State of DPS dk

Classes Death Knight
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I’ve been an unholy main since the legion rework. Frost main since cata.

Unholy: I hate PI.

“Holy crap that unholy is PUMPING” - Dk that gets PI.

This feels good. The damage feels good. The rotation fees good. It takes me back to haste corruption DK from end of BFA( hate all you want but it was fun as heck).

“What happened Mr. DK?” - Dk that did not get PI

This feels awful. The rotation is slower. We do considerable burst damage to everyone else maybe a bit higher, but after that we fall down the meters faster than a lead balloon.

Why is it okay that your specs true potential lies within another class choosing to buff you. Ok yea you can make that argument with every spec with PI, but since unholy stands to gain the most benefit from it, it’s basically feast or famine. I’ve never seen a trinket nerfed for one specific class the way puzzle box was. How on earth has the class fantasy of unholy gone from debilitating diseases, popping pimples, to finally being the one pump chump. The only part of the fight that matters for you is the first 30 seconds. The rest is spent doing your rotation so that you have enough steam to stay where you are on the meters.

SL was the start of the decline of unholy and now it just feels bad. It’s like some sick joke that you have to race change to troll and get PI to be competitive. I think Biceps said something like 235% haste on the opener? Love the class fantasy. I could keep going with my gripes on unholy, oh well.

;tldr unholy has an identity crisis and is too burst focused/PI reliant for the wet noodle damage we put out after the opener.

Frost: unholy’s shadow

What is frost good at? M+? Raid? You can spec separately to do the damage depending on the content. Are you better than unholy? Yes, but in niche situations.

Frost seems like it needs just one patch cycle of attention to being a solid spec. We’ve been breathe of sindragosa as 1h, obliteration 2h, for so long(if you count the 2h as viable). We at least have some identity there, but the execution for each style leaves a little bit to be desired. Breathe is fun to play and so is 2h, but from my experience it’s just been too far behind unholy. Getting major step child vibes from frost. It has its moments but they’re few and far between. Always in the shadow of big bro unholy. Every season I pay close attention to logs so I can finally say “oh frost is good in raid again”. Each season I’m pretty disappointed. Do some frost Dks make it work? Yes, but the same can also be said when the shoes on the other foot.

;tldr Frost needs some time and attention. It feels like it’s getting there but bringing a frost over an unholy DK is a hard argument to win. Especially with DK just not bringing a whole lot to a raid comp.

Ultra ;tldr:
Unholy: burst damage has led to a toxic play style. Identity crisis. Maybe this rework will get it right.

Frost: please someone develop frost a bit more. You could almost call frost niche with how little the situations you bring frost over unholy to raid/m+ .

7 Likes
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God damn it and i just started a DK.

2 Likes
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Nah nah you got it all wrong here man.

I’ve been a DK main for over 10 years. I’m not here because I don’t love and enjoy playing the class, but because of the direction it’s going.

I’ve tried alts, but for me, nothing compares to playing a DK.

1 Like
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Warlocks see basically the same issues. We were balanced around numbers that included PI, so when you don’t have it it just feels terrible. I doubt anything will be done for either class as we were both pretty solid last tier and both do just fine with PI currently.

The problem is PI needs to be changed to a haste buff for only the priest so they can then tune the classes that get crazy benefit from it correctly.

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I agree. PI, ultimately is the issue here at least for unholy.

I have a feeling theyre going to double down on this with the new evoker spec. Leading to more convoluted balancing systems.

Hopefully it turns ok, but I have my reservations.

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Frost is so close to being solid because the actual bones of the spec ( killing machine, oblit, frost strike, and HB/rime proc) are really solid.

The problem is in how everything is tied together. It just feels like frostreaper and cleaving strikes was a mistake.

The spec would feel SO much better if frostscythe was baseline and did real damage in aoe as an obliterate replacement and then if oblit did more than noodle damage out of killing machine.

Frostreaper and cleaving strikes just forces every spell that isn’t specifically obliterate DURING killing machine to be bad because oblit does your single target AND AOE. We need to go back towards legion and bfa with oblit doing fat damage and frostscythe being the aoe option.

Side note, howling blast aoe cap is 1 target? Why? Also frost strike feels awful, it could use a 100% buff and MAYBE it would start feeling good. I think shattering blade should just be baseline for dual wield like MOTFW is for 2hand.

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No; Unholy’s decline started with the Legion rework. Late WOTLK and WoD were Unholy at its absolute peak; Wrath because of how really freaking nasty Scourge Strike started to get with gear, and WoD because of Necrotic Plague and how it could be maintained at its biggest damage ticks for quite a long while. In addition, the way the rotation was set up you had an instance of “Ok, NP is up at full strength, I now have a full bar of Death Runes. Everything is set up; now I simply destroy you.” with 6-8 Scourge Strikes in a row, each one capable of multistriking at least half a dozen times; in addition, we also had our ghoul that could occasionally become big and angry. With Legion, the class fantasy of a dark, shadow knight whose necromantic energy ruined enemies gave way to a weird sort of grossout body horror of popping pimples and slime that seems like it came straight out of 90s era Nickelodeon. Now, 90s era Nickelodeon was pretty cool, but not the sort of thing I think of when I think “Unholy death knight”. I have long struggled to like the spec since.

Frost? I’ll tell you Frost’s biggest problem: Breath of Sindragosa. That ability needs to die in an eternal black fire. I hate it, have always hated it and will continue to hate it going forward: it is the Rune of Power of Death Knights. I do agree that Obliterate, for an ability with that exact sort of name, needs to be hitting much harder, especially for 2h Frost.

8 Likes
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Honestly big agree on most of this, I think breath can stay personally but it needs to be toned down considerably so the entire spec is not designed around such high uptime. If breath is permanent then nothing else can be allowed to do damage. I feel like having it max around 30-40 seconds would be WAY healthier.

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Meh as long as I can beat the content :relieved:

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BoS is Frost’s “biggest problem” and Obliterate needs to hit harder?

And then people wonder why everything in the kit outside of KM does less than a default Crusader Strike lmao.