Fixing Death Strike (please read)

[AgentStrife]

Edit: This post is primarily for PvP'ing with Frost and Unholy

So I've put a lot of thought into how to improve frost and unholy DK survivability without making them over the top.

Right now, DS heals you 20% of the damage sustained in the last 5 seconds (minimum of 7%). So basically, DS heals you for 7%, assuming I read the tool tip right. What I propose is that DS heals you for 7% PLUS 20% of the damage sustained in the last 5 seconds, at which point, when the 5 seconds are up, you get the extra 20% of the damage back. The catch is, if you DS before the 5 seconds are up, you reset the 5 seconds. That way, you can't keep spamming it, or you pay a huge rune cost (unholy + frost), for a small amount of health back.

If you Imagine an enemy taking 20% of your health in 5 seconds, during a burst, you will get .2 x .2 = .04 health x total health. (basically 4% plus the 7% base) . That's 11%, much more manageable than the 15% for every death strike we received when we spammed DS with glyph of dark succor.

If you had somebody take 50% of your health off in 5 seconds (which would be horribly bad), you'd get 10% + the base 7% = 17% which I don't think is too much to ask for, considering that you'd have to have half your health lost in 5 seconds to get that amount back.

People's thoughts?

[DemoBytom]

do you even play DK? o_O

DS is fine, it heals enough to keep you alive and, most importantly - gives you enough shields to smooth incoming dmg, while not making you immune tank. In normal fights our heals are already pretty big, what you propose here is just getting OP.. You're not supposed to tank without a healer >.<'

[Wih]

He's looking at it from a PvP perspective, for Frost and Unholy, not looking at it for Blood.

The only easy way to fix DS for DPS is to either make it a different spell for different specs (ie B/F for Unholy), or to buff Dark Succor.

[AgentStrife]

He's looking at it from a PvP perspective, for Frost and Unholy, not looking at it for Blood.

The only easy way to fix DS for DPS is to either make it a different spell for different specs (ie B/F for Unholy), or to buff Dark Succor.

This is what I'm talking about. Right now, death strike for frost and unholy is a joke in pvp, and it's almost not worth having on the tool bar.

Yes, we have lichborne (if you spec into it, come MoP) on a 2 min cd assuming you have a full bar of runic energy (to dump 2 or 3 death coils into), but it leaves you open to turn undead or shackle, and silence. And we have sac pet, on a 2 min cd.

What I'm proposing is have something to mitigate being trained, since DKs have no emergency defensive CD like bubble, heroic leap, shield wall, blink, ice block, teleport, vanish, deterence...ect (IBF is 20% damage reduction on a 3 min cd, not very impressive)

[Wih]

Remember you're getting Glyph of IBF in Mists which will be a far better stun break than what you currently have. Frost is also getting access to 100% AMS, DP won't kill your pet any more (if you choose to take it) and you're getting an extra trinket. It's not all bad. But yeah, DS is kinda pointless for non-blood at this point.

[DemoBytom]

spec death siphon if you're still low on self heals?
I like crazy ideas, but we don't want all 3 DK specs to be dmg immune like Blood was in Cata..

[Sinzaram]

Right now, DS heals you 20% of the damage sustained in the last 5 seconds (minimum of 7%). So basically, DS heals you for 7%, assuming I read the tool tip right. What I propose is that DS heals you for 7% PLUS 20% of the damage sustained in the last 5 seconds, at which point, when the 5 seconds are up, you get the extra 20% of the damage back.

Yeah what you've said here doesn't make sense, you don't understand deathstrike it seems.

Right now, you ether get 7% of your health back or 20% of the damage you took in the last 5 seconds.
Right now, you get whichever heal will be bigger.

So already at the moment if someone does enough damage to you so that 20% of that damage is larger than 7% of your health healed for more.
So you already get this idea you're proposing.

Lets see an example shall we?
My character currently has 177355 hp.
7% of 177355 is 12,414
So 12,414 is your minimum heal.

And lets use your example:

If you had somebody take 50% of your health off in 5 seconds (which would be horribly bad),

So you take 88,677 damage over 5 seconds.
20% of 88,677 is 17,735
So in this example you'd get healed for 17,735 hp.
So already getting a heal over the minimum.

Making it give you both heals wouldn't change much really, and is just asking for a numbers increases for the sake of one really.

[AgentStrife]

Remember you're getting Glyph of IBF in Mists which will be a far better stun break than what you currently have. Frost is also getting access to 100% AMS, DP won't kill your pet any more (if you choose to take it) and you're getting an extra trinket. It's not all bad. But yeah, DS is kinda pointless for non-blood at this point.

IBF is NOT an extra trinket. It ONLY breaks stuns, NOT saps, blind, fear, ice trap, etc. . Also, when you glyph into it, you sacrifice duration (down from 12 seconds to 4 seconds...not much of a damage reduction there) for a shorter cd, thus making it totally useless for damage mitigation, which is the problem dks are seriously suffering from.

It doesn't matter how many stuns you can break, if you're being focused and have no way to mitigate the damage.

As for AMS being 100% for frost, that's only frost. Also AMS only mitigates spell damage, AND it's now 5 seconds, down from 7 seconds (after glyphing, which every dk did). So if you consider that AMS blocking 100% damage for 5 seconds, when it use to block 75% for 7 seconds, there is no improvement there.

Death Siphon could be viable, but it's affected by resilience, so the healing you do in PvP is greatly reduced. And I think it costs a death rune, which actually requires some ramp up time for unholy. Also, if you chose death siphon, you can't sac pet, so considering both of them together is not practical.

[Coldpro]

do you even play DK? o_O

DS is fine, it heals enough to keep you alive and, most importantly - gives you enough shields to smooth incoming dmg, while not making you immune tank. In normal fights our heals are already pretty big, what you propose here is just getting OP.. You're not supposed to tank without a healer >.<'

Indeed. We can already tank a lot of fights without receiving any direct heals at all, just HoTs.

[Wih]

IBF is NOT an extra trinket. It ONLY breaks stuns, NOT saps, blind, fear, ice trap, etc. . Also, when you glyph into it, you sacrifice duration (down from 12 seconds to 4 seconds...not much of a damage reduction there) for a shorter cd, thus making it totally useless for damage mitigation, which is the problem dks are seriously suffering from.

I never said IBF was an extra trinket, I said it was a quicker stun break. The extra trinket is in your T90 talents, go check them out. IBF is already useless for damage mitigation and is almost always reserved for a stun break.

It doesn't matter how many stuns you can break, if you're being focused and have no way to mitigate the damage.

I don't and haven't disagreed with you on that, so I don't see why you're bringing it up again.

As for AMS being 100% for frost, that's only frost. Also AMS only mitigates spell damage, AND it's now 5 seconds, down from 7 seconds (after glyphing, which every dk did). So if you consider that AMS blocking 100% damage for 5 seconds, when it use to block 75% for 7 seconds, there is no improvement there.

There a big efficiency increase there. If you have 170k HP are are getting focused with spell damage, it'll absorb 85k damage total over (lets say,) 5 seconds. In order to absorb that 85k without the new glyph as Frost, you'd have to take 114k~ damage, whereas with you only have to be targetted by the 85k. Secondly, it means that if you're popping AMS reactively when you're already at low heath, you can't be killed by the 25% that gets past the unglyphed version while your AMS is still up.
7 second AMS is better for negating debuffs, 100% AMS is better for preventing damage done, which is what this thread is about.

Death Siphon could be viable, but it's affected by resilience, so the healing you do in PvP is greatly reduced. And I think it costs a death rune, which actually requires some ramp up time for unholy. Also, if you chose death siphon, you can't sac pet, so considering both of them together is not practical.

Completely agreed here. DSiphon also conflicts with NS in PvP, which is another huge factor. DSiphon is not the solution to survivability (though it might help at a cost).