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  1. #1

    Lets Talk About Talent Tier 75



    I wanted to take a quick moment to discuss why the level 75 tier for Death Knights still exists. I remember there being like a massive 30 or 40 page thread talking about this during the MoP beta and most of the feedback was concerning three things.

    -There will always be a best choice for any particular spec.
    -Why is it so high up in the tier for low lever players just starting
    -Boring

    1. Blizzards first explanation for making our core rune regeneration as talents was because they wanted us to be able to use the regeneration that we wanted for any particular spec but it never worked out that way. Blood always took RC, Unholy Always took RC and Frost always took BT or RE depending on if they were 2H or DW. The illusion of choice there has always been noticeable.

    2. If in fact DKs retain this tier going into WoD, why should it remain so high up in the tier that new players or just starting DKs don't get a core DK mechanic until level 75 which is just dumb and also leaves a bad taste in the players mouth making the class seem week or too slow.

    3. Where is the fun in picking a straight up passive ability in which should already be a standard passive ability for the three Death Knight specializations. I don't see any other class in the game that has to waste three perfectly good talent spots to choose how they regenerate their core resource.

    ____________

    Overall I feel that this tier needs to be removed. There is absolutely no reason why this tier ever needed to exist. The entire point of playing a particular spec was because you liked how it felt and played not because it had any one specific resource regeneration mechanic. Not once during cataclysm did I ever see a Death Knight complain about 100% rune regeneration for 3 seconds in unholy and vice versa for the other two. I simply want to appeal to Blizzard and ask them replace this tier with cool non boring abilities because I know they read these forums.

    If anything they just need to make BT baseline like it was in Wrath and Cata.

    EDIT:
    This guy said it better than I could.
    To me this tier, BT in specific, goes against everything blizz has been trying to do for two expansions now. These talents arent fun and in no way add depth to the class. Most DKs I know just take RE or RC to avoid the hassle of BT and those, like me, that do take BT just macro it into some other abilities so that it is a hit and forget aspect.
    Last edited by LCDArcade; 2014-04-14 at 09:14 PM.

  2. #2
    it's being moved lower in WOD - 56 I believe
    I still think they should make RC baseline and remove the entire line though

  3. #3
    Always took BT on my Blood DK so not sure what you mean. Kind of liked having that level of control so I could get a DS in just when I wanted it.

    I dunno, is the difference significant? If so no doubt they could tune them closer. Don't really see a problem with them personally.
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  4. #4
    It's being dropped to level 60 in WoD, yes.

    Most DKs hate the rune regen tier, primarily because it's not a real choice.

    The devs love it. Nobody knows why.

  5. #5
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    Blood Tap IMO should be baseline but I doubt it'll go there. The others are very RNGish. I don't know how they can leave it there. I can only guess they don't want to change gameplay too much(Which is understandable but there has to be a line).
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  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    Most DKs hate the rune regen tier, primarily because it's not a real choice.
    Many people will agree with this, but there are still plenty of people speccing whatever they feel like taking.

    I'd love to see the tier scrapped and the talents replaced with minor glyphs.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    The devs love it. Nobody knows why.
    Probably because it exactly fulfills the original design goals?

    The very fact that you continually have people arguing over whether RC is superior to BT (or vice versa) is a pretty good example of this.

    The primary complaint I see with this tier (besides being level 75) is simply that it occupies a tier slot by adding mechanics we have already had previously (i.e., it is taking the place of another potential set of talent choices that would be considered "new and exciting").

    There is very little agreement on which talent should be made baseline (although I'd say there's certainly an aversion to RE), and numerous players have mentioned that they like to alternate between several choices depending on the circumstances since the margin between talents is very minimal (other than in PvP). Does this not sound exactly like what they want in a talent tier?

    Quote Originally Posted by LCD View Post
    Blood always took RC, Unholy Always took RC and Frost always took BT or RE depending on if they were 2H or DW. The illusion of choice there has always been noticeable.
    You might want to re-evaluate the validity of your claims here...
    Last edited by SSHA778; 2014-04-14 at 03:04 AM.
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  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by SSHA778 View Post
    Probably because it exactly fulfills the original design goals?

    The very fact that you continually have people arguing over whether RC is superior to BT (or vice versa) is a pretty good example of this.

    The primary complaint I see with this tier (besides being level 75) is simply that it occupies a tier slot by adding mechanics we have already had previously (i.e., it is taking the place of another potential set of talent choices that would be considered "new and exciting").

    There is very little agreement on which talent should be made baseline (although I'd say there's certainly an aversion to RE), and numerous players have mentioned that they like to alternate between several choices depending on the circumstances since the margin between talents is very minimal (other than in PvP). Does this not sound exactly like what they want in a talent tier?



    You might want to re-evaluate the validity of your claims here...
    Blood always took RC at the beginning of the expansion but yes now they lean more towards RT.

  9. #9
    1. There is plenty of choice. There isn't much data readily available for certain specs taking certain talents. However it shouldn't be difficult to find players who take options that I list.

    Blood players tend to lean towards BT or to RC. RE has fallen out of favor because it doesn't provide offer emergency play for death strike usage and is inconsistent in its proc.

    Unholy players tend to go with BT or to RC. Both have their merits and both can be found well represented.

    Frost players tend to lean towards BT or towards RE because of familiarity from Cata.

    In my opinion however, there is nothing wrong with RC here especially 2h frost. 2h frost's only complaint is that during execute phase it may end up sitting on a rune because of soul reaper's 1 rune cost. Dw prefers ways of regenerating single runes.


    In fact, I recently had a nice discussion with someone about t75 balance. My feeling was that RE is under-represented among players. After some more investigation and discussion I sent a tweet. I do not have all the data, but Celestalon does.


    2. This has been changed. Current t75 are now level 60 talents in WoD. Confirmed via questioning devs at blizzcon if I recall correctly and again through recent datamining.

    3. Other than this being entirely your opinion, its premise is wrong. One could argue that t45 for Monks, and t60 for Hunters are entirely about the resoruces. Sure they are not all passives but without it, your class plays differently. While there is very much an argument that these classes don't rely as heavily on the talents to complete their rotation, the point still stands.

    I actually see this customization as a good thing, especially when players elect to spec into different options based on the content or spec they are playing.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    Most DKs hate the rune regen tier, primarily because it's not a real choice.
    blood tap is the best but I just can't deal with having to manage a third resource on top of everything else. Yes I could be lazy and just macro it but I just take RE as frost and RC as unholy/blood.

    I still think RC should just be base line and bring back the old blood tap. But since they're removing cds as much as possible that's not gonna happen

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Nangz View Post
    I actually see this customization as a good thing, especially when players elect to spec into different options based on the content or spec they are playing.
    No, no, no. It's not customization because your choice truly doesn't matter. It's like they gave us a talent tier that changes the Death Coil effect color. It's cosmetic. It's a false choice.

    Runic Corruption - Passive ability. Zero gameplay.
    Runic Empowerment - Normally passive too, unless you "game" it, which I would argue is negative gameplay; purposefully not using your resources to force a specific rune to refresh is not something I would embrace if I were a developer. I can't speak for Blizzard, but I honestly believe they would not embrace it either. (Then again I've been wrong about them before, and no doubt will again. Celestalon recently tweeted that GCD-locking was OK. /sigh.)
    Blood Tap - By default this is of course active, but the performance lost to macroing the ability is tiny, and we've proven over the course of this expansion that it is best macroed for most people. Macroed BT is obviously passive.

    So here we have three "choices". They're all slightly different in various fiddly ways that theorycrafters argue about on message boards, but none of them actually change how you play the game. (Unless you use manual BT, which probably hurts you.) And more importantly, if you pick the "wrong" talent, unmacroed BT aside, it won't really hurt your performance. Even Unholy with Runic Empowerment works OK. Not technically optimal, but well within any human's margin of error.

    Since they all play the same, and they don't impact performance, how could anyone justify these talents as worthy? They totally don't matter!

    I believe Blood Tap could be a worthy talent, if it was no longer macroable. But do we really need two passive alternatives? Nah. Runic Corruption should be baseline, Blood Tap rendered un-macroable and buffed to compete in a tier with two new performance-impacting talents, and Runic Empowerment removed from the game.
    Last edited by Schizoide; 2014-04-14 at 05:50 AM.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    I feel like the problem with the choices is that anyone that takes the class seriously will always take the best option and forsake the other two. Why would I take RE as Frost when Blood Tap does exactly the same thing without any RnG AND gives you Death Runes. You can even Macro it in to abilities and be more effective than with RE, pretty sure a lot of high end Dks like Fnx do this and hold a lot of top ranks.
    Last edited by mmoc2233da4339; 2014-04-14 at 09:37 AM.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    No, no, no. It's not customization because your choice truly doesn't matter. It's like they gave us a talent tier that changes the Death Coil effect color. It's cosmetic. It's a false choice.
    No, its like they gave us a talent that makes Sudden Doom Proc a free death coil like it currently does, or make sudden doom launch a free death coil that say grants no T75 talent procs. It would probably come down to preference in this case assuming the math worked out that they were close. Again, its customization.

    Runic Corruption - Passive ability. Zero gameplay.
    This is why it is good option, removal of the mini-game of managing your t75 talent is a choice. Its easy to see how removing this management plays differently than the management provided by BT. Even in its macro'd form, the flow of the rotation is different even though the priority list may remain the same.
    Runic Empowerment - Normally passive too, unless you "game" it, which I would argue is negative gameplay; purposefully not using your resources to force a specific rune to refresh is not something I would embrace if I were a developer. I can't speak for Blizzard, but I honestly believe they would not embrace it either. (Then again I've been wrong about them before, and no doubt will again. Celestalon recently tweeted that GCD-locking was OK. /sigh.)
    The clear intent is for this to be a midway between managing resources through blood tap, and passively getting them through RC. RE lets you influence what rune you get back in a way that RC doesn't. The lacking of this talent is that the benefits of runes for each spec are not equal. There are a few ways of making this talent better in my opinion but I wont' get into that here. ( And not just by buffing the chance to proc, though that is one way in terms of raw numbers)
    Blood Tap - By default this is of course active, but the performance lost to macroing the ability is tiny, and we've proven over the course of this expansion that it is best macroed for most people. Macroed BT is obviously passive.
    Macro'd blood tap is superior to RE, this is the problem with it. RE isn't a choice because macro'd BT is better, it refunds a rune as a death rune! You get the rune you want most! While I can't speak for blizzard, if they had a way to make blood tap unable to be macro'd while still being off the GCD, they should do it. When its on the GCD it becomes worthless, when its off the GCD it's macro'd. There has to be a middle ground. While this is a nice discussion to have, it still has very little to do with player choice which is what talents are all about.

    So here we have three "choices". They're all slightly different in various fiddly ways that theorycrafters argue about on message boards, but none of them actually change how you play the game. (Unless you use manual BT, which probably hurts you.) And more importantly, if you pick the "wrong" talent, unmacroed BT aside, it won't really hurt your performance. Even Unholy with Runic Empowerment works OK. Not technically optimal, but well within any human's margin of error.
    I agree that these talents are slightly different in numerical ways that we like to talk about, but people who play less for the numbers pick the talent that they like the best. Its as simple as that. Thats a choice for them. However very few specs have the kind of complete freedom with their talents that we all seem to long for. There is always a mathematical superior option unless the talent does not matter. So i'll continue using blood tap because it is superior AND using it unmacroed because that is superior as well. I'll take the risk that my improper management costs me dps when compared to running something like RC. That is called a skill cap.

    Since they all play the same, and they don't impact performance, how could anyone justify these talents as worthy? They totally don't matter!
    I've already explained why they don't play the same. As for performance impact, an idealist would say the one you have to focus and manage the most should give the highest return at the highest risk. Thus in theory, BT>RE>RC for all specs. This isn't always possible and in my opinion, its due to the weakness of RE for the reasons touched on above.


    I believe Blood Tap could be a worthy talent, if it was no longer macroable. But do we really need two passive alternatives? Nah. Runic Corruption should be baseline, Blood Tap rendered un-macroable and buffed to compete in a tier with two new performance-impacting talents, and Runic Empowerment removed from the game.
    The point of Runic Corruption which it seems you have missed is that it is the option for people who do not want to manage a resource. Now this is up to the developers if they wish to give benefits to managing our resources but currently there are significant benefits to managing BT properly. It would be nice if RE had similar benefits, alas it does not. Its worth being clear that if all choices were, in theory balanced so closerly that it didn't matter what you picked, this discussion likely wouldn't happen because there are clear differences in these talents that appeal to different people. Hell, I don't even use the same rune regen talent when I play different specs.



    Getting more off topic than I would prefer as well as going into "the wishlist realm" ,which I hate, I thought i'd share what I would love to see done with RE in an effort to make it more appealing and remove its weakness: that all runes are not created equal. Gaming is required to get the best rune for your spec. The difference between this and RC is that one would likely have to monitor RE procs under this system as opposed to monitoring RC procs.


    Runic Empowerment:
    Your Death Coils, Frost Strikes and Rune Strikes have an XX% chance of granting you a buff that causes your next single rune ability to be free and generate normal levels of runic power. This can stack 2 times. At 2 stacks, it allows your next double rune attack to be free as well.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    The rune tier should go imo. I'd rather have one as baseline.

  15. #15
    Keep Blood Tap and remove the others. Make Blood Tap passive for all. Add new talents

  16. #16
    People get upset if they remove a choice. Even if you were able to glyph back to the one you wanted... I'd feel like I was getting cheated out of a glyph slot if I had to do that.

    Changing the L75 talents to L60 is good (L56 or L57 would be better), but doing away with them entirely isn't going to happen at this point. They would just replace the three talent choices with three other things we already had and make us choose one of them.

  17. #17
    Nangz, your Sudden Doom death coil comparison is flawed. Those two options are different-- we would use the former until GCD-locked, then we'd switch to the latter. That wouldn't be a particularly sexy talent, but it would matter more than the rune regen tier.

    Unmacroed Blood Tap does indeed require skill (or really micromanagement IMO), but that skill is not properly rewarded. Celestalon brought up that excellent point recently. The distinction matters; unrewarded complexity is not strong design.

    https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...80163733262336

    Your proposed Runic Empowerment would be an improvement over 5.x Runic Empowerment because "gaming" is negative gameplay. It would be an improvement over 5.x macroed Blood Tap too, because it doesn't require a macro. I like it.

    Thing is, I question whether it would actually work out to be active in the game-- would it offer actual gameplay, or would all 3 DPS specs just play as normal, with some percentage of their abilities being free? DW frost and normal unholy would totally ignore it. 2H frost and necrotic plague unholy rely on dual-rune strikes, so perhaps not... but my guess is they would ignore it too. And if it's ignored, it's passive, and offers zero gameplay, much like Runic Corruption. And we don't need more passive options; RC handles that perfectly.
    Last edited by Schizoide; 2014-04-14 at 12:22 PM.

  18. #18
    This has been discussed ad nauseam, but I have always wondered why some people don't make the effort to learn BT. Up until ToT I had always used RE or RC, and it was awkward at first to manually use BT. However, at some point I assume most people here realized that clicking and keyboard turning were suboptimal and took the time to learn to keybind. To me using BT properly (manually) is far, far easier than going from clicking to binding, and it offers so much more than using it via macro. I just don't understand why you wouldn't take the couple of days time (between progression/rated PVP, mind you) to learn to use it properly.

    That said, as was concluded in Mag's thread on this subject, RE RNG sucks. I like the control and lack of RNG with BT, but I would be fine with RC baseline and getting the old BT on a ~20sec CD back.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    Unmacroed Blood Tap does indeed require skill (or really micromanagement IMO), but that skill is not properly rewarded.
    I still disagree with that. I don't claim to be a simulation expert, and I am aware that the simulations put manual BT as a tiny gain over macroed BT, but I think the intangible benefit of banking those charges is what makes BT so much better. I think manual BT is of much greater benefit in PVP rather than PVE, but it still exists in PVE and I don't think the simulations can account for those moments when banking charges is valuable.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Skarssen View Post
    I still disagree with that. I don't claim to be a simulation expert, and I am aware that the simulations put manual BT as a tiny gain over macroed BT, but I think the intangible benefit of banking those charges is what makes BT so much better. I think manual BT is of much greater benefit in PVP rather than PVE, but it still exists in PVE and I don't think the simulations can account for those moments when banking charges is valuable.
    That argument came up before too, and nobody was able to articulate a PvE scenario where the ability to bank two whole runes would offer a non-trivial performance gain over an entire fight, even when you assume perfect execution. Burst usually doesn't matter in PvE, and for situations where it does, it's only two runes, it's a tiny amount of burst. Even most tanks don't use BT these days, and it seems like such a natural fit for Blood; a clutch Death Strike when you really need it to avert a wipe. There is no comparable situation for DPS.

    I mean, you're welcome to disagree and keep manually using Blood Tap. Maybe you're an elite player who can execute BT perfectly, never capping, and banking runes for just the right time. If so you're a much better player than the vast majority. But odds are, you're doing yourself a disservice by (slightly, because the tier doesn't matter, remember) hurting your performance, and micromanaging an ability that doesn't offer worthwhile reward for the effort. If you enjoy manual BT, that's great, God bless. If you don't, macro it.

    That's why I commonly propose making Runic Corruption baseline, removing Runic Empowerment, and then buffing Blood Tap, making it unmacroable, and putting it in a tier with two other competitive talents. Macroing the ability sucks, it shouldn't be possible. Accepting the added complexity from non-macroed Blood Tap should be rewarded, fo' reals. Like Plague Leech. At least 2-3% total performance.
    Last edited by Schizoide; 2014-04-14 at 03:08 PM.

  20. #20
    Some guys on the wow forums said this and he said it better than I could in 2 sentences than I could in an entire post.

    To me this tier, BT in specific, goes against everything blizz has been trying to do for two expansions now. These talents arent fun and in no way add depth to the class. Most DKs I know just take RE or RC to avoid the hassle of BT and those, like me, that do take BT just macro it into some other abilities so that it is a hit and forget aspect.

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