Death Knights are awesome.
We weave Spells into our Melee attacks, we can summon ghouls, we can blight the land and spread Decay.
We have the single greatest starting zone EVER.
We can into WOW as a broken class that has been nerfed to hell and back so we can be balanced, However we are not balanced, we are underpowered (frost PVP), clunky (Unholy) and weak (Cant take a hit to save your unlife).
How do we fix this? and a better question : what is truely wrong with our specs / class?
---------------
In my opinion, Death Knights are great tanks (my favorite), we do amazing DPS in PVE, but we are lacking in PVP. One of the problems is most of our defensive cooldowns have a cost, unlike many other classes. Another issue is our self healing (Frost/Unholy) is underwelming compaired to others. Now i dont believe we need a instant cast free 30% heal on a 2 min cooldown. I like the healing talents we have, and in 5.2 they are getting buffed, however dont think that is enough.
Example :
Death Siphon
1 Death
Instant
Deal X Shadowfrost damage to an enemy, healing the Death Knight for 100% of damage dealt.
You use a Death rune to heal your self for a pitiful amount. Death siphon should adjust to your spec, like soul reaver, you give up a frost/blood/unholy rune to get access to a quick heal. IMO Death siphon should look like this :
Death Siphon
1 Blood/Frost/Unholy
Instant
Deal X Shadowfrost damage to an enemy, healing the Death Knight for 300% of damage dealt.
or
Death Siphon
1 Blood/Frost/Unholy
Instant
Mark the Target with the sign of Death, Your next 3 attacks will heal you for 150% of the damage dealt over 5 seconds.
-
Conversion is another weak ability blizzard is toying with :
Conversion
Level 60 death knight talent
10 Runic Power, plus 10 per sec (reduced to 5)
Instant
Continuously converts Runic Power to health, restoring 3% of maximum health every 1 sec. Only base Runic Power generation from spending runes may occur while Conversion is active. This effect lasts until canceled, or Runic Power is exhausted.
For any spec, losing Runic power is a huge loss to threat / damage. If you are giving up so much you need to get something worthwhile back. The HOT from conversion should be increased to 4% and the tick should be every .7 secs.
My other issue is with Asphyxiate, Death's Advance and Chilblains, two amazing talents that are stuck together in the same tier. I dont want them moved or replace because the new talent system should be based around picking 1 out of 3 great abilities. I want them buffed the player doesnt feel like he is losing something by picking 1/3.
A easy Buff could be : Asphyxiate no long replaces stranugate, Death's Advance can be used on a targeted unit, frees them from all roots and snares and makes them immune to them for 7 secs, Chillblains causes icy touch to removed a magic effect and chains of ice will snare all enemies in a 5 yard radius around the target.
Another issue is how to remove the "fat" from unholy death knights, should one ability be baked into another? should something be removed? or should unholy be retooled from the ground up? should they get prem death runes like frost?
What about Frost? what issues do they have? can they fix the strike damage against high armored targets? is there any fixes that can be made?
-----
TLDR : What can be done to balance the once great Death Knight?