No dk in top 100. What happened to death knights?

[I stand in fire]

http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/player/

So, all the death knights that somehow managed to stay in the top 100 are now completely gone.
What happened?
Blizzard has turned their new class into garbage.
Should death knights be buffed? I dont arena but i manage to destroy any death knight that stands in my way in battlegrounds even on my resto druid.

Was in front page, saw this thread in recent posts, was relieved that it's about pvp.

LAWL, ARENAS

[Deleted]

You are getting confused with the difference between complexity and difficulty. A disc priest may use more buttons than a DK in arena but the fact remains that it is much easier to attain a high arena rating with a disc priest than it is with a DK. That makes playing a disc priest easier even if it is more complex.

Even on that I don't buy that disc priest is harder to play. The only difficulty in being disc is you have to constantly switch your heal targets and be able to effectively heal 3 or 5 people. To succeed as a DK however you need to target switch as often if not more often than the disc priest does but you need to do this onto enemy targets which I would contend is much more difficult. In fact, I would contend that it is far easier to keep renew and PW:S up on 5 targets than it is to keep Chains of Ice up on three.

As far as I know, a priest is casting more than just healing spells (or helpfull spells in general). Holy fire, smite, mana burn, dispel magic (and mass dispel), dots and fear are used quite alot by a disc priest too.

On topic, I don't really know why this thread was created. There is a reason why Blizzard is buffing DK pvp in the next patch. I guess it would because of unbalance between the classes. It is hard to say how the patch will affect DK pvp though. Only time will know

[Dark_Widget]

only thing that happend is that DK's been more balanced (still rape locks and rogues tho) so all the 2 button facerollers fail above 2k =D
and all the "omg i plej dk aj em te best aj dont fejsroll" i do play DK aswell, they arent underpowerd, the defensives are still slightly OP (vs lock and rogue mainly once again) and yes they do abit less dmg then warriors.. but then again warrior can 1shot 4 ppl at once with their skillstorm (nope its no speculation happend to me twice) same thing with palas, still waaay more DMG then they should do but not the same as warriors =) (flame inc =DD )

[Horrid Crow]

They all have to learn their class while it's in line with the rest now.
Give it some time.

[Sulika]

One thing worth mentioning about DK in arena is that DK in arena plays very differently than a DK does in BGs. Having an arena play style that is mostly focussed around peels and snares just doesn't scale very well into BGs. This is not a problem in and of itself but it does lead to a situation where a DK who might be doing fine in BGs running around doing a basic melee zerg will go to arena and, even though they are doing the exact same things they do to succeed in BGs will find that they are very unsuccessful in arena.

The other problem is that the DKs playstyle of peels and snares just doesn't work all that well in 2v2. This again isn't nescessarily an issue but again leads to the problem that for most people new to arenas or PvP they will usually try and learn in 2v2. Again the DK has two issues here, firstly, the role they need to take in 2v2 is much more that of a DPSer, having to usually burst down one of the opposing team members. This is a role the DK doesn't exactly excel at and even if you do manage to do so successfully as soon as you go to 3v3 or 5v5 you find that you are expected to play with a totally different playstyle again.

All this combines to make DK arena play very inaccessible to the majority of players who won't be watching PvP videos and reading tactics guides. What you do in bgs wont work at all in arenas and what you do in 2v2 won't work at all in 3v3 or 5v5. A player starting out in arena after doing some bgs etc as a DK will, unwittingly, have learned to play DK PvP in an incredibly inefficient manner.

So while I think it is fair to say that a DK played well can do pretty well in any bracket, the majority of DKs are unlikely to just figure out what they should be doing. What you need to do as a DK in arenas is pretty unintuitive and doing the same thing in BGs will be, for the most part, an utter waste of time. I'm not sure exactly how to solve this, it is for the most part a case of the game not rewarding DKs for playing "well" in BGs which will lead to a lot of "bad" DKs in arena who are actually just doing what it seems from BGs they should be doing.

Defensive play, which is basically what the DK is about in arena, just does not scale into BGs which makes it unlikely new players will learn an efficient play style.

[kumduh]

And the Nobel PvP Prize goes to...

Skulver for his dissertation on the common reasons why DKs fail in arenas and bgs!

Well written.

[Grocery]

You cant judge by AJ, lol. On my BG the 4th ranked 3s team in s7, lol cleansing totem was DRUID DK WARRIOR. They are one hell of a team because they have 0 dispells in a time where dispells are all but mandatory. If you are good you will make it near the top, it just won't be as faceroll as say...pret, ele sham, spriest, or warrior.

[Doctadrew]

I like how DKs are brought for utility and peels when most other classes have much better of them.

[Raptorg]

I like how DKs are brought for utility and peels when most other classes have much better of them.

No way man Chains of Ice is overpowered, 15 times in 10 seconds, true story.

[Helmos]

They got fixed finally after being ridiculously overpowered for almost a year.

Comming from a Druid...

[GodTier]

This also shows that DKs are only viable if teamed with an MS class and invariably teamed up with a paladin.

No paladin: you are screwed.
No good paladin: no chance of gladiator.
Extreme reliance on a dps class with MS such as warrior or hunter, again proved by your list.
Should you loose your dps mate as a dk and end up 2v2, you are in deep shit: you cannot kill healers.

So yes Dks are not in a envie-able position.

http://www.arenajunkies.com/char/US/Sargeras/Seed/

No paladin period. Seed is a beast too, he's also playing his hunter and another toon as well (shaman i think).

[Helmos]

I play a Main DK ever since WotLK was released. I know we're not the "Hero Class" we once were, but it's better this way cause only people who really like DKs stay as DKs. And I would play it even if we would have fallen to the lowest output for few months. I just love the class, it's tier gear, it's meaning, it's abilities, spells etc ... It's not everything about being top DPSer or top PvPer, someone has to fill in the 5th spot (example).

Ive played the DK since Beta. I just cant play anything else anymore, the DKs mechanics are what i enjoy overall. I PvP, and sure it really stinks when wanting to arena, my teams struggling hardcore at 1500 2v2. But idk i guess being underpowered is kinda nice in the sense that it feels good when you make it far in arena. Rather than all the people who play Lock druid n think they kick ass.

[Cactrot]

It's just a huge disappointment. I was realy into the class the first few months but they kept screwing it up over and over.
I doubt the new changes will fix anything. Maybe we'll have to wait for cata.

so you were really into the class when it was grossly overpowered? Go reroll whatever the new flavor is.

[Exaviuz]

lol i remember when this happened with warlocks a while back, and everyone just laughed and said we got what we deserved, hehe.

On topic though, I actually think they should just nerf all healers in general and remove all mortal strike effects since all 2v2 teams seem to rely on this one effect. Even mage/rogue has it. On the other hand, DKs don't seem to be underrepresentated in 3v3 og 5v5, and the game is said (if im not wrong) to be balanced around 5v5. In 2s is all about class and extreme determination if you wanna go high.