Death Knight Mobility

[Rias]

Instead of Wraith Walk, I'd like to see a Death Knight equivalent of the Divine Steed of the paladin. We would raise corpses from the ground that mesh together into some hideous abomination of a steed for a short time.

[Gultar]

Instead of Wraith Walk, I'd like to see a Death Knight equivalent of the Divine Steed of the paladin. We would raise corpses from the ground that mesh together into some hideous abomination of a steed for a short time.

That would be badass. I always thought that spell should go to DK. In warcraft 3 the DK hero was on a horse the whole time. seemed like a perfect fit for DK better then wraith walk.

[frychikn]

I am honestly starting to think players think class design is all about "how can we make a class with all upside and no downside?" Like for the longest time it has been known that a "weakness" or "drawback" or whatever you want to call it for the DK has been its mobility. HEAVEN FORBID the DK cant be able excel in EVERYTHING. I am pretty close to deciding to play DK for legion, to act like having a weakness is dire is just silly. Go to any class, they all cant do everything, as in not a single 1 does everything, evennnnn druiiidddddd

[psyquest]

I am honestly starting to think players think class design is all about "how can we make a class with all upside and no downside?" Like for the longest time it has been known that a "weakness" or "drawback" or whatever you want to call it for the DK has been its mobility. HEAVEN FORBID the DK cant be able excel in EVERYTHING. I am pretty close to deciding to play DK for legion, to act like having a weakness is dire is just silly. Go to any class, they all cant do everything, as in not a single 1 does everything, evennnnn druiiidddddd

please do enlighten us. DK mobility is the lowest of all melee, what is their upside? Compared to what class? Is the upside really that good to justify the downside?

and since you joined recently, Aug 2016, you might have some ideas that this community has failed to grasp (or is you real account banned for trolling?).

[Rubim]

I am honestly starting to think players think class design is all about "how can we make a class with all upside and no downside?" Like for the longest time it has been known that a "weakness" or "drawback" or whatever you want to call it for the DK has been its mobility. HEAVEN FORBID the DK cant be able excel in EVERYTHING. I am pretty close to deciding to play DK for legion, to act like having a weakness is dire is just silly. Go to any class, they all cant do everything, as in not a single 1 does everything, evennnnn druiiidddddd

Tell me on thing that a DPS DK can do that its exclusive or make we excel at something that any other meele could not.

Unholy has more mobility than Frost, but both of then dont have Mass Grip.

[RuneDK]

I am honestly starting to think players think class design is all about "how can we make a class with all upside and no downside?" Like for the longest time it has been known that a "weakness" or "drawback" or whatever you want to call it for the DK has been its mobility. HEAVEN FORBID the DK cant be able excel in EVERYTHING. I am pretty close to deciding to play DK for legion, to act like having a weakness is dire is just silly. Go to any class, they all cant do everything, as in not a single 1 does everything, evennnnn druiiidddddd

The DK players may actually be the most realistic in terms of class design. I've been on most if not all of the class forums and most are a lot more unrealistic than us. However, I think I can speak for most of us when I say...we'd have no problem with our mobility being as bad as it is, if we did more damage than the other classes. However, there are numerous melee with MUCH better mobility and do moderately more damage than us. Where is their downside?

- - - Updated - - -

Tell me on thing that a DPS DK can do that its exclusive or make we excel at something that any other meele could not.

Unholy has more mobility than Frost, but both of then dont have Mass Grip.

That's really not a problem as both have some utility still(although unholy has arguably a much better kit for mythic raiding than frost). The problem is the more mobile classes by design are also doing more damage than us. We should be contending for top dps with both specs to have our mobility as low as it is(as with ret pallies as well). However, rogues and DH's have far far greater mobility than us...with a shit ton more mobility...So their downside should be their damage if they can be as mobile as they are.

[Kronik85]

Tell me on thing that a DPS DK can do that its exclusive or make we excel at something that any other meele could not.

Doing most of our damage at range. Which is why the issue is completely overblown, we deal something like 60-65% of our damage at range, more if you actually start using your head and spamming Epidemic.

Real world scenario is mechanic goes off>melee leave melee range (every other melee else does much lower DPS than us at range)>mechanic resolves>You Wraith Walk back. Or alternatively we have the cheese route where we just pop AMS and CS and don't move off the boss at all.

Our utilities are 2 Death Grips, a Combat Res and cheesing mechanics. Our AoE is top tier, our Single Target is average and our Burst is top tier.

[Raikh]

Doing most of our damage at range. Which is why the issue is completely overblown, we deal something like 60-65% of our damage at range, more if you actually start using your head and spamming Epidemic.

Real world scenario is mechanic goes off>melee leave melee range (every other melee else does much lower DPS than us at range)>mechanic resolves>You Wraith Walk back. Or alternatively we have the cheese route where we just pop AMS and CS and don't move off the boss at all.

Our utilities are 2 Death Grips, a Combat Res and cheesing mechanics. Our AoE is top tier, our Single Target is average and our Burst is top tier.

How is a dk again doing 65% of his damage at range? CS is nerfed to uselessness, we cant apply festering wounds at range, DC is a small part of our damage, leaving ultimately only our pet, virulent plague and 1-2 epidemic as range filler once in a while. That accounts for maybe half of what you suggest if we are talking about priority damage and not AoE.
And don't even let me start on frost. Frost has FF and thats it. HB does so little damage that its pretty much wasted to use at range unless you're away an excessive amount of time and have runes overcapping.

Most other melee dont give a shit about ranged dps because they have either massive speedbuffs or insatnt gap closing or both. Even if we would deal 65% of our damage at range, others would do pretty much 100% during that time as they close the gap while we are spending our first gcd doing ranged shit.

CS is probably the most inferior cheesing mechanic in the game. A the point where its not just a neat def cd for some damage its a massive dps loss, which hits especially our off target damage hard. It isa good ability to have, but i highly doubt its something game changing.
If you need multiple grips at the same time you will probably want to go for a dh or a blood, if not both, especially since they are tanks and a slong as they arent garbage level that utility is supreme on them and you could use better dps in the other slot should dk not perform accordingly.

Our damage right now looks good, no doubt about that, but there are other top tier classes performing equally well, while having big def cds or high mobility, while we are immobile glass "cannons". IBF and ams are pretty weak, ibf due to its cd, ams due to it being a disc shield on a 60 sec cd only absorbing magic damage, rp gain is also pretty damn low in legion.

DK for sure isn't shit, even with low mobility you can do your job, but whats really a slap in the face is, that others can do the very same, while having strictly more. We are pretty much just damage at this point, we dont even have some cool utility speels for fun or fantasy. Blizz decided we are to be slow for fantasy reasons, fine, but why got all our sustain (aka slefheal) cut, why got ams nerfed even further? Why is the Corpse shield penalty so huge? Why is wraith walk so insanely shitty, when the good old Da we had in WoD and MoP would've done it, too?

While some classes got their rotations cut, we got pretty much everything esle cut and while i still have fun with my class and the output looks promising, it definitely hurts my overall enjoyment of playing the game. I mean if you have a class doing 100 patchwerk dps and another class doing 100 dps, having ninja flips, speed buffs and strong defensives/self heal/utility the first might still be top tier dps but which one is inherently more appealing and straight out better/has abigger power budget overall?

[Kronik85]

How is a dk again doing 65% of his damage at range? CS is nerfed to uselessness, we cant apply festering wounds at range, DC is a small part of our damage, leaving ultimately only our pet, virulent plague and 1-2 epidemic as range filler once in a while. That accounts for maybe half of what you suggest if we are talking about priority damage and not AoE.

Because that's what my sims are telling me. Autoattack 5%, SS 10% FW+FeS 10%, the rest is stuff that happens whether we are on the target or not.

Most other melee dont give a shit about ranged dps because they have either massive speedbuffs or insatnt gap closing or both. Even if we would deal 65% of our damage at range, others would do pretty much 100% during that time as they close the gap while we are spending our first gcd doing ranged shit.

It's swings and roundabouts, we keep doing damage at range which mitigates the DPS loss of moving off the boss. Other classes get back on the boss quicker to mitigate moving off the boss. At best we are talking a couple globals though lost to movement.

CS is probably the most inferior cheesing mechanic in the game. A the point where its not just a neat def cd for some damage its a massive dps loss, which hits especially our off target damage hard. It isa good ability to have, but i highly doubt its something game changing.
If you need multiple grips at the same time you will probably want to go for a dh or a blood, if not both, especially since they are tanks and a slong as they arent garbage level that utility is supreme on them and you could use better dps in the other slot should dk not perform accordingly.

I would only outright sacrifice a ghoul via CS to cheese a mechanic for the guild.

Our damage right now looks good, no doubt about that, but there are other top tier classes performing equally well, while having big def cds or high mobility, while we are immobile glass "cannons". IBF and ams are pretty weak, ibf due to its cd, ams due to it being a disc shield on a 60 sec cd only absorbing magic damage, rp gain is also pretty damn low in legion.

Last time I checked all the other melee defensive CD's ours was the best suite. Defensives as a whole are alot weaker in Legion. I certainly wouldn't say we are glass canons compared to other melee.

DK for sure isn't shit, even with low mobility you can do your job, but whats really a slap in the face is, that others can do the very same, while having strictly more. We are pretty much just damage at this point, we dont even have some cool utility speels for fun or fantasy. Blizz decided we are to be slow for fantasy reasons, fine, but why got all our sustain (aka slefheal) cut, why got ams nerfed even further? Why is the Corpse shield penalty so huge? Why is wraith walk so insanely shitty, when the good old Da we had in WoD and MoP would've done it, too?

I tune out when I read "slap in the face".

While some classes got their rotations cut, we got pretty much everything esle cut and while i still have fun with my class and the output looks promising, it definitely hurts my overall enjoyment of playing the game. I mean if you have a class doing 100 patchwerk dps and another class doing 100 dps, having ninja flips, speed buffs and strong defensives/self heal/utility the first might still be top tier dps but which one is inherently more appealing and straight out better/has abigger power budget overall?

Play the one which you enjoy more.

[Raikh]

1. Calculating ranged damage doesn't work like that. Is this a pre-patch sim or one using legion gear? If pre-patch you need to subract Thorasus and DA, both are fueled by you beign on target. Ghoul damage also drops massively when you have down time, due to the ghoul getting reosurces from DC and you generate much less rp and miss out entirely on SD procs, this also means that you can' use the full value DC dps brings you in a patchwerk scenario for ranged damage.
In case of having a artifact you can subtract army, since apocalypse requires you to being on target and i also wouldn't rely on shambler as solid ranged damage.

2. Proportions don't fit, especially not since you might use runes that won't overcap during running to your target inefficently for ranged damage, wasting on target damage, rendeirng the option useless. Its highly situative and the off-target damage isnt even close to as high as you suggest. Additionally mobility isnt just for gap closing but it alos helps avoiding damage and react faster to mechanics. Both will be designed to be doable but dk is at a clear disadvantage here.

3. There are others who can do that better by losing way less damage, especially so if cheesing the target requires running around. DK looks more like an emergency candidate for such a job, rthater than a good choice.

4.DH looks better honestly with blur and netherwalk, maybe tied but they also have stupid amounts of mobility. Do i need to talk about rogues? They might have tuned down survivability but even if ours is better than some melees its not far better, especially not if we talk physical damage, were we quite easily the worst of the bunch, especially if you take corpse shield out of the equation which isnt even available to frost.

5. Deeply sorry i used a line you dont like, because ofcourse arguments and opinions are invalidated by default when it isn't liked.

6. Ignorance is strength.

[cRawmode]

Warriors and Monks also won't loose any uptime on a boss with their Heroic Leap / Charge or double roll / Tiger's Lust / Flying Serpent Kick and passive 10% movement speed aura.

Of course when we talk about raiding, mechanics won't be so damn hard that you have to run around like a headless chicken for 50% of the fight length and loose all your precious DPS. There are short bursts of movement involved here and there where DKs will have a downside. The problem is, other classes that perform at the same level / above have not this kind of problem.

[Deleted]

Meanwhile, people forgets how much our artifact talent buffs our DPS output(not to mention, how big deal DC is after maxed out artifact, possible to a degree, where it's top priorty and how much you can buff it with talents as well).

ANY average player should be able to see, that when you max out your artifact(atleast for the UH), that your rotation will be vastly different. You probably will care less with FS/SC combos, unless you are in melee, but have the opertunity to keep your DPS up with DC. With CS, you can even buff up your DC.

It's just stupid to argue on this level. Sorry.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Try this:

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=60 Wraith Walk, Draenic Swiftness Potion

Keep 3-4 stacks of potions on you at all times. If you are Worgen, you can add that move buff too. Boom! Now you have back-to-back or even back-to-back-to-back movement buffs!

[Miseras]

As a PVE player I didn't think he removal of Death Advance would affect me as much as it has; I just feel so damn slow.

• Moving in and out of AOE that originates form the center of the bosses - these effects are always repetitive, so for the first I use wright walk, but whilst that is on cool down I'm the first to move away from the boss and hence l lose DPS
  
• I lag behind the group when doing dungeons now and because of that I'm always last to arrive to a pack of mobs we're supposed to kill - it's trivial, but annoying to be the last to arrive and already 25% of the mobs HP is gone.
  
• I'm now always among the last players to get back after a wipe and therefore lose time to prepare - this wont be an issue in an organized raid but in PUGs I'm not always considered when I ask the MT to hold on a few seconds.

It might sound trivial but these small things affect the enjoyment when playing my Death Knight: I feel very slow now and find myself constantly pressing the hot key for wright walk when its on cool down.

[Raikh]

Meanwhile, people forgets how much our artifact talent buffs our DPS output(not to mention, how big deal DC is after maxed out artifact, possible to a degree, where it's top priorty and how much you can buff it with talents as well).

ANY average player should be able to see, that when you max out your artifact(atleast for the UH), that your rotation will be vastly different. You probably will care less with FS/SC combos, unless you are in melee, but have the opertunity to keep your DPS up with DC. With CS, you can even buff up your DC.

It's just stupid to argue on this level. Sorry.

Excuse me? There is only one artifact trait buffing DC specifically and that gives it a 21% damage buff. Scourge of worlds also doesn't buff your DC by using CS/SS but the other way around. DC will hit like a wet noodle in legion, too, and its entire purpose is to fuel our ghoul and other abilities.
The artifact doesn't add any tools to get us significantly more ranged dps and our rotation won't be vastly different. Playing around festering wounds will still be the core gameplay. The only things changing are that we need to pool wounds for apocalypse to ensure maximum effect and that we get in as many SS/CS as possible while scourge of worlds is active, which will probably also cause so wound juggling.
Unholy gets a few ne nuances into its playstyle with the artifact but doesn't change fundamentally and so will be played very similar.

[DrMcNinja]

Instead of Wraith Walk, I'd like to see a Death Knight equivalent of the Divine Steed of the paladin. We would raise corpses from the ground that mesh together into some hideous abomination of a steed for a short time.

"Carried by bone"
Raise the hands of the dead under your feet, carrying you and increasing your movement speed

[Kronik85]

1. Calculating ranged damage doesn't work like that. Is this a pre-patch sim or one using legion gear? If pre-patch you need to subract Thorasus and DA, both are fueled by you beign on target. Ghoul damage also drops massively when you have down time, due to the ghoul getting reosurces from DC and you generate much less rp and miss out entirely on SD procs, this also means that you can' use the full value DC dps brings you in a patchwerk scenario for ranged damage.
In case of having a artifact you can subtract army, since apocalypse requires you to being on target and i also wouldn't rely on shambler as solid ranged damage.

Yeah you're right but you can't just dismiss DA and Thorasus since you always get full value atm. The same will be true in Legion with Apocalypse. You still get near full value out of ghoul because you can still spend runes with Epidemic. There is one encounter in the entire HFC that actually requires you to move off the boss for a decent amount of time and that's handling Shackled Souls in Mythic Archi, the rest of the time it's near 100% uptime on the boss in every encounter. I don't believe Legion will be vastly different.

2. Proportions don't fit, especially not since you might use runes that won't overcap during running to your target inefficently for ranged damage, wasting on target damage, rendeirng the option useless. Its highly situative and the off-target damage isnt even close to as high as you suggest. Additionally mobility isnt just for gap closing but it alos helps avoiding damage and react faster to mechanics. Both will be designed to be doable but dk is at a clear disadvantage here.

If movement is so brief you won't overcap runes then you're only losing Autoattack damage because that's how our resource system works. If you can't react to mechanics in time that's a personal problem.

3. There are others who can do that better by losing way less damage, especially so if cheesing the target requires running around. DK looks more like an emergency candidate for such a job, rthater than a good choice.[/quote]

Kewlies, that doesn't mean we don't have that utility though if needed.

4.DH looks better honestly with blur and netherwalk, maybe tied but they also have stupid amounts of mobility. Do i need to talk about rogues? They might have tuned down survivability but even if ours is better than some melees its not far better, especially not if we talk physical damage, were we quite easily the worst of the bunch, especially if you take corpse shield out of the equation which isnt even available to frost.

Netherwalk replaces Blur, it's a DPS loss because you can't cancel it. Frost has White Walker for an additional CD. What about Rogues? Still OP like always? Every melee is worse than Rogues.

5. Deeply sorry i used a line you dont like, because ofcourse arguments and opinions are invalidated by default when it isn't liked.

It wasn't an argument, it's angst.

6. Ignorance is strength.

If you say so.

[Raikh]

1. You can't count that as ranged or off-target damage. By that logic a class which can close gaps instantly has 100% ranged damage since they always get full value. Off-target is solely the damage you are capable of doing while not being in melee range and that is about 30% a bit more or less depending on talent choice and situation.
It simply means that we have a lot of damage which happens outside of standard rotation, which is the case for many specs. Being it a bunch of pets on a 1,5min CD or a 100% crit buff leading to a lot of damage being concentrated in a small time frame. The only point where that matters is if you have to move out during that point in time and there Thorasus would lose value, apocalypse obviously not but needing to go off target during a major damage CD which is solely dependant on your acitons is a miss play in 95 out of 100 cases..

2. That depends on how many resources you have at hand, even if you're not overcapping in this very moment you can lose a few reosurce slater on by not being able to spend everythign in time and shortly overcapping while being on target, but its very miniscule or no loss at all, yes. It still proves the point though that our ranged capabilities are not always of use, while mobility is pretty much always of use, which makes our inferior "compensation" also more situational additonally.
As long as encoutners are designe dproperly it is no huge detriment, maybe even none at all, but output wasn't my concern as I've already stated before. Our output looks promising and it has rarely been the case in the past that our viability suffered strictly due to our mobility.

3. Indeed we still have it and we might get to use it once in a while but it won't be a special niche we shine in. We will probably get a backup position, use it when said mechanic is randomly targeted or if the mechanic can be abused in great style we simply are on duty for it because of the sheer amounts of players required.

4. Missed netherwalk replacing blur, my bad. Although netherwalk is still most likely a smaller dps loss then Corpse Shield for instance, when used for the according mechanics. Every melee being worse than rgoues is a clear design failure though in a game were all classes are supposed to be agood choice, you can have differently distirbuted "power budgets" were one might look a bit more attarctive than another but you really shouldn't have vastly different "power budgets" unless you want to define specific specs or classes as endgame ones, meanign they are intended to be the bets choice at all times and since they haven't delcared such a philosophy, rather the opposite, I'm criticizing it, obviously form the PoV of the class i prefer to play.

5.Thats for sure not angst, probably as far off the mark as possible. I simply despise the ability, not as such that it is there, but as a replacement for what we had before. Sure they want us to be slow, fine. But giving us not only a sprint which has a vastly shorter duration than your standard version, it doesn't even allow you to attack, vastly reducing its usefulness even more and also being on gcd which wasn't the with the old Deaths Advance. Additonally it comes with a wonky animation which was declared placeholder during alpha but never got changed and will need to be glyphed to ensure its functionality to begin with. Along with that it needed to be buffed several times, the latest one costing us deaths advance. Thats why it feels like "a slap in the face" in a metaphorical sense. Blizz spend quite a bit of effort creating something solely to make a part of us worse that didn't need nerfs in the first place and then delivering a half baked ability. The story is almost comically sad, so comical, that even some people barely ever playing dk fell off their chair laughing at how stupid Wraith walks past story is.


I will say it again: I'm not really worried about our raiding viability, if they dont do any last-minute nerfs to us, then we will be fine for legion damage wise, we will be in a good spot and unless we get bosses were moving around non-stop is a thing low moblity won't be too detrimental for us.
But i still don't feel complete. The specs are itself fun to play, have distinct thematics and look well-rounded, but everything else is lacking. They explicitly said that they want to compensate slow classes, specifically mentioning dks and paladins, for their low moblity and said it would either be damage, survivability or utility.

I've yet to see anything of that. I'm not saying paladin got it, but if not then thats even more problematic. Our damage is good yes, but there are classe sthat tie with us while having that mobility and they are tied witohut that mobility in mind, so there was no damage compensation. Our def cds might not be the worst but are also not outstandingly good, some melees might have a def cd less but therefore has decent self healing, even if that might come at a cost, while ours is not only a dps loss but alos impractical and weak. Yes, we have some utility, but that utility is for most situations the second choice, rather than the prime one, additionally do some classes with mobility share similar utility making it no compensation either.

And thats where my entire point comes from. I feel like while some classes have a "power budget" of 100 points we have one of 80. It ight be that we have 70 points in damage and others have 70 in damage, too, but they get 30 points in other gadgets, while we have 10. DK is probably not the only class having that problem but that doesn't make the point invalid, ebcause this discrepancy exists and thats what I'm criticizing as it opposes the philosophy legion enforces. And I'm doing that especially for the dk class because its class I've enjoyed the most so far and not because I'm entirely dissatisified with it.

[frychikn]

I've yet to see anything of that. I'm not saying paladin got it, but if not then thats even more problematic. Our damage is good yes, but there are classe sthat tie with us while having that mobility and they are tied witohut that mobility in mind, so there was no damage compensation. Our def cds might not be the worst but are also not outstandingly good, some melees might have a def cd less but therefore has decent self healing, even if that might come at a cost, while ours is not only a dps loss but alos impractical and weak. Yes, we have some utility, but that utility is for most situations the second choice, rather than the prime one, additionally do some classes with mobility share similar utility making it no compensation either.

And thats where my entire point comes from. I feel like while some classes have a "power budget" of 100 points we have one of 80. It ight be that we have 70 points in damage and others have 70 in damage, too, but they get 30 points in other gadgets, while we have 10. DK is probably not the only class having that problem but that doesn't make the point invalid, ebcause this discrepancy exists and thats what I'm criticizing as it opposes the philosophy legion enforces. And I'm doing that especially for the dk class because its class I've enjoyed the most so far and not because I'm entirely dissatisified with it.

I REALLY want to just emphasize on "Our damage is good yes, but there are classe sthat tie with us while having that mobility and they are tied witohut that mobility in mind, so there was no damage compensation."

So, with WORSE mobiity, we tie with other classes.... yet, you want MORE mobility(which ill say again, DKs arnt KNOWN FOR). If we are fine with our lack of mobility how is that a BAD thing exactly? Are you just wanting to feel stupid powerful just because? I havnt played in beta, nor have I even raided in the past 6 months(cant believe there are people who have, can you say stale? yuck!) but unless DK dps has dropped from when I last played, I dont see where the problem is exactly.

Lower mobility isnt a GOOD thing, we can agree on that. But it's thematic and a playstyle thing. Maybe the DK class playstyle isn't for you? Is there a class you feel has all upside and no downside whatsoever? I like systems of "give and take" not "lets give everybody everything just because". If DK right now is just unplayable in both pvp and pve because of their movement, then you got me there, if it's gotten that bad then yes maybe this should be looked into.

[Deleted]

We still have this silly argument? Everyone who say it is fine obviously don't main a DK. This whole discussion is a farce, dk mobility sucks right now and isn't even true to class fantasy as has been proven many times. They removed core features we had since LK ffs. Everyone who thinks this is okay is an idiot.