Yep, this is gonna be a big important post.
So, it’s about time we talk about the San’layn talents coming up for Death Knights, and the cosmetics we want to see. I’m going to start off this discussion with my opinions and ideas, but figured I’d poke our community in general to see what you all think as well.
Starting off this post of course with a song to get things in the mood:
San'layn Death Knight Hero Talents Opinion Breakdown
Keystone
Vampiric Strike: Your Death Coil and Death Strike have a 10% chance to make your next Heart Strike or Scourge Strike become Vampiric Strike. Vampiric Strike heals you for 3% of your maximum health and grants you Essence of the Blood Queen, increasing your Haste by 1.5%, up to 7.5% for 20 seconds.
I feel like the effect for this one should be quite straightforward. A blood effect, either encircling the Death Knight, or drawing in to the death knight, like blooddrinker (I think that’s what the talent is called, it’s been a while). BUT… they should make the effect unique from what it already looks like for that one. I’d love a lunge forward and bite, but that requires animations - so I imagine it’d be better to have an aura or blood flowing around them.
Row 1
- Newly Turned: Raise Ally revives players at full health and grants you an absorption shield equal to 20% of your maximum health.
The ally getting a blood red aura would be pretty cool. That could represent the shield, too. Could be blood flowing around them too, that’d be cool. We have graphics that represent this sort of thing already, though, so I feel like flowing blood should be added to make it unique. Maybe even bats encircling them for a bit.
- Bloody Fortitude: Icebound Fortitude reduces all damage you take by up to an additional 30% based on your missing health. Killing enemies that grant honor or experience reduces the cooldown of Icebound Fortitude by 3 sec.
Basically the same thing as above. However, I favor the bats flying around the person for this one, I think that’d be really cool. For IBF, maybe even chilled or ‘icy blood’ looking bats.
Row 2
Infliction of Sorrow: When Vampiric Strike damages an enemy affected by Blood Plague or Virulent Plague it consumes the disease dealing 200% of the remaining damage. While Gift of the San’layn is active, Vampiric Strike no longer consumes your disease and instead extends the duration of your disease by 3 sec and deals 20% of the remaining damage to the enemy.
This is really neat and plague/disease related. Again, bats flying around them would be cool, but more sanguine effects. Blood flowing down the Death Knight for example, blood coming down their eyes, stuff like that. Maybe bloody wings, or bat wings, appear, bat wings that could have bloody mist. Speaking of bloody mist - maybe that could be an effect too, surrounding the enemy. When gift of the San’layn is active, I think it’d be super neat to have that indicated. Jet black eyes, perhaps? I’d prefer perma-red eyes, so I’d shy away from that. Maybe wings pop out for it?
Frenzied Bloodthirst: Essence of the Blood Queen stacks 2 additional times and increases the damage of your Death Coil and Death Strike by 5% per stack.
Definitely blood flowing from the lips and/or dripping from claws/nails. I think that’s straightforward and would be SUPER COOL. Also, the essence of the blood queen thing is super interesting, again another opportunity for wings ^^
The Blood is Life: Vampiric Strike has a chance to summon a Blood Beast to attack your enemy for 10 sec. Each time the Blood Beast attacks it stores a portion of the damage dealt and when the Blood Beast dies it explodes dealing 50% of the damage accumulated to nearby enemies and healing the death knight for the same amount.
Oh man, a BLOOD BEAST?! This is bloody cool and I can’t wait to see what they do. Now, you know what I’m going to say. It should be a bat. A plague bat, to be specific, like the mount. HOWEVER, we could speculate a TON of different ones. A wolf, perhaps? Blood tick? What if we could… choose? That would be neat. Maybe even a tiny blood-dragon. But in my opinion, the best one for this would be a bat made of blood. And of course - an explosion of blood would be warranted.
Row 3
Visceral Regeneration: Your Heart Strike and Scourge Strike have a 3% per stack of Essence of the Blood Queen to refund a Rune. Vampiric Strike doubles the chance to refund a Rune.
Every time it refunds a rune, we’d need a surge of blood or something, some cool visual effect for it. I’m open to ideas.
Incite Terror: Heart Strike and Scourge Strike extend the duration of Essence of the Blood Queen by 0.5 seconds. Vampiric Strike increases the extension by 100%.
This is a good transformation moment, where your DK turns into a bat monster or something similar. Or jet black eyes, the addition of wings, whatever. A hiss, baring fangs, but I feel like it should be turly terrifying. Maybe the DK, if Blizz wants to be lazy, turns into a bloody simulacrum version of themselves with bloody wings spread or something. How they’d apply this visually to that paritcular move, I don’t know. It’d apply at every heart or scourge strike - would that be reasonable? Hm… maybe toning down these ideas to be shadowy bloody wings when it’s going on.
Choice node
- Sanguine Scent: Your Death Coil and Death Strike have a 15% chance to trigger Vampiric Strike when damage enemies below 35% health and it is guaranteed to critically strike.
When this is active, glowing red eyes or jet black eyes (preferred). Maybe, again the wings, or flowing bats around the DK. Maybe a puddle of blood forming under them, or something, which would also be cool.
- Pact of the San’layn: Your store 50% of all Shadow damage dealt into your Blood Beast to explode for additional damage when it expires.
Stored energy has a shadowy aura for several moments <3
Capstone
Gift of the San’layn: While Vampiric Blood or Dark Transformation is active you gain Gift of the San’layn. Gift of the San’layn increases the effectiveness of your Essence of the Blood Queen by 100% and replaces your Heart Strike and Scourge Strike with Vampiric Strike for the duration.
This is the meat and potatoes of the visual effects we need. That transformation for our DK. Dark transformation is for our minions, yes, which ideally would turn them into a blood beast or whatever model they plan on using that WOULDN’T explode, maybe another variant.
But for our character? Bat monster. Hands down, I suggest a really neat plaguebat monster, though am open to ideas. I think that would be SICK myself. I doubt they’d do that, though, so just gaining wings during that part like the Blood Queen would suffice.
Though - a toggleable outside of combat would be SICK.
Thoughts? I feel like there should be a toggleable effect if you’ve ‘specced’ into ‘San’layn’, where you would indeed gain additional eye colors like glowing red or jet black. That’d be neat. DK can’t have red eyes right now (-.-) so this would be a perfect opportunity to give us those.
Also - for unholy, they should let us ‘transform’ or ‘transmog’ our ghoul into some sort of bloody beast, that’d be cool. The blood beast that does not explode, I reckon.
Finally - an additional move I’d want to see is something like Death Walk but as a cloud of bats, quite like from Diablo 4 Season of Blood and that ‘dodge is actually a cloud of bats that curses enemies’ ideas. (well the curse applies under specific talents but my point is, maybe it can be an offensive tactic with that visual effect, of course.)