Hello Death Knights,
Back during Shadowlands Blizzard replaced Necrotic Strike (a unique anti healing effect) with Necrotic Wounds (a below average Mortal Strike equivalent). I wasn’t playing at the time having already cancelled my subscription so I’m wondering if anyone could fill me in as to the logic and/or reasoning for this change (if any was known).
Was it something players were asking for? If so what type of players and what were their arguments? Do these arguments still hold weight?
Did Blizzard change it because they were finding it too difficult to balance? Was there a certain situation that made it grossly overpowered? Was it too weak to compete with normal rotation and thus rendered useless?
Was this just another case of class homogenization? where unique class mechanics are removed in favor of something other classes already have so we are more interchangeable with everyone else? So Altaholic Andy has less difficulty understanding his 11th Alt class because it now plays just like the other 10? Were new players less concerned with class identity and more concerned with not having to learn how to fully utilize a new mechanic?
Did blizzard just want to buff TSG by making a mortal strike effect that’s only really threatening if a warrior is already present?
Was this change considered a buff or a nerf at the time?
I ask these questions because I want to know more about what brought on this change before I go full speed forward with asking for it’s return, I loved necrotic strike and the anti-healer niche it provided unholy was somewhat of a selling point for me, a cool thing you could do that no one else could do. From my point of view this would be like changing divine shield into a damage reduction cooldown instead of an immunity cooldown, like ya there are arguments that could be made for that, but why remove something so iconic and replace it with what everyone else already has?