How to make DK great again

[Deleted]

So i posted this on the eu wow forums this morning, figured that there'd be more people to discuss it with around here so here you go :
Original thread : http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17613482662

Woo clickbait championship here i come aight ?!
Balancing thread :

Easy balance options to make Frost DK viable again, Blood DK feel solid again, UH perform a little bit better (considering nearly every class got buffed and UH didnt, we are now bottom tier for no reason other than bad patching), here we go

Lets start with FROST :
1 - Just give back the old flat +20% haste passive, it will speed up the spec, making it feel better, improve the dps to an acceptable point and make it feel less dull, having the GCD shortened, quicker runes and all.
2 - Modify the artifact ability, let's be honest, currently its pure !@#$, noone can argue that, it looks bad, doesnt really do dmg and is dull af.
2.5 - Heres how to do it !
Might of the fallen prince :
Passive : Your Obliterate and frost strikes critical hits create icy copies of Icebringer and Frostreaper, which will then stab and pierce your foes for frost damage for 15 seconds.

(Only right hand crits count, you can't get two from the same crit, you can stack to max 4 blades up at the same time, spawning another while having 4 removes the oldest one and replaces it with the new one that has a fresh 15s lifespan.)
(You get a buff to know how many are around at the same time (like tank dh with their soul shards))
(They now act as dancing runic blades in blood spec, actually moving around you and hitting stuff you hit with animations)
(They appear only in shades of blue, because they are 'icy' copies, made of ice, and leave a tiny fog behind them, just like path of frost does when flying you see what i'm thinking ?)

Active : Unleash the power of the runeblades, sending the active copies of the blades piercing through your target, each blade dealing 125% of Attack power as frost damage and summons Sindragosa, who breathes frost on all enemies within 40 yd in front of you, dealing (2000% of Attack power) Frost damage and slowing movement speed by 50% for 10 sec, you gain 4% mastery for each blade consumed by the effect, lasts 20s.
2 minutes cooldown

(2 minutes to make the CD a good part of the gameplay, and not making it stack all the time with EPR, it will give a short burst that can be usefull to switch on adds and a good buff that caps to a good 16% flat bonus to mastery, increasing burst damage and having a duration stackable with POF, bringing the mastery bonus of the burst to 26% if Frozen core trait is taken)

3 - Remove 'Ice in your veins' trait and replace it with :
Might of the fallen prince :
Increases the chance of Killing machine procs per autos critical hits by flat 6.66% per rank, 3 ranks.
Giving KM 20% increased chance to proc, 40% if you get right relics, should be a HUGE boost to dps, just what the spec needs.

4 - Replace 'Sindragosa's fury' trait (given its now in the base weapon) be :
Echo of the fallen prince :
Summons an Echo of Arthas to aid you in battle, while at your side he mimics your attacks for 10% of your damage for 30 seconds, before disappearing he casts Fury of frostmourne, dealing 100% of the damage he did split between every enemy within 15 yards of him, and your current target.
10mn CD, 3 runes.
(Your current target will always be hit by it, no matter how far he is from you)
Dudes, i present you the frost's army of the dead-type cd, one use per fight, deals 20% of your burst damage in total, and looks great.

5 - Make Frostscythe proc Rime and make it replace Obliterate when taken, lower the crit bonus to 3 times normal damage instead of 4 so that it doesnt outscale that much the other talents of the tier, even if it will.

That alone should boost Frost from last place to middle and maybe top tier when used properly with the haste buff.

Now on to BLOOD :
Damage feels a bit low in monotarget, but thats not the problem, the problem is the mastery. Its fricking useless ! The shields don't even last a full GCD when applied in higher difficulties than normal dungeons, so the artifact trait 'Unending thirst' is just as good when not taken !
Solution is simple, bring passive mastery from 12% to 20%, and make it proc from any kind of self healing exept leech, blood plague, heart strikes with Blood feast trait, and mostly, Consumption.
Next thing would be up bone shield to 20% damage reduction baseline, from 16%, that little difference can do great into high level content.

Now lets talk about PvP for a second, because that's where the whining will come from, just remember that from this hotfix onwards, wars can stack their shield to millions in PvP too, and i doubt that this little change will make BDKs that much stronger than actually.

And for UNHOLY :
I think the spec feels good, it deals fine but given that all other dps specs got buffed it needs a little something to compensate.
Lets compare shall we ?
Havoc DHs have their main stat as crit, and they have 16% passive crit.
Unholy DKs have their main stat as crit (if playing castigator, which you should for pve) and have 5% passive crit.
Lets make UH DKs have 12% passive crit.
And that RNG on Festering strike ? Having simple to double the wounds based on pure RNG ? Come on, bring the wounds generations to 3-4 per strike instead of 2-4, and it will be enough.
Something that simple would bring us just a little bit higher in dps, make castigator proc more and increase the overall dps by just a enough to stick with the other buffed classes without changing the gameplay and removing those %^-*-pulls when the rng just !@#$s you up and decides you gotta do 4 festering strikes instead of 2, now it should cap to 3 festering strikes when %^-* pulls happen, and since crit is buffed it should be even rarer, greatly increasing the feel of the spec overall.

That is all i had in mind, more would be making DKs OP, altough i think Frost could use more buffs, like a split of Obliterate damage to include frost damage, 30% frost and 70% physical instead of 100% physical could be nice.

So hey, i know this won't come into the game, but whatever, maybe a blue will see it and get some ideas, toodles.

EDIT [After the hotfix] :
Our dps in raid is insanely low if we don't have the legendary bracers, which is stupid, bring passive mastery to 18% instead of 12% in both frost and unholy, and we will be competitive again

[Deleted]

Jokes aside, take one:
a) Increase damage by a flat 50% on BDK, 70%+ on frost and 60%+ on unholy. At least now we actually break legs when we get to stay on target instead of being bottom of the barrel(literally).
b) get rid of the epic meme-tier idicy of "DK NO MOVEMENT. EVER." remove WW and give us "Pale rider: Death knights continue riding their horses into battle at 40% movespeed" and 20% min increase in overall damage for UH and frost.

What blizzard will do "eh, fuck DKs." and do nothing. Or a barely above 2-3% dps increase.

[Psikotik]

Blood mirror is a bad talent and should be reworked or removed/replaced.

[Dahti]

What I read: make frost scale rediculously and make it top dps by adding more over-tuned passives

What I wanted to read: make the frost rotation have an option of being more complex and more rewarding, while leaving passive options that smooth things out at the cost of some dps. (This works great for feral)

I'm not going to say frost is fine, it needs a buff, but as simple as it is it shouldn't be a top dps spec.

[Pepehands]

Now that we have the logs, should be easier to prove that we really need some changes.

Thanks alot for invest that much time OP! Thanks!!!!!!

[Deleted]

I'm not going to say frost is fine, it needs a buff, but as simple as it is it shouldn't be a top dps spec.

Because retpal/assarogue/armswarrior/feral are very complex specs and implies lots of choices and have overall a very high skill cap
I'm dying right now

[mezz8984]

I don't really see the point in giving Frost essentially 1 damage CD and having it on a 5min CD as well as it coming from the artifact.

[Deleted]

I don't really see the point in giving Frost essentially 1 damage CD and having it on a 5min CD as well as it coming from the artifact.

Its not 5 its 3, please read before commenting false things :/

[Deleted]

Deport all other melee specs.

Ban Fire Mage immigration in to all raids.