So basically everyone knows that (Unholy) DK rn is terrible still in PvP even after all that time since season 1 start nerfs , okay its not completely terrible after the buffs its just not good. If your very good on the class you can do similar Dmg to other meta classes, while your designed to do mostly spread damage and HAVE to cleave and play better than other classes to win, which by definition means your not a good class. Well to fix it now doesnt take as much fortunately, clearly it needs some BASELINE DEFENSIVE BUFFS that dont require you to spam a “mutilate level” GCD to defend yourself that does no damage at all (deathstrike with bloodforged armor pvp talent) and you still die through easily, everyone agrees on that. Clearly with how its damage profile is structured it needs around 5-7% more overall damage i would guess but optimally it would be big buffs to WOUND DAMAGE rather than overall buffs, especially with how Riders pets work and are imo unhealthy for the game and its class identity. So a huge buff to wounds would be enough and healthier since you have 2 abilties in your kit to play around it (festering strike and scourge strike) which do negative damage, closer to what it was in Dragonflight. REMOVING THE “EBONFEVER” TALENT would go a very long way too and buffing dots baseline so they are slightly weaker than they are rn but dont require you to play ebonfever every single game which isnt even a last row talent and actively less fun to spam your dot gcd.
Now to make Unholy cool again would require imo one thing mainly: REWORKING SANLAYN
Well sanlayn is a PvE only hero talent spec that doesnt make particular sense in PvE either if we are being honest, its one of the coolest themed hero talents (like Dark ranger for Hunters and Sunfury for Mages) but has gotten no love so far and makes the least sense out of all the hero talents in the game basically, its now tuned properly in PvE but is it fun ? I dont think so. Is it cool ? definetly not. Well i dont know about the details, dmg numbers and passives but some things just make a ton of sense that i think also everyone could agree on. Coils should be good with it, so make it centered around coils in a cooler way, for example, bloodcoils instead of vampiric strike on Dark Transform and removal of the stacking mechanic to make it more viable in all content or change the stacking mechanic to something else. Vampiric strike rotationally is a very very poorly designed ability that removes half the mechanics of the Unholy DK kit. It should stay in some form because just having it is cool but rather as only the random proc and the ability to stack with clawing shadows damage rather than reducing it lmao. The last thing that just makes sense is to bring back the pet dot aura to yourself on dark transform like it was during DF, make it have some other cool bloody aura dot that is a small part of your damage (completely fine to add multiple dmg sources with how broken riders is in comparison). Removing random stuff that isnt as cool from sanlayn is perfectly fine and would put more damage in your core abilities even if they are buffed up. so to summarize:
- Baseline defensive buffs
- Large buffs to Wound damage, since its the most skill expression you can get and fair
- Removing Ebonfever and tuning around it
- Rework San’Layn in any way lol
- Rework to San’Layn by making Deathcoil the priority in a cooler way (Blood Coils), since that just makes way more sense and you would press it anyways and it doesnt cannibalize your rotation
- Possibly in Sanlayn rework put the Pet DoT Aura back to the DK, since it allows for way more consistent DoT application and skill expression in that sense by running to your opponents or gripping them in + It could have a Sanlany Aura and be cool (still bound to Dark Transform button)