Morbid Feedback: DK L-75 Talents

[Magdalena]

Good stuff so far.
As many of you are aware, this thread exists on both the official forums and MMO-C.

Official forum link:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/12091329432

MMO-C forum link: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...K-L-75-Talents

Here are some of my observations, based on what I see in both threads:

(I deliberately asked posters to refrain from wishlisting, so the threads aren’t as full of calls for major changes. This is important, and something I will definitely consider.)

-There is little disagreement that Rune Regeneration talents should be accessible earlier than they currently are. Indeed, I have yet to see a single player argue in favor of keeping them at the Level 75 mark.

-Blood Tap and Runic Corruption seem to be the main “choice” posters have stated that they make. A big stated contributor to this is because of the way in which macroed Blood Tap mimics (and performs better than) Runic Empowerment. Some posters felt that this functionality of Blood Tap was fine, while others felt it should be discouraged.

Mione, writing as a Blood DK, commented on Runic Empowerment:

Concerning the talents themselves, I would be happy if RE was completely removed, as that would free up space for a more interesting option (a ballpark estimate for the current talents is around 29% additional runes for most specs, give or take a few % as I did not double check this number as I'm posting this).

The only spec that could arguably prefer RE over RC is Blood when soloing old content, and that's an illusion, as RC is both smoother and objectively stronger. In the case of Blood for tanking current content, RE is effectively a trap and I shudder thinking of all the players who fall into it, as it is not a particularly intuitive concept for a new player.

DW Frost is also effectively stronger when using BT over RE, leading to RE being a trap (and an attractive one at that, since it was the original frost talent in Cataclysm).
Either way, I see RE as a talent that serves virtually no purpose when RC exists and satisfies the need for a regeneration talent that does not require a macro or player input at all. Regarding its functionality itself, it could easily be condensed into a glyph rather than take a talent spot (this leads to very interesting options) or even be outright removed.
I have no opinion on Blood Tap macroing at all and think it's completely fine.

Another poster stated:

As i said, i feel the only "correct" choice for blood is Blood Tap because it's predictable, i can control it, it's one less risk factor.
What bothers me is that if i picked another talent, such as Runic Corruption, i'd be at the mercy of RNG without gaining any significant advantage in the long run, the risk vs. reward proportions are way off.

-Some posters use Runic Empowerment because they are so used to it.

One poster wrote:

I really wanted to like Blood Tap, but RE is just burned too deep in my muscle memory. I'm sure if I tried harder I'd get the hang of it, but I'm comfortable for now.

-Some posters were hesitant to recommend changes to the talent tier because they felt it would pigeonhole them into Cataclysm-style mechanics again.

For instance:

They are "boring", yes. But what do you expect? Them removed and we get stuck with them depending on spec again? Runic Corruption for Unholy, Empowerment for Frost/Blood, and Blood Tap goes back to it's former-self?
No thank you. I am happy with it as is. I cannot afford to lose the current Blood Tap as Unholy or Runic Corruption as Blood.

-Several posters stated that they didn’t feel they had much choice in this tier because “optimal” talents changed according to spec.

One poster writes:

When first encountered, the lvl 75 talent row choice for dk's felt unintuitive, and I knew I just had to wait for mathy-theorycrafters to tell me which was the highest dps gain. I felt that there was no interesting choice to be made here. As I tinkered with different options, none had room for major playstyle-shifts, just slight changes here and there, i.e. saving a particular rune instead of spending on cd. Did not feel interesting or compelling as a talent row. My least favorite talent row of all the dk talent choices, and perhaps of any class that I have played.

Another states:

Overall, I feel like my choices are almost always limited between one or two of the options of the talent tier. I feel like the tier is not accomplishing it's purpose as a talent selection because I never really have all three options available to me and I don't see a way to fix it. In addition, the tier does not generate any excitement and I almost never have any incentive to change my talent selection on any fight. I feel like if this tier was removed by making the options baseline based on spec (RC baseline for Unholy and Blood, and RE or BT for Frost for example) we could have the opportunity to have a more engaging tier.

A third poster wrote:

I think that they go against what the dev's philosophy for the talents was. By this I mean, they wanted people to have choice and play around with things. Admittedly, by only using blood tap and never playing around with RE, I suppose that was a "choice" I made in itself. However, it certainly isn't a very 'fun' one so to speak. All the other tiers of talents I've changed around quite a bit.

-PvP players were an important subset that I paid attention too. Almost every PvP player said that Blood Tap was the only talent they would consider taking due to Death Rune Costs.

One wrote:

When it came to pvp and deathrune costs bloodtap became a requirement, which didn't bother me as I prefer the talent, but effectively limits the usefullness of the other two.

Another wrote:

Give me a reason to pick something other than Blood Tap other than I have one less keybind to push.

-It’s worth noting that while Blood Tap proved to be a popular choice among posters, many either macroed it or claimed dissatisfaction at the fact that it took up another keybind.


Summary:

-Blood Tap and Runic Corruption seem to be the talents most players gravitate towards.

-Blood Tap’s ability to mimic Runic Empowerment’s functionality is part of what makes it so popular (and RE so unpopular).

-This tier is still disliked by many, but the prospect of going back to “one spec uses X and the other uses Y” is also not one that players relish.

-Synergy with Plague Leech is another reason for Blood Tap’s popularity.

Keep them coming, and know that every voice in here matters.

[SSHA778]

Might as well cross-post for the benefit of any non-US players:

To start off, I have not spent much time playing MoP. The content that I have done has been limited to 5-mans in a tanking capacity, primarily on a monk. That being said, I spearheaded the simulation of DKs during the beta, so from that perspective I am quite intimate with these talents and how they’ve changed for the better.

In terms of balance, the tier is incredibly well balanced. No talent is so far ahead that it is mandatory.

Probably the best aspect of T75 is the simple fact that I am not forced to use RE anymore. Coming primarily from a tanking background, I despised RE for the entirety of Cataclysm (even though I was adept at RE gaming and BT exploiting) and I would much rather have had RC due to its consistency. With the loss of the old BT, RE is without a doubt the worst choice for tanking. A random proc with a random rune return that consumes your entire rotation, RE is just simply one more item to keep track of, and as a Blood tank, I can assure you we have enough to keep track of in order to anticipate future damage intake already, and the last addition we need is more uncertainty on how we can respond to that future damage intake.

More importantly, RC flows much more smoothly with double-rune strikes since it doesn’t return just a single rune (leaving me with nothing to do). BT offers the unique advantage of being able to precisely control my rune return, which is also very useful. However, without having done any raids, I can say that any sort of DS timing that I’ve needed to do (which isn’t much), RC has been able to fulfill this role just fine, so I’ve stuck with RC. I can appreciate the rune flexibility appeal of BT (such as for DnD on a set of adds), but with enough forward thinking, I can make RC work without too much effort.

Coming from a DPS perspective, other than for pure throughput (and this is arguable, since the time and rotational effort (by biasing rune types) you spend RE gaming could lead to resource waste and therefore lower throughput overall), I really don’t see any compelling reason to take RE. RE is much more invasive on your rotation (because RE gaming drives the rotation), and the potential for wasting RP isn’t something I even want to be possible; that’s just throwing DPS away. More importantly, why would you bother gaming RE (i.e., putting effort into gaming RE) when you can simply use BT, which cannot waste RP and returns a death rune, eliminating any consideration on which rune type is returned? In fact, if you don’t game RE, you’ll get less of the runes that you want than if you simply macro-ed BT because BT always results in a rune you want.

Thus, I see no reason at all for RE to be chosen from both a tanking and DPS standpoint. Its higher throughput does not justify its unwieldy use, for either alternative leads to comparable results with significantly less effort. Therefore, at bare minimum, RE needs to be replaced with some other choice.

As a potential option (but much more involved), RC could be made baseline (since its return is the most compatible with all specs), and a glyph could exist to convert RC into BT. RE would be deleted. This would free the developers up to introduce an entirely new tier.

As for RC and BT, assuming RE is scrapped, a choice needs to be made regarding macro-ed BT. Personally, I have no opinion on the matter. If the intent is that players should respond to T75, then macro-ed BT needs to be eliminated (somehow), because then you have a tier in which two options are not performing as intended (which brings into question the necessity of the existence of the tier itself). Otherwise, macro-ed BT is fine because it allows the player to have a choice over direct resource control versus passive resource regeneration, since the player can choose when to use a macro-ed version over the manual version. However, I think that macro-ed BT will be predominant usage of BT for any DPS spec if that is permitted. Particularly, for any spec that uses a single-rune strike, macro-ed BT will be ubiquitous. At present, I can’t think of any way to address this other than by making BT very low on the priority (which is nonsensical).

I will also note that the general trend for DK resource management has been toward that of least effort when the reward for micromanagement is not statistically significant--hence, the low adoption of RE and the prevalence of RC and macro-ed BT. This is quite a slippery slope, because if proper micromanagement results in a significant gain, then that talent (and its micromanagement) suddenly becomes mandatory. This would also explain Blood’s adoption of BT on several fights with a predictable high damaging ability with moderate frequency.

As for BT itself, death rune costs need to be addressed. If there is ever an ability that costs a death rune that needs to be used frequently, BT is the go-to option. It results in a significantly higher death rune production than any other alternative. In addition, specs do not generate the same number of death runes per unit time--there is quite a disparity. Thus, for both of these reasons, death rune costs need to be eliminated.

So for a quick summary:
1. Not being forced to have RE anymore is amazing.
2. RE needs to be scrapped or seriously reworked. There is no realistic advantage to choosing RE, but there are serious usability drawbacks. Consider that not all rune types have the same value when redesigning.
3. A judgment call on macro-ed BT needs to be made. If not allowed, then perhaps the tier shouldn't exist and RC should just be baseline, as it is the most compatible with all specs (doesn't inherently favor single- or double-rune strikes).
4. Trends have shown that DKs prefer less resource management when micromanaging does not result in a large gain.
5. Death rune costs need to be eliminated.

[Deleted]

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

heroic content, now 12/14H orgrimmar, mostly as a blood death knight.

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

I don't play with RE because it has too much constraints compared to the others : the "random fully depleted rune".
With RE, I can't use that blood rune at the risk of "losing" my next RE proc. And if I don't have one fully depleted rune, I can't rune strike as much as I want when I have too much runic power (AMS/aoe tanking) because I have 45% chance to lose my RE proc.

With RC, I have more "freedom". I only need one depleted rune of each. When I have too much runic power, I can rune strike more without losing runes.

I like blood tap, and use it when I want to increase my survivability a bit.

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

If they really want to keep the lvl 75 talents, then change RE and maybe make BT more rewarding when we use it cleverly.
While I'm at it, I agree that the lvl 75 talents should be accessible earlier.

[Deleted]

Don't think I'm going to bring anything that hasn't already being said (and said in a better way) to the thread, but here's my 2 cent :

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

Mostly heroic raiding, as a DPS DK, both frost and unholy, some flex as Blood, with a very low level of skill in regard to our tank spec.

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

As a DW Frost, apart form the very early T14 where I was still playing with RE based on a gaming runes gameplay, I've always played with BT. With the dominance of HB as the core of the rotation for this expansion, I don't see any reason why play without BT as a DW frost, as it can be macroed for anyone who doesn't want to handle the micromanaging part, and the death rune return allows us to maximise the use of HB. RE rune-gaming feels odd, and I don't like RC at all as DW because I don't see the point of having a third of my rune-return going on an unholy rune when I want mostly frost or death one.

As a 2H frost, I dislike using RE because having half of the ressource at my disposal for using my core rotation ability feels wrong. As it have been said already, the 2 rune cost make RE less attractive that any of the other 2 talents. I mostly use BT as a 2H frost, because I like it synergy with KM, as I feel as if it allowed me to better react to a KM proc whenever one occur while I don't have enought rune to land an OB. I actually never used RC but I can see it being interesting as while we're "spamming" OB, all runes-type are usefull.

I never play with maccroed-BT because I like the control aspect of the talent, and being able to bank the charges when I want to maximise some burst phase, and both frost spec doesn't feel overwhelm with bind.

As Unholy, I never used RE for the same reason I never use it as a 2H frost : the 2 rune cost of FeS make me prefer to have my BF runes the more synchronise they can be and RE work in an opposite way in that regard. As I would actually prefer playing with BT for the ability to bank charges when I want to, I mostly play with RC because I'm less used to the unholy rotation, which involved a little more bind than frost and make me prefer not to add one atm.

For the little experience I have of Blood spec, I consider Blood Tap being the go-to because of the control it provide, which seem to me, on paper, being what a blood DK should want to have. More experience blood player will have better feedback than me on that subject.

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

I actually doesn't have any problem with this talent line. My opinion being that if talent are supposed to allow us to make interesting choice, "interesting" is a subjective concept, and having one raw being a choice only when a tier change, or when I change spec, doesn't bover me. I never thought about its placement in the talent tree but having them available ASAP while leveling would actually be pretty logical. I would have critics to make to other talent tier, but won't here as it isn't the subject of the topic.



On this last note, doing the exact same feedback collecting process on the topic of the other talent raw would be interesting. There are things to say about them too.

[Ikrekot]

What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

I have experience with all MoP normal and few heroic raids. Few weeks ago I started 25 man SoO, previously played only 10 man. I play as Blood Death Knight. I don't like dps.

What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

In MoP I use only RC or BT as tank. I tried to use RE but it wasn't my playstyle. I play only as tank and speaking in view of tank.

I like BT because it provides most survivability for tanks and control in damage intake. In my opinion it scales great with heavy mastery build and avoidance build.

RC in my opinion is great for haste build. When I have more haste then my runes regenerate faster and I can use much more times my abilities. It's great option because it's only talent in tier75 in which you don't waste resources. When you have all runes up you can RS/DC and still get RC proc. RE won't proc and BT only have 12 stacks.

In start of MoP I was using both RC and BT. I changed them for specifics fights. In ToT with haste build I was using RC but now in SoO I use BT for Avoidance/Mastery build.

Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

BT should get some more stacks so you can use more RS without loosing resources but give BT 2 charges without globalcooldown and cooldown X seconds. You will still be able to macro it for 2 Death Runes for DS. With AMS up I can generate 12 stacks of BT in few seconds.

RC should get increased proc rate in my opinion. Sometimes I have to long wait for proc.

RE should be removed and replace with new talent. Increased Runic Power poll and passively incrrease Rune Regeneration by X%

Sorry for my bad english

[roahn the warlock]

Content: I played heroic in 5.0, but have moved to flex come SoO

EXP: I pretty much only use blood tap as a blood tank, because I can get two quick runes whenever I need a death strike. It's a nice backup. Or if I don't need to think too hard, I just macro it to rune strike and start swinging.

thoughts: I think Blood tap should really become baseline in a class that really doesn't need to be simplified more than it is in its DPS specs. And instead make a mobility tree. because currently the best Dk class is a worgen by far because of darkflight


as for other tiers. Death pact will always be the best, as will deaths advance. so maybe a fix there.

[Deleted]

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

Cuttting edge raiding as Tank whenever i actually played. CM gold serverfirst. Oldcontent soloing. 14/14HC Soo atm.

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

I always use seperatly Hotkeyd Blood Tap for both Blood and Unholy because i consider Blood Tap to be a lot better than RE or RC for Blood Tanking.
Because i am so used to Blood Tap from playing Blood i also use it for Unholy. But i would consider RC for Unholy.

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

Blood Tap is very important for the playstyle of Blood because it nor only gives necessary control but it also allows some Deathstrike storing. I really really like the way Blood Tap works and how important it is for Blood Tanking.

If Blizzard redesigns the LV 75 Talents i would like them to consider :

Runic Corruption probably would work fine as a default option for Blood and Unholy. Removing Blood Tap from advanced Blood DK Tanking on the other hand would not only remove the ability to control your Resources but also replace a lot of fun gameplay with RNG.