Feedback: Death Knights

In Development The War Within Beta Test
14

Raise Abomination replaces Army of the Dead, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about…

I agree with basically everything you listed there for Unholy, so let me save typing time and just sign my name under your assessment.

I especially agree with your comment on Control Undead, and I think generally similar abilities (for Warlock and Priest) should make the controlled mob a following minion (like Risen Skulker) instead of controlled pet, because the same issue occurs when you cast Subjugate Demon as Warlock.

Also…

THANK YOU! Finally someone who notices it as well! This tree for me had grand expectations, and none of them involved summoning Riders instead of being one yourself.

Personally, I think it would have been better if rather than physically summoning the Horsemen, the Rider’s Champion talent would grant the effects as buff on the player (Mograine and Nazgrim) or make your next ability apply the debuff (Trollbane’s through your own Chains of Ice and Whitemane’s through Festering Strike or Outbreak) so we can choose which target and when gets affected.

I agree that Deathbringer is probably the best hero talent for Death Knights (and one of best across all classes).

2 Likes
15

Currently as Blood, being Deathbringer is superior to San’layn in Dungeons due to the damage profile and generally easier flow of the hero spec:

  • Rather than maintaining a buff that stacks to significantly large number that cannot be refreshed, we have a simple, elegant and very strong new ability that revolves seamlessly around our general rotation and toolkit.
  • As such, Deathbringer just keeps playing as normal without any interference, whereas San’layn nearly forces you to forgo your rotation and ignoring your resources or proper cooldown usage (using defensive one offensively) to make sure we fully benefit from the keystone buff.

In most recent testing of San’layn, I noticed I got absolutely ZERO procs of the keystone talent’s Vampiric Strike through via Death Strikes. Funnily enough, it wasn’t even a problem for Essence of the Blood Queen uptime because I was maintaining 100% uptime through Vampiric Blood with Red Thirst CDR…

I find how Essence of the Blood Queen is generated and maintained as quite problematic: Instead of a steady flow of procs that allow us to gain the stacks and maintain them throughout the fight, we are pushed into a degenerate playstyle of using Vampiric Blood regardless of its defensive use and need. This issue will be further evident in harder content (High M+) where we will be using VB for buff and not for defensive value.

I’m confident a lot will agree with me that Unholy’s Festermight current incarnation is much better than the old one - probably even Blizzard dev team will, given they introduced this change themselves. As such, why was it deemed good to implement Essence of the Blood Queen as old Festermight?

Also, the fact Essence can already be maintained at 100% uptime is worrying for the future of the hero class in future seasons, likely setting itself up for multiple adjustments over the course of patch lifecycles.

Newly Turned/Vampiric Speed:
The first choice node doesn’t feel like they belong together, it’s just two talents doing completely different things.

  • Newly Turned can be potent in PvE, but is very limited, notably due to the fact the combat rez is shared across the party/raid. if other classes use up the rez pool, the talent is effectively dead.
  • On the other hand, Vampiric Speed is universally useful, both for the DK as well as for their allies.
  • Suggestion: Allow Newly Turned to bypass the combat rez limit (once per Raise Ally’s 10 min CD) to make the talent competitive.

Vampiric Aura/Bloody Fortitude:

  • While Bloody Fortitude reads as if it was meant to be a strong option for M+ Dungeon content through the CDR, it loses with Vampiric Aura that offers potent group utility that is hard to pass, along with constant personal benefit.
  • Suggestion: Instead of CDR on kills, Bloody Fortitude, have it reduce the CD by 1 second each time you use Heart Strike (Blood) or Scourge Strike (Unholy), or 2 seconds when using Vampiric Strike. This could make the talent more consistent and useful in Raids.

Pact of the San’layn/Sanguine Scent:

  • It feels to me like Sanguine Scent should have been a choice node with Blood-Soaked Ground, as both offer increased chance of gaining Vampiric Strike. Then again, BSG offers damage reduction that would make it an automatic pick for Blood, unless Scent offered defensive option too.
  • With how low the proc rate of Vampiric Strike is (and again, in some tests I had no procs at all) and the ability to maintain 100% uptime on Essence through degenerate VB usage, the increased chance of proc in Sanguine Scent is a waste, making Pact of the San’layn an automatic pick.

Key takeaways:

  • Unlike other classes or specs, exiting choice nodes for San’layn are either insufficiently tuned (one choice being significantly better than the other) or provide completely different, unrelated feature.
  • For Blood, Deathbringer is superior choice in PvE (especially M+) due to its toolkit that aligns and does not interfere with the standard rotation and ability use.
  • Essence of the Blood Queen, San’layn’s core mechanic creates significant friction and leads to possibly unintended ability use.
    – Simple solution would be to make Essence work like new Festermight (rolling separate stacks) and shift its stacking from the capstone (CD) to the keystone (proc).
2 Likes
17

This is something I wrote a long time ago.
Currently, we are summoning more NPCs, but it is random, so the interaction is hopeless, but my suggestion was to add passive bonuses that would strengthen our skills, and when activating the Army and summoning riders, the passive effects would be more powerful or their effects would be slightly changed.
Riders would only appear when they were actually summoned. Passive bonuses should work outside the usage window.
I also lack a talent that would allow me to choose which rider I want to have by my side permanently, e.g. Mograine. However, if someone did not want an additional NPC, they could choose a passive talent.

2 Likes
18

A few things I noticed while tanking dungeons:
Vestigial Shell: Only applied to one party member, never seen the intended 2
Otherways the new class tree is a banger for Blood, only problem is I don’t have enough points to take everything I want, but that’s the best kind of problem.
Spec tree:
Love the new Bone Storm, but its damage could use some buffs. It deals the same damage as Abomination Limb, but its opportunity cost is higher.
New Blooddrinker is great.
Rune Tap or Gorefiend is mandatory to path through, it would be better if there was a way to go around, as we already have a high button bloat, and the rune cost of Rune Tap is usually not justifiable, and Gorefiend is nice but not always needed.
I feel that the baseline Crimson Scourge procs less than previously, as I have prolonged periods of time without DnD and waiting for procs or cooldown, the same never happened in DF

Hero talents
Only played San’layn so far
Mostly positive, only problem is the general Vampiric Strike proc rate. It procs way to rarely outside of Vampiric Blood as Essence of the Blood Queen hardly ever refreshes or stacks above one when not under VB. It’s possible it gets better with higher haste levels but based on the procless periods I have now I doubt it.

2 Likes
19

Frost Deathknight Feedback :

I am going to give honest opinion about how it feels for me to play Deathknight in TWW, i really hope this will help.

TWW Talent trees :

We are lacking of mobility, everyone will agree on this, however The War Within tree gave us some tools to solve this problems but only in the “Rider of the Apocalypse” tree, which is problem i will discuss in “What i would change” part.
After testing both trees my opinion on what we are going to play for Mythic+ is “Deathbringer”, for many reasons : AoE , short CD , Defensive CD reduction , combine well with some spells and talents such as “Icy Talons” , “Cryogenic Chamber”.
Raid is not currently available i can’t tell which one we are going to play, since it depends on bosses abilities ( Single target, Single target + adds, AoE etc… )

Deathbringer :

The gameplay is actually good , i used to hate the Obliterate spec but it now feels kind of refreshing, new spell with a lot of additional effects, cool animations, and balanced damage ( ~18% overall DPS ), which is in my opinion pretty good.

Rider of the Apocalypse :

About “Rider of the Apocalypse”, i am not a huge fan of this kind of talent, mainly because it is a 4 part passive.
It grants a lot of thing ( Damage % , Offensive CD reduction, Main Stat, AoE, Single Target, Movement speed), but still it is random, really strong but random.
The only way to counter this RNG is Frostwyrm Fury which summons the four of them, but this is the main reason i don’t like this, it feels like Blizzard is actually telling us : "Play this talent ( Frostwyrm Fury ), to play this one… I don’t blame them, i point out a problem.

Class Tree :

Finally ! no more 2% Crit , 2% Strenght, however i can understand the “5% Leech” ( a stat that comes with our lore ).
It looks like devs want “Anti Magic Shell” to be our indentity spell even more ( I am not complaining since the old Legion AMS is back due to “Unyielding Will” ), we now share a part of our AMS with “Vestigial Shell” which is crazy strong !
We now have access to more and more combinations due to some talents going from 2 points to 1.
Playing DK in TWW feels like you CAN’T die, great work from devs on this part, we still might be able to offtank for a short duration, which in some case can save Mythic+ keys or Raid bosses.

Specialization Tree :

Obliterate :

As i said before Obliterate spec is strong right now, dual-wielding looks crazy with the combination of “Smothering Offense” , “Icy Death Torrent” and “The long Winter”. ( By the way “Icy Death Torrent” brings some nostalgia with the old “Frozen Pulse” talent which has similar animations ).
Gameplay is smooth, really feels like you are doing damage ( Even if other classes are doing better actually ), the new “Frostscythe” is way better than the older, having both “Enduring Strenght”, “Icecap” and “Frostwhelp’s Aid” for only 3 points is fantastic.
The “Shattering blade”, “Shattered frost” is a great combo, we will have to track Razorice stacks to play with it, adding some small details between good and bad DKs.

Breath of Sindragosa :

By far my favourite spec in this game, i am going to be the most objective i can with this one…
I don’t know what to think about “Hyperpyrexia” since we traded it with “Invigorating Freeze” which was really good. One of them ( Invigorating Freeze ) is oriented on sustaining your breath, while the other wants you to burst even more, i don’t know if we win or lose on this one.
We lost 1 stack of Empower runic weapon, hyportermia rune, and a lot of ressource generator talent, i know why and i won’t complain more since it was a real problem, a 2 min+ breath seems ridiculous, but the breath went from 75.92% Attack Power to 94.9% , which is in my opinion not enough.
It is the old bursty breath which is good but it falls SO HARD, i dont know what devs can do on this except add more % to the ability.

Overall i would say DK has a satisfying gameplay now, great tools for both raid and mythic+, good talent changes.

What i would change :

  • Since “Wraith Walk” has no related talents in the class tree, i would make this ability baseline, so we would finally have a baseline movement speed ability.

  • Either reduce the rune cost of “Frostscythe” or reduce it’s cooldown by 5 sec, so the gameplay would be even smoothier.

  • Buff “Breath of Sindragosa” damage by 10% ability power, i could’nt imagine a way to resolve the downsides of the non breath moments, the only way to make it stronger is to buff it.

  • Change damage type of “Abomination Limb” from Shadow to Shadowfrost so it would combine with Deathbringer TWW tree, since it doesn’t provide procs on any spec anymore.

I am sorry about my bad english, this post is about my opinion and my opinion only.
Thanks to devs. Keep on good work.

Edit 1 : After doing some Mythic+ keys, it really feels like Howling blast and Frost fever deals no damage at all.

4 Likes
20

Arms, which has significantly fewer things to track and fewer skills, gets a cut, while Unholy players can’t ask for a CD or skill reduction - which I’ve been suggesting in many ways for many years now.

-Remove Outbrak or combine it with Soul Repaer,
-Remove Vile Contagion or combine it with Unholy Blight or Apocalypse (as upgrade)
-Combine Apocalypse with Dark Transformation
-Combine Pestilence with Death and Decay/Defile and increase the chances of applying wounds
-Then add a new talent that replaces this effect with causing a free Epidemic - for a disease build.
- All Will Serve may additionally have, for example, a 15% or 20% chance of bursting festering wounds from secondary targets.
- Death Rot (remove), but if you want to force it, speed up the application at least twice and extend the duration to 15 seconds,
- Icy Talons, also needs to be extended to 15 seconds.
- Move Army of the Dead higher and place it between Festering Strike and Apocalypse and connect them with nodes
- also move Raise Abomination and create a choice node with Army of the Dead
- move Summon Gargoyle to the old Army of the Dead spot, and add the Dark Arbiter talent below (1 min CD reduction for Gargoyle)
- Ruptured Viscera (same story as other junk talents) - but if you want to keep it, it needs a change.

To limit the number of CDs (I was thinking of Corpse Explosion as a CD every 45 seconds to order ghouls to jump towards the enemy and cause an explosion), a way to passively trigger this effect should be found, so the ghouls should immediately jump to the target and explode after being summoned, or another way:
Ruptuted Viscera blablabla. Additionally, your Apocalypse casts Death and Decay where you are, and the ghouls explode after standing in Death and Decay for 3 seconds.
At the very end you can buff the skill accordingly because even now it is about 0.7% of the overall after completing the dungeon. This is a pathetic and even marginal result

1 Like
21

Both unholy and frost riders of the apocalypse are very weird to build. Having our main power of the hero tree tied to frostwyrm and army of the dead forces you to take a talent that will reduce the choice in the most powerful part of the tree + we get a hero talent that reduces the cooldown of horn of winter and unholy blight which also forces you to pick those talent and if we end up not pick them then the hero tree fails at its job.

The worst is frost right now : frostwyrm’s fury talent “Absolute Zero” really is a pain to take and 180 or 90 sec cd doesn’t match with breath of sindragosa at 120 sec. If everything, i despise frostwyrm’s fury, it’s a very cool spell but it serves no purpose in a class that has either a bland gameplay (no breath) or a very engaging gameplay that is unfortunately very hard to bring in most content. On top of that, we always want to press frostwyrm’s fury at the end of pillar of frost to maximize its damage which is already weird but is even more weird when considering breath of sindragosa.

In the case where we keep the unholy blight/horn of winter hero talent then it would makes sense to make “Apocalyspe Now” work with it and summoning only 2 horsemen.

However this means RNG during our burst window since we do not summon all 4 horsemen which is less important for frost but terrible for unholy, however frost would suffer from needing to press horn of winter without needing power generation so this solution is a big no no.

Then why not a new button ? Deathbring has one, so why not riders ?

This will feel bad for unholy that already has so many GCD in their burst window and the cooldown of this spell is a subject of discussion since unholy has a burst every 45 sec while frost with breath of sindragosa is on 120 sec.

Best solution i can think of is reducing breath CD to match unholy burst and either lowering it’s power or not depending on tuning. Obvioulsy not 45 sec cd but 90 sec. And i guess this would also make breath a bit more enjoyable and playable in some content.

2 Likes
22

i gotta say with the removal of the 2 point talents in the middle talent row things have made talenting alot better, but Blizzard can you pls just set our first talent row 2 talent point nods down to 1 talent point, just make Improved Festering strike only increase Festering Strikes damage by 20% and Runic Mastery can increase the Runic Power up by 20.

Also move the Festering Wound damage from Improved Festering Strike up to Bursting Soars and move the talent to Pestilence talent location, then you can bake Pestilence in to Defile.

As for Festering Scythe, move Festering Scythe were Bursting Soars is located it makes more sense to have it be a talent you take before going in to Bursting Soars, but also don’t stop improving this effect, i feel this is way to inconsistent to be used at a average play.

And last thing add back Raise Sludge Belcher as a talent option to replace the Pet Ghoul. For PVP players having access to Sludge Belcher would be good as it gives a Death Grip to the Pet and allows for more planing on how to deal with pesky ranged dps.

10 Likes
23

I personally find that Unholy is just as bad as the Warrior specs in terms of button bloat. As such, I agree to an extent that some of the abilities that are always intended to be used together in rotation should be combined into single button. Unholy opener is truly an unholy aberration, not mentioning the fact a lot of the summoning abilities suffer from a significant delay before they start doing their damage.

  • Apocalypse is now the primary outlier, and I believe it should replace Dark Transformation and combine both effects into one button.

  • I also think Summon Gargoyle should be a choice node with Raise Abomination, and tuned accordingly to have Garry be the pure ST and Abom be the Cleave/AoE option.

2 Likes
24

Following up on the changes from most recent build:

The Infliction of Sorrow change is great, it no longer creates rotational friction and instead creates a nice damage burst window.

It is really good that it doesn’t happen automatically at the end of the Gift buff, so we can choose when and which target gets blasted. However, I would say that it being tied to spammable RP builder does make holding it back hard.

Wouldn’t it better that if instead of Source/Heart Strike the damage event triggered from next Outbreak and Death’s Caress? Both are Single Target, not vital to Rune/Runic Power building/spending, and reapply the consumed disease.

The Good:

  • Changes to Ghoulish Frenzy and Improved Death Coil are great, even with the “lower values” it still is a major improvement.
  • Likewise, Apocalypse change is tremendous, allowing us to use the ability on cooldown without delay to get extra wounds if we somehow failed to prepare sufficient (which is now slightly harder with Sudden Doom popping them).
  • Personally, I like the Defile change a lot. No longer it is a “mastery buff cooldown” and instead is an AoE damaging ability it should have been from the start, and it simplifies the rotation.
    • I hope that Defile will get new visual before TWW release, not only it looks dated but it’s simply detrimental to play with when ground swirly damage effects are involved.

The Bad:

  • Decomposition still feels unworthy and unrewarding as a 2-point talent sitting in the penultimate row just before a capstone (and on the wrong side of the tree). It would be more acceptable as a single point talent (with same values as current 2) at Gate 2, probably around the location of Pestilence. It’s just that the three extra seconds equates to 10% (Abom) to 15% (Apoc Ghouls) uptime increase, but it doesn’t equate to a 10-15% DPS increase - and those 2 talent points could be put to talents that do.
    • Side note: The flare up part should have been built into Virulent Plague baseline - Unholy is supposed to be master of diseases, yet their disease does less than Frost or Blood (just pure damage ticks).
7 Likes
25

I hope that Commander of the Dead wont be going live in War Within.

This passive is so bad it can’t work when you have talented Doomed Bidding.

There are several things that should replace it in my opinion.

  1. You have a chance to Raise a Lich instead of a Magus, the Lich buffs the UH DK with Shadowfrost armor increasing the damage the DK deal by X amount and reduces incoming damage by X amount.
  2. For every Festering Wound you Burst you Raise up a Skeleton warrior, the Skeleton Warrior Applies a stacking debuff on the enemy target increasing the damage the enemy takes from the DK.
  3. Gargoyle gets located here, but that is the most boring one out of this 3 suggestions, heck 1-2 could even be baked in together to create something more interesting out of our rotation.

we are bursting way more Festering Wounds now on beta which is a good thing, but i feel like we lack talent that really makes this change have a great payoff, that’s why i think Commander of the Dead needs to be buried alive? and replaced for something that are really worthy of being a cap stone talent.

Also Blizzard [DO NOT LISTEN TO THOSE PLAYERS ON THE US FORUM ABOUT SUDDEN DOOM BURSTING FESTERING WOUNDS] it’s a good thing it helps the rotation flow better, they are only bragging about numbers forgetting that it helps the rotation flow more naturally.

12 Likes
26

Rune of Apocalypse - Feedback

  • please improve the uptime (up to 70%-90% / min-max) of the all debuffs because it is currently very low (especially in a dungeon environment)
  • please make all debuffs last at least 10 seconds
  • I also request that all debuffs be applied at the same time

I’m still asking for a reduction in the requirements for Festering Scythe.

Generally, it could be a great skill that I would really want to use, but it must be baseline and not cost 20 wounds.

3 Likes
27

There is still many problems with BDK rework.

  1. Ossified Vitriol is pointless talent and it (other two nodes) blocks from rapid decomposition.

2.Tightening gasp should reduce cd to 1min or give 2 charges. Bdk main utility is grips and other tank having better grip skill is insane for me.

  1. Bonestorm should work with insatiable blade. It would Bdk gameplay much much more interesting and finally bonestorm usefull.

4.Leching strikes, blood tap, blood feast should be removed from game and changed to something more interesting.

1 Like
28

PS Darion Mograine is more powerful than us because he uses Death and Decay as an aura around himself, while we can only throw it to the ground.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

PS. Why, as Rider of the Apocalypse, did we not receive access to the improved Asphyxiate, which Nazgrim can use without any problems?

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wowpedia/images/e/e2/Regicide_-_Nazgrim.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20230724164022

4 Likes
29

can we get the old Animations back for Blood presence , unholy and frost presence ?
not the skills themselves but just the animations tied to cooldowns ?

maybe we could have

  • blood presence animation tied to Blood queen proc on saylan
  • frost presence animation tied to deathbringer
  • unholy presence tied to rider proc

i miss seeing that big Skull above my head

3 Likes
30

With all due respect, we don’t need old animations. We’re already riddled with them. UH doesn’t have a single good modern looking animation. If you have the glyph of the foul menagerie on you will literally summon those armoured skeletons from vanilla wow.

AMS is literally with no joke or exaggeration, the same dated and pixelated mess since its original creation back in 2008.

Blood’s animations are barely visible. Frost has very little going on for it, but at least it has Frostscythe.

Deathbringer has a decent new animation, that is a lot more satisfying than a floating blue skull. That is literally the only new exciting visual we got from these hero specs. San’layn has nothing impressive going on, and all them gimmicky riders just end up clipping each other as they all move to the default pet melee location.

So I implore you, no. No more old stuff. It looked cool at the time, but the year is 2024 and when you see what beautiful and visually exciting animations blizzard’s team is capable of producing, we should simply never ask for anything old like that.

6 Likes
31

Yes gimme that right now

1 Like
32

I agree that Commander of the Dead is not a good talent, even regardless of what other talents you pick. It just adds unnecessary complexity to the rotation where you want to cast it after the minions are up.

Please simplify it, for instance make it an aura on the player that increases all minion damage by 35% while Dark Transformation is active, so any minions that are raised/summoned during Dark Transformation still benefit from the talent.

Agreed, 100%! Especially with recent update to Apocalypse that no longer requires you to have Wounds on target to get all ghouls out, Festering Wounds are no longer such a pain to work with.

In order to make any rune other than Rune of the Fallen Crusader be competitive is likely to remove Fallen Crusader completely. For Rune of the Apocalypse to be competitive otherwise it would need a significant increase on the uptime, so that we can safely maintain 3-4 at all times. I think Festering Strike should be applying those effects in addition to ghoul, this would make Festering Strike and applying Wounds less of a chore.

3 Likes
33

I disagree, Ossified Vitriol is great by making reapplying Bone Shield stacks more worthwhile (and further benefitting from Deathbringer’s Exterminate buff)

This is actually a good idea, I would prefer two charges, but 1 min CD isn’t too bad. Question is whether it would not make Tightening Grasp OP since it also silences casters. I know it sounds like fun police on my end, but balancing is something Blizzard will not forgo.

I still think this is a bug.

Bonestorm doesn’t mention it should not benefit from Shattered Bone, and even more so is that Shattered Bone is a prerequisite to Bonestorm, kind of directly indicating it should work with it, and therefore with Insatiable Blade. It does make DRW come back too often, though, so it could be changed that Bonestorm only consumes 5 bones for maximum effect (it could even not give them back, just have it proc Ossified Vitriol).

Absolutely, all talents in the leftmost column of the tree are dead on arrival, not even because they’re bad, but because they are much worse than talents on the other side.

I include Rune Tap in the list mainly because it is somewhat counterintuitive in regards to Death Strike healing and that it has a rune cost.

1 Like
34

Problem with doing a change like that is the fact we already have a buff like this, when we cast Dark Transformation you have a talent Ghoulish Frenzy, it buffs both the player and the pet so we will end up with 2 passives doing the same thing, but Commander of the Dead will end up just being a weaker version of Ghoulish Frenzy as a result.

3 Likes