Just gonna dump some thoughts for TWW talents that are currently bad that might make them actually worth taking? Who knows, I’m not a balance monkey. I only play Blood and Unholy so that’s all I’m gonna post about.
Blood:
Leeching Strikes: Rather than just healing you for 0.5%, have it drain 0.5% of your max health from all targets truck by Heart Strike.
Rune Tap: The opportunity cost of a rune for a weak defensive is generally not worth it. Take it off GCD (if it’s not already) and have it make your next Heart Strike free.
Unholy:
Pestilence: Bursting a Festering Wound extends Death and Decay by 0.5 seconds, up to 5 seconds. (0.2, up to 2 seconds for Defile)
Festering Scythe: Every 20 seconds, Festering Strike becomes Festering Scythe. The cooldown of this effect is reduced by 1 second each time you burst a Festering Wound.
Decomposition: Bursting a Festering Wound extends the duration of all of your minions by 0.3 seconds.
Hell, let’s Festering Wound up all the 2 point talents down there.
Morbidity: Bursting a Festering Wound increases the damage of your diseases by X% for Y seconds. Multiple applications of this effect may overlap.
Unholy Aura: Bursting a Festering Wound increases the damage of your minions by X% for Y seconds. Multiple applications of this effect may overlap.
Ruptured Viscera: Gotta be honest there’s no saving this. Whoever’s baby this talent is, it’s time to let it go.
I like the festering scythe change because it removes vile contagion from being a thing we need to make it viable.
4 Likes
I think leeching strikes would be too much dps in one point? I like the idea though, and tying it to a % of dk health is thematic and easier to balance. Maybe just fiddle with the %, but I’d like to see something like that added to blood eventually.
It would be pretty much passive damage though, and shattered bone and the disease already fill that space pretty well.
although, now that I’m talking it out, heart strike is already dealing damage. So maybe this just gets lost in the sauce and you don’t even really notice even more damage with some different math behind it 
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Hello fellow DK enthusiast.
These UH changes would lead to the Pillar of Frost issue where scaling is so good that the base abilities of the class would need to be tuned so low that it feels weak until sufficiently ramped.
Given how many wounds your Festering Scythe idea would let you burst in AoE pulls it would also need to be very small damage increases which would mean all of those talents would be useless in single target and the ramp time of the spec would be increased drastically. If played correctly you would push Festering Scythe every 4th to 5th global and wait till you had enough stacks to make it worth using CDs.
If you want to burst that many wounds you cant have scaling attached to them and that includes Festermight
The Pestilence change is honestly inspired and I want that in the next build.
Ruptured Viscera just needs to make mages explode for more damage and it will be viable when paired with the new Doomed Bidding talent.
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This is a step in the right direction. I think a slight modification to this idea would make Unholy almost perfect:
Festering Scythe is a Talent that is a choice node with Defile. Festering Scythe is on a 20s cooldown, replaces Death and Decay, and inherits charges, cooldown reductions, and Cleaving Strikes like Defile.
This slight change would solve most of Unholy’s problems.
2 Likes
I like ruptured viscera but just making them explode is… well a mage out where there are no enemies = no damage.
I think making it so that ruptured viscera is “When your minions expire they leap into your target and explode for…” So now they at least all do damage to a target.
Maybe make it so the explosion does more damage to Absorb shields? for whatever that is worth?
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Oh, forgot something.
Mark of Blood: This being on a choice node with Tombstone is hilarious. I bet most Blood DKs forgot it even exists. In order for this to be even remotely comparable to Tombstone, it needs an offensive component and it needs to reduce DRW’s cooldown.
A bit too similar to Frostscythe, but not a bad idea.
I’d like to have more consistent wound application though. Prefer to see Festering Scythe directly upgrade Festering Strike, making it a physical cone that applies wounds. Then the proc, however way it is activated, can change the damage to shadow and increase its main target damage so that it’s worth pressing even in ST.
This could be good if Unholy played more like demo and consistently summoned minions. I’ve suggested many times that they should drop Apocalypse in favor of a passive that has a chance to summon disposable ghouls, like the pvp talent Reanimation, via wound pops or disease ticks. Then Ruptured Viscera could make them explode at the end and possibly apply some wounds.
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Not sure since this wasn’t a direct reply or quote but assuming this was pointed at my comment I made it with the assumption that the damage would actually apply.
In order to make the coding side of things as simple as possible I would recommend just having the mages cast 2 extra shadow bolt volleys as they die. In terms of flavor having it be that they release their stored shadow energy upon death.
I liked this, great idea.
100% agree with you. I would love to use ruptured viscera but the fact the minions explode where their standing and not do damage at times is the biggest reason I don’t.
It’s a neat talent but if they jump to your primary enemy then that would make up for its biggest issue. Of course a damage increase would be great to of course but jumping to the enemy would be a top change.
Ruptured would be cooler if the ghouls leapt on to there target like imps do for demo. Also solves the problem of things not being in range.
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The problem with ruptured viscera is mainly the ghouls exploding after the current pack is dead but before you get to the next one. Them jumping to an enemy won’t help with that, unless you really want them jumping to enemies you’re not in combat with.