San'layn Unholy feels like it missed the mark

Classes Death Knight
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I love casual pvp, I love self heals, so I decide to give TWW a try playing as San’layn Unholy.
Get myself a full set of honor gear before seasons starts and consistently get wrecked, but that’s okay I haven’t played for a while I’m probably just bad.

I notice death strike is kinda bad, but it scales with versa so maybe it will get better? Can’t 1v1 anyone except other death knights at this point so I avoid any rated pvp, but that’s okay I would rather just get my conquest from unrated play anyway.

I play lots of epic battlegrounds and notice AoE damage is very mid, charts always dominated by boomkins and hunters.

I Swap Plaguebringer to Clawing Shadows and play a bit more like a hunter, now I can actually kill some people when stuck in 1v1 yay! Sure I’m losing the massive synergies between plaguebringer and san’layn but now I can actually win fights cause range is that important, and I can’t dual melee classes in 1v1 without kiting them anyway.

I don’t see many DKs overall and the ones I do see are all playing Rider of the Apocalypse. Can’t argue with their logic, RotA is just better, but that’s okay I play for the aesthetics and themes anyway and I figure balance patches should help it out in the long term.

I Expect blizzard to buff San’layn or nerf RotA sometime in the future, and maybe nerf boomkin/hunter aoe or buff DK aoe. Blizzard nerfs diseases and deathcoil, which is a stronger nerf to San’layn than RotA, hunters/boomkins untouched. I am now very confused.

I play some more battlegrounds, get stuck into very long aoe fights, damage is still mid, other classes still dominate the charts, don’t really notice much difference, cept everyone is harder to kill.

Theme wise I’m confused as to why my self healing is garbage yet my damage reduction is actually okay? feel like a homogenized plate dps instead of something unique, as it appears I’m expected to play by being attached to a healer and just waiting for cooldown spikes? heck even the deathstrike pvp talent gives me more damage reduction to help an external healer keep me topped up instead of more healing to help top myself up. I don’t like how the heavy cooldown pet focus and lack of self sustain focus pushes the skill floor and skill ceiling so close together, but I also wouldn’t want to ruin the game for people who want to play pet spam unholy.

I would love a more classical version of unholy with higher base damage fewer dps cooldowns and exceptional self sustain options, and I think San’layn is excellent design space for such a build while leaving RotA for people who prefer the existing stampede playstyle.

Clearly I’m not on the same page as blizzard, but that’s okay, this game doesn’t have to be designed for me, I’m just 1 sub.

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This is a no go buddy plague bringer is too good.

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I feel you friend, I was extremely hesitant to swap to Clawing Shadows over Plaguebringer. Not only does Plaguebringer literally double the damage from both parts of the San’layn Infliction of Sorrow talent, but Vampiric strike has the same base damage as clawing shadows with either talent selected, so your cooldown period is just objectively better given perfect uptime.

However when I switch talents my pvp performance instantly increased. My current understanding is that this has to do with uptime. While playing Plaguebringer it was easy to get kited for the entire Gift of San’layn/Dark Transformation window. Also when I am kited I don’t have any way to efficiently convert runes into runic power, and not being in range for scourge strike means the San’layn Incite Terror talent falls off, and not being able to generate runic power means the Deathrot talent also falls off. Without clawing shadows I find myself spamming outbreak or chains of ice just to get enough runic power to Death Strike when I do close in range, the whole time doing pitiful rot damage compared to what clawing shadows would enable and only falling further behind in the fight.

If you are the type of player that always sticks with your group and never wanders off alone then I would recommend Plaguebringer for the added aoe fight benefits, especially if other members of your group are using buffs and debuffs that assist with your uptime. If you are more like me and alternate between following the group and breaking off solo to claim an exposed high value objective, then Plaguebringer appears to be a liability, as I can’t maintain the uptime to use enough of my rotation for the benefits to start to outweigh the drawbacks.

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