New bluepost regarding unholy Dk performance.

[Galathir]

Learn to perform decently? What are you talking about? I'm doing fine as unholy, but if the strength of the spec is lower relative to others there is nothing I can do to magically become better. Carried by legendaries? Grind it if you want? These are just absurd statements when the playstyle and performance is so heavily modified by the legendaries. How can i know what legendary to grind for since when i finally get it the spec might be garbage? Its just a huge gamble, and I lost that gamble when I chose unholy.

He's stating that you should respecc to Frost and get better with that specc while you grind your legendaries there.
But he misses the point that Nighthold progression is now and not in a few months.
Yeah, just get comfortable with Unholy, maybe change your lootspecc to Frost so you get a chance for Frost legendaries if you want to respecc.

[Deleted]

The only problem I see with unholy currently is the single target DPS, and that can easily be fixed with a hotfix that only affects single target DPS.

Posts saying "Frost is fine just switch, unholy is dead" are just absolute garbage posts which should be ban worthy in a thread about unholy.

[Stacie]

Just remember to keep it clean here please guys

[Poisongaz]

I wont take that bait tho. We arent in WoD, we are in Legion. It isnt easy to just switch over to Frost. Also why should we play a Spec we arent enjoying? It is a bad argument, that Unholy shall stay at place 24/24 of all DDs just because Frost is strong as fuck. Every Spec needs to be good and there shouldnt be such a big gap between both specs. Unholy is ways more RNG and more unforgiving for that little dps. I always have high brackets and do my best, but you will never reach a frost dk on the same skill and gear level.
Now take your bait and go in the frost discord, thank you

The problem is that you don't have to switch to frost to be competitive now. UH is still middle of the pack except of Star Auger, which is because alot of UH dmg is front loaded in army. Pick whatever you want but dont start this infighting that has plagued the DK community since its launch. Be happy that we have all of our specs have a really good place. That my friends has never happened in the history of wow for us.

Also why is everyone just seeing this as bait. I never once said people should switch from the spec they like. I was just trying to point out that frost is really really good now and trying bring it down because UH isnt as good is selfish. Stop complaining about number of UH and join the constructive people in this community that are trying to come up with way to make the GAMEPLAY better.

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It is not WOD when you can easy switch spec. In legion you can't do that with ease (ap farming, leggos, titanforged gear). It's just not fair.
And we will cry more

Oh just fyi. if you put in more time than just the min time of getting on and raiding, like you did in WoD, then you would already have both of your dps weapons at good AP. I myself have 54 in frost 35 in UH and 35 in Blood. Especially now I dont understand people in ability to and peoples' unwillingness to change just because you have a few less points in a weapon.

Dont even try to give the AP famr, leggo, titanforged argument. We are at 25 AK. Takes no time at all to put AP into a weapon and have it at a good lvl for the difficulty on raiding most people in MMOC do, which is not mythic btw. Legendary items matter so little for frost. Just look and JaceDK. Dude only has dps trinket and out parses just about everyone on this forum. Also because of the nature of BoS, if you had taken the time to understand the build, the build values strength so much that any 5 ilvl upgrade is worth switching to and all of the stats are so fluid that your secondary stats really don't matter.

STOP hiding behind that thin excuse just because you don't want to learn a new way to play. If you raid and put a tinny bit of time into the game switching to a new spec within your class is so easy. You just have to challenge yourself to a different play-style. That is assuming of course you aren't opposed to the frost playstyle. (would be wiling to bet most of these people either have never played frost in its current incarnation or more specifically for people that say they are fed up with BoS from WoD really don't understand just how different BoS is now compared to WoD.)

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I'd gladly reroll frost if it wasn't such a boring mindnumbing playstyle. I'll admit BoS is slightly less awful than MG, but i was already fed up with BoS during WoD and wasn't really looking forward to it coming back.
I'd gladly reroll if blizz provided a way to transfer the AP from one artifact to another.
A way to change the artifacts from one spec to another would also be nice.

Farming another 20 levels of artifact to get frost weapons to 54 from 34 would be too painful.
Doing that for a playstyle that sucks ass - twice as painful.

Yes Frost is currently good. However i recall blizz saying that they won't let the spec that was behind to become better than the one that was ahead. However it suddenly became the case with UH and Frost.

And I am glad for my Frost buddies that they are viable and that they have an option to play the spec that they want and be viable.

It sucked that Frost was completely unviable at the start of expansion.

But chasing the fotm and playing the spec that is 0 fun apart from paddling meters is not an option.

I'd rather go hunter and play survival. Tried it and it is hell of a fun. And getting the first 34 traits with the knowledge boost is not that hard.

It being not fun is your opinion. Also when did we start putting the fotm tag on people that just switch spec within there class. Have lines been drawn in the sand that we arent allowed to cross. Were people calls fotm in HFC when DK went UH in masses? No. Then why are people considered fotm now? Also fuck off with your no fun other than padding meters statement. There is not a single instance of meter padding, other than skrop, which everyone pads on including UH. Also UH's strength is AOE. Shouldn't you want more instances to "pad"? And wouldnt UH be better at padding than frost? You are so off base with that comment its not even funny.

That being said I respect you opinion of frost's playstyle being not fun but understand you are in the minority in that opinion and would wager a bet to say that you havent actually spent anytime at all actually learning to play BoS properly.

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I would like to switch to the Frost BOS spec, but I have 0 frost legendaries, all my artifact power is in my unholy weapon, and I don't have either of the really good Frost trinkets...
So the switch is not really realistic while having to raid at the same time. The artifact power and legendary system makes a specialization switch really really hard

BoS doesnt need any Legendary items. Also since we are at 25 AK now. It take no time at all to get to a high enough lvl for the current content. You wont be able to switch on a dime but you can switch withing a week or 2.

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The only problem I see with unholy currently is the single target DPS, and that can easily be fixed with a hotfix that only affects single target DPS.

Posts saying "Frost is fine just switch, unholy is dead" are just absolute garbage posts which should be ban worthy in a thread about unholy.

Nobody is saying UH is dead switch to frost. Actually people are pointing out that frost is in a really good place and UH is middle of the pack on just about every boss. No reasonable person is trying to tell people to switch. We are trying to tell people that they need to stop bring frost down just because they thing UH is shit, which its not.

That being said I will go out of my way to tell the people that say they want to switch to frost but dont because of AP, legos, or titanforging that they are stupid. People that make this argument don't actually want to change, even though in this case in this case its super easy. I will explain why in a second. They are trying to us it as a crutch to get their spec buffed. I also kinda hate these type of people. These are the people that hold their spec higher than their class. I have always made sure that I know the ins and outs of every spec of my class so that when the time comes when i need to switch I will be ready to do so.

Back to my other point about the transition from UH to frost. Frost is one of the few spec, if not the only spec in the entire game, that blizz actually got right in terms of their design philosophy. That want ilvl to be the biggest factor into whether or not a item is an upgrade. Frost is exactly that. With so tiny exceptions to that rule of thumb frost values strength so much that the secondary stats on an item dont matter. So as long as you put AP into your frost weap then gear should not be a problem as you UH gear will be good for frost. With trinkets, some of the best trinkets fro frost are also really good for UH and stat sticks are some of the easiest and best trinkets in the game.

[Saltysquidoon]

The problem is that you don't have to switch to frost to be competitive now. UH is still middle of the pack except of Star Auger, which is because alot of UH dmg is front loaded in army. Pick whatever you want but dont start this infighting that has plagued the DK community since its launch. Be happy that we have all of our specs have a really good place. That my friends has never happened in the history of wow for us

Your definition of 'middle of the pack' is perhaps more broad then the standard interpretation. I'd lean more for in strong contention for the weakest dps spec in the game presently, maybe like tied with destro.

[Raiz]

STOP hiding behind that thin excuse just because you don't want to learn a new way to play. If you raid and put a tinny bit of time into the game switching to a new spec within your class is so easy. You just have to challenge yourself to a different play-style. That is assuming of course you aren't opposed to the frost playstyle. (would be wiling to bet most of these people either have never played frost in its current incarnation or more specifically for people that say they are fed up with BoS from WoD really don't understand just how different BoS is now compared to WoD.)

I'm pretty sure a majority of UH players already learnt how to play the BoS playstyle. Duh. They're coming from UH, not from the OBRA brainded spec
In all seriousness though, it doesn't take long to understand how to play it. Just a few practice against the dummies for a few hours + a few dungeons and you're done really. You won't be going for the 99% percentile, but it's been the same for every class and every spec.
And still, I'd chose to play UH. Simply because I find it way more fun. I'm even putting my loot spec for UH because I really want the bracers.

It being not fun is your opinion. Also when did we start putting the fotm tag on people that just switch spec within there class. Have lines been drawn in the sand that we arent allowed to cross. Were people calls fotm in HFC when DK went UH in masses? No. Then why are people considered fotm now? Also fuck off with your no fun other than padding meters statement. There is not a single instance of meter padding, other than skrop, which everyone pads on including UH. Also UH's strength is AOE. Shouldn't you want more instances to "pad"? And wouldnt UH be better at padding than frost? You are so off base with that comment its not even funny.

That being said I respect you opinion of frost's playstyle being not fun but understand you are in the minority in that opinion and would wager a bet to say that you havent actually spent anytime at all actually learning to play BoS properly.

Again, I'm pretty sure they spent enough time learning that BoS. In fact, I'd even dare to bet most BoS players find it fun ONLY because they're doing a good chunk of DPS. I'd really like to know if they'd still play that style if BoS playstyle was nerfed to 10%.

Nobody is saying UH is dead switch to frost. Actually people are pointing out that frost is in a really good place and UH is middle of the pack on just about every boss. No reasonable person is trying to tell people to switch. We are trying to tell people that they need to stop bring frost down just because they thing UH is shit, which its not.

For real ? We're all good if Frost can do a lot of DPS. We're just concerned because UH is currently doing like 10% less damage than frost, and we're like last on the DPS chart. All we're asking is a DPS buff. We don't want Frost to be nerfed. We just want UH to be able to play on par with the other DPS (and most importantly, if Blizzard could do something about the overcapping ressource, it'd be greatly appreciated...).

Back to my other point about the transition from UH to frost. Frost is one of the few spec, if not the only spec in the entire game, that blizz actually got right in terms of their design philosophy. That want ilvl to be the biggest factor into whether or not a item is an upgrade. Frost is exactly that. With so tiny exceptions to that rule of thumb frost values strength so much that the secondary stats on an item dont matter. So as long as you put AP into your frost weap then gear should not be a problem as you UH gear will be good for frost. With trinkets, some of the best trinkets for frost are also really good for UH and stat sticks are some of the easiest and best trinkets in the game.

Pretty much agree with that. I'm just sad it won't be the case for the other way around, since you need a lot of mastery. But I doubt blizzard will do anything other than a band-aid fix to make them "competitive" again.

Me ? I'll continue to play Unholy. I've put my AP on all my weapons evenly. Even if I'm doing slightly less DPS with UH, I'll stick with it. I really don't find BoS fun. The only part I find it fun is because of the tremendous DPS it provides. It's great that they're both "competitive", but for some reason I'm always switching back to Unholy.

[Deleted]

Your definition of 'middle of the pack' is perhaps more broad then the standard interpretation. I'd lean more for in strong contention for the weakest dps spec in the game presently, maybe like tied with destro.

Quick look at mythic logs seems to show unholy pretty much dead last.

Again.

[Poisongaz]

Your definition of 'middle of the pack' is perhaps more broad then the standard interpretation. I'd lean more for in strong contention for the weakest dps spec in the game presently, maybe like tied with destro.

If you go boss by boss the only boss that UH is not in the middle 10 specs, 10 because the variation between the specs is so small this expac, is star auger. There is a good reason for that. Alot of UH St dmg comes front loaded in the form of a 10 min CD. this means that while they have alot of burst they suffer the rest of the fight. star auger is like a 7 min fight for most people so obviously your gonna do worse on a fight that long. If you want to look on a average across all bosses then yes UH is at the bottom. (but it is still a ranking and doesnt in anyway tell you how they do compared to the specs around them in the ranking.) Ill give you a hint, there isnt much of a gap in spec. Looking at each fight individually you will see that UH sits at lowest 15th on the ranks. (UH is lower on Guldan yes, but if you actually look at the dps of each spec you will see the difference between UH at 19 and Survival at 12 is 8k dps.

Please for the love of god people please stop acting like the world is crashing around you. You are in a great place. A place where in 8 out of 10 fights in NH you are doing well. And on the other 2 fights, it is very obviously to see what is wrong. ST and a powerful CD of 10 min.

[Slim1256]

Please for the love of god people please stop acting like the world is crashing around you. You are in a great place. A place where in 8 out of 10 fights in NH you are doing well. And on the other 2 fights, it is very obviously to see what is wrong. ST and a powerful CD of 10 min.

I think you and I have wildly differing views of what a "great place" is.

I mean - I think it's fair to argue the UH isn't quite as bad as logs would have you believe, but UH clearly has nothing it excels at, no claim to fame. That's been my beef with it since 7.1; even if people want to say the sky isn't falling, it still feels bad playing a spec that nothing particular to recommend it.

Say what you want, but there's very little (probably no) reason to bring an Unholy DK over all other melee classes, and I can't think of a single reason to bring an UH DK over a Frost DK.

[mrmsix6]

Heroic NH, 90th percentile:

Skorpyron: 10/24 ( meaningless data)
Chromatic Anomaly: 18/24, 13% behind Frost
Trilliax: 21/24 (fight HEAVILY favors melee, UH down among the worst ranged), 9% behind Frost
Spellblade: 18/24, 7% behind Frost
Tichondrious: 10/24, 6% behind Frost
Star Auger: 24/24, 14% behind Frost
Krosus: 24/24, 9% behind Frost
High Botanist: 11/24, 13% behind Frost
Elisande: 18/24, 13% behind Frost
Gul'dan: 19/24, 11% behind Frost

What can we learn from this? Unholy is a mediocre spec on fights with sustained AoE and the worst spec in the game on single target fights by a substantial margin.


The situation is... a far cry from a "great place". And that's before getting into the wonky functionality of all the different Unholy mechanics.

Unholy needs attention.

[Poisongaz]

I think you and I have wildly differing views of what a "great place" is.

I mean - I think it's fair to argue the UH isn't quite as bad as logs would have you believe, but UH clearly has nothing it excels at, no claim to fame. That's been my beef with it since 7.1; even if people want to say the sky isn't falling, it still feels bad playing a spec that nothing particular to recommend it.

Say what you want, but there's very little (probably no) reason to bring an Unholy DK over all other melee classes, and I can't think of a single reason to bring an UH DK over a Frost DK.

Maybe your right. Let me revise my statement. UH is in a good place. That being said the argument that there is no reason to a UH dk is silly one one reason. The fact that very few groups take you based on spec alone. The top world first guilds do this yes, but their players are ready and willing to play any class to get the world first. The next group being the guilds that will complete the tier. There are a good number of guilds that will do this and the vast vast majority of guilds will do this with the players that they can find. Im in one of those guilds and yes we look for specific classes, but that is mostly in the healing and tank roles. The idea that you as a UH dk will not be taken over some other class based purely on your choice of spec is silly. These guilds look at each applicants logs. The logs dont lie. A really good UH dk will always keep a spot in a raid if he is playing well and doing his job as a member of the raid. The pool of players that are good enough for mythic is really really small. Some of these players are like yall. Playing something that you think is more fun than the other option. As long as you can show a guild that you deserve a spot then you will get a spot. The reason to take a any player over the other is because they are better at their class and they are better in a raid environment. You might have to work harder as a UH because your tuned lower, but it doesnt change the fact that people will take you if your good enough.

On to what UH shines at. Tbh your right UH doesnt shine at a specific thing. Now thats a problem. That being said it does have strengths but im not sure any of the fights in NH play to UH strength other than skorp. Where frost has a whole bunch. guldan, elisand, tic, spellblade, and chronomatic to name the big ones. Chrono, elisand, and guldan all have some sort of time mechanic that works really really well with BoS. spellblade is good for frost because of the amount of cleave needed and HB hits like a truck with rime, which you have all the time because of tier set. Tic is a border line. Some of our dps could come from HB splash on adds that spawn on the tank. That being said the dmg buff coming out of dream phase is so good and the timing couldnt be more perfect for BoS. Fight design plays a big part in how good a spec will be for a tier. That is blizzard problem. If they want a world where each spec has strengths and weakness they need to not only balance specs around those ideas but also they need to make a raid tier that has all of those different aspects to it. I dont think they did that this tier and tbh i dont think they ever have been able to do that.

Sorry if this is long, but im just trying to explain to people that its not all bad and many of the problems dont come from a class being bad all around.

[Slim1256]

You might have to work harder as a UH because your tuned lower, but it doesnt change the fact that people will take you if your good enough.

You make good points, but I do want to make a comment about this; I think this is exactly my problem.

I think this is a Blizzard balancing problem; I have to work harder to get the same results. I don't understand why Blizzard can't use hotfixes to adjust this. UH doesn't necessarily need sweeping changes based on my experience. But would a 5% buff be out of line, based on the numbers we're seeing? I don't see how it would be.

It's like they're afraid to make small adjustments; they make one tuning pass at the beginning of the GODDAMN raid tier, when there is a small sample size and people aren't properly geared, and then they don't touch anything else until the NEXT goddamn patch.

WTF?

And don't get me started on them fixing a bug that had Assassination overperforming, and then apologizing - oh, sorry, we reduced your damage by fixing this unintended bug, here have a buff to compensate. Dafuq? They're already one of the top performing specs? When they fixed our bugs - oh, we'll compensate, and then crickets?

I just don't understand. I really don't.

[Mosin]

I don't get this.

Why does legs and single target DPS not matter on a raid with relatively easy mechanics (at least to melee) and two fat DPS walls instead?

[meteoa]

imo revert the nerf on epidemic and also maybe make it baseline, and then unholy would probably be in a pretty good spot in a mass-aoe role and frost would be left with the single target/cleave role

[CausalXXLinkXx]

Legendary items matter so little for frost. Just look and JaceDK. Dude only has dps trinket and out parses just about everyone on this forum.

Just wanted to say, while I do appreciate your compliments, this is very much incorrect. Legendaries are massive for frost. Just because I do well without them doesn't mean they aren't good. I'd be doing drastically better if I had dps legendaries

[Poisongaz]

Just wanted to say, while I do appreciate your compliments, this is very much incorrect. Legendaries are massive for frost. Just because I do well without them doesn't mean they aren't good. I'd be doing drastically better if I had dps legendaries

then maybe i worded it it wrong. You can 100% play BoS with any legendaries. That is what i was trying to get at. Sure do they help and does it make it better? Yes. But it doesnt change the fact that you dont NEED them to be good.

[Deleted]

We did a fun Normal Nighthold today and our main DK tank went frost for fun. She has no frost leggos (ofc) only sephuz and boots. She only has 2 set but a decent ilevel (around 890ish) and her trinkets are an 860 horn and chrono at 875. Her trait level was around 42.

I'm around 902 equipped, UH ofc, 54 unlocked. I have belt and sephuz ring.

On any fight, her burst is amazing... Then she falls off, then when the cleave comes... I can't believe how her dps leaps up... in the 700-800s. At one point she passed myself and the fire mage on cleave (Botanist and Spellblade). This is without 4 set ofc and only 42 traits with utility legendary items.

Not only that but on Krosus an assassination rogue in our raid with 2 set that was barely doing over 500k a week ago and a warrior with draught of souls and convergence of fate and 2 set suddenly find their gear in today's raid and do a wopping 640+k on Krosus with a miss pull. Both their traits are in the low 40s.Warr got his 4 set after Krosus.

My best on Krosus heroic and normal have been around 600-615 and my gear can only get marginally better.

Maybe their kill time inflated their dps? Then it should inflate mine too...I do feel at my limit.. both rogue and warr could still improve due to ilevel, set bonuses and trait level, I am completely at my limit bar some lucky procs with gear and a 0-4 month wait for a bracer drop (maybe a greater range).

TLDR

We need something to sustain our high initially burst. In a sub 2 min fight I can do okay. Over 700k easy. But after that 2 min mark or a fight without heroism at the start, I'd be lucky to hit the 600 mark. The dps I do is good enough for heroic, but for mythic, to carry my own weight, my spec needs to be hitting the 650 mark on ST and 800-900 on small cleave fights without bracers. I can't see this being the case when I look at top parses for UH where people with bracers are doing only marginally better than some top parses without it...

[Angeredsoul]

The problem for me is, I went hard in on unholy with my minimal playtime. I don't have the time to bring another weapon up to max. Let alone gear frost compatible gear.

And Blizz has effectively told me to suck it, for the remainder of 7.1.5

[Acidbaron]

The notion that you can simply change spec in legion is laughable, you are better off rerolling due to how it all works.

If you want to say that unholy is in a good spot please provide the mythic kill logs that point that out since right now we are near the bottom and it's even worse if you compare it towards other melee specs. Nobody cares about heroic or normal kills that is content that was outgeared the second it came out and allowing you to ignore mechanics.

About 300 unholy players myself included have 3/10, so who are you fooling by telling us it's in a good spot. Yourself i guess?

[Angeredsoul]

The problem is Blizzard clearly said that they were NOT going to change up the specs were one becomes stronger than the other leaving the other spec in the dust as it were.

So that's one problem, development team failed us.

Number two is you can't just switch like you could in warlords. Unless you play a ridiculous amount it's not feasible to have two specs at max artifact, proper relics and then in some cases a completely different gear set on top of Rng legendaries.

It feels bad, especially when these concerns were made during beta time and time again. They claim to listen, but I've yet to see any action resulting from it.