Runes and Runic Power in Cataclysm

[Admuntour]

I'd like to start a discussion to examine a potential problem and potential solutions that might arise when the stat revamp comes live.
Blizzard stated that, to make haste more attractive for melee classes it will also regenerate resources faster, that means energy, mana and runes will regenerate faster.
On the flip side however we have some death knight specs that, already have problems dumping runic power without it clipping rune times. Blood has the worst problem because of a very congested rotation caused by the fact their main strike is a 1 rune move.
Also, to add to the problem, Blizz stated that, frost's mastery will increase runic power generate.

So, when added together, I see a situation where Death Knights will have runes hasted so much that they might not have time to dump runic power at all, or even in the best cases will only get out a single death coil/frost strike.

I'm thinking that, in this case, DKs might require some passive ways to drain runic power, for example, necrosis could be re-worked to cause the same shadow damage it does now but while also draining 2 runic power per 5 second.
Or we could use some bigger runic power dumps, maybe something that drains all our runic power similar to how execute used to work.
Perhaps have and option even to empower certain strikes with runic power, say you empower a heart strike with 10 more runic power so it does 5% more damage.

Please bring some constructive discussions to the table, and if certain ideas are overpowered please feel free to point it out without flaming.

[Mordockk]

If you consider the new stat changes them I think this may be less of an issue. Yes, blood has a tight rotation because of the 1 rune moves....However, amror pen will be gone and be given in a mastery.....so Yes, haste will effecive runes coming off cooldown quicker but it will also reduce your GCD so you can fit more moves into your rotation to counteract that. (or unholy presence may become pro for that)

so as armorpen on gear goes away you'll be using more haste gear. which makes runes come off cooldown faster but allows you to "do more stuff" and be able to use those runes as they come off CD faster.

[kumduh]

Deleted the duplicate for ya.

To quote the blue post that's currently on the home page.
"DKs are undergoing some slight changes so they aren’t so GCD constrained and are less limited by rune cooldowns. "

and

"Runic Power boost through Frost masteries
I know it's hard to get a feel for the design when you can't see the complete picture, but talent trees are changing for Cataclysm. As Eyonix referenced above, we are changing the DK rune mechanic a little so that you aren't so GCD constrained. This in turn will give us a chance to rebalance how much runic power Frost gets. Remember that in many cases we are pulling talents out of the trees and giving them to you as passive bonuses. In general if you see a passive talent tree bonus and think to yourself "Hmm, that doesn't sound very good for me," then it's probably because we haven't revealed the changes that lead to that being attractive to you."

Personally, I'm happy about being able to pick up 20% mount speed and still gain damage. >>>>ZOOM ZOOM>>>>

[Admuntour]

It will depend on the how much haste reduces rune time by what amount in comparison to how much haste is required to reach the soft cap for haste.
Also considering Frost DKs will have the most haste and the most RP regen they could also have the biggest problem with dumping RP.

[Albert the fish]

they've hinted heavily that dk resources are getting a reworking.

so yes under the current system we'll have to tweak shit hard. with the cata system......well we'll have to find out

[I stand in fire]

I doubt they're gonna totally overhaul our current rune/rp resource system. They're however, going to make it more flexible, (haste shortens rune CDs!! ;D) thank god. I couldn't count the times I fucked up my rotation by hitting the wrong button. I'm all for making rune system for flexible.

[Albert the fish]

they've already pretty come said they are doing just that I stand. i have to get on the road but i;ll find it later for you

[Denalian]

they've already pretty come said they are doing just that I stand. i have to get on the road but i;ll find it later for you

What.

[Shiira]

So lets brainstorm some ideas about what blizzard might actually be doing with runes.

Current problems:
Rune abilities are the main focus of all dps specs.
Runes must be used within the grace period for maximum dps.
Runic power is ignored if we lack the global cooldowns to make use of it.

Changes in cataclysm that we know about so far:
Haste decreases rune cooldowns.
More runic power for frost.

Consequences:
Spare time within the rune cooldown and grace period for using anything other than rune abilities decreases.
Rune abilities get used more, runic power abilities get used less.
With enough haste runic power abilities don't get used at all.

Solutions:
This is the tricky part. There are many things that could be done and they have their own issues associated with them.

The simplest possible solution would be to allow haste to decrease the global cooldown of our physical abilities and speed up disease ticks, so haste lets you do exactly what you were doing before only faster. This could make the runic power generation mastery of frost useless eventually because you might not have time to make use of the extra runic power. I don't really know how to fix that without letting frost use rune strike while dpsing.

Most of the other solutions that I can think of involve more complex changes. Rune cooldowns could be increased, damage from non bursty sources like diseases and auto attack could be buffed as compensation. This works around the issues temporarily by requiring more haste for them to actually matter, in order for this to be a viable solution blizzard would have to have a good idea what our stats in the last tier of cataclysm would look like.

Alternatively blizzard could balance dks such that we want to focus on runic power abilities for maximum dps. Rune abilities do decent damage too but the runic power that they generate is what you really care about. If you played frost back in t8 you've done this already.


That's about all I can come up with now, any thoughts?

[Denalian]

-Reduce Runic Power generation from Rune abilities.
-Make certain rune abilities damage scale with your Runic Power.
-Make certain abilities use both Runes and Runic Power.
-Synergize Rune abilities with Runic Power abilities. (Eclipse style?)

That's all I've got for now.

[Albert the fish]

What.

sometimes my laptop does this thing where it moves where i am typing, making things look very odd. and i was about to head out the door so i didn't have time to look and make sure it made sense.

what i meant to get down was "blizzard has pretty much come out and said as much(refering to them revamping our resources)"

anyway on to shiira

i agree with most of what you said, BUT keep in mind one thing that's been pointed out already

with haste speeding up rune cooldowns we may not have to pick up epidemic at all, our rotations may fit comfy inside the standard disease timer they way they fit within the talented disease timer now. basically nothing would change except we'd get it all done in a shorter period of time. 2nd rotation would(well it might, key word) end just as diseases are ending similar to now.

of course this may not work out and it would also have the issue of giving us a 'sweet spot' on haste. less haste and we'd end up with diseases falling off before 2nd half of rotation is complete and we'd have to interrupt throwing off the whole scheme. having more haste would end with us clipping diseases, which also is bad. im not sure we'd want that in the end.
blizz may still roll with that


an ideal solution probably is to make the ticks come faster with haste so that it stays even continually.

now increasing RP for frost is interesting. let's say for argument that all dks get 2 fs for every rotation half.
it>ps>ob>bs>bs>fs>fs
ob>ob>ob>fs>fs

with increased RP lets assume we get 3
it>ps>ob>bs>bs>fs>fs>fs
ob>ob>ob>fs>fs>fs

this in and of itself is worth noting since it increases the amount of time we'd want covered by diseases. and than it gets reduced due to new haste. basically my point is, i find it likely that we're basing our assumptions on current rotation when Cata may force all DKs to alter their rotations to something new.

without know what blood and unholy mastery is, it is hard to say.
maybe we begin using RP similar to locks new shard system by using RP to fuel the attacks instead of to activate them

ie a 0RP FS does x dmg, a 100RP FS does X+y dmg, or Xdmg+effect a 50RP FS does x+y/*.50 dmg or xdmg+effect for 50% time

how they'd set up the system so that we'd choose to activate RP and how much we'd use on the fly is a mystery to me, unless they'd just assume the "use rp to fuel" button pulls your entire reservoir which would be tricky. but might works
it>ps>ob>bs>bs>fs
ob>ob>ob>activated fs

or some such

obviously DC would be on a similar system.

Rune Strike probably would not be, though they may move rune strike to the Rune system and have it cost F/U making it replace Ob/ds/hs for dks as a standard rotation strike instead of a macro'ed to everything power. this would seperate the dps and tank rotations more which i wouldn't mind

it>ps>rs>bs>bs>fs
rs>rs>rs>afs for single

dnd>it>ps>pest>fs
hb>bb>bb>rs>afs for aoe

not massively different from dps, but still enough to feel separate

[blacktempest]

If Blizzard is making us less GCD dependant, that means that damage/GCD is going up. The easiest way to do that is to make runes pop back slower but increase the amount of damage that each move does. My guess is that runes will match the disease timer at 15 seconds. Haste increases the tick speed of the disease but decreases it's total time by the same amount as the rune cooldowns. So diseases and rune cooldowns will always match up. Haste will simply decrease the amount of time to do a rotation.

This will change our style in PvP from more utility to more damage which is something that most Death Knights would approve of. The opportunity cost for things like Strangulation or Chains of Ice will go up quite significantly. The runic costs will likely stay the same which means IBF and AMS will have a higher cost if you choose to use it. Our utility will have a higher opportunity cost overall but our damage will make up for it.