There are apparent issues that were obvious in beta, which you guys received feedback on, but unfortunately, they weren’t fixed and are now showing up once again. Since the RWF this tier and the lack of heroic week tuning, it’s clear that DPS DK is in quite a dilemma. What’s the reasoning behind this?
From my perspective, as someone who pushed the highest keys early in the season (at least in the last few seasons), had Rank 1 Unholy world in BFA S4, and has over 10k hours on the Unholy spec alone, the issues are easy to identify by playing the game and looking through logs and statistics that matter for harder content.
Beyond the obvious tuning issues, I believe the problems come down to simpler things:
Lack of a Raid Buff
DK doesn’t provide a raid buff that directly improves throughput, meaning it doesn’t have a guaranteed raid spot. For those who argue that AMZ/Grips are raid buffs, I’m afraid you’re misled. Blood DK already takes this role without compromising DPS. It has stronger AMZ numbers, a shorter Grip cooldown, and access to instant Mass Grip, which no other DK spec has.
What Raid Buff could DPS DK bring?
There aren’t many stats to choose from. At this point, haste/crit% combined with a little bit of flat DR% could actually give the spec the secured spot it needs, assuming the percentage numbers are high enough, regardless of tuning.
This feedback primarily focuses on Unholy because it’s my favorite spec out of the three. Other experienced players can give their two cents on the other specs.
The state of DPS DK was already an issue in the early PTR cycles for this patch. Blizzard asked for feedback, and players suggested at least a 20% buff for the spec to make it somewhat viable (not feel bad about being brought into the setup) in raids, even without a raid buff.
And all the two DPS got was a 5% aura buff and unholy a little tier set buff. That’s quite off, don’t you guys think? Looking at the statistics, you can see quite easily that the player base that asked for those was more than right if you consider all the points brought up in this feedback.
What Makes UH DK Struggle?
You may ask, “What makes DK so bad, aside from its really under-tuned single-target performance?” Well, DK has unique issues that no other spec really has. It requires certain conditions to deal meaningful damage. If the single-target damage is bad baseline, you can’t magically make the spec good because of factors like pets, which have travel time and contribute a significant portion of your damage.
Additionally, many of the spec’s abilities have splash damage that depends on targets staying in close proximity to one another for good scaling. The inherent AP values are relatively low for many DK abilities, which only make sense if you account for the fact that DK naturally hits more targets than other classes target-wise (at least Unholy in this case). Which is still odd, considering that best-case scenarios (pulling more than 8 monsters in the pull or having adds on top of the boss) are the rarest scenarios overall in a dungeon compared to lower target counts.
I also know the general AP values of UH DK’s abilities are that low as well because of the natural main stat steroids the class itself provides with Festermight and Fallen Crusader, which makes them quite higher than they look. But the moment you step outside of your class and compare baseline AP modifiers that don’t require ramp or natural procs like DK does, you can see quite easily that the spec itself, compared to other classes, has quite the weights on it from the get-go.
Also DK is a spec of a thousand cuts which make all the AP modifiers stack ontop of each other but as i said pretty much everything in the toolkit besides all the instant damage events counts as a pseudo dot, Pets are pretty much dots which have to travel and can stop ticking if you think about it(mobs jump away knock stuff back etc). It is quite noticeable as Rider of the Apocalypse. Festering Wounds are dots that you need to consume yourself. Everything it does is stacking theoretical AP mods ontop of each other that regulary get outscaled by other classes in the same time window esp on lower target counts.
Clearly there are missing high AP efficent Abilities that deal their damage quickly, in an instant or short duration instead of being spread out to a 12-20second duration. Unholy Dk is known to be one of the worst target swappers in the game esp on short duration bursts, that is because you have to reapply dots, summon things and ramp onto it til you deal any meaningful damage. While having to manage wounds,cd’s, runes and runic power to actual have globals to press onto the target swap.
M+ State of Unholy
The state of Unholy in M+ is simple: Mass AOE damage is insane if conditions are met, even without hero trees. However, the worst part is that it shares the same problem that holds DK back: every scaling and hard-ramping gameplay loop has the same issues. You need uptime and solid rotational play without mechanics forcing you to stop, or your numbers go down way more than everyone else.
Bloodbeast Issue
Bloodbeast (Blood is Life) is the biggest issue. It makes everything you do as Unholy DK even stronger, which leads to insane proc numbers that make the current state of Unholy AOE damage a meme.
The problem with Bloodbeast is that you can’t just buff Unholy DK without making M+ completely broken. It deals far too much damage. But that’s not the only issue; it’s also the iteration of the RNG proc itself.
You’re forced to use Vampiric Strikes to % chance per use to proc Bloodbeast, which is RNG. Then the Bloodbeast has a limited duration before it deals its damage to the pack. It has to travel correctly to reach the pack and explode at the perfect moment. The damage of that one proc alone can do more than any other class combined with a single damage event in a pack. This has another problem: 300 million damage in one event gives you player aggro, which usually does not happen to Unholy DK, but in this case, it does. Meaning that, in perfect conditions, a high-damage proc gives you aggro. If any enemy is alive, especially in high keys, you’re most likely dead for free, which is poor design.
Where the Issues Lie
Damage dealt by you stacks with the Bloodbeast’s damage, which already deals more AOE damage than any other character in the game. This makes tuning DK damage impossible without gutting it. The way the proc works is completely poorly designed, holding the spec hostage when it comes to tuning. M+ availability is entirely dependent on how much you can proc it in a key with RNG to make up for the spec’s low single-target/low cleave damage and no real funnel damage.
In current M+ logs, the bloodbeast can contribute up to 15% of overall damage for the DK under the right conditions, but this is entirely reliant on RNG, which, if you math it out, depending on the dungeons, can be minutes of faster clears compared to having bad RNG, which makes it bad for speedrunning, which high keys/Mythic+ is.
What the Spec Needs Now
The spec needs the removal of Bloodbeast and tools to allow Unholy to deal more consistent damage in lower target count situations. You can’t buff Unholy ST without addressing San’layn and Bloodbeast — that’s a fact. Buffing them would break the game entirely. On the flip side, you can’t fully embrace an Infliction of Sorrow playstyle because that would turn Unholy DK into a Breath of Sindragosa spec every 45 seconds, where the biggest bulk of your damage comes from that one ability.
To make Unholy a viable choice for raiding and a well-balanced spec for M+ with actual boss damage this season, you need to completely change or remove Bloodbeast and give the spec the sustained single-target damage and self-control over damage that it currently lacks.
Talent Tree Issues
Unholy’s talent tree is still problematic. The two-point gates are horrendous, sadly. Menacing Magus, for example, costs a point to enable low target cleave, which is far too expensive for the other options available on the tree. Talents like Decomposition, which were introduced with TWW, never got any meaningful use or any kind of viability tuning. Unholy Pact is borderline bad because of the tuning and the talent tree placement of it combined, and All Will Serve, besides its mechanic problems, is quite undertuned.
And then there’s the star of all talents: Ruptured Viscera. I would rather spend a talent point on an empty slot than spec into that talent. I hope that speaks for itself. Somehow it always finds its way back onto our tree or any system, and really, nobody asked for this, and everyone asked for it to be gone. But it is here once again for the I don’t know how manyth time. If you think about it , its pretty much Bloodbeast without rng, end of the duration of your pets they explode but instead of a 20000% ap mod at the end of it it has like a 0.1% ap mod and gives a chance for a Festering Wound.
That was just for the current iteration of San’layn. Rider of the Apocalypse suffers from underwhelming numbers in Mythic+. It deals too little in every aspect and has the same problem as Bloodbeast: pets that have travel time and certain conditions need to be met to achieve full uptime for actual damage output without tanking the values the abilities/riders provide. This is extremely punishing, especially since these pets are still not controllable with their targeting behavior, as many people have asked for. The current targeting behavior causes issues with travel time and target swapping, as well as disruptions from crowd control effects like Blind and Fears, which makes them swap their target by default.
Looking Ahead
For the next expansion, Unholy really needs a developer who’s willing to work on the spec. Putting in talents during an expansion release and then letting them rot for two seasons without any attention is poor class management.
I know it reads like I’m only dooming about the spec, which is correct in this feedback because everything else I didn’t mention here is good and fun. I’m only pointing toward the unfun and bad parts of the class/spec that need to change.
I’m thankful for all the other stuff about the class, really. Otherwise, I wouldn’t put countless hours of my life into it because it has plenty of things that work well too.
At last, for the next expansion, the only thing I can say as a personal Festering Wounds enjoyer myself: Wounds need to go. Unholy DK needs a coherent identity. You can’t keep giving every ability three extra effects and call it a day. Wounds were once a key part of the spec, but they no longer fit. Unholy needs something that ties dots and pets together, and unfortunately, wounds are no longer that system. The spec already hard caps on keybinds, and to combat that, you would need to give every ability multiple effects, which overloads those. This isn’t really helping, and Festering Wounds take up quite a big spot holding the spec together, which isn’t working.
