Death Knights haven’t had some love for a very long time and it’s evident. At this point in time, the stars have aligned (fundamental class issues, tuning + raid not requiring a grip) and one of our biggest weaknesses are showing. DK is not seeing play in RFW (outside of Stix running Blood DK). So let’s discuss, how did this happen?
The Raid Buff Dilemma – To grip or not to grip?
Ever since we saw the return of raid buffs at the start of BFA, Blizzard has been making sure that Raid and Mythic+ comps have some variety, not only based on tuning, but by giving classes unique utility and raid buffs. This has helped a lot of classes stand out. Overall, a good addition to the game.
Death grip – a blessing or a curse? Death grip likely is one of the most iconic class abilities, and it has been a staple for the Death Knight, no other classes can really do it like we do. It is so unique in fact, that there have been bunch of raid fights that have been designed around Death Grip. The largest outlier that comes to my mind is Aggramar in Antorus.
Death grip is so unique in fact, that it has been classified as a raid buff, according to interviews with developers, and the fact that DK currently is the only class without a raid buff. How does that help Death Knights? I would argue it actively hurts the class. In the great majority of cases, it has no use, yet it is holding us back from having a raid buff. I imagine it’s also difficult for fight designers, as they have to actively create fights having death grip in mind, and likely from time to time making fights around requiring Death Grip, so Death Knights could have their precious “raid buff”.
The time has come and the greedy goblins have finally exposed one of our biggest issues. When the class hasn’t been tuned well enough and you don’t require grips, why would you ever need a DK? The simple answer is – you don’t. The only time you bring a Death Knight when grip is not required is when they’re tuned high enough. Is that healthy for the game? I would argue not. I don’t want to be sitting and hoping that every patch we’re tuned good, so on the high end, the class can be played. Personally, not a big fan of being a grip bot as well, but that’s just my own personal pet peeve.
Utility disparity – why?
It is not secret that some specs have it better than others. As it stands right now, Blood has better utility, straight up. AMZ is stronger, grip cooldown is shorter and on top of it, they also have a mass grip. If you ever need this utility in raid, why would you even consider bringing something that’s not a blood dk? You wouldn’t. Only time you will see unholy or frost is when their damage is outstanding and fit the damage patterns.
Enough about raid buffs and utility – let’s get into the specs themselves. I will try and discuss all 3 specs to the best of my personal experience and knowledge.
Unholy
Wounds were introduced in Legion, a cool new mechanic, alongside many other large class reworks. Change is always welcome, otherwise the game would get too stale. However, I feel like they have overstayed their welcome. The biggest issue with wounds, for me personally, is how clunky they feel. When most of the time they either feel extremely important for setup or you don’t think about them at all. On single target you almost never think of wounds, other than making sure you have wounds before you use apocalypse. On the other hand, on aoe you want as many wounds as possible, all the time, nonstop.
2 new additions at the start of The War Within. Did they fix the wounds issue?
-
Raise Abomination, a cool new cooldown, replacing army. A welcome change, where during abomination window you almost never think about wounds, and just spam your other abilities. It makes pressing Festering Strike not necessary while Abomination is up. He’s a bit too slow, but we sometimes need to take the good with the bad.
-
Festering Scythe. While Festering Strike is likely in the number one spot for how bad it feels pressing the button, Festering Scythe is quite the opposite. It feels incredible, you gather 20 stacks by popping your wounds, and bam, you AoE slash and all the targets have wounds, where you keep cycling between scythes, granting you near unlimited supply of wounds on larger packs.
Where does this bring us? We got 2 new tools that make you think less about wound management. They both feel amazing, why? The answer is simple – you need to think less about wound management. So why should the wounds be even there, when it feels better not to think about them?
If you were to describe unholy, what would you say is its niche? What makes it unique? Personally, I would say that’s mass aoe damage. Luckily, this season, we’re exactly that. We’re a lean mean aoe machine, we nuke large packs like no other and it feels incredible, considering that this season we got a bunch of dungeons where large pulls are incentivized. However, in the raid, you won’t get to play your shiny aoe build, sorry.
What about the other areas? I would say unholy is downright awful. The only way we gain any meaningful single target, is by sacrificing a lot of aoe and cleave damage. Even when we sacrifice all our aoe damage, I’d argue we’re still below average on single target. We can’t properly target swap, because to do damage we have gazillions of different interactions that need to work together so we would do damage, as well as hoping that little Timmy (our pet) and the horsie gang listen to us, where in most cases they don’t, they just do their own thing and maybe sometimes little Timmy is responsive and on time to save the day, while horsies are busy ganging up on critters somewhere in the corner of the room, maybe they’re going for an achievement, who knows.
Unholy stats. Simply put, you never want to see crit on unholy. We love Haste Mastery, if we could have every single piece with haste mastery, we would do that. Unfortunately, tier pieces have different stats, so 0 crit 0 vers dream can’t live. Even when we enter diminishing, we still want only haste and mastery. As our stats naturally are growing throughout the expansion, versatility I imagine will gain some value, while crit remains to be a dead stat. This needs to change. Itemization has become silly, where you’re willing to drop bunch of item levels on pieces, simply if it has crit on it.
Frost
I will start by saying that I have not played a lot of frost lately, while it was my favorite spec in the past for the longest time. I will list my personal issues with the spec and why I’m not playing it, rather than stating objective facts.
The issue of balance between single target and cleave. As frost is right now, especially with breath, great majority of your single target abilities also cleave. It is very hard to balance between you having solid single target without making you a monster in cleave scenarios. I don’t think that’s too healthy for a spec, especially when you don’t have much options to stray away from cleave while focusing a lot more on single target damage.
Breath has been around for a very long time, and most of the time, it has been what frost dk plays. It is getting very stale and boring, especially how almost always it’s the same thing. Stick on targets as much as you can, spam 1 button, that’s it. As well as I can imagine it’s very frustrating to the player base how punishing the breath playstyle is. I feel like it has to change, or at least how you play breath has to change. Change sometimes is healthy.
Damage variance. I know that for riders, that is not that much of an issue, but for Deathbringer the damage variance is simply not healthy. It feels very bad how the total damage output sometimes is entirely out of your control, even when you play perfectly. If I felt like gambling, I would go to the casino.
Blood
I have only 1 major issue with blood. You’re either an immortal god, or you’re a bug to be squashed. Likely the tank spec with the highest skill expression. In most cases, in raid it’s fairly balanced and a very fun spec to play. However, in mythic+ it feels unhealthy. In seasons where you’re an immortal god, it feels incredible. You don’t need a healer, you’re just death striking your way to victory while pulling half the dungeon. On the contrary, when you’re not an immortal god, every pack hurts and you simply hit a wall where you’re getting oneshot, while other tanks can take those hits and live.
Conclusion - please help
Death Knights are suffering. We don’t have a raid buff, we’re undertuned and all of the specs have massive flaws, while our niche’s don’t make up for them.
I have been feeling very pessimistic about the class overall. We have had very little love, especially during The War Within expansion. While other classes are getting multiple reworks during a single season, we are not even seeing band-aid fixes. It never feels good to be forgotten about. This is my first time posting on the forums, while I have played the game since The Burning Crusade, that’s how pessimistic I feel about the class and its future.
Edit - grammar.
).