So that's why UH is so much better than frost...

[Khain]

They're going to have to do some baseline buffs, and I don't see that happening.

Five bucks says the 'buffs' are "Unholy Might: Increases Strength by 20%, up from 15%."

Any buff would be a win at this point. I feel like we won't get shit.

[WillFeral]

It's going to be really really bad for us in 5.4,especially for those who play dw frost,as of right now on the ptr prot pallys are pulling more dps without veng. than dw frost dk's.

Thats how bad its gotten.

[DemoBytom]

This is not true. I can't give you evidence, but they definitely do care. It's even one of the very reasons Riposte exists.

I was sure that Riposte was created so you'd care more about dodge/parry and not go full haste/mastery as blood, not necessarily as a DPS buff..

[Raikh]

It's going to be really really bad for us in 5.4,especially for those who play dw frost,as of right now on the ptr prot pallys are pulling more dps without veng. than dw frost dk's.

Thats how bad its gotten.

I would see the problem elswhere if a prot pally could pull over 200k dps without vengeance. If that is the case on the ptr which i haven't seen so far than there a re 3 possiblites: 1.bug 2. 50 ilvl difference (or more) 3. a serious l2p problem.

@Tank dmg
Riposte only provides dps, it changes nothing on stat priorities, especially since avoidance weakens our active mitigation. We get nothing from crit but raw dmg and even the scent of blood buff provides dmg through more resources. They just don't want "full tanks" to feel punished for choosing defensive gear and therefore lacking such an amount of dps. They just give us now the option without that we have to care too much about dmg, the difference will be smaller. It is clearly a dps tune as it changes nothing for the respective gearings, no one has to change their current gear setting, scent of blood is an overall buff and again a dmg and QoLchange for def tanks as you have less downtime.

If tank dps wouldn't matter there would be no need for vengeance anymore or atleast not that much, especially with the new taunt mechanic it should be no problem to keep aggro, with the exception of exploding fire mages at elder council. They're doing too much dmg, even without camping in every void zone available and that its possible to camp in everything is also a problem of a too good scaling with vengeance, especially pallis (dark animus 10man hc *cough*).
Tank dps is currently a feature which brought many new tanks to the board and that is reason alone to further care about tank dps.

[Deleted]

If tank dps wouldn't matter there would be no need for vengeance anymore or atleast not that much, especially with the new taunt mechanic it should be no problem to keep aggro, with the exception of exploding fire mages at elder council. They're doing too much dmg, even without camping in every void zone available and that its possible to camp in everything is also a problem of a too good scaling with vengeance, especially pallis (dark animus 10man hc *cough*).
Tank dps is currently a feature which brought many new tanks to the board and that is reason alone to further care about tank dps.

Vengeance just fucked up the whole game, they should remove it and all this boring, neverending and no-sense discussion would be over.

This is another reason why Blizz shouldn't listen to people that qq.

And why avoidance should weaken our active mitigation?

[Erishkigal]

And why avoidance should weaken our active mitigation?

Because it's based on previous damage taken and when you avoid an attack there is no damage

[Glaziola]

I have no idea what we're talking about. Too many acronyms.

I know that feel bro even though my main is dk I don't understand any of this expert talk

- - - Updated - - -

What has been mentioned so far in relation to Death Knights.

UH = Unholy
R/PPM = Real/Proc Per Minute
BT = Blood Top
IBP = Improved Blood Presence
UHP = Unholy Presence
RC = Runic Corruption
RE = Runic Empowerment
Feather = Fabled Feather of Ji-Kun

Thank you very much!

[Raikh]

Vengeance just fucked up the whole game, they should remove it and all this boring, neverending and no-sense discussion would be over.

This is another reason why Blizz shouldn't listen to people that qq.

Thats just untrue.

This hating just for the sake of it with no evidence of something ever hurting the game and those "discussion" is just a farce of fact vs opinion, its visible that dmg is a thing that matters for tanks, if this is good or an ultimate solution can be questioned but its something on the table even if not first priority.

Yes vengeance causes problems, but those "problems" are not nearly enough to even scratch the games state. Its positive sides are a benefit to gameplay and not the other way around.
Currently active mitigation scales too good with vengeance or we simply get too much vengeance. Increasing dmg is countered by increasing defense but not gained from increasing stats and that is a problem because more dmg causes not necessarily more danger. Aside from that it would be better to reduce vengeance to lets say 1% of unmitigated dmg so that tank dmg not completely overpowers dd dmg. Also with less vengeance active mitigation gets weaker which should stop tanks from soaking each and everything that causes additional dmg because it gets harder to make up for it.

This game is ever evolving and new stuff has to be tuned with its use, nothing starts perfect.
With further evolving there might be a solution to make tanks attractive through pure dmg avoiding and doing their specific job that vengeance or high tank dps are unneeded and can be replaced but till then it is a good feature and makes tanks more versatile and interesting (especially fun) for many players including myself.
Numbers are fun as encounter are not as hyping anymore for everyone if you kill them for weeks over and over and that is also just fine.

[Deleted]

Because it's based on previous damage taken and when you avoid an attack there is no damage

Yes, I know how it works, but I don't get what he really means. I mean, even our active mitigation weaken our active mitigation but we don't give a crap about it...

[broodax]

Totally disagree. Vengeance provided exactly 1 benefit, it allowed tank damage to scale as players progressed through content. But it was a totally backward way of doing it, it made tank damage way higher than dps damage at the beginning of tiers, encouraged weird play (standing in fire), made tank swaps difficult, etc.

Now, that benefit is not even needed for 3-4 of the 5 tanks. Monks, Paladins, Druids, and warriors to a degree all prefer dps stats to tank stats, so they are already scaling as they progress in a natural way (i.e. through gear, the same way dps scales). Not to mention the fact that they also gave tanks 500% threat, so there wasn't really a need for great damage scaling.

DKs are the only tanks left that need any sort of help from vengeance to scale their damage as they progress.

Vengeance caused a lot of problems that do way more than scratch the surface of gameplay, they alter it in huge ways. And it provided only a meager benefit, and now provides almost no benefit at all.

[Deleted]

Thats just untrue.

Tell me another positive side that vengeance brought beside the one you already said (tanks being able to do some good numbers).

I agree with you that vengeance should add more dps to tanks so they can feel useful for the raid but at the moment is totally out of control and this kind of problem led people to care too much on tank dps: when tank were doing ridiculus dps none cared about them, now it's a matter of life and death and this is totally wrong.

But I feel we are a bit OT now... Weren't we talking about UH and bugged RC? XD

[Raikh]

Thats from an old way of view and was mainly cataclysms point of vengeance, but they've changed vengeance and made it intentionally stronger and also said that they're fine with tanks doing somewhat high dmg, they shouldn't just outperform dds completely, which is a result of too much vengeance and the introduction of dps stats as mechanic triggers for tanks but it will make things ultimately more convenient and will be tuned according to that.

Chnage alters things, but this game changes constantly in every direction it fits the growth of tank game play, which was really dull just a few years ago compared to today.
Just as class mechanics getting renewed and redesigned, role mechanics get their upgrades.
You can just view it from an older perspective, but that won't help you or anyone else, the good old days are no convincing feedback for a game that lives from steady change. Without bringing fresh wind here and then this game wouldn't last as long as it did. The completely new experience which brought this game so far up vanishes with the time and so new means are needed.

The core point is fun, balance is nothing compared to fun in a game, only when balance disrupts fun it has to be tuned and that will happen and is already happening. For your example of tank swaps was already added a shorttime threat multiplier which makes tankswaps way easier and 50% vengeance on taunt was added already a good way back.

Also from my experience are dks more independant of vengeance as other tanks, we have minimum heal and we have dmg based on our weapon, not only our ap, our vengeance scaling is on the contrary worse than for them, thats what our problem as tanks currently is, we don't scale as good with vengeance as other tanks, so we don't get any additonal help out of it in comparison.

edit:
@italiandk
Its somewhat OT but its not really important where we are discussing this stuff, the whole sub forum could be a giant thread in terms of discussion as everything comes together somewhere, the result is important. And the thread itself is pretty mucn done, we can just wait and eventually provide feedback and see whats coming for us.
And yes tank dps might be too important currently or just too much of a convenience, but its not the totally wrong direction.

[Tojara]

We don't scale at all with vengeance. Warriors get higher shield barriers, druids will heal more, protection paladins will heal more, and monks will heal more (plus shield the raid for higher numbers). Our only gain from vengeance is flat damage, which honestly seems completely intended.

I think having worthwhile damage makes tanking a lot more fun. I really don't care for doing absurdly high damage compared to damage dealers though, nor do I care for what I consider an abuse of the vengeance system by purposely standing in shit. That however is currently part of the meta game of tank DPS and we unfortunately have to do it. If it's going to be nerfed I'd rather it be changed for ALL tanks. I wouldn't care as much about my DPS compared to other tanks if other tanks weren't doing more damage than me while I am seen as gearing/gemming sub-optimally for my spec, while they get away with having the best of both worlds (damage dealing stats increasing mitigation, and taking more damage for more vengeance equating to better healing/survival for the raid).

Yes I know this is OT but vengeance is completely dumb in it's current iteration. The cataclysm model was probably the best model but it was scrapped because it made off-tanking difficult as it would take some time to build up vengeance and it made tank swaps annoying. Currently we have the exact same model but with even higher numbers making tank swaps just as difficult. However in the next build we are getting a massive threat boost on taunt to pretty much alleviate the issue altogether.

I really think capped vengeance based on our health (5/10/15% whatever) scaling up more like the cataclysm model (but faster) with the new taunt change would probably be the best source of action. I know they are putting caps in for vengeance in the next patch, but the health cap is still too high IMO. With a low to mid ground number that you're ALWAYS going to reach you won't see people doing what I conceive as stupid in order to cap vengeance. 30% of my stamina is still something like 240-250k AP granted by vengeance. Heroic Lei Shen typically grants me a bit over 100k AP without doing something I shouldn't be doing. With the potential for 100-150k more AP to be gained, rest assured we are still going to be looking for ways to take more damage in order to do more damage.

That's really my only legitimate gripe with vengeance. Our lack of scaling (and/or other tanks scaling with it) and abusive behavior in order to game it.

[Deleted]

Thats from an old way of view and was mainly cataclysms point of vengeance, but they've changed vengeance and made it intentionally stronger and also said that they're fine with tanks doing somewhat high dmg, they shouldn't just outperform dds completely, which is a result of too much vengeance and the introduction of dps stats as mechanic triggers for tanks but it will make things ultimately more convenient and will be tuned according to that.

Just because something is intended it doesn't mean it can't be wrong... And by the way I don't think they should bring back old days, I'm just saying that vengeance, at the moment, needs some balance and I just gave an example of what I consider a better design.

For the fun part you are just looking from the tank side: don't forget that a lot of dps that are being outdpsed by tanks aren't having fun that much :P

[SSHA778]

Just speaking from personal experience - I generally play "apply diseases when they're strong and then keep them rolling until the next opportunity to use outbreak on strong procs" type unholy nowadays with a pretty normal rotation in between... In that scenario there's likely not going to be much of a DPS hit (relative to other classes). True festerblight that applies diseases at the start of the fight with every proc available alongside synapse springs/pot will likely be dead.

Time until proc varies very heavily based upon your true haste.

I've made a simple graph (link at end) for probabilities after 10s into the fight. To figure out where you should look, calculate your true haste that you'd expect at the pull.

E.g., Unholy with Feather, UP (with PTR fix), UF, Heroism, and 25% haste from haste rating
True Haste = 1.20 * 1.20 * 1.30 * 1.25 = 2.34
Base RPPM = 0.616

So for the x-axis, you would look at 0.616 * 2.34 = 1.44, which corresponds to a probability of 12.10% for feather to NOT have procced by 10s into the fight. Note that having Heroism or not having Heroism for the first strike (t=0s) is a major factor. In the case used above, if the DK did not have Heroism, then you'll look at 1.11 on the x-axis, which corresponds to a probability of 51.72% for Feather to NOT have procced.

Increasing your time range will shift the graph down and to the left (i.e., as more time passes, you are less likely to not have procced Feather). Conversely, shortening the time range will shift the graph up and to the right, since there's a higher chance that Feather will not have procced.

Graph:
http://i.imgur.com/pXHkmgb.jpg

edit: Note that this applies to any trinket and any spec, not just Feather and Unholy.

[Rashi]

Will this stay the same with the trinket change? does people still think UH will be "SO" much better than frost?

[valliant13]

Will this stay the same with the trinket change? does people still think UH will be "SO" much better than frost?

Depends on how well they compensate unholy for the nerf. Its kind of hard to do considering unholy is a pretty strong spec for pvp. They'd run the risk of making dks the fotm class. However they need to compensate frost as well with the number tuning. There's no reason a dps spec should be behind a tank spec and iirc protection pallets are doing more dps than frost dks. If the buffs aren't too significant we'll see another tier being the bottom but instead of one spec it will be both.

[Skarssen]

Depends on how well they compensate unholy for the nerf. Its kind of hard to do considering unholy is a pretty strong spec for pvp. They'd run the risk of making dks the fotm class. However they need to compensate frost as well with the number tuning. There's no reason a dps spec should be behind a tank spec and iirc protection pallets are doing more dps than frost dks. If the buffs aren't too significant we'll see another tier being the bottom but instead of one spec it will be both.

While unholy isn't bad in PVP and a large DPS buff could push them into OP status in PVP, frost absolutely sinks in both PVE and PVP. Buffing its PVE damage significantly would do nothing more than turn it into a glass cannon in PVP, and there are already plenty of specs like that. Unholy though, they are going to have to find a way to increase its PVE damage only.

[Forswear]

The only way out I see for unholy is them allowing scourge strike's shadow portion to crit again.

Buffing the unholy might would drag PvP balance issues into this mess.

[boombeef]

Well let's hope for less dependence on trinkets next tier as far as balance tweaks.