On Unholy...

[Rheckameohs]

I'm currently leveling a new death knight, with the intent of running as Unholy with my guild once WoD drops. I've always had a soft spot for Unholy; something about combining diseases and decay with undead minions and direct weapon strikes just screams awesome to me.

Unfortunately, there's Festering Strike. Prior to unlocking this ability, I found Unholy akin to a well-oiled machine. I liked the dynamic of strategically spending your Blood and Frost Runes to both maximize your DPS as well as acquire Death Runes. Festering Strike almost completely kills that kind of play style. Sure, you can continue spending your Frosts on Icy Touch and your Bloods an Blood Boil, but there's really not a reason to on bosses, not without gimping yourself.

I think it would be better if Festering Strike replaced Plague Strike, cost a single Frost Rune as opposed to a Frost and a Blood, and didn't increase disease duration*. I also think that Blood Strike should be kept around as a core part of Unholy's arsenal. This means that Frost Runes would be delegated to Festering Strike, while Blood Runes are delegated to Blood Strike (for single target, mind you). Meanwhile, Unholy and Death Runes continue to be delegated to fueling Scourge Strike.

Again, the idea is for Unholy to have a very smooth, rhythmic play style of spending Blood and Frost Runes to gain Death Runes to spend on Scourge Strike. I think it would be a nice contrast to Frost, which is generally burstier and places greater emphasis on anticipating and reacting to procs. Basically, Frost is for blowing things up, whereas Unholy is for dissolving them.

What do you guys think?

* For those who like Festerblight, they can add a Major Glyph that brings that back, e.g. "Festering Strike extends the duration of your diseases by 4 seconds, but now costs a Blood Rune and a Frost Rune."

[HeroZero]

Ever play Unholy during Wrath? Because that sounds very much like what I recall of it. Was not particularly fun to play.

[Rheckameohs]

Nah, I was a Frost tank back in those days.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that we didn't have things like RE/RC/BT back then, and runes behaved much differently than they do now. Those factors would very well change things up from how they used to be.

[Rooskie1993]

pretty sure it doesn't matter come 6.0 since death coil and frost strike will add 4 seconds to your diseases meaning they most likely will never drop http://wod.wowhead.com/spell=161497

[Rheckameohs]

pretty sure it doesn't matter come 6.0 since death coil and frost strike will add 4 seconds to your diseases meaning they most likely will never drop http://wod.wowhead.com/spell=161497

Oh. Oh.

... Well that's not cool at all.

[HeroZero]

After writing out a whole response and then clicking the wrong button... sigh. Short version.

Re-applying DoTs is something that you want to do only when absolutely necessary. Adding another button into our rotation won't really change anything besides fill up more of our skill slots. We already have uses for Icy Touch in certain circumstances and I don't really feel the urge to be using a blood-type (heh) ability as it seems very Un-Unholy DK. Even using blood boil makes me cringe a bit in terms of flavor.

In a time when Blizzard is attempting to simplify classes needlessly re-adding an attack into our rotation would be counter-productive to me. It would feel like a step bak for the class.

[Deleted]

I dislike unholy, prefer frost ;[

[Deleted]

I don't really see the point of have TWO spells to do what ONE spell can do. Festering strike is there to quickly create death runes, and then you can spam your scourge strike with ease. I don't really see what you dislike about Festering Strike.

Plague strike is here to apply your diseases, even if you can do it with Outbreak, and you'll get the CD back because the diseases duration is augmented by Festering Strike and now even with Death Coil.

They did a really good job on the UH DK for WoD (RIP Unholy Frenzy ), and it will be a lot of fun.

[Deleted]

Plaguebringer is a talent however, its replacing Roiling Blood. Personally I'm too much in love with Plague Leech to even consider using Plaguebringer.

[zoomgpally]

I don't really see the point of have TWO spells to do what ONE spell can do. Festering strike is there to quickly create death runes, and then you can spam your scourge strike with ease. I don't really see what you dislike about Festering Strike.

Plague strike is here to apply your diseases, even if you can do it with Outbreak, and you'll get the CD back because the diseases duration is augmented by Festering Strike and now even with Death Coil.

They did a really good job on the UH DK for WoD (RIP Unholy Frenzy ), and it will be a lot of fun.

Also, festering strike will be the only way to extend necrotic plague

[Jimjam38]

I find it curious that you feel that festering strike doesn't fit into the flavor and smoothness of unholy. Extending disease duration feels very much unholy flavor in my opinion, so it surprises me that you think it doesn't fit.

As for smoothness, Festering Strike still converts the frost and blood runes it uses into death runes, that much hasn't changed. And, unholy at least, has hardly lost any of its pace in WoD (as opposed to frost which has crawled to a halt), so for the sake of dps you actually prefer to be spending 2 runes at once as it frees up more GCDs than spending a GCD on each rune.

Blood strike has kind of died out - Heart Strike is not even available for blood in WoD. I do find this an oddity; Development wise it does make some sense, it hasn't really been a part of either Frost or Unholy since LK and has been Heart Strike for blood since blood existed and they just wanted to prune prune prune anyway, but it still seems odd that Blood Strike has just faded out of existence entirely.