Wrong class design

[Nelkora-silvermoon (Nelkora)]

The design of the Death Knight class is wrong.

I believe this because the Death Knight has only one choice - “fight” !

I somehow agree with the Death Strike nerf because it makes it heal similarly in the critical situations while it heals far less when it’s used just because it’s available, but this is not the topic’s main focus.

The desing of the current Death Knight will never be balanced just becasue it can ONLY fight.

Trying to balance a class that has only one knob will always result in it being overpowered or underpowered, never balanced.

With the new expansion that will bring us closer to the Death Knight’s source of power, I strongly believe that this is the time to change the design while keeping the class fantasy. (go back to the drawing board).

Over the years the Death Knight has turned into a class builder via talents.
Every single class has more baseline skills than the Death Knight, even the Demon Hunters that are only one expansion old.

In WoW usualy a class has skills to navigate more than one path of action.

Not every single “friction” must turn into a d.i.c.k measuring contest.

More action possibilities open more knobs for balancing.

I hope that in Shadowlands the classes will stop using external systems linked to class oriented improvement paths.

These are my thoughts about the class with the story I love the most.

[Necrofenix-veknilash (Necrofenix)]

i do agree the DK talents are basicly “mandatory” in many rows, you have like 2 talent changes in each spec, most is basicly the same because there is actualy no choice

lets pick blood: raids (st) and for m+ (aoe) you will only change the the tier 1 and tier 7 (maybe even 5)

t2 - hemostasis is so strong that the other talents are overshadowed, even the cool consumption, the other is pointless

t3 - ossuary hands down beats the nerfed bulwark, tombstone is pointless

t4 - this is the big problematic row that single handly could fix a big flaw of blood, no baseline CDs, rune tap is goddam strong, 40% reduction for 4sec with 2 charges if paired back to back its 3 times better than IBF as it has “50sec” cd
problem? we NEED necropolis to not get GCD down to death from 100% to 0%
AMS talent is niche

t5 - grip of the dead is mandatory for anything with slowable adds with WW being niche for raids, tightening grasp nerf made it not worth the use

t6 - blood worms is must have for the parkour 100-0 deaths, it works good with necropolis as it slows down the dmg and worms heal up, the other 2 talents are pointless in their current state, mark of blood could be usefull if it healed more as niche pick vs dual wield fast attacking bosses

t7 - all good talents

so most of the rows already have locked up choices, either because 1 is way too strong or because the other 2 are just bad

[Necrofenix-veknilash (Necrofenix)]

what i would change for blood for example.
first and foremost, DK runes should not be affected by haste (all specs), this would remove the horrible downtimes with low haste due to gear secondary stat reduction in main gear.
haste should increase disease tick speed and other spells like blood boild CD, DnD and RW tick speed, pet speed, autoattacks, etc. this way haste still increases dmg but we “avoid” the downtimes

make blooddriker, runetap and necropolis baseline (yes, u heard me right), its not like necropolis has not been baseline this whole expantion as to “fix” blood

tier 1 resource row - same as now, blooddrinker goes baseline and is replaced with the old talent DnD gave 1 RP per second while the DK was standing on it (after 2 years i still instinctively stand on my DnD without need)
the other 2 are ok, 1 generates RP in aoe scenarions and runestrike gives runes (maybe rebalance it)

t2 - buff DnD dmg, slightly buff comsumption, make hemostasis flat 10% per blood boil independent of number of targets
-> choices, go full aoe dmg with DnD or aoe dmg with some healing or singletarget buff dmg/healing on DS

t3 boneshield talent rpw - buff bulwark back to 2% per bone so it competes with ossuary, tombstone remove the bones consumption and just make it give 4RP and 4% max hp shield depending on bonestacks when used without comsuming them
-> gives choices for bigger HP pool, higher number of DS or and extra CD if needed

t4 - mostly can remain like this except make tightning graps reduce graps CD by 1min again

t5 niche utility - will of necro and runetap go baseline (DS is nerfed by making hemostasis weaker on t2 so these 2 should be fine)
-first talent increases IBF CD to 6min but also increases the dmg reduction to 45%, make it a better panic button
-second talent buff to AMS as is maybe rebalance to make it more pickable
-add lichborn but instead of 30% dmg reduction make it 10% so it does not became a super IBF, this should be mainly for niche CC imunity root,snare,fear,etc and not for dmg reduction

t6 - remove voracious and mark of blood (they bad)
-bring back spectral deflection (when DK take dmg more than 25% of max HP consumes 1 boneshield and reduces the extra dmg that goes above the 25% by 20%) for small mitigation versus big hits
-bloodworms remain unchanged still good
-vampiric fangs, increases vampiric blood effect from 30% to 40%

t7 - can remain like this

[Bicepspump-kazzak]

DK runes should not be affected by haste (all specs)

This would create lots of downtime at higher haste values since your GCD scales with haste. Downtime generally does not decrease with haste in the game currently. Higher APM but still same % of time spent outside of GCDs.

[Necrofenix-veknilash (Necrofenix)]

that is correct

what i meant was with a fixed rune timer, lets say 8sec instead of 10s, they could balance the number if runes used without being starved with low haste while overflowed at higher haste
given the rune regen is fixed so would RP generation be stable, wounds giving bonus RP would be more desirable, geting bonus from runic empowerment and runic corruption would impact more, even runestrike runes would feel more apealing

its the starvation when u have low haste that bothers me alot, it makes all 3 specs feel clunky

[Bicepspump-kazzak]

I think it’s crucial that the generation rate scales with haste. Total resource regen wouldn’t otherwise scales.

I think it’s a fair point to discuss the base rune timer and how it impacts the gameplay. I think it’s a very complicated issue since you don’t want to cap on resources either. It’s a fine balance that feels right at the moment imo.

I think the starvation you’re talking about at lower haste levels is simply a reduced APM, not actual downtime. I do think it’s fair to argue that the APM at low haste should be higher though, to make the spec feel more active at that point.