Cleaving Strikes is one of the worst implementations of cleave in the game. Its unfun, unreliable and annoying to incorporate into your gameplay.
Change the interaction to work with remorseless winter or something. Or just rework it completely. But this is just bad.
Take for example fury warrior meat Cleaver. Press whirlwing and get 4 stacks of meat cleaver, making your next 4 abilities cleave nearby enemies. I think DK should get something similar to this. This could be: Press remorseless winter and get 3/4 stacks of your next ST ability cleaving hitting extra targets.
No! stop with the kit communism. As frost especially you barely have any buttons to track in the first place, dumbing it down n baking in everything even further into the rotation is terrible. We need less mindless dumb crap not more of it.
DnD lingers for a few secounds after leaving it. Classes as a whole need less autoplay, not more.
I’m down to get something else as an alternative to D&D to make sure its not complete faceroll. But d&d really is bad gameplay when you arent the tank, even the 4 seconds linger doesnt make up for the fact that u have to sit in it.
It only feels that way in easy content where the tank never stops, people wont pull the entire dungeon mindlessly in harder content so its really a problem. I personally like DnD n find it thematic for DK.
Back in the day it dident even add any cleaving, thats much later down the road. I dont like how every class has everything now. It takes away the uniqueness n turns it into just a mindless numbercrunch where all classes play identical n the only difference is tmogs n numbers.
what drugs are you on that equate this to being a bad change`kit communism? what?!, for once in our entire existance we have got something that just does things smoothly and starts a damage chain that goes by itself, deathbringer hero spec that is. other classes has had good design like that for ages, except we have been stuck with clunky designs that was abandoned 5 expacs ago, unholy “combo points” wounds anyone?!
IF they want us to use the clunky death and decay, then it needs to be made an ability that actually does something on its own, and not only semi capable on unholy. DO you know just how much damage the ability does? lower than a frsotstrike for frost, compare that to…for example frostmage blizzard, that slows for MORE overall than our own chains of ice, AND procs things the mage AND auto immobilizes at the same time AND does respectable damage.
get out of here with your asinine talk of “communist” kit’s, you’re doing us no favors.
Refrain from using nonsensical language like this.
The vast majority of the DK player base doesn’t enjoy the idea of floor restricted abilities.
Mages didn’t like their equivalent rune of power for the exact same reason as us and it got removed.
Floor restricted effects that are so core to a class’ rotation have no place in modern wow, it’s that simple.
Now, we’ve got 2 great abilities sitting their doing nothing, Glacial advance (the castable one) and Frostscythe. We’re not talking about simplifying rotation and making it like combat rogue where you just press one button and then carry on as normal. The devs have proven time and time again that they can come up with engaging and interesting solutions to problems. We’re asking they apply that talent to our predicament. Right now, any solution is better than D&D cleave.
DnD isnt designed to do raw damage, as unholy you have diseases n epidemic to do massive aoe damage ontop of the cleaving from standing inside DnD, ontop of that DnD also applies aoe wounds passivesly which also deals aoe damage. Why do you want every class in the game to function the same way? I already have a fury warrior, i dont want my DK to play like one too.
I dont want my kit reworked because you dont deal top dps in your heroic dungeons. Just wait for harder content to release with the season where the tank stops pulling the entire continent n you´ll be perfectly fine with DnD once the tank stops moving.
All classes have already been streamlined way too much n DnD is a very iconic ability thats been around since DK was made n has functioned virtually the exact same way ever since. In the past it dident even give you any cleaving at all. Its degenerate to have more crap baked into the existing rotation that just plays itself.
So how can a version of this be implemented in a unique way that isnt just “press a button, ideally that isnt on the GCD n do your regular rotation mindlessly”? because thats exactly what people are asking for. I hate how they keep removing class identity in favor of everyone having the same damn kit.
This Frankly doesn’t have to do with your Fury warrior, or any other classes. Frost DK plays nicely now, if you disregard the D&D. As mentioned before its a bad mechanic in itself cause its floor restricted. There are going to be situations were the cleave will work fine, however there are too many instances were it just feels like a huge inconvenience.
They should find other ways to make the spec “different” and innovative, but DND is not it
I think that is a fundamental issue with how classes have devoloped as a whole, in the past we had classes shining in different parts of the game but now everyone needs to be good at everything whch often comes at the expense of a classes fantasy.
Outside of tanks never stopping n pulling the whole dungeon while everyone dps down the mobs on the run i dont see where DnD is such an issue, in content that is being speedran the difficulty is clearly too low n thats where the issue is anyways. I suppose DnD could be removed from frost n replaced with something else but what would that be? i dont want another off GCD mindless grug button 98% of the playerbase simply puts into an ape macro n spam click. The game has become too self playing already as is.
That’s the problem, tanks never stop moving and quite frankly they shouldn’t because said harder content demands them to kite a lot. I did plenty of super high damage as UH last expansion, with fantastic overall. The bigger the pull the better, sure. The point is, that it’s super clunky and restrictive. If you find this satisfying gameplay, then great for you, you’re the minority.
The idea of epidemic bursting wounds was pretty cool, but that got scrapped. Festering Scythe was a brilliant idea, but was terribly executed and now nobody plays with it.
I’m not asking for mindless zug zug homogenised classes, most people don’t. They might not have great suggestions to replace the current system neither. The common denominator is that we’re desperate for something else
Neither do I, firstly that’s why I encourage the devs to look into it, because they’re likely more creative than most of us (also they’ve never picked anyone’s suggestion from a class forum ever). Secondly I always suggest people to have a look at what’s already there. Glacial advance and Frost Scythe. why can’t these be tuned in a way that makes them feel relevant and engaging? These abilities can be reimagined as part of a rotation that flows better whilst having a relevant degree of skill expression. This whole DnD in frost spec was brought through Shadowlands because of the covenant ability nonsense. Now that that’s gone, why has the spec stayed stuck in that era?
There’s so much potential for them to create new and interesting abilities too, why adopt a limiting view?
I don’t know if you noticed, but during the m+ season you definitely will: There are tons of mechanics (e.g. concecration on priory) that require heavy movement (on several trash packs). This has always been an issue with top DKs in the past, and is what is potentially holding DK from shining (cause it’s never been a meta spec in m+ apart from one season in BFA were this talent didnt exist yet)
If there is a cool n unique redesign of how it works i´d be fine with it. i still think it´d be a shame to make a thematic and nostalgic ability obsolete, especially for unholy as it fits the theme of the class.
I think the majority of people infact do want mindless zugzug damage boost so they can link the dps meters while pressing 1-2-1-2-1-2 on repeat. I think DK had alot more flavor when for example we used to have to convert runes etc but i was fine with them dumbing that part down n making it into just one type of rune. I dont want to go deeper into that hole though. I find that all dk specs has already become very zugzug.
If there is a unique n thematic solution to the problem i´d be all ears, so long as its not some degenerate macro n forget garbage. DK has already been progressively more n more dumbed down n at this point its rather zugzug already as is with only one rune type etc. I dont want to go further down that hole.
Good aoe n good single target should be completely seperated playstyles, I hate designs where AoE is built in free of charge with no drawback or compromise. Epidemic vs coil is about the only thing we´ve got left as unholy in terms of diversity.
It does fit thematically for sure? Defile is basically as old as WC3 scourge buildings that corrupted the floor around them. But is this enough of a reason to keep it, does it justify the gameplay? Maybe there’s an interesting gameplay out there that maintains the theme but modernises the gameplay.
An unholy death knight literally corrupting the floor beneath them as they walk sounds evil and thematic AF.
A frost death knight “drains the warmth from all nearby enemies” sounds so horrible in the best of ways.
Yet these cool themes just don’t get reflected in the gameplay. One is a terrible deathtrap and the other is a set and forget passive.
That’s why I’m always promoting an open minded state for these abilities, because the themes are all there. They just need to be executed better.
As for blood dk… Well… Let’s say that plate dawning vampire that is somehow super slow and needs to constantly drink blood to stay alive is odd to say the least.
Never cared for blood DK all that much, i think its one of the weaker themes overall but i also never found WoW´s take on vampires to be all that cool. Hemomancy can be cool in fantasy games but in WoW it really isnt.
Blizz has a terrible trackrecord when it comes to “reworking” things though so i´d rather they just dont touch things in general. Just look at the ret rework, the walking incarnation of dumbness itself. DK´s are already extremely dumbed down compared to how they were initially. I never cared for blood dk dps admittedly but unholy was always cool. Never loved wounds that much personally but i also dont really mind it. How the class played was very unique n required some pre planning where as now a days its very streamlined with every other melee. That is why im sceptical of making gameplay changes just because “other classes has this”.
It gets to a point where the class loses its entire identity n simply isnt fun to play anymore.
in saying that you reveal your hand that you see the ability itself is a simple middleman for doing something else, in this case cleaving. just because something has been with the class does not mean it should stay, the entire asinine idea that DnD allowed for cleaving is a blashfemous change that still lingers from shadowlands, one that hurts us because as you know, blizz designs after spreadsheet stats, and on their sheets our aoe damage is factored with the DnD oblit cleave in mind, and thus. remorseless winter dmg and howling blast has to be reduced to keep the average aoe dmg down. im getting off track on this point but DnD/defile, is an ability that has actually done good dmg, back in legion Defile for unholy was beastly in dmg, if you just want the flavor of it to be our cleave enabler while literrally doing 20k damage over ten seconds to things staying within its full duration then there is no problem in allowing remorseless winter to cause obliterate cleave for its duration.
Unholy’s dnd, in this case often Defile, ontop of being affected by unholys mastery, also has a massive increase in its base damage, doing more dmg than Bloods version even. and it also fits for unholys kit, even if it’s a far cry from its legion days in power.
answer me this, everytime you walk to the store, you have to run up a flight of stone stairs, usually you can just…walk up them to get there, but in this case you have to be contrarian and walk backwards up the stairs while also holding your breath. incase it is lost on you you you still get to the store, but this way of doing it is annoying and is far more work than what is really needed. and your argument for keeping it this way is “because weve always had the ability, and has always done this thing as long as i can remember” It’s called vestigial featiures, they are useless, obsolete, and does not help the flow of the class, ARGUIBLY if Death and decay did MORE things, or MORE damage on its own as i stated, and perhaps followed you like remorseless winter or on the horseman minion things would be gucci. the issue with death and decay is always the lag and the ground targeting ripping you from your smooth flow and camera movement. And dont tell me that you have issues in seeing your cursor when you need it in the chaos of fat pulls or insane battleground fights, even the rival game FF XIV changed a similar ability on the Dark knight class, to be places beneath you, instead of ground target, BECUSE OF OBVIOUS REASONS.
I have news for you, i dont use DnD in much of my gameplay ON PRINCIPLE, i dont care about dmg on most trash mbos, they die regardless in adequate time due to everyone else having good AoE tools, i dont use damage meters, i dont use any mods bar some roleplay ones, on principle and protest, as i think the game would benefit from not being designed around PvP or raid Addons, a pipe dream but that is my conviction, for me gameplay feel and allowing yourself to slip into the flow is what matters, as even half a second snag in your flow and hesitation can make you go off cadence and perform worse, no one has complained about my damage, as on single target and bosses it’s as a it has always been, good enough.
the answer is in your own sentence and words already, look back and think, before the shoehorned change of ONE(1) covenant in Shadowlands allowed you to use DnD for cleave no one used the ability bar Unholy and blood as it somewhat does things for those specs, frost DK has never used it since Wrath of the lich king, and i would argue that WoTLK’s version of death and decay was weird, three runes, but also good damage AND chance to fear, before they nerfed that.
again…the answer is in your own words, if it is degenerate to have more “crap” in your rotation then why was DnD needed to be a staple of frost DK cleave? it never was for years before the asinine covenant brainfart of an idea, IT IS THE DEGENERATE CRAP YOU DESCRIBE, holy watermelons im getting an aneyrysm on this, last expansion, and those before that, do you know what unholy gameplay was alike? i hope so, because if you do you will get what i mean here, but im not sure. To achieve the same level of damage and effectiveness you need to play tjaischkovsyk melody N.43 in APM, while a demo lock or BM hunter presses one or two buttons.
no one likes that,no sane person likes that, dont come here and try to make the argument taht you want such REAL DEGENERATE DESIGN to stay just because it loses “flavor” of taking extra steps to achieve the same results as other classes do. Your justification in this is that it “plays itself” Oh no it does not, again in taking Unholys example, the plates you used to need to keep spinning always needed manual micro and upkeep by the player, nothing was smooth and enjoyable about it, and in the end you did not do anything arguibly better than the other pet classes, save for trash pack damage in AoE.
the easy way to implenent it is to simply move the cleave to remorseless winter, it fits with the theme is smooth, no REAL DEGENERATE ground targetinging to kill your flow. If your reason for keeping the clunky and downright stupid design of DnD cleave is because if the class fantasy argument im sorry, but that has little legs to stand on, i can sympatize that you feel distressed that modern wow classes all have stuns, self healing, some form of movement, and respectable defensive cooldowns, Healers overall are extra cancerous in this…BUT…
I once again circle back to unholy, a class fantasy that is quite perfect, bar some gameplay issues still, DnD fits there, Defile fits there, it even does more dmg and more utility for unholy, what i dont like is how they made DnD the much focus of frosts cleave, NOTHING makes sense from a calss fantasy to having to slap down some dark ground to cleave your blades when your entire fantasy is frost and dark weaponstrikes and ice, hence why remorseless winter being PERFECT, this cannot be denied. I also heavily dislike Blood and its even larger focus on DnD, aswell as bone shield in TWW, but hey, thats my own tastes. In the end, above all, gameplay is king, if you cant flow with it, it feels extremely bad.
in what world and way does the current version of DnD shine? it was a dead button for years before shadowlands covenant shoehorned the cleave on it.
picture this…we are in season 2 of TWW, priory of the sacred flame is in m+ rotation, half the dungeon after the cathedral main gates have mobs that puts down a very hurtful aoe on the ground, that the tank has to move out of, and thus, you have to move, your DnD stays, ytouy cannot move back into it due to the consecration aoe…said consecration AoE also comes in staggered intervals, making the tank have to move constantly, now you add in affixes, Aoe Affixes, new adds that needs to be CC’d, root Aoes from mythic affixes and more, no amount of 4 second lingering cleave buff will allow you to be effectyive in any norm. And dont make the argument that unholy can manage that, just look at their Aoe dmg. In that i say that unholy has Defile, Defile grows in area overtime, does respectable damage on its own, and automaticly applieds wounds if yo spec into that, but unholys main pumper, epidemic, is not tied to Defile/DnD, only the targets suffering from the DoT, Friosts DnD does not grow, and requires youy to A: be in the DND, or with the lingering pathetic 4 second buff, and B: stand near the mobs to begin with, unholy does not need to do that.
Again i have said that it fits on remorseless winter, reasons are many that i have repeated in other posts and in this thread, in essence it’s the 4 second lingering cleave buff but longer, alongside an ability that synergies ALOT more. And let me tell you something about the asinine reasons you have for wanting DnD cleave to stay “grugbrain” this…“mindless” that. did it ever occur to you that convoluted annjoying coimplexity does not equal skill in how you use it? it instead makes the majority of players make more mistakes because they have to think about things that put them out of their flowstate, and they might eat an extra AoE, or forget to do a raid mechanic, there is joy in simple complexity, the entire deathbringer hero talent tree proves this.
You speak opf ape macors and the reason that somehow keeping DnD like this, forced on us will keep the sweats and tryhards from making their weakaura macros or auto gound target addons? it will not, they will always do what they do, and i curse them for it, in a way you are pushing to keep a taxation law that the big players and rich dont really will feel, only the small and medium man.
IT HAS BEEN OBSOLETE FOR FROST DESIGN FOR YEARS BEFORE SHADOWLANDS CURSED US WITH THE DND CLEAVE IDEA YOU BOZO
Unholy’s defile has always stood on its own even before the DnD cleave, with the mastery stack and good dmg, i used it in legion for devastating dmg.
Most people enjoy gameplay that is not clunky and convoluted, some complexity is fine, but no gameplay should be so demanding of your brain power that you fail mechancis or die to things you easily could have seen if you hadnt have to clunkily stop strafing, disengage your mousemovement, find your cursor and ground targeting reticle, then predict where the mobs shall be, and think again if aoe’s will spawn there for the next 10 seconds etc etc. It helps NO ONE, NO ONE.
I played Wrath of the lich king beta, and the entire expansion more or less and i prefer the four rune system, such limited supply meant that the abilities we did use whre powerful, Old frost strike was feared by rogue and warrior alike.
Again i dissent, convoluted gameplay for the sake of gameplay is not good design. even the four rune system was not hard to get once you got into the flow state of death rune conversion too. on the contrary, i approve of designs that makes things smoother and easier to flow with, remorseless winter giving you rime proc once it hits tthree targetrs is a good example, and then you have razorice proc on howling blast talent, easy, fits with your flow. I dont like how you invoke the word diversity here, the entire idea about DnD allowing cleave on unholy’s and frosts obliterate and scourgestrike is asinine, Blood had it on heartsrtike during legion, and that kinda fitted, KINDA, it does NOT for unholy and frost, you also want classes to be more unique, and go back to how they sued to be, well that means less Diverse Aoe options too FYI.
The Windwalker monk rework begs to differ, the rework that they got MID PATCH mind you, while we have been screaming for wqual attention ever since the end of Legion, weve basically been bleeding out in the waiting room ahving to deal with asinine ideas being imnplemented like DnD cleave for years…and the damnable monks have ONE BAD PATCH, and they are rushed to surgery for a sprained toe. now look at Windwalker monks, i guarantee that the second you face on in PvP 1 v 1 you will not enjoy it.
and we come full circle…the wound mechanic is combo points on your target, from vanilla rogue, a superemely vestigial featrure that never should stay, yet it does. MAYBE, if your plagues allowed to pop them in some way, but that would be to nice and easy would it not.
On the complete opposite, the smoother and better a class plays, the more fun and enjoyable it becomes, AND it allows you to develop better skills to view your ewnviorment, be in PvE or PvP, for aoes, mechanics, or if your healer needs help, or whos low and can be bursted. But i know i speak on deaf ears to many here, because you dont really need that when you have one million addons telling you things that you never have to parse or think of in your life, in PvP and PvE. the damage addons has done to PvE fight design, and PvP meta is immense. as i think my point is well understood when i say that.
There is way too much mindless rambling, if you want to get a point across get to that point. I made my way through about half of it before i lost interest due to moving in circles.
Reading this is like reading the diary of a guy with dimentia who randomly starts over n then changes topic.
My point with DnD n why i dont want it baked into remorseless winter is because remorseless is already part of the basic dmg rotation. I want decisions n rotations to change depending on if the goal is aoe or single target. idc if thats done through DnD or if they replace it with another ability that fits the theme better but it shouldnt be the same damn buttons for every situation.
Frost is a comedically simple damage rotation, i dont think having that extra button would kill you. Either way im not going to reply again if you decide to make another dimentia diary. Im perfectly fine hearing your arguments n debating with you if you maintain some sort of consistancy in your wall of text.
I love DnD and how it works. Meaning the vast majority of DKs in front of my computer love it.
Its an Iconic Ability in the DKs Toolkit. Plus standing in one place is kind of the original class fantasy for DK. Being an immovable Object. Even the Lich King rarely moved and if he did he moved slowly. Like a Terminator.
The only thing I wished for is for NightFae-DnD to become a Glyph.
The official DK Beta forum entry is a great start. The continuous lack of frost DK representation (pretty low UH too) on high end M+ is also a useful indicator. Have a chat with people in the Acherus DK community. This isn’t a scientific paper that needs Harvard style citations.
Read further up* my other entries regarding themes vs gameplay. I never said the ability isn’t thematic. Nobody says that.
Themes are one thing. The game is evolving and certain gameplay elements simply don’t fit the way game is designed in this day and age.
Rather odd talking about themes, and then mentioning the least visually relevant and jarring covenant wanting to be added as glyph. I understand wanting a blue DnD with elements of frost for a visually consistent ability with the rest of the spec. But those afterlife tree hugging furries can stay away from the class, thank you.