Feels like Unholy DK is incredibly boring and doesn’t really fit the Necromancer/Master of Minions Fantasy it should…
Looking at the Frost and Blood Trees for Dragonlands I feel excited to test/play the talents and use the talent calculator to find what could be good or how everything will fit but when i look at the Unholy DK it just seems boring/bland…
I feel like the fantasy of the unholy DK is supposed to be someone who commands swarms of the unholy(Undead/necromancy) while spreading plagues upon their enemies… Right now unholy dk feels like a Classic WoW hunter who only plays in melee with their pet.
I feel like there could be alot more synergy and control built into the class of having hordes of undead that you are trying to uptime on be it through spreading your Plague DoTs or Expending Runic Power. The only button that makes you feel the Class fantasy in the slightest is Army of the Dead which you get to press maybe 2 times a fight or every 4-5 packs in M+
it looks like frost and unholy dk are going to be the same as they are in sl which is fine i like sl frost dk and i dont mind unholy but i didnt see any talent from past expansions like from legion.
With the Talent system they could easily split up the play style but i feel like the RP behind Unholy DK was always supposed to be a Master of Plague and the Undead. I feel like with these talent trees they could really flesh out both sides of that and make each play style feel unique
honestly a lot of our play diversity is locked behind PVP, if you take abom and reanimation and defile, you can play a necromancer, if you take superstrain, ebon fever, and the VP conduit, you can play a plaguemaster. these builds have their niche, but it generally isn’t any of the competitive or front stage content.
PVE has the issue of there not being any art to playstyles, there is the mathematical max dps build and a few situational, but generally that is it. because damage per second matters more than just damage in general, you can’t really explore other playstyles like you can in PVP.
thats not to say damage doesn’t matter, damage matters in pvp, but discipline and execution matter more, this allows players to explore alternate playstyles which rely on different damage profiles which may not have the best overall DPS or max damage.
can’t say i liked what i saw in the talent trees
having to expend talent points to get stuff that literally has always been baseline doesn’t feel good, always felt like it should be expanding on what we’ve had, but it may just be growing pains that’ll get better in later xpacs
on the issue of uhdk
i really don’t like the pet builds as much as i like disease builds
it feels boring to have your entire kit based around dt/apoc cdr, at least personally but i guess some people might like it
im hopeful for some scourge strike gameplay with the diseases making you deal more dmg talent like old scourge strike used to
The biggest issue I have with unholy is the feast and famine playstyle making it pretty dull between cooldowns. The new talent tree isn’t making Unholy command or Army of the damned baseline which sucks because the cooldown reduction really should be baseline considering we are already extremely cooldown dependant and these choices are in most cases mandatory given a lot of our damage is tied to an 8 minute cooldown.
Empower rune weapon also looks cool, but it may be unviable to compare it to limb or soul reaper which both do baseline shadow dmg. It’s the only new button I see that can go on the bars, so that’s a shame.
I’d love to see them maybe help our aesthetic out by allowing us to generate minions without cooldowns like they did in BFA. Maybe also adding in some mobility for our pets and making some cooldown reduction baseline so we can try some alternate builds without adding 5+ minutes to our cooldowns.
Yeah unholy is my fave spec and the protoype tree is a bit underwhelming.
It needs more creativity, I’d rather see minions generated through diseases and disease uptime (but keep apocalypse) / shambler integrated / have gargoyle finally go baseline / have AotD either deleted or reduced in power to have other abilities and elements of play be more effective and creative
Be very careful of these multi tiered damage increases in talents because it could just be getting Festering Strike and Scourge Strike to where it is currently in power relative to the rest of the spec abilities.
the best build for climbing 2s is not the best build for 3s which can also function for RBGs, but none of those builds work for epics or large scale team fights.
but that wasn’t really my point, with pvp talents you can make a plague build or a necromancer build, or a pet build, you don’t have to do a wound focused build. each build will have its optimal niche, but you can’t take those talents into PVE. so while i have been having a blast playing a ranged necromancer and battlefield disrupter, everyone else has been popping wounds and qqing about their lack of fun. if they had reanimation and abomination as PVE talent options, PVE could join in that fun too.
another point to remember is that PVE most often has people going with a sim build, and if that build isn’t fun but is the top dps, players will complain about the gameplay of that class rather than the balance of other builds.
Tbf, we have “complained” about other builds being underpowered tthe entire expansion. All we got was a mastery nerf and buffs to builds that already simmed as optimal through conduits
Anything. I thought you were saying one couldn’t experiment with pve builds like you could with pvp builds. I misunderstood you were talking about pvp talents.
This is true and unfortunate. I wish there was more tolerance for build experimentation.
well, to an extent you can’t, raid groups aren’t going to tolerate your experimental fun build doing only 75% of your total DPS potential if its making them wipe on dps checks.
pvp is a lot more dynamic in nature, if i summon 3 zombies with reanimation, a smart player will know to aoe or avoid them, but what if i grip them into the zombies before they can react, thats 30% of their HP gone from just 3 runes and 4 gcds, but it’s success entirely depends on proper situational usage.
this is very fun from a gameplay perspective but difficult and therefore subpar from a simming an meta-analysis perspective. PVE simply does not have that grey area because opponent difficulty is not variable. an NPC doesn’t see reanimation and react to it, so everything is entirely about the math and the player’s ability to do all the mechanics.
Sure. Nor would I suggest anyone experiment around in the middle of progression. But you’re right that there’s a cadence to the way a pve season unfolds vs a pvp season that makes pve experimentation more confined
IMO its better for AV than Ashran, but in general its used for more than just teamfights. and given the PVE friendly changes they made to mechanically nerf it this expansion, i was thinking they were setting it up to be a talent in the new tree , but it didn’t make it
as long as the range stay 40 yards, costs 1 rune, has no cd or charges then yeah, that would work as well. TBH if they wanted to add a necromancer talent line to the tree, they could add pve copies of reanimation to the tree that summon different PVE ghouls.
when you play reanimation, for the most part the spell becomes your main spell and CS/wounds is the backup. spamming this one button can get a bit tiring and boring sometimes.
if they added 3 spells, a shamber(aoe/boom), an army ghoul(melee/physical), and a magus(ranged/caster), then you would have a PVE necromancer gameplay right there, as long as each maintains the 1 rune per summon, no cd, no limit factor of reanimation.
also, reanimation is still nice in pvp because it does 10% HP damage and stuns, this means it works on bear tanks and is problematic for big casters like warlock, because your first zombie tends to show up right as he starts his chaos bolt, the stun disrupts the cast without blowing your mind freeze or petkick.
