Feedback: Death Knight Hero Talents in The War Within

Chillmore-silvermoon · February 29, 2024, 12:06pm

I think locating it between Blood/Unholy is were it had made the most sense.

Reason as to why has to do whit how both Blood/Unholy DK dabbles whit Flesh and Bone so having things like bone armor when stacks are consumed then summoning skeleton warriors or unholy when wounds are popped you raise skeletons as a result adds way more visual, and for a payoff to take all those skeletons you raise you can merge them in to a Bone Lord on CD would be far more DK like than what has been showed in the hero talent, right now Blood feels like a San’layn but the hero talent will not add any thing more to what already exist and that’s why Dk needs to have the first showed Hero talent reworked to fit a more thematic hero talent than what we have gotten right now.

That being said IF Rider of the Apocalypse ends up turning the DK in to more of an Necromancer than what we can right now on live then i’m fine for the most part about that , my wish is for us to have the option for having a permanent mount to ride on and fight in combat while we are able to Raise Crypt lords/Nerubians/Skeletons/Necromancer the caster type one and even let us replace our Ghoul for Abomination [I do miss my Sludge Belcher pet], This is why i hope Unholy will be redesigned to be more about undead and plagues and less about striking abilities, i would find it more appealing if we feel more like Warcraft 3 DK whit large army of undeads swarming and charging in at the enemy.

Gorbathust-draenor · February 29, 2024, 3:51pm

Yeah that’s the spec I’m the most looking forwards to… Even if it’s awesome though they got to fix the baseline of frost and UH still.

If we end up being able to use the mount in combat, I’d imagine it would be more of a decorative thing, maybe with a small speed increase, imagine running around in melee with permanent 100% boost, that’s just broken.

I wonder if they’re going to add a similar spell to one from the Torghast abilities if you remember, death gate brought forwards one of the actual riders of the apocalypse. That would be a cool addition to the summoning of minions roster. If they go a bit more literal then they’ll likely include the concepts of Death, Famine, War and Conquest but those can all be real abstractions when it comes to implementing them.

Chillmore-silvermoon · February 29, 2024, 3:59pm

Using our mount buff On a Pale Horse is a good way to make the mount we ride in combat a fair buff as if you have other sources of speed increase it wont stack plus the flavor text of this passive goes hard,

that is also an option but i find it abit boring to summon other death knights that ride a horse and you wont XD,

I think the Death Gate mechanic should be used more to summon Lich/Necromancer/Dk from Ebon Hold to fight along side you for a duration.

Gorbathust-draenor · February 29, 2024, 4:04pm

Oh yeah for sure, wasn’t advocating for cloning that ability as is, was fun in tg but would be lame as a permanent thing. We need some way where we ride our mounts to battle, it feels awesome but isn’t broken or OP.

Also aesthetically maybe it needs to be kept at only being skeletal horses or something, because imagine freaking raid bosses or a dung like Waycrest M and then some big fat tauren dk starts riding around a mammoth or something like that! xD

Chillmore-silvermoon · February 29, 2024, 4:07pm

Yeah if you start to ride the AH mount your going to wonder how your Rune Blade are connecting to smaler enemies lol.

Gorbathust-draenor · February 29, 2024, 4:26pm

Hah forgot about that one. I can already picture the memes. 40 dks riding their ah mounts in alterac valley vs 40 gnomes.

Ironjaw-sporeggar · March 7, 2024, 9:00am

Remove Death And Decay from all specs.

Lukeskyvoker-ragnaros · March 15, 2024, 7:46pm

Will Rider of the Apocalypse’s “On a pale horse” talent be similar to paladin’s divine steed?

Amyntasz-nethergarde-keep · March 16, 2024, 1:39am

Disagree it is fine to use VB for this. Can also manage VB cd with other talents to use it even more often offensively.

Amoncaco-ragnaros · March 16, 2024, 2:16am

Hello fellow DK people

Back again once again to talk about the new hero talent trees a lil bit
For some context as to where I’m coming from, I’m a pretty passionate DK one trick-ish player who raids in a fairly high end guild. I will mostly be talking purely from a raid DPS perspective, not really touching on tanking, m+ or pvp

So first of all, both of these trees look significantly more interesting than San’Layn imo. While San’Layn is cool thematically, it does have some pretty grim gameplay connotations. Those may be completely moot due to talent changes, however I can only take them at face value currently.

So, on to these trees. Let’s start with Riders, as this was probably the most anticipated tree.

First of all, extremely cool thematically. Probably about as good as anyone could have expected, and the hype was pretty big for this one, so hats of to you for this.

That being said, there still are some problem points in these talents. I won’t touch on any DnD reliance related issues since you already mentioned cleaving strikes will be changing.

Rider’s Champion So like I said, very cool thematically. However, Trollbane’s chains of ice being a random 70% slow seems like it could be very annoying on sanguine weeks (or other, probably more niche scenarios). I would suggest to simply remove the slow. The same goes for the Trollbane’s Icy Fury talent, same suggestion for that, honestly.

On a Paler Horse Is extremely interesting, however, does this talent mean you can simple mount up, or is this fully mounted combat? If it is the former, it will be almost entirely supurfluous compared to Death Charge.

A Feast of Souls We already have a crazy amount of runes, especially frost and more specifically obliterate, so I think this talent will likely be DoA at least for them.

Mawsworn Menace Very cool to have DND cdr but again, since Cleaving Strikes is changing, it’s hard to tell the gameplay connotations of this. UB cdr is kind of whatever, not very interesting and may just be awkward and feel desynched in M+. HoW however is almost entirely useless, as you currently already hold HoW for a significant amount of time as BoS, not to mention it being entirely useless for oblit.

Apocalypse Now Again, very cool thematically. In the current talent set-up, this will be both rather awkward to use for frost and also potentially 2x as strong for frost as it is for unholy due to Absolute Zero. For unholy, on the other hand, it will potentially lead to either a very awkward or a very bad feeling opener, since Army is 34 seconds, Riders are 25 seconds max (Extended with Fury of the Horsemen), gargoyle is 25 seconds while UA/ERW are 20 seconds. This means that ideally, you want to cast army early for the ghouls, but late for the horsemen. This may lead to a very complex opener like we saw in the DF alpha/beta, or just a very bad feeling on.

Overall, very fun tree and I can’t wait to see the iterations.

Let’s move on to Deathbringer. Another very cool theme, while being a bit less “obvious” than Riders is.

Reaper’s Mark So, cool ability overall, however, I’m not sure if it’s a typo or if everyone is misreading the below 35% stipulation on the talent, but it seems very counterintuitive the way it is currently written. Does it always explode below 35%? Does it then always spread? Is there just a 3 minute cooldown on spreading, or just to the same target? I hope this gets clarified come alpha.

Bind in Darkness Nothing to note here aside from that I would really like a custom look for the shadowfrost versions of these abilities. Similar to how that one talent used to make wrath/starfire blue for druids in the DF beta.

Death’s Bargain Cool idea, but 25% seems kind of a low threshhold. Also, I don’t see why you would ever take this over Rune Carved Plates.

Expelling Interesting idea, however incredibly niche. Very hard sell over 25% (!) Lichborne CDR (and a minor DPS gain). Potentially change it to something like “if you interrupt while AMS is active”.

Dark Talons Same request as for Bind, a shadowfrost BoS would go insanely hard.

Wither Away Extreminate applying frost frever seems incredibly pointless (as does blood plague tbh) since you have 100% uptime on everything without trying anyway. Maybe it would be interesting if it applied the opposite spec’s DoT?

Exterminate This has the potential to make this one of the most visually impressive specs in the game, please make it look cool! That said, though, the “highroll” potential seems a little ridiculous, with a 15% proc rate on a 1 minute baseline cd ability.

Overall, Deathbringer seems like it has some real potential to me, and it is almost exactly what I imagined from the tree when I first heard the name.

Thank you for reading and hopefully I will see you in the Alpha/Beta!

(quick repost since for some reason the forum decided my unleveled classic DK was now my main)

Fogwatt-thunderhorn · March 16, 2024, 2:19am

Hi, my one main piece of feedback is for On a Paler Horse for the Rider of the Apocalypse tree. It sounds like DK’s will just end up having to change the talent a lot while they are indoors/outdoors. Please just make it baseline, if I’m outside I can benefit from it, if I’m not I can’t. Does it really need to be a choice (which as I said it won’t be - it will just be if I’m outside or not, and end up changing it annoyingly all the time).

Jeton-agamaggan · March 16, 2024, 8:11am

These Hero Talents should be an opportunity to integrate the Necromancer, caster with only ranged spells.
The Necromancer who has existed in Warcraft since the Warcraft 3 RTS, support, rez and “healer” in Horde.

Now that the Evoker Augment has proven its usefulness, such a Hero Talent tree Necromancer would be great

IMHO, the Rider of Apocalypse Hero Tree is a complete waste.
“On pale Horse” and “Death Charge” should be basic spells or basic talents, and this since like ever. Death Knights are actual “Knights” since the WOLTK and even before…
And for the rest of these Hero Talents, lore side the mythical Four Horsemen shouldn’t be called so easily and randomly, and spell side these talents are really awful compared with the epic nature of the Four Horsemen.

That been said, Death and Decay following the player is great.
But it shouldn’t be in “Hero Talent”, but in a DK class’ rework".
It’s a kind of old mechanic, not to mention the fact that the Unholy DK (like the Arcane Mage) are the last to still depend on their “combo” construction on a single target. If this target is obliterated by the other DPS (mostly in MM+), or if the tank moves targets away from Death and Decay, a good part of the mechanics and DPS are lost.
And with new mechanics in raid and affixes in MM+, “modern” fights are more mobile than the old static fights.
Even the Rogue who was the first to got Combo Points on single target, has lost this mechanic long ago

Vislow-burning-legion · March 16, 2024, 10:25am

I absolutely agree with that.
We have no control over anything and some basic skills are duplicated and bring literally NOTHING new to the action.

The developer responsible for the concept of these talents should lose his job.

Soon I will write my own feedback pointing out the stupidity of the served reheated cutlet from the Torghast tower.

In short, this talent tree does not solve ABSOLUTELY any of our problems, but creates even more of them.

I’m dissapointed.

Arkhes-firemaw · March 16, 2024, 11:01am

On a pale horse needs to be baseline and available in all content,spec name is "Rider of the apocalypse"for God sake, not horsemen summoner.If npc’s can ride their horses in raids and in the tight corridors of torghast then so can the players.

Gorbathust-draenor · March 16, 2024, 12:39pm

I was really looking forwards to Rider of the Apocalypse but unsurprisingly it’s just a bit… meh…

Death Charge is real cool for sure. On A Paler horse, well remains to be seen as a few people have pointed out, actual 100% perma speed increase or decoration?

Spec feels a bit RNG atm… Do they spawn in a set order? Is it completely random? Feels like the knights are amazing in some contexts and useless or borderline problematic in others.

Frankly the thing that excited me the most was the developers note saying “they know we’re fed up of D&D” so hopefully it means we’ll be getting some baseline changes before WW.

Deathbringer… Well… MEH!!! That “Death’s Messenger” talent seems so pointless in m+ and raid considering that CRs are on set timer for the whole group. 30 secs on Lichborne… Seriously they couldn’t come up with something better?

Then again those classes both need so much work no wonder they struggle to come up with new ideas.

Ellîs-tarren-mill · March 16, 2024, 2:59pm

Please make Death Charge available to all three dk specs.

Vislow-burning-legion · March 16, 2024, 6:40pm

Death Knight - Rider of the Apocalypse - FEEDBACK

KEYSTONE
Rider’s Champion: Spending Runes has a chance to call forth the aid of a Horseman for 10 seconds.
NOTE:
**It should work as a passive buff + active buff along with significant changes. **
what is the chance of being summoned?

Mograine - Death and Decay moves with you - passively. When Mograine is active, fires a Death Coil at any target in DnD or all enemies in combat.

Whithmane - you get two more ghouls when you use Apocalypse - passive. When Whitemane is active, your pets and diseases deal 5% more damage.

Trollbane - Your Festering Strike and Scoruge Strike deal an additional 10% damage as Shadowfrost damage. When Trollbane is active, bonus are increased to 20%.

Nazgrim - Your Death and Decay cower enemies for 5 seconds and your Asphyxiate affects all enemies within 10 yards of the target. When Nazgrim is active, you gain 5% strength and an additional 2% for each enemy, up to a maximum of 15%.

ROW 1
On a Paler Horse - remove it
NEW TALENT: March of the Damned - Death Advance causes your allies to gain the same effect for 3s.
NOTE: it literally adds nothing
Death Charge: - is good
Mograine’s Might: - if you die, Mograine will resurrect you.
Horsemen’s Aid - it needs more control, I don’t want AMS when it is unnecessary.
Pact of the Apocalypse: - buff it e.g. to 10%

ROW 2
Whitemane’s Famine: - Your buffs and debuffs last 3s longer and your diseases will reduce the cast speed of enemies by 10%
Nazgrim’s Conquest - Reduces the cooldown of Abomination Limb by 30s
Trollbane’s Icy Fury: - When you use Unholy Blight, Trollbane will use Remorseless Winter and conversely.

ROW 3
Hungering Thirst: - is good
Fury of the Horsemen: - is fine
A Feast of Souls: - is fine
Mawsworn Menace: - is fine

CAPSTONE
Apocalypse Now

NOTE:
Frostwyrm’s Fury 1.5 min CD after reduced
Army of the Dead 3.5-4 min CD after reduced

Why would Frost DK get the full pool of Horsemen 2-3 times more often than Unholy?
We often use the Army before the pull, but Frostwyrm’s Fury during a fight will be problematic for Frost DK to call 4 Horsemen.

What needs to be done to make Apocalypse Now make sense:

Move Army of the Dead to the class tree
Reduce army CD to 3 minutes.
Replace Army of the Dead in the Unholy tree with a new talent
The Shambler (NEW TALENT) - Your attacks have a chance to summon a Super Zombie that shambles forward and explodes, dealing (84% of Attack power) Shadow damage to nearby enemies.
Army of the Dead additionally evokes “Summon Gargoyle” / this will make Unholy lose one CD in his skill bar
Apocalypse Now now summons literally everything we own.

**

OR without other changes - just change Army to Unholy Assault for Apocalypse Now.

**

Thanks to these changes, we have more control than before over what we do and what we want to achieve.
We also have great support for the group in M+ or Raid - at the class fantasy level.
I would like DK to be able to use Nazgrim’s power and, like him, choke several enemies at the same time - just like here:

https://ibb.co/YTnRKB9

More thoughts coming soon

Gorbathust-draenor · March 16, 2024, 9:05pm

and

Do make sense as ideas, especially after seeing the paladin trees, where they all have access to Avenging Wrath, but then have respective spec talents that modify it.

That being said I’d like less boring automation and more interaction through our summons. Right now the only real interaction we have is DC buffing gargoyle’s damage, which is again a little boring, and gargoyle still suffers from ridiculous crit rng (where you can spam real hard and fit loads of DC and do average damage, or mess up your rotation, but then because it will constantly crit you will do more damage)

Nygrael-aszune · March 17, 2024, 11:09pm

My feedback on the new trees (copied from my post in Get an Eye on an Even Dozen New Hero Talent Trees - #54 by Nygrael-aszune)

Death Knight - Rider of the Apocalypse (Rating: 1/5)

There was a potential in the name that indicates a powerful individual. Instead, the tree reduces the DK into a “sidekick that calls in his friends to do stuff for them”. It looks like we’re “Friend of a Rider of the Apocalypse”, since we summon them, not become one of them.
RNG chance to summon a Horseman, which can occur at a time that does not line up with our needs, with a 25% chance to get the one we actually wanted to summon. My situation needs to slow an add, I’d love Trollbane to pop, but instead I get Mograine with a free Death and Decay, and due to RNG he pops after the add is already dead. “Great success!”
“Horsemen’s Aid” - somehow I can already see getting random AMS applied exactly between big hits. It’s an example of a toxic stockpiled RNG ability with an absolute zero player agency: RNG to summon a Horseman (outside long CD), which has RNG to cast AMS at RNG times?
There is only one talent that looks like a proper Rider of the Apocalypse, and it raises a question, too: “On a Pale Horse” - it states it allows us to mount in combat, but does allow us to fight while mounted, or do we get dismounted upon pressing a damaging ability?
I’m glad I play Blood most of the time, because even if this tree was overtuned I’d still hate to pick it.
How come there is no tree that is related to the mastery of the Runeblades? Rider could have been such, having our weapon empowered with the powers of the Horsemen, rather than having them associated with a summoned NPC.

Death Knight - Deathbringer (Rating: 4/5)

This is way better design than Rider of the Apocalypse, putting power into player and not random minions.
Personal note: I much prefer having the tree interact with existing abilities (either by having abilities proc traits, or the ability to change into upgraded version of themselves like Vampiric Strike), adding new abilities can create a bit of a bloat or disrupt a rotation. In case of Reaper’s Mark, it adds another longish CD (1 min+) to a class that already has quite a bit of those.
Reaper’s Mark creates a gameplay loop with a bit of player agency (timing using abilities that can speed up the explosion). The only downside here is that there is 3 minutes CD on the extra bit at the end - depends on damage tuning, but on a 1 min cooldown it feels unnecessarily excessive.
Most talents are decent but interesting passives (Wave of Souls, Shuddering Soul) or give a meaningful twist (Dark Talons)
There is a “fake choice” node at Death’s Bargain/Rune Carved Plates that looks very much like one is themed for DPS and other for Tank (Death Pact is not very tank friendly due to the downside it causes, and the small % damage reduction is only useful during constant damage intake really relevant to tanks only).
Capstone Exterminate’s first scythe has 15% chance to apply Reaper’s Mark that is 1 min CD… I don’t like it, there is no agency and there is too much power in it. Imagine if there was a talent that said “After your Empower Rune Weapon ends, you have 10% chance for Empower Rune Weapon to be applied to you again at full power.” What I mean is that it is not OK to have 15% chance to reapply something that has longer cooldown. It is fine if something has 15% to reapply a disease that we can actively refresh anyway, so we just save resources, but this? I would rather have 15% chance to regain 3 Runes or something similarly less significant.
“Blood Fever” talent makes irrelevant damage of a DoT still irrelevant (though adds interaction with Bind in Darkness talent). I would love to see the diseases be more, either do more damage or create some rotational interaction.

Gorbathust-draenor · March 29, 2024, 9:03am

Unsurprisingly not a particularly positive review.

Points out a lot of the problems that most of us already mentioned here.

TLDR:

R-N-G BAD

At this stage, I’m just waiting for a complete dk rework that will modernise the class. At the very least, fix the visual of Defile already… They’re making all these new banging animation (looking at you new consecration design from Rise) yet can’t seem to update this awful spell that has been around since, not even sure, MoP?