For DK a primary function across all 3 specs has always been the ability to recover some damage taken in last few seconds. In PvP this just doesn’t work.
A paladin took 300/500k hp off me in last 5 seconds and still only healing for 9%.
Spammed it 3 times with a dc and it didn’t change the number each time, this would also Be over the 5 seconds so in PvP at least I can’t see the multiplier reliably kicking in on damage taken?
Deathstrike basically sucks for recovery right now and with no other reliable Heath recovery we need this sorting especially as melee.
I don’t want to be immortal but I would like to be able to reliably survive some burst and be able to return some damage and not flop
Yeah, Blizzard really did Death Strike dirty. Even with the new PvP Talent, Bloodforged Armor, it sucks having to give up an essential PvP Talent for it. Due to how little freedom DKs have regarding their PvP Talent choices.
Death Strike’s healing is an utter joke and with MS + dampening in SS, it is not unusual for it to heal only 30k. If Blizzard is so determined on making the healing insignificant, at least they could make Bloodforged Armor baseline at a slightly reduced effectiveness and make it reduce magic damage too, considering how gutted our magic defense has become with the nerf of AMS and removal of Spellwarden.
“Death Strike reduces all Physical and Magical damage taken by 15% for 3 sec.”
The main issue from the other side of the coin is; if you nuke a DK and all that player needs to do is press a Death Strike to counter your whole setup - it is really un-fun. As Death Strike is just a basic ability, not a CD.
Any buffs to Death Strike would possibly cause DKs to become immortal again in PvP. As such if this truly is a problem, maybe argue for a CD that empower your next Death Strike healing by 200% for 5 sec, or whatever number that would be ‘balanced’, on a 1.5-2min CD.
It takes ≈2 Rune spender abilities in order to generate enough Runic Power to use Death Strike. That is 3 globals or 4,5 seconds for a 30-40k heal. Of course DKs shouldn’t be immortal, but surely there is a world where Death Strike feels good and impactful to press, without making a DK immortal. At the same time, DKs can’t Death Strike during stuns/disarms or when the enemy dodges/parries (Die by the Sword, Evasion), so even if the heal was broken, which it is very far from with the current 30k, there would still be counterplay. A least DKs have to press and invest something in order to heal, unlike DHs, Fury etc. that just tops their health bar through passive healing / leech.
Even at their best at the start of DF s1 DKs were far from immortal.
You can’t really spam Death Strike and there is plenty of counterplay. (basically what Mellion already said)
Regarding your suggestion to give DK an ability to empower Death Strike. Not every basic ability in the game should need a CD or ‘empowerment’ to make its button worth pressing. That’s bad game design, in my opinion. 45 runic power already is a highly enough cost to justify a strong effect.