WoD Death Knight Changes

[tru]

Is there any class / spec dps wise that is functionally / mechanically in a good spot? not talking about lolsims numbers but actually playing like its supposed to?
Unholy needs outright performance buffs frost needs KM reworked blood is becoming even more docile I just really don't see myself staying a dk anymore.
I really liked that one guys post where he did the math if they devalued the crit buff from killing machine it would actually be a benefit to us.
If ArP was back in the game I would main a MM hunter again but... lolmm in its current state
I browse forums here not so much on official but doesn't seem like much of anyone is happy.

[Schizoide]

Looking at DPS specs only. Enhance is pretty great. Survival (with yesterday's patch) and BM are fine. Mages are all good. Warlocks have some issues, but are generally OK. Unholy and feral are fine.

I haven't kept up on rogues lately so can't speak to them.

WW monks, shadow priests, arms/fury warriors, elemental, and balance are hurting.

[Sarkol]

Looking at DPS specs only. Enhance is pretty great. Survival (with yesterday's patch) and BM are fine. Mages are all good. Warlocks have some issues, but are generally OK. Unholy and feral are fine.

I haven't kept up on rogues lately so can't speak to them.

WW monks, shadow priests, arms/fury warriors, elemental, and balance are hurting.

What's wrong with monks mechanically? They're in a good spot. Or Balance? All their players seem good with the changed, apart from some people preferring the old way.

[Deleted]

Looking at DPS specs only. Enhance is pretty great. Survival (with yesterday's patch) and BM are fine. Mages are all good. Warlocks have some issues, but are generally OK. Unholy and feral are fine.

I haven't kept up on rogues lately so can't speak to them.

WW monks, shadow priests, arms/fury warriors, elemental, and balance are hurting.

Did they change something about unholy recently that i didn't know of? Last time i checked 2H frost beat the shit out of it

[Schizoide]

Mechanically, WW's problems are centered around Chi Explosion. It's the best talent by far, and using it, RsK is not used on cooldown, which leads to WW maintaining two buffs. Looking more at gameplay, WW downtime was OK in last week's beta with Ascension, but the energy regen component was nerfed in this week's patch so now WW is slow again no matter what. Still much faster than Frost DK, incidentally, but too slow for me. 30% or so, and their attunement isn't haste.

I prefer the old Balance personally, and the new gameplay still lacks depth. Subjective, like all opinions.

@Kanj: C'mon. Still in tuning phase dude.

[Shiira]

Unholy has working mechanics unlike frost, frost just happens to be ahead in terms of damage right now.

[Stacie]

Unholy has working mechanics unlike frost, frost just happens to be ahead in terms of damage right now.

Yep it's a big shame the one spec that plays ok (other than IT frost rune crap) is stupidly low DPS.. Not holding out for a fix looking at patch notes i think they are happy with where we are at maybe a small buff/nerf to things but nothing major. Another expan with little raid utility and crap scaling and lower damage than most.

[Faenlyn]

Yep it's a big shame the one spec that plays ok (other than IT frost rune crap) is stupidly low DPS.. Not holding out for a fix looking at patch notes i think they are happy with where we are at maybe a small buff/nerf to things but nothing major. Another expan with little raid utility and crap scaling and lower damage than most.

Relax.
Celestalon:
"Reminder: It's very hard for you to have much perspective about how under/overpowered your spec is on Beta.
Buffs/Nerfs are good, not bad."

Tuning is not done

[Prag]

Relax.
Celestalon:
"Reminder: It's very hard for you to have much perspective about how under/overpowered your spec is on Beta.
Buffs/Nerfs are good, not bad."

Tuning is not done

Tuning may not be complete, but most of the changes this close to release will be small percentages. It would be highly unlikely that we'd see more raid utility or drastic scaling adjustments this far in. Remember, release is November, which means we're looking at 6.0 in the next 4 weeks. I don't know that there's ever been a notable change after pre-patch has been released.

[Iysdexia]

The frost 2pc was extremely overpowered and needed to be nerfed. It was like a better version of ERW on a 1min CD.

Was it overnerfed though? 50 RP, or two extra Frost Strikes per minute seems pretty miniscule in terms of damage, although it does alleviate some of the downtime of both frost specs. The burst of 50 extra RP can also help to keep BoS up for a bit longer.

[Stacie]

Tuning may not be complete, but most of the changes this close to release will be small percentages. It would be highly unlikely that we'd see more raid utility or drastic scaling adjustments this far in. Remember, release is November, which means we're looking at 6.0 in the next 4 weeks. I don't know that there's ever been a notable change after pre-patch has been released.

Exactly this. You have a better chance of a lottery win than getting extra raid utility or adequate nerfs/buffs or scaling fixed right now. You will see the small tweaks 5% + or - on some spells for each class but thats about it.

It's fairly obvious we won't be in a good spot just as we were not in MoP. As always a below average class you take for the odd nitch like AMS, DG or because a blood tank is good at fight X. I don't like to gimp my raid even if its only by a little.

[RuneDK]

Yep it's a big shame the one spec that plays ok (other than IT frost rune crap) is stupidly low DPS.. Not holding out for a fix looking at patch notes i think they are happy with where we are at maybe a small buff/nerf to things but nothing major. Another expan with little raid utility and crap scaling and lower damage than most.

That's entirely the problem. Tuning isn't done yet however they have barely touched tuning for unholy. They haven't special cased NP yet for all the specs. History has a tendency to repeat itself and iirc they didn't touch unholy much the last two expansion beta's going into the expansion. They wait for it to be insanely undertuned on live servers before actually doing anything with it. Aside from the 1s GCD during the MoP beta we don't typically get tuned well. All that ends up happening is nerfs(like we saw with HB getting an about 25% nerf).

Meanwhile specs that are playing fine(pretty much all mage specs) are getting buffs or at worst sub 2-3% nerfs. They didn't tune the specs correctly for the last two, going on three with WoD, expansion betas and the complete lack of tuning still(I believe this is the third tuning phase) is pretty alarming. We have a tendency to go unheard way too often due to season 5.

And Maxweii before you respond that tuning isn't done and the game is coming out in two months crap, there is maybe 4-5 tuning patches AT best left. They are soon going to put a big focus on the 6.0 PTR. DKs have gotten jack shit as a whole, especially unholy in terms of damage tuning and I don't see the trend changing anytime soon.

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The frost 2pc was extremely overpowered and needed to be nerfed. It was like a better version of ERW on a 1min CD.

Was it overnerfed though? 50 RP, or two extra Frost Strikes per minute seems pretty miniscule in terms of damage, although it does alleviate some of the downtime of both frost specs. The burst of 50 extra RP can also help to keep BoS up for a bit longer.

I am sensing PL is going to be mandatory with the 2PC for both frost specs to get any form of quality gameplay that we're used to. That could change by tier 18, but who knows. We don't know how powerful T18 gear will end up being.

Again, while you don't NEED to take PL, if you want to get the lowest amount of downtime it is going to be essential and seeing as most people prefer frost as a fast paced spec I would say that it is essential with the 2PC to get that feeling again. Which sucks, shouldn't have to rely on a crappy designed talent to bring our downtime down.

- - - Updated - - -

Exactly this. You have a better chance of a lottery win than getting extra raid utility or adequate nerfs/buffs or scaling fixed right now. You will see the small tweaks 5% + or - on some spells for each class but thats about it.

It's fairly obvious we won't be in a good spot just as we were not in MoP. As always a below average class you take for the odd nitch like AMS, DG or because a blood tank is good at fight X. I don't like to gimp my raid even if its only by a little.

This has a lot of good points in it. However fights won't need DG or GG. All fights will be doable without them, and seeing as there are less spots for DPS since healers will still be 5-6 spots, and tanks 2...that's 7-8 spots right there leaving 12 for dps. Rack up the ranged with probably eight, and there is at best 5 spots for melee now in mythic and I would say that's an absolute best. So if I can only bring 4-5 melee(assuming all equal skill) I currently see zero reason to bring a dps dk. 1 Enhance, 1 DPS warriors(glad/fury), 1-2 Rogues, 1 Druid/Monk. It's actually bad for both ret and dk dps. I don't consider 2H Frost as a spec people will bring to raids due to the inevitable nerf to obliterate due to PvP. If it doesn't happen in Tuning, it will happen shortly after the season goes live. That I will absolutely promise will happen at some point. The problem really is, if we start out mediocre then what will happen after that...While yes we have two new secondary stats, neither one interacts with the spec mechanics like Multistrike does for say unholy or even blood. While yes Versatility is a damage gain, I don't see people stacking it. Also, Versatility is such a mediocre stat, there is nothing interesting about it. I personally can't believe they axed readiness for versatility.

[blasterion]

Thank god for Job security as a Tank, would like it if Unholy will be competitive but I almost never raid as DPS so it's more a open world QoL thing.

[RuneDK]

Thank god for Job security as a Tank, would like it if Unholy will be competitive but I almost never raid as DPS so it's more a open world QoL thing.

Unholy got the best QoL changes in 5.2. The only thing it could use is making blood boil special cased and have it take less SI stacks to use DT, mostly because it doesn't feel like much when you push it. BB should be special cased for unholy doing double damage and costing a blood and frost rune. I think schiz got that right from the get go and it would make on demand aoe worthwhile for Unholy. I don't know if he was the original person who posted that idea, but I know he has brought it up numerous times and it personally makes sense. With the Plague Strike giving both diseases change, IT should have been removed from unholy completely as overall it's a pretty useless ability aside from it being forced to be used to generate death runes which overall is bad design still, to me personally.

[blasterion]

Unholy got the best QoL changes in 5.2. The only thing it could use is making blood boil special cased and have it take less SI stacks to use DT, mostly because it doesn't feel like much when you push it. BB should be special cased for unholy doing double damage and costing a blood and frost rune. I think schiz got that right from the get go and it would make on demand aoe worthwhile for Unholy. I don't know if he was the original person who posted that idea, but I know he has brought it up numerous times and it personally makes sense. With the Plague Strike giving both diseases change, IT should have been removed from unholy completely as overall it's a pretty useless ability aside from it being forced to be used to generate death runes which overall is bad design still, to me personally.

Well next to useless but still a way to
1. Do damage
2. Convert Frost to Death

Still useful for something.

[RuneDK]

Well next to useless but still a way to
1. Do damage
2. Convert Frost to Death

Still useful for something.

Well it's useful for something because we "have" to use it to convert death runes. If BB just costed a frost/blood there's no reason for it. Which makes sense from a pruning standpoint.

[blasterion]

Well it's useful for something because we "have" to use it to convert death runes. If BB just costed a frost/blood there's no reason for it. Which makes sense from a pruning standpoint.

Why make something more expensive then it is already? If I really wanted to convert both a Blood and Frost I would FeS, or I can cast BB/IT back to back.

I mean BB costing 2 runes is less damage than BB costing 1 rune + Icy Touch

[RuneDK]

Why make something more expensive then it is already? If I really wanted to convert both a Blood and Frost I would FeS, or I can cast BB/IT back to back.

I mean BB costing 2 runes is less damage than BB costing 1 rune + Icy Touch

Go back to the original suggestion BB costs a blood/frost rune but does double the damage. this way the "on demand" aoe for Unholy is there instead of having to use IT before going into an aoe rotation

[Jimjam38]

Unholy has working mechanics unlike frost, frost just happens to be ahead in terms of damage right now.

Isn't that abomination called festersimple still stalking the halls of Archerus?

[Shiira]

Unfortunately yes, but unholy is much closer to being a well designed spec than frost is.