Cataclysm overhaul for Death Knights

[Eats Compost]

lol no. If you consider anything other than Unholy dps fine, then something is wrong.

With 3 DPS specs, one's always going to be cookie-cutter for optimal DPS. Quite frankly, it'd be unfair to expect Blizz to be able to balance the specs that finely.

[yaij9841]

ROFL
ROFL
LMFAO
LMFAO
ROFL
ROFL

Poster loses all credibility.

same goes for anyone who thin k this game requires any serious degree of skill that can't be attained by reading for a couple hours. (as in what most players fail to do on the way to 80)

[kumduh]

ROFL
ROFL
LMFAO
LMFAO
ROFL
ROFL

Poster loses all credibility.

Poster loses all posting privileges for 7 days. Please remember to follow forum guidelines and keep posts on topic and courteous.

[Coldbringer]

i just want fuckin frost to be able to compete with the other dps specs respectively. i hear people say oh but frost gives a buff that increases your melee haste thus increasing the whole raids dps. i say so? so does unholy and blood. i really enjoyed the burst of frost and i just wish maybe 2h frost will come back or atleast make dw frost a lot less shitty. maybe a new ability

[xnickybx]

Is the DK class broken? Nope.
Does it NEED an overhaul? Nope.
Are some people dissapointed in the DK class or some of it mechanics? Yep.

So move along if you have nothing creative to add. The point isn't to predict what blizzard will do, it just what some of us would like to see, realistic or not. Stating the obvious doesn't make you cool.

BTW I did stop playing my DK. The whole disease mechanic is totally boring, when it should be the most interesting part of the class. Might as well have an aura that puts FF and BP on enemies.

[axi0m]

The only overhaul I'm very concerned about is the one to haste rating. With haste shortening our rune's cooldowns, having a normal set in stone rotation for each spec is going to be chaotic.

As far as talents go... I was thinking it would be cool if Heart Strike was changed to hit the main target(100%) + secondary(50%) + each target after that for 10% reduction so to help blood out a little bit in aoe.

So in the case of 5 targets you hit Heart Strike and hit the main target for full damage, the 2nd target for 50% damage, the 3rd target for 40% damage, the 4th target for 30% damage, and the 5th target for 20% damage.

While I personally haven't had issues tanking as Blood, I have seen many complaints saying its aoe threat is lacking, and maybe this would help that.

The only time I really have issues with AE threat tanking as blood is wave type situations where the cooldown on DnD > the rate at which mobs come, I usually try and keep a diseased mob alive to instantly spread diseases and start blood boil spamming if possible. Other than that just clever use of taunts and chains to keep stuff off the dps/healers.

The heart strike idea is alright, I liked it better when it hit harder and had the haste debuff to be quite honest.

Also hi Kumduh. Grats on mod, I was gonna apply but had to leave for work when I saw the posting and it was closed by the time I got home.

[treston323]

Is the DK class broken? Nope.
Does it NEED an overhaul? Nope.
Are some people dissapointed in the DK class or some of it mechanics? Yep.

So move along if you have nothing creative to add. The point isn't to predict what blizzard will do, it just what some of us would like to see, realistic or not. Stating the obvious doesn't make you cool.

BTW I did stop playing my DK. The whole disease mechanic is totally boring, when it should be the most interesting part of the class. Might as well have an aura that puts FF and BP on enemies.

Death Knights are completely not viable for pvp and people are seeing reports of 500 Scourge Strikes on anything mail+ with the new resil buff. Even on clothies, it's not even hitting past 1k in arena.

S7, Death Knights were the only class that did not reach 100 gladiators and was far behind the second last place, druids. ONLY 1 DK in the US got to relentless gladiator. Death Knights, being the most popular class, had the lowest Arena rep all through out s7 and will only get worse in s8.

How can you say that is fine?

[Reeducation]

i just want fuckin frost to be able to compete with the other dps specs respectively. i hear people say oh but frost gives a buff that increases your melee haste thus increasing the whole raids dps. i say so? so does unholy and blood. i really enjoyed the burst of frost and i just wish maybe 2h frost will come back or atleast make dw frost a lot less shitty. maybe a new ability

If you want, pm me and ill help you tweak your blood deeps... I don't know enough about unholy/frost to guide you there, but you're in the death knight forum, so...

[xnickybx]

Death Knights are completely not viable for pvp and people are seeing reports of 500 Scourge Strikes on anything mail+ with the new resil buff. Even on clothies, it's not even hitting past 1k in arena.

S7, Death Knights were the only class that did not reach 100 gladiators and was far behind the second last place, druids. ONLY 1 DK in the US got to relentless gladiator. Death Knights, being the most popular class, had the lowest Arena rep all through out s7 and will only get worse in s8.

How can you say that is fine?

Because I don't care about any of that nor is the thread about solving pvp issues. That's not to say that DK's limp dick in pvp doesn't need some Viagra from blizzard. It's just not a personal concern of mine. Actually, on further thought, I'm quite pleased that the most popular class sucks at arena.

[Shelly]

Regarding tanking in Cat, considering how the DK tanking build at its most basic is:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...#3hNgrx,,11159

I'm pretty sure they can just toss crit immunity into the extra armor talent and call it a day. So all trees will still remain tank-viable.

What I'd like to see for DKs is pretty much just the strongest tanking CDs removed from the resources.

Other than that I find Heart Strike working great and working out well and fitting the theme of each tree having their own "strike." Maybe give SS some more utility, I think the damage it does is alright but maybe give it some of the healing from DS or something since it replaces DS and Obliterate.

The biggest problem I've found with DKs are the players. Lots of people who like to DW while deep blood or unholy or even DW frost and don't pick up ToT or DWing.

I'm sure that there will be other small tweaks to come, overall though I feel in a pretty good place when playing my DK.

[Mawnix]

My main is a DK, and trust me, basicly either every patch or major patch we've been nerfed. I'll admit Unholy was OP back when Wrath started, but then the nerfs just kept coming.

So let me ask YOU this: Why are you targetting DKs?

Cuz I mean, Ret Pallies or Warriors in general aren't extremely powerful. Definitely not.

And you're disappointed..why?

Cuz of the High Dps?

Or do you think it's a wicked easy class to play? Cuz it's actually not..
Unless you have a correct rotation, for Blood Specced people such as myself high in Arpen, certain stats you have, etc., not as easy as ya think.

[jimbo_red13]

I orginally tried posting this in another topic as a reply but for some reason I kept getting a bunch of errors and it wouldn't let me post it, so i'm making this into a topic. (Merged by Kumduh)

blizz is completely happy with the mechanics of DK's and there would be no change in the future...

Actually i've read several blue post about things they want to change for the dk class when cata comes out.

Things like:

buffing blood tap and/or changing dnd CD/rune requirement. They said they want to make blood tap a better "oh shit" ability for tanking situations where we have several mobs comming at us and our runes are on CD. An idea they had for this was whenever you used blood tap it would refresh your dnd CD, or effect its rune cost.

Giving DK tanks a "sheild slam" type of ability. They said they wern't sure exaclty what they were going to do for this but they want to give us an ability that is used for quick burst threat. They said they might rework runestrike to fit this need, but they wern't sure exactly what change they were going to make.

also considering thet our talent trees are going to get reworked and were getting masteries in our trees we can expect that there are gona be some changes overall. Your not gona roll into cata with a dk that is identical to the one your playing now.

Things that I think they might give us that things like:

A dmg reducing effect simmular to what druids have (the one that works on crit and ap) to put us more in line with the other tanks, especially since warrior/pally tanks block is getting changed to a %, I feel that they are gona make all tanks have some sort of % chance to reduced a % of dmg.

I also think DK tanking is gona get some nerfs as well if we do get the above buff to kinda offset the buff. I can see them taking away some avoidance talents in our trees or something to that effect.

Blizzard has stated that they have no idea how they are gona work DK masteries, but honestly after watching their little powerpoint thing they did at blizzcon about masteries I don't see what the probelm is. All they have to do is give us a mastery that buffs our dps in some way. For DK tanks they will see the mastery stat as some sort of threat increasing stat much like hit/expertise, and I believe you wont see any pvpers complaing about doing more dmg.

Right now DK tank specs are just basicly dps specs with a few diffrent talents, so I don't really see a probelm with giving us a mastery that does something like

Blood: your attacks that use a % of your weapon dmg will use X amount additonal %
Frost: Increases the rate by X% in which our talents have to proc (rime/KM)
Unholy: increases the % of dmg increased by diseases on abilities that are increased by having a number of diseases on the target.

Thing that i would like to see are:

A buff to the 51 point talents that make them more viable and interesting for all specs and/or new 51 point talents alltogether. Right now I feel hungering cold and HB should have their places switched and insead hungering cold could be reworked to do something like:

Hungering cold, freezes all target in x amount of range for x seconds, which breaks on all dmg except from diseases, once they effect is broken the targets will recieve X% more dmg for X seconds, and the DK will take X% less dmg for X seconds.

Add an approaite cooldown/resourse and you have a nice effective 51 point talent ability that every frost dk will want.

Also the same could be done for bloods DRW

Dancing rune weapon: summons a weapon to fight by the side of the DK using the same attacks as the dk for x% of the dmg and last for X amount of time, while the rune weapon is active it will protect the DK and will parry x% of attacks cast on the dk. (will parry attacks from behind, will still parry attacks even while stuned/feared/whatever)

Fluff wise both of thoes abilites make sense to me, the summoned rune weapon having kinda a will of its own, but following the commands of its master and protecting him, and hungering cold, the DK purges the area of all heat, victims are caught in ice while ice builds up around the dks armor acting as extra protection.

For unholy I'm not really sure what should be done, I had an idea for unholy blight but it started sounding alot like my hungering cold idea and I was trying to give give ideas that would make each specs 51 talent feel unique to that tree.

I would like to ask everyone to post about any other changes you may have heard about, or if you got some cool idea post them here too.

Edit: also I would like to thank the mod who merged this threat, thank you.

[Devanox]

All valid points and ideas guys (except for the trolls -_-).

I was considering some significant changes to the class lately, ones that necessarily wouldn't make us OP, but provide changes to the class that would allow us to adapt to different fights against different opponents (sort of like how warlocks have a curse for every type of opponent idea).

The Runic System imo is an excellent resource system. The only problem i find with it is Runic Power. RP feels like a reverse rage system that, quite frankly, is boring as hell. You "dump" RP and thats it in the end really. I came up with the idea of having something along the lines of the Shadowmourne effect.

Runic Release:
The Death Knight absorbs his all his Runic Power, allowing him to use destructive abilities for a short period of time freely, with no cost to Runes. The Death Knight cannot gain Runic Power while in the state of Runic Release.
5 minute CD.

This adds a new flavor to the Runic Power system one that involves careful planning on the DK's part albeit it in PVP or PVE, and one that i forsee causing DK's to be more pensive of thier RP other than just a dump resource to fill in PVE gaps or to unload DC's in PVP (BTW, that HAS to change we should not be spamming DC's as our main source of damage in PVP -_-)

Changes to the Talent Tree's:

Although this may never happen its nice to come up with ideas. =)

Blood: Tree focuses entirely on Melee attacks, with very little power from range. The spec would emphasize on using NO diseases. The point being that Blood DK's, when they connect, WILL do damage to an opponent (not just tickle plate wearers like they do now). Blood out of three trees would give the most health and stam upgrades, as well as be incredibly good at sapping and weakening opponents. The Blood tree would have its own special pet upgrade along the lines of the Gheist. The gheist is an extremely agile melee oriented pet that can do immense damage to opponents from close range and has an arsenal of abilities to resist damage and CC.

Frost: Would boast the most defensive abilities, but be the most adept at AE effect spells and control. The Frost DK excels at taking on multiple opponents at once and shattering them to pieces with his artic powers. Second only to unholy in the amount of debuffs and diseases, the frost tree balances movement control and AE damage nicely. The Frost tree's specific pet would be the Abomination. The Abomination would be able to take massive amounts of damage and provide good melee damage to help finish off the frozen enemies of the Frost DK.

Unholy: Unholy does its best at a distance, where the DK can rely on his many diseases and minions to do most of the work for him. Unholy DK's use thier disease covered runeblade's to proc damage boosting effects on thier targets, so they are able to hold thier own up close. Unholy boasts the most amount of diseases and thrives off of spreading them easily. Albeit being the weakest in terms of defensive prowess, Unholy DK's make up for it with thier excellent DOT's and powerful minions. Speaking of the minions, the Unholy DK can use many minions including the Ghoul, Necrolord, Gargoyle, Undead Warriors, and Valkyr's, allowing the DK to adapt to any situation at a moments notice.

Ideas i came up with in about 30 min =D

(On a side note, I have played a DK for a veryyy long time. I am not one of those guys that just picked up the class recently and hit 80 and hated the class because i sucked at PVE or PVP due to not knowing anything -_-. The reason i am disappointed about the class is because i believe that the class had been made by Blizzard to be one of the most boring (with all the nerfs and whatnot) classes to play and i would hate to see one of my most anticipated additions in Wotlk go to waste heading down the Actiblizzion "fun-sapping" path.)

Hope that explains myself a little better

[Deleted]

Personally, I'm not looking forward to 'Haste increasing the speed of Runes Regenerating' unless they make haste reduce melee GCD, or something similar. I've never been fond of playing DK specs/rotations that feel like an uphill battle against the GCD.

Other than that, it'd be great if they could bring Frost back up to par.

[jimbo_red13]

The Runic System imo is an excellent resource system. The only problem i find with it is Runic Power. RP feels like a reverse rage system that, quite frankly, is boring as hell. You "dump" RP and thats it in the end really.

I agree, an ability or two that uses runic power in diffrent ways would help make it less about dumping. I kinda would like to see some abilites like these:

Runic smash, uses up to X runic power and increases the damage/effect of your next ability that requires a rune by X% used within X seconds.

runic blade, every attack over the next X seconds will cause X% more dmg and each stirke will use X amount of runic power, it is canceled when you run out of runic power or the duration is up.

Also a passive ability that increases the dmg you do by an amount that scales with how much runic power you have, but will give you less of a dps increase than actually using the runic power. (this would make it favorable to save your runic power untill you get ful then use runic abilities)

This would help add more depth to rotations as now it would be important to pick out abilities in which you would empower.

[jazx]

i like these ideas alot myself and agree there should be some change in how runic power is used instead of just...Dcoil/frost strike/runestrike and CDs....super boring... along with Blood tap increasing the amount of RP you gain per rune by 5 for the duration. even something like "rune conversion" -2min cd, for the next X amount of seconds your heartstrike(OB/HB scourge watever depending on spec) will now cost X runic power instead of consuming runes" so u can come bak after that will all ur runes up with no runic power and start blasting ppl again. or more of a tanking version where its like
"runic shield" 1min cd - for X amount of seconds your runic power will be depleted, aborbing X% amout of dmg per hit for the duration or until you run out of RP(sort of a mana shield with runic power but for a much shorter duration increased by health or armor) not a super CD like IBF or any of the speced CDs but something kinda decent that wil help tanks in PVE and not be OP in pvp

and i do think every spec should have its own RP dump like FS (expect dcoil should be kept as unholys) and shouldnt be a talent. as well as it costs more like 60RP for all of them so u can really only do once without hurting yourself. but should have talents that increase or modifies wat that RP dump does in the tree

blood gets something like "serrated strike"- does 100% of weapons dmg +X% dmg based on AP(more or less just making it a harder white hit if not talented.then if talented) also puts a debuff on the target causing an additional X% more dmg from heartstrike and deathstrike and increases the amount healed by Dstrike by X% for X amount of seconds

unholys unholy blight does wat it does now and also "in addition your ghouls attacks do X% more dmg to targets effected by unholy blight. if in frost presense your ghouls attakcs are converted to your threat(if effected by unholy blight ofc)", so that its not something that you can just tab Dcoil and fuck everyone up with but your main target will take more dmg from your ghoul(which i think is a cool part of unholy but also does nothing for tanks so it would convert some threat but obvsly only single target which unholy lacks in greatly because of its soft runestrikes)

the talent that is frost strike gets replaced as "frozen strike(something like how crypt fever gets changed into ebon plague)" - makes your frost strike sub-zero cold increasing the frost dmg it does by X% aslo putting a debuff on your target removing all heat causeing all your attacks to do X% more dmg as frost for the next X amount of seconds

all the talents durations would be very short and immune to dispell in pvp. along with you would only be able to use one(usefully) per spec but all of them wld be viable while lvling without the talents. and because of the duration of the debuff u have to decide if you want too automaticly use RP if your switching targets to put up the debuff and making it so u actualy have to have a spot in your rotation to make sure it stays up on one target(a boss)

[Skullmaster]

My main is a DK, and trust me, basicly either every patch or major patch we've been nerfed. I'll admit Unholy was OP back when Wrath started, but then the nerfs just kept coming.

So let me ask YOU this: Why are you targetting DKs?

Cuz I mean, Ret Pallies or Warriors in general aren't extremely powerful. Definitely not.

And you're disappointed..why?

Cuz of the High Dps?

Or do you think it's a wicked easy class to play? Cuz it's actually not..
Unless you have a correct rotation, for Blood Specced people such as myself high in Arpen, certain stats you have, etc., not as easy as ya think.

We are disappointed because instead of having a badass Knight of all things death and darkness, we have a class which is a mere shadow of its' former self. High dps means absolutely nothing when you log in and instead of seeing the character that you knew and loved, you are greeted with a class that is one nerf away from being on a par with a Paladin or Warrior.

[Zao]

So you're basically saying that you want to be OP again and don't like the class because you know that it will be nerfed to the level of Warriors/pallies?

As far as I see DPS DKs are fine, but the PvP and tanking Aspects are not. I'm not entirely sure what could be done about them, and I don't think that Dk's need a total overhaul...merely a bit of tweaking.

[Wingwraith]

Personally, I'm not looking forward to 'Haste increasing the speed of Runes Regenerating' unless they make haste reduce melee GCD, or something similar.

Melee white hits don't have a GCD, it's just the speed of the weapon, which is already affected by haste.

[kaelleria]

I'm fairly certain what Kiru is referring to is how spell haste currently lowers the GCD for casters. He or she is right though, unless haste rating allows a reduction of the GCD incurred by melee special attacks, the lowered rune CD will probably be very difficult to juggle.