I was interested in giving UH DK a try since it seemed interesting to be a plaguebringer and all that stuff. However, I’ve noticed that most of my damage comes from passive sources like pet autos/abilties. Even my own auto attacks often contribute more damage than most of my own abilities.
I was also hoping that UH would actually have more diseases, but it’s really only virulent plague. I wonder what people would think about festering strike applying a short duration disease onto the target and then scourge strike would extend the duration for ramping damage, much like a Warlock’s agony spell. It would also have some nice interactions with Death and Decay as scourge strike would extend diseases on all those targets.
The pet transform is cool and all, but it feels like too much passive damage was baked into it. At least AOE is a bit more fun with spamming epidemic on virulent plague targets, but even still the rune-spending attacks just feel a bit lackluster.
I agree and Frost is in a similar boat with frost fever doing so much damage. Frost still feels better than Unholy though.
Every time I try to play unholy it feels like I am not actually doing any damage, but things die. It is not so much that the damage is not good, it just doesn’t feel good.
i can’t seem to get frost to perform anywhere close to unholy. i actually like DW classes the most but when i switch to unholy it just pulls ahead of frost significantly for me.
all of unholy dk abilities are only their to enable your pets and dots, although some talents make it more around scourge strike popping festering wounds, like if you were to run bursting sores with a coordinated tank
I dislike all the passive damage on UH as well…Soooo…
You don’t have to do the cutting edge cookie cutter build to be competitive.
You can stack Festermight/Cankerous wounds and Festering Strike will be one of your top damaging abilities.
Can also spec Clawing shadows. Which will also be one of your top abilities.
If you sim your character you can be within reasonable range of the 'Top" build. This makes your active abilities feel more rewarding and makes it feel like you actually have a 2h equipped.
@Greendoll
Not sure what you are on about with FDK but frost fever is my 8th ranked damage source on single target.
The passive damage is there to make up for the lack of mobility of the class. It’s essential that DK’s do enough dot/pet (aka ranged)damage to make up for the fact that their uptime won’t be anywhere near as good as DH/warrior/monk/rogue.
At some point we had icy touch/howling blast spam from range as a class design for ranged damage, but those were changed/pruned and so the only ranged damage that remained was our disease and in the case of unholy a weakish RP dump.
I’d be pretty happy if they upped the cost of Death coil and made it hit like a truck, and turned sudden doom into a guaranteed crit with crit% increasing crit damage while the effect of sudden doom.
I don’t like Deathcoil just being a rune renewal tool. Rune dumps should feel good and meaty, and just like frost strike used to, they should hit like a truck.
Honestly, for frost they should remove frost strike (it’s bland looking, melee range with no particularly neat animation).
Replace frost strike with howling blast as a rune dump, rework rime so it grants a free howling blast or guarantees frost scythe crit.
Then make Frost Scythe baseline as our aoe builder. Make a talent replace frost scythe so that it guarantees a rime proc if it crits or whatever.
I took bursting sores, so it kind of feels like scourge strike is actually doing something but, yeah the spec doesn’t feel very good to play, in my opinion.
Honestly the spec’s playstyle is great, the class just needs some serious damage redistribution. Move damage off of the autoattack, Virulent Plague, AotD, and pets, put it back into the actual spells. Death Coil, Festering Strike, Scourge Strike and Soul Reaper should all hit like trucks.
The spec feels so limp with how passive it is. If they don’t do anything about it in Shadowlands it’ll get even worse, because Summon Gargoyle is going baseline which means the spec will be balanced around it.
I can feel that, if we have to rot a target, give me two or three different dots, with debuffs that go along with them, so it at least feels like I’m actually participating by keeping them up and crippling the target…otherwise dots should just be there to fill in gaps with our strikes being the true bulk of our damage, when I push scourge strike I want to FEEL it.
Also wouldn’t say no to maybe a …hmm heavier sound effect? For things like obliterate and scourge strike.
I like that virulent plague does a lot of damage. When i think of an unholy DK, i am thinking about the spread of death and disease. I think it would be good to be dot focused instead of just being a shadow damage version of frost.
Other than that, i really wouldn’t mind taking damage out of the pet and moving it into another dot and the runic power spenders.
I agree, with so much passive damage coming from diseases, festering wounds, and pets, it just doesn’t feel as satisfying to play as frost feels. It’s too bad that Unholy shares the same stat priorities as Blood, otherwise I would actually play Frost.
Frost just feels fantastic to play, even though it falls behind Unholy on sustained AoE, which is the majority of content that I run my DK through.
With a lot of mastery in AoE usually bursting sores and epidemic are my top 2 damage dealers. In single target though its almost always the pet/army/magus.
According to raidbots when I simmed its more DPS to stack mastery and mastery procs over rank 3 tentancle and rank 3 twilight devastation even, which sends epidemic and BS damage through the roof.