Flaws With Death Knights

[Challenge]

Oh and yes the disease tier is only a DPS increase consistently for DW frost cause plague leech. With 0 aoe its does 100% nothing for unholy and less than 1% dps increase for blood if you want plague leech, which is worthless.

[Vereesa]

It's not a not-healing tier, it's a personal survival tier, and self-healing helps your survival. However, AMZ doesn't fit there.

There's already a self-healing tier, spreading self-heals across multiple tiers is dumb if you ask me.

Well, for whatever reason the devs decided on making us dks feel special by giving us a talent option for each tier (except rune regen and self-heal) that does the exact opposite of the other two talents:

You're right, it does make us special. Much in the same way that people born without limbs, so to speak. We're not a good kind of special.

Tier1: 2 Disease application, 1 Disease removal

Which is it - disease application or disease removal? 'Something to do with diseases' doesn't suffice if you ask me.

Tier2: 2 Personal survival, 1 Raid survival

'Survival tier'? One's a self-healing talent that belongs on another tier, one's an actual personal survival tool and one's a raid CD. Sure, they all help you survive to varying degrees but they don't fit together in the same tier.

Tier3: 2 Hindering enemy movement, 1 Personal movement

This gives us the advantage of adapting to the situation. The mistake you are making is that you are accepting DA as the norm, whereas it is supposed to be a bonus you can pick when there is nothing to slow/stun. This is preferable to having 3 useless talents in these situations.

Again, comparing to other classes, it's an inconsistency. Why is a personal movement speed boost competing with control? What's next, a tier with Scourge Strike and AMS?

For the movement-impaired DK DA is the norm. Also, in 99% of cases DA is the only option, which is why I don't agree the tier is preferable to having 3 sometimes-useless talents. Other classes have tiers that that are sometimes useless - why are we different?

Tier6: 2 CC, 1 CC breaker

Like I said, T90 is useless in raiding most of the time. It's only good somtimes and completely redundant most of the time. That's unacceptable for the ultimate talent tier when all other classes use theirs all the time.

Tier7: 2 AoE, 1 ST

T100 is intended to be used for both ST and AoE as much as possible. Whether their tuning results in that remains to be seen. With that said, T100 is completely fine mechanically.

First of all, most level 90 talents are NOT game changers. Most of them are cds.

Perhaps game-changer wasn't the right word. That doesn't change the fact that no other classes' T90 goes unusued on most raid encounters.

Second, as I said, the devs tried to have each of these talents do damage, but it didn't work.

I realize that. I'm not implying they should have damage tacked onto them, I'm saying they should all be taken off the tier and replaced with a properly thematized tier.

Third, we have our disease tier and our rune regen tier to be a damage increase in every situation, so we already have two, just like all other classes.

Maybe I'm just the odd one out, but I think it's an inconsistency that the ultimate talent tier doesn't make you feel noticeably more powerful all the time. I don't care if we numerically have the same amount of DPS-related tiers.

Oh and yes the disease tier is only a DPS increase consistently for DW frost cause plague leech. With 0 aoe its does 100% nothing for unholy and less than 1% dps increase for blood if you want plague leech, which is worthless.

Technically UB is a minor DPS increase (currently with snapshotting) for UH, but it's largely insignificant in that regard. So I'll agree, calling it a DPS increasing tier is inaccurate.

[Challenge]

Its so small its negligible.

[Deleted]

This is hilarious when you think about it. T75 is like warriors having a tier where they get to "choose" whether they want rage on each autoattack, on every 4th autoattack but for 4x more, or on every special attack but none on autoattacks......except that all 3 give exactly the same amount of rage.

Yeah, or if warriors had to choose whether they want Bladestorm, Shockwave or Dragon Roar.

Really, I don't get that point. So what if we get to choose how our RP spenders speed up our rune regeneration? How is that a problem (and don't start babbling how these talents don't behave differently, I know that, I mean the very concept of choosing how you regenerate runes from spending RP)

[Challenge]

The concept is fine. Just currently has the most lazy ,most uninspired, uncreative, boring form it possibly could right now. ( Aside from each one being the same performance wise, as I would hope we all know by now, like you said.)

[Stacie]

AMZ is quite a powerfull raid cooldown, you are greatly mistaken

You have to spec into it, other tanks don't with there's so should be base, duration is crap and doesn't soak a huge amount. It is inferior.

What exactly is it you dislike about tanking adds as blood?
Come WoD all other tanks lose their raid cds, making us look pretty good in comparison.
Frost and Unholy: Raid cds from dps will greatly lose value in WoD, so it's not a huge disadvantage, but I agree AMZ should be baseline.

being gcd locked is something the devs want to adress in WoD.

Squishyness.

[Deleted]

stuff

As I've said and you've ignored, the talents do have a theme, and one talent that does the exact opposite of this theme.
For example, tier1 is disease APPLICATION, that's why it's opposite is REMOVING these diseases.

Free Self healing IS a form of survival, I don't see why it shouldn't be an option in a survival tier.
If you look at the survival tiers of other classes, you'll notice that they too got self healing options alongside damage reduction.
Self healing cds and damage reduction cds are not inherently different things.
And our self-healing tier and our survival tier are NOT redundant. Our self healing tier is supposed to offer options for trading damage for healing (except for DP now, but it was when it actually killed your ghul)

I disagree on the ultimate tier having to be usable on every fight. It is supposed to be the coolest tier of all, which for DK definatley is the case (In my opinion, AoE DG is one of the coolest abilities in the game). Who cares if it isn't helpful in every raid encounter? While raiding, you already have access to all talents, so it doesn't matter in which order you learned them.

So about DA:
Try to view DA as a free bonus for when there is nothing to slow. You said you'd rather have three useless talents in that situation.
However, keep in mind that this would mean that you don't have DA at all. Would you really rather not have DA than having it stand against control talents?
And I'm not arguing here that DA is not useful, or that dks don't need it. It is something they don't deserve, which is why having it is such a great benefit. DKs are supposed to be slow, it is one of their inherent weaknesses (damage tuning and such aside).

[Shiira]

I disagree on the ultimate tier having to be usable on every fight.

It is for every other class.

Why are death knights different?

I don't disagree with you, but blizzard should just pick a design philosophy for final tier talents and stick with it.

[Challenge]

So about DA:
Try to view DA as a free bonus for when there is nothing to slow. You said you'd rather have three useless talents in that situation.
However, keep in mind that this would mean that you don't have DA at all. Would you really rather not have DA than having it stand against control talents?

Because now you are force one or the other, instead of having a normal tier were you pick your control, next tier you pick your movement and have both.

Good idea for a tier.

Shockwave, stormbolt, and double time. That way when you dont have stuff to stun you at least got double charge as a bonus
Long arm of of the law, speed of light, and fist of justice. That way when you dont have to move very much, you get a shorter stun as a bonus.

Yeah, no thats stupid.

- - - Updated - - -

90 talents are like this cause for some odd reason they thought combining utility moves + damage was a good idea in mop beta/alpha.

Look at the 90 warrior talents. All have some extra little thing, pretty much just there for pvp. Blood bath slow, Avatar (ex movement freedom) root+ slow break, stormbolt stun on non bosses.



They made DK talents with the same thought process in mind but quit halfway through.

[Vereesa]

As I've said and you've ignored, the talents do have a theme, and one talent that does the exact opposite of this theme.
For example, tier1 is disease APPLICATION, that's why it's opposite is REMOVING these diseases.

So it's a theme that's only apparent on some tiers? And then the others, such as the rune regen tier or the self-healing tier, have clear, straightforward themes? No. I still strongly think all the talents in a given tier should give the same end result. Either the tier should be about disease application or disease removal, not a mix.

Self healing cds and damage reduction cds are not inherently different things.

You're right, I kind of overlooked that fact.

Free Self healing IS a form of survival, I don't see why it shouldn't be an option in a survival tier.
If you look at the survival tiers of other classes, you'll notice that they too got self healing options alongside damage reduction.

Which other class, though, has a dedicated self-healing tier and then has an additional talent on another tier that also serves primarily as a self-healing talent?

And our self-healing tier and our survival tier are NOT redundant. Our self healing tier is supposed to offer options for trading damage for healing (except for DP now, but it was when it actually killed your ghul)

I don't think I said it was redundant. I'll say it now, though - the self-healing tier has next to no choice in raiding due to the simple fact that DP completely free. That's another problem the talent tree has.

I disagree on the ultimate tier having to be usable on every fight. It is supposed to be the coolest tier of all, which for DK definatley is the case (In my opinion, AoE DG is one of the coolest abilities in the game). Who cares if it isn't helpful in every raid encounter? While raiding, you already have access to all talents, so it doesn't matter in which order you learned them.

I don't disagree about Gorefiend's Grasp being cool and very powerful circumstantially, but I think it's a problem if GG is practically the only talent a raiding DK ever takes and then further only uses it on a few encounters over the expansion. GG didn't help me do my job of DPSing on Stone Guard, or on Dark Animus, or on Iron Qon, or on the Fallen Protectors. A Warrior's Bloodbath did, as did a Retribution Paladin's Execution Sentence or Light's Hammer.

So about DA:
Try to view DA as a free bonus for when there is nothing to slow. You said you'd rather have three useless talents in that situation.
However, keep in mind that this would mean that you don't have DA at all. Would you really rather not have DA than having it stand against control talents?
And I'm not arguing here that DA is not useful, or that dks don't need it. It is something they don't deserve, which is why having it is such a great benefit. DKs are supposed to be slow, it is one of their inherent weaknesses (damage tuning and such aside).

Yes, I'd rather have a properly thematized movement or control-related tier that might not serve a purpose on every encounter than an amalgamation of both where there's practically no choice because you absolutely need DA to function to any acceptable extent.

[Challenge]

Which other class, though, has a dedicated self-healing tier and then has an additional talent on another tier that also serves primarily as a self-healing talent?

Druids. /char

[Vereesa]

Druids. /char

Druids don't have a dedicated self-healing tier. They have a healing tier that has a self-heal only talent which admittedly looks slightly misplaced considering it doesn't affect allies in any way. Their T90 is a raid utility tier which, coincidentally, is useful anytime, anywhere.

[Deleted]

Because now you are force one or the other, instead of having a normal tier were you pick your control, next tier you pick your movement and have both.

Except we wouldn't have a movement tier. DA wouldn't exist without this quirk of the dk talents.

It is for every other class.
Why are death knights different?

Because dks are supposed to be different. That is one of the design philosophies of the dk, to be significantly different than other classes. We are the only hero class, we are the only ones that didn't choose our class, arthas did that for us. We are the only ones who didn't serve the horde or the alliance from the start. We have nothing in common with other classes, why shouldn't that be reflected in our toolset as well?
I still fail to see how the ultimate tier has to be useful in any situation. Every class has situational talent tiers, and ours happens to be the lvl 90 ones.

So it's a theme that's only apparent on some tiers? And then the others, such as the rune regen tier or the self-healing tier, have clear, straightforward themes? No. I still strongly think all the talents in a given tier should give the same end result. Either the tier should be about disease application or disease removal, not a mix.

You just mentioned the two ONLY talent rows where that isn't the case. Coincidentally, it's the only ones where such a alternative wouldn't make any sense.
Why is having the option to pick a useful talent in each row worse than having completely useless rows?

Which other class, though, has a dedicated self-healing tier and then has an additional talent on another tier that also serves primarily as a self-healing talent?

You can come up with something like that for every class.
Which other class except warriors has a interrupt on a movement-impairing talent row?
Which class except for Monks not only has a whole row about a single ability, but also a single further talent about it?
Which class other than rogues has a talent tier only affecting the beginning of a fight?

I don't disagree about Gorefiend's Grasp being cool and very powerful circumstantially, but I think it's a problem if GG is practically the only talent a raiding DK ever takes and then further only uses it on a few encounters over the expansion. GG didn't help me do my job of DPSing on Stone Guard, or on Dark Animus, or on Iron Qon, or on the Fallen Protectors. A Warrior's Bloodbath did, as did a Retribution Paladin's Execution Sentence or Light's Hammer.

A warriors tier 75 however was useless on most fights, as was a paladins tier 30. Every class has situational talent rows, why can't that row be the last one?

Yes, I'd rather have a properly thematized movement or control-related tier that might not serve a purpose on every encounter than an amalgamation of both where there's practically no choice because you absolutely need DA to function to any acceptable extent.

Once again, if it wasn't for that "amalgamation", DA would not exist.

[Challenge]

Missing the point. Its clear that there wont be a movement tier for DKs, however its just a way to point out how DA deserves to be baseline instead of a talent

[Vereesa]

Because dks are supposed to be different. That is one of the design philosophies of the dk, to be significantly different than other classes. We are the only hero class, we are the only ones that didn't choose our class, arthas did that for us. We are the only ones who didn't serve the horde or the alliance from the start. We have nothing in common with other classes, why shouldn't that be reflected in our toolset as well?
I still fail to see how the ultimate tier has to be useful in any situation. Every class has situational talent tiers, and ours happens to be the lvl 90 ones.

I guess you could look at it that way. I choose not to, though, because I think it's utter bullshit and I'd prefer not to be any different to other classes in that regard.

You just mentioned the two ONLY talent rows where that isn't the case. Coincidentally, it's the only ones where such a alternative wouldn't make any sense.
Why is having the option to pick a useful talent in each row worse than having completely useless rows?

It's only logical to me that I get to choose from talents that have the same end result. As well, 90% of the time there's no choice involved in the cesspool tiers because only one of them serves any purpose. I mean when did Blood ever spec anything but Roiling Blood? Or Purgatory? How often did a DPS DK spec out of Death Pact for raiding? Death's Advance was the go-to talent always.

You can come up with something like that for every class.
Which other class except warriors has a interrupt on a movement-impairing talent row?

It's an AoE control tier, I think it works fine. I mean it's not like they're choosing between Staggering Shout and Heroic Leap.

Which class except for Monks not only has a whole row about a single ability, but also a single further talent about it?

It's a movement-centric tier that ties into Roll wonderfully. T90 for Monks is admittedly confusing, but I'm not here to comment on their issues.

Which class other than rogues has a talent tier only affecting the beginning of a fight?

Once again, there's a clear theme on the Rogue stealth tier.

I still think a self-heal talent should be on the self-heal talent tier.

A warriors tier 75 however was useless on most fights, as was a paladins tier 30. Every class has situational talent rows, why can't that row be the last one?

I'd beg to differ on Warr T75. That aside, if the talents on the tier function similarly and have similar end results in all combat scenarios then I don't mind them not being useful everywhere. I also think T90 should be an exception to this as I've explained before.

Once again, if it wasn't for that "amalgamation", DA would not exist.

5/5 nice what if would read again. If Blizzard had stuck with a proper theme for all talent tiers we'd likely be far better off.

All that said, I think it's pretty clear we simply disagree on a lot of things and I'm not sure there's much more to discuss.

[Skarssen]

Because dks are supposed to be different. That is one of the design philosophies of the dk, to be significantly different than other classes. We are the only hero class, we are the only ones that didn't choose our class, arthas did that for us. We are the only ones who didn't serve the horde or the alliance from the start. We have nothing in common with other classes, why shouldn't that be reflected in our toolset as well?

Why does DK uniqueness in the lore, or the feel and flavor of the class, have to extend to what is by far the shittiest talent tree in the game? Being different is fine, but not when that difference is tied to shitty performance and lazy design.

[Shiira]

Stop using hero class as an argument, it doesn't mean anything.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure there's much more to discuss.

Well I'd like to discuss how you consistently manage to completely miss my point on certain things, like the talent row examples I posted. That was neither ment to provide other inconsistent tiers, nor show shortcomings of other classes. It was simply ment to show you how that "uniqueness" of dks of having both a selfheal as well as a survival tier is not so special as you make it sound.

Why does DK uniqueness in the lore, or the feel and flavor of the class, have to extend to what is by far the shittiest talent tree in the game? Being different is fine, but not when that difference is tied to shitty performance and lazy design.

How is having our tier90 talents not increase our damage tied to shitty performance or lazy design?

Stop using hero class as an argument, it doesn't mean anything.

If you actually looked at what I was saying, I didn't use it to call for special privileges or superiority or anything, I just used it to point out that DKs are inherently different than other classes. In that case it is a valid argument.

[Shiira]

I didn't claim you were asking for special treatment, you said that being a hero class is why our level 90 talents don't make any sense.

I'm not seeing the logic.

Is hero class also why most of the rest of our talents don't make any sense either? Is it why we are less mobile than any of the ranged dps?

[valliant13]

Yeah, or if warriors had to choose whether they want Bladestorm, Shockwave or Dragon Roar.

Really, I don't get that point. So what if we get to choose how our RP spenders speed up our rune regeneration? How is that a problem (and don't start babbling how these talents don't behave differently, I know that, I mean the very concept of choosing how you regenerate runes from spending RP)

simply because our resource generation should not come from talents. SOMETHING should be baseline with glyphs for one other one(preference would be RC base, RE Glyph however slightly improved, bring back BT from cata and wotlk and get rid of plague leach and put another new talent).

It's like they didn't know what to fill our tree with and decided it would be a great idea to take something absolutely necessary for the class to function and make it a talent with the illusion of choice. Skarssens example was quite on point with what the problem actually is but related it to warriors.