Feedback: Death Knights

In Development Midnight Beta Test
24

I completely agree. I feel the same way. Basically, I feel like DK Unholy has been ruined.
I don’t know why we still have to play Festering Strike, which does something for Scourge Strike.
I don’t know why Festering Strike still exists, and neither does Outberak. For these abilities to make sense, we have what we have, and Outberak got Pestilence, which doesn’t work.
This is the perfect opportunity to get rid of Festering Strike and Outberak.

Instead, the developers got rid of:

  1. Blood Plague - an iconic disease since WOTLK
  2. Frost Fever - the same story
  3. Wandering Plague - the same story
  4. Necrotic Plague - a WoD expansion
  5. Crypt Fever or Ebon Plaguebringer from WOTLK - I miss it.
  6. Now we’ve lost Apocalypse, which could have been reworked.
  7. Unholy Frenzy was also removed—of course, I wasn’t a fan of that ability, but we got absolutely nothing in return…
  8. Unholy Blight? - also removed.
  9. Abomination Limb? - also removed.

10*. Gargoyle had a significant impact in DF - but for the remaining years, it was nothing and brought nothing new to the game. The fact that it was combined with Val’kyr is a crime. Historically, they’re not the same.
11*. Army of the Dead lost its purpose when Apocalypse was introduced and hasn’t been expanded since.

And what did it gain?
Dread Plague, which looks and functions almost exactly like Virulent Plague…and Pytrefy, which is simply invisible and makes me not want to play Unholy; it destabilizes the rotation…
I know it’s Beta, but the rotation is smoother and more intuitive in Live…so where is the progress?
I feel like I’m dependent on it in every build; I’d happily use Unholy Blight or Apocalypse instead.

It’s very difficult to play without Unholy Blight. It could stay as is, working with DT, or introduce a new effect.

I’d also like to see talents offering gameplay with:

  1. Crypt Lord

  2. Lich

  3. Dreadlord

  4. Val’kyr

  5. Unholy Blight

  6. Wandering Plague

  7. Necrotic Plague

  8. Frost Fever

  9. Blood Plague

Death and Decay - also an iconic ability that’s been trampled on by developers.
This hasn’t received any changes to adapt to the new game.
It can do many things: it can be a DoT AoE, it can trigger diseases, it can be the equivalent of Swarming Mist, Blood Boil, and Remorsless Winter all at once, but it’s not…

Unholy is a master of disease and undead, but in all of these areas, Blood DK or Frost DK are better.

Instead of these weak and ill-conceived changes, it was enough to change Festering Wound into a disease that deals damage for a certain number of seconds, e.g., Festering Plague.
And make other necessary changes.

Putrefy should be removed for now. Festering Strike can summon 3 ghouls for 12 seconds. Scoruge Strike can finally deal disease damage, and Death and Decay can finally move with DK or Unholy Blight.
If someone wants to cause ghouls to explode, go ahead and choose an additional optional talent.
As usual, there are many options, but currently, DK Unholy has lost more than it has gained.

I don’t feel like a master of disease or a master of the undead at all.

What’s more, I don’t feel like a heavily armored warrior fighting with a two-handed weapon - because I don’t feel the power, strength, or see the attack animations.

I feel like nothing.

6 Likes
25

The new build we just got is kinda wack for UH. Blizzard has just nerfed the amount of Ghouls and Maguses we’re going to raise. Army only raises 6 Ghouls… WHAT?. Magus no longer spawn from Army of the Dead when Magus of the Dead is talented, like WHAT?. Lesser Ghouls only last for 6 seconds, extended by the amount of Mastery we got, Like WHAT the hell Blizzard, i do like the Mastery one, but the other change. No, reducing it down to 6 second duration is legit bad move, like ultra bad, we are going to feel extremely bad when trying to maintain our Lesser Ghouls. The update did not address our talent tree and Hero talent issues, which is that we still have passives in it we want to ignore at all cost Superstrain/Menacing Magus for instance.

In summary, some smal, but good changes…ugh. Then there are the bad ones, which just took away some of our master of the undeath theme.

5 Likes
26

A little update as i have tested the new build. We went from being able to maintain 8-12 Lesser Ghouls to now only be able to maintain 4-8 Lesser Ghouls. The reduction to the amount of Maguses we raise as well makes every thing feel more underwhelming as a result. Bad changes overall, Festering Scythe has been located in a slot that forces us to talent in to Superstrain which is just, yeah, it’s that bad.

This is not it Blizzard. The reduction to the Lesser Ghouls duration has to be reverted alongside the nerf to Army of the Dead, and Magus of the Dead with also the Putrefy nerf which makes us also raise fewer Magus of the Dead when pressing Army of the Dead.

Summon Gargoyle needs to be separated from Abomination, there is no point for them to be a choice nod in the talent tree. Just locate Gargoyle somewhere else in the talent tree so it’s actually worth taking.

4 Likes
27

Another update i need to add about our Unholy Aura and Ancient Power, they both feel incredibly bad now. Unholy Aura will not amount to more than 2% haste per Putrefy Lesser Ghoul, while at best when you have all CD up every 1,5 min, you’ll just get 10% haste which for 2 talent points feel incredibly bad and almost like a mockery of our time. Blizzard decided instead of keeping the mastery stacking from the Maguses, and instead add the haste component to the Lesser Ghouls, they instead just nerfed this passive even more and made it feel like it’s not worth the 2 talent points. Ancient Power is the same problem, boring, uninteresting, useless.

Our last part of the talent row at this point has almost nothing of use in it, i can see that we might ignore spending 4 talent points in the last row, because our so called 2 point passives simply does not offer any meaningful power to them, let alone interaction with our core kit.

Unless this get addressed we’ll just end up in a worse spot than we were in the previous beta build.

3 Likes
28

Did some keys on beta. Midnight blood dk feels much more worse then current version of war within. DS nerf was unnecessary. DRW parry nerf was unnecessary. armor buff is not amplied in beta but i dont think it would help a lot. without bonestorm boneshield management sucks. It just feels awful

3 Likes
29

Unholy DK

Some talents need to be repositioned to improve flow, accessibility and thematic cohesion.

Talent Position Changes

  • Move Outnumber to the current position of Summon Gargoyle / Abomination.
  • Move Reanimation to the current position of Outnumber
  • Move Summon Gargoyle / Abomination to the current position of Reanimation
  • Swap Unholy Devastation with March of Madness
  • Swap Commander of Dead with Unholy Aura

Why?

This ensures our major Cooldown Army of the Dead (Gargoyle or Abomination) feels like a proper capstone and doesn’t require speccing too deep into the tree just to access a burst windows with Outnumber.

Putrify and Disease Synergy Fixes

  • Putrify still feels awkward.
    To fix this:
    • Make Dread Plague apply to ALL enemies, not just once
    • Reduce its damage to ~260% AP if needed for balance
  • Change Rapid Variant
    • When you putryfy a lesser ghoul, you apply virulent plague and dread plague to nerby enemies or extend it for X seconds.
  • Remove Blightburst and replace it with:
    • Unholy Blight - Putrify your lesser ghoul to inftect enemies with a plague that deals X% Shadow damage over 15 seconds. Additionally, all your diseases deal X% increased damage during this time
  • Remove Pestilence
  • Move Superstrain to Pestilence’s current position
    • Superstrain: Virulent Plage also applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague

We have currently 7 Buttons for Single-Target rotation… What the hell?

1 Like
30

Day 1247 and I’m still tired of clicking Festering Strike.
This ability is so awful that I’m shocked at what a boring developer the person working on the DK project must be.
This ability simply doesn’t exist without Festering Scythe.
Dear creator, please choose a build without playing with Festering Scythe, and you’ll feel the same way I and many other players do.
You’ll feel the same with the Outberak talent, and you’ll feel the same when clicking Putrefy, which feels like it’s been forced into the rotation.
Putrefy is neither a finishing talent nor a starting talent – ​​so what exactly is this talent?
Our finisher/spender is Death Coil and Epidemic, which, even in their improved version thanks to Army, deal mediocre damage.

Getting back to Putrefy – this talent is killing me because I don’t know if it works or not, because I can’t even see it. I feel like I’m clicking blindly because I feel like my bus is about to leave.
Can’t you make it work immediately and without ghouls? Can’t it be some kind of bone scythe throw with a cool animation and action sound?

Why have you disabled Soul Reaper now? Now every time I use DT, I have to click SR…so why doesn’t DT apply SR automatically?
Can’t Soul Reaper work like Execute for a warrior? Is it that hard? Thanks for the guaranteed proc every 45 seconds…but M+ fights usually last shorter, and I’d like to be committed to clicking Soul Reaper in every fight—at least once or twice, if I choose that talent, of course.

Why are you making things complicated for us?
Pestilence still works hopelessly, Putrefy too, Festering Strike too, Clawing Shadow too. I have to ask, what works well? Even diseases don’t work well.
You’re still trying to carve something out of the old tree. I’ll give you a hint - you need to choose and create a new talent tree.

I am asking for a change of designer, I am asking for someone who has reworked Frost DK or someone who is working on DH Devourer.

2 Likes
31

I was doing now 45 minutes of hitting the Dummy.

  1. Death Coil hits like a wet noodle, yet it still outperforms Scourge Strike most of the time. (not counting Erupt)

  2. I keep overcapping Runic Power, and when I try to dump it, Coil of Devestation keeps overwritten and deals low damage.

  3. Infected Claws performs well when you ramp up the ghouls.

  4. DnD and Descrate deal no damage even on AoE situation.

  5. Festering Strike feels like filler button, pressed only to ramp up the ghouls for Scourge Strike. It’s more akward than pressing Putrify, which can be used at the start thanks to the Necromancer’s Cunning talent - making Outbreaker usless!
    How the rotation kinda works:

    1. Prio Suddon Doom
      1. Putrify at the beginning
      2. Festering Strike twice (Festering Scythe proc)
      3. 2-3 Times Scourge-Strike to ramp up ghouls
      4. Dump Runic-Power 2 times because you will ovecapp otherwise when you Putrify again
      5. Putrify
      6. 2-3 Times Scourge-Strike for Ghoul-Ramp
      7. Dump Runic
      8. Festering Stirke twice before you Scourge-Strike again.
        1. So many GCD passes before pressing FS again.

  6. Soulreaper: It is a good ability but not as good as I expected: Infected Claws benefits from the 20% Disease damage meanwhile Coil of Devestation does not. The 8 Sec Buff feels gimmicky, I prefer to have a 30 sec. CD and a 15 sec. buff.

  7. Overall Festering Strike feels out of place. Death Coil could serve the same purpose- ramping up ghouls for SS - without wasting a keybind on a filler. You just need to get rid of the disease extender.

2 Likes
32

I’ve written this many times over the years, saying that buffs and debuffs lasting 5-8 seconds are pointless, at least for DK Unholy, because it’s a specific specialization that always requires more time than others.
To me, these are garbage talents that add nothing but waste space in the talent tree and waste our attention.
The minimum that should be considered is 10 seconds of duration, whether for ghouls or other things.
Unholy Devotion, for example, seems like a cool talent (like SR), but it only lasts 5 seconds! In the lab scenario, we have 1 Putrefy every 30 sec, so we could only use Unholy Devotion once every 30 seconds, and for only 5 seconds. Is this talent so powerful that it needs to be so limited?

I still wonder why I keep seeing such absurdities. This is absurd, especially when the idea and goal of the class changes for the new expansion is simple – to simplify gameplay, reduce tracking, reduce wasted attention on the class, and focus more on combat.
This isn’t my invention, but the developers’ goal.
Why is it always the opposite of what they announce? Why does this happen?

I still wonder why we can’t throw bone spears and cause corpses to explode, etc., and instead play Putrefy, which is simply not fun.

We don’t need any charges for Scourge Strike to summon ghouls. Simply put, any Scourge Strike can do it, or even Festering Strike. Putrefy could and should be a separate, independent ability that causes undead to explode, replacing Bursting Sores on the damage table.

33

Been playing Unholy in Keys, and I have never felt so punished for occasionally fumble my opener / rotation. My damage goes from acceptable down to abyssmal.

I was sad seeing the talent to extend lesser ghouls being active being gone. I used to be able to summon out 10-12 ghouls and it felt fantastic! Now I can just squeeze out mere 4-6 ghouls….

Festering Strike still does not feel satisfying to press, it just feels like a mandatory filler to get ghoul charges and then go back to doing the actual rotation. It feels like a akward speed bump in a sense. A wrench in the gearworks I have to pull out so I can continue doing my rotation

Putrefy feels like a strange cooldown. It makes a lesser ghoul explode but that is pretty much it? It does not feel like there is a real kick to it. Good way to spread diseases and get the ball rolling with the rotation, but that is pretty much it

I am also sad seeing Undead Magus going from frequently spawning from Sudden Doom procs to require a 45 sec CD to spawn 1 (Dark Transformation) and another CD on 30 seconds (Putrefy if chosen in talents) to spawn 1…
The talents for Undead Magus and its cleave talent choice feels underwhelming, when I know the magus will barely be alive long enough to make it count.
As well with it just being 1 singular undead magus each for 2 different offensive CDs. With one of the spawn requirement being dependent on a talent, in the very bottom of the tree.
To keep it short: Bring back Undead Magus spawning from Sudden Doom procs, make Undead Magus frequent again

The cleave feels weak with relying on only disease DoTs spreading, Putrefy and occasional mandatory festering cleave. With frantic Scourge Strike spamming with Clawing Shadows.
Death and Decay barely feels like it does enough damage to feel worthwhile using.
Would love to see some form of “Beast Cleave”, similar to Beast Mastery Hunters, for lesser ghouls. Epidemic could be the trigger for it?

Forbidden Knowledge, as a apex talent, feels very underwhelming. The first talent to unlock it, that one is fantastic in itself. But the choices that comes after? They feel underwhelming

8 Likes
34

Scourgelord Tyrannus from Pit of Saron has been redesigned and has more of a Death Knight feel than DK Unholy in the beta…
Oh, and his Army of the Dead (his army is powerful and you can see that power) doesn’t live for a few seconds like our army, but it lives longer and deals massive single target and aoe damage…
Could it be that the dungeon designers have more knowledge and a sense of identity with the character’s fantasy than our DK Unholy designer?

4 Likes
35

Here is a summary of what needs to happen for the next weeks build.

  1. Lesser Ghouls duration needs to be reverted back to 8 second duration. Reason as to why, is to avoid the same problem we have on live right now with the Magus of the Dead which simply loses all it’s dps on the slightest of movement from mobs.
  2. Unholy Aura needs som serious buff, it’s absolutely ludicrous that at best we will have a 10% haste every 1,5 min. So what needs to happen is the following. A. Lesser Ghouls increases haste by 1% for each Lesser Ghouls, and B. Magus of the Damned increases our Mastery for 2% for each Magus that is active.
  3. Giving Summon Gargoyle a 100% crit chance is an absolute joke of a change. What this does is it devalues our critical strike stat which we want to stack some for our minion crit damage. Summon Gargoyle needs to be separated from Raise Abomination, and be located back in the cap stone of our talent tree. Summon Gargoyle should be located where Reanimation is, and for Reanimation, this should have it’s position located in to a new gate you can talent in to after you have taken Unholy Aura, just in between Summon Gargoyle and Outnumber.
  4. Summon Gargoyle should also be redesigned to actually fit with our new design. As i mentioned before in one of my earlier post, Summon Gargoyle should now summon 3 of them to attack the enemy target, which then will increase both Disease, and Minion critical strike, and critical damage for 0.3% each time they attack the enemy. [THIS SHOULD BE A BUFF ON THE DK]
  5. Commander of the Dead’s secondary effect which increases our Lesser Ghouls duration, needs to be increased to 100% of our Mastery. 50% is just a joke, and will always feel frustrating to calculate. Also much cooler having a large army of undeads, instead of what we have right now on Beta.
  6. Festering Scythe needs to be located in a much better location than it currently is. And as for it’s functionality, it needs to just replace Festering Strike. it should also have only a 1 GCD just like Necrotic Coil has.
  7. Superstrain needs to return to what it used to be, granting us both Frost Fever and Blood Plague. It should be located in a new gate after Ancient Power.
  8. Ancient Power also needs to be replace with something more interesting. This passive like always, it’s just a joke.
  9. Putrefy could really use some more interesting things we can talent in to, right now the undead part is almost there, but it’s the diseases that seems to be an after thought. We should have Unholy Blight returned to our talent tree. When we Putrefy our Lesser Ghoul, it should leave a blighted corpse by the enemy which infect them with Unholy Blight. Maybe those who are infected by Unholy Blight takes splash damage from the next Putrefy which will act like a bigger explosion, while they also take some damage from Unholy Blight’s disease as well.
  10. Menacing Magus needs to be baked in to Reanimation. Raise Sludge Belcher should be returned to us in the talent tree. For more details on it, just scroll up to one of my earlier post on the deep dive as to why it should be brought back.
  11. I think Ghoulish Frenzy needs to be taken a look at. Right now it seems so out of place when we have so many modifiers which does the same if not much better job as a buff than what Ghoulish Frenzy currently does.
  12. Soul Reaper’s secondary effect should stack for each time you press Soul Reaper at the target, as well as the duration of this buff should be increased to match the CD of Soul Reaper as well.
  13. Necromancers Cunning should raise 2 Lesser Ghouls, not one. Much cooler that way.
  14. The nerf to Magus of the Dead, which made it no longer raise a Magus when Army of the dead was pressed needs to be reverted.
  15. Army of the Dead also needs to be reverted back to raising 8 Lesser Ghouls. No one likes a loser Blizzard.
9 Likes
36

The Point behind: Abomination and Gargoyle is pretty clear…

Abomination → Disease

Gargoyle → Minions but Gargoyle should spawn 2 Magus instead.

IMO, the ghoul charges on Scourge Strike are basically a third resource system we have to manage. They just turned Festering Wound into ghouls and called it a day.

37

Please give DK raidbuff

4 Likes
38

The US forum has similar feelings as we do in the EU.
Here I also post interesting proposals for changes from the US forum.

2 Likes
39

It’s no hidden secret that Blizzard walked backward with the recent Beta Build for UH DK. Nerfing the duration of our Lesser Ghoul, and reducing the number of Maguses we raise just took away a lot of the aura UH had. And then they still intend to ignore the main problems with our talent tree which is just stupid at this point.

4 Likes
40

Death and Decay is currently usless and provides no real benefits for Unholy DK.

Despite the Sanalyn hero Talent adding Desecrate, it still falls behind because the talent tree offers no meaningful support for DnD. So why do we still have DnD at all, when pressing it is a DPS loss, even in AoE situations?

Players who prefer the disease playstyle should have DnD intefrated as a core mechanic that synergize with diseases. Right now, Desecrate is locked behind Sanalyn, while Rider of the Apocalypse als casts DnD - but only as a disease extender. We already have two disease extenders (Death Coil and Putrify), so this feels redudant.

Changes

  • Remove Festering Strike and Festering Scythe completely from the ability book
  • Make DnD baseling for both single-target and AoE.
  • Give DnD only 1 Charge instead of 2, but allow it to be recast. (Increase the duration to 15 sec.)
  • Inside DnD, Scourge Strike becomes corrupted with blight each second (up to 15 stacks), causing your next Scourge Strike to summon lesser ghouls
    • This would Sreamline the rotation without wasting GCDs on Festering Strike or Festering Scythe. And after DnD ends, you would still have lesser ghouls charges left.

Talent Adjustments

  • Make Desecrate a baseline talent
  • Replace the current Festering Scythe talent with Improved DnD, which makes your diseaes tick faster
    • Multiple applications may overlap
  • Add a talent that causes DnD to empower all minions inside it, increasing their attack speed by 10%
    • Multiple applications can overlap

Benefits

  • Removes filler buttons that exist only to ramp ghouls
  • Allows DnD to be placed every 30 seconds, enabling a smother scourge strike rotation without awkwward ghoul charges
  • Make DnD feel impactful rather than filler, since it directly enhances core gameplay
  • Adds synergy for dieases-focuses builds and minion-focused builds alike
  • Ensure DnD can be recast on moving targets without losing lesser-ghouls
1 Like
41

Necromancer’s Cunning, while making Putrefy simpler to use, turn this spell into even more of a nothingburger than before. At this point, why not just rework it into summoning some other temporary undead that does damage or interacts with our toolkit in some other way, instead of yet another ghoul? Or just something else altogether. Not to mention that the cooldown on it, even with the reduction from Sudden Doom, is too high for it to be that noticeable to our rotation.

I suppose it’s nice that Reaping makes Dark Transformation reset Soul Reaper’s cooldown now so we have some consistency during our cooldowns, but it was fun to get SR to randomly proc during combat and have another button to press every now and then.

Festering Scythe would be better as a replacement to Strike, instead of a follow-up, in my opinion. Maybe it could even cost just one rune, to offset the loss of the free Scythe. It can be annoying to enter a fight with a couple of Scourge Strike stacks, as you want to put the Scythe debuff on mobs but casting both FS and Scythe would overcap you. Not to mention that it’s pretty bad to have to spend two globals just to put a debuff on some mobs. This is less important, but thematically it also doesn’t make much sense for Festering Strike to somehow build up ghoul stacks. I get that it “corrupts our weapon with blight”, whatever that means, but I think a scythe is more in line with the whole “reaping the souls of our enemies and raising the dead” concept.

I think that reducing the number of ghouls Army gives and their duration is the wrong way to tune them and the bonuses they might give, as it just neuters the wow factor of the cooldown.

Extending Forbidden Knowledge feels awkward. You want to spam as many empowered Death Coils/Epidemics as possible, but you also have to spam SS to spawn ghouls and extend FK, but to do that you have to use FS and it all leads to a somewhat frustrating balancing act, especially with the low resource generation we have now.

2 Likes
42

After testing our Apex talent i feel this effect conflicts with our rotation, the problem stems from Necrotic Coil and Graveyard not raising Lesser Ghouls, i think Blizzard should rework the last talent in the Apex row to instead of extending the duration when you Putrefy and raise Lesser Ghouls, instead Graveyard and Necrotic Coil should raise Lesser Ghouls instead.

Summon Gargoyle is also another one that which i noted earlier in the post also contradict our rotation and now it also does it as well with our crit stat stacking. I really think this passive should be reworked and moved up to our cap stone location, the best would just to implement what i suggested, and then attach it to Dark Transformation or Army of the Dead, maybe slap on that DT last 3 seconds longer if talented, because right now it’s not fun to play around with this minion, worst is also when we use Necrotic Coil, our Runic Power spell cost only 20 Runic Power which makes it ramp up less damage that what Death Coil which cost 30 does, it’s a mess.

2 Likes
43

Based on the current developer notes and implemented changes, it is unclear how the stated goal is intended to be achieved the damage reduction component of Lichborne has been removed, Rune tap is gone, Death Strike’s healing also has been reduced. Although a 25% bone shield armor buff is not applied in beta. None of the new talents provide meaningful mitigation that would support the claim of making Blood death knights ‘‘more reliable in high-end Mythic keys’’.

3 Likes