DK self healing... where?

[Deleted]

the only problem is that the damage of everything got buffed so hard, though the healing of death strike remained the same as our healthpools didnt rise. with 85 and much higher max health and haste gear, we will be able to heal ourselves via death strike by an acceptable amount. its simply the massive scaling of death strike why its so bad in an environment where everybody is running around basically naked at an 85 point of view. and, with 4 death runes, the death strike cost wont gimp the scourge strikes (usable when duels last longer than 20 secs max). again, a lot easier and effective with haste on your gear. use death strike reactively, not preemptively.

the ghul sac is a nuisance as the summoning cd gets set to 2 min everytime we mount... sac your gargoyle, a raised ally or an army of the dead ghul instead, as the ghoul is really important now.

and: as the self heal got nerfed our damage can get buffs and a healer at our side finally is of some use.

[Foibles]

I usually can spam DS as Unholy if I pay attention to not clipping RC.

[Algroda]

wait wait wait, it was 10% health and 2 runes before aswell, what you talking about

Actually it healed you for 5% per disease on your target. For Unholy, this was 15% due to the extra disease. For blood, there was a talent for 50% more healing from death strike, or 15%.

With the new changes, per death strike, Frost's bad death strike got no change / a buff if focused and taking more than 30% of their health as damage per 5 seconds.

Blood's death strike took ~3.45% nerf baseline, and takes ~34.5% of their health as damage in the last 5 seconds to equal the old 15% death strike. After that, it's a buff. However, they also gained blood shield, so solidly a buff against melee.

Unholy, however, solidly got its death strike nerfed by ~33%. They'd need to take 50% of their health in damage in the last 5 seconds to have the old 15% death strike heal. After that point it's a buff, but...if you're taking that much damage that fast, death strike likely won't save you, especially in a pvp situation where they cannot taunt things off you.

The other part to consider is the rune change. Before, you could get 2 death strikes per 10 seconds, or ~1 per 5 seconds. As blood now (without the buff coming up to blood presence, and likely 0 haste) you only get 1 per 10 seconds...ouch! Runic empowerment helps some, but is in no way reliable that you have the right rune pair up. However, with how great blood shield is vs melee, likely a buff overall.

As frost, you run in frost presence for DW, and unholy presence for 2h. Sitting at 10% haste (which is likely more than you would have in pvp, frost goes for the big frost strike / Howling Blasts at the moment) your runes regen in ~9.091 seconds for DW, or ~8.264 for 2h. Still ouch...and no blood shield to compensate. Nerfed by about 45% / 40% less death strikes when needed except while CCed as your runes come back.

As unholy, reforged to haste in pvp gear you might get 20%. This combined with improved UH presence, your runes regen in 7.25. Closer to the old times, but still low. It would take Runic Corruption uptime of roughly 62% to get your old 1 per 5 seconds. Going with a 30% uptime (still too high I think, but I've not checked any logs) you'd have 6.125 second rune regen on average, or a nerf of ~18.4% less death strikes. However, yours are healing for 33% less per death strike. This is a nerf of ~46.6%, and likely even more since haste should not be that high for Cata for quite some time from what I have read, especially in pvp gear.

TLDR: Blood's death strike is about the same vs melee, worse vs casters. Frost and Unholy's death strike are ~40-46.6%+ worse, depending on runic corruption uptime and haste values

[InfernalKatana]

I don't know about pvp, but it sure has impacted soloing. I can still solo things, I just have to put more effort into it, and use more cooldowns. I used to heal a good chunk of my health with death strike, now it does about the healing of a health potion, and while you're doing that, you're doing very little actual damage.

Guess they got tired of all the "look what I could solo" movies as a DK.

[Velasco]

It helps, if you pop AMS against a rogue, if you didn't do it already, as they most likely have a poison coated weapon. Reduces incoming damage.
Runic Empowerment/Runic Corruption, albeit relying on RNG, can give you back your runes very fast, which effectively gives you more chances on death striking again.
Many already pointed out, that you don't need to put up your deseases on the target anymore, which can be very advantageous.
Also, do you happen to have Blood Strike on your bar, if you are specced into Unholy? Even if Scourge Strike is your primary ability now you should, because when you Death Strike you'll end up with Blood Runes, on which you sit. And what better than to convert them into Death Runes by burning them with Damage instead of Pestilence? Gives you another Death Strike.

You also did not consider the new abilities you will get on which also PvP/PvE is already balanced around., especially Necrotic Strike which will allow you to put a debuff on the target, where they would need to heal a certain amount of the damage done by Necrotic Strike to actually gain effective healing again and remove the casting time reduction.
It costs 1 Unholy Rune, so you can fire this instead of Scourge Strike. The healing absorb should stack. In this scenario you are the only one with effective healing and if there is no healer around they will slowly die.

In terms of soloing stuff. After the patch I find that I have no problem soloing Thrym in Zul'Drak whereas he killed me before the patch, just sayin'

[Deleted]

Selfhealing wasn't really that nerfed. Remember mortal strike effects are almost gone now with some pathetic 10% still remaining, which is nothing imo. This would make self heals OP if they were left as cheap as before. Death strike is no longer a way to get back health by spamming it. I guess dks will now rely alot on ghoul sacrifice.

[Deleted]

Nothing is wrong with the self healing at all, I've always tanked as DK and it's the same as b4, totally making me stay alive.

[Willelm]

If you're DPSing why are you worrying about healing yourself?

DS still heals the same amount so it's not like you got whacked with the nerf stick for PvP.

[Mayden]

Have to agree with OP.

At 85 you will have 5 extra talent points. If you look at the rogue and warrior tree then their selfhealing can be buffed even more with second tier talents (quickening for rogues and second wind for warriors).

Warrior healing is passive through these talents, rogues only need one finishing move to activate (30 secs of healing). A DK has to pretty much sacrife all his runes to be selfhealing a bit (still only 10% per deathstrike).


Overall the balance seems to be shifted in pvp if you look at selfhealing.

[icecreamtruck]

Nothing is wrong with the self healing at all, I've always tanked as DK and it's the same as b4, totally making me stay alive.

Tanking?

If you're DPSing why are you worrying about healing yourself?

DS still heals the same amount so it's not like you got whacked with the nerf stick for PvP.

DPSing?

I said unholy and frost PVP. l2 read..

It heals less for unholy now, still the same for frost, but since they slowed down rune regeneration and it still costs 2 runes, you can use it much less often, so its a big nerf. The result is that it is very rarely worth using since it is so expensive= you sacrifice a lot of dmg, and the heal is very weak.

I think blizz is screwing classes up when rogues and warriors does MUCH more healing then DK's. Dks is a class that is supposed to have an advantage over others with self healing, warriors and rogues isn't really supposed to have any healing at all, at least "lore wise"..

[Algroda]

If you're DPSing why are you worrying about healing yourself?

DS still heals the same amount so it's not like you got whacked with the nerf stick for PvP.

You need to read the post I have up earlier on the page.

As well, as Unholy it's an even bigger nerf than just then numbers say. There's also the opportunity cost. As blood, the opportunity cost is very little. Death strike is buffed by talents, and is their way of converting FU runes to Death. If they use a death strike instead of 2 heart strikes, that's a small loss, depending on your gear / diseases.

As Frost, you lose one oblit or (Howling Blast+plague strike) per death strike, which is a damage loss. No other losses.

As Unholy...not only do you lose one scourge strike per death strike, you also lose one festering strike and gain one death strike+blood strike. Not only is this a huge damage loss, but also means you lose even more damage as your Frost Fever, Blood Plague,and Chains of Ice fall off and need to be reapplied

[Nyanmaru]

The old death strikes required you to have diseases on the target, diseases last 20s, so you got 18 healing DS from your FU and 6 from your D runes over 120s and a, now you get 12 healing DS from FU and 3 healing DS from D over 120s at 0% haste. 24 vs. 15 over 2 minutes, this means that you got 300 RP from DS and 60 RP from BS so we are looking at 360 RP or at least 9 RP strikes or an average 4,5 activated runes or at least 27s of runic corruption giving frost the chance to get 1-2 extra DS in and unholy even a whooping 3 extra DS. So Frost is at ~16-17 DS and Unholy at 18 DS over 2 minutes, for the sake of arguing, let's say it's 17 vs. 25 DS comparing new to old.
You get the same number of DS as before.

Self Healing is slightly nerfed at lower gear levels but scales with incoming damage.

DK: 17 DS are minimum 170% over 120s or 1.41666% / second.
Rogue: 5cp recuperate heals him for min. 30% of his HP over 30s so a total of 120% over 120s or 1%/s 2/2 imp rec goes up to 1.6666%/s
Warrior: 10% proc chance on hit for 1.5%/s over 5s, after stun/root 1%/s over 10s, so at best, the warrior would be at a constant 2.5%/s heal

For the sake of completeness:
Ghoul Sac is 0.33% heal so the DK is at 1.75%/s (not counting Lichborne + DC as the heal varies)
Enraged Regen is only 0.166% and the warrior can enhance self healing by 20% so he'd be at best at 3.2%/s since second wind is avoidable you could keep a warrior at 2%/s

DK and rogue are about en par if you simply look at healing numbers, while the rogue has to offer a lot less of his damage for the healing. The warrior is the class with the strongest minimum self healing but is reliant on RNG (dunno if either of the warrior heals have got ICDs).

Ignoring ranged and classes with "real" heals.

Just by tunnel vision DKs are behind in pure self healing for PvP purposes.

[ikotanya]

if you want to heal as a dk, go blood

[Jahoota]

but to ghoul sac you need to press 2 consecutive buttons!!!!!

TEW?! consecutive butonz?! unpossible!!

[Algroda]

The old death strikes required you to have diseases on the target, diseases last 20s, so you got 18 healing DS from your FU and 6 from your D runes over 120s and a, now you get 12 healing DS from FU and 3 healing DS from D over 120s at 0% haste. 24 vs. 15 over 2 minutes, this means that you got 300 RP from DS and 60 RP from BS so we are looking at 360 RP or at least 9 RP strikes or an average 4,5 activated runes or at least 27s of runic corruption giving frost the chance to get 1-2 extra DS in and unholy even a whooping 3 extra DS. So Frost is at ~16-17 DS and Unholy at 18 DS over 2 minutes, for the sake of arguing, let's say it's 17 vs. 25 DS comparing new to old.
You get the same number of DS as before.

17 = 25? That's a loss of 80% healing.

With a more realistic approach for this, for Unholy with Improved Unholy presence, 15% haste (pvp gear) and your 22.5% uptime on runic corruption:
Average rune time = base_regen*(1-runic_corruption_uptime) + (base_regen/2)*runic_corruption_uptime

From EJ:
NewRuneRegenTime = (BaseRuneRegenTime) / (1 +(Haste%/100), with BaseRuneRegenTime being 10 seconds in Blood Presence or Frost Presence, 9.09 seconds in Unholy Presence, and 8.70 seconds in Improved Unholy Presence.

so 8.7/(1+15%/100) ~= 7.565 seconds
7.565*(1-.225) + (7.565/2)*.225 ~= 6.714 seconds per rune regen

120 seconds / 6.714 = 17.87 FU pairs. You get half that in blood runes, and half again for death. So 4.47 death rune pairs. So 22.34 death strikes, which is still ~11% less death strikes.

Self Healing is slightly nerfed at lower gear levels but scales with incoming damage.

Self healing per death strike is down by 33% (10% compared to 15%) for Unholy until they've taken 50% of their health in the last 5 seconds. And anything less than 1/3 of their health in the last 5 seconds is no scaling at all (1/3*.3 = .1). Combined with 11% less death strikes, that's ~a 40.4% death strike nerf (22.34 death strikes at 2/3s effectiveness compared to 25 at 100%).

DK: 17 DS are minimum 170% over 120s or 1.41666% / second.
Rogue: 5cp recuperate heals him for min. 30% of his HP over 30s so a total of 120% over 120s or 1%/s 2/2 imp rec goes up to 1.6666%/s
Warrior: 10% proc chance on hit for 1.5%/s over 5s, after stun/root 1%/s over 10s, so at best, the warrior would be at a constant 2.5%/s heal

For the sake of completeness:
Ghoul Sac is 0.33% heal so the DK is at 1.75%/s (not counting Lichborne + DC as the heal varies)
Enraged Regen is only 0.166% and the warrior can enhance self healing by 20% so he'd be at best at 3.2%/s since second wind is avoidable you could keep a warrior at 2%/s

DK and rogue are about en par if you simply look at healing numbers, while the rogue has to offer a lot less of his damage for the healing. The warrior is the class with the strongest minimum self healing but is reliant on RNG (dunno if either of the warrior heals have got ICDs).

Ignoring ranged and classes with "real" heals.

Just by tunnel vision DKs are behind in pure self healing for PvP purposes.

Bolded for truth.

With the new number of closer to correct (if your runic corruption uptime is correct, and you do not get stunned as your 2x blood rune or death rune becomes active) Unholy DKs get 2.234%/second, and frost should be similar. The DK does not have to spec specially for this, but effectively loses most of their damage.

The warriors heals do not have an internal cooldown. Assuming arms pvp (so the fury mastery does not come into play), you missed a modifier. 1.66*1.06*1.2 (both from Field Dressing) = 2.12%/sec, and with second wind it's 3.392%/sec. The warrior does nothing but spec into them to gain these benefits.

This is an odd transition, since DKs used to be the best at self healing for nonhealers, and now they are effectively the worst when you include the opportunity cost.

Rogues appear to get the shaft with 1.66%/sec, but you missed quickening, which is another 20% healing taken. This brings assassination rogues to 2%/second. The rogue has to spec into them, but also loses 1 5 point combo stack per 30 seconds.

This is ignoring leveling, where rogues can keep up recuperate 100% of the time without any cost if they keep killing mobs every 30 seconds, and where warriors get a 20% self heal (25.44% talented) after every mob kill, while DKs get 0.

[tomehere]

Is it just me or did DK healing get nerfed to the ground? Talking mostly about unholy and frost pvp here... Since Death strike still costs 2 runes and only heals you for 10% hp, its not really even worth using it.. You sacrifice too much dmg with 2 runes.

I always thought

Blood= Death Strike

Frost= Obliterate

Unholy= Scourge Strike

And that if you wanted the extra healing, go blood so u can have improved Death strike and all the other self healing stuff.

[charivari]

I like how it is now...frost DK here so long as they dont nerf lichborne + Death Coil. Its nice because I cant just constantly heal but I can heal a small amount witn an emergency Death Strike...or I can heal a decent amount with a ghoul sac on a 3 min CD...or I can heal for a massive amount on a 2 min CD with Lichborne + DC.

I like the mechaninc of Lichborne + DC since you need to pay attention to how much RP you have to be effective and other classes can stop you from doing it if they fear your undead butt.

If anything I would like to see a buff to the base healing of DS since for the cost the return is barely noticable.

[wylatron]

dk TANKS have self healing - I think you are confusing your specs...the only self healing frost and unholy had pre 4.0.1 was the small % from blood pres thats it.

That's funny cuz I seem to be able to blow a lichborne CD and use DC to heal up HUGE as a dw frost. If I have enough runic power I can go from ZOMG SQUEEL! I ARE GONNA DIE! to HAHAHHAA I'Z BACK!! in like 2 death coils....



ah crap Charivari said it before me.

[Deleted]

Is it just me or did DK healing get nerfed to the ground? Talking mostly about unholy and frost pvp here... Since Death strike still costs 2 runes and only heals you for 10% hp, its not really even worth using it.. You sacrifice too much dmg with 2 runes. So you only use it in very few situations... Now warriors with second wind, blood craze and rogues with recuperate end up doing more healing then DKs and shadow priests since vampiric embrace got nerfed to 6%, even affli locks since their healing got nerfed hard. Doesn't make any sense... I thought Dk's were supposed to have an advantage over others with self healing.

Well i think they should make death strike only cost 1 blood rune (and maybe buff blood strike dmg) OR increase the damage and healing of death strike
cuz now looking at BG stats, you see Dks with 10k healing and warriors with like 10 times more >.<

I don't think Unholy or Frost is supposed to have such efficient self-healing capabilities.
Tanking or PvP with Blood will make incredible amounts of survivability given the new HP raise (some heals for DK are %) and that's not mentioning healers with them.
Unholy is supposed to whip out powerful stenches of death (Ghouls) and Frost is supposed to unleash icy shards of death.

- H

[Spartanoble]

but to ghoul sac you need to press 2 consecutive buttons!!!!!

or 1 if you unholy and if your not a tard you should have your pet summoned at all times.