Feedback on Unholy Death Knight Changes in Midnight.
First off, thank you, Blizzard, for removing the pre-Warlords of Draenor style of combo points and shifting them to be player-based rather than target-based. (Note: I don’t have alpha access, so this is based on what I’ve heard from others and the new talent tree previews.)
A Bit About Me
I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since Wrath of the Lich King. I started diving deep into Mythic raiding during Dragonflight. I love good lore, and my favorite zone is Duskwood—can’t wait to have a home there!
The Good
More Minions: We love the swarm! Overwhelming targets with even more minions is always a joy.
Removal of Wounds: From my perspective, not many people liked this mechanic—it felt stale and was often frowned upon since Pre-WoD. Thanks for removing it!
The Alright
Putrefy: This seems neat, but I’m worried the dogpile of effects might hide its unique visual flair.
Festering Scythe Baked into 1/2 Combo: This could help casual players, but it feels a bit boring and lackluster. (More color and visual pop, please!)
Apex Talents: Numbers aside, I fear the physical damage aspect, especially with our mastery. (That said, I do like the “shotgun” vibe it gives.)
Forbidden Knowledge: This feels a tad lackluster. Maybe make the first minion summoned a Magus for some extra cool factor?
The Bad
Unholy Still Needing DnD for Vampiric Strikes Procs: This seems like a downside that could hold the spec back.
Loss of Magus from Death Coil: It hurts, especially if it’s just summoning a lesser minion, and Sudden Doom/Festering Strike only summons them while granting “Ancient Runes.”
Mograine Needs a Rework: Keeping him in his DnD is a pain, especially on fights like Fractus where he wanders off, leaving you stuck on cooldown.
General Stuff
All Will Serve AoE: This could use some tuning or improvements.
Fury of the Horsemen/Feast of Souls: These seem like potential pain points between the hero tree and the new apex talents.
Priority Damage in Grouping
I do fear that Unholy might fall behind Frost for priority targets—Breath of Sindragosa and Reapers Mark really hurt it in comparison. It would be nice to have something more heavy-hitting for priority mobs that doesn’t sacrifice too much AoE.
I don’t mind the wounds, it adds complexity. My fear is DK becomes too easy so in high end pvp it will be nerf’d to oblivion. What do we do with healing absorb without wounds?
I understand this fear, I would however argue that unholy is actually going to take a higher skill to master in PvP after this update, while still somehow being easier for new players to approach, and I believe this is because of a reduction in none-interactive complexity.
For example in TWW you have to apply festering wounds do deal your good damage, but also your cooldowns and passives can facilitate the application and spending of those wounds. Sure you might need to manage festermight hypothetically, but in reality just preforming your cooldown spike with apocalypse and unholy assault will cover that for you without thought. Meanwhile your abomination and ghoul are providing you with all the festering wounds you need while refreshing your diseases so you don’t even need to pay attention to outbreak. The result is that when your damage really matters, during your cooldowns, you are effectively only responsible for pressing scrouge strike and death coil. Everything else is being covered for you by background processes and talented ability riders that the complexity is just an illusion that confuses new players.
In Midnight you have to festering strike to get your ghoul charges almost every time, you can get a couple of charges once with our apex talent on cast of army of the dead, but this is nothing compared to abomination and ghoul spamming festering wounds for you during your cooldown. You also have to manually track and refresh your own diseases, no longer do abomination and dark transformation take this responsibility from you. Diseases also matter much more with scourge strike directly benefitting from diseases in addition to brittle and morbidity talents.
What this means in practice is that unholy DK’s now need to manually keep track of 5 rotational abilities during our cooldown spikes: outbreak, festering strike, scourge strike, death coil and putrefy. Outbreak is no longer automated, Festering is no longer automated, and we have a whole new manual button we need to pay attention to in putrefy. Failing to properly utilize any of these 5 buttons will cripple our spike period.
Well said, i’d also like to add that the new apex talents are mainly tailored towards the pet build rather than a more general playstyle fitting the alternative disease/SS side of the tree/sanlayn.
Also the physical aspect of the apex talents are worrysome and somewhat misplaced. Not sure why the devs thought a non mastery scaling mechanism would fit well for an apex talent.
They’ve already taken abom limb. Taking the perma ghoul means losing a stun and interrupt. They’re taking everything that adds any level of complexity and watering it down to a button masher spec. I’ve been playing unholy since WotLK, I’m a multi tier CE raider, I always get over 3k io. These changes significantly lower the skill ceiling and will make the spec incredibly boring to play for those that are good at it.