Feedback: Death Knight Hero Talents in The War Within

Classes Death Knight
167

Nice post man, couldn’t have put it better myself.

I think at this stage we’re just the same few characters saying the same things over and over… But slowly more and more people are joining in and going “what on earth is wrong with this class”.

What I really want to understand is how, just how is it possible that they saw the old mage problem, rune of power or whatever it was called and thought ah yes that’s problematic and really doesn’t fit the current design of the game, we hear you mages

BUT

DnD is still here in the same capacity… And on top of that they just “dealt with it” by adding the talent “cleaving strikes”…

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHGJKLDXFDGJHGSDKLJSGJKLHSGJKLH

Since they’re evidently not going to rework the class from the ground up let’s look at some feedback for this current iteration…

Unholy Tree

  • Army of the Dead and Raise Abomination needs to become a CHOICE NOD
  • Ruptured Viscera has moved to the right side of the tree and is less of a “gating” talent pick for something that should feel more optional. Thank you, we will keep ignoring this useless talent, now please just remove it from the game, or witness yet another expansion of nobody playing.
  • Ok so I’m not on alpha atm, but let’s talk about sudden doom exploding wounds now… Make Festering Strike a better button to press. Don’t care how, just make more talents work with it or whatever, buff it, improve the animation & SFX, remove the rng, make it cleave somehow, don’t care to just make it better.

Class Tree

Vaguely more positive here, played around with the talent tree calculator and there are definitely more viable options available with situational flexibility which is a win. That being said there are still caveats:

  • Soul Reaper is in a really strange location, likely because of the frost and Death Bringer combo issue. Why not make it baseline, and create talents that actually improve upon it?
  • Subduing Grasp feels like a forced and also useless talent to take both as Frost and Unholy, gating Abomination Limb.
  • Gloom Ward still feels like an odd talent to have even for blood.
  • March of Darkness is already a very weak talent to pick, it’s going to become further more redundant for those who play Rider of the Apocalypse.
  • Does anyone use sacrificial pact in any context? Frost or blood in pvp? Why does it still exist?
  • Not seeing very many people selecting Death Pact outside of pvp.
  • Death’s Echo a capstone talent!!! It’s a very useful one but come on…
  • Runic Protection seems daft even for blood dks, but it’s luckily very easy to avoid so enjoy having yet another talent that will never see the light of day.

And for the love of god… Since Defile is clearly not going anywhere, will you address it’s horrid animation finally?

2 Likes
168

To improve the quality, efficiency and usability of the festering wounds system in many scenarios, while also solving the DnD problem, the following changes should be implemented:

For Unholy:

  • Unholy Blight - Additionally, each stack of Unholy Blight applies one festering wound up to 8 additional enemies.
  • Cleaving Strikes - Scourge Strike hits up to 8 additional enemies while you remain in Unholy Blight / infected with Unholy Blight.
  • (NEW1) Festerblight - When there are 8 enemies within 8 yards of you then
    your next Festering Strike will reduce the cooldown of your Unholy Blight by 10s.
    OR
  • (NEW2) Festerblight - When there are 5 enemies within 8 yards of you then
    your next Festering Strike will infect festering wounds on all nearby enemies.

There are many options - you just have to want it.
I’m sure there will be one that will encourage me to press Festering Strike, because since Legion and the introduction of festering wounds I’ve been mentally exhausted and discouraged.

For Frost:

  • Cleaving Strikes - Obliterate hits up to 2 additional enemies while you remain in Remorseless Winter

For Blood:

  • Cleaving Strikes - Heart Strike hits up to 8 additional enemies while you remain in Swarming Mist

For all specs:

  • Death and Decay (Defile still for Unholy) - reduces damage enemies deal to you by 2%, up to a maximum of 8% and their power is transferred to you as an equal amount of Strength.
  • (NEW) Rampant Transference - The Strength gained from Death and Decay is increased by 3% and persists for 2 sec longer.
  • (NEW) Withering Ground - Death and Decay deals 75.0% increased damage over time in half the duration.

Each specialization is based on a skill that fits thematically to the specialization and a skill that is mobile and moves with us.

DnD remains (if you as a developer want to keep it) as a skill that buffs our character - like in Shadowlands, and optionally as a skill that deals large aoe damage but in a very short time (this is very important), which will allow us to better use it in dungeons.
This should work and end when the group is forced to move for some reason.

I believe that the few minutes I spent writing this actually change something, i.e. it improves the operation,
However, what has been done so far is in no way a response to the goals set (by the developers) or by the players. So far we have received literally nothing, the changes that have happened are a smokescreen for serious problems.

5 Likes
169

Search your feelings, you know why…I know why, yet we dont want to accept it.

and the miniscule chance of it being ignorance is lessening with each dev announcement and patchnote

1 Like
170

or make Festering Strike work similarly to Cleave from a warrior and apply wounds

3 Likes
171

You know the one thing that bothers me about DnD/Defile the most? Is that the fantasy and idea behind it actually suit us, particularly unholy. The idea that we emit such dark and foul energy that makes the very floor beneath us rot and wither away, that we… Defile the grounds we step on is really on point with what Death Knights are…

It’s just the freaking gameplay that utterly sucks. I think your ideas above would help though an extra point has to be made:

The fact that they homogenized DnD on all 3 specs is terrible.

  • Frost should go back to not having it whatsoever, and obliterate shouldn’t be a cleave ability. We have Frostscythe for a reason, buff it, do whatever it needs to so it can see the play it deserves. Balance Remorseless Winter and Howling Blast accordingly to make for the loss of DnD.

  • Unholy we’ve already spoken about this so much, everyone here has given plenty of good examples as to what we feel about it…

  • Blood weirdly is the only of the 3 specs of which the gameplay isn’t as problematic as it resets very often and tanks tend to be the ones that dictate party movements. That being said, the fantasy suits it way less, I’d much rather see Swarming Mist come back to some capacity for Blood, as it really suits the spec (we got this ability from freaking Death Vampires, that’s basically a blood dk)

Talents that affect DnD on the DK tree need to have different effects depending on the spec. That’s all keeping in mind that we’re haggling here since they won’t simply delete the ability and rework the class.

3 Likes
172

Just change the appearance or animation xD

btw…
I wonder what the developer should also change in the context of tracking our buffs and debuffs because here too, nothing has changed at all.
After all, he himself mentioned it in the note that Unholy has too many things to keep track of xD

These changes and this developer are one big joke. First, he states the goals and what he wants to change, and then leaves it completely and focuses only on resources.
In my opinion, flooding with resources is the least of our problems.

3 Likes
173

Circles back to our usual point, the devs responsible for class design clearly aren’t playing DK, and if they are they just play it at a casual capacity.

Sure, festermight sounds like isn’t going to be as important to track anymore with it’s new ironfur like stacking system but I don’t think that’s enough. They evidently rely on the idea that we use weak auras for everything.

Loads of people keep banging on about that, especially on the acherus discord, and what bothers me is that they always deal with this by doing the same numerical fixes on existing abilities. Now sudden doom reduces the RP instead of making free, sure whatever… How about the systemic issue, that this spec basically doesn’t work properly unless you have 21% haste minimum, that everything takes forever to ramp up, but then we get to high gear and we’re apparently “flooded with resources”… It’s the usual inflation issue that messes everything up. If they went in and looked the spec at its core, there wouldn’t be a resource problem even with low ilvl.

In short, “Resource Flooding” is a symptom, not the problem.

3 Likes
174

indeed, a symptom of a design that is not made by real people for longevity.
every other class only has benefits when they reach an endgame amount of stats and “resource flooding”

take rogue for example, they can increase their damage EXPONENTIALLY by getting more haste and faster rotations, because everything feeds into itself.
in contrast to Death knight where for example unholy MUST spin seven plates to do damage, for ewveryone else when they reach taht endgame stage, they can usually do something crazy like outlaw spamming loaded dice and critting Sinister strike to get 7 combo points to do a full dispatch that feeds into another 7 combo points that feeds into a between the eyes taht feeds into itself to do another 7 point dispatch. they get benefits from going to fast, as the middlemen in the rotation are fired, and it’s bam bom bom bam simple.

while for example Unholy, if you refrain from spinning even one of your 7 plates, you lose damage, you are punished for going to fast

Edit: i forgot to mention why outlaw rogue feeds into itself so hard, Restless blades is why

3 Likes
175

Yes indeed, on top of that we had that other comicotragic issue when too much haste literally bugged out Gargoyle, so they had to nerf how much things scale with haste, because that’s how badly it’s made.

3 Likes
176

btw
why isn’t Gorefiend’s Grasp in the class tree for DK yet, but it’s only available for Blood?

1 Like
177

So…you’re gonna rework rogue are you?..Oh thats fine, really fine… i am sure they need their third one before us…yeah…

178

That’s why we’ve added even more things to track:

  • Wounds
  • Festermight
  • Gift of the Sanlayn
  • Incite Terror
  • Death Rot
  • Festering Scythe
  • Icy Talons
  • Plaguebringer
  • Diseases (+Infliction of Sorrow)
  • Unholy Ground
  • DnD/Defile
  • Rotten Touch

UPDATE - also:

  • Whitemane’s Famine
  • Trolbane’s Icy Fury
  • Cleaving Strikes
  • Vampiric Strike

Thank you for achieving your goals. Unfortunately, I am dissatisfied to report that the changes have gone in the wrong direction.

We haven’t received a style change for the Gargoyle yet. What you offered is consistent with the second sentence, i.e. offering a different choice, but it is still a different choice, not a change of Gargoyle style.
This change does not change the Gargoyle’s style, in fact it bypasses it

In BFA we didn’t have anything like Vile Contagion and it was the best game you managed to implement for the wound mechanics.

If you want find ways to make the friction of playing with them less, You should:

  • just remove the cost of using Vile Contagion and make the disease spread to all nearby enemies after using this skill and infect them with 6 stacks of festering wounds. That’s all. It’s so simple.
  • make Festering Scythe a replacement for Festering Strike (i.e. a core skill for us) and remove the 20 wound condition for empower.
  • Festering Strike always applies 3 wounds

Basically, you could give a choice between Festering Strike and Festering Scythe.
Festering Strike could be heavily buffed and act as an execute, it can even passively apply Soul Reaper and Outbreak for passive disease application and apply 6 wounds to the target, while Festering Scythe can function in an AoE environment as a basic wound building skill

Has anything changed in this regard or is it exactly the opposite of the goals you set?
Our opener still looks the same.
This isn’t bad overall, but it’s a shame you couldn’t offer at least one change that would make us play without a skill or two.
You could easily get rid of the hideous Outbreak. Apocalypse could work together with Dark Transformation (you once offered this). You could add this choice in talents, but I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do it.

2 Likes
179

You know, right now and very much on paper, I’m not mad about this. It sounds like it’s actually going to be a fun button to press. 20 wounds pop pretty quickly, especially in larger pulls. I like that it upgrade itself, from strike to scythe and we wont’ need a new button. Like how the paladin combo ability works. That being said tracking wounds will become even more vital so we don’t cap.

On the down side, I feel this new ability is making Vile Contagion redundant and that they diminish each other’s value. I feel like it needs talent that would create more interplay between VC and wounds, so every time we pop a wound it knocks off 0.5 sec of it’s cd or something.

Now for the other new talent, Decomposition, I like that it creates an interaction between minions and disease, but it seems like a pretty boring set and forget talent, considering how low down it is too.

Playing around with the talent calculator, I can see more variety of builds forming with different gameplays, a wounds centric one, a disease dominant one, a more dungeon friendly pet cleave and a raid pet ST. I do feel though as we’re a bit over stretched by having too many talents, and this can be simply offset by having army and raise abomination being a choice nod.

Finally, Runic Mastery will spend another expansion being dead and useless, please change it.

Ruptured Viscera: thanks for putting in a really optional place, we don’t want it either way so just bin it.

Pestilence: as above, bin it.

Death Rot: I feel like now that both Festermight and Unholy Assault moved, the location of this talent is awkward, it should be on the middle or the right side of the tree.

180

The recent updates to the Blood tree looks good, but combined with the changes to the class tree we are approaching heavy button bloat territory.

In addition to our current kit, we can, and probably will pick:

  • Soul Reaper from the class tree
  • Consumption or Blood Drinker
  • Bonestorm
  • Gorefiend’s Grasp

While none of these are new, they were rarely or never taken as Blood because throughput was too low, or placement/investment cost was bad. This means we have 4 extra keybinds coming in TWW. While I am happy that previously dead talents can be taken, I’m not thrilled about getting so many new binds to sort out.

The easiest fix to take care of at least one bind, is merging Death’s Caress with Marrowrend. It could simply be a passive modification, changing the damage from physical to Shadow and giving Marrowrend some added range. Death’s Caress was never used for damage, and the only real purpose was Bone Shield management, either to refresh it before dropping between pulls or generating it before coming into melee range. Since we get Bone Shield charges from Death Grip and Abomination Limb, the value of Death’s Caress will be very low and hardly worth a keybind.

Mark of Blood sharing a node with Tombstone isn’t really a choice, since the latter is superior in every situation. With the changes to ** Bonestorm **, it functions very similar to Tombstone and it might make more sense to have the choice between those on the same node instead and simply moving or removing Mark of Blood. I know lots of BDKs, including myself, will prefer to have both Bonestorm and Tombstone, but for the purpose of reducing button bloat it would make sense.

** Currently Bonestorm does not interact with Insatiable Blade, so you’re not getting cooldown reduction on Dancing Rune Weapon from consuming Bone Shield Charges.

2 Likes
181

‘‘Blood suffers from a lack of viable build options because it has to invest so heavily into the tree to feel like it functions.’’ You talking about heavily investing but doing same mistakes. Like to take rapid decomposition you still need take two useless talents like ossified vitriol (new useless talent, why you even in considered to add it i dont know, very bad talent) Relish blood should be taken out of game, ebon blade talent also to weak (its not fun to take weak talent to reach talent you want). Gorefiends grasp also has to long cd even when you invest it 2 points ( it should be 1 min or 2min cd with two charges). Shattering bone nerf was unecesary we only tank that not giving group any party buff, so decreasing our damage its not good.
Hope you will do BIG BIG improvements on Blood tree, because we would be again forgoten for whole expansion

2 Likes
182

I’m TWW Beta, I’m going to do as much bug reporting and feebdack for DK as possible.

Maybe they’ll hear us!

4 Likes
183

we should also make a clear statement to Blizzard when it comes to some of our bad passives/talents in the talent tree, we need to make sure that we don’t go live with UH still having things like Pestilence/Vile Contagion/Ruptured Viscera, we also need to call Blizzard out on fixing the last row for UH, we have way to many 2 talent points there, and we need to make sure Blizzard separate Abom and Army so they are their own individual CD, we shouldn’t lose our ability to raise an Army for the sake of raising 1 Abom, this needs to be called out to be fixed.

6 Likes
185

MIX Build- Wounds with Pets
PVE - Dungeons

Festering Scythe is totally useless in this build.
I completed the HC dungeon and at no point did I get the slingshot for the improved Festering Strike. This does nothing to improve my rotation in terms of changing targets or quickly applying wounds to detonate them quickly.
If I don’t control it, it will still be useless.
I suggest changing the whole idea.

  • Or it will work on request, e.g. when there are two enemies without wounds nearby, your Festering Strike will turn into Festering Scyhte.
  • Or it will be a permanent replacement for Festering Strike.

In my opinion, Sudden Doom is working very well and I am very happy with it.
However, this sometimes causes unintended problems.
When I use 2x Festering Strike and it only applies 4 wounds to the target and I use Death Coil (with Sudden Doom), I have a problem with using Apocalypse because I just lost one wound to the target.

  • To solve this, you can increase wound application for Festering Strike from 2-3 to 3.
  • You can also remove burst wounds for Sudden Doom,
  • However, I understand why you introduced such a change - it’s nice in an AoE situation when Epidemic causes an explosion of wounds, and above all because there are situations when we can’t use Scoruge Strike and then Epidemic comes to the aid of our rotation.

I don’t want to stop using Sudden Doom (if possible) when it gives me Icy Talons and Doomed Bidding or Death Rot (if I choose it), or because of the benefits of A Feast of Souls or Fury of the Horsemen.

Instead of the current version, you can use my ideas:

  • Festering Strike always applies 3 wounds to the target
  • each stack of Unholy Blight also applies a festering wound to the target
  • once you do this you can remove Vile Contagion outright or make Vile Contagion an improve for Unholy Blight
  • change Festring Scythe into Scourge Scythe - thanks to this change we will always be able to use Scourge Strike to burst wounds on 5 or 7 targets without using DnD/Defile.

this gives me better control over what I want to do and I can better plan the application of wounds in an AoE situation.

In this build, but I suspect that also in other configurations I will always want to click Epidemic, although due to Whitemane’s Famine and Trolbane’s Icy Fury I will feel embarrassed because then I will be forced to spam Scoruge Strike - this is not a good combination. This is already frustrating and unpleasant.

Theoretically, I don’t need to use Outbreak because I have Unholy Blight every 30 seconds. So why are you forcing me to keep the Outbreak skill on my bar? I do not want it. This annoys me.
Most of the time in the game, this skill is redundant. Same with Soul Reaper - because it is a skill that only gives benefits when the fight is over.
Therefore, what you should do is remove Outbreak and Soul Reaper should additionally apply Virulent Plague for 5 seconds. Its range should also be increased to, for example, 15 or 20 yards.
Such a change would mean that we would have one less useless skill on the bar and the skill itself would be used (in total) more often than 2-3 times per fight.

During the fight, I don’t know which Horsemen is active. I would like to see some aura, some buff, because I don’t know, for example, when DnD will move with Mograin (is it him or someone else?)

1 Like
186

Can we use On a Pale Horse in BGs like AB or AV?

I think they are outdoor envoirement, but at the same time are instanced content, so…we can use this incredible talent or not?

187

Nope, strictly outdoors content. Mind you the alternative talent to that is incredibly powerful, even more so than the paladin horse one as it’s basically DA but with 100% speed increase.

On A Paler Horse is a bit of a gimmick, distracting from the crucial issues the class needs addressed. I did a bit of levelling to see what it feels like, and yeah I can see it being practical and fun whilst farming a densely populated area, but outside of that… Majority of the time I switched back to the flying mounts anyhow.

Imagine how busted this talent would be in a capture the flag BG. Dk swoops in picks up the flag, AMS, Lichborne, Frostbound, DA, pvp trinket, rinse and repeat, gg end game. Only other rider DK will be able to counter them.

1 Like