Current state of DPS Deathknights

[Deleted]

How would you rate it?

Deathknights started the expansion pretty strong with normal mythics the only serious content. After the first EN tuning patch, it seems they keep falling behind.

Did the latest buff to frost change anything in this regard?

[Deleted]

As a whole, bad. Frost manages after the buffs, but it's nothing out of the ordinary, while Unholy is just plain bad in comparison to pretty much everything else but Affliction locks, and even those have a niche.

In raids, Frost is now middle of the pack due to big damage buffs on the skills, while Unholy is pretty much rock bottom in every fight. Both specs are scaling very poorly with all secondary stats, worse than pretty much every other class, which means that soon enough, Unholy will be even worse, and Frost will drop down to the bottom quickly.

In Mythic+, Frost still fends off pretty well, having good AoE damage, decent ST and a low cooldown aoe stun with their talents. It's in a good spot, for now.
Unholy does good damage in Mythic+, but that's about it. Utility is very limited, the only form of stun is either Strangulate or the pet stun (1sec stun, 1.30min CD, single target), picking Strangulate gives you one less Death Grip. Not much more utility than that. Also worth noting that Unholy's AoE is sustained, and not bursty at all (unless you have the legendary bracers), making it slightly worse than other classes in certain situations. Unholy is also scaling terribly, but not as bad as Frost, despite being lower in the damage charts.

Basically, it's pretty bad if you mainly raid, and it's not looking so great in the future if you do M+. The latest buff to Frost is a band aid that will peel off quickly, come new content.
More needs to be done. Blizzard said 7.1.5 will bring Class updates and balancing, including restoring some utility and making the classes feel better to play. Unholy definitely needs a bunch of those utility restorations and better feel, while Frost mostly needs a little bit of artifact re-haul and better scaling. We'll see what happens when PTR launches.

[Deleted]

Frost:
Top-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE
Middle-Ranked Single Target

Unholy
Upper Middle-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE
Middle-Ranked Single Target

[goriander]

Frost:
Top-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE
Middle-Ranked Single Target

Unholy
Upper Middle-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE
Middle-Ranked Single Target

Frost:
Middle-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE on a 5 min cd
Middle-Ranked Single Target

Unholy
Bottom-Ranked Cleave
Middle-Ranked AoE
Bottom-Ranked Single Target

Fixed that for you.

[Deleted]

Frost:
Middle-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE on a 5 min cd
Middle-Ranked Single Target

Unholy
Bottom-Ranked Cleave
Middle-Ranked AoE
Bottom-Ranked Single Target

Fixed that for you.

Nah, you didn't.

[Deleted]

Frost:
Top-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE
Middle-Ranked Single Target

Unholy
Upper Middle-Ranked Cleave
Top-Ranked AoE
Middle-Ranked Single Target

You're wrong. You're either not doing top content, or you're playing with very bad players.

[gixxpunk]

As a whole, bad.

LOL
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...lty=4&sample=7
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#sample=7
And please don't come up with "OMG you need to check 90+ percentile because that's where I play" nonsense...
Frost is fine, but it seems unholy could need a bit of love in the near future due to sub par scaling. Difference between Rank 6 and Rank 26 is only ~5%. Blizzard Devs did a really good job at balancing. Not perfect, as some classes are still broken, but much better now.

[Nemesquish]

You're wrong. You're either not doing top content, or you're playing with very bad players.

Frost is completely fine.

[Schizoide]

Yep, frost is fine. Saying "top ranked" for AE or cleave is a misrepresentation in raids, however. Frost is solid middle of the pack overall in raids.

In mythic+, frost is somewhere between top-tier and top-third in mythic+ dungeons, depending on whether you go by player speed or damage dealt and which mythic+ level you're examining. Frost is particularly strong at lower levels where you gather up giant groups and cleave 'em down.

[Deleted]

You're wrong. You're either not doing top content, or you're playing with very bad players.

I'm doing top content and I'm playing with very good players.
Frost is Cleave-King, AoE is in the top-chart as well. When it comes to AoE, Frost competes with Monks and DH's.
I'm not saying that Frost is a Top-DPS Spec overall, because Single-Target is mediocre.

Frost is in a good position, it excels in multi-targets fights.
The majority of the current content is containing Cleave and/or AoE phases.
This neglects its single target weakness.

[Saltysquidoon]

Right now Frost is average, unholy with the bracers can be equal to frost or greater on certain fights and unholy without the bracers is dumpster fire tier.

And please don't come up with "OMG you need to check 90+ percentile because that's where I play" nonsense...

Why is that nonsense? I have a 96%+ parse on every heroic boss as frost and 92%+ as unholy(I only have one dps neutral legendary so I'm at a disadvantage). I play with a druid that has a rank in the top hundred of every fight heroic and mythic, a lock who at one point was first in the world on mythic dragons and the second best rogue on oce.
How is 75% on heroic fights supposed to be even remotely representative of what my actual performance should be compared to the rest of my raid group? Fact is when you're pushing Mythic content with a raid consisting of Mages, spriests, MM hunters, Rogues, DHs, druids and myself based on statistics the only person I should theoretically be beating on average is our balance druid.
The problem is people don't play shitty specs in Mythic raids so being average is essentially being meh because no one is stacking their raid with ele shammys, frost mages, outlaw rogues or unholy DKs.

[0verdose]

Frost is more than fine ATM. Look at 90 percentile mythic EN overall logs, frost is in the top 10 while unholy is third to last. Frost is actually good! I'm not playing due to me being stubborn about getting 4thlesson, and to the dude who said afflic locks are bad they actually have been doing well over the last couple of weeks. Second behind priests in 90% mythic EN

[Schizoide]

How is 75% on heroic fights supposed to be even remotely representative of what my actual performance should be compared to the rest of my raid group? Fact is when you're pushing Mythic content with a raid consisting of Mages, spriests, MM hunters, Rogues, DHs, druids and myself based on statistics the only person I should theoretically be beating on average is our balance druid.

It isn't. If your guild plays at 95th percentile, that's where you should be targeting your own performance. It is, however, less meaningful than lower percentiles for balance purposes.

[Deleted]

While I agree with frost being fine. I do think we have some problems regarding flavor and feeling. Our artifact ability is a crime and the usable trait´s cooldown is ridiculously long. If you compare how much other classes gets out of 5 min cds it dwarfs Sindragosa from a single to low target fight. But honestly, please change our artifact ability to something that feels good to use, its so-so-so-so bad.. they really screwed up with crystaline swords.

+ I think it´s quite sad when you pharse 99% on both ilvl and general preformance to be below the top classes by 100-120k dps.

[Vycaus]

This class is populated by mediocre cry baby fan boys. You'll see endless posts about how bad we are, about how we are not competitive, when the reality is most people playing this class ate garbage. The top most dks crush everyone while noobs quote Ursoc as the only meter that maters whilst linking warcratf logs representations showing dks sucking (ignoring dps deflation from the abundance of under performerse) whilest also linking sim results that are representive of one spec without talent variation or appropriate legendary representation. It's honestly hilariousn I sit in the top 50 dks, truck all content as UH and don't listen to the bullshit everyone is touting as gospel (like that painfully shitty talent castigor).

But sure, read the above noob posts about how bad THEY are and get a feel for tue community you are asking. We are fuxking amazing, and most of our class is to shitty to pull if respectable numbers. Do not take that for our class being underpowered. We dispense with impunity.

[gixxpunk]

Why is that nonsense? I have a 96%+ parse on every heroic boss

Me too, but that does not matter when it comes to balancing. Maybe you should have read my whole post in context and not do cherry picking...

[Ashtricks]

This class is populated by mediocre cry baby fan boys. You'll see endless posts about how bad we are, about how we are not competitive, when the reality is most people playing this class ate garbage. The top most dks crush everyone while noobs quote Ursoc as the only meter that maters whilst linking warcratf logs representations showing dks sucking (ignoring dps deflation from the abundance of under performerse) whilest also linking sim results that are representive of one spec without talent variation or appropriate legendary representation. It's honestly hilariousn I sit in the top 50 dks, truck all content as UH and don't listen to the bullshit everyone is touting as gospel (like that painfully shitty talent castigor).

But sure, read the above noob posts about how bad THEY are and get a feel for tue community you are asking. We are fuxking amazing, and most of our class is to shitty to pull if respectable numbers. Do not take that for our class being underpowered. We dispense with impunity.

Gear scaling is bad, plain bad.... any direct increase in gear Ilvl, although it slightly increases our dps, in reality places DKs lower and lower in the dps scale. And especially in Mythic raiding content, not in heroic farming where u can cheese some extra shit, to climb up the ladder. It's a pitty cause to me , this is the only time that Blizz has invested in the nip/tuck of the class design but made it so unworthy in damage terms that the only reason that I still play a DK in raids is the fact that I love the class fantasy and the fact that my guild is casually oriented. It is pitty to reach 95% percentille in your performance and then get roflstomped in dps meters from a mage, a rogue, or a lock with a 75ish performance.

As far as your claim of being able to stand at the top 50dks......good for you, for the rest of us, we ll prefer statistics and numbers in such kind of debates.

[TeeZed]

This class is populated by mediocre cry baby fan boys. You'll see endless posts about how bad we are, about how we are not competitive, when the reality is most people playing this class ate garbage. The top most dks crush everyone while noobs quote Ursoc as the only meter that maters whilst linking warcratf logs representations showing dks sucking (ignoring dps deflation from the abundance of under performerse) whilest also linking sim results that are representive of one spec without talent variation or appropriate legendary representation. It's honestly hilariousn I sit in the top 50 dks, truck all content as UH and don't listen to the bullshit everyone is touting as gospel (like that painfully shitty talent castigor).

But sure, read the above noob posts about how bad THEY are and get a feel for tue community you are asking. We are fuxking amazing, and most of our class is to shitty to pull if respectable numbers. Do not take that for our class being underpowered. We dispense with impunity.

Hahaha. That's precious.

You wanna talk "The best DKs" Here you go
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10/#dataset=100

Looks like they're really killing it mate.

[Deleted]

This class is populated by mediocre cry baby fan boys. You'll see endless posts about how bad we are, about how we are not competitive, when the reality is most people playing this class ate garbage. The top most dks crush everyone while noobs quote Ursoc as the only meter that maters whilst linking warcratf logs representations showing dks sucking (ignoring dps deflation from the abundance of under performerse) whilest also linking sim results that are representive of one spec without talent variation or appropriate legendary representation. It's honestly hilariousn I sit in the top 50 dks, truck all content as UH and don't listen to the bullshit everyone is touting as gospel (like that painfully shitty talent castigor).

But sure, read the above noob posts about how bad THEY are and get a feel for tue community you are asking. We are fuxking amazing, and most of our class is to shitty to pull if respectable numbers. Do not take that for our class being underpowered. We dispense with impunity.

Thank you Vycaus, for your higly educated opinion. Yes, this has to be the problem! All these whiny dks that where able to read and interpred simple data are just plain bad at this game. Its guys like you, that have no clue about anything they are talking about, that dominate all logs.

Let me help you with this brilliant theory:

Highest parsing Ranks DPS DK by boss vs all classes:

Nythendra: Rank 163
Il'gynoth, Heart of Corruption: Rank 290
Elerethe Renferal: Rank 489
Ursoc: Rank 848
Dragons of Nightmare: Rank 54
Cenarius: Rank 434
Xavius: Rank 745

Wow, top tier dks are totally whipping the floor with all other classes! There should be an hall of idiocy for statements like yours....

[Soulwell]

Thank you Vycaus, for your higly educated opinion. Yes, this has to be the problem! All these whiny dks that where able to read and interpred simple data are just plain bad at this game. Its guys like you, that have no clue about anything they are talking about, that dominate all logs.

Let me help you with this brilliant theory:

Highest parsing Ranks DPS DK by boss vs all classes:

Nythendra: Rank 163
Il'gynoth, Heart of Corruption: Rank 290
Elerethe Renferal: Rank 489
Ursoc: Rank 848
Dragons of Nightmare: Rank 54
Cenarius: Rank 434
Xavius: Rank 745

Wow, top tier dks are totally whipping the floor with all other classes! There should be an hall of idiocy for statements like yours....

Wewlad, you're tilted into another plane of existence. Looking at parses and drawing a conclusion that your class is underpowered because of 2-3 other classes being retardedly strong is a poor way to backlash at someone who made a solid point. You are one of the stronger melee on single target, along with having some really good cleave. Dks aren't in a bad spot just shadow and fire make everyone look like shit.