We want change

Classes Death Knight
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When will we see a reimagination of what Death Knights are? It’s apparent Death Knights currently is the least liked class by Blizzard given the themes of the class are explored through other mediums in the game. Also with the state of the Death Knight class feeling like such a unrewarding class with very little to bring to the table compared to alot of other classes why not just redo the whole class? Surely when the class was first designed back in Wrath of the Lich king today’s mess of a class isn’t what the Dev team had envisioned would be the future of the class? The runesystem feels clunky and outdated, the cooldown dependency is beyond silly and the lackluster azerite traits compared to other classes feels like you’re spitting on us.

I thought a Death Knight would represent damnation? A ruthless being with no regard to the living? Going against the natural order? Harness souls of the dead as tools to further their own goals? Well atleast we have one relevant unholy death knight lore wise in-game, oh wait that’s Sylvanas!
The playable Death Knight class was before joining the Alliance/Horde a champion in the Lich King’s army - The Scourge. So why are not the themes of the Scourge flowing through the Death Knight? Why haven’t the Death Knights tried understanding their Undeath more like the Forsaken? Are they happy using the tools given to them from their former slavemaster? Why are Death Knights always playing second fiddle in the Undeath theme? Just look at the state of things:

-Val’kyr are now commanded by Sylvanas.

-The apothecary are the experts in blight and plague, why else would they always blight their enemies? When was the last time we heard of any plague related news from the Death Knights? I don’t really care much about this one though, since in my opinion a Death Knight should be about the unholy nature about undeath. Not the rotting dangers of corpses sure I can understand why it has a such a pivotal role to explain undeath but I thought that the Death Knights didn’t rot nor decay as the forsaken?

-Bwonsamdi and Helya are awkward entities from a Death Knight’s point of view, I mean if Bwonsamdi hates Sylvanas for raising undead surely a DK would be a atleast a little bit hated by the guy aswell. Also I thought Death Knights used to be the damned champions of the Lich King twisted and bent to his will do his bidding? And since both Helya and Bwonsamdi are both in the “Damned souls”-market then where the hell are the damned souls of the DKs coming from? We are neither Vrykul and just a small portion of the Death Knights are troll so what medium do the rest of the souls come from? This could be a good base for a rework (is it really a rework? I mean the Death Knight fantasy is really weak) exploring the theme of what makes Death Knights death incarnate. Are we Heralds of the Shadowlands or is there something else sinister lurking in the afterlive we draw our powers from?

-The holy Light was for smiting undead, then it was to smite Demons and now finally it’s not Holy Light but just Light to battle the void. This kinda show how irrelevant the unholy undeath has become that once was there to corrupt the light. Turning Paladins into Death Knights, making newly risen dead kill their old loved ones and putting the chains of neverending torment of undeath on their fallen enemies.

-Tauren, The Kalu’ak and Shamans commune with spirits to make sure their old loved ones are put to rest in the afterlife. Also Ner’zhul used the bones from Gul’dan to open up portals on Draenor and the Death Knights made a magical shield out of bones, nothing more nothing less.

-Blood magic. Not really sure Death Knight really feels like they are using blood magic right now if you compare them to the blood trolls of nazmir or the bleeding hollow clan from draenor. They literally do unholy rituals drawing power from blood whilst the Blood Death Knights protects themselves with boneshields…

-Death Knights are the most lazy necromancers ever. All they do is raise people into undead with no thought. The Lich King harnessed the spirits of the dead and gained wisdom and power from those unlucky to be chained to him in their afterlife. Sure those spirits then helped the players in his demise but isn’t that kind of theme of necromancers? There are a few quests are there out there where we kill a necromancer who harness the spirits of the dead and then those spirits turn against their former captor.

-Gargoyles, what happened to them? Why are such a mystery still? Also why are they even aligned with the current death knights?

I also can’t understand the specialization Trees available to Death Knights either:

				            Unholy

The current gameplay as Unholy is boring as hell, you pop a 8 min cooldown to summon ghouls then you empower your ghoul into building up a few wounds then you pop Apocalypse to summon more ghouls and then you’re done. It’s such a passive playstyle, keep dot on, empower ghoul, run out of runes and runic power then wait 3 seconds until you can press something and wait for Apocalypse.

-Ghouls the lowest rank of the Scourge, mindless cannon fodder thrown at the enemy with no regard for what the outcome, they are also often free to mindlessly just roam about and that is our main damage focus? The class fantasy is contradictory with this one. Why would a commander in the scourge army only have ghouls at their disposal?

-Festering Wound, the most mindnumbing mechanic ever introduced and still to this day makes no sense. A festering wound is something that will literally kill you if left untreated in the real world is instead working somewhat like a blister? It “bursts” open… Like a blister would. It doesn’t begin to rot nor spread fever… but it bursts…?!!

-Virulent Plague, a DoT ability that sometimes deals bonus damage. I bet an apothecary from the Forsaken have a more potent plague than us in their arsenal.

-Death Coil+Death and Decay actually makes perfect sense in my opinion, would like to see more spells and abilities under this theme. Abilities drawn from the energies of death and unnatural decay and not just decay, all things decay in the end but like the idea of forced decay. The Lich King used darkness based attacks, not in the sense of the void but just cold unrelenting darkness one might find in the afterlife but hey atleast there is Deathcoil.

Would make alot more sense that unholy was about corrupting and twisting things making natural things unnatural? Also why are we not drawing powers from the spirits of the dead? Death Knights traveled to the Shadowlands to gain a mighty steed to ride into combat and also I thought the Lich King gained dominion over the shadowlands with the help of Val’Kyrs so why aren’t the Death Knight class more intertwined with this place? Surely the shadowlands would be a great source of power for Death Knights and it wouldn’t be a coincidence the darkness that corrupted Arthas was to be found in that realm. Especially since Death Knights doesn’t seem to be related to Bwonsamdi nor Helya.

				           Blood

As previously stated what’s wrong with Death Knights, it doesn’t really feel like they are utilizing blood magic to empower themselves. Isn’t blood magic a form of torured life magic? Wouldn’t this specialization make more sense to be a dual wield damage dealing specialization moreso than Frost? You use your own and your opponents blood to inflict more pain and suffering and empower yourself but no in the current game it’s used to do what exactly? Deathstrike for Deathshields and Marrowrend to gain Boneshields, I’m sensing another theme than blood magic with those spells to be honest.
The spec plays out very wierd if you compare it to other tank specializations: You want to use your major healing ability wich your spec is based around to either DPS when you’re taking insignificant damage or save it for when you have taken alot of dmg in the span of a few seconds.

				          Frost

You take one pinch of Disney’s Frozen and then add two scoops of Dragonborne from Skyrim and you have frost Death Knights. Why is the focus so much about frostwyrms for this specialization? I like the frostwyrms as much as the next guy but weren’t they just a tool for the Scourge? Why not explore the theme about how Frost magic came to be one of the schools Death Knights use, like how the Lich King learned to harness the power of the cold prison of the frozen throne and the lack of warmth from the afterlife.

Like I don’t really like how this specialization plays right now, I hate Breath of Sindragosa and I hate how cooldown based the damage rotation is.
-Breath of Sindrosa 2 min cooldown.
-Frostwyrm’s Fury 3 min cooldown.
-Pillar of Frost 45 second cooldown.
-Remorseless Winter 20 second cooldown.
-Cold Heart+Icy Veins 40 second cooldown.
Like what in the frozen plains of Icecrown? What happened here? How is this travesty even designed? You add those cooldowns ontop of a runesystem that is based on what? A COOLDOWN.

I think alot of people may not agree with me or my thoughts but I think the majority of people playing Death Knights wants a promise of Change. Why are we the only class being overlooked? We are always the victims of lazy tweaks instead of reworks. Just look at Rogues who got to be pirates or Demon hunters having the most boring playstyle upon their release and it took what, 2 patches for you to rework how they should be played. You introduced Breath of Sindragosa years ago and now you don’t like it, the playerbase doesn’t particulary enjoy it either and then I question myself why is it still functioning the same way? Also why are you clinging on to the “class fantasy” about Death Knights having 0 mobility and then you design other classes to have alot of mobility and you do raid encounters based on the mobility of said classes. Update the runesystem or scrap it and make a new system.

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I’m already bored and confused

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How so? The current class fantasy of the Death Knight are what, a vampiric undead that fights with bones and sure there are alot bone themes and very few blood themes in the Scourge but looking back at the story of the Death Knights back in WC3 how many times did Arthas or the scourge use blood as a medium of attack?

Then there is the Unholy spec, wich in short is just a rabid ghoul or to some extent an abonimation in command of other rabid ghouls wich is… kinda disappointing in my opinion atleast. Why would the Scourge ever have need of a such an entity when those roles are already fufilled? The liches spread the plague, the ghouls further spread it and killed whatever they came across and then they brought back all the “materials” to make abonimations to bolster their armies further… So why would they need of the same tools but under a different branding?

Frost I’m pretty okay with just don’t really enjoy how it is played. In a raiding environment bringing a Frost Death Knight is at the moment giving yourself a handicap. Why bring a class that is based on short bursts of mediocre damage that can’t do any mechanics during those bursts or that class won’t be able to do any damage whatsoever when you can bring something that actually can do mechanics whilst doing greater damage?

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because it’s just another one of those DK complain posts that’s loosely sewn together with arguments that hardly have anything to do with eachother, translated into a ginormous wall of text that would bore the life out of a corpse

So what’s actually bothering you, the theme and class design and the background lore that don’t match? Or the perfomance in raids and the mechanics they use?
Either way, I’ve seen it all before.

DK’s are the Lich King’s chosen champions, created in his own image acting as enforcers of the scourge. Icy bringers of death, draining the life of their enemies t sustain their own and commanders of the undead and plague. I think it’s great design, very well translated into different speccs.

You’re just nitpicking. With the same logic, you can find ‘flaws’ in every class and every specc

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Dude, you just wasted your own time for nothing. 1st of all Blizz devs dont read EU servers, thats a fact. 2nd thing is we will never get huge reworks of any classes, because its a lottery, class can become strong af or brokenly weak, its Blizzard we talking about here…and originality and fun…Blizzard forgot this two words long ago.

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How is it loosely sewn together? Like what place in WoW are Death Knights supposed to have right now in the current state of the game? We’re not related to Val’kyrs anymore and such we have no relation with the Shadowlands, we’re not the ones spreading the plague, we’re also not the ones raising undead - That role went to the forsaken.

There are more examples above but I don’t really feel like repeating myself so I won’t.

Great points really but I can’t see this being reflected in the gameplay for Death Knights at the moment. Obviously we’re not in cahoots with the Scourge as much albeit a little bit with the new Lich King.

If you go back to Naxxramas and run through the Military Quarter and compare the Death Knights in there to the playable class there’s a obvious disconnect. The only person in there who’s based on the Plague-theme is that guy in the four horsemen that coincidentally one of the Horsemen fights using the light. The Lich King never fought using the plague, he was the one controlling the Undead. The liches and the other undead was the ones spreading the plague (also the Cult of the Damned).

The theme of Naxxramas as far I can discern is it’s a beginning of a full on invasion, the undead are preparing for War against the living. All ranks of the undead have their own roles to fulfill in the war to come.

The nerubians grows their brood and bring forth new poisons that will be used with the help of the few undead there helping them, we’re led to believe that the Lich King “handpicked” the grandwidow because of her past experiences with biology.

The Construct quarters are filled with abonimations, body parts gathered by the undead and brought back to birth new horrors that goes against the natural. We also know the same practice in a smaller scale is going on with the Forsaken and other factions aswell.

The Plague quarter made well… the plague. They birthed new monsters born of dark magic from the necromancers aswell as the essence of death from the plague. True we could take from this that the Death Knights learnt from the necromancers how to wield the plague as a weapon against the living but not since Naxxramas have we seen any necromancers or the Death Knights further expand on the existing plague, it have always been the Forsaken or a Forsaken gone rogue and if Death Knights are supposed to be so heavily intertwined with the Plague then why aren’t there any Death Knights being spawned from it? It have always been Paladins or Warriors being raised into undeath by the Lich King.

and lastly we have the Military Quarter, a place full of warriors risen into damnation and Death Knights being properly trained in the art of inflicing as much pain and suffering onto their opponents. We even see a Necromancer fighting alongside Death Knight initiates and suchs using the spirits of the damned to rise new undead.

Take a ghoul, brush his hair and put on some shiny armor on it and you have a unholy death knight, disease ridden so you apply festering wounds and make a stinky stink. It would make more sense to give Unholy a frontal breathe (or in this case Spewing rotting bile) mechanic than Frost so they resemble a rotting ghoul/abonimation/just a random dead guy more but I hope to god they never do, since it’s such a bad mechanic to be dependant on in today’s raid environment.

Also looking at the Lich King, he never drew power from the plague? It was merely a tool for him to spread death quicker with the help of others just because it was a effective way to kill as many people as possible thus bolstering his army quicker. He was all about the darkness of damnation, a tortured soul of the undeath and a sprinkle of frost based powers wich we can conclude was because of how Ner’Zhul was encased in the mystical ice of the frozen throne (like how you eat chips and then you’re granted the power of grease).

I know this is just another wall of text you won’t read but I personally feel like it’s a shame how the Death Knights have been treated thus far in all capacities of the game that I myself has consumed.

True but what other tools do we have to get the ball rolling for change? I’m not a person in a great position to be able to push the envelope, I’m just a consumer and one of the ways I can voice my concern are through the official forums.

I’m not advocating for “buff Y nerf X”, what I want is a total redesign of the class. I really like the class and have mained it on occasion through the span of a few expansions but since Blizzard aren’t loyal to the class then why should I be? The abilities the class have right now is pretty much the same as back in Cataclysm although it is a bit washed out and that was 9 years ago.

edit: What we also see alot with anything related to death and the Lich King: Shades and evil spirits. Wouldn’t that be a good tool to wield as someone who’s the embodiment of death?

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Im still hoping they will do a complete rework for the next expansion, make Frost like an Arms warrior, Blood stay as a tank and Unholy as a faster class with less pets and more dots.

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Yeah that’s a change in the right direction in my opinion aswell. I would really like Unholy to be leaning towards being more… Unholy. Make us into a dark figure wielding mysterious powers from the afterlive, not a stinky boi with a stinky boi pet.

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for me unh best iteration was still legion, you had abomination for a second grip and aoe, u had a badass valkyr nuking stuff, your disposable ghouls actualy made a diference with the debuff effects, leggendary shoulders should be made baseline so there are more interaction between DT and all ur summons.

blood i like it a lot as it is. the current mechanic of DS healing more the more dmg u take is great

frost is very meh, honestly is a love/hate created by devs trying to re-invent the wheel every expantion messing up talents just for the sake of justifying their payment.

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i would even throw away army of the dead which is the current doom on unh and why it wont buffed more, and return the summon undead renamed “call the dead”

call the dead would summon specific pets for X seconds on a 2min cd:
-blood a gluth model dog that would aoe pulse dmg and debuff taht reduce dmg to the DK by 20%
-frost would summon 2 skeleton mages (like the magus of the undead trait) range dmg+slow and 1 lich blasting targets, with bonus dmg to targets affected by remorseless winter
-unh would summon the old valkyr buffed with each death coil cast (making DC usefull again)

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What part in Frost makes think summoning undead!?

I like the current lore:
Frost magic warrior(frosty bruiser),
Unholy the necromancer (a master of death)
and Blood the vampire(a juggernaut).

I still can’t understand why Control Undead is the least effective on Unholy (the master of undeath).

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I would LOVE for Frost to be more like Arms. I don’t even play frost and that sounds baller.

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why would you want to be like a spec that’s pretty much always been designed around having a pocket healer to do anything?.

that is trash tier design.

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So you’re telling us the current design of frost is better off than arms?

Ice cap build = You do bad damage outside of Pillar of Frost.

Breath Of Sindragosa build - You do incredibly bad damage outside of Breath of Sindragosa+Pillar of Frost.

Frost is the worst spec I’ve ever played in the current game not only because of the meh damage but also because of the lack of fun. You spam obliteration and wait until you you get a rime proc, then you wait some more so you can use Pillar of Frost, then you wait some more for your other damage dealing abilities that does damage and then when everything is said and done you wait for your runes. They really hit the nail on being slow as a design for the Death knight with this one.

I would rather have a specialization being bad but fun than having one that is bad and boring.

If you could change everything and anything with the Frost spec, how would you want it be played?

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I didn’t said I want an exact arms copy, more like the wotlk Frost dk. Tanky ,hard hitting, slow, two hander OR dual wield user, with a little magic as a flavour. I think Wotlk frost had the best design and they just reached the lowest point now with BFA. It offered so much option. I think Legion was a great expansion overall but by making the Frost DW and the Encha Shaman and the spell prunes too they ruined it for me.

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it’s fun to me… besides arms warrior isn’t exactly the beacon of innovative combat either.

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I like UH and would play Frost if it didn’t suck. Death Grip is useful as hell in PvE and PvP and the AOE damage we can pull off is ridiculous, single target needs more spells like Apocalypse as we don’t have any other big spenders for festering wounds and seeing as we are getting a 5% dmg buff (though we also get PvP nerfs) i’d say the class is solid. The problem with UH is that it’s not a 2 button spec like Ret, Havoc, Furry, Frost DK etc. so i am not even sure if most people play it right. As far as Frost is concerned the spec is simple but fun and it for sure needs buffing. Blood seems unkillable in PvP but i haven’t played it in PvE recently and haven’t seen many Blood DKs either, Gorefiend is still incredible though.

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A 5% buff to our aura doesn’t translate into a pure 5% buff, it’s more like 3,6%.

The problem with Unholy is that we are limited to our 6 runes, we spend 5 of those in the beginning of our rotation to apply our Virulent Plague and then 4-6 wounds (depending on how lucky we are) so we can use Apocalypse and because we’re then runestarved obviously we’d want to have some back so we use Soul Reaper and then we’re playing the waiting game, applying wounds into bursting wounds and then every now and then we use our runic power depending on the situation we either use Death Coil or Epidemic.

Now in most raid encounters we also spend 3 runes for Army of the Dead (a 8 minute cooldown we’re balanced after in PvE…) before we spend those 5 runes.

Haste is our strongest stat in 99% of the times as Unholy. Why? Because of how most of our damage comes from melee hits and to gain as much access as possible to our Runes. Runes takes 10 seconds to recharge and with 25% haste it’s magically reduced to 8 seconds. That’s why as Unholy we have not a few but alot of downtime during longer fights.
Edit: Also haste increases our pet’s damage wich is why we’re using Unholy Frenzy btw.

I’ll tell you something that is even more powerful in both instances, Line of Sight. Something that all classes have access to, since all classes are free to move however they want but I do understand that sometimes there is no way to Line of Sight and Death Grip does help out alot but it’s not a mandatory utility if we’re talking group/single based content. I would argue a AoE stun would be more powerful than a Single target grip.

The problem IS that we’re a 2 button spec the majority of time. After Apocalypse + Army of the Dead + Unholy Frenzy + Dark Transformation - what buttons do you use? You’re not gonna use Festering Strike because then you’re gonna overcap on Festering Wounds so all you’re left with is Scourge Strike + Death Coil/Epidemic. Outside of our Cooldowns we use 3 abilities maybe 4 depending on how many targets and how quick they will die. Sure Retribution/Frost is probably a 2 button spec moreso than Unholy but one of the major problems in my opinion is how diverse other classes different specializations are except for Death Knights.

Because as all other types of Death Knighs - Blood lacks mobility and damage.

True it’s not innovative combat in my eyes but it’s more innovative than Frost. How does your AoE rotation differ from Singletarget as Breath spec or as Frostscythe spec? Because of Passive cleave from our Single target rotation Blizzard have run themselves up a corner, we can’t have strong Single Target damage because that would affect our Passive Cleaving too much making Frost a broken specialization. Although Frost is broken but in the opposite way right now.

Also isn’t it funny how the least adaptable talent to the least adaptable class is the best choice in the talent tree?

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most of the gameplay these days revolve around mowing down things so i suppose it’s kind of understandable that they’ve gone quite aoe heavy. i mean single target damage is pretty much only for boss fights now and that’s a rather small portion of the overall combat.

mostly though all that really would be needed is some tweaking of a few talents. not a complete overhaul.

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Downtime isn’t that bad. We only experience something like 20 seconds or 7% downtime in a 5 minute fight.