Reaper's Mark Reset is neither engaging or enjoyable

Classes Death Knight
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Hello, I’m Discord. I’m a minion from Acherus, which is the Death Knight Discord. I do some TC work, and I review logs to help and coach community members wanting to improve their gameplay. I assist mostly new players learning their rotation, and older players trying to figure out less obvious issues. They both usually have a problem stemming from the same source.

Reaper’s Mark.

It’s often the first thing a newer DK will ask about, “Why is X’s reaper’s mark doing so much more than me”, and it’s usually something more experienced DK’s will complain about “my class feels like trash when reaper’s mark doesn’t proc.”

This is especially bad for new players, who might be playing WoW for the first time, choose a DK, and not understand why sometimes mobs will absolutely disappear, while other times they take forever to die.

The Problem

Reaper’s Mark Resets are bad for the spec. It is an infrequently rolled RNG proc which has significant rotational and damage impact, which both result in not proccing feeling terrible. This is juxtaposed against actually procing being borderline unnoticeable in the moment, since the initial application is identical to an Exterminate that does not proc.

This is compounded by the debuff itself often being covered up by Frost Death Knight’s cluttered debuff profile, as there are a great number of non-interactive debuffs that without extensive UI modification can be difficult for any player to understand.

Because of this, two people pressing the exact same buttons and playing equally as well as each other will get wildly different results and feeling out of their class.

An Example

Anecdotally I tried to help a pretty young player who wanted to solo delves. He could manage it well enough until he got to the boss, where he would either kill it extremely quickly, through reaper’s mark procs, or he would be unable to kill it and die.

Due to how difficult it can be to feel Reaper’s Mark resets without the knowledge of what it is, he could not figure out why this would happen. This was genuinely upsetting for him as he did not understand the source of these wild RNG swings.

Before, he had sent multiple messages asking for help or information, but after this situation, he completely stopped talking in the community, which I suspect meant he gave up on the class or the game,

The Result

The inconsistency in both feeling and damage has and will continue to result in people abandoning the spec, or even the class all together.

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And the nerfs to the damage just makes it feel 100x worse. If it was 100% chance then maybe it would actually feel useful

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I just made this same post this morning. Get rid of the reset and make it 25% crit chance per 10 stacks. Get rid of this moving target to tune that way you have a consistent base line to buff back to the standard of getting 2-3 resets. There’s no way current tunning is based on not getting any resets.

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Killing machine already puts us in a weird position where we want to stack crit to get the procs, but since the buff gives a guaranteed crit it doesn’t actually benefit from the stat.
Giving Reaper’s Mark a guaranteed crit (because really, when do you ever not hit 40 stacks?) would end up in the same situation.

Unless you’re going to rework the entire spec to give some kind of crit damage multiplier from crit and/or mastery, or remove all our guaranteed crits, or go even heavier on the guaranteed crits to the point that we don’t need to get the stat from gear (I think fire mage is like this?), I don’t see how this would help anything.

To the point of the OP, I personally love the resets. Frost is already hugely RNG based so I don’t really see RM being any different. I see the resets as a bonus, not an expectation.
You can make the same argument about “pressing the same buttons but getting different damage” based on crit alone, or for any other ability/class that has RNG procs.

Take resets out of the equation. Take crit out too. You’re still gonna get wildly different damage based on if fallen crusader procs, or our current tier set, or both. Etc.

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I don’t think anyone thinks the resets are unfun when they happen. Its obvious at this point we have been nerfed due to getting resets. When you do a boss pull and go through 2-3 RM CDs with no resets you are going to pars a 60-80. When you get 2-3 resets on that same run you are going to pars a 90-95. Two players that perform equally shouldn’t show that much difference in performance due to a proc mechanic.

Just one proc is another RM bomb and 2 Exterminates. It not like any other proc in our kit its a HUGE dps difference.

Exterminate costing 1 rune and giving 20 RP also causes much longer BOS

When it comes to the crit aspect this also causes two FDKs that performed equally and even got the same number of procs to get very different results due to how high the damage is of RM. One player having bad luck and not getting any crits on their 3.5mil RMs appose to another getting lucky and getting a few 7mil crits makes a big difference. Its not like a frost strike hitting 350k or 700k. Its 3.5mil or 7mil.

I promise im equally as frustrated at the fact we stack crit till our eyes bleed just to proc KM to spend on a global that waste all the crit we have stacked.

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Very eloquently written
I sincerely hope this is something they address.
I find myself in raid even annoyed on the opener because i didnt get a reset and my damage is garbo OR i get a god string and we wipe on our mythic prog anyways.

There has to be a better system, but i think the major stemming issue is frost has desperately needed a rework for a long time now.

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You guys are gonna ruin everything in the game with your endless pursuit of perfect balance.

After this it’s gonna be Km, after km it’s gonna be gathering storms or whatever bs you come up with, etc etc… There’s always gonna be a damn problem until every spec has little to no interactions and is extremely barebones to play with literally nothing dynamic going on, just shut up and enjoy the damn game. Frost damage is fine even if you don’t get a lot of resets, and if you do you will blow up in the damage meters.

The gameplay shouldn’t be held hostage because some people just cannot accept that if you want a fun and interactive gameplay then you also need some dynamism, some form of proc or cdr or cde mechanic, or whatever in order to actually make you feel like you are working towards something, doing something that’s actually engaging, and that’s gonna bring some variance into the game, and it’s fine, and you trying to remove this is just gonna make the game play like trash.

That’s about all.

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The game and classes have been reiterated on and altered since the game came out and every patch / expansion thereafter

what are you even talking about what a nonsensical statement

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Completely missed the point, but it’s expected of pseudo intellectuals.

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okay have fun on your “slippery slope” LOL

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I don’t think you even know what slippery slope means.

Or what argument is a slippery slope.

Pseudo intellectuals tend to throw “fallacy” without even understanding what’s going on, it’s just a bs internet debate tactic to avoid actually thinking about something and it’s pathetic, just like your argument.

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Nice try, “pseudo intellectual” seems pretty slippery to me

Its always the same reason people like you hide behind burner profiles

Also what gameplay are we holding hostage, you dont even play the game :^)

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Yea because i’m in Europe, that’s why. There could be multiple reasons for that. Many which you didn’t account for because you’re not as smart as you think you are.

How’s that for a fallacy? Wat are you gonna cry about next?

Maybe you should actually… Try to think once in a while, it’s good exercise. That’s assuming you’re even capable of doing so.

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Just stop feeding the troll its muddying up a good post.

Don’t let him bait you. let his comments float into the abys.

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This is not a good post.

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No one even use that word but you. I assume you are a tested, proven, and TRUE intellectual capable of evaluating others intellectual capacity?

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Yes indeed.

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He’s an emotional vampire don’t let him feed. like a stray cat if you feed them they come back.

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You can always tell a true intellectual by the way they call other people dumb while using poor punctuation…

Dude must have a sad, sad little life.

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I’m not trying to pursue perfect balance, I, like many people I interact with, just don’t like reaper’s mark resets.

The difference between reaper’s mark resets and KM, is that there’s gameplay alternatives for when KM doesn’t proc. You can manually generate a KM inside pillar, you can spend down your runic power so you have more runes for your next killing machine, you can make sure you have a high average stacks of bonegrinder so you proc more often.

Reaper’s mark doesn’t have any of that, if you don’t proc it’s not like you can play somewhat differently to account for it and get roughly the same result. You also can’t do anything to increase the chance that it procs, it either does, or it does not. There is no gameplay interaction here, and when it has gameplay implications, that lack of interaction feels bad.

Also it’s strictly segregated from gathering storm which is a determinative buff that has no RNG interaction what so ever beyond the innate RNG of frost’s rune economy.

Reaper’s mark resets isn’t some kind of CDR, or a random proc that can happen whenever you need to play around like hot hands for shammy. You press reaper’s mark, and then it either decides to do double damage, and carry your rune economy, or it does not. You do not change the way you play either way.

Its the old classic, I press lightning bolt and then seven lightning bolts come out, through no actual impact of my keybinds.

3 Likes