To start I’d like to thank the devs for finally listening to the playerbase and giving up on wounds. Finally we’re focusing on what truly defines unholy again which is the disease spreading and undead raising fantasy that made us love the spec in the first place.
With that being said I’d like to mention some things that I feel could be improved upon to make this new unholy feel and flow better.
𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗽 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝗻𝘀:
In general the moment to moment gameplay still feels very monotone and wound-like because scourge strike is still largely overshadowing the rest of your core abilities which results in those being less exciting and infrequently pressed!
The biggest loser of this is Festering Strike / Scythe which you occasionally press for the ghoul buff and a 20 second disease debuff but that’s pretty much it. Also, with Festering Scythe being baked into the base strike, the damage will probably be normalized and therefore won’t be as exciting nor worth pressing for anything besides maintaining the ghoul buff.
While wounds were obviously not great, the old Festering Scythe had something that the new one lacks… excitement !
Be it the damage or the self feeding loop that would get you excited in large aoe, it was worth the global the moment you got it and it felt good.
In addition to that I sense a lack of additional gameplay hooks between the other abilities which if present could string together the gameplay nicely.
𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:
As an example, one thing that would elevate the fantasy, excitement and synergy of the other core abilities in your rotation could be something like the following…
“Pressing Putrefy empowers your next Festering Strike / Scythe to deal 200% more damage, cost no runes (or 1 less rune) and summon a Banshee”
When summoned, the Banshee’s scream further hastens diseases
and besides that there could be…
“Spending Sudden Doom reduces the cooldown of Putrefy by 1-2 seconds”