DK Hotfixes Jan 12/13th.

[Raiju]

weapons are easy to come by tbh, i got a 645 from Invasions and butchers cleaver, all since the nerf/buffs happened. not to mentiuon you can get lucky in CM daily and and get the PvP ones as well, 4-5hours in ashran doing the side events gets you enough for 2 x 1h axes

the only real problem is re-gem and re-enchant that for any serious raider should be no biggy tbh, as BIS gear is the same.

Because 640 weapons compare to 670/685...

[Deleted]

You're missing basic logic - There is only 1 boss that drops 1handed strength weapons despite it being a dual wield weapon for multiple of the specs involved - and 2 weapons for nearly everyone else dropping in highmaul. This translates to "it's easier to go 2 hander"

Everyone started off as unholy before frost got buffed and unholy's aoe nerfed. You have a situation where a lot of people don't even have a choice to go frost until they can get 2 weapons (and many may just choose to settle till BRF anyway)

It's not just the weapons, either. Even if you do get lucky with one-handers, there's barely any mastery in Highmaul plate loot making DWF a very weak spec until you have several pieces of BRF gear. We all know Highmaul is AOE/cleave heavy and 2HF AOE damage is trash, DWF is not currently viable so small surprise that unholy is doing fine. Sometimes it feels like people just stare at the logs and take the data as it is instead of thinking why the data is like that. Parse blindness.

[Deleted]

The History of the Death Knight Tank:

Beta - Whine, whine, whine, DK's are underpowered! BUFF PLOX.
3.0 - OVERPOWERED.
3.1 - STILL OVERPOWERED (slightly).
3.1.3 - Ok, that should work, kinda.
3.2 - WE JUST CAN'T STOP MAKING CHANGES, 'CAUSE ROLLERCOASTERS ARE COOL! - DK Tanks begin to dissipate.
3.3 - DK Tank? Wut? (Bear Stamina Scaling, Pally's & Shields, etc. even Warriors got sidelined here to be fair)

Beta: Yeah, the Blood changes are coming............ When? Sorry, can't say. Couldn't say. Should be soon though, don't worry.
4.0 - NEW RUNE SYSTEM! OH, & WHACK-A-MOLE RUNE TANKING! YEEEEEEEAH!
4.1 - WHAT? RUNIC CORRUPTION FOR BLOOD? SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF HOW MUCH WE KNOW HOW YOU SHOULD BE PLAYING YOUR SPEC BETTER THAN YOU DO.
4.2 - I've been saying this for a year now - DK'S ARE FINE, GO AWAY.
4.3 - Uh, so yeah, it kinda turns out.... DK's aint that fine after all. Let's buff them! (Not that we'll ever admit we were wrong all along, or issue any kind of apology to our pissed off DK Community)

5.0 - So yeah, we re-designed your Class once again, because uh, well, uh, we felt like it, because uh, well, we didn't like the previous direction anymore....... So, uh, yeah.... Enjoy! Oh, btw, we kinda broke Heart Strike, but that's not a problem, after all, you still have Blood Boil!
5.1 - SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF HOW AWESOME I AM!
5.2 - Any comment on the rumour that you have no idea what to do with the Death Knights anymore, so you're just dragging them through Updates just because you can't remove the Class from the Game without major backslash? Any comment on the BLATANTLY OBVIOUS FACT that you completely failed to do even the most basic Internal Testing when you were designing Ra-den's Active Mitigation Ability?
5.3 - What? No. That's completely not true. Er, uh, actually, uhm.... NO COMMENT!
5.4 - Huh? DK's can Tank?

6.0 - So we re-designed your Class once more, & we had this bright-as-shit idea to remove all your Meele abilities minus the one we couldn't remove because of Blood Shield, & the one you share with all 3 Specs, because... uh.... Well, you're Death Knights, you should be more.... Death-y. Yeah, let's go with that. They're too stupid to know what's good for them anyway. They totally won't ever realize that the Level 100 Talents.... TOTALLY SUCK either. Yeah, we're good. Let's get an early lunch.
6.1 - What? [Blood/Unholy]? Uh, no that change was really just for [Unholy/Blood].... We're looking into some kind of a way to help (read: FIX) Blood. What? No, we won't bring back Heart Strike. Or Rune Strike. No, no, no, they were removed for a reason.... What reason? Uh, um, well, you know.... Ability Pruning! Too many buttons! But don't worry, your issues are right at the top of our Priority List, & we'll DEFINITELY get to them before the end of this extremely short Expansion Pack, & the next Class Redesign with Patch 7.0.

No, we won't give Blood Boil the same Primary Target Damage Modifier that Howling Blast has either, that's too easy. We're working on something more creative, more interesting...... (6.4 - Blood Boil gets a Primary Target Damage Mod - called it - not because Two-Button Tanking is fun, but because it's "the end" of the Expansion Pack, they're lazy, unoriginal, & incapable of coming up with an Ability to replace Heart Strike which they can also balance, otherwise we'd have gotten it with 6.0 already. Really if they had half a brain, they'd have just changed Heart Strike, but like I said - too simple, too easy).

The Future of the Death Knight Tank:
6.2 - R.I.P. Blood.
6.3 - ???
6.4 - ???

7.0 - I guess we can all hope for 7.0, though I somehow doubt it.

Honestly, just like any other Death Knight (Tank, DPS, or whatever), I'd like to believe that Blizz will pull their heads out of their arses & deal with this in 6.1, but based on our Class' History, I harbour extreme doubts as to that. I am seriously ashamed to be playing a Blood DK through Highmaul right now, my DPS compared even just to our Prot Warrior sucks, but I can't help it... I hate Paladins, I don't like one-button Bears, & we already have both Prot & Gladiator Warriors. Not even going to mention the Monk......

P.S. Should I even mention how horrifyingly bad this new Gear System is, where 90% of the Highmaul Loot sucks for a Tank that wants/needs Mastery/Multistrike to the point that 665 BoE's are better than 670 Highmaul Heroics?

[Schizoide]

No, we won't give Blood Boil the same Primary Target Damage Modifier that Howling Blast has

This is actually a great idea (special-cased for Blood only). Would have solved the problem quite nicely.

[cashballer]

This is actually a great idea (special-cased for Blood only). Would have solved the problem quite nicely.

Well half of the problem (as Blizzard sees it) is the lack of us (Blood DKs) using our weapon. In that regard, it wouldn't solve the Blood Boil issue.

[Deleted]

Well half of the problem (as Blizzard sees it) is the lack of us (Blood DKs) using our weapon..

Explain please.

e: Do you mean blood boil spamming when not throwing shitballs? Thats only because RS and HS got removed :P

[Schizoide]

There are two problems.

The first is that BB did too much damage as Blood, because it had to be tuned to be worthwhile on single targets and was simultaneously Blood's only sustained AE. Changing to Howling Blast style secondary AE damage would address that, allowing the single and AE components to be individually tuned.

The second problem is that people hate using Blood Boil. It has that obnoxious BRRRAAAAP sound going off constantly, drives me crazy. And its animation and kit are uninspiring when compared to a physical strike like Heart Strike or (in particular) an awesome animation from other classes like Whirlwind or Divine Storm.

[Deleted]

There are two problems.

The first is that BB did too much damage as Blood, because it had to be tuned to be worthwhile on single targets and was simultaneously Blood's only sustained AE. Changing to Howling Blast style secondary AE damage would address that, allowing the single and AE components to be individually tuned.

The second problem is that people hate using Blood Boil. It has that obnoxious BRRRAAAAP sound going off constantly, drives me crazy. And its animation and kit are uninspiring when compared to a physical strike like Heart Strike or (in particular) an awesome animation from other classes like Whirlwind or Divine Storm.

Well OK, BB did do too much damage for Blood, but it was perfectly fine for Unholy. I do miss 160k AoE on the trash before Rukhran in Skyreach

They do have the tech to tune spells per specialization, Think back to 5.4 when Death Strike's healing was reduced by 50% for Blood DK's in Arena.

[Rothulean]

I think we need to give up the idea that this nerf was directed at Blood only (this includes myself). It was directed at Unholy as well. For whatever reason, despite rets/arms/enhance dumpstering everyone on aoe...Blood Boil was singled out. It would not have been hard to add a modifier to Unholy Presence or Reaping or whatever that says "Increases Blood Boil damage by 33%."

They didnt do that though.

They very clearly buffed single target. Now, this next part is purely my opinion. But I would guess that FeS/SS were buffed and BB nerfed for a reason (pre-nerf BB + potentially buffed NP would be insane). My guess is probably something for NP (maybe even BoS?) in 6.1. The reason I say that is because NP getting buffed worries some ppl because they dont want to play Festerblight.

The best way to prevent mandatory Festerblight is a massive SS buff (which happened).

[Kronik85]

I think we need to give up the idea that this nerf was directed at Blood only. It was directed at Unholy as well. For whatever reason, despite rets/arms/enhance dumpstering everyone on aoe...Blood Boil was singled out. It would not have been hard to add a modifier to Unholy Presence or Reaping or whatever that says "Increases Blood Boil damage by 33%."

They didnt do that though.

They very clearly buffed single target. Now, this next part is purely my opinion. But I would guess that FeS/SS were buffed and BB nerfed for a reason. My guess is probably something for NP (maybe even BoS?). The reason I say that is because NP getting buffed worries some ppl because they dont want to play Festerblight.

The best way to prevent mandatory Festerblight is a massive SS buff (which happened).

I kinda agree really. Every fight with the exception of Oregorger seems to have an awful lot of cleaving and I think Unholy would of been well positioned to destroy BRF. Post BB nerf and SS, FeS buffs UH seems to be well placed and dare I say...fun!

The rotation feels good and intuitive (mostly...still don't like having to use the odd IT but it's passable), the pace is fine, you can add or remove elements of micro management and Necrotic Plague is offering Unholy an alternative play style akin to Festerblight which alot of people wanted to see return. BoS needs some work and Defile isn't all that interesting but I'm fine with it since it's powerful and feels flavorful.

Yes the talent tree's have always needed work but Unholy hasn't felt this good for me since Wrath. I thought I might go back to DWF for BRF but it all depends how much cleave there is and how well UB+NP works on such fights. Slightly dreading what could be coming on the PTR but we will see.

[Schizoide]

Unholy was strong pre-nerf, so yes, that is a reasonable assumption. It wasn't an outlier, though. Blood DPS while tanking was a true outlier, just like Arms was last week.

[Deleted]

Explain please.

e: Do you mean blood boil spamming when not throwing shitballs? Thats only because RS and HS got removed :P

Pretty much, yeah. Basically they "feel" that Bloods aren't "Meele" enough (read as: lack of Abilities with the word "Strike" in it), which as you yourself said, is ridiculously ironic, since it's all thanks to them completely removing two of our major Meele-Range Abilities. This is all from a Blue Post from either earlier this year, or late December, I can't remember. Typical Blizz though, first they break what doesn't need to be broken, then they "feel" that they need to "fix" it, though they'll never admit to having made a mistake, or apologize for the mistakes made.

There are two problems.

The first is that BB did too much damage as Blood, because it had to be tuned to be worthwhile on single targets and was simultaneously Blood's only sustained AE. Changing to Howling Blast style secondary AE damage would address that, allowing the single and AE components to be individually tuned.

The second problem is that people hate using Blood Boil. It has that obnoxious BRRRAAAAP sound going off constantly, drives me crazy. And its animation and kit are uninspiring when compared to a physical strike like Heart Strike or (in particular) an awesome animation from other classes like Whirlwind or Divine Storm.

Same issue with Whirlwind though, or similar I suppose - It might have a nicer animation, but Whirlwind spam is boring as f*ck.

Look on the bright side of that issue though - the idiot who liked the Cataclysm version of Blood Boil with its golden rings & "SHRIIIING" noises must have either quit, gotten fired, or come down off his high, since they got rid of that at least..... That, or someone came to their senses long enough to revert to the old Wrath version at some point. Hallelujah to that.

[Rothulean]

Unholy was strong pre-nerf, so yes, that is a reasonable assumption. It wasn't an outlier, though. Blood DPS while tanking was a true outlier, just like Arms was last week.

Yea I think almost everyone agrees about Unholy. But it seems like blizzard didnt for whatever reason. Remember how dominant windwalkers were on aoe for a while? Everyone expected some aoe nerfs...but instead they nerfed WW overall damage. Arms/Enhance are next. Might take some time but it will come. Just look at Enhance on Imperator: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...le=7&boss=1705. Thats hilarious.

[Schizoide]

Unholy was nerfed when it ranked #11 in early cataclysm, and that was under GC. Sometimes they just plain get it wrong.

[Skullflower]

More sims will be ran with BrF gear and comparisons with the BoS buff soon.

Highmaul BiS Single Target 300s


Highmaul BiS 2 Targets 300s


Highmaul BiS 3 Targets 300s


Highmaul BiS 5 Targets Hectic AoE Cleave 30s

[Schizoide]

Looks great for Unholy. Pity it wasn't special-cased so it looks great for Frost also.

[Enfilade]

Thanks for the quick sims. How does 2H Frost look, single target, with the NP buff?

[jellyfrog]

Ugh, gonna have to go back to that NP playstyle that felt horrible (to me). RIP fun. At least they are giving us buffs though, although everyone is getting buffed so hardly a gamechanger for DKs.

[Faenlyn]

Ugh, gonna have to go back to that NP playstyle that felt horrible (to me). RIP fun. At least they are giving us buffs though, although everyone is getting buffed so hardly a gamechanger for DKs.

Why would you have to? The sims Skull just posted showed the two are about equal. So play what you enjoy. It will probably give you better results

[Iysdexia]

Any fight were you won't get 100% uptime on Defile, or will have to delay Defile, will be favored towards NP.