DKs in the Legion alpha, what are your thoughts so far?

[Rixarius]

I'm particularly interested in hearing about Frost, but also looking forward to hearing how Blood and UH are playing too. I've watched all kinds of videos but I wanna hear it from people who main DKs on live. How do they feel? Strengths and Weaknesses of all the specs? Do you think you'll still play a DK if they stay as they are now?

[Nezia]

Unholy: uptime way too high, which is bad cause it will devalue haste faster, actually, with the blue starting gear I had a hard time finding an opening for using apocalypse if I did not choose defile. Apocalypse damage seems to be bugged too, the tooltip shows much mure damage than it actually does.

The aoe damage is pretty... weird, it may sound great on papper, but having to count on your tank for stacking the mobs together and not move them out of your defile/DnD is pretty sad.

Target swap is also pretty bad, because it is not worth using scourge strike if there are no festering wounds on the target, or if the Scourge of worlds debuff is not up, on the other hand, you will be losing dps if you use festering strike on a target and not triggering all the festering wounds, so if the target will die too fast you are losing dps. In other words you will have to spend 2 gcds in order to start dealing some real damage. For that matter we can use Blighted Rune Weapon however, but it's cd seems too long, I would prefer something weaker but on 20s~30s cd.

The pet is almost the same, they added some new interactions with it, but most of them are passive and dont actually change the way you play, for most of the time the pet is still something that you send in for attack and then forget about.

The valkyr right now deals no damage, so cannot tell if it is something that you should be watching out for maximizing it's damage or if it will be just a gargolye on steroids.

Frost: pretty much the same. Really, they only added a new spell which you just use each 20 secs without having to think about it, and some talents which add some other cds that you pretty much just use on cd too.

Obliterate damage right now is just too low, of course you won't just ignore it at some point, cause the rime proc now is SUPER strong, also, they just mentioned right now that they will add a change that makes killing maching only proc off critical strikes, so maybe with this plus the Shattering Strikes we won't be devaluing crit too much at least.

Frost also got some downtime, which is good cause you will value haste at least to some point.

Abomination's might is just insane for trash pulls in dgs, if it goes live the way it is now, frost dks will be a must in challenge modes.

Also not sure how Frostscythe will play, the way frost is now, you just want as much rime procs as possible, so wasting a rune on something else may not be wanted.

Worth mentioning: if you stand still for a while, the ground below you start to freeze.

Anyway, tried almost all classes already on alpha, and I must say... if dks stay as they are now (which I will believe they will stay for the most part), so I probably will be moving for another class after 5 years maining a dk.

[vbnm247]

Worth mentioning: if you stand still for a while, the ground below you start to freeze..

Thanks for a detailed reponse, really appreciate it. But this comment seems really cool. Any chance of a screen shot? Would really like to see how it looks.

[Nezia]

It starts really small under your feet, then grows in size. This is the maximum size.

[psyquest]

Anyway, tried almost all classes already on alpha, and I must say... if dks stay as they are now (which I will believe they will stay for the most part), so I probably will be moving for another class after 5 years maining a dk.

Exact same situation as this poster. been maining a DK since they were launched, 600 days played and will most definetely reroll if things stay as is.

but there is still hope.

[Rizendragon]

I really hope I get in the Beta once they flip the switch over to Beta. I need to test both DKs and Enh Shammies... I'm loving the synergy I'm seeing between the abilities. From what I can see most of the complaints above are tuning complaints. I was really hoping that Frost would get a version of Unholy Might or that they'd remove Unholy might since that is the main passive that makes UH scale better than Frost...

[Deleted]

In a few words: Frost is too stop and start. It needs to be sped up since you run out of resources sporadically. Talents are mostly good.

Unholy is too full of resources, you are GCD locked which is not attractive really. Talents are mostly good.

Blood for me works well in terms of the core rotation of maintaining bone shield, using blood strike and using reactive deathstrikes but the talents are god awful in almost every single way.

So a lot of work to go.

[Rizendragon]

In a few words: Frost is too stop and start. It needs to be sped up since you run out of resources sporadically. Talents are mostly good.

Unholy is too full of resources, you are GCD locked which is not attractive really. Talents are mostly good.

I prefer GCD lock to the "sweet spot" of a free GCD every 20-30 seconds. Frost has always been the GCD locked spec and hopefully it'll get back to that point with the right amount of haste.

[Deleted]

I prefer GCD lock to the "sweet spot" of a free GCD every 20-30 seconds. Frost has always been the GCD locked spec and hopefully it'll get back to that point with the right amount of haste.

True but unholy literally has too many resources. The GCD lock comes from simply having too many runes, runic power and things that cost neither or build them up at the same time. If you could press something all the time but it didn't end up so that you also had 100 other things to press it wouldn't feel so opressive.

Constantly feels like you end up in a situation with 4 free runes, some cooldown and 100 runic power and I'm like 'fuck me what do I do?'. While on frost I'm on 10 runic power and waiting on 2 rune to light up so I can use obliterate.

[Ambulatory Cube]

If I can sneak in here with a quick question, does Frost on the alpha play like current DW Frost, or more like 2H Frost? Or maybe a mix of the two?

I'm kind of hoping it'll play closer to 2H, because I always really enjoyed that playstyle. Just farting Howling Blast all the time is so boring and I hate that it's the best DPS of the two. (and yes I'm still salty they're taking my 2H away)

[Mcbenchpress]

It's fun. I really like it. I re-roll every expansion, and I'm probably going DK for Legion.

[meian]

I am unimpressed. Disclaimer: I like being GCD locked. I don't like downtime in my rotations. I would however like my buttons to actually do something.

Frost is still going to have massive scaling issues just like it did in WoD and Blizzard's response to it seems to be, "Well, we'll just make it worse and pretend like no one wants to play it." Just take Obliterate out already. Seriously. It's trash. No one likes it. It only ever served as a way to waste an Unholy Rune and since that isn't a thing anymore it serves no purpose beyond "that button you press to make your other buttons good sometimes." There have been dozens of valid ways of changing Obliterate so that it scales and is never a super OP button and none of them will be implemented because Blizzard thinks it's cool to have a core rotational ability not scale.

Unholy is way too busy right now. Some of the ideas are cool, but it's not particularly smooth and your tanks have to know how the spec works. So, maybe it'll be good in guild raids but you might as well not bother if you intend to PUG.

Blood is pretty much a mess right now. The talents are painfully bad and I am confused as to why. The whole class rework has a lot of potential but so far it seems non-functional and since we aren't as vocal about it as a class it'll probably stay as is.

[Ralikon]

from what I've seen in these videos, DK looks fucking terrible. They got rid of all the shit that made us good on our own, which makes us simply a different version of a Warrior.

Practically all the talents in Live are cut.. Des. ground, plague leech, lichborne, Dark sim is a talent now. No more empower rune weap heals. Do we still have soul reaper lol?

Frost is pretty much chains of ice, obliterate, frost strike and howling blast, deathgrip, AMS and kick. I think that's your entire ability bar.

[Ambulatory Cube]

Just take Obliterate out already. Seriously. It's trash. No one likes it.

I liked it plenty in 2H playstyle :P Big hits are fun. If they'd just make it not-trash it wouldn't be a problem. I don't know why they insist on leaving it Physical damage instead of letting it scale.

[meian]

I liked it plenty in 2H playstyle :P Big hits are fun. If they'd just make it not-trash it wouldn't be a problem. I don't know why they insist on leaving it Physical damage instead of letting it scale.

2H is pretty mongorific too. Instead of HB you're pressing Obliterate. Yay~ What'd I'd personally LIKE them to do is have KM provide your Crit% as a Crit Damage bonus. Then at least Frost scales off of more than just Mastery and sort of Multistrike because it's crit that benefits from KM.

[Rizendragon]

I liked it plenty in 2H playstyle :P Big hits are fun. If they'd just make it not-trash it wouldn't be a problem. I don't know why they insist on leaving it Physical damage instead of letting it scale.

2H is pretty mongorific too. Instead of HB you're pressing Obliterate. Yay~ What'd I'd personally LIKE them to do is have KM provide your Crit% as a Crit Damage bonus. Then at least Frost scales off of more than just Mastery and sort of Multistrike because it's crit that benefits from KM.

You guys never played Frost in WotLK as DPS did you? Oblit hit hard as hell back then. It needs to go back to a talented Frost damage portion of Oblit to give the option of Masterfrost or Traditional Frost. I'm not a huge fan of the artifact buffing HB either. If a traditional frost rotation isn't going to be competitive then I will be folding on my DK unfortunately. I didn't realize they changed that talent to be a Frost Strike buff...

[Ambulatory Cube]

Meian I'm not sure how you can say 2H was "mongorific" when DW is even more simple and braindead. "Spam this, then push that when it lights up. Congration, you done it!" I get that it's subjective and all, but I felt 2H was way more engaging, since you were dumping runic power with Frost Strike but you didn't want to waste Killing Machine procs on it (which tended to happen often, which was annoying, but it made hitting Obliterate with KM feel that much better. The risk/reward was fun for me.)

It needs to go back to a talented Frost damage portion of Oblit to give the option of Masterfrost or Traditional Frost. I'm not a huge fan of the artifact buffing HB either. If a traditional frost rotation isn't going to be competitive then I will be folding on my DK unfortunately. I didn't realize they changed that talent to be a Frost Strike buff...

Yeah I could swear there were talent options for boosting Obliterate, to preserve the feel of both DW and 2H playstyles. If they're going to cut out my playstyle as well as taking away my weapon, I'm going to be supremely disappointed and even more salty.

[Rixarius]

Frost has always been good at AoE, but how does it feel now with even more AoE via talents and Remorseless Winter doing damage? It seems like it could be crazy. Spamming HB, using Glacial Advance, Frost Scythe, Remorseless Winter, and that thing that makes the icicles fall whatever that is.

[Weaponized Nuclear Kitten]

Meian I'm not sure how you can say 2H was "mongorific" when DW is even more simple and braindead. "Spam this, then push that when it lights up. Congration, you done it!" I get that it's subjective and all, but I felt 2H was way more engaging, since you were dumping runic power with Frost Strike but you didn't want to waste Killing Machine procs on it (which tended to happen often, which was annoying, but it made hitting Obliterate with KM feel that much better. The risk/reward was fun for me.)

Neat choice, but the truth in practice when I was playing Frost (Ulduar -> TOC -> ICC -> (UH for T11)-> Firelands -> Dragon Soul) was that using a Killing Machine optimally VS. pretending it doesn't exist and just using it ASAP on whatever (NOTE: I mean this for Cata years of course since Obliterate didn't benefit in Wrath) was miniscule, like a 1 or 2% difference when the dust settled. Either way my favorite play style for frost was the icy touch machine gun from Ulduar and Naxx (anyone remember the sigil from XT that made Frost into Vanilla Arms warriors?). I liked the old rune system better, it wasn't as dynamic, it didn't have as high a skill ceiling to use, but I liked the flow it had.

[Bullettime]

Unholy is just swimming in resources to an insane degree. It's not uncommon to be swinging away and find yourself with a bunch of runes available, really high RP, and scratching your head wondering what you're supposed to do first.

It's GCD capped to a fault is the best way to put it, and this is with pretty minimal secondary stats.