The DK changes soon to be live.

[Herald]

I never quite got the "hai can some dps plx come debuff my mob so I can Death Strike one more time per minute" style of tanking. Or the "Ima gonna body pull instead of shooting an Icy Touch because ONE MORE DEATH STRIKE PER MINUTE HOOO!" style of tanking.

Because that style never existed. Reading comprehension is a good thing.

[Nyanmaru]

You know there has already been a response from Blizzard that this is not intended and they are planning to make the shadow portion of SS be effected by mastery, right?

Ignorance is bliss.

You know the post here was made some time before the blue made his post? Ignorance sure is bliss.

Because that style never existed. Reading comprehension is a good thing.

Right, that's what you had outbreak for... -20% attack speed, DS/BB/RS and all debuffs are set. Once you had a DK DpS (not that uncommon in 25s) no one needed to care about -20% attack speed debuff anyhow. Pulling with IT does not help with aggro the slightest, almost every DpS has an 'initiator' with more TpS that IT. Though, Outbreak/Taunt/DS/BB/RS is a nice way to start a fight...

[Herald]

Now that any DK DPS spec can pick up and use scarlet fever without disrupting their normal rotations, Blood DKs will never have a reason to use anything other than Outbreak. Warriors won't need to demo or TClap, Bears won't need to bear demo and Pallys already had their debuffs baked into everything they do (ez mode tanks ftw; you know it's still true...).

DPS DKs will become mandatory raid slots because of how much they'll relieve tanking rotations without sacrificing anything on their end.

Frost: http://wowtal.com/#k=xsfQUxuRE.aei.deathknight.

Unholy: http://wowtal.com/#k=xf2uajDm.aei.deathknight.

Blizz needs to reevaluate the Blood tree; it's long overdue for a good modification.

[Deleted]

Now that any DK DPS spec can pick up and use scarlet fever without disrupting their normal rotations, Blood DKs will never have a reason to use anything other than Outbreak. Warriors won't need to demo or TClap, Bears won't need to bear demo and Pallys already had their debuffs baked into everything they do (ez mode tanks ftw; you know it's still true...).

DPS DKs will become mandatory raid slots because of how much they'll relieve tanking rotations without sacrificing anything on their end.

Frost: http://wowtal.com/#k=xsfQUxuRE.aei.deathknight.

Unholy: http://wowtal.com/#k=xf2uajDm.aei.deathknight.

Blizz needs to reevaluate the Blood tree; it's long overdue for a good modification.

Or I could use those 2 points in something that will actually benefit me as a DPS role and leave tanks to do what they're supposed to be doing. But hey if you want to use talent points for talents which have no use for your role then go ahead.

[Herald]

Or I could use those 2 points in something that will actually benefit me as a DPS role and leave tanks to do what they're supposed to be doing. But hey if you want to use talent points for talents which have no use for your role then go ahead.

Such as what? Improved Blood Tap? Be serious.

If you can take two spare points and use them to relieve pressure on your tanks, you're going to be expected to do so.

[Baracuda]

1) If you're not using your diseases (Talking Frost Fever and Crimson Fever here) as Blood, then you're doing it wrong and gimping your own survivability. So I Lol'ed at your comments about blood.
- You also forgot that Crimson Fever being applied via Blood-plague actually gives us an incentive to use Plague strike instead of letting Blood plague fall off until Outbreak is ready.
- I also do not tank raids for my guild atm, so I'm only talking situations where we DON'T have someone else applying those two debuffs and need to be responsible for it ourselves.

2) You also forgot to mention how Frost is getting some Fixes and buffs through these changes.
- Howling Blast only doing 60% damage to the AoE targets, but 100% to the primary target. FINALLY Blizz learned how to balance abilities properly. This is exactly what needed to be done.
- Virulence going baseline frees up 3 talent points for ALL 3 specs. Amazing. (Now all you scrubs who DONT spec into Mind Freeze have no excuse. And those of us who realize its potential are able to spec into Chillblains without a huge dps loss)
- Glyph of Dark Succor: OMG YES! Wrath DK Survivability being given back to the dps specs? Another amazing move by blizz.
- Fixing 2H Frost via the buff to Might of the Frozen Wastes. Again, well done (even though they've been getting that suggestion since early beta).

Overall, OP, I think you focused way too much on the nerfs to boring-ass Unholy and didnt focus on the sweeping buffs overall.
4.0.6 is going to be amazing for DKs.

I agree with this post, like there's anyone playing unholy for fun x)

[Herald]

I agree with this post, like there's anyone playing unholy for fun x)

That post had a lot of old news in it. I focused on the two most recent sets of updates (excluding clear PvP changes). I'm not an Unholyphile.

[desjeanius]

Such as what? Improved Blood Tap? Be serious.

If you can take two spare points and use them to relieve pressure on your tanks, you're going to be expected to do so.

Probably like Virulence. Top tier of unholy, 20% extra damage to my diseases? Yes please.

[Herald]

Probably like Virulence. Top tier of unholy, 20% extra damage to my diseases? Yes please.

I asked you to be serious. Imp Blood Tap provides more DPS than 2 points in the new Virulence.

To put it into perspective: Unholy DKs avoided Mastery like the plague when it was giving 40% extra disease damage baseline with the potential to increase it by much more.

[Deleted]

Such as what? Improved Blood Tap? Be serious.

If you can take two spare points and use them to relieve pressure on your tanks, you're going to be expected to do so.

My guild leader expects me to do two things, dps and stay alive. So i'm going to use my talent points to achieve those two aims, sticking points in Scarlet Fever to give the tanks an "easier" time does neither. Those two points could be far better used to max out Magic Suppression (which seems like it may be necessary given the nerfs to rp gen in 4.0.6), or to max out RPM, or in Blade Barrier to give myself a pretty constant 4% reduction in damage taken, or yes in Improved Blood Tap as you never know when you might need to have that instantly available unholy rune.

[Herald]

My guild leader expects me to do two things, dps and stay alive. So i'm going to use my talent points to achieve those two aims, sticking points in Scarlet Fever to give the tanks an "easier" time does neither. Those two points could be far better used to max out Magic Suppression (which seems like it may be necessary given the nerfs to rp gen in 4.0.6), or to max out RPM, or in Blade Barrier to give myself a pretty constant 4% reduction in damage taken, or yes in Improved Blood Tap as you never know when you might need to have that instantly available unholy rune.

Relieving the tanks helps you stay alive; if the tank goes down, so do you. Sticking the points in Scarlet Fever to give the tanks an easier time benefits the entire raid's survivability. Magic Suppression is a highly situational talent in this tier, I can think of only three encounters where I think to myself "AMS absorb time". Maxing out RPM as Unholy gets you nothing, only one point is required. Giving yourself Blade Barrier instead of giving your tank extra breathing room would be extremely selfish. Improved Blood Tap is only rotational with Unholy and even then the GCDs may not be available.

After the patch goes live (assuming this Scarlet Fever change stays) you'll have your guild leader asking if you wouldn't mind picking up Scarlet Fever.

[Deleted]

Relieving the tanks helps you stay alive; if the tank goes down, so do you. Sticking the points in Scarlet Fever to give the tanks an easier time benefits the entire raid's survivability.

If the tank is going down because he had to take a gcd to apply a debuff to the mob he's tanking then you probably should start looking for a new tank or better healers.

Magic Suppression is a highly situational talent in this tier, I can think of only three encounters where I think to myself "AMS absorb time".

You should probably examine what your doing in encounters more closely then.

Maxing out RPM as Unholy gets you nothing, only one point is required.

It gets me 20 runic power closer to being able to spam 4 death coils which given the changes to Runic Corruption will be something you'll be wanting to do whenever DT drops off your ghoul.

Giving yourself Blade Barrier instead of giving your tank extra breathing room would be extremely selfish.

Yes, taking less damage so your healers don't have to concentrate as much on you and can use mana on other things, say like the tank, is completely selfish. Obviously it's so much better to save the tank a gcd than take some heat off your healers.

Improved Blood Tap is only rotational with Unholy and even then the GCDs may not be available.

Well i'd have thought the fact I mentioned i'd use points in Magic Suppression would have implied that I was unholy but if not then i'm an unholy DK. And having that rune available on demand is far more useful to my role as a DPS player than being able to save the tank a gcd.

After the patch goes live (assuming this Scarlet Fever change stays) you'll have your guild leader asking if you wouldn't mind picking up Scarlet Fever.

I very much doubt that, he seems quite capable of applying a debuff to the mob he's tanking and then not dropping dead from the massive inconvenience it is to him. Oddly he seems much more concerned with people staying alive during fights and pushing out the DPS we need.

[Deleted]

Death Strike glyph might be semi-viable on Chim though. 1 hit and your up 15%.

[Herald]

If the tank is going down because he had to take a gcd to apply a debuff to the mob he's tanking then you probably should start looking for a new tank or better healers.



You should probably examine what your doing in encounters more closely then.



It gets me 20 runic power closer to being able to spam 4 death coils which given the changes to Runic Corruption will be something you'll be wanting to do whenever DT drops off your ghoul.



Yes, taking less damage so your healers don't have to concentrate as much on you and can use mana on other things, say like the tank, is completely selfish. Obviously it's so much better to save the tank a gcd than take some heat off your healers.



Well i'd have thought the fact I mentioned i'd use points in Magic Suppression would have implied that I was unholy but if not then i'm an unholy DK. And having that rune available on demand is far more useful to my role as a DPS player than being able to save the tank a gcd.



I very much doubt that, he seems quite capable of applying a debuff to the mob he's tanking and then not dropping dead from the massive inconvenience it is to him. Oddly he seems much more concerned with people staying alive during fights and pushing out the DPS we need.

1. You're saving the tank GCDs and resources.

2. Magic Suppression in only massively effective in a few encounters but has oddspots to pop it for a decent amount of RP in all encounters.

3. Maxing out RPM gets you nothing as Unholy, you shouldn't be holding RP for that long.

4. It's a selfish choice, you'd save more healer mana by freeing up GCDs for your tanks to not do something extremely binary (like applying debuffs).

5. We'll see.

[Deleted]

1. You're saving the tank GCDs and resources.

Yes, 10 rage and/or one unholy rune. Oh and one GCD every 30 seconds. I wonder how they ever manage to cope currently with such high demands on their resources and time.

2. Magic Suppression in only massively effective in a few encounters but has oddspots to pop it for a decent amount of RP in all encounters.

So is useful in all encounters then.

3. Maxing out RPM gets you nothing as Unholy, you shouldn't be holding RP for that long.

If you can store it without losing any and can spam DC without overwriting runic corruption (which will be the case in 4.0.6) then yes you will be wanting to hold onto RP ready to get stacks of Shadow Infusion on your ghoul as fast as possible.

4. It's a selfish choice, you'd save more healer mana by freeing up GCDs for your tanks to not do something extremely binary (like applying debuffs).

What exactly are these tanks going to be doing with the extra 10 rage/one unholy rune and one extra gcd every 30 seconds (and that assumes only one tank in the encounter is applying the debuff) that will save the healer more mana?

There's also the small issue that as an Unholy DK I'm using outbreak probably less than once a minute so does that mean I'm supposed to waste an unholy rune and a gcd every 30 seconds to keep the debuff up?

[Deleted]

So did they drop the 5% Str nerf for Unholy? As it isn't listed.

[Herald]

Yes, 10 rage and/or one unholy rune. Oh and one GCD every 30 seconds. I wonder how they ever manage to cope currently with such high demands on their resources and time.



So is useful in all encounters then.



If you can store it without losing any and can spam DC without overwriting runic corruption (which will be the case in 4.0.6) then yes you will be wanting to hold onto RP ready to get stacks of Shadow Infusion on your ghoul as fast as possible.



What exactly are these tanks going to be doing with the extra 10 rage/one unholy rune and one extra gcd every 30 seconds (and that assumes only one tank in the encounter is applying the debuff) that will save the healer more mana?

There's also the small issue that as an Unholy DK I'm using outbreak probably less than once a minute so does that mean I'm supposed to waste an unholy rune and a gcd every 30 seconds to keep the debuff up?

It's two GCDs and 35 rage/UF pair of runes. Every 30 seconds, that's a pretty big deal.

[Deleted]

It's two GCDs and 35 rage/UF pair of runes. Every 30 seconds, that's a pretty big deal.

And what exactly are you using to apply Scarlet Fever or the Warrior/Druid equivalent?

[Herald]

And what exactly are you using to apply Scarlet Fever or the Warrior/Druid equivalent?

As Unholy: Outbreak
As Frost: Plague Strike/Outbreak

When spec'd, it requires no extra work from the DPS.

[Deleted]

and you know it'll be fixed how? its been that way on the ptr for weeks now, still no change.
don't get me wrong any change from the piece of shit mastery we have now is good, its just rather then copy pasting try and come up with something that would fix more issues then is causes.

The Shadow portion of Scourge Strike is intended to be affected by Dreadblade (this was part of the intent behind changing Unholy mastery); however, there's a bug on the PTR right now that's preventing this from happening correctly. It should be resolved soon, or may already be resolved in the next PTR build.

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