Proposal for San'layn change

Classes Death Knight
1

What I hope for is better survival via damage mitigation for this spec.

Play-style issue i have when I play this spec:

  1. More buffs to track and upkeep to the already heavy upkeep blood gameplay. We need to keep haste upkeep, death strike every 8 seconds to buff to dots, DnD, and boneshards. That is on top of other resource management between runic power and runes. Compare to Deathbriner, boneshards needs additional attention since Exterminate for Deathbringer pretty much made sure we are at 100% upkeep with optimal rotation. Death Strike buff should be extended in general to make the class smoother, and Vampiric Strike proc should be more consistent and rewarding. I find myself looking at addons and play whack-a-mole with button a lot more with San’layn, but none of these additional workload feel like there’s any payoff.
  2. Blood beast is too random, infrequent, and unreliable.
  3. Burst window is ruined by the fact that you cannot satisfyingly focus on burst, but also all the other multitude of buff upkeep and resource management and survival. Compare that to warrior, pretty much everything for prot is press on cooldown, defensive rotation upkeep is off GCD, and only pop defensive CD when needed.

San’layn is a spec that adds a lot of work with nothing to really show for it, and the spec has worse survival both naturally due to the lack of damage mitigation, and forcing us to cast death strike in more situations when otherwise we want to save the runic power.

:point_right: Maybe make vampric strike grant 100 runic power regardless to number of targets hit, grants 1 boneshard, and makes your next death strike free, and/or Vamperic Strike granting Coagulopathy itself or buff next Death Strike to grant 5 stacks? During burst window you can still maintain 100% boneshard upkeep, and sit at max runic power. When you are force to death strike in rotation for the proc, it is rewarding like hitting the jackpot because now all the runic power you wasted is back, and you have a free death strike. This doesn’t overtune the damage but drastically improve the playstyle.

2

That should be the big visual highlight of the hero spec, and it’s more infrequent than it should, really.

I’d rather make it an active spell instead of a proc. Something like Void Form that good gameplay can extend its duration.

3

Either make it come out with dancing runic weapon, or make the random proc payoff be better. Seems to me blizzard balance around pull size of 5-8 depending on the class, blood beast balancing should reflect that especially considering we don’t do huge packs in mythic anymore.