The 6 second cooldown of soul reaper is obstructing for all 3 dk specs rotations. Using resources and a gcd every 6 seconds for soul reaper means less resources to maintain everything else in the spec’s rotation. Even if this results in a minor single-target dps increase, it feels awful and many DKs drop the ability purely because of the maintenance required.
The 5 second delay also adds little to the spell other than the opportunity to estimate group dps to ensure the first soul triggers at 34.9% so that with perfect play you can fit in another soul reaper before the target dies. This can feel random and unrewarding when the first soul reaper triggers >35.1%, or when the target dies with <1 sec of soul reaper left to tick.
The 5 second delay also ensures that the ability will never be usable in pvp. Healthbars in pvp change drastically within seconds, guaranteeing a target will be >35% for longer than a couple seconds is quite literally impossible and it wastes resources if cannot be guaranteed.
My suggestion is to change soul reaper to guarantee the 2nd hit, and make it only usable below 35%. This maintains the execute niche of soul reaper as well as make it usable in pvp. Soul reaper should also have its cooldown increased so as to not be as obstructive to all 3 dk spec’s rotation’s.
Finally, soul reaper should be swapped with either army of the dead, or superstrain in the unholy tree. Either of these spells would be much more applicable in many more scenerios, would be easier to balance, and would fit into rotations infinitely easier.
13 Likes
Soul Reaper should be a rune generating ability like it used to tbh.
45 sec CD, generates 2 runes, apply heavy undispellable DoT or something. DoT should empower you when it comes to an end (that would be cool).
I agree it’s current iteration is garbo especially when it’s competing with Rune weapon and Limb. I mean come on… lol
10 Likes
i wouldnt mind it having the 5 second delay for pvp if it at least did meaningful damage, soul reaper does such little damage for one of the hardest abilities to use in pvp, it should have a huge % damage modifier attached to it in pvp to spice up all the specs and add some cool skill expression to an ability which isn’t even required to spec into. would be really fun.
2 Likes
Having Superstrain in the general tree would be pretty nice to have.
6 Likes
I hate pressing soul reaper and the health ends up above 35% which causes a waste of gcd/resources. I also like that they made it interact with frost by getting KM from it, now have it also do something for unholy/blood as well.
I could think of so many things that would make the button actually fun to press and make it worthwhile as a talent especially when stacked up to ERW and abomb
the biggest issue with soulreaper is mainly pvp related with having it proc reliably and contributing to your rotation to be worth pressing
In PvE im sure regardless of how it fit in either specs rotation or whatever it costed, as long as it hits hard enough itd be good
But for PvP its really important that it fits into our rotation well and isnt costly rune or RP wise otherwise itll feel like it never procs
i think the best most simple thing they can do is just buff the damage considering its the most niche execute with a difficult condition
4 Likes
The reaping talent already buffs it for unholy. Frost had literally nothing that interacted with it until obliteration got a nice change for it. But as far as i understand, soul reaper is still garbage
soul reaper is a really fun/high skilled ability to try to land, but if feels like ur reaping noodles not souls when it does actually land.
I say bring the execute down to 20% and just x4 the dmg
2 Likes
35% is fine, And theres no need to buff soulreaper anymore than maybe 30% considering it already is among the hardest hits we have (assuming you get it to proc during your CDs and it crits) most of the people who think its weak and doesnt do damage is probably only getting it to proc without any active cds or strength increases etc
But that issue extends past soulreaper to our entire kit. None of our abilities do damage outside cds because our cds are really just THAT powerful when they shouldnt be
Outside of that really all you could do it change the cost from runes to runic power at least for FDK
its the trade off tho; comparing it to slappy/empy its very weak. i think having it at a lower % with much higher dmg would make it a super fun high risk high reward ability
But youre literally just making the ability worse by lowering the % requirement
You are trying to nerf buff soulreaper
I am just trying to buff soulreaper
Do you see the logic
Why lower the % requirement when you could literally just buff the damage
1 Like
Just make it like the monk ability automatically kills the person if they aren’t top off to full in 5 second in PvP.
2 Likes
and your 1000% correct. The only reason why frost DK even used this ability back in was because it was new. The damage at the time was slightly better then performing the rotation so it was still worth using, it is still just hot garbage. To make the ability really function well would just be a chance to apply the soul reaper dot with either Clawing Shadows, Scourge Strike, Heart Strike, or Obliteration. Has a higher chance to apply to targets below 35%, and have the damage progressively get stronger over the course of a fight. So if you randomly got like 3-4 procs during the fight yeah the damage will be diddly squat for those but once that target gets the 5th and when they are below 35% HP it feels like an execute. Lets be honest, the biggest problem with DK right now isn’t a crappy ability. It’s all the crappy abilities. I strongly feel there is someone at Blizzard that is like John Peters. The just want to keep forcing a “giant spider” into the game and somehow they just keep failing upwards to the point of now they are in charge of frost death knights and that is where we are today.
For those who don’t get the reference to John Peters, look up Kevin Smith talking about it and Superman Lives.
Another simple idea would be to make the Soul Reaper damage proc proportionally inversional to the target’s HP pool. The range of effectiveness could be from 0 to 50% for example.
This way even if your target is just above 35%, you’d still get a proc but it wouldn’t be full value. And on the other hand if he is like <10%, you’d get a huge value proc.
I don’t know. I’m speaking from a PvP PoV where it’s really difficult to aim for your target to be <35% HP five seconds from the moment you press Soul Reaper.
4 Likes
I wish theyd just make it an execute, doesn’t have to be as good as killshot/execute but just a “use at 35%” sort of thing would be nice. this 5 second thing is just annoying
It just doesn’t do enough damage to be worth using.
If I could make one mechanical change it would be that the damage still happens regardless of health % though. That and a serious damage buff.
If a death knight REAPS YOUR EFFING SOUL it should be a real problem for you.
4 Likes
I really like this idea. Make it worthy of the name, I’m talking 100% damage at 35% HP jumping to 400% ap at 10% in pvp. Maybe cap it for pve at 200 to 250ap
I agree, the delay feels awful and adds very little to the gameplay other than being annoying.
Why not? I’m yet to see anyone come up with a good answer to this. Hell make it physical and adjust accordingly IF you have to but right now it’s a dumpster fire.
Bro… imagine if warrior had execute as a capstone talent…
Lmaooo
2 Likes