World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

hey folks! similar to the rogue thread, it felt like death knights would appreciate the gift of a follow-up post to last week’s update with a look at some of the changes that will be coming in January, as a winter veil present to make up for not seeing iteration & bug fixes on the PTR this week.

for both of the bonuses we’re showing today, try to center feedback around your impressions of them on a feel-level; both the Unholy set and Frost’s 2-piece have generated a lot of discussion on that angle over their actual power level, so these iterations seek to address those concerns while capturing the original goals of the sets.

Unholy:

• 2-piece Bonus: Every 5 Scourge Strikes / Clawing Shadows casts Soul Reaper on your target and summons a Ghoul for 12 seconds.
• 4-piece Bonus: Soul Reaper causes your pet to deal 20% increased damage. If Soul Reaper’s secondary effect triggered, all of your pets gain 20% increased damage instead.

while we think there’s still value and excitement in a bonus that interacts with Soul Reaper & pushes Unholy’s more single-target/execute niche (as compared to Frost), it was clear that having an entire bonus inactive unless in execute was a bridge too far and could lead to some major tuning issues. this set seeks to retain that goal while also emphasizing the ‘undead commander’ fantasy of Unholy that the original promised.

before anyone asks, yes all pets means apoc ghoul, garg, aotd, you name it. go crazy.

for Frost, this bonus is a little more experimental, so really curious to see what people think of it - again, numbers may be too high/low, don’t make me tap the sign

Frost:

• 2-piece Bonus: Gaining a Rune has a 15% chance to grant Killing Machine. Consuming Killing Machine increases your Strength by 2% for 6 seconds.

the above bonus seeks to accomplish the previous one’s goal of ‘generate more KM procs for the 4-piece’ but in a way that feels a little more in your hands. Gaining a Rune here means both as part of talents and passives like Murderous Efficiency and Runic Empowerment, but also whenever a Rune refreshes naturally. The strength kicker also stacks, so hitting multiple KM’s within a moderate duration via fishing for 2p procs or talents like Obliteration gain a lot of value here as well.

It’s worth noting for the vocal group of players who only want to play Breath of Sindragosa, that those builds generate a lot of extra Runes as well which should hopefully still make it a viable option.

as for blood players - there’s nothing to share at the moment, other than there’s still a desire to find a middle ground for solo-tanking and multi-target tanking that feels good for the bonus, though more data and feedback on a non-bugged version is necessary before figuring out where to take it.

thanks for being patient, and we’ll see you all again in January!

Good afternoon, Illidari brethren!
We’ve been reading your feedback and appreciate all of the testing you’ve put into exploring your set bonuses on the PTR. Some elements of the bonuses we’re looking to tweak:

• Havoc 4P - We’ve heard your feedback that you would like more information about when your empowered Blade Dance will arrive, as you want to plan around that gameplay. We’re looking to add a means of understanding when your blade dance is empowered in a future build so that you’ll have more information about when your big moment is approaching.
• Vengeance 4P - Testers have been doing some very exciting things with this bonus, but it’s proving too strong in conjunction with other modifications to Immolation Aura and Soul Fragments like Growing Inferno and Soul Furnace. We’re considering a couple different options in a future build to address that problem: 1) reducing the Immolation Aura uptime granted when consuming a Fragment (flatly lowering the overall power) or 2) changing the bonus to instead reduce the remaining cooldown of Immolation Aura, Fel Devastation, and Fiery Brand upon Fragment consumption, offering you more agency about when you choose to devastate your foes.

a little pre-holiday gift for y’all! in the last big post here, we talked about how Outlaw’s 4-piece and Assassination’s 2-piece would be undergoing some iteration - and with no new builds until January, it felt like rogues might like a look at upcoming changes that will be implemented and waiting for you when it comes time to log in:

(disclaimer that these numbers may change before january, etc etc)

Assassination

• 2-Piece Bonus: Shiv causes enemies within 15 yrds to take 100% increased damage from your Poisons and Bleeds for 9 seconds.

further changed from Friday’s post, the 2-piece now includes Poisons as well as changes from a Critical Strike bonus to Increased Damage, meaning that Crit still works on top of this as a synergistic stat rather than causing it to lose value for rogues. to clarify, the debuff is added to enemies at the time of using Shiv, so running away from targets after you’ve done this doesn’t cause them to lose the debuff or anything.

4-piece is unchanged, with the exception of the Deadly Poison bugfix mentioned just a bit further up!

Outlaw:

• 4-Piece Bonus: Pistol Shot has a 50% chance to load a Hidden Bullet from your sleeves, up to 6 times. After loading 6 bullets, your next Pistol Shot also fires Between The Eyes as though 6 combo points were spent.

goals here are to avoid some awkwardness with the previous iteration, such as 1) the cooldown refresh often coming near when BTE was cooling down anyways, and 2) refreshing the cooldown still required the rogue to build up combo points to use. additionally, these ‘free’ BTE’s will still count as finishers for the purposes of talents like Alacrity, but also Outlaw passives like Ruthlessness and Restless Blades, which hopefully makes the Tier Set much smoother to play than previously.

this change is accompanied by a few other fixes - first, a nerf to the 2-piece - a bug was found where the chance to proc was actually 62.5% instead of 25% - this likely means it’ll go from being overpowered to in need of a slight numbers buff.

second, free Pistol Shots from the 2-piece bonus won’t consume or benefit from Opportunity, the Greenskin’s Wickers legendary effect, or the above 4-piece - all of those will only work on Pistol Shots you yourself cast, which should give players more control over their burst windows and overall game flow, which was a major point of feedback from the set’s original implementation.

Greenskin’s Wickers benefits especially from this, as now you can set up Between The Eyes → 300% Pistol Shot w/ 6 bullets → 4-piece instantly casts a 6-point Between the Eyes → 300% Pistol Shot combos with proper planning and execution.

thanks for being patient! happy to clarify if parts of this post were unclear, but otherwise look forward to the next meaningful updates or info to come in January - see you then!