WoD Death Knight Changes

[RuneDK]

Dk badass flavor > everything

Also, still time to get cms on your war, especially if you tank, you'll get it done easily

Pretty much this, I'm going to Resub once 6.0 hits the PTR to finish CM sets. Warrior tanks are badass right now, barely behind DK and monk for damage I'd say

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What's so great about warriors except that the grass is always greener? They are leagues in damage over anyone else in Beta but that will certainly be nerfed and equalized with the rest before live. As far as mechanics all you have to do is go to the Warrior forum to read the complaints. It's near outrage level with regards to their rotations and mechanics. Worse than this thread has been.

It's outrage because they neutered the specs with the pruning by too much. Warriors have ALWAYS scaled well in every expansion. They usually start out average and end up near the top every expansion. The only thing making MoP different is warlocks absurd level of overpoweredness. I want a class that can scale through the expansion, not one that gets worse through the expansion without substantial buffs just to make it on par at the beginning to fall behind again before deep heroic progress starts.

[Shiira]

However, without looking at any statistics, my gut feel is that DKs are the all-round most popular meele class in the game.

Last time I checked death knights were the second least popular dps in heroic t16, after monk.

Right now demonology is the third highest performing spec in the game despite having significantly less representation than the other high performing specs. Demonology hasn't been bad at any point in the past year. You should stop listening to warlocks and mages who claim to be losing their raid spots as soon as any of their specs are outside of the top three.

As hard as you may find it to believe people actually do base their choice of spec on performance.

What's so great about warriors except that the grass is always greener?

They have mechanics that have synergy with their stats. We have killing machine. Even if both of those things stop being true they will still have better cooldowns and more mobility than we do.

[Sarkol]

Those things you said about Warriors have always been the case. If you guys prefer warriors, and want to play one, then stop writing about it in the Dk discussion forum. I'm all for discussion, but when people just list reasons why every class is better than a Dk , it's not a discussion any longer. Different classes are different, who knew.

[Jimjam38]

It's outrage because they neutered the specs with the pruning by too much.

They did this to every class. Pruning was something they need to be very delicate with like trimming a Bonsai, but instead they ran at it with a chainsaw like they were attacking a horde of zombies. WoD will be full of hotfixes and changes until they manage to get every class back to where they should be.

[Nayami]

They did this to every class. Pruning was something they need to be very delicate with like trimming a Bonsai, but instead they ran at it with a chainsaw like they were attacking a horde of zombies. WoD will be full of hotfixes and changes until they manage to get every class back to where they should be.

This ^^^^^

Will happen to at least DKs, can see it now after first week of WoD live, the amount of QQ about free GCDs in Frost quadruples and it gets "fixed".

[Jimjam38]

Last time I checked death knights were the second least popular dps in heroic t16, after monk.

Firstly, I wasn't talking specifically about hct16 or specifically about dps. I said "all round most popular melee class". I don't know where you'd look, but I suspect if you looked at all level 90 toons, dk's would be pretty popular. The point being, that a class so popular wouldn't be left in the gutter to rot. Hard to believe, but outside of HC raiding is the rest of the game, including PVP and LFR and everything in between. Dk's are popular across all of it. And what does blizzard care about most? Money. And if one of the most popular classes is horseshit, they stand to lose money, and that's not something they want. The evidence is in mop, where even though they consistently failed to address scaling issues of dk dps, they also consistently compensated with increasingly stupid hotfix buffs to keep them viable. So, as sad and doubtful as you might be about the mechanics, blizz can be relied upon to hotfix your dps and keep you in the game.

Right now demonology is the third highest performing spec in the game despite having significantly less representation than the other high performing specs. Demonology hasn't been bad at any point in the past year. You should stop listening to warlocks and mages who claim to be losing their raid spots as soon as any of their specs are outside of the top three.

I'm well aware that Demonology is a strong spec. Sparkkugs used it for many of methods first kills. But that doesn't change the fact that it's massively underrepresented compared to the other two, with Destruction being the most represented of any spec in the game at the moment; Warcraft Logs has it at 42873 parses in 25man HC, while Demonology is the 3rd lowest at 1737. In fact you can quote me saying "and popularity pladed a big factor in that too" in regards to their seemingly low performance on some ranking sites. Oh and I'll go ahead and correct myself so you don't feel the need: *played.

As hard as you may find it to believe people actually do base their choice of spec on performance.

And as hard as you might now find it to accept, people also choose their spec on a whole lot of stuff unrelated to performance, including, but not limited to, previous experience with the spec and flavor. Eg, shadow priests, one of the lowest performing specs in single target, has the 5th highest number of parses (29088). Or like how Destruction is by far the most popular spec in the game at the moment, despite being significantly behind both other warlock specs.

Oh and I should also mention that Frost DK is right in middle, immediately behind fire mage actually, with 18137 parses, despite being one of the lowest performing and unholy had one of the lowest number of parses, with 7530, despite being significantly ahead of frost. Oh, but that's odd, didnt you say that frost was the 2nd least popular? And didn't you also say people choose their spec based on performance? Where are all dem unholy dks brah? Where?

[Skarssen]

People who care more about flavor and the feel of a class won't be the ones dropping DK's. Frost will be slower, but otherwise both specs are almost identical to what they have been. I like all the "little stuff" about DK's just as much as the next guy; death grip, faster mount speed, special mounts, free weapon enchants and portals, "the redeemed evil guy" personna, path of frost, etc. I miss all those things when I'm on a different character.

What I don't like is watching the rest of the raid zoom by me in damage with gear upgrades. I don't like taking a trinket drop, knowing that by doing so I'm hurting the overall raid damage because the warrior would get far more out of it than me. I don't like my favorite spec being "easy" and spoken of as being "faceroll", despite my having mastered it. I don't like being nearly defenseless in PVP, and being forced to play a spec I don't like (unholy) if I want to push rating higher than 2k.

So I agree with you that DK's are still overall a very popular class, but I highly doubt that popularity has anything to do with PVE or PVP performance. It is all flavor driving their popularity. And frost is more popular than unholy because it is so easy. The difference between a 95th percentile frost player and a 75th percentile player is far, far smaller than any other spec I am aware of, though I last checked this months ago.

I have nothing to back this up, but I would bet that the percentage of heroic raiders and high level PVPers leaving DK's in MUCH higher than the general population. And that is the crux of the problem.

[Gaiseric]

Is it just my imagination or are our eyes on beta a little more muted than live? My new human model looks pretty good but the eyes don't seem to glow anymore.

[Vereesa]

Is it just my imagination or are our eyes on beta a little more muted than live? My new human model looks pretty good but the eyes don't seem to glow anymore.

The DK eye glow on the new models in-game has been bugged for a very long time now, but it works on the character selection screen, from which we can pretty reasonably conclude it's just an in-game bug.

[Sarkol]

Regarding this whole topic, i think it boils down to this. You're either in a very. very high end guild, and someone who doesn't mind benching their 'main' for any other class which your raid needs performance wise(I'll use Method's Blatty as an example here. He mains Mage, but only started playing it after progression, where he played Warlock), or you're the vast majority of people, and you play what class you like, all things considered.

A very small sample of class perform well on every fight, and to expect your class to be that, or you'll reroll, is quite simply stupid.

Play what you enjoy, or play what your raid needs, if you're so inclined to do that. If Frost Dks have been destroyed, i feel for you, but playing something you do enjoy will be more fun than playing something you don't.

[Schizoide]

Play what you enjoy, or play what your raid needs, if you're so inclined to do that. If Frost Dks have been destroyed, i feel for you, but playing something you do enjoy will be more fun than playing something you don't.

Well said!

[Deleted]

I don't think people should be worried about scaling as much as before. The stat passives, weapon damage scaling, attack power scaling, all has been standardized. Weapon damage is much less reliant on the weapon, it scales much more heavily with attack power. Intellect and agility are no longer superior to strenght. Every skill is now completely dependant on attack/spell power or weapon damage.

So Please Stop this nonsense with traditional scaling issues...

Sure some classes have better scaling but, it is no where near the horrendous numbers from before.

[Shiira]

So Please Stop this nonsense with traditional scaling issues...

Are you suggesting that killing machine is no longer a problem?

It's worse than before because we have fewer frost strikes and obliterates to spend procs on so crit matters even less.

[Schizoide]

All the things you said are true, but that don't in any way mean that there won't be scaling issues. Early simulation already says versatility will outperform haste for 2H frost at a whopping 400 haste-- not very much, even with squished stats. Frost's attunement is haste, and versatility rating is purposefully tuned to be expensive per point, so scaling will be off target extremely quickly.

Since we won't be stacking/gemming/enchanting/preferring haste, this also means that its downtime probably won't drop to what I personally would consider to be remotely acceptable levels in the entire WoD expansion. Earlier I hoped to see acceptable 2H frost downtime around 6.2 or 6.3. Now, it'll probably never reach that.

@Shiira: And yes, of course, crit value remains severely depressed due to KM. That's not really a scaling issue per se, it's low value from day 1.

[Sarkol]

Well said!

Just realised the last part of that sentence was kind of stating the obvious. Should have said 'Sticking with a class you don't enjoy for sentimental reasons, won't be as enjoyable as switching to a class you genuinely enjoy playing'

[chibichibiko]

Are you suggesting that killing machine is no longer a problem?

It's worse than before because we have fewer frost strikes and obliterates to spend procs on so crit matters even less.

They might not be suggesting that KM is no longer a problem, but I am. We'll have more than just haste and mastery to invest in. Multistrike/mastery gear is going to be our 'big stacker' after we hit our relative haste plateau. It's ok to have one bad stat as long as you have alternatives. If you get to a point where only two stats can benefit you and one of them is especially bad; that's the issue.

[Deleted]

... Still waiting to resub.

IF (Unholy=Fun+Competitive) THEN
(Play Unholy)
ELSE
(Boost Rogue)
END IF

[Schizoide]

It's ok to have one bad stat as long as you have alternatives. If you get to a point where only two stats can benefit you and one of them is especially bad; that's the issue.

I fundamentally disagree with this. The design goal should be that all stats are balanced. Obviously that's difficult to do, and some will float to the top or sink to the bottom, but the goal should be balance, and whenever possible those should be corrected when they occur. That can be disruptive during an expansion, of course. But those pegs should be knocked right back down flat in beta.

[Skarssen]

It's ok to have one bad stat as long as you have alternatives. If you get to a point where only two stats can benefit you and one of them is especially bad; that's the issue.

Mastery, crit are straight out BAD for 2h. Haste is valuable for a while, then falls off. Versatility will be "okay" for a while. So at the very beginning of WoD 2h frost will want multistrike, haste and to a lesser extent versatility. How long before it becomes just multistrike and versatility? And we can't stack/avoid stats like we have been able to up until 6.0.

Bottom line is this. Add [x] primary stat and 1% each of all the secondary stats to a frost DK, fury warrior, fire mage, feral druid, ele shaman, aff lock, etc,. Which one will gain the most damage? I am almost certain that the frost DK will gain less than just about any spec in the game.

[Schizoide]

400 rating points is not a lot, even with the stats squished.

Itemlvl 630, Heroic dungeon blue 2H, 118 haste rating
http://wod.wowhead.com/item=110046&bonus=524

Itemlvl 685, Mythic T17 raid epic 2H, 230 haste rating
http://wod.wowhead.com/item=113953&bonus=567

So in 6.0 as a new 100, a single heroic dungeon weapon is 1/4 of that cap. And a mythic raid drop from the very first tier is half of it. Remember these numbers are increased by 10% from attunement, too. This is of course only a single slot. We'll hit 400 haste rating in leveling greens.

At that point Haste is devalued, retaining the high wait times I hate so much. Remember all those parses at 40% wait time in 660 gear are with every piece of haste gear and haste enchants we can get. But we'll be actively trying to avoid haste. Crit is already very low value due to Killing Machine. Mastery remains very low value for 2H frost due to Obliterate dealing physical damage. And thus the subspec is left with two valuable stats; Multistrike and Versatility.

But wait, Multistrike is very inexpensive in rating per %, so it will diminish quickly in later tiers. And then we're left with just Versatility. The end result will be a migration to DW frost, because it makes much better use of Mastery on gear. This is what happens when stats aren't balanced.

The devs hate the word, but this actually is a classic scaling issue.