
- Demolition Duo 2 mechanics, both Shrapnel and B.B.B.F.G
- Darkfuse Jumpstarter - Battery Discharge
- Geezle Gigazap - Turbo Charge
Darkflame Cleft
- Ol’ Waxbeard - Cave-In
- Kobold Taskworker - Bonk
Theater of Pain
- Sathel the Accursed - Searing Death
- In general you tank 1st and last boss near the edge of the arena, and when you place Defile it clips beneath the arena, so half the time you can’t even tell if you’ve even placed it or not. Same thing happens on Kul’tharok.
Motherlode
- Addled Thug - Uppercut
- Venture Co. Mastermind - Brainstorm
Rookery
Voidstone Monstrosity - Null Upheaval
Priory
- Taener Duelmal - Ember Storm
- Forge Master Damian - Molten Pool
- Fanatical Conjuror - Flamestrike
- Baron Braunpyke - Hammer of Purity initial spawn
Thank you for reading.
84 Likes
Defile has been a pain point for UDK for a long while, and while it’s improved from where it’s been, it still is a real pain, especially for players that already have colour difficulties.
2 Likes
Something else to add to the list: coin lines on One Armed bandit are obscured by the center of defile.
2 Likes
I love defile thematically and it does a great job of feeling like a upgraded version of DnD that is impactful. However, the amount of times I have died to ground effects that were basically impossible to see, even after the defile visual update, is very frustrating. There is no reason for it to still be this way in the patch that introduced to us the new swirlies in the interest of visual clarity. However, those swirlies also proved that we can have improved visual clarity WITHOUT sacrificing thematic identity, and defile deserves that, as a talent that is a cornerstone of this spec’s builds in every AOE situation.
2 Likes
I hate defile and hate that I have to use it to cleave. Just get rid of it. We already have too many globals even playing the new hotness that is the blood is life.
4 Likes
It’s insane to me that Defile’s visual was updated recently, but these issues haven’t been improved whatsoever. This issue dates back to Shadowlands with Death’s Due (probably even before then, I just started playing Unholy back then) and while that spell was infinitely worse, it shows that this type of underlying issue still gets ignored in favor of shiny new things.
Agree with this. DnD cleave is the worst thing about DK gameplay right now.
Having to spend a GCD and a rune to self-affix is just dumb, and you almost never get full value out of it since there is so much movement needed and a lot of tanks are super spazzy about it.
It’s time to kill off cleaving strikes!
5 Likes
Just remove defile as a talent and roll its current damage into base Death and Decay.
The current version of DnD is so weak that it only serves to allow us to cleave.
Also, turn it into Shadowfrost damage so frost cam benefit from it.
DKs in general need to be modernized, but that’s for another thread.
2 Likes
Big vouch why do i have to use my inner eye to predict things that will atomize me in .01 seconds, if other classes were able to see defile like we have to see fire storm and rain of fire it would be changed in less than a week.
1 Like
“Improved from where it’s been.”
I really miss the stacking Mastery buff that used to come with it. 
i love it when my group questions me why I got hit by a swirly. Only if they could see what I see on my screen…
just another classic example of where fantasy and class theme hinders with actual gameplay. Wow developers just simply doesn’t understand that this is a losing battle every time this happens.
1 Like
Blizzard please listen to this man
The graphic itself isn’t really much worse than the last iteration, but it is still a significant problem.
I doubt they can fix it if it’s size/texture remains dynamic; likely an engine/code issue where dynamic textures take priority over anything else in a layered system.
Don’t expect a change unless they make Defile’s size static, and just a larger radius than DnD by default.
UP
make DND/Defile an aura just like Mograine’s already.
2 Likes
Orrrrrrr… give us Lich King’s defile and have it immediately kill everything in it so seeing it grow feels good.
There are pros and cons to that. Particularly in the case of defile as a range aoe slow in pvp. You’d be surprised how often it comes in handy.
The fact that DnD is just a ground buff that allows us to cleave is the problem with the current incarnation of the spell. We need an alternative cleave method that isn’t locked behind static spell on a cooldown.
And again, Defile has no need to exist, just give its damage and lower cooldown to the base DnD.
1 Like
tooo OP.
BUT I like the idea, gets bigger as it deals damage, if something dies in D&D then it’s duration is refreshed so it can just stay and get bigger and bigger and bigger.
But everyone will complain that it covering up swirlies gets even worse with that.
1 Like
what if defile was semi transparent and things show up in a outline so we know where everything is
or stuff shows up in outline and defile stays out it is
Just to add to this, I was streaming my keys last night in discord and our titled healer was watching and said, “wow, I will no longer be frustrated when DKs die, how do you even play”. This wont be fixed ever but it should be
2 Likes