With the announcement that the talent design phase is over and moving onto the tuning phase. I thought I’d throw up a few ideas that would be easy fixes to underwhelming talents and also quick from the dev perspective. At worst its a copy/paste from another talent and at best they’ll be a simple number changes.
I am just going to list talents I think could use additional text added to them. There are some talents that are completely overshadowed by competing options (such as Defile/Unholy Bond choice node in the Unholy Tree).
I will just going focus on the Class and Unholy tree as that is what I play 99% of the time and am most familiar with. So Frost and Blood ladies and gentlemen, please add any talents you have concerns with and suggested fixes in your posts below.
General Tree
Raise Dead
The 2min cooldown/1min duration results in this being a very weak cooldown for Blood/Frost DKs, if you didn’t have a damage meter you couldn’t be sure if he did anything. Here are two directions I think this talent could go, option #1 if the Dev(s) feel a little bit adventurous.
- Permanent ghoul for all DK specs, this allows other talents such as Enfeeble and Sacrifical Pact to be of equal value to ALL DK specs. Without this, those two talents need to be changed in power because they’re very low value to Blood/Frost.
- Reduce the duration of the ghoul and significantly buff it’s damage so it actually feels like a cooldown. Enfeeble and Sacrifical Pact would need to be changed/buffed to compensate for the lowered duration moreso.
Permafrost
I feel this should behave similarly to Warlock Soul Leech, a passively regenerating absorb shield that can also be reinforced with your auto attacks. There are alot of good talents on this row, and finding a point to place here is going to be tough with its current design.
Sacrifical Pact
Usable whenever you need as Unholy which is fine, however it results in not ever using Raise Dead as a DPS cooldown for Blood/Frost as your “Oh crap!” button could possibly be on cooldown. Talents in the general tree should be of a similar power/usefulness to all specialisations otherwise they will be dead in the water. How to improve this talent:-
- Change Raise Dead as suggested above to a permanent pet for all specialisations, no longer an issue of needing Sac Pact but ghoul is on cooldown.
- If no pet is available function similarly to Warlock Dark Pact sacrificing X% HP for Y% absorb shield.
Control Undead
No-one is wasting a talent point here, this needs to be baseline, imagine if Pick Lock or Create Soulwell were talents. It cannot be used as Unholy without severely impacting your DPS and negating alot of your talent selections. A replacement talent could be:-
- If Raise Dead is changed to permanent pet for all specs, the talent here could be a utility ability for said ghoul. Corpse Shield could be a worthy addition here, it was a great ability in Legion, or making the ghoul Huddle/Putrid Bulwark work like Demoralising Shout for group utility.
- If the above doesn’t happen, a talent involving our diseases doing something more, either a throughput increase or some sort of utility would be great. Anything to strengthen options in the right hand side which currently is very weak.
Enfeeble
Even for Unholy, I just don’t see this being taken with its current tuning. A chance of slowing/taking less damage is not something you want to play around especially when they’re low impact/duration/proc chance as well. Pretty much rubbish for Blood/Frost without a permanent pet.
Solutions could be:-
- If Raise Dead is changed as above to permanent pet. Just adjust the strength of the proc or remove RNG entirely with slight tuning to the damage reduction side of things (15% perma damage reduction would be too strong, maybe, maybe not relative to other classes talents)
- Strength of this will need significant buffs for the reduced ghoul up time Blood/Frost have without changes to Raise Dead.
Blood Scent
A few other classes have 5% Leech single nodes, no reason for this to not follow suit.
Suppression
Total garbage, this could be 20% and would probably still not see play because large AoE damage events are rare outside of raids, and when they are present they are either one shot style requiring raid cooldowns to counter and the ones that aren’t are for the healers to manage. Your job is either dealing damage or tanking damage, when you’re Frost/Unholy you’re needed to do as much damage as possible, the more damage you do, the less healing you and your allies require. As a Blood DK, you already have numerous tools to defend against AoE damage attacks and you’d be better off putting a point elsewhere.
Solutions:-
- X% versatility.
- X% movement speed.
Brittle
Good for Unholy with Superstrain, not impactful enough for single diseases. Buff the proc chance around having a single disease ticking every 3 sec.
Anti-Magic Zone
Good but needs the max health calculation removed so it’s equal strength for all DK specs.
Clenching Grasp
Far too weak for a class that has spammable ranged slows. Solutions could be:-
- Also reduces the cooldown of Death Grip by 5 sec.
- Target slams into the ground, knocking down/stunning/disorienting all nearby foes for X sec.
Assimilation
The added runic power generation will result in this being used offensively by BoS Frost DKs and Summon Gary Unholy Dks, now that is a good thing for them, but a negative for the group as a whole. The damage reduction also needs to be significantly stronger if it’s going to stand a chance against the other options in this row. Solution here could be:-
- AMZ duration is reduced but the damage reduction and damage cap are MASSIVELY increased, a kind of a skill shot where correct timing provides excellent magical defense.
- Have it function as an AoE magical dispel, in addition to normal AMZ effects, a bit of additional raid utility that we need and hardly overpowered as its on a 2min cooldown.
Death Pact
It’s time to remove the healing debuff or change it to a % heal reduction. Our warrior friends have Bitter Immunity a 20% HP heal and removes all diseases, poisons and curses from them on a 3min cooldown. In scenarios where you’re taking damage (the reason you activated Death Pact) it’s effectively a 20% heal with the healing debuff factored in. Solutions:-
- Remove the healing absorb and maybe if the 50% heal is too much knock it down a peg or two.
- Instead generates a X% absorb (benefits from Gloom Ward so that synergy would be welcomed).
Insidious Chill
This isn’t powerful enough to be a Row 9 talent. Rogue Numbing Poison or Warlock Curse of Weakness are vastly superior and available significantly earlier in their trees. Solutions could be:-
- The attack speed is drained from the target, granting X% attack speed for the Death Knight.
- Pulse AoE every X sec reducing movement/attack/cast speed of nearby targets by X% for Y sec.
Blood Draw
Very underwhelming with current tuning and is going to create some bad gameplay if the drain is buffed in AoE situations. Solution:-
- Anytime you suffer X/Y% of your maximum health within Z sec. Gain Dark Succor.
- Consuming a rune has an X/Y% chance to activate Dark Succor.
Death’s Echo
Not bad, but anytime you’re using these abilities back to back such as extended combat situations, it nets you one extra use only. Solutions could be:-
- Also reduces the cooldown of said abilities by X sec.
- Reduces the cooldown of said abilities by 10 sec. Having a 15 sec DG, 20 sec DnD (10 sec Defile
and a 35 sec Death’s Advance would definitely fit here considering the cost required to take Death’s Echo currently. Especially when the preceding talent Unholy Ground at best works once every 30 sec (20 if using Defile) or 15 sec with Blood. Being unable to cleave targets in melee because I am not standing in stinky stuff is silly. This change would help alleviate that problem somewhat.
Abomination Limb
Just needs Shadowfrost damage for Frost mastery scaling.
Soul Reaper
Needs to deal SIGNIFICANTLY more damage, the secondary damage effect is next to useless in PvP scenarios. Just feels very bland for a capstone ability. I feel it needs individual specialisation dependant secondary effects on top of the damage.
UNHOLY TREE
Raise Dead
Depending on how the Raise Dead of the Class tree pans out, I feel this could be either made baseline for Unholy or provide alternative undead minions to summon other than ol’timmy. Hunters and Warlocks have all of their Pet utilities baseline. Why do we need to spend on point on making ours permanent when its also part of our Mastery? Two possible solutions, one easy or one slightly harder but nothing a bit of copy/paste couldn’t handle.
- Your Raise Dead ability now allows you to select from a variety of undead minions to raise to aid you. Would function similarly to Mage:Portal, click the spell and select the minion or drag to your toolbar.
- Copy and paste the hunter pet mechanics, rename Tame Beast to Dominate Undead, replace any mention of the word beast with undead and profit. The three pet family trees could be Ravager/Defiler/Damned with similar utility spells spread amongst it. Long story short, I really want a Lich offsider to help me out.
Dark Transformation
Ideally I’d like for this to be removed from the GCD once again, and remove the AoE damage portion that was added to make us feel better about pushing it and incuring the GCD. Unholy has MORE than enough GCD issues and smoothing out those GCD’s with having DT off GCD would feel great.
Unholy Blight
Not sure what purpose this serves anymore, the damage is very weak dealing less than our Virulent Plague and does nothing else unless you spec into Morbidity. I have two ideas that could quickly make this a bit better:-
- This ability is now a passive and is baked into Outbreak, applying Virulent Plague and Unholy Blight to all nearby targets for 6 sec.
- Increase the damage of the DoT effect and bake in a healing debuff/absorb.
Runic Mastery
GARBAGE talents, being able to bank ONE additional Death Coil for two talent points is…bad. This needs to see SIGNIFICANT additional benefits to be even considered. The Frost version (Runic Command) is just as bad. Possible solutions could be:-
- Increase your maximum Runic Power by 10/20 and your Runic Power spenders have an X/Y% chance to refund Z% of their cost.
- Increase your maximum Runic Power by 10/20 and increase your Runic Power spender damage by X/Y%.
Epidemic
I feel this needs to be baseline, we have ZERO active AoE abilties outside of Death and Decay which is on a 30 sec cooldown. It is a good ability, but the cost to take it is high, because if you want to progress beyond it you’ll also be wasting a point on Pestilent Pustules which I just don’t feel we need anymore with the increase in Runic Power generation available to us now and reduced Death Coil cost.
- Make this baseline, without this talent Unholy has no ability to deal active damage to more than 2 targets outside of Death and Decay windows.
Replenishing Wounds
Will need to see what the simulators have to say when they math it all out, but from a feel perspective, I don’t think anyone needs this talent. I never feel I am starved of Runic Power with the changes to Death Coil and increased regeneration offered in the Class tree. Solution to bring it up a notch:-
- When Festering Wounds pop you generate an additional 2 Runic Power. Additionally, there is an X% chance each time you pop a wound to generate a new Festering Wound on the target.
- Replace talent with Castigator. Your Festering Strike critical hits apply an addition 2 Festering Wounds and your Scourge Strike critical hits burst an additional Festering Wound. Maximum Festering Wounds increased to 8.
Clawing Shadows/Plaguebringer
Clawing Shadows needs additional power to make it the go to single target option here, Plaguebringer is an excellent talent, I love how it works, and I get excited watching all those numbers ticking away (hopefully Superstrain doesn’t get nerfed). Solutions to make this choice node better because as it stands currently, I would hard lock in Plaguebringer if there was even a remote chance of dealing damage to more than one target.
- Clawing Shadows now makes your Auto-attack and Festering Strike deal ranged Shadow damage. This simple change could really shake things up, and give those who are forever going on about being a Necromancer something to be happy about. PvPers would also no doubt be excited also. I imagine when not in melee range you would adopt the spell casting stance and Auto-attack becomes effectively Auto-shot with shadow bolts.
- Clawing Shadows now deals X% more damage and applies a DoT effect for Y% of damage dealt.
Sudden Doom
Cool talent, especially with the Rotten Touch talent, but I feel the PPM needs to be removed in favour of a flat %. 3 procs per minute is pretty low and I swear this will always proc when you don’t need it, or proc back to back, then not show up for another 5 mins.
All Will Serve
Can this guy be replaced with a Magus or some other ranged undead unit? The bow and arrow looks comical. Of if we ever get hunter styled pet management, have it work similarly to their Animal Companion talent. A man can dream.
Pestilent Pustules
I don’t see myself ever taking this talent, it MIGHT see a bit of play early on with low haste levels, but once that is done, it will be banished. A solution to keep it in play for longer could be:-
- Additionally, Death Coil will burst one Festering Wound on a target.
- Additionally, your Virulent Plague has a chance to apply a Festering Wound to the target.
Unholy Command
I like the reduced cooldown, I do not like spending two talent points just to do it. ESPECIALLY if I for some reason do not also put points into Army of the Damned my cooldowns are now once again desync’d. The solution is a two step process:-
- Merge Unholy Command into Army of the Damned, these talents are pretty much mandatory from a damage dealing perspective.
- Your pet gains X/Y% additional bonus from your secondary stats and stamina. Firstly there are no talents that make your pet, which is part of your Mastery deal more damage or be more powerful. All pet buffs are tied to cooldowns bar I think Unholy Aura WAAAY further down the tree (does this even affect our ghoul, it says minions which I interpret as temp undead such as Army/Garg etc?)
Magus of the Dead / Ruptured Viscera
Magus is good, Ruptured is bad, not being able to control the detonation often means they explode with no targets nearby. Solutions:-
- Replace Ruptured Viscera with Shambler, when you activate Apocalypse a shambler spawns and runs VERY BLOODY QUICKLY at your target and explodes dealing solid AoE shadow damage to all nearby targets. Maybe possibly have it apply some Festering Wounds too.
Unholy Pact / Defile
Defile needs massive buffs to be able to ever compete with the 5% strength of Unholy Pact. ALSO, the fire chains need to go as they look stupid, replace it with shadowy chains or just make it a pulsing/exploding shadow AoE like when you activate Dark Transformation.
- Defile now costs X Runic Power, and has no cooldown. Maximum of one. Tuned to deal more damage than Death Coil at 3+ targets.
- Each time Defile deals damage, increase your Mastery by X% for Y sec. Stacking.
- Each rune spent whilst standing within your Defile increases it’s damage by X% and duration by Y sec.
Vile Contagion
Great idea, its use condition needs a bit of fine tuning. The best case opener scenario for this would be Outbreak-> Festering Strike (You want to spread maximum wounds)-> Unholy Assault-> Vile Contagion-> Death and Decay. This leaves you with 2 runes for DnD cleave and zero Runic Power. It is still a crazy setup to do AoE damage when other classes can just hit one button. This isn’t taking into account other cooldowns we also have, which adds further GCD bloat. Solutions:-
- Vile Contagion now applies and spreads 6 Festering Wounds to up to 8 nearby targets. Quick and easy fix, also helps the initial opener even in single target and remove the runic power cost because its a bloody 1.5min cooldown and doesn’t need additional gatekeeping. Also add the old WOTLK Pestilence animation because it currently has ZERO visual feedback which is crazy for a big cooldown like this.
Pestilence
No-one has used this in an age, I was testing this last night and on the 4 close target dummies in Archerus, I had 4 wounds pop up once over the 10 sec DnD duration more often than not it was only 1-2 wounds over the duration. That is WEAKSAUCE. Solutions:-
- Your Death and Decay will apply 1 Festering Wound to all targets within when cast and a 10% chance to apply additional wounds each second. DONE, FIXED, EASY.
Harbinger of Doom
If Sudden Doom is changed to a flat % chance above, then this talent will become a bit more useful. Currently the 15% increased proc chance equates to 0.5 extra Death Coils per minute. I think I saw this stack to 2 once but couldn’t be sure. Solutions:-
- Change Sudden Doom to a flat % proc chance, no additional changes needed here bar maybe the % chance.
- If we are sticking with PPM, the increased proc chance needs to be significantly increased and maybe add some bonus damage to the proc to make it stand out from the run of the mill Death Coil casts.
Deathrot
I like the talent, but I feel it will make target switching for Unholy feel even worse. The absolute best case scenario, it would take you 3 Sudden Doom Procs, and 4 additional Death Coils to get this buff to 10% on a target and let me tell you, if you think those Sudden Doom procs are coming, you’re going to be disappointed. On a fresh target, with no runic power stored, you’ll be spending 30 runes before getting Death Rot to maximum stacks on up to 2 targets if you have Improved Death Coil. If I talented into this, you better believe I am not switching target from the main boss. I will tunnel that mofo into the ground to get those numbers up! Solutions to fix my tunnelling:-
- Death Rot is a self buff for the Death Knight, this significantly improves the experience and also removes one debuff on the target (an unholy DK can have over 10 debuffs up at once on one target).
- Reduce the stack count to 5, increase the damage to 2% per stack.
- Death Rot stacks on the Death Knight, upon reaching 10 stacks. Your next Outbreak/Death Coil or whatever applies Death Rot to the target dealing ridiculous damage over X secs or increasing disease damage on the target by a CRAZY amount for X secs.
Army of the Dead
Feels bad having to take this to get Army of the Damned, our PvP brothers and sisters are wasting a point here because you can’t actually use this in arena. Which is BLOODY STUPID DESIGN. There should be no cooldown this long in this game AT ALL. Solutions:-
- Reduce the cooldown to 4mins and duration to 15 sec.
- Make a passive that increases the number of ghouls summoned by Apocalypse by X. As they do the same thing its kind of redundant having two abilities summoning ghouls.
Festermight
Its an interesting gameplay mechanic and when done right is very powerful, but when done wrong which is VERY easy to do it feels bad. You might be half way through a Festermight window and your cooldowns come back, so you now need to wait so that you can line up the end of the cooldowns with the end of your Festermight stack for maximum damage. Some solutions:-
- Festermight no longer stacks, but overlaps additional applications similar to abilities like Prot Warriors Punish. This would ensure that as long as you’re bursting wounds consistently you’re getting the benefit. It would also reduce this feast/famine situations where you need to get the moons to align and all your cooldowns fit inside your ridiculously high Festermight stack or it feels as if you wasted them.
- Festermight functions similarly to the Mage talent Incanter’s Flow where we get a rise and fall of strength over 10 sec. This means you don’t ever need to be holding off bursting wounds, and just need to worry about the timing of cooldowns, still not ideal IMO but far better than current beta implementation.
Apologies for the wall of text, I get carried away sometimes.