Replace Rune Regen Tier - Concrete Analysis

[Maxweii]

It would work to such a small extent most people wouldn't feel it and as such it would be auto deemed shit by the community. If something does almost nothing, then it's useless in the eyes of the masses.

[Saybel]

Why do people keep saying the 75 talents don't offer meaningful choice. I personally opt to not macro BT (and I convince other people to not macro them either) meaning that I have significantly altered my play-style by taking the talent. And I do not want that choice to be taken away from me.

If I wanted to be lazy and use a passive talent, I would use a passive talent.

[Maxweii]

Shiira/Shiz I leave the response to Minx to you guys as I am going out and don't want to explain this yet again even though it's on page 1 of this thread.

[Schizoide]

Why bother?

[valliant13]

I'm fine with all the threads, because I really do think it's a problem. Admittedly less of a problem than Killing Machine, but it is a problem.

I hope whoever gets into alpha will be just as active in the alpha forums too.

I really thought they would launch alpha today, but I guess they're further behind in development than even I thought-- and I thought they were in the weeds since 2013. Instead they gave the valor buff. Not a good sign for WoD releasing closer to September than December, that's for sure.

The problem is they continually insist that they aren't a problem(they is Celestalon and WatcherDev). The still think they offer meaningful game play because the talents are the reason we have. iirc about 30% more up-time than without. You also brought up Killing Machine. I know dw will use Obliterate in WoD however KM is broken beyond belief and they don't understand why it's bad.

Between the issues with this specific talent tier, KM, and the length we are most likely going to be waiting for WoD, I am very unsure about even purchasing it to begin with even on sale. If none of the glaring issues of the class are fixed going into WoD then I am done with this game which is really a shame. Two expansions they still haven't listened to anyone about the problems, I certainly will not go a third.

Back on topic...kind of. I have a beta key and this is the first time I am actually going to participate in the beta the right way(not just amg IM IN THE BETA!!!!11!). Lucky part is I will get to see how we progress through the beta. So I will be able to tell what is going on with our development from a game play perspective as well as relay concerns of more informed people who aren't able to get in, on the beta forums. Here's hoping a lot of this crap gets fixed and they finally listen to us. As much as I hate to say it, because there's still vanilla classes who could utilize a class revamp similar to Warlocks in MoP, DKs in their current state of the last two expansions absolutely need it.

[Schizoide]

I don't think DKs need a revamp at all, but like all classes, we have some problems that really should be fixed. Happy to hear you will be vocal in beta.

[valliant13]

I don't think DKs need a revamp at all, but like all classes, we have some problems that really should be fixed. Happy to hear you will be vocal in beta.

Well, the glaring issues seem like they won't be addressed without it. Not based on their responses at least. I also still think blood of the north giving perma death runes is bad and should have been fixed going into MOP.

And by revamp I dont mean quite as extensive as warlocks got, however something significant enough to differentiate the three specs, as well as bring blood dps back(still pretty miffed that they are giving prot warriors a dps option but not bringing blood dps back at all). However some serious changes to the way stats work with our class as well as interesting mechanic changes.

[Saybel]

Shiira/Shiz I leave the response to Minx to you guys as I am going out and don't want to explain this yet again even though it's on page 1 of this thread.

There's nothing to explain. The talent gives me a legitimate choice to modify my playstyle. Just because other people want to macro an ability which is optimal un-macro'd, why does that make it suddenly a "passive" talent?

Me making a choose to alter my playstyle =/= you people skimping the option to modify your playstyle and claiming it's a passive.

Blood Tap - No one in their right mind uses this ability the way it was meant to be as manual activation and macroed activation both provide the same exact DPS result. Why would I waste the time managing the button when I can get the same result from a macro. This ability is just straight up passive.

Is just plain incorrect. Just because you choose to macro the ability, doesn't mean everyone does. I don't know any PvPer in their right mind who macros this ability, and if you macro the ability in PvE you might as well have chosen RE because it has the highest rune return/RP and works in exactly the same manner. Using BT in anything except it's intended incarnation is using it wrong.

The first and foremost reason you use BT is due to AMS soaking. Simply put, you can hold more resources overall while using BT, thus meaning it's harder to cap resources while soaking with AMS when using BT. This is an advantage RE does NOT have and RC only his a minimal form of this advantage. While this is the least punishable with Frost (and Frost is the most RE friendly, again, because macro'd BT = RE basically) because you want to be sitting on an Unholy Rune to game as DW anyway, and 2h favors the immediately return of runes. Macro'ing BT is absolutely ridiculous as Unholy as the point of BT is that you can camp either 5 charges of BT or an Unholy rune to ALWAYS be able to hit SR off CD, which more or less is one of the most significant aspects of the spec you can master, while macro'ing the ability causes that to be taken away from you. You could argue that it doesn't matter because "you can sit on the Death Rune" but anyone who plays Unholy extensively should know you can't actually do that if you're playing FB or FB2.0 (FB2.0 is optimal on single target, and Unholy does not use PL in FB2.0 to make up for the shortcomings of RE/macro'd BT) because you need to extend your DoTs with B/F runes and U runes don't recharge fast enough for you to SR every CD, so there are situations where it's actually extremely convenient to be able to bank Blood Charges.. And especially in the case of Blood, where the reason you pick BT/RC over RE is exactly the reason why macro'ing BT is bad (i.e, you can no longer camp 2 runes unless you want to waste resources).

Additionally, I do not want to have the ability to have (unmacro'd) BT taken away from me. I don't care what happens to RC/RE. But I've played with unmacro'd BT since I could spec it (aside from the brief period of RC bug during T15), and I am extremely comfortable with it, and having that option of control taken away from me would be a regression of class mechanics in my eyes, and would probably cause me to drop the class altogether.

And no, I don't want a passive increase in rune regeneration rate either. That's basically an even lazier version of RC.

It irks me that you people can even suggest your opinions regarding Blood Tap are absolute truth, when clearly other people feel differently. Your opinion is just that, an opinion, and you should respect the fact that other people don't share it.

The class has far bigger issues anyway, for example the lack of synergy between our secondary stats (i.e haste negatively effecting the damage crit has on our yellow attacks, due to more km = less need for crit) and our poor mobility.

[Challenge]

Lots of garbage.

Can you read or what? We are tired of explaining it, white knights like you are a part of the problem. Go read the many responses that have been made, on the very first page of this very thread to answer why this tier is a problem.

That fact that you think non macroing BT is much more optimal and you convince others to do so is hilarious though.

[Raikh]

BT is really good at creating the illusion of ramping up burst and have runes banked for that important moment. The reality is, you can bank 2 runes and doing so is paying with your gcds. As you are easily gcd capped time is also a resource, if you don't use all the time you got, you'll lose dps and if you cank blood charges, you're losing time as you either get empty globals or force yourself to delay rp spenders to not overcap your chagres, also you can waste resources by overcapping blood charges.

Keeping all this in mind you have to do quite much of decision making in very little time. Depending on what you like this can be quite fun but can also be very stressing and annoying.
The problem here is you do all this for basically nothing but your own entertainment. I simulated macroed BT vs unmacroed a while back and it give something along the lines of a 0,3% dps gain and that is below the level of rng impact, you'll never notice this in an actual fight while you get huge downside of losing much more for mismanagement which can easily happen from time to time.
You do not trade risk for dps you trade possible fun/a button more/nothing for risk and that is always a bad trade if the possibility stands to change that, so you can keep your fun playstyle and either get a gain out of it or make it more fun without the risk.

Also every time I hear "if you macro BT you can better use RE" I would like to go face palm mode. There are 2 reasons to choose BT 1.death runes 2. no rng.
Rng can be your best friend and your worst enemy. Especially if you are in a progressive environment you don't want rng to kick in your face for the possibility of padding out a bit more dps if you win the lottery.
Death runes are the key why BT is so amazing. You get universal runes, which have two pluses for you RE can't provide without specifically gaming for it. The first is you have more flexibility, much more impacting in pvp than in pve but you can freely choose for what you want to use that rune. The second is, you can turn rune sof less worth into ones for your main nuke. For example you can provoke having an unholy rune becoming a death rune for another howling blast as frost or in AoE situations for another blood boil as uh. You can change blood runes for blood and blood/fros runes for unholy and get a gain from it in addition to getting a rune.
This is not very interesting in a single case but it adds over the fight beating REs higher rune gain without risk or rng influence.

Also this particluar use of turning specific runes into death runes/ provoking it doesn' need an unmacroed version as you can integrate it in your rune "flow" without to much of a hassle.

@Changing ideas
I would flat out go for the major glyph version and making one baseline, probably corruption as the default one you don't have to bother with at all and RE/BT as a little more advanced/little more gain/slightly playstyle changing major glyph options.

Those 3 as a talent row is unreasonable as has become a core mechanic, what would paladins say if one talent row of them would have been designated toi change he color of their holy power bar? The point is that it is currently a mandatory mechanic to keep our resource mechnaic working to begin with. It doesn't feel like an addition it like other talents do. You sill can walk without DA, you can still apply DoTs easily without RB/UB, you don't necessarily need any other talent to play your class besides the rune reg talent, your dps will collapse without it and much more the feeling of playing a dk as it simply doesn't work without it. So saying "other classes have important dmg cds and their dps won't work without,too" isn't really a working argument. Also most dmg cds are customizable in nature, short cd, longer cd, burst heavy or more constant and thats impacting you you play in many ways.
You maybe always wanto push that one on cd. The other one is only worth it if you can stack it with other cds and the more constant one is maybe not worth it in a fight with many downtimes on the boss. Also you maybe want to choose depending on the legnth of the boss fight.

All that doesn't apply to the rune regain tier. The personal note that this talent tier gives is also very weak and its basically a core mechanic differently colored for the sake of it.
I would be totally fine with it if it really would impact my management with different ups and downs, creating more interesting choices but that is simply not the case. Most of those decisions are made up in ones head in a forceful try to justify your choice as meaningful but the difference in playstyle and dps impact is so minimal that you won't notice with the exception of rng being rng in the case of RC and RE.

[Schizoide]

And by revamp I dont mean quite as extensive as warlocks got, however something significant enough to differentiate the three specs, as well as bring blood dps back(still pretty miffed that they are giving prot warriors a dps option but not bringing blood dps back at all). However some serious changes to the way stats work with our class as well as interesting mechanic changes.

When I think revamp I think Warlocks in MoP, or Balance coming up in WoD. DKs don't need to be changed at such a low level, they just need tweaks and fixes. Here's a fairly brief list of changes I'd like to see for 6.0. None of them are revamp-level.

Overall
- Rune regen talent tier should be a meaningful choice, not passive, and change gameplay.
- Asphyxiate and Desecrated Ground are poor PvE talents. They need PvE components.
- AMS absorb should trigger before healer absorbs
- 75% nerfed Army damage is a return to Cataclysm-level performance, when it was a depressing button to push. This is a substantial overnerf. Feels like "You wanted to keep army so bad? You got it, but it's garbage now."
- Haste scaling curve on resource generation should be flattened, so it gives more resources at low gear levels and less at high.

Blood
- Soul Reaper should also trigger Scent of Blood, so it's not an effective health loss to use it.
- Purgatory is often seen as mandatory for Blood.

Frost
- Killing Machine should not be ignored. If they keep current design to work on both Obliterate and Frost Strike, it also shouldn't proc from unpredictable autoattacks.
- Death Coil should not be pruned as it has real use for Frost
- DW offers much more cleave than 2H, which means it is always advantaged by design. Frost spec mastery should be "Increases your Obliterate and all Frost damage". Obviously Obliterate base damage should be lowered to compensate.
- Runeforge changes also heavily advantage DW over 2H. Will 2H even use the additional Cinderglacier charges? Seems very feasible to me that 2H frost ends up using Rune of the Fallen Crusader, with no perk. Perhaps go even further, change Obliterate to deal frost damage, to fix this?
- Similarly, the new cinderglacier runeforge seems like it may cause DW to skip Obliterate, even with the Empowered Rime perk. Just speculation as we don't have numbers yet, but it does seem feasible, even likely. Not in 6.0, as they will tune that, but later on in the expansion with more stacked mastery.

Unholy
- Rampup at low gear levels takes a very long time
- Plague Leech is an invalid choice alongside Necrotic Plague
- Death Strike messes up runes as Unholy has no 1U1F ability in its standard priority. Perhaps Death Strike could cost 1U for Unholy, rather than 1U1F?
- Unholy AE using Icy Touch to generate Death runes is awkward. Much better to simply change Pestilence to cost 1B1F (and deal double damage) for Unholy only.
- Concerned that Necrotic Plague will be the only valid L100 talent choice for Unholy, since it deals dramatically more disease damage than Frost.

[Challenge]

Add in how poor it is to have AMZ and death's advance where they are at in the talent tree, instead of baseline or competing against similar talents.

[Saybel]

BT is really good at creating the illusion of ramping up burst and have runes banked for that important moment. The reality is, you can bank 2 runes and doing so is paying with your gcds. As you are easily gcd capped time is also a resource, if you don't use all the time you got, you'll lose dps and if you cank blood charges, you're losing time as you either get empty globals or force yourself to delay rp spenders to not overcap your chagres, also you can waste resources by overcapping blood charges.

You don't loose time or damage since both the RP spenders and RP generators for both DPS specs both have a very similar DPCT/DPET. Since we're GCD capped DPET is very relevent and it's far better to be able to expend some extra time (theoretical example) using more Frost Strikes on a single target and be able to drop 2 extra Howling Blasts/Blood Boils on some incoming, short-lived adds then it is to be able to only drop 3-4 and have to go back to using our single target RP dumps after

Can you read or what? We are tired of explaining it, white knights like you are a part of the problem. Go read the many responses that have been made, on the very first page of this very thread to answer why this tier is a problem.

That fact that you think non macroing BT is much more optimal and you convince others to do so is hilarious though.

No, I don't think macro'ing BT is much more optimal. I think that if you macro BT you might as well have been using RE because it has a higher rate of resource return.

All the talents are within, what? 2%~ of eachother. I'm sorry if I come across as a white knight if I don't want the ability to play the class my way taken away from me because some random people on a forum insist that my way of playing is "bad".

Also every time I hear "if you macro BT you can better use RE" I would like to go face palm mode. There are 2 reasons to choose BT 1.death runes 2. no rng.
Rng can be your best friend and your worst enemy. Especially if you are in a progressive environment you don't want rng to kick in your face for the possibility of padding out a bit more dps if you win the lottery.

1) No spec actually has a use for the Death Runes that BT actually provides aside from Unholy (Frost and Blood DK's uses U/F runes just as readily as D runes, for their main ability). Furthermore RE is suboptimal for Unholy, for that exact reason.
2) RE provides more runes/RP over a long period of time, and RNG screwing you over is a short term thing, especially when the reverse can happen and you can get extremely lucky too.


At this point, I really don't care which talent is optimal. The tier is pro-choice and a game changer for me, the fact that people think it doesn't offer a meaningful choice for people to alter their playstyle is ridiculous, because it's altered the way I play my DK significantly for the last 2 years.

Just as an pedantic example - I hate the new talents suggested in the OP of this thread. One of them is passive and adds nothing to my gameplay, 2 of them are just "press this button on cooldown" and one of them even wrecks my utility to do it. Awful idea, having to use Death Grip on CD to maximize DPS is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Not everyone can like the same talents, and obviously the people who shout the loudest about the 75 talents have grouped up here to create one happy little circlejerk thread where they can be right and anyone with a different opinion is wrong.

Whatever, I'm done anyway, people in this thread will never see eye to eye with me, and absolutely no meaningful discussion will come out of me continuing to post.

[Maxweii]

Can you read or what? We are tired of explaining it, white knights like you are a part of the problem. Go read the many responses that have been made, on the very first page of this very thread to answer why this tier is a problem.

That fact that you think non macroing BT is much more optimal and you convince others to do so is hilarious though.

Add in how poor it is to have AMZ and death's advance where they are at in the talent tree, instead of baseline or competing against similar talents.

Thank you Challenge, I have no more effort I want to put into discussions like this until/if I get into beta/alpha since at least in there my word might reach the devs a slight bit.

AMZ being considered the same as those was such a shitty blow to take. I mean I understand the mentality behind it, but we are still going to be the only class with no baseline raid CD because of it.

[Raikh]

You don't loose time or damage since both the RP spenders and RP generators for both DPS specs both have a very similar DPCT/DPET. Since we're GCD capped DPET is very relevent and it's far better to be able to expend some extra time (theoretical example) using more Frost Strikes on a single target and be able to drop 2 extra Howling Blasts/Blood Boils on some incoming, short-lived adds then it is to be able to only drop 3-4 and have to go back to using our single target RP dumps after


1) No spec actually has a use for the Death Runes that BT actually provides aside from Unholy (Frost and Blood DK's uses U/F runes just as readily as D runes, for their main ability). Furthermore RE is suboptimal for Unholy, for that exact reason.
2) RE provides more runes/RP over a long period of time, and RNG screwing you over is a short term thing, especially when the reverse can happen and you can get extremely lucky too.

I can only spoeak for myself here but I don't intend to talk you out of your playstyle or the sake of it. I've done quite a bit of testing on all rune talents over the course of every tier and work with 3 sources of tests, raid environment, dummy tests and simulation craft. I'm not doing the whole math thing on the level of the likes of mendenbarr, which is truly amazing, I'm doing it on a practical level reflecting on the number sI get in the game, I get from simcraft experiment how I can manipulate them with what consequences and what those changes mean in practice and vice versa.

First paragraph:

Thats heavily dependant on how many resources you have, if you barely can fill every gcd you have not alternaiv to push button A or B because only one is up. If you hav ethe other extreme of having too many resources, so can actually decide, its athing of comparing the gain from delaying certain abilities/wasting resources and time.
But for the most part, the "strategy" behind your post is also achievable without using unmacroed BT by simply changing one or two globals where you use rune ability or rp ability around beforehand so your runes arrive for that AoE burst in time.
You also can have BT activate via your macro and not use the rune immediately, as long as you don't get and empty gcd or stop a runepair from regenerating by having both up you don't lose dps and that is is not the case is something you can also manipulate by switching some globals around. Especially the use of FeS and OB kick in here fro dw and uh.
Also you have other gadgets and purely natural generation so you might have runes anyways and the question is how long said addspawn lives and how many globals you can put in there. Maybe you have 3 globals and have 2 without BT, but have waited a global for having 2 runes per BT banked. At this point it is purely a dps loss as you could have used that global as you couldn't use both runes for the AoE and as you're gcd locked you simply can't make up for that for the remainder of the fight.
And the more of those little mistakes sneak in by manually controlling BT the worse it is.

I've been through this by testing on dummies and in raids, working with simcraft, and the result was always the same: You monitor 4 resources instead of 3. With unmacroed BT you monitor Runic Power, Runes, BT charges (also runes) and time.
The clue is BT charges and runes are basically the same resource, BT can't proc if there is no depleted rune so there can be no loss and if you use your runes properly it is not possible to overcap blood charges.(macroed BT)
Everything you can achieve by monitoring 2 x runes can be achieved by monitoring your runes as a whole. Your BT shows you when you get one and you can play it out without losing time or DPET of any abilities by knowing the fight, planning a bit ahead and manipulate your order of ability usage by a fix set of rules which contain that you don't waste dps/resources.
And that set of rules is the very basic foundation of dk priority lists and you'll find them in most guides described in different forms.

Thats also why the rune system is complex while not so complex. If you think out that complexity you come to a very simple answer and thats the illusion I'm talking about. YOu can have those 2 runes for AoEing that adds without paying anything nor using BT manually.

Second paragraph:

Death runes are always superior to any other rune by default. Rarely they help so you can slow mob A with chains or kick that mob B casting with strangulate or simply saving your life with a death siphon.
More often it helps manipulating your resources so you pay nothing for wanting the resources available at the time you need them. UH runes for frost dw are mostly unwanted, rather have that death rune for another hb. Unholy maybe wants to skip a FeS using SS instead for the same runes and blood maybe wants to push that blood rune for a DS instead of HS/BB. Or even the other way round, maybe you want a FeS more to keep your DoTs up at a crucial point for some reason or need that BB/HS for the new adds spawning as blood.
Even if some are unlikely, some are going to happen and this is where BTs death runes are superior.

RE si also not straightly a thing of rng as you can manipulate it, too, atleast in terms of the rune type you get back. But what it doesn't change is that you get back that UH rune as frost dw or that you get back that blood rune as blood and that you can't skip A FeS in the rune cycle as uh, thats the point.


I personally want all options to stay, but not as a talent, make one baseline, the other 2 major glyphs and we're settled.
The thing is you don't trade gain for risk like you claim, you trade your personal fun for risk. Thats totally fine itself but it is from a design point of view not a viable argument for something to stay or go.
This is nothing about optimal choices and having this special talents replaced or removing one ability entirely. This is about discussing if the rune reg system is reasonable from a mathematical and practice point of view and you argue with losing your personal playstyle as it originated from a meaningful choice from that particular talent row. But that playstyle is fruiless, as it offers nothing in practice but your own entertainment whch is not bound by keeping that particular talentrow.

Your argument is only useful against removing/changing blood tap because you have interpreted it in a viable way and therefore the ability is meaningful and fun. And in this point I totally agree. BT is awesome and should definetly stay, just not as a talent as it is a core mechanic and the row is only deciding the color of that core mechanic which isn't fitting for a talent row.

[Hand Banana]

Is just plain incorrect. Just because you choose to macro the ability, doesn't mean everyone does. I don't know any PvPer in their right mind who macros this ability

Except everyone does. You macro it into necrotic strike because thats the only thing its good for is giving you more death runes to give more necrotic strikes and necrotic is always your highest priority attack. I dont know about the pve side of things but for pvp its a required talent that is macro'd 100% of the time.

[Schizoide]

Except everyone does. You macro it into necrotic strike because thats the only thing its good for is giving you more death runes to give more necrotic strikes and necrotic is always your highest priority attack. I dont know about the pve side of things but for pvp its a required talent that is macro'd 100% of the time.

On the other side, I don't know about PvP, but in PvE we macro it to the RP spender. So, yeah.

[Nnyco]

why cant we have somethin like rogues have, a little button like their poison, you choose what rune regen you want, cast 3 seconds and you have it as buff

[SlippyCheeze]

why cant we have somethin like rogues have, a little button like their poison, you choose what rune regen you want, cast 3 seconds and you have it as buff

Because that is indistinguishable from a talent, and we already have it as a talent.

[Schizoide]

Except it doesn't consume a talent tier.