Why the reluctance to buff DK?

[Hunaxor]

Hello guys,
when the 7.1 pre-notes started to show up and I saw pretty much no changes show up for DK, I really started to wonder what is going on. According to the class fantasy we should be strongest on target but with low mobility which is not the case. Well the low mobility part is.
Possible reasons:

1)PVP
First time in legion, we are free of pvp forcing changes in pve and vice versa. Not the reason.

2)We are already very good.
Looking at the logs, we are "fine" in normal and heroic and fall behind in mythic. Some have the experience being in the top5, I have the same, but I have recently started logging and then you see you are around 70-80 percentile and the people competing with you are around 50. Or are same percentile but 30k dps more on enha/feral.

3)Our utility is great and the package overall is great.
Not the case either, as unholy I bring no stuns (unless I trait one single target), one pull and only my damage to high m+ run. You will feel it.
I am playing also hunter, mage and DH for alts, and their package is similar or stronger (especially mage) while being more mobile, doing more damage and in case of mage/hunter even ranged. Or DH mastery being our death advance on super mobile class.

I just can't come up with no reason why to keep the least mobile, low utility class as mediocre at best. We don't even bring some must have raid buff or something. It is really sad to be at the same percentile with enha, with them doing 30k+ more dps on H Xavius. With them having on demand mobility, same bress and actual group buffs.

Even if we go and take the dps specs as fine, what the hell happened with Blood? Only spec with no %DR CD anymore (we had several before lol). Necrotic? You can shelve your DK tank for a week. What is the reason to have tank spec that sucks when there are tens of 1H/3DPS groups in Mythic + LFG.I don't really get it.

And the lack of communication is the worst. If they told us this is the place we want to have you/ we will buff you, people could make informed decision to stick/reroll/unsub. With no communication, people just hope for some scraps next patch, and the next patch......

So why do you think we are in this state?

[Deleted]

Season 5 DK.
Not even joking.
DK must suffer for S5, blizz balance team is fucktarded and very prone to vengeance see shaman.


Reminder that DK will get no fixes (denote the word FIX and not "buff", DK would be top damage if it got something like an extra mastery along the lines of something stupid IE "The lich king will: You deal +20% damage and get 20%+ bonus AP" it'd do top damage but none of the issues (rotation being rng hell for uhdk, frost default package having no scaling, no mobility, no dr cd on blood)).

If you like DK you only have 2 real options.
A) Reroll because you like wow
B) Leave because you like DK

[0verdose]

Blizz just hates the death knight. It's obvious already. All three specs are in such a sorry state it's pathetic. Getting no communication from secs, just a bunch of bandaid fixes telling us the shut the fuck up. We went into legion super stoked about the state of unholy, even praised blizzard on a job well done when it came to revamping the spec. Hell, we were even in the top 5 best Melee specs in the game. Now we can really say that blizzard was lazy as fuck when it came to unholy and every dks design. The RNG implemented in the playstyle is just down right lazy. Also look at our artifact weapon traits, especially the golden ones. Straight up terrible

[hellhamster]

Frost will get buffed by 15% in 7.1. Scaling issues still haven't been fixed though so it's more of a bandaid than anything else, classes will still race ahead of us as gear progresses.

If you ask me though, I'm just happy I received any buff at all, and a significant one at that, I honestly wasn't expecting that. I'm gonna have fun in, 7.1,I might even start beating 75 percentile mages.

[Flextt]

1) Not a PvP'ler

2) We have obvious scaling issues, so we will steadily fall more behind. Unholy is still a very strong, burst single-target DD with average overall DPS. Unholy definitely needs less RNG & less spells on global cooldown. Currently I fail to see what the designers intention for Unholy is, since talents like Shadow Infusion and Dark Arbiter bait into an abhorrent playstyle.

3) Icy Chains, 2 grips / 3 interrupts, Stun immunity / Damage reduce, AMS + potentially another survival cooldown. I feel like Unholy has decent utility for mob control. It is very useful during Ilgynoth and Xavius. Mythic+ reliance on AoE stuns is a design issue not solely related to DK. You just need to have very good mob knowledge and "pick your battles".

Blood DK is a whole other matter. As always, if you outgear content, it's fun as hell. If you progress with Blood, it is worse than ever with less survivability options, weaker shields / leech and almost no options to help your healer or gauge incoming damage to avoid overheal.

[ScreddyLoix]

DKs wont blow up the damage meters, but they have 2x grip, up to 3 defensive cds, and pretty good cleave and aoe. They also use plate which is one of the lesser used armor types.

[Tems]

I really want to like the buffs as others are saying "we are happy with any kind of buffs happening even bandaids" but no, hell no.

We have been literally screaming with more than viable options and solutions to problems that have been persistent for a while now, with posts even providing hard proof evidence of 0 scaling showing the current state of the whole class. Then Blizzard just turns a blind eye to the light. First 2 weeks of this tier the tuning pass includes 0 changes for DKs, that actually gave me hope that they are looking at the bigger picture and want to avoid unnecessary tuning when the problem lies in core class design that they will push in 7.1

You wait and wait, reading 7.1 changes only to find the very last build include a change regarding DKs and to my disappointment that it is only a few increase dmg for x by y%.... just simple tuning fixes that could have at least been pushed for the first couple of weeks of tuning along other classes, instead they decided to do that in a MAJOR patch. This only shows Blizzard's lack of interest in the class that after all that time they just wake up and shove those fixes that basically changes nothing to the problems of the class as an excuse to shut people up and claim the old line 'You were buffed not long ago, now move on.'

[Khain]

They buffed us and nerfed SP, Mage and Hunter, so be happy.

[Nezia]

Worry not, dks will keep getting some buffs as patchs come, that's how things have always been, right? Because it's way too hard to make killing machine increase the damage of your next guaranteed crit obliterate by your crit chance like... any other class, It's also not a good idea to make killing machine proc off frost strikes, it's way more fun to watch your auto attacks and pray you have no lag spikes or something, oh yeah, this is the high life.

- - - Updated - - -

They buffed us and nerfed SP, Mage and Hunter, so be happy.

SP did suffer no nerf, some weeks ago they added some passive that would increase their damage by 10%. Now they are nerfing almost every moves a SP can do by 8~10%. That's how they fix stuff.

[0verdose]

exactly how much % is unholy ahead of frost currently? I really doubt it was 15% ahead. So they intended to have frost dks suck since the beginning of the expansion only to buff it 15% ahead of unholy a few months in when most dks invested full ap into unholy? That's seriously like a kick in the balls man. I just recently started banking ap as an insurance policy just in case frost overtakes unh by a large margin but I would like to avoid frost but will play it if unholy is that much shitter come 7.1 frost has already been beating us in high m+ dungeons and their st definitely will be just as good as ours come patch day. I really don't get blizzards logic here.

[Nayami]

exactly how much % is unholy ahead of frost currently? I really doubt it was 15% ahead. So they intended to have frost dks suck since the beginning of the expansion only to buff it 15% ahead of unholy a few months in when most dks invested full ap into unholy? That's seriously like a kick in the balls man. I just recently started banking ap as an insurance policy just in case frost overtakes unh by a large margin but I would like to avoid frost but will play it if unholy is that much shitter come 7.1 frost has already been beating us in high m+ dungeons and their st definitely will be just as good as ours come patch day. I really don't get blizzards logic here.

From what I've read in these forums and on DK discord, it seems that both specs will play quite close to each other. I will personally keep on maining Unholy because it's unbelievably fun for me to play, but I am also looking forward to trying Frost now that it won't be so far behind. I'll probably give the Frost artifact enough AP for the first 2 gold traits then I'll keep on dumping AP in Unholy which is currently at 27-28 traits. Note that we'll still probably be behind other better specs by a decent margin but hopefully the gap will be somewhat closer.

This should be confirmed after ~2 weeks the patch hits, where we have a nice amount of data to work with and we'll see the actual results then.

[NightmareSystem]

exactly how much % is unholy ahead of frost currently? I really doubt it was 15% ahead. So they intended to have frost dks suck since the beginning of the expansion only to buff it 15% ahead of unholy a few months in when most dks invested full ap into unholy? That's seriously like a kick in the balls man. I just recently started banking ap as an insurance policy just in case frost overtakes unh by a large margin but I would like to avoid frost but will play it if unholy is that much shitter come 7.1 frost has already been beating us in high m+ dungeons and their st definitely will be just as good as ours come patch day. I really don't get blizzards logic here.

Right now

Frost > UH in Mythic and UH > Frost in Hero looking the Logs www warcraftlogs com/statistics/10

[aroth]

DKs wont blow up the damage meters, but they have 2x grip, up to 3 defensive cds, and pretty good cleave and aoe. They also use plate which is one of the lesser used armor types.

Are you talking about Blood or Frost/Unholy?

Because Blood is the only spec with Gorefiend's Grasp now, and as a tank they should not be trying to "blow up the meters" anyways. And their only real defensive CD is Anti-Magic Shell, which only reduces magic damage. Vampiric Blood boosts health/healing, and as such requires coordination from a healer to be of any real use, making it a crappy defensive CD. Death Strike's healing can potentially be significant, but even so its not a true defensive CD in the original sense of the term (plus the blood shield it provides now is atrocious). Blood Mirror is slightly better (20% damage redirected for 10 seconds), but requires me to spec into it instead of Purgatory. I usually do anyways because I have no real defensive otherwise. Of course I could spec into Rune Tap and consume a rune for 25% reduction for 3 seconds. A rune I might otherwise need to maintain my Bone Shield or use to generate RP so I can get a Death Strike off so I don't get fucked by an ability that REQUIRES active mitigation to survive. Because apparently despite being the class that INVENTED active mitigation as a tank utility, we have jack shit for it now. Mind you no other class I know of has their strongest damage reduction cd require their class's base resource to use.

Frost and Unholy also do not have three defensive CDs either. As frost I have Icebound Fortitude for 20% damage reduction and Anti-Magic Shell to nullify up to ~30% of my health in magic damage. Neither of those are very good as defensive CDs, plus IBF has a 3 minute CD (compare to a shaman's Astral Shift with 40% reduction every 1.5 minutes). To my knowledge unholy doesn't get anything else beyond those two either (though I could be mistaken).

[0verdose]

Right now

Frost > UH in Mythic and UH > Frost in Hero looking the Logs www warcraftlogs com/statistics/10

I thought the reason why frost is beating unholy is mythic EN is because of the large disparity between the logs. Since there are more unholy dks raiding mythic than frost, the avg of unholy will go down when compared to the frost results. I don't know if this was true, but since unholy is beating frost in heroic (where more dks are playing frost) that just about confirms the data. I could be totally wrong though, I don't even know why frost would be beating unholy in mythic in the first place. Does frost really outscale unholy this time around?

[Reiziger]

Are you talking about Blood or Frost/Unholy?

Because Blood is the only spec with Gorefiend's Grasp now, and as a tank they should not be trying to "blow up the meters" anyways. And their only real defensive CD is Anti-Magic Shell, which only reduces magic damage. Vampiric Blood boosts health/healing, and as such requires coordination from a healer to be of any real use, making it a crappy defensive CD. Death Strike's healing can potentially be significant, but even so its not a true defensive CD in the original sense of the term (plus the blood shield it provides now is atrocious). Blood Mirror is slightly better (20% damage redirected for 10 seconds), but requires me to spec into it instead of Purgatory. I usually do anyways because I have no real defensive otherwise. Of course I could spec into Rune Tap and consume a rune for 25% reduction for 3 seconds. A rune I might otherwise need to maintain my Bone Shield or use to generate RP so I can get a Death Strike off so I don't get fucked by an ability that REQUIRES active mitigation to survive. Because apparently despite being the class that INVENTED active mitigation as a tank utility, we have jack shit for it now. Mind you no other class I know of has their strongest damage reduction cd require their class's base resource to use.

Frost and Unholy also do not have three defensive CDs either. As frost I have Icebound Fortitude for 20% damage reduction and Anti-Magic Shell to nullify up to ~30% of my health in magic damage. Neither of those are very good as defensive CDs, plus IBF has a 3 minute CD (compare to a shaman's Astral Shift with 40% reduction every 1.5 minutes). To my knowledge unholy doesn't get anything else beyond those two either (though I could be mistaken).

I think he means pet grip as 2nd grip.

[Deleted]

Hello guys,
According to the class fantasy we should be strongest on target

This is where your wrong started.

[Crevan]

Because Blood is the only spec with Gorefiend's Grasp now, and as a tank they should not be trying to "blow up the meters" anyways.

Just a minor counter-point here - if you're not in immediate danger of dying that is exactly what you should be doing. If you're doing progression/challenging content, having just enough mitigation to survive and putting the remaining effort into DPS is a valid and effective strategy.

I do agree with you that Blood is at a disadvantage right now compared to other tank classes and could use some tweaks, but it's still good enough to clear the current mythic raid tier and push into higher m+.

[pixelated senpai]

My weap is only 875 for frost compared to 886 unholy, so my numbers will still be lower for frost, but ill still clear a heroic and see how i do.

[Deleted]

This is where your wrong started.

So basically, you're saying that DKs shouldn't be good at anything. Because right now, DKs are no good at anything, when compared to other classes. If you compare equal skilled players with equal gear, and one of them is a DK and the other is any other melee class, the DK will lose every single time in just about any situation. There's no reason to bring DKs anywhere as it stands.

[0verdose]

So basically, you're saying that DKs shouldn't be good at anything. Because right now, DKs are no good at anything, when compared to other classes. If you compare equal skilled players with equal gear, and one of them is a DK and the other is any other melee class, the DK will lose every single time in just about any situation. There's no reason to bring DKs anywhere as it stands.

Yup, heroic EN pigs and high mythic + groups are starting to not accept dk applications anymore. I literally have to link my achieved and logs inorder to get invited only to hold my own and sometimes lead in overall dps. The game is so "bring the spec not the player" it's pathetic really. So sick of out damaging trash mages and hunters but still struggling to get that auto invite those other specs get just because they are "OP"