What exactly is our strength as DPS?

[Frolk]

The personal loot option pretty much removes the whole "someone has to take the plate drops" from being an issue, no?

Not an option for mythic progression

[Hoeth]

Not an option for mythic progression

How have you incorrectly interpreted it as being "not an option"?

[Kronik85]

Not an option for mythic progression

Before you couldn't gift personal loot to your peers this would be more valid, however now top tier Mythic progression guilds can still funnel gear to their best players, hell if you're class stacking then it works even better during those farm runs they do.

But I'll restate, it really doesn't fucking matter unless you're in one of those Guilds and if you then you know full well what you signed up for.

[Nize]

Before you couldn't gift personal loot to your peers this would be more valid, however now top tier Mythic progression guilds can still funnel gear to their best players, hell if you're class stacking then it works even better during those farm runs they do.

But I'll restate, it really doesn't fucking matter unless you're in one of those Guilds and if you then you know full well what you signed up for.

Not exactly. Can only trade when the ilvl is the same or lower than a piece you have in that slot. If you're progressing, it's very likely a person will receive that piece of loot and not be capable of trading to the proper person. However, it means 2 things. A) You're in a ML mythic progression group that needs DK to soak plate or B) You aren't, your guild goes personal, and they'll just take whoever's best. Either way, DKs are fine.

[Jngizu]

I don't understand all the whine about DK's on this forum when they are the best melee class damage-wise after Rogues, in pretty much every situation. Their only two weaknesses are low mobility and zero raid utility. Aside from that, they are great at everything. I'm talking about Unholy of course.

[Kronik85]

Not exactly. Can only trade when the ilvl is the same or lower than a piece you have in that slot. If you're progressing, it's very likely a person will receive that piece of loot and not be capable of trading to the proper person. However, it means 2 things. A) You're in a ML mythic progression group that needs DK to soak plate or B) You aren't, your guild goes personal, and they'll just take whoever's best. Either way, DKs are fine.

Ahhh thanks for clarification, I'd been wondering why random pieces suddenly weren't tradable. The more you know .

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I don't understand all the whine about DK's on this forum when they are the best melee class damage-wise after Rogues, in pretty much every situation. Their only two weaknesses are low mobility and zero raid utility. Aside from that, they are great at everything. I'm talking about Unholy of course.

It's a mental disorder known as "Rogue Envy". It common amongst melee players that don't main Rogue. If you play ranged it manifests as "Mage Envy".

[Hashcrypt]

Rogues SHOULD deal more dps than DK...it's a pure dps class.

Mage, Hunter, lock, and Rogue should all be at the top of the charts by design.

[Kronik85]

Rogues SHOULD deal more dps than DK...it's a pure dps class.

Mage, Hunter, lock, and Rogue should all be at the top of the charts by design.

Hybrid tax was supposedly removed in Wrath. What those classes do have though is 3 DPS specs which means that they have a high chance of having at least 1 top performing raid spec. Personally I just think it's a matter of letting the specs fall where they may and Blizzard not being all that bothered outside of progression to bother rebalancing specs.

Either way Rogue shouldn't be the tankiest melee in the game. For DPS it is what it is.

[Raikh]

Rogues SHOULD deal more dps than DK...it's a pure dps class.

Mage, Hunter, lock, and Rogue should all be at the top of the charts by design.

Hybrid tax is supposed to be dead. If you go such lengths you could argue that druid should be the worst at everything because it has the most specs and covers all possible roles even the sub roles melee + ranged dps. A dk can't swap to being a tank mid fight, so there should be no penalty for being able to in general. The argument that if pure dps suck then they are worthless because they can't fulfill another roll is also moot. If you are lets say a ret pala und you suck this time around you won't say "then its holy this time around" you will either deal with it or reroll. Hybrids have even less room for being undertuned because they have fewer specs covering their primary role so they are always all-in. If destro is undertuned for a conent you might still have affli or demo to shine on the side of a "pure" dpser.

Aside from that rogue has an incredible kit for both mobility and survivability. I have no problem with pure specs having specs tailored to be #1 for specific scenarios. Assa/sub can do all the ST in the world and fire mage can AoE the entire planet if it wants to. But the artifact system is contradicting such a spec design and we even are no at the point where outlaw and fire rule in their glorious entirety and the artifact system again doesn't allow them to bring them "in line" since players would feel betrayed for their commitment into the respective artifact.

[RuneDK]

The people that are complaining about DKs are the shit lords that have no idea how ridiculous Unholy currently is, they'll threaten to re-roll another class (even though they won't) or say they'll get benched by the imaginary Mages they have lined up in their rank 1000+ Guild. It's really pointless arguing with them, because they just drag you down to their level.

From my understanding a lot of people doing raid testing on beta were using the scaling technology so therefor still using their current wod tier in Legion content. Unholy is no doubt in a great spot right now, but the spec was definitely boosted by people using the scaling. We will truly find out how level 110 players in level 110 gear are doing in about a month. Until then we really can't say how well something is or isn't doing. Then again, I could be completely wrong too.

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With personal loot it isn't going to make much difference but that doesn't change the reality that your Guild DPS comp probably isn't entirely Mage and Rogue and your Guild isn't comprised of players that want to play Rogue and Mage.

The top end of raiding is at this point is so ridiculously competitive that it's members are playing multiple classes and they will take whatever is the FotM or what is best to beat the encounter, which renders the whole issue moot since there will always be classes which outperform others and these Guilds will always be stacking them whatever it is. If you're a member of one of these Guilds then it's a given that you play one or you lose your spot but for the rest of us it's a non issue.

If anything when Legion launches and a large proportion of the top end Guilds start stacking Mages and Rogues then that just highlights the issue to Blizzard and they might address it, if you buy into a theory that Blizzard intends Mages and Rogues to be outliers then you can be confident that you won't be getting nerfed and you will be playing one of those 2 for all of Legion and your happiness is guaranteed.

DK's seem to be widely thought of outside of this sub forum as the second best melee after Rogue, that's not a bad spot for the rest of us.

If you want be a FotM reroller then go for it, I don't mean that as an insult, if playing the outlier classes is the only way you can enjoy the game then play the game that way.

The problem with these top guilds is a lot of shitstain guilds(the try hards) try to mimic EVERYTHING they do. It's not the fault of the world progression guilds, but more in line of Blizzard not balancing things correctly through the life of an expansion. With the team they have on wow, there's no excuse to not have monthly tuning passes. And I don't mean they should severely nerf any outliers to crap. Mostly, they should tune under-performing specs up and the outliers slightly. However, Blizzard tends to bring a hacksaw for the job of a scalpel. Frost in 6.2 is a perfect example of that.

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I would look into Epidemic. Exponential AOE is their strength. The more mobs, the more the abilities can do, and if you played in WoD at all you would know that is why Enhance was so over powered in CMs. They had the same type of damage with Fire Nova, but its gone now from them, leaving Unholy as the king.

Now there may not be a lot of opportunities for this to shine this expansion, but when there is they will dominate. Think of a fight like Iskar or Darmac where a bunch of trash adds come out regularly and you can Epidemic off them onto the main target for just insane damage.

Outside this, there is really nothing wrong with them. Idk what all the talk about Mage is but unless it gets to be a repeat of 6.2 Arcane then I don't think you need to be worrying about it. No one is going to bring 16 mages for progression.

But anyway, you still have single grip, which can go a LONG way, and battle rez which will be invaluable in 5 man progression.
I would rank Unholy DK as a top tier melee atm right now.

Also, in terms of your concerns with AMZ, be aware that no one else has a defensive raid CD other than Warrior.

I honestly expect Epidemic to be a focal point for "nerfs" shortly into EN if there's a lot of AoE. Which to me sucks, I would rather see buffs to other specs/classes than nerfs to something else.

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We already are doing pretty fucking good damage. Slight mobility tweaks would be nice but if we remain unchanged at all from Beta currently then DKs are in very good shape.

Here's where the problem is, in a fight with zero movement BOTH Frost and Unholy should be the top damage specs. I don't include Ret simply because they bring a ton of utility. Right now, that's not the case. You have classes who are exceptionally mobile beating classes with no mobility. In a stationary fight, the lesser mobile classes SHOULD be the top damage. Hell blizzard even stated...with the lack of mobility dks should feel strong on target...Now...I know they didn't say should be the strongest stationary dps....but...honestly when they spout strength and weaknesses....what exactly is the strength of BOTH dps dks right now...not just unholy..We are being beat by more mobile classes while things are stationary. That just shouldn't be the case.

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I don't understand all the whine about DK's on this forum when they are the best melee class damage-wise after Rogues, in pretty much every situation. Their only two weaknesses are low mobility and zero raid utility. Aside from that, they are great at everything. I'm talking about Unholy of course.

You can't say they're fine then say oh just one spec. Not everyone likes to play unholy.

[Hctaz]

You're whining about the changes done to Unholy? Lol everybody does this. How about Frost? We had nothing particularly useful to offer at all ever and Blizzard didn't exactly give us anything for compensation either. It's both frustrating and annoying to see unholy dks complaining about the nerfs to their spec when we frost dks haven't been given a bone at all. You're fine.

I see where you're coming from. You like unholy and dks in general and you don't want to be forced to switch to another class. I get it... but do try to think about frost dks when you're worried about the frustration of possibly having to play a different class in order to be viable. Think about the fact that none of these dks are going to get taken to raids unless they take the time to level up unholy and know that they're "wasting" artifact points into a spec they'd rather not play at all. I've seriously considered just switching to my mage or some shit since I detest what every other melee spec in the game is like now (fortunately I actually think unholy isn't half bad) but I know plenty of frost dk mains who are stubborn or generally dislike what unholy is. The only thing I personally dislike about unholy is the reliance on a pet. I'd prefer to do my damage myself and not rely on a pet, even if it is generally mindless and easy to control. I don't want to add any additional factors in my dps being varied based on poor AI or glitches or something of the like. Think Blackfuse where pets couldn't get up to the belt. Feels bad.

Alternative think about disc priests who got changed from a healing class to a hybrid support class. They either play holy for healing or they swap to a different class entirely as well. I have a friend who has been a disc priest all the way from Wrath who is begrudgingly telling me he's going to main swap to to druid now. That's disheartening. Unholy actually got a pretty good overhaul that gave them some really useful tools and an interesting playstyle. It could be worse I promise. As it stands we dks do have a very diverse set of tools for just about any and every single mechanic and encounter can throw at us (as unholy) and we shouldn't ever be solely excluded for other classes...

That being said, the change to personal loot in the middle of WoD might make the fear of being excluded a reality. If warriors, pallys, and dks are all on the shit tier then there's no longer a reason to take them at all. It isn't "mandatory" to take at least one person per armor class anymore since the boss physically can't drop anything useless if you set it to personal loot.

Overall though, when it comes to competing with rogues and mages, we do have great sustained AoE that doesn't really need too much ramping. We aren't forced to use a big CD in order to do our AoE either. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but rogues have really bad sustained AoE, right?

[Kronik85]

The problem with these top guilds is a lot of shitstain guilds(the try hards) try to mimic EVERYTHING they do. It's not the fault of the world progression guilds, but more in line of Blizzard not balancing things correctly through the life of an expansion. With the team they have on wow, there's no excuse to not have monthly tuning passes. And I don't mean they should severely nerf any outliers to crap. Mostly, they should tune under-performing specs up and the outliers slightly. However, Blizzard tends to bring a hacksaw for the job of a scalpel. Frost in 6.2 is a perfect example of that.

Yeah I agree but on tuning and having played this game for over a decade I can also say that they don't and never have shown the slightest inclination to so at this stage there is no point crying over it, everyone should be painfully aware of the state of class balancing by now. That's not to say they shouldn't but I certainly know they don't so I'm not going to waste the energy.

Here's where the problem is, in a fight with zero movement BOTH Frost and Unholy should be the top damage specs. I don't include Ret simply because they bring a ton of utility. Right now, that's not the case. You have classes who are exceptionally mobile beating classes with no mobility. In a stationary fight, the lesser mobile classes SHOULD be the top damage. Hell blizzard even stated...with the lack of mobility dks should feel strong on target...Now...I know they didn't say should be the strongest stationary dps....but...honestly when they spout strength and weaknesses....what exactly is the strength of BOTH dps dks right now...not just unholy..We are being beat by more mobile classes while things are stationary. That just shouldn't be the case.

I don't agree with this however. No class is entitled to be the best DPS spec, one class just ends up being on top (not to mention that lost DPS because of movement is an incredibly overstated issue on this sub forum). Mobility should be a counter balance to survivability, the more you have of one the less you should have of the other.

[Hctaz]

Here's where the problem is, in a fight with zero movement BOTH Frost and Unholy should be the top damage specs. I don't include Ret simply because they bring a ton of utility. Right now, that's not the case. You have classes who are exceptionally mobile beating classes with no mobility. In a stationary fight, the lesser mobile classes SHOULD be the top damage. Hell blizzard even stated...with the lack of mobility dks should feel strong on target...Now...I know they didn't say should be the strongest stationary dps....but...honestly when they spout strength and weaknesses....what exactly is the strength of BOTH dps dks right now...not just unholy..We are being beat by more mobile classes while things are stationary. That just shouldn't be the case.

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You can't say they're fine then say oh just one spec. Not everyone likes to play unholy.

Unholy is fine. Frost is definitely not fine. I do agree that both frost and unholy in theory should be the best at single target Patchwerk style fights though. IMO Frost should be one of the highest single target specs in the game if they're permitted to stand still and just dps the boss. Unholy a little behind since they have more ranged abilities and really good sustained AoE so without the need for moving or any AoE they should be a little behind. The second a fight requires movement or a bunch of adds then unholy is instantly better than Frost and I would be okay with that if we were the kings of standing in melee range.

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I don't agree with this however. No class is entitled to be the best DPS spec, one class just ends up being on top (not to mention that lost DPS because of movement is an incredibly overstated issue on this sub forum). Mobility should be a counter balance to survivability, the more you have of one the less you should have of the other.

Well... mobility doesn't bring more survivability though. The mechanics in the game are designed so that every class has ample time to escape them. If dks just... couldn't move fast enough to dodge things then they wouldn't be allowed in the raid at all unless they had RIDICULOUS amounts of damage reduction. The only thing mobility helps is dps. The more mobile you are the longer you can stand in that void zone that's about to explode before needing to move. If you're a rogue for example you can sit in the explosion radius while dks and other classes have to run away and then simply Shadow Step at the last second. Your mobility didn't transfer into survival, it became more damage. And then you can get back to the boss faster with Sprint if need be. It all just translates to moving to and from your target later, earlier, and faster depending on the situation. Later if you're moving away from the boss, faster if you're moving back in to the boss.

With ranged it's a similar story except they promote moving faster to a spot more since it usually means they can enter the safe zone sooner but mobility also applies to being able to cast on the go. A mage is considered a highly mobile class not only because of blink but also because of stuff like Ice Floes that allows them to cast any spell while on the move as long as you have a charge remaining. This is huge compared to destro locks who can't do that at all. Having to stop cast mid Chaos Bolt is a big pain and not being able to cast anything except instants while on the move is also huge. Destro locks only have conflag which has a 2 charge system and a 12 (maybe?) second CD reduced by haste. It'd be like if fire mages had to spam Fireblast while moving to do damage.

[Kronik85]

Well... mobility doesn't bring more survivability though. The mechanics in the game are designed so that every class has ample time to escape them. If dks just... couldn't move fast enough to dodge things then they wouldn't be allowed in the raid at all unless they had RIDICULOUS amounts of damage reduction. The only thing mobility helps is dps. The more mobile you are the longer you can stand in that void zone that's about to explode before needing to move. If you're a rogue for example you can sit in the explosion radius while dks and other classes have to run away and then simply Shadow Step at the last second. Your mobility didn't transfer into survival, it became more damage. And then you can get back to the boss faster with Sprint if need be. It all just translates to moving to and from your target later, earlier, and faster depending on the situation. Later if you're moving away from the boss, faster if you're moving back in to the boss.

With ranged it's a similar story except they promote moving faster to a spot more since it usually means they can enter the safe zone sooner but mobility also applies to being able to cast on the go. A mage is considered a highly mobile class not only because of blink but also because of stuff like Ice Floes that allows them to cast any spell while on the move as long as you have a charge remaining. This is huge compared to destro locks who can't do that at all. Having to stop cast mid Chaos Bolt is a big pain and not being able to cast anything except instants while on the move is also huge. Destro locks only have conflag which has a 2 charge system and a 12 (maybe?) second CD reduced by haste. It'd be like if fire mages had to spam Fireblast while moving to do damage.

This would be true if raid damage wasn't balanced around the weakest CD's. Considering certain classes with weak defenses aren't dying to raid mechanics unless they fuck up then this is true. Classes with better defensives and lower mobility however should be able to ignore more trivial mechanics that other more mobile classes have to move to deal with. I did miss Utility though in that post, Mobility, Survivability and Utility should all be counter balanced against each other (which they are apart from the outliers in Rogue and Mage).

You never lost on the DPS rankings to a fellow guildy though because they had an extra GCD on the boss because of movement though, DPS tuning isn't that tight.

[Deleted]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but I think one of the benefits of Unholy DK is that it is a jack of all trades in terms of damage. We have strong ST burst, decent AoE burst and sustained ST, and our cleave damage on spread out targets is one of the strongest. Besides that we also have 3 good defensive/utility CD's that can help us deal with raid mechanics in IBF/Corpse Shield/AMS. The only weakness imo is our mobility, which does mean that DK's have to be more aware of their movements and positioning than most other classes. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to the individual player. Eventhough mobility is supposedly our weakness, which normally would mainly hurt us when we have to kill targets that are far apart, we are actually one of the strongest classes on spread out AoE.

Having recently rerolled from Rogue>DK, I personally quite enjoy the change of pace. With my Rogue it often just felt as if the only thing I had to think about in a fight was my damage rotation, because positioning is so forgiving with all the mobility Rogue has. I pretty much just followed the target the tank was moving around and staying behind it, and if I need to swap targets I can be there with one global, no real thought process behind it at all.

tl;dr In terms of damage DK is above average in pretty much every aspect, excelling in cleaving spread out targets, defensives aren't bad either. Mobility is kind of crappy, but that is intended. All in all probably top 3 melee dps specs(unless we count Rogue x2 or x3) and definitely worth bringing to a raid.

[Airwaves]

Hate to say it. But... Nothing. Love a mage.

[Baddok21]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but I think one of the benefits of Unholy DK is that it is a jack of all trades in terms of damage. We have strong ST burst, decent AoE burst and sustained ST, and our cleave damage on spread out targets is one of the strongest. Besides that we also have 3 good defensive/utility CD's that can help us deal with raid mechanics in IBF/Corpse Shield/AMS. The only weakness imo is our mobility, which does mean that DK's have to be more aware of their movements and positioning than most other classes. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to the individual player. Eventhough mobility is supposedly our weakness, which normally would mainly hurt us when we have to kill targets that are far apart, we are actually one of the strongest classes on spread out AoE.

Having recently rerolled from Rogue>DK, I personally quite enjoy the change of pace. With my Rogue it often just felt as if the only thing I had to think about in a fight was my damage rotation, because positioning is so forgiving with all the mobility Rogue has. I pretty much just followed the target the tank was moving around and staying behind it, and if I need to swap targets I can be there with one global, no real thought process behind it at all.

tl;dr In terms of damage DK is above average in pretty much every aspect, excelling in cleaving spread out targets, defensives aren't bad either. Mobility is kind of crappy, but that is intended. All in all probably top 3 melee dps specs(unless we count Rogue x2 or x3) and definitely worth bringing to a raid.

Unholy was just designed exceptionally well, it has a transition to any form of DPS you want it to excel at with virtually no overlap.

Frost on the otherhand...

[Hctaz]

You never lost on the DPS rankings to a fellow guildy though because they had an extra GCD on the boss because of movement though, DPS tuning isn't that tight.

If you think the disparity in Dks movement versus the other melee classes is confined to one GCD per "run away from the boss" mechanic then I laugh at you.

[Kronik85]

If you think the disparity in Dks movement versus the other melee classes is confined to one GCD per "run away from the boss" mechanic then I laugh at you.

Considering I don't lose many GCDs (if any) in HFC to movement, yes. Having raided every tier and not lost many GCDs to movement, yes.

[Poisongaz]

Why does everyone think in terms of what kind of utility skills they can bring to a raid? Shouldn't the first a biggest goal be to bring the best dps you can possibly bring to the raid? I never really understood why people dwell so much on their "utility". I can understand the movement arguments, some of which I tend to agree with, but to be mad that DKs don't have enough "raid utility" is silly. Like lets be honest for a second, how many of you would use these super special awesome raid utility abilities? I would bet not very many of you.