New Rune System

[Akrocius]

I still have yet to find any information clarifying if both runes cooldown in 10 seconds (5s a rune) or if it will continue to be 10 seconds per rune (totaling 20s for both). If it is the latter, I really hope they will lower the RP cost of our dumps or give us more free attacks with a short CD to fill the gap. Having forced dead GCDs in my rotation isn't something I want, even if our strikes do more damage as a result.

[sevenflow]

This is an example rotation with the new system.
We have 3 sets of runes (1B, 1F, 1U) and it will take 10 seconds to charge a set by 50%, 20 seconds to charge a set 100%.

Example:
B [----------|----------]
U [----------|----------]
F [----------|----------]

PS (U goes cd, fully recharged in 10sec), 1.5sec GCD + 15 RP
B [----------|----------]
U [----------|]
F [----------|----------]


IT (F goes cd, fully recharged in 10sec), 1.5sec GCD + 10 RP
B [----------|----------]
U [----------|-- ]
F [----------|]


BS (B goes cd, fully recharged in 10sec), 1.5sec GCD + 10 RP
B [----------|]
U [----------|--- ]
F [----------|-- ]


BS (B goes cd, fully recharged in 10sec), 1.5sec GCD + 10 RP
B [-- |]
U [----------|----- ]
F [----------|--- ]

SS (FU goes cd, fully recharged in 10sec), 1.5sec GCD + 20 RP
B [--- |]
U [------ |]
F [----- |]

The runes we used so far generated 65 Runic Power

Death Coil, 1.5sec GCD - 40 RP
B [----- |]
U [-------- |]
F [------ |]


Now we wait 2 seconds before we can use our second scourge strike +20RP, and after using that:
B [--------- |]
U [- |]
F [|]


Enjoy being bored for 10 seconds. You only got a Death Coil and a Blood Strike to play with in these 10 seconds.
The opener you have 6 runes at your disposal, like you have in the current rune system, but after the opener things look much more... boring.
On a tank and spank fight your rotation will be like this: 1 SS, 1 BS and 1 DC every 10 seconds.
That's 4.5 seconds of GCD spent per 10 seconds.
That's 45% active time.
That's horribly boring.
And that is the sad truth. DK pve will be horribly boring, and PvE tanking will be double the struggle* it is today


*half runes and runic = double struggle

The rune system we have today is not flawed.
Compared to the other classes' power resources the Rune system is advanced, tightly tuned and hard to master.
It isn't casual friendly if you want to maximize DPS, but it definitely provides us with enough runes to do what we want, when we want to do it.

Reducing the Rune supply by 50% does not only completely trivialize DK dps, it also proves that Blizzard is trying to make this game so casual that everyone and their mother can maximize DK dps.

Honestly, don't fix it if it ain't broken.

If you wanted to make the Rune system penalize people, who leave runes unspent, less than it does all you had to do was reduce the Rune refresh time to 5 seconds.

B [---5sec---|---5sec---]
U [---5sec---|---5sec---]
F [---5sec---|---5sec---]


- Sevenflow

[Keile]

Except they said they will probably add more "Free" skills and RP skills to fill in the void.

[sevenflow]

Before I get flamed to death about the double struggle for tanks I will exemplify the new rune system in a (quite common) tanking situation:

A Blood DK tank is in the middle of a bossfight and a pack of adds spawn. He has recently used his runes on tanking a previous pack of adds and his first set of three runes is refreshing as he runs to the new add pack.

He has 1 blood, 1 unholy and 1 frost rune almost ready, when these ready he will be able to use them and his last 3 runes will start recharging. The runes ready just as the adds spawn, the deathknight applies his diseases for free with his 1 minute cooldown and spreads the diseases to all the targets - using 1 blood rune.
Now he has 1 unholy and 1 frost rune, dots on all targets, but definately not dependable aggro on any of them, the one hes been white swinging might stick to him if hes lucky. He can cast a Death Strike on another target and possibly keep aggro on 2, but this pack of adds is 4-5 mobs unfortunately.

He doesnt have enough runes to cast death and decay, he couldnt have cast death and decay first, because DnD alone is not enough to maintain aoe threat and every DK knows this. He has to wait a full TEN seconds before he can get aggro on all the adds, ten seconds is more than enough to kill a handful of healers and buttonmash-happy aoe dpsers.

Let's say they compensate for this obvious design flaw by greatly increasing threat from Death and Decay. DPS DKs will be penalized by not being able to use it for DPS and it will completely trivialize DK tanking (Pop DnD -> /afk, great job tank!)

[sevenflow]

Except they said they will probably add more "Free" skills and RP skills to fill in the void.

We already spent all our RP in the rotation example I made. Besides I heard that they were considering removing Rune Strike completely.

Free skills?
If you forgot, the main reason for the Rune System revamp was to avoid DKs being GCD-capped in their DPS rotation
- a free skill will completely GCD cap any class.

I think the free skills you're thinking about are the removal of Rune cost on most of our cooldowns.
A rune cost that would be straight out retarded to not get rid of if they decide to implement this 50% less Runes revamp.

[Faelyn]

Free skill doesn't necessarily imply that it doesn't have a cooldown.

Next to that, they said there will be more changes to attacks and the like, not to mention this really is only beta and you can't really apply any current rotations to that as a lot of things will be changing which will destroy your current rotation.

[shadet]

Don't forget Cataclysm hasn't even gone to public beta yet, thus you don't know half of the changes that could be implemented yet. You may find some skills using half runes, may see a vast increase in RP generation...

Also you're forgetting a huge part of the Rune changes where runes fill up faster depending on haste which I would imagine to be a rather large stat priority for DK's in Cata (and wow dps frenzy during BL/Hero)

[DSRilk]

I'm waiting for a talent or two that says, "double the rune cost to boost the effect of X by Y%." Given the new rune-filling rules, this type of thing sounds more feasible and interesting than it would be with the current way runes work.

[Eletharin]

The end effect is each pair of runes form 1 bucket that you can empty when it is anywhere between half full (one rune fully charged) and totally full (both runes fully charged). They will probably need to tweak the recharge rate to prevent excessive dead time, but that's easy enough to do.

The HUGE advantage is if you use both your runes at once (or back to back), then wait until one is recharged, as long as you use it before the second one is fully charged you aren't wasting any "rune regen" time because the available flow of rune regen is being used to fill up the second rune.

Now once that second rune is fully charged, the rune regen stream is wasted until you spend a rune and allow it to start filling up again. The problem now is for each set of runes, there are effectively 2 streams (since both runes can recharge at once), so from the time the rune is available to the time you hit a button that uses it, that stream is being wasted and your DPS is suffering.

[CSJenova]

T4j...you clearly didn't actually read past what you quoted...considering in the follow up he says you use that ability. Good Job.

Not saying the people saying ZOMG IT'S NOT GONNA WORK LOOK AT THE NUMBERS!!! when we haven't actually seen how the numbers are going to change aren't over-reacting...but you clearly didn't actually read the post you are criticizing.

Before I get flamed to death about the double struggle for tanks I will exemplify the new rune system in a (quite common) tanking situation:

A Blood DK tank is in the middle of a bossfight and a pack of adds spawn. He has recently used his runes on tanking a previous pack of adds and his first set of three runes is refreshing as he runs to the new add pack.

He has 1 blood, 1 unholy and 1 frost rune almost ready, when these ready he will be able to use them and his last 3 runes will start recharging. The runes ready just as the adds spawn, the deathknight applies his diseases for free with his 1 minute cooldown and spreads the diseases to all the targets - using 1 blood rune.
Now he has 1 unholy and 1 frost rune, dots on all targets, but definately not dependable aggro on any of them, the one hes been white swinging might stick to him if hes lucky. He can cast a Death Strike on another target and possibly keep aggro on 2, but this pack of adds is 4-5 mobs unfortunately.

He doesnt have enough runes to cast death and decay, he couldnt have cast death and decay first, because DnD alone is not enough to maintain aoe threat and every DK knows this. He has to wait a full TEN seconds before he can get aggro on all the adds, ten seconds is more than enough to kill a handful of healers and buttonmash-happy aoe dpsers.

Let's say they compensate for this obvious design flaw by greatly increasing threat from Death and Decay. DPS DKs will be penalized by not being able to use it for DPS and it will completely trivialize DK tanking (Pop DnD -> /afk, great job tank!)

[sevenflow]

Free skill doesn't necessarily imply that it doesn't have a cooldown.

Next to that, they said there will be more changes to attacks and the like, not to mention this really is only beta and you can't really apply any current rotations to that as a lot of things will be changing which will destroy your current rotation.

Nothing stated in the preview will touch our current rotation.
None of the new abilities could be used as a filler - not even the ones with cooldown.

Don't forget Cataclysm hasn't even gone to public beta yet, thus you don't know half of the changes that could be implemented yet. You may find some skills using half runes, may see a vast increase in RP generation...

Also you're forgetting a huge part of the Rune changes where runes fill up faster depending on haste which I would imagine to be a rather large stat priority for DK's in Cata (and wow dps frenzy during BL/Hero)

Skills using half runes? Now who's making up stuff?
Yes basically, if they make the filler abilities they haven't stated it means we will be GCD-fucked more than ever during Bloodlust or if we get too much haste.

[sevenflow]

T4j

Ok, let's imagine I didn't take advantage of our new cooldown.
If you noticed, even when I used this new super ability, I still couldn't see the tank keeping aggro...
What if that ability is on cooldown? :

[masterkiller]

Nice illustration wooshiewoo, can I repost that on DKi forums? That is exactly how it works.

[masterkiller]

I'd think they'd have to change the refresh rate of the runes.

If you pop off 2 blood strikes, only 1 rune is refreshing. If they keep the 10 second CD you are going from an average of 2 BS every 10-11 seconds to 2 BS every 20 seconds. The nice thing is lag and GCD won't be in the way as much so you won't have stale runes just sitting. If they double the time it takes to regen 2 runes they would need to double the damage that each one does. That'd be a lot of potential burst damage and it would probably create a lot of QQ in PvP.

So I think they have to increase the refresh rate.

[T4j]

T4j...you clearly didn't actually read past what you quoted...considering in the follow up he says you use that ability. Good Job.

Not saying the people saying ZOMG IT'S NOT GONNA WORK LOOK AT THE NUMBERS!!! when we haven't actually seen how the numbers are going to change aren't over-reacting...but you clearly didn't actually read the post you are criticizing.

ye you got the point, at the moment ppl are making up the facts "OMG, IT WILL BE LIKE THIS, AND IT WILL BE BROKEN LIKE SHIT!! WFT BLIZZ?!"
beta isnt out yet and ppl already complain about the new system without havent seen a demo yet

[sevenflow]

ye you got the point, at the moment ppl are making up the facts "OMG, IT WILL BE LIKE THIS, AND IT WILL BE BROKEN LIKE SHIT!! WFT BLIZZ?!"
beta isnt out yet and ppl already complain about the new system without havent seen a demo yet

We just saw a preview of the DK changes which included a detailed explanation of the new Rune System - on which Ghostcrawler even elaborated and explained further, how can that be anything other than a demonstration of the new Rune System?

[shadet]

And what if DnD gets an uber threat increase only when in tanking presence. What if we get Howling Blast in the Blood tree or very low down in Frost tree to give instant AoE threat. What if we have an aura that just oozes threat. We don't know yet. You can't say that the rune system is rubbish based on current rotations and skills, especially if you then choose to ignore an already announced new talent.

[Shiira]

You're ignoring the fact that haste will increase rate of rune generation, and that blizzard will probably double it anyway since we will only have one of each rune generating at once. All this does is remove the punishment for not using runes as soon as they become available.

[TaeKahn]

Rune management is the entire reason i play a DK. I started as a rogue and the energy system was way too boring. Now we are being converted to a similar system.
So much for "bring the player, not the class". Blizzard chants this mantra every chance it gets, then nerfs the game in ways that make the player unimportant from the class.

[sevenflow]

And what if DnD gets an uber threat increase only when in tanking presence. What if we get Howling Blast in the Blood tree or very low down in Frost tree to give instant AoE threat. What if we have an aura that just oozes threat. We don't know yet. You can't say that the rune system is rubbish based on current rotations and skills, especially if you then choose to ignore an already announced new talent.

You can only make assumptions on the facts and the details provided.
Assuming that they fix stuff after they notice it's broken is worse than telling them they are going down a road that ends with a brick wall.

I must have missed this new talent that will fix tanking with no runes? It's not in the preview at least.