To be fair, I found Necrotic Strike was a pretty contentious ability for other players to go against when it was strong as heck. It’s a pretty hard ability to balance: it’s either too strong for healers to top off the healing absorption or laughably weak.
True Unholy Players want Necrotic Plague. As Snapshotting was gone in MoP which defined the Festerblight build, Necrotic Plague was historically the most powerful disease we ever had as well as it is a defining feature of a melee affliction warlock that’s an Unholy Death Knight.
With the removal of Unholy Presence, both GCD redox or free haste, or god-forbid our DoTs not scaling with haste and an overreliance of pet damage with a global demanding mechanic such as Festering Wound is what leads the mess of an identity crisis that Unholy DK is suffering right now… and the fact that they got scaling nerf in CN really left them in an odd shape. They’re not terrible per see, but they do have a lot of things that just makes the spec feel odd to play. (Festercleaving feels good if done right though in an AoE situation).
As for the rune system, I don’t see the issue with the streamlined version. In fact, I’m actually quite happy with its current iteration. However, I do feel like RP should not be totally random otherwise I’ll probably use Death Coil occasionally as a Frost DK.
I dont like the wound system, but while playing timewalking with Visions of Perfection, Magus and Last Surprise, Shambler legendary, I find it fun and hilarious.
Does it have the diseases people are asking for? No. But it does have a mass of ghouls and skeletal mages exploding everywhere. If the wounds went away and it instead had a focus on diseases and the undead, I would like it a whole lot more.
Bad logic here; same could be said for literally any ability when its strong. I can c.c. someone for 21 seconds straight, how contentious is that? Sorry bro this is a hollow virtue signal argument. Need to quit with the “think of the children” reasoning. Also if like to point out that this argument is a literal wash, because it is equally contentious to be out pressured by a healer hike playing dps in pvp, which has been a thing with unholy in recent expansions.
Another logical fallacy, “unholy is good, it’s just outperformed by 10+specs. Nerf all those and its good.” Wrong, unholy needs buffs, other classes are fine. That’s an argument people make that don’t understand the game at base level.
I’d like it back, but not if its going to be trash.
At this point before anything is added removed I’d like to see a change in philosophy. Stop catering to people who want weak specs and can’t handle a simple priority by hard braking resources and the global. The fact that we can let vp drop for 10s on single target is horrible for the class,its just more hand holding for idiots.
Unholy has 9% of the rep it did in the first tier, raid wise. Heroic, post nerf we were at 250k, pre nerf 300k plus. Now, 23k. Heroic.
I’m convinced that most people play the class just enough to know to yell for nerfs so they can play their main instead of feeling forced to play dk, which may explain why non eu players post from low gear/content clearing toons. I’m not taking a shot at you or Kel here; I’ve noticed that a bunch of the posts that agree with unholy bad performance come from characters that are clearly alts with minimal time play.
Unholy was nerfed, 90th percentile and its almost 11% behind. Thats not within Blizzards target, and now neither is Frost which hasnt been touched, which is like 7.6% behind or something. Frost not being touched the entire expansion and only being 7% behind after other classes were buffed, truthfully isnt bad.
Thats across all bosses lumped together which people use to gauge how well a class is doing at a quick look.
Unholy should get a buff.
But its time to go start the smoker and prepare my roast.
I found it contentious for a reason. It was an only ability that blocks all sorts of healing if you let it stack. It was different from Mortal Strike/Wound or any other healing redox debuff, let alone more powerful at that. Comparing it to a Crowd Control which serves an entirely different purpose is not a fair comparison.
Heck, I tried Necrotic Strike in SL Season 1 and it just doesn’t work (It’s funny if it does though as some of my opponents were baffled as in “WTF why am I not healing” with my 62% haste NS spam). This ability has always been feast or famine and it was polarizing to play against if it were strong from previous iterations.
Key word is: was. I used to mash Necrotic Strike like I mashed your mother (jesting in case you get the wrong idea) and I remember I got a lot of heat from it before Festering Wuunds became a thing.
Necrotic Plague was a defining ability for Unholy Rot Damage. If it was a powerful ability then, it’s probably going to be powerful now should it return from its previous iteration. It’s probably going to be weaker since FeS no longer extends the duration of your diseases.
It should be a talent that replaces Gary’s spot while Gary becomes baseline and benefits from Army of the Damned.
It just makes sense and the sky is the limit for this one.
To be fair, my interest in the game is dwindling and even most of my time in Sanctum is spent on my Warlock than a Death Knight due to the gripes I have with the class personally.
I don’t like now RP functions to restore runes nor I don’t like how little interaction with our class this resource has. I asked in Acherus Discord about RE/RC being entropic (like if you fail to restore your rune, you add your chances of restoring them on the next GCD) and concluded that it’d be way too powerful for a functional fix. Which is a surprising conclusion but it cleared my dilemma a bit since it’s the only resource I know that takes an RNG to restore something of your resource compared that to other resources in the game.
I am aware that Unholy is not great nor it doesn’t scale well. I never liked the idea of putting pet damage into mastery because I knew it’d be way too powerful and resulting in a scaling nerf next to the AMZ damage cap. I wanted Unholy to deal more Shadow and Rot damage, not more pet damage. If I want to do pet damage, I’d play either a BM Hunter or a Demo Lock… which I played the latter.
The fact that Frost deals more rot damage than Unholy is sad (I’m not even exaggerating, Virulent Plague is that bad compared to Frost Fever) and that to me is an epitome of the state that Unholy is in. But hey, more pet damage should do the trick right?
no the point is to stack either to win the game. Cata unholy was terrible in arena btw people complained about mages and rogues way more. Also offensive dispels are way worse to deal with in most cases which is why priest or shaman were both better in cata/mop than unholy.
we could have it applied/stacked/maintained by bursting wounds. Or have festering extend it just like it used to. I seem to recall that 3 abilities at least stacked np, icy touch, plague strike and coil.
preaching to the choir, as I’m on my rogue for most of my limited play time.
Our mastery was never that powerful, haste or mastery for assassination are (either) far more powerful. I don’t have that opinion partly because I don’t by intent have anything to do with the discord. Most of the player related feedback issues start there, that community also loves when the specs are weak because it keeps them relevant.
Agree with your assessment of frost for damage being light years better than unholy, baseline. Its not better if you use ebony fever and the conduit, but that build isn’t a good performer.
it somewhat scales, but both need buffs not covered by the set bonuses at this point. Even with next to no playtime on the spec I’m doing better numbers st and aoe on frost and having more fun pve wise.
My wish is to revert UH to it’s BFA playstyle. I miss the huge AoE pulls. But more than that, I HATE what they did to UH in SL. Why did we need to become melee BM hunters/demo locks? It is so unsatisfying to finish a fight or dungeon or arena and look at your damage done. It’s all white hits from pets. To be a successful UHDK in the past, you had to play the game well all the time to maximize your damage. The difference between a good UH and a bad one was readily apparent. Now the gap has become much smaller. So long as you remember to summon your pets, your job is done. It really feels terrible. Bring back old(ish) UH.
