Just a quarterly reminder that UH DK has way too many dead/unviable talents.
Just thought since they seem to be so desperate in gaining some subs back and are actually implementing things that we complained about since the Alpha, maybe they’ll do something about UH DKs.
Ebon Fever, Harbinger Of Doom, Pestilence, Defile, Summon Gargoyle… Still find it very odd that not a single talent modifies Festering Strike in any kind of way.
It’s not that they lack creativity or anything, Torghast has proven otherwise. Just don’t get what’s stopping them.
Not only does Unholy have many dead talents but frost also has a lot of dead talents. They really need to have a deep look at that class. And I doubt they will actually do this.
I am pretty sure DK will garbonzo for the rest of expansion
Again we come back to posts that were present at shadowlands alpha state… where we had 2k pages of feedback and suggestions. And what we got was barely 2-3% of all that. In many cases things even got worse/nerfed - for both uh and frost. I realy wish some class designer start playing death knight at some point.
Ebon fever talent : → increase 15% damage for all diseases(no matter virulent, blood or frost) and add to this talent second option about if disease make critical strike-> errupt nearby enemies
Harbinger Of Doom talent :-> add posibility to use one handed weapons and generate 1 runic power if disease make critical strike
At this stage I would advocate for complete revamp of the entire DK class but that’s probably to much of an ordeal.
I would say Frost needs either:
A: Make BoS baseline, create new talents that modify how the ability performs in different contexts and refine it accordingly.
B: Completely remove BoS, create new final talents that push you either towards Burst dps, consistent dps, aoe dps.
As for Unholy, there’s just so much fantasy to play around with between “dark knight”, “necromancer” and “plague bearer”, it could be it’s own class! I don’t understand how they classify and group talents. Take the lvl 45 row. All 3 talents are essentially aoe/multi target ones. Of course one of the 3 will be better than the rest of them thus be the only viable in all situations! Surely grouping talents with distinctive separate roles is more interesting? Talent 1 improves single target, talent 2 improves aoe and talent 3 provides some great utility. I mean I get that they don’t always have to be as clear cut, it could be between burst aoe, consistent aoe and functional aoe (thinking something that would remedy an ever kiting tank that makes it impossible to set up correctly for example).
Meh BoS should stay a talent, it’s one of the coolest ones in the game.
Frost main issue is its feelbad rotation comprised mostly of filler abilities and proc fishing. It probably needs good baseline rp spenders (an aoe one, and a better FS), and talents that interact a little better with them. One cool idea could be having an additional effect on icecap (maybe while nerfing a little the cdr on pillar) that makes rp spenders dump all the rp and deal additional hits or increased dmg per rp spent past the base cost. Another one could be removing icy talons and putting back shattering strikes (as flark proposed in his video), spending razorice stacks to pump rp spenders. Also hypotermic and avalanche need to go.
Unholy is way too much of a conceptual clusterfook to even try to soundly reimagine some dead talents. Garg needs a decent buff, Pestilence is pointless until SS is capped, Defile may need a component that either increases its duration or deals a big aoe hit at the end of it(it doesn’t make sense to have an ability based on ramping that lasts way too little time), fourth row is kind of a mess (soul reaper being too good), the second row too (UB being too good). If they want this to be a pet spec, then the dead talents on these rows should be rearranged to interact better in different situations with timmy or the whole roster of pets. If they don’t have a clear idea of where the spec should go, or if they keep implementing it in an half-assed manner, chances are uh will keep being a one build do it all pump champ for the future patches too.
Sadly i think that aside from tuning we won’t be seeing any major re-design/rework till 10.x or worse, as to why, even if we knew, there would be nothing we could do about it.
Got mixed feeling about BoS but that’s why I’m advocating for making it baseline and modifying the last row of talents to affect it in interesting ways. I feel that no matter what every current expansion or stat combination do to icecap and obliteration builds, BoS still is the main feature of the spec.
100% agree on that for sure!
I feel a potential way to rearrange talents for UH in a way that’s more conducive is to give player’s the choice: Do you want to play mostly with pets or with your own abilities? Have a bunch of talents that strengthen all them zombies / allow you summon more, and the rest of them change how the core abilities work. There isn’t a single talent that interacts with festering strike, which I find very odd considering it’s part of the main rotation. No talents that interact with the effect of festering wound, besides basic numerical chances of proccing it.
It kinda is, as the stacked cleave niche where the spec excels is all based around that talent. They tried to even it out with the DD oblit cleave, but that build hasn’t proven much worth yet, mostly cause of prelaunch tuning. All things considered we are talking only about pve, in pvp BoS is bad at its core (too hard to setup and too easy to counter), and having it baseline would mean having a useless 2 minute. Pvp being somehow tied to pve only brings in pointless complexity imho, it’s a legacy concept that is dragging class desing down, let alone the whole game.
Play style and player power are way too tied up together, this potential would certainly end up in a jack of all trades - master of none scenario, which the spec isn’t too far from already.
Not going to lie, I completely forgot about it pvp wise, indeed it’s not a great ability to have there! Maybe that’s where interesting talents could still come in place though? Just 3 examples off the top of my head:
A: Makes BoS cost less RP, increases dps on main target but does significantly less damage to other targets (more of a ST raid adaptation)
B: BoS doesn’t consume RP but has a set duration of X seconds (making it a lot more of a functional burst useful for generic open world content and pvp) [the thinking here is you sacrifice some of its maximal output but it’s a lot more reliable and mobile.]
C: BoS leaves some sort of nasty debuff on all the targets it hits and interacts is some creative way with remorseless winter (the go to multi target variation)
Well that’s a wider issue really isn’t it? Pvp unfortunately always seem like a bit of an afterthought in this game in general!