Flaws With Death Knights

[Stacie]

While we have a thread that would be better used then this, seeing as it is so old I'll just note one thing.

The only talent people are having huge concerns with it's use is Sindragosa'a Breath. NP and Defile are fine as is, just have damage tuning issues (which they have barely started in yet)

Would not mind AMZ being a baseline also though and something else instead :S

[Maxweii]

AMZ most likely won't change, the spot on the talent tree is the issue though, not that it's a talent.

[Deleted]

What happened for all the blizz talk about "dk dots will be much stronger" ?

And i dont recall that Unholy *Ebon Plaguebringer* was removed, i double checked and no info from blizz that it was removed from game
and still i cant find it in beta.

[valliant13]

What happened for all the blizz talk about "dk dots will be much stronger" ?

And i dont recall that Unholy *Ebon Plaguebringer* was removed, i double checked and no info from blizz that it was removed from game
and still i cant find it in beta.

A lot of passives were removed from the spell book. Which imo is one of the stupidest things they've done in the life of this game.

So now new players will have to go to websites to find information about the class instead of getting a rough grasp looking in their spell book.

[Enfilade]

A lot of passives were removed from the spell book. Which imo is one of the stupidest things they've done in the life of this game.

So now new players will have to go to websites to find information about the class instead of getting a rough grasp looking in their spell book.

I STILL don't understand the purpose behind that. Why not keep it the way it currently is set up, or make a separate passive tab?

[Eats Compost]

Death Knight talents are screwy in general. Most of the choices feel really bad, and that's mostly because a lot of them do two totally different things that can't be compared. You can't compare Purgatory to AMZ. You can't compare Death's Advance to Asphyxiate. You can't compare Plague Leech to anything. The entire point of talent tiers is to group similar talents together and avoid making specific choices seem like big losses of important utility, and yet virtually every tier feels like that. The ones that don't are even worse, either being something that shoudn't be a choice at all (the rune regeneration talents) or something so purpose-fitted that any choice is already made for you (lookin' at you, T90).

Death's Advance should definitely be baseline because it forms the basis of Death Knights having any kind of mobility at all (even when it's a total joke compared to other classes' mobility). Blood Tap, Runic Empowerment and Runic Corruption should all be stripped from the talent system and be made baseline, using glyphs to customize rune regen if necessary (literally no other class uses a talent tier to form the absolute basis of their resource regeneration, and glyphs are far more closely suited to the kind of "sidegrade" that these talents are meant to represent). AMZ should be made baseline OR shifted to a tier with 2 other raid utility abilities, which is possible if the rune regen tier is knocked out.

It's not like there aren't obvious replacement choices for some talents that are removed/made baseline. For example; Death's Advance's position in the tier could easily be replaced by a talent that monkeys the double death grip effect of the MoP PvP set bonus, with an additional Death Grip-based effect if it's not strong enough. That should fit well enough into their "these talents are for locking the enemy down so you can actually do things to them" philosophy for the tier well enough.

[valliant13]

Death Knight talents are screwy in general. Most of the choices feel really bad, and that's mostly because a lot of them do two totally different things that can't be compared. You can't compare Purgatory to AMZ. You can't compare Death's Advance to Asphyxiate. You can't compare Plague Leech to anything. The entire point of talent tiers is to group similar talents together and avoid making specific choices seem like big losses of important utility, and yet virtually every tier feels like that. The ones that don't are even worse, either being something that shoudn't be a choice at all (the rune regeneration talents) or something so purpose-fitted that any choice is already made for you (lookin' at you, T90).

Death's Advance should definitely be baseline because it forms the basis of Death Knights having any kind of mobility at all (even when it's a total joke compared to other classes' mobility). Blood Tap, Runic Empowerment and Runic Corruption should all be stripped from the talent system and be made baseline, using glyphs to customize rune regen if necessary (literally no other class uses a talent tier to form the absolute basis of their resource regeneration, and glyphs are far more closely suited to the kind of "sidegrade" that these talents are meant to represent). AMZ should be made baseline OR shifted to a tier with 2 other raid utility abilities, which is possible if the rune regen tier is knocked out.

It's not like there aren't obvious replacement choices for some talents that are removed/made baseline. For example; Death's Advance's position in the tier could easily be replaced by a talent that monkeys the double death grip effect of the MoP PvP set bonus, with an additional Death Grip-based effect if it's not strong enough. That should fit well enough into their "these talents are for locking the enemy down so you can actually do things to them" philosophy for the tier well enough.

As far as AMZ it's fine as a talent choice, it's just in the wrong tier. They should either make Remorseless Winter part of Frosts kit, or remove it entirely and put AMZ in it's spot. Also to make Desecrated Ground more of a utility spell instead of self spell it should effect party members too. They could make interesting mechanics involving us using them. The biggest overall issue with the current max level talents for us(not T100 in WoD) is that they are either useless in current raid content(RM/DG) or exceptionally situational(GG). Our max level talents should be something we use all the time. Not crap we use for CMs or maybe four fights this entire expansion.

[Eats Compost]

As far as AMZ it's fine as a talent choice, it's just in the wrong tier. They should either make Remorseless Winter part of Frosts kit, or remove it entirely and put AMZ in it's spot. Also to make Desecrated Ground more of a utility spell instead of self spell it should effect party members too. They could make interesting mechanics involving us using them. The biggest overall issue with the current max level talents for us(not T100 in WoD) is that they are either useless in current raid content(RM/DG) or exceptionally situational(GG). Our max level talents should be something we use all the time. Not crap we use for CMs or maybe four fights this entire expansion.

Yeah, I agree that AMZ is fine as an ability, which is why I suggest either making it baseline or giving it a tier of similar raid utility talents to live in as solutions. Like I said, I loathe the rune regen talents and absolutely don't think they should take up a tier, so that's where it could go, alongside two new raid utility options.

The level 100 talents are a double whammy of being mostly useless in current raid content and being too obvious. For example, you'd be silly to have it set to anything other than Remorseless Winter for PvE in general unless you had something very, very specific in mind. There's no "choice". There's "this is for this, and that is for that", which somewhat defeats the purposes of these talents. Which, as I'm sure we can all agree, sucks.

[Marcellus1986]

For me personally, I think they should do a few things (which I am sure others have touched on):

1.Make Necrotic Plague baseline for Unholy, and remove it from the 100 talent tier.
2.buff Defile (can be solved with a numbers pass)
3.Remove BoS entirely.
4.replace Necrotic Plague and Breath with Infest and Summon Val'kyr.
5. Bring back Bone Shield as a talent choice as well as Unbreakable Armor. The new Unbreakable Armor would increase the damage reduction from IBF to 50% (Remove the perk). This would be for Unholy and Frost only.
6. Allow Scourge Strike to deal pure shadow damage.
The entire 100 tree would be Lich King flavored and would be more interesting than what is currently offered. Val'kyr could replace Garg for Unholy and give frost an on demand burst minion. Make the Val'kyr deal Shadowfrost damage and scale with UH/Frost Mastery.

[nLord]

I wonder why developers don’t realize that DKs need revamp as warlocks had after Cata…

Dps DK is the least desirable class for progress raids during hc SoO and now it is the worst dps in all game. It underperforms in practically every aspect of game: scaling, sustained dps, burst dps, single target dps, even aoe dps atm, mobility, survivability etc.

That’s a state when only complete revision could solve the problem. Otherwise DK should be considered as tank only class or should be just removed from the game (which is better imo as it will not waste time of DK fans who gear DK and then realize that it is gimped again).

[Chris743]

For me personally, I think they should do a few things (which I am sure others have touched on):

1.Make Necrotic Plague baseline for Unholy, and remove it from the 100 talent tier.
2.buff Defile (can be solved with a numbers pass)
3.Remove BoS entirely.
4.replace Necrotic Plague and Breath with Infest and Summon Val'kyr.
5. Bring back Bone Shield as a talent choice as well as Unbreakable Armor. The new Unbreakable Armor would increase the damage reduction from IBF to 50% (Remove the perk). This would be for Unholy and Frost only.
6. Allow Scourge Strike to deal pure shadow damage.
The entire 100 tree would be Lich King flavored and would be more interesting than what is currently offered. Val'kyr could replace Garg for Unholy and give frost an on demand burst minion. Make the Val'kyr deal Shadowfrost damage and scale with UH/Frost Mastery.

This Sort of got me thinking a little about our talents as a whole and a few ideas came to mind to try and give each talent tier clear message. I don't PVP that often so please take these ideas with a grain of salt, I'm more focused on the PVE side of things. I will only mention tiers in which i think need changed. Personally i like the rune re-gen tier, gives me choice in what i want to use and what kind of way I like to play each spec. Ill get to my point now though.

Unholy

Tier 2 – Personal Utility Tier

Lichborne
Purgatory
Desecrated Ground

I believe taking out AMZ made a lot of sense, its more suited to tier 6 with the rest of our 'raid' Utilities.

Since Desecrated Ground is already a personal Skill I felt it fitted in the best here. We have Lichborne which is great for self healing and also breaking out of fears etc within PVE. Desecrate Sort of serves the same Purpose, but we will be able to choose it and still be able to pick up of the rest of our raid utility.


Tier 3 – Utility / CC Tier

Chilblains
Asphyxiate
Brain Freeze - Increases Range of mind freeze to 20 yards, reduces cool down by 0 seconds.

Replaced Deaths advance with Brain freeze and made it baseline, now this tier gives a clear message of what its for, CC.


Tier 6 – Raid Utility Tier

Gorefiend’s Grasp
Remorseless winter
Anti-Magic Zone

So here we have our AMZ, i feel this tier now makes a lot more sense, its focused on Raid utility and gives a DK the ability if they wanted to take GG, RW etc. without losing out on Desecrate Ground.

Unholy

Tier 7 – Damage Increasing Tier

Summon Val’Kyr - Replaces Summon Gargoyle, Deals Increased Shadow Damage. Increases Multi strike Rating by 0% for the duration. (For Burst damage situations)

Necrotic Plague – A powerful disease that stacks up to 15 times. Deals shadow damage every 2 seconds. Each stack increases your ghoul’s damage on the target by 0%. Replaces Blood Plague and Frost Fever. (For sustained damage fights)

Defile - Deals increased shadow damage. When there are two or more enemies within defiles Radius it will grow increasing damage taken from Frost Fever and Blood Plague by 0% Every Second. Replaces Death and Decay. No cost. (Primarily Used as your Main AOE Damage Increasing Skill)

I liked your idea of the Summon Val'Kyr, so I tried to implement it. I now think that this Tier gives a distinct talent for each situation in a raid, we have Val'Kyr for Burst, NP for sustained damage and Defile for AOE.

Again take this all with a grain of salt, i just wanted to show what i would like with the talents and what i think would sound cool (but maybe not viable). But i tried to keep everything within reason.

Gonna give a go at doing Tier 7 for frost and maybe Blood if i get time.

Frost

Tier 7 – Damage Increasing Tier

Icy Transformation -Turns the Death Knight into a Icy Monstrosity, increasing all damage by 0% And Rune regeneration by 0%. Attacks also have a chance to Proc Razor Frost for 0% increased Damage. Replaces Pillar of frost. Lasts 20 seconds. 2 Min CD.

Brittle Fever - A powerful disease that stacks up to 10 times. Deals Frost damage every 2 seconds. If wielding a two handed weapon when the Fever is applied each stack increases the amount of armour ignored by the death knight by 0%. If using two one handed weapons increases the frost damage taken by the target by 0%. Lasts 30 seconds. Each new stack resets the duration. Replaces Frost fever and Blood plague.

Breath of Syndragosa - Deals frost damage every second for 10 seconds in a 12 yard cone in front of the Death Knight. If 2/3 targets are hit with Breath of Syndragosa they also take increased damage from frost fever for the duration. Replaces Death and decay. No cost.



Blood

Tier 7 – Defensive / Damage Tier

Rune Armoury - The Death knight summons 1/3 rune weapons to his side increasing the Death knights parry by 0% and multi strike rating by 0%. Each time the weapons hit a target they transfer 0 Runic power to the Death knight. Replaces Dancing Rune Weapon. 2.5 Min Cooldown.

Scarlet Fever - powerful disease that stacks up to 10 times. Deals Shadow frost damage every 2 seconds. Each stack reduces the amount of damage the target does to the death knight by 0%. If an enemy with scarlet fever attacks the death knight they gain 2 Runic power. Replaces Frost fever and Blood Plague.

Blood Eruption - The Death knight creates a pool of blood on the ground that deals Shadow frost damage. Blood worms spawn from this pool and attack all targets around them. Enemies within the pool deal 0% less damage too the death knight. When the pool ends the blood worms transfer blood % to the damage they dealt to the Death knight increasing HP by 0%. Replaces Death and Decay. No cost.