I would agree with your idea of Unholy. As I said, it’s pivoted too far into pets without picking up any interesting gameplay. Look at our cooldowns, they’re mostly pet related save for UB which doesn’t even interact with much of the kit. Demo is a great example of a minion spec and with their S3 tier, they even had a pretty interesting disease-adjacent gameplay.
I’d love to see our diseases become the more prominent part of the spec. Necrotic Plague should come back as our main mechanic, replacing or augmenting wounds. It was very thematic for the Unholy and also gave us an actual disease to manage. I remember completing the WoD challenge modes multiple times on my Unholy just to help out randoms, because playing that build was just fun.
I would also axe a bunch of our current pet cooldowns and give Unholy a way of consistently summoning cannon fodder ghouls (from popping wounds, disease ticks, etc.). I don’t know if something like that would be as good for pvp, since it’s all about having big burst at the right time these days. But I think if they returned Scourge Strike to scaling with diseases and supporting Necrotic Plague with some pvp talents, it could definitely have its place.
Blizzard pet AI sucks. It takes Army of the dead 3-4 seconds to get off the ground, same goes for the pet ghoul when first summoned. I have macros to tell my pet what to attack b/c it’s so dumb.
I remade a dk on remix and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pressed dark transformation just for my pet to be in Narnia, and therefore the button does not work.
They should rework UH into a knight with many temp ghouls. “Doomed bidding” is an excellent example on how they can they do it.
All throughout the dk starting lore you’re seeing more dks or undead being raised. It’s a core piece of the class fantasy.
Frost is pretty packed thematically, and I’m not sure it fits the spec at all.
Blood is thematic, if not that flashy. I guess you could make an argument here, but how does that coincide with tanking?
So it falls to unholy. I do think they should have a disease focus build and a pet build. Even if they both favored different styles of gameplay (aoe be ST) and cut down on the identity crisis if the spec. Unholy isn’t really casting any blood or frost spells though. It’s all pretty unique to unholy.
the ghoul is an extension of your own toolkit and capability. master uhdks do not think of it as a separate entity taking credit for its own actions.
if you want to play an undead melee spell caster that doesn’t use pets, that is frost, even blood would fit that description if you get past the idea that blizz labels it a tank in pvp.
I think you haven’t read the posts or you missed the entire point. My contention is with the PERMANENT pet, a ghoul that follows the Death Knight around… That is not what the fantasy of an Unholy Death Knight is in MY head.
If you read through the forum post you would see that I am a fan of and very on board with the Unholy Death Knight raising undead minions out of the ground to help fight their enemies… Even buffing those undead minions and those minions providing interesting game mechanics. This is more akin to what the Unholy Death Knight fantasy is in MY head.
I don’t envision the Frost Death Knight fantasy as one that raises undead minions from the ground to help them fight. At least not nearly to the same extent as an Unholy Death Knight.
It’s literally only about the permanent pet because to me it doesn’t really make any sense and it doesn’t seem like that’s what a Death Knight would do.
I realize it’s a very specific contention that I have, and if you disagree with me that’s totally fine and dandy… But at least contend with what I said many times in the post.
the perma pet has been a part of unholy since its inception back in wrath. you have to remember that its not really a pet in the lore, its some dude you randomly raised and your magic is powerful enough he doesn’t just fall over after a few seconds. once you are done with that random dude, you just dispose of him, this isn’t a pet that you care for like a hunter, or a specific demon you have a contract with like a warlock.
imagine you’re a UHDK on your day off, you just killed your ex Kevin and then raise him and make him mow the grass. once the lawn is done you have him paint the fence and clean the house, then take out the trash, once he is in the dumpster, you recall the magic (aka dismiss him) and his lifeless body lands itself in the dumpster. that is how a UHDK thinks of his ghoul, a tool to be used and disposed of. we are only a pet class in terms of classification for game balance reasons.
Fair enough. I think there is a disconnect between the lore/fantasy of a class and the way that class plays mechanically in-game. I do agree with you about the relation a Death Knight has with their minions, it’s a means to an end. I like your description of using Kevin to do your chores and then throwing him in the dump only to summon Jeff the next day to do your laundry.
I guess my contention is how that plays out in-game mechanically because in-game, although it’s a random minion with an awesome mad-libs name, for me it kind of breaks the fantasy because it does act as a “pet” in the sense of being a permanent minion. If I say “pet” i’m just referring to that. If we don’t have our pet summoned then our damage tanks even if we have all of our other minions summoned, our dark transformation specifically only buffs our permanent pet. (Unless you take the Commander of the Dead talent which might completely nullify the point I’m making)
To me, it would just make more sense if we raised undead minions to serve us and dark transformation buffs all active summoned minions and/or causes all summoned minions to spread diseases, inflict or pop festering wounds or something.
Perhaps the results are all the same in the end. The pet might play basically the exact same in my world as it does currently haha. I’ll have to think about it more. Maybe a lot of my contention comes from not enjoying playing classes in which I have to control a pet in any way haha
There is no thinking needed here. There is a disconnect, and a big one and spending any amount of time on these forums will tell you why. Things being said like “DnD should do shadowfrost damage and be blue for Frost” is why the DK isnt a Death Knight anymore. Its either a Blood Knight, Frost Knight, or an Unholy Knight.
I wish there was a Death Knight class again, but people keep wanting to push it away from what it should be and trying to create 3 different classes under 1 name. Festering Strike was a Frost ability, Pestilence was a Blood ability.
That’s because, since the class was created, it has been the amalgamation of three different classes. You have the Death Knight from WC3, Necromancers, and Runemaster. Then you have also that class be allowed to be a tank or DPS role in any specialization. The Death Knight class is just that—a bunch of different things working together to create this giga edgelord class. Just look at the mog you’re wearing.
No. A death knight that specializes in diseases with the few occasional pets.
Are you making up your own fan fiction?
Death knigths don’t cast spells. They use runes. It would be cool if they did.
Thats not the reason why people push Blood Knight, Frost Knight, Unholy Knight. Its also more than an amalgamation of three different classes. Warrior is in there, Lich is in there, Banshee is in there.
But given those are the basis for the DK… its not even there. People are pushing a Knight that only uses Frost, a Knight that only uses Blood, and a Knight that only uses Unholy. Part of that comes from the masteries, and another part of that comes from people that just cant see past being 1 color. “I want everything of Blood to be red, tattoos that are red, eyes that are red, weapon that is red, gear that is red, make the ghoul red, make AMS red, make AMZ red, make DG red…” that is the mentality that Blizzard is kind of playing into and that has been pushing people away from the class as well because it doesnt feel like a Death Knight anymore.
Many people play this class to play a Death Knight, not a Frost Knight, not a Blood Knight, a Death Knight which is supposed to encompass all of these things while specializing in making a certain aspect of the class stronger while not throwing out the rest of the class because some people are still in gradeschool and only want to use the green marker.
I mean who else is raising the dead as minions in this game’s lore besides dk’s (not entirely rhetorical)? I do think that UH should have like a more disease focused subspec though. Right now it seems like pets are the only thing it has going for it. But then again, I haven’t played UH since they introduced the festering wounds mechanic because that mechanic is annoying and not fun imo.
Good news! The AoE builds for DF have been primarily Disease based while Pets has been the single target build.
Which makes sense to me that the mass contagion idea is the AoE build.
I agree that it feels abnormal to have our one special ghoul who isn’t even special follow us around.
(My preference is for them to lean away from pets entirely and Focus on the Plague night aesthetic due to pet AI being mediocre.)
It would make sense to me if the abilities leaned into a Flesh Stitching, abomination making aesthetic but they clearly lean into an undead commander idea.
I’d like to propose an idea I haven’t seen yet. What if we had more permanent pets? We already have All Will Serve, (Even though it sees little to no use.) but what if we had a follow-up talents that gave us a permanent Skeleton Mage and various other dead minions. Effectively making your own troop of undead to command at all times.
With 4 undead and your self making a pseudo party I think it would feel less weird why ‘Pebble Muncher’ gets to stick around and not any other undead.
Obviously this would require a lot of reworking of core functions but I think it speaks to the core complaint.