What i hoped to see added to Unholy Dk’s, would be a talent that lets us raise skeleton warriors every time we burst a festering wound.
This is the abilities name, Festering Dead. This is how it works. Every time you burst a Festering Wound, you raise up a Skeleton Warrior that fights for you for 8 seconds.
- Plague Strike. Plague Strike infects the target with Virulent Plague. In addition, it also applies a stacking debuff, increasing minion damage the enemy takes by 2% stacking up to 20%.
- Charge. Charge an enemy target, this has a 2 second CD.
- Corpse Dust. When the Skeleton Warriors duration has expired, it will give you a Corpse Dust stack. Corpse Dust stacks up to 100 stacks, when you reach 100 stacks of Corpse Dust, your next Death Coil is turned in to Necrotic Blast. Necrotic Blast deals 25%-50% more damage than a Death Coil, it also gains the Sudden Doom benefit. In addition, Magus and Lich will grant Corpse Dust as well, the Lich grants 5 stacks of Corpse Dust when it’s duration has expired.
The next talent i would like to see added, would be something that makes us raise an even better version of the Magus of the Dead.
This is how i think the new passive should work.
Raise Lich. Raise Lich has a 25% chance to be raised instead of a Magus of the Dead, the Lich last for 12 seconds, and it has several abilities it will use. Menacing Magus should be baked in to this passive as well.
- Death Bolt. Death Bolt is a combined version of Frost Bolt and Shadow Bolt, it also burst a Festering Wound when it hits the enemy target, this also contribute towards rasing Skeleton Warriors.
- Amplified Magic. The Lich buffs the Death Knight with Amplified Magic, increasing the damage and size of the Death Knight by 5%. This is the same effect as the tier set from the last raid in Dragonflight.
- Shadow fissure. When the Lich’s duration expires, it will drop a Shadow Fissure under the enemy target. Shadow Fissure deals high amount of damage, and if any enemy target is to close to the Shadow Fissure, they will take the full damage of it as well, in addition, enemies gets infected with 2 stacks of Festering Wounds as well.
Another thing i would like to see changed, is the Summon Gargoyle.
First. Locate it where Unholy Assault is, and make them in to a choice nod. Second. Change how Summon Gargoyle does it’s thing, and make it more interactive with our rotation. here are some examples i think will make it way better than the current one.
- When Gargoyle is raised you summon 3 Gargoyles to fight for you for 30 seconds.
- The Gargoyles has a 30% chance to infect the enemy target with Festering Wounds.
- While Gargoyle is active, they increase the chance to proc Sudden Doom.
- While the Gargoyles are active, each attack it does to the enemy target, will increase both minions and pet’s critical strike and critical damage by 0,5%, stacking up as much you can get for it’s duration.
Unholy Aura is removed, or is located earlier in the talent tree.
Where Unholy Aura is located, i think we should have something better in it’s location. here is one example i think would be cool to add. Summon Necromancer. Necromancer is a permanent minion. But this minion does not attack the enemy. Instead the Necromancer focuses on raising undeads, and buff our minions and the Death Knight.
- Raise Bone Fiend. Bone Fiend leaps at the enemy target.
- Fiendish cleaver. Fiendish Cleaver applies a Bleed dot on the enemy target. This is considered a Disease.
- The Necromancer will buff a target with Unholy Frenzy. Unholy Frenzy increases attack speed by 20% for 20 seconds. While Unholy Frenzy is active, it leeches 3% health of the buffed target every 3 seconds. The Necromancer will always prioritize the Death Knight before his permanent minions.
- Bone Shield. Bone Shield increases the Death Knight’s armor based on his strength. This is to offset the fact Unholy Frenzy leeches your health.
With the new change to All Will Serve, i think it would be really cool if the Skulker could be effected by Dark Transformation, if you take a talent for it. Here is an example i think could happen with the talent path where the Skulker is located.
First you take the Skulker, nothing new here. But it will be the other two talents that will be changed in this location.
- Raise Sludge Belcher. Raise Sludge Belcher replaces Unholy Pact. Unholy Pact has always felt bad to talent in to, as it is way to gimmicky as a talent. Instead Raise Sludge Belcher will be located here. The Sludge Belcher works the same way as it did in Legion where it improved our pet Ghouls abilities when you talented in to it. what it improved, was things such as our pet always cleave with it’s attacks, and aoe when in Dark Transformation. Other things it gave us was a Physical Death Grip, and when you use Huddle out side Dark Transformation with the Sludge Belcher, the pet no longer stops attacking, which is a massive quality of life improvement, like the Physical grip.
- All the Raise Sludge Belcher needs as a buff when the talent is taken, is a 15% damage and health increase, and nothing more than that sins it gets improved skills and utility.
After Raise Sludge Belcher, i think that, with how much Dark Transformation is defining the pet aspect of our minion build, it should have a talent that makes it so when Dark Transformation is used, it also Transform the All Will Serve Skulker.
Dark Transformation is now replaced with Dark Perfection, it has the same CD and duration. Dark Perfection transform both the main pet and the Skulker in to their empowered forms. The Skulker will turn in to a Bone Lord.
The Bone Lord has a couple of abilities it will use.
- Bone Storm. When Dark Perfection is cast, the Bone Lord will use Bone Storm when Dark Perfection CD is used. The Bone Lord will Charge the enemy target as many times it tries to escape. If you swap to another target while this ability is active, it will charge to that target instead.
- Bone Spikes. When the enemy gets out of reach of the Bone Lords melee range, it will swap over to ranged attack. The Bone Lord will slam his axe in to the ground, bone spiking the enemy around the focused target.
- Bone Cleaver. Bone Cleaver is the same as Bone Spikes, but in melee range
- When Dark Perfection is talented, both transformed minions will deal increased damage by 20%.
- The Bone Lord benefits from Infected Claws and Ghoulish Frenzy, and Unholy Blight.
- When Sudden Doom is consumed, command both your pets to do their primary attacks. For Sludge Belcher, it’s the Meat Cleaver ability, for the Bone Lord, it’s Bone Spikes at range, and in melee, it uses Bone Cleaver, at reduced effectiveness.
I would also love to see changes to Army of the Dead, and Apocalypse, in a way.
Army of the Dead is no longer Replaced by Raise Abomination/Legion of Souls. Instead Army of the Dead replaces Apocalypse when talented.
Army of the Dead has a 45 second CD. In addition, Army of the Dead has a passive effect added to it as well.
This passive effect work like this.
- When the Death Knight uses his abilities, you have a 10% chance to raise a Army of the Dead Ghoul. In addition, When Sudden Doom has been used, the Death Knight has a 20% chance with Sudden Doom proc to raise a Army of the Dead Ghoul.
- When the Army of the Dead Ghouls duration expires, they explode, dealing a tiny bit of damage with a chance to apply a Festering Wound to any target hit by the exploding Army of the Dead Ghoul.
Sins Menacing Magus is baked in to the Raise Lich talent earlier in this post i typed, i think it would be a good opportunity to add a passive, that make our Army of the Dead Ghouls feel a little bit more impactfull.
Ghoulish Infection. Ghoulish Infection causes your Army of the Dead Ghouls to cleave the enemy target, In addition, The Army of the Dead Ghouls have a 10 % chance to apply Festering Wound to the enemy target, they also deal 10% more damage.
Now for the change to Raise Abomination i would like to see.
Raise Abomination is now located where Army of the Dead used to be located.
In the Place where Raise Abomination used to be located, i think adding a choice nod where you can make Abomination more impacfull in his own way, would make it more interesting as a result.
Here is an example.
Lord of the Underworld. Lord of the Underworld replaces Raise Abomination for a Crypt Lord.
- When the Crypt Lord has been risen, you raise 2 Nerubian Crypt Stalkers that fights for you for the same duration as the Crypt Lord. The Crypt Lord has the same abilities as the Abomination, but it also cleaves with it’s melee attacks.
- when Crypt Lord is talented, it will use Burrow Charge, charging the enemy target when they are out of range, this has a 6 second CD.
- Another thing the Crypt Lord does, is that, when enemies dies, he raises Beetles. This minions deal smal amount of damage, nothing really special, it’s slightly stronger than the Crypt Lord’s melee attacks, this is more so a flavor thing for it’s theme.
- Last thing the Crypt Lord has as an effect. When the Crypt Lord is struck by a physical attacks, it deals a little bit of poke damage back at the enemy target. The Crypt Lord spreads Virulent Plague, but from Insect Swarm as it’s own ability.
The other passive talent you can chose from, is centering more around Diseases, and Abomination being more a Disease focused CD would help the Disease build feel a little more impactfull when the big guy is up. Raise Abomination has a 45 second CD now, and when Raise Abomination is active, The Abomination infect’s the enemy target with Wandering Plague.
- Wandering Plague causes the enemy to have a chance, for each unique Disease applied to them to multi strike. When Wandering Plagues is active on the enemy target, it triggers the multi strike effect on the Diseases when they deal damage. This will deal less the damage the more it triggers, but the chance to trigger is high on the first hit, and for each time it ticks, it gets lower the more it chains of it self.
- while this Disease is active on the enemy target, it also extend other Diseases duration’s.
I think Legion of Souls is a boring CD that has no business replacing our undead Minions. This should be located somewhere else in the talent tree, maybe as a choice nod with Superstrain, at least then, you can pick between AOE burst or ROT damage, for a more defining damage profile.
Necromancer’s Bargain PVP talent should be located where Army of the Dead is located, as a choice nod.
Necromancer’s Bargain is changed to fit better, in a Disease Playstyle. This is how it will work.
- Necromancer’s Bargain will increase the damage enemy takes from your abilities. It increases shadow damage taken for 10%, while Disease damage is increased by 35% damage.
- Apocalypse has a 30 second CD, and it has a 30 yard range to it, and Apocalypse deals increased damage to all enemy target in front of you.
I think allot of our passives should be baked in together, and moved around a bit, and some should be choice nods so they can get a better damage tuning to them.
- Rotten Touch and Coil of Devastation are now a choice nod, and they are located where Infected Claw was located, Improved Death Coil is baked in to Coil of Devastation as well, and Rotten Touch also buffs Festering Strike/Festering Scythe.
- Ebon Fever is located where Ghoulish Frenzy was located. Both Ghoulish Frenzy, and Infected Claw has been located to where both Improved Death Coil and Coil of Devastation was located before.
- As for the location before Festering Scythe, i think adding Desecrated Ground back, would be a good thing, it’s the same as it used to be back in Wrath of the Lich King, where if you pressed Scourge Strike, it spawned one under the enemy target, an extra effect they can add to it, could be that it has a chance to apply Festering Wound to the enemies standing in it, and increase our haste by 10%.
This would help give Unholy Death Knight’s a better damage profile, if you want to focus more on hitting things hard or rotting them down.
Also i would love to see a Disease added in between Festering Scythe and Coil of Devastation/Rotten Touch is located. Here is a example to what i think could be added.
- Festering Plague. Festering Plague is a Disease that grows in strength based on how fast you can burst Festering Wounds in a span of 6 seconds. This Disease will deal it’s damage every 3 seconds - 1,5 seconds if Plague Bringer is talented, and is reset after 6 seconds. In addition, Festering Plague will infect the enemy with a Festering Wound every time it deals damage.
I also think our last talent row could have more Disease talent options.
Here are some Disease focused one i think should be added.
- Ebon Plague. Ebon Plague is a Disease that will deal higher damage the more unique Diseases that are applied to the enemy target. Ebon Plague will also increase the amount of stacks of Death Rot you can stack on to the enemy target. In addition, Death Rot makes it so when you use Death Coil, it also grants 2 stacks of Death Rot, instead of 1 stack. Same will also apply to Sudden Doom Death Coils, Sudden Doom will apply 4 stacks of Death Rot.
- Necrotic Plague. Necrotic Plague is a powerfull Disease when it reaches it’s full potential. But to do so, you will have to build around it to achieve this result. So here is how it works. For each Festering Wound you burst, Necrotic Plague gains 1 stack to it, this increases Necrotic Plagues damage by 1%, and Death Coils by 0,3%. Necrotic Plague will stack for as much as 100+ stacks, and Necrotic Plague last for 1 min on the enemy target, and deals it’s damage every 6 second. Plague Bringer and Ebon Fewer speeds up it’s damage. in Addition, Necrotic Plague will also consume a Festering Wound. But this will not contribute towards Festering Dead talent.
Next thing that needs to happen in the last part of the talent row, is that both Festermight, and Decomposition should be set to 1 talent point, and not like they are now where you have to spend 2 points on them.
Both are both boring because they don’t actually offer anything interesting past the first talent point that we spend on them.
So here is what needs to happen. Festermight is the same, but only gives us strength up to 20%, but there will be a new talent you can take after Festermight. The same will go for Decomposition. Decomposition should also be tuned so that it extends minions duration up to 5 seconds, up from 3 seconds, it deals 250% of Virulent Plagues damage, instead of 200%.
This will also have a talent you take after Decomposition.
- Chaos Bane. Chaos Bane consumes all of your stacks of Festermight to unleash a powerfull barrage of souls at the enemy target’s. This will deal a high amount of aoe damage, and the Death Knight will be empowered, increasing our strength by 30% for 10 seconds. After the effect ends, you will start to stack Festermight again to you reach 20 stacks. In addition, when enemies are hit by Chaos Bane, they will get infected by Soul Reaper. This Soul Reaper will deal damage to the enemy target regardless of their HP. This is to make it so Chaos Bane feels like it’s own unique talent that provides a payoff for reaching 20 stacks of Festermight.
- Defiler of all that is Holy. Defiler of all that is Holy, will cause your Virulent Plague to hit like a truck. This is if you have met a certain amount of requirements to make it hit hard. Here is how this passive will work. For each unique disease that deals it’s damage, your last damage tick from Virulent Plague deals 1% increased damage for each time your other Diseases have delt damage, stacking for as much you can get in a span of Virulent Plagues duration on the enemy target. Now, how does this work?. It works on the idea that when Virulent Plague runs it’s full duration out, it deals a large amount of damage from it’s accumulated % stacking for the final dot damage hit to the target, this happen when the other Diseases has buffed Virulent Plague up. This damage increase will not apply until the last dot tick from Virulent Plague goes off, and if you try to refresh Virulent Plague, it will go off before the new application has run it’s full duration out. So if you refresh it, it won’t change when this effect goes of. So, say that my Virulent Plague had 5 seconds left on the target, then i hit Outbreak to refresh it, what will will happen?, what happens then is that after 5 seconds, the newly applied Virulent Plague will Detonate it’s damage, the dot it self continues with it’s normal damage regardless of when it goes off. This is mostly to avoid it being turned in to a degenerate type of passive. The overall goal to this Passive is to make it so when this effect does go off, the enemy will be hit hard. But this is locked to a fixed duration of your first application of Virulent Plague, and any new applications will start the process all over again. In addition, Defiler of all that is Holy will always trigger the effect of Decomposition, as a result, you can get a really powerfull dot on the enemy target, when the effect goes off on the enemy target. Maybe this can also extend Dark Transformation’s duration as well, By X amount.
I think this changes would move Unholy Death Knight in a better position, where our damage profile feels more impactfull without resulting in us feeling like we are a Rogue in plate. Now it can offer a much better focus on the theme you want to go for. Do you want to be a master of the Undead, now you can. You want to be a master of Dot and Rot, now you can do that. You want to hit things really hard, yes you can do that as well, if you have talented in to the correct talent’s and passives required for it.
Last thing i think should be changed, this might not seem important at first glance, but, i do think it will help push our damage profile even more based on how we build our Unholy Death Knight.
I think adding a Mastery choice nod, when you spec in to Unholy Death Knight would be a smart move.
What i can see done here, would be to bake in Raise Dead from the UH spec talent tree, just locate Festering Strike in it’s location. As for the mastery choice nod, i think it would be smart to add 2 types of Mastery, that pushes our play styles damage profiles.
For example, Mastery: Dreadblade. Increases shadow damage by 10%, in addition to that, Disease damage is increased by 35% for example. Not only does this make our Diseases have a stronger focus on it’s damage profile, but also makes it so the damage to undead minions are not buffed equal to the Disease damage value. This has always caused some issues with how we deal our damage, things feels to inconsistent right now.
I belive with this, we can feel allot better when we pick and chose our mastery, we know what we will get, instead of what we have now, where we have to roll a dice to see what type of damage source is our top priority each season.
As a result, if the other choice nod mastery talent then focuses more on undeads, then when you take this mastery, our undead build won’t feel inconsistent, in certain places it currently does right now.
As for the name, this is what i think it should be called, Mastery: Scourgelord. This is what i think it can do as it’s effect, increase minion damage by 30%, in addition, critical strike damage is increased to all minions as well.
The name strikes the Unholy Death Knight theme pretty well with it’s name Scorgelord.
I think this accomplishes 2 things.
- Blizzard can use our mastery to better tune our damage, should it struggle in certain places, It makes it so, if we get tier pieces that focus on for example Diseases, then with this mastery choice nods, we can talent in to our Disease build, without having our damage be so stretched out, as a result of the current mastery we got right now, which buffs our damage sources equally.
This ultimately is something that makes allot of sense to do to Unholy Death Knight, not only does it achieve a better talent build, but it also helps us feel like our damage always hits correctly, and not like it does on live, where our damage feel so inconsistent from time to time, because of all the micro damage sources it does right now