Hello,
Another very long post inc!
Seeing other players also make cool new posts and suggestions, I want to hop in and write something as well. Hoping…, now that we actually getting some attention and the game is changing for the better, our class will receive some love and changes. Promoting further discussion and community feedback that will help the developers improve death knights. Even if not now, not in this expansion, id really love some changes and improvements done to Death Knights in the future.
I’m playing dk since legion. I know in the past, before legion, death knights had other cool mechanics and gameplay options. So feel free to add and discuss if any of those worth being brought back. What I feel is that the developers should really look back at the past, see what worked good, was fun to play and try and implement it back in the game. Some of that + new more intuitive changes that are needed, I feel we can have our class “fixed”.
I will leave the pvp problems our class have right now, for another time/discussion because for pvp improvements I think, Death Knights need more immediate attention so they can be better in the current pvp burst meta. Especially unholy. I do write most of the things below with PVP in mind. So I still think everything could work with some adjustments in pvp setting/pvp talents.
I will leave the blood spec aside as well. I have not tanked seriously since legion and can’t really give feedback about it. For me in legion blood was amazing and fun.
What I want to focus is for more general overhaul of the dps specs. Something that we can expect the next expansion. Or hopefully next major patch (unlikely).
I. Lets start with Unholy. That’s what I prefer to play in general. I find the spec way more fun and complex to manage.
General gameplay mechanics – current state, ideas and suggestions.
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Having 3 different power resources (runic power, runes and wounds) is what I find very fun when managed correctly. Depending on the current state and power balance, doing good rotation can be very rewarding. However, I completely understand why majority of DK players don’t like the wound mechanic. Most of the times it can be very frustrating and in certain situations even limiting our ability to do certain things fast and efficiently. Simple example is – switching fast to new target that has high priority. While I would be fine with removing the wound mechanic from the spec and try having Unholy without it, I would also be ok if it stays and having other skills/abilities help with the problems it provides.
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Being a pet specialization. Our pets doing 40% of our damage. This is reinforced by the current class power balance and our Mastery which buff our pet damage. Making Army of the damned the best talent, providing us with more pets with higher uptimes. Together with the pet buffing legendaries… Its just the current Shadowlands state of Unholy.
I personally don’t mind it. Again I like the spec and learned to play with our pet and it is rewarding if you get used to controlling him. Specially in pvp. But same thing as with the wound mechanic, many players want to have an option to play Unholy build that is focused more on our OWN damage spells, strikes and diseases. I truly believe with couple of changed talents and other sources – legendary/set bonuses etc., we can have an option to chose a gameplay style that we prefer. Necromancer with pets or a undead knight with diseases and heavy hitting strikes and spells. -
Few ideas that alone or together can improve the current state of Unholy. And maybe present some different build options. Have in mind that I did take in to an account the legendary Powers we have in SL, because I think such bonuses should be present in the game via… Legendary items or Set bonuses. But I did not add to an account any of the current Covenant Features – Abilities/Conduits/Soulbinds Etc. I really look forwards to a complete working Spec with strong foundation before adding any borrowed power systems.
- Rework our Mastery bonus. Make it more interesting. Flat damage buff to shadow and pets… is boring and the result as I mentioned above is - Too strong to ignore, pushing us to play AOTD build and stack mastery. It needs to be something different. Something that improves our gameplay and provides bonuses to our skills and abilities. I kind of prefer the previous iteration from before SL. Where it only buffed our shadow damage. This way we had more choices when it comes to secondary stats. Giving our pets crit and haste was more beneficial than mastery for single target. While in M+ we stacked more mastery for the higher damage of our uncapped bursting wounds aoe. On paper adding pet dmg bonus to it… looked amazing. And everyone agreed is a nice change. But what ended happening… Stacking mastery early expansion make UH dks Top dps. Just because our pets were doing all the work. No other class had such a big bonus coming from a secondary stats. Resulting a Nerf to mastery. But even nerfed… it’s still our best stat. Just the way scaling works in SL. Changing/nerfing it to only affect our Shadow Damage is not an interesting change. But for me it will bring back more choice and decision making when deciding what build we will play. Maybe just reduce the bonus minion dmg by half compared to the shadow damage. Ofc, minion’s base dmg should be adjusted after.
I like to have more options and choices. Feel free to suggest completely other ideas or just ignore this. I just feel as long as this version of our mastery stays. Pet focused build will always perform the best. - Remove the RNG of Festering Strike and make it apply 3 wounds. It’s a long waited change that will be a huge improvement on its own.
- Give us baseline Summon Gargoyle. Something we wanted and was promised. Main offensive 3min cooldown.
- Add a buff affecting Summon Gargoyle to Army of the Damned talent. Further boosting the PET class fantasy of the DK when that talent is chosen. It could be something like 2% damage (up from 1%) per 2 runic power spend.
- Dark Transformation should be off GCD. Remove the useless aoe dmg it does.
- Army of the Dead. If this spell stays, this 8min cd thing is annoying and outdated. Our mastery and the fact - how big impact our pets have, further pushes us to use Army of the Damned as only real option in the final row talents. I know its iconic spell and its really cool, especially if you enjoy the pet focused unholy, but it needs some adjustments. Make it 6 min baseline with option to reduce it to 3 min with Aotd. (lining it up with Gargoyle) And there you got nice pet based build. While having it at 6 min cd, it can still be used at least 2 times on most of the mythic fights that come out recently. While leaving some options to play more direct dmg build.
- Blighted Ground (feel free to suggest other names ) – (new) baseline unholy passive skill. Changes Unholy’s Death&Decay to apply 1 festering wound to each new target it hit. (cap at 5 or 8 or will be too broken). This will make D&D not mandatory for single target and huge bonus for AOE. It will also help setting up a target switch (incoming wave with adds, etc.) It will ease up and promote defile /bursting sores build. Can be used to re-apply/refresh wounds from range if you see your wounds dropping and stuck away from your target. Add a new updated unholy themed spell/graphic effect.
- Improve Ebon Fever. Being on a row with 2 other AOE based talents. It should provide higher value in pure single target fights. Simple relevant damage buff can fix that. But it can also be made more interesting talent. Providing us with additional buff that helps some of our abilities. For example:
Enemies affected by Virulent Plague take 10-20% extra damage from Death Coil. OR…
Death Coil have 10-20% chance to hit twice targets affected by your Virulent Plague.
OR… add Harrowing Decay (azerite trait) baked in to it. J Something like that. - Make Soul Reaper baseline. It should have been baseline the moment it was changed in Shadowlands. It does not make sense placing an execute ability on a resource regenerating talent row. In BFA it provided 2 runes on demand. So it was a logical place for it. Now, it… simply don’t make sense. It should be baseline ability.
Add Horn of Winter on its place. Giving us back the 2 runes on demand 30 cooldown ability on that row. - Buff Harbinger of Doom. It should promote a pure single target oriented build. It does not need much. Maybe few % higher chance to proc. The Runic Corruption proc value of having extra death coils should be enough to make it a “resource regen value” talent.
This way the talent row will have 3 resource regenerating talents. One based on death coils, one on bursting wounds (Pestilent Pustules) and one that provide Runes on demand. Offering choice for different content based on the character gameplay and stats. - Buff Defile’s damage and give current Pestilence effect. Combine the two talents. 10% Chance to apply festering wound on tick. It simply needs something more to compete with Unholy Pact. Together with the Blighted Ground passive skill, this would be an insane AOE talent combined with Bursting Sores/Infected Claws.
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Deadly Strain (new) talent in the place of Pestilence – Increase the damage and aoe explosion range of Epidemic by %. Increasing the Area of Effect of Outbreak and making it work like in BFA. Applying Virulent Plague to all targets for 5 seconds after it hit.
This way we will have 3 good aoe choices for different content. Cleave with Unholy Pact, Bursting wounds spam with Defile concentrated aoe, and large spread aoe spam with Epidemic. - Give us Festermight (azerite trait) back. In form of a legendary item. It should be tuned correctly so it won’t automatically become our BIS legendary for all content. Which was the case in BFA with the Azerite traits. It should promote the busting wound build. Slightly less viable in single target, huge bonus in aoe.
- Unholy Assault should be changed back to Unholy Frenzy and its previous design. It should be put off the GCD. This alone will be enough to make it a viable choice for some content. It had great interaction with our m+ (bursting sores) build. Together with the Defile, Festermight and D&D additions… It will complete the build. The fun we had in BFA m+, we can do it again.
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Ultimate Transformation (new) Talent. In the place of Summon Gargoyle (which is now baseline).
Replaces Dark Transformation. Whenever Dark Transformation is activated – Now instead Sacrifice our Ghoul and become empowered Dark Lich Mega Knight (:D) for the duration. Increasing our runic power generation 50?% and empowering our Runic Power Spenders (DC and Epidemic) by doing 50?% more damage. With missing pet – Unholy Pact (if selected) instead of fire chains, now covers the Dark Knight in ash dealing damage to everyone around him, split between targets. Still gives 5% strength.
This ability will boost our main offensive CD- Summon Gargoyle - allowing us to empower it to a level competitive to Army of the Damned bonus it receives, by casting couple of extra death coils.
It will for sure feel weird to play without pet. Re summoning it just so we can sacrifice it again to transform our self. But why not?
Our first row of talents is the one I did not talk about because… its pretty balanced already. With this Ultimate Transformation selected, Infected Claws will become useless… which is fine . We can play Clawing Shadows or All will Serve. But I feel it would be cool to have that talent also change a bit if UT is selected. Giving our auto attacks chance to apply a wound on the target. Again promoting Our damage. (windfury viable:D) Making a build with Infected Claws, Ebon Fever, Harbinger of Doom, Unholy pact , Ultimate Transformation + Deadliest Coil Legendary that now works with Ultimate Transformation. I’d play that for sure.
Swap Unholy Pact for Deadly Strain and Frenzied Monstrosity Legendary – and we have petless AOE m+ build.
Just fun idea that will complete my attempt to create a petless build that rely on our own damage and diseases. We will still have our guardian minions from Apo,Garg,Aotd. But, now we will be the main damage dealer. Imagine a Metamorphosis type of ability… Transforming us to a Walking mountain of metal spikes n skulls n death True edge lords.
More ideas about legendary powers and improvements to our current covenant abilities can be made. But that will further make things complicated. Like I said… I’d like to have a good foundation in our base abilities, and build up from there.
So this is my idea to revamp the Unholy Death Knight Spec. We will have 3 different builds within the unholy tree. All with different main source of damage. -
- Pets – All Will Serve, Unholy Blight, Unholy Pact, Army of the Damned.
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- Bursting Wounds– Infected Claws, Bursting Sores, Pestilent Pustules, Defile, Unholy Frenzy.
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- Runic power spenders – Ebon fever, Harbinger Of Doom, Unholy pact/Deadly Strain, Ultimate transformation.
All the 3 builds will have interaction and improving our Gargoyle via either Str bonus from festermight, or more death coils, or 1% extra dmg form AOTD talent.
- Runic power spenders – Ebon fever, Harbinger Of Doom, Unholy pact/Deadly Strain, Ultimate transformation.
II. Frost
General gameplay mechanics – current state, ideas and suggestions.
- Resources - It’s a basic spec that plays way easy. In its core it’s a simple Builder – Spender spec.
It has build in bonuses that help with our Rune and Runic Power regeneration. It has a good second row of talents that help with that, depending on what build you play, you have a choice. However, I don’t really like the poor options we have when it comes to Runic Power spender abilities. - Abilities – We are missing good balance between runic power generators and spenders. Outside Breath of Sindragosa, we only have Frost Strike. And Frost strike is weak and very boring button to press.
This for me is the main problem that I want to see addressed, if nothing alse changes with the Frost DK’s. Main feedback and requests from players has been to add an AOE runic power spender and make Obliterate cleave inside D&D baseline (not only for night fae’s). - Gameplay and damage windows - The other problem for me is the design where we do damage only during our cooldown windows. And that’s very very very obvious and really annoying. Especially when we got nerfed Pillar of Frost… to last only 12 seconds and put on 1min cd). The fact our obliterate hits for 2k base…. Relying on cooldowns and procs to do 5x more damage is just bad design. For me it’s stupid our character to do 20% of our damage for 80% of the time. I may be exaggerating a bit… but that’s how it feels for me. Don’t even want to talk about Breath of SIndragosa. Its fun ability, and very rewarding when you can keep high uptimes. Depending on the raid boss design can be top build to play. But, you get one boss mechanic on you that forces you to move out of melee range for 2 seconds and its all over. You just lost bunch of your potential damage that you cant get back. You just suck it up, and go hit the target like a went noodle for 2 more mins…. -.-
Similar to what I mention with Unholy. I really want developers to see what worked in the past, what felt good gameplay wise, and just bring back some of those mechanics.
I had lots of fun in Legion playing Obliteration. Breath was fun in Nighthold because many of the fights were very nicely tuned for 2min cd classes. Rets and breath frost dks had a good time. But in Antorus, obliteration was the best for me. We had very strong Howling Blast that added great cleave/aoe. Both Rime and Km procs kept the constant dps uptime and pilar/oblit windows were simply short burst windows that boosted our dmg a bit. I had also fun in late bfa with Icecap, icy citadel and frostwhelps and frostschytes. Again a build that had good constant dps uptime. I really want to have an option to play those two builds again.
So couple of ideas how we can improve the Frost DKs.
- Fist I want to address Breath of Sindragosa (talent). I personally want to see this ability completely changed. Make it similar to Bonestorm of Blood Dks. Simple aoe breath cooldown that consumes all our runic power and does damage over time to everything in front of us. Duration of which will be based on how many Runic Power we spend when we pressed that button. Up to 20seconds for 100rp spend. Uninteruptable. You spend your RP in advance and you stop worrying about keep generating RP to keep longer breath. This is my idea for this Ability.
- Reverse Pillar of Frost nerfs. 12 seconds is now too short… and 1 min cd is too long of a time. Especially when our abilities don’t do any damage outside pillar windows. Especially when play Obliteration. Being on 1 min cd is not that bad of nerf. It lines better with our other cooldowns. I won’t mind if it stays. But I really want the 15 seconds duration back. In legion it was 20 seconds duration ….
- Either buff Obliterate to do 2 times higher physical damage by default and make Killing Machine to only make 100% crit + 30% additional frost damage. So it does benefit from our Mastery when we get a proc. Or Simple solution – Make it a FROST attack by default with KM proc providing Critical hit for 3times extra damage. This way press the button without a proc … will not feel that bad. Because right now… it does. We just hope our next obliterate will have KM proc… or it feels like a wasted 2 runes for attack that does 1-2k dmg
. - Buff Howling blast base damage. Right now it deals… the mind blowing 500 dmg… With around 1.5k strength. Buffing it it will scale way better with our other buffs and cds and it will help to have more constant dps outside our cooldown windows.
- Razorice ground (new) Passive Frost Skill. Changing our Frost dk’s Death and Decay so Obliterate cleave one additional target while inside it. Similar to the unholy special death and decay. Frost could use this change. Not available only for night fae players. Add a new frost themed graphic/effect to it.
- Buff Icy Talons to give haste instead attack speed. It should be nerfed to 2-3% per stack. 15% free haste is too much .
- Buff Frost scythe so it receives the same bonuses as Obliterate from Might of the Frozen Wastes, Rime and Obliteration. Tune it so its weaker than obliterate on single target, but always the best option on 2-3+ targets.
- Avalanche and Frozen Pulse are very boring talents. They should have additional interaction with different abilities. Change Avalanche into a talent that has a 30% chance our Frost Strike to attack 2 times. Single target focused bonus to Frost Strike. Double crit on that proc will help with Icecap builds on single target. - Change Frozen Pulse so it Pulses when we spend runic power. And make it scale-able. The more RP spend the higher damage it does. For my new Breath of Sindragosa ability, this could feel very nice. To explode for max RP.
- Make Glacial Advance baseline ability. Cost 40 Runic power. Change the effect to match Jaina’s frontal attack from ph1 in her encounter in BFA. Same attack that the current M+ frost mini boss does. Current Glacial Advance is very very bad looking. Remove the cooldown of the ability and make it our Default AOE Runic power spender. It should be beneficial to press that button on 3+ targets. And keep Frost Strike for pure single target. And D&D cleave for 2 targets.
- Add Frostwhelp Indignation as a talent in the place of Glacial Advance. It was a very cool azerite trait. Making our Pillar of Frost shoot out a mini frostwhelp that aoe’s everything infront of us. Will be a perfect spot in that row of aoe talents. Next to Gathering Storm.
- Rework Hypothermic Presence.. Lets be real - only current version of Breath can see any benefit from this ability… and having it on 45 sec cd is … useless. I think it was not even working properly … and it’s still not working. No idea. Either buff it so it actually provides benefit to Breath of Sindragosa, matching its 2m cooldown, or just rework it to something entirely new.
My idea is just to make this talent passive that provides flat bonus to our maximum Runic Power. Increasing it by 30. And maybe adding a small damage bonus to our runic power spending abilities. I just really want a build that promotes that pure single target constant damage. And potentially adding some bonus to Frost Strike’s viability. It will also synergize with the new Breath of Sindragosa. Potentially making the the duration few seconds longer when used with 130 runic power. We can also pool 120-130rp and spend it on 3x Glacial Advances for extra burst aoe. I think this will make it balanced and in a good spot between Frosthelps and Gathering Storm. - Add Icy Citadel (azerite trait) back in a form of a Legendary power. It gives flat strength bonus after Pillar of Frost ends for 10-ish seconds. Tune it (same as Festermight) so it does not automatically become bis. This trait enabled the Icecap build in late BFA. Making use of high crit and haste to overlap Pillar of Frost with the strength bonus of icy citadel, resulting a pretty fun, dynamic and exciting gameplay. Little bit spammy… but for me was fun. Also overlapping and reducing Pillar’s cd +t he frostwhelps was also very fun. So getting icy citadel will enable Icecap build again.
- Talking about Icecap , in bfa the whole build worked great with 45sec base Pillar of Frost cd. Nerfing pillar to 1min/12 sec duration directly further nerfed this build, I think with the current rune regen and haste/crit numbers – 4 seconds reduced cd per crit may not be enough to actually overlap the pillar and icy citadel buffs. So that should be adjusted. Corruption provided us with around 50% crit and 50% haste and that also was a major factor enabling the build. So there should be some adjustments to make it possible without those numbers.
- Obliteration is fine as a talent. What it needs is… again the Pillar of Frost fix. The Pillar nerf really affected all our builds negatively. If the duration of it is back at 15-20 seconds it will help a lot. The suggested changes to make stronger base Obliterate will boost this build and make it valuable alternative for all content.
- Last but not least – Might of the Frozen Wastes bonus to TWO HANDED weapons should be changed. It should provide Rune of the Fallen Crusader bonus as soon as Two Handed weapon is equipped. Allowing us to have both Runeforges - Razorice and RFC, same as Dual wield. The bonus damage to Obliterate (AND Frostscythe) Should be reduced or just removed. Those big juicy obliterate crits will still be there with the NEW fixed Obliterate. Currently we can see how much of an impact and difference in performance 2 runeforges has compared to only one. I personally gain 300dps when I sim same obliteration build using dual wield 2x 252 1hander weapons compared to 1 252 two hander with only razorice. Having that 15% strength proc is too strong. Especially now when we have more and more strength from random procs (chaos bane lol) and gear.
Those changes in my mind will provide us with 3 working builds.
-Breath of Sindragosa - Relying again on that 2min cd to activate very strong AOE ability. Gaining most benefit from our mastery that simply buff all that stacked frost damage. Build with Cold Heart, Runic attenuation, the new Frozen Pulse, the new Hypothermic Presence. - Obliteration – with the Improved Howling blast, Obliterate and talents that buff Frost Strike. It will make sure the build has consistency in DPS outside Pillar of Frost. And Pillar it self with a bit longer duration will make this build shine again. Koltira’s Favor Legendary, Inexorable Assault, Murderous Efficiency, the new Avalanche, Hypothermic Presence. Strong Single target build. Switch to Biting Cold legendary, Frostschyte and Gathering Storm. And we have a strong Obliteration AOE build. Crit/mastery build.
- Icecap – Completely relying on spaming as many as possible critical strikes to reduce Pillar’s cooldown.
Stacking high Crit and Haste + Icy citadel strength bonus. Relying on overlapping those 2 strength bonuses for high overall uptime and damage buff. Icy talons, the new Avalanche (extra chance Frost strike to crit if proc), Frostwhelp’s Indignation (shooting 3 times more often with reduced pillar cd). A working Icecap build. Switch to Frostschyte for AOE for that extra crits to further reduce the cd.
The only downside of this build for me is, waiting for first overlap of the strength bonuses to snapshot our Sindragosa’s Fury.
So this is it from me when it comes to FROST. I will again leave all the covenant stuff aside as im thinking about the core of the spec. I do like some of the abilities. Especially Abomination Limb. It has become very good core pvp ability and brings tons of utility in pve. So Ideally Id add it as a baseline ability available for all specs next expansion. But the rest of them… are nothing that we cant live without Imo.
III. Core Utility and Defensive abilities.
The two big problems many of us are used to hear about… and used to play around - Are our mobility and our physical defensive abilities. Adding Wrath Walk as a baseline ability will help with our mobility.
And on its place we can have a new talent that reduces the CD of Icebound Fortitude. Simple fix. It will help us chosing the right Defensive talent depending on the fight/setting we are in. Both in pvp, and pve.
Death Pact’s Healing absorb need to be reduced.
I may have missed something. Feel free to point that out. This whole wall of text may sound like a complete garbage. Feel free to point that out as well. I may be wrong about some numbers and values I pointed. Again… im not saying everything is perfect and im probably wrong about some things. Just trying to add an additional ideas to the alrdy large pool of ideas our community has, with hope that some things will be addressed in the near future.
Thanks for reading (if u did) all this text.
Suffer well