Death Knight Wish List

[elseagoat]

The following is a Patch note compilation that would make me cream myself. Obviously many of these ideas are imbalanced, overpowered, ect, but who cares. None of these are real, they are just for fun. Feel free to give input or your own suggestions.

http://war-tools.com/t65965.html
I have moved talents as I deemed appropriate to allow for the creation of PvP and PvE builds at 80 and 85 with appropriate tradeoffs. So you can get a reasonable build with everything you might want, but not without sacrificing damage talents for example if you wanted a PvP build.

Blood
• Death Rune Mastery: This talent no longer affects Obliterate.
• Vendetta: Removed.
• *New Talent* Blood Burst: Deals 443 Bleed damage instantly at max rank. Critical strikes with this ability refresh 1 Blood Rune.
• Mark of Blood: This ability has been moved to tier 7 and redesigned. When cast on a friendly player, they will be healed for 4% of their maximum health when they deal damage to an enemy, lasting for 20 hits or 20 seconds. Cannot be cast on self and can no longer be dispelled.
• Improved Blood Presence: Redesigned. Now provides 5/10% additional healing received in any presence, and causes Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes in Blood Presence to ignore 5/10% of enemy armor.
• Bloodworms: Removed.
• Improved Death Strike: Redesigned. Renamed to Morbid Feast, no longer increases damage done by Death Strike. Increases healing received by Death Strike by 25/50% and causes Death Strikes to summon 1/2 Blood Worms, a maximum of 4 Bloodworms can be active at one time.
• Vampiric Blood: Now costs 15 runic power instead of 1 Blood Rune.
• Heart Strike: This ability will now deal 50% of the damage dealt to the primary target to the secondary target. The damage dealt to the primary target will no longer be considered area-of-effect damage; this ability will function similar to Sweeping Strikes or Blade Flurry.
• Blood Gorged: This talent will now provide the percentage damage bonus based on the target’s percentage of maximum health relative to the Death Knight’s, similar to Prey on the Weak.
• Dancing Rune Weapon: This pet now lasts for 15 seconds and may be controlled using the standard pet interface. The pet will still mimic Death Knight attacks for 50% reduced damage. This will allow the player full control of the pet without the pet obeying its own agro tables.

Frost
• Chilblains: Redesigned. Now increases Frost Fever damage by 10/20% and deals Frost damage to any player that dispels Frost Fever, also afflicting them with an undispellable 50% snare for 8 sec. This effect can only occur once per 8 sec.
• Hungering Cold: Renamed to Icy Tomb and redesigned. This ability now encases all enemies in a targeted 8 yd radius in ice, preventing any action for 10 sec and applying Frost Fever. Any damage other than diseases will break the effect.
• Threat of Thassarian: No longer effects Plague Strike and Death Strike.
• Unbreakable Armor: Now also renders the Death Knight immune to critical strikes and costs 15 runic power instead of 1 Frost Rune.
• Acclimation: Redesigned. Now provides a 1-2% reduction in spell damage taken from a particular school after being hit with a spell. Stacks 5 times. After 5 stacks, the next spell hit from that school against you will have a 50-100% chance to remove all stacks of acclimation and cause you to become immune to the next spell from that school for 6 sec.


Unholy
• Blood Plague: This disease will now also heal the Death Knight for 100% of the damage dealt, but this heal may only occur once per 2 sec to prevent large amounts of healing through Pestilence.
• Virulence: Redesigned. Now provides 1/2/3% spell hit and causes targets to be afflicted with Fevered Recovery when Frost Fever, Crypt Fever, Blood Plague, or Ebon Plague are dispelled. Stacks 3 times, lasts 10 sec. Fevered Recovery counts as a disease, but cannot be dispelled, and one stack is removed each time Frost Fever, Crypt Fever, Blood Plague, or Ebon Plague are applied.
• Corpse Explosion: When cast on player summoned ghouls, the ghoul will no longer cast Explode. Now applies a 3 second debuff when cast on player summoned ghouls. The ghoul will explode when this debuff ends, dealing 25% of its maximum health as Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yds.
• Unholy Blight: Redesigned. Now increases damage dealt by diseases by 10% and causes victims of your Scourge Strike ability to be surrounded by a swarm of unholy insects, dealing 15% of the damage dealt by your Scourge Strike over 10 sec. This damage accumulates like Deep Wounds or Ignite.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Redesigned. This talent is now a passive effect that heals your summoned ghoul for 120% of the damage dealt by Claw and provides 15% haste at all times.
• Bone Shield: This ability now costs 15 runic power instead of 1 Unholy Rune.
• Scourge Strike: Redesigned. Now deals 45% of weapon damage plus 357 as Shadow damage, increased by 11% per each disease on the target. Also reduces periodic healing done to the target by 15% for 12 sec.

Glyphs
• Glyph of Death Strike: Renamed to Glyph of Worms. Now increases the damage dealt by your Bloodworms by 50%.



*Notes*

-The Virulence and Chilblains changes are aimed at fixing DK reliance on diseases in a PvP environment without nerfing Shamans or Priests, functioning in conjunction with the dispel rework suggested in this thread: http://www.mmo-champion.com/general-...-in-cataclysm/
-The lowering of Death Strike damage is done so that Heart Strike can gain something through a more useful Imp Blood Presence and hopefully be a bigger contributor to DPS, along with higher Blood Gorged uptime and ease of use in PvP, and 3 more seconds on Dancing Rune Weapon. Oblit removed from Death Rune Mastery to keep PvE DKs from replacing Death Strike with Oblit in a rotation due to the damage nerf.
-Death Coil replaced in Blood builds with a 10 yd range runic dump that causes instant bleed damage (unmitigated physical damage) with the same base damage and scaling as Death Coil, but would be increased by Bloody Vengeance and Hysteria. Secondary effect to mix up the rotation and make it more dynamic.
-Blood Plague was given a self heal effect with cooldown (so that you cant pestilence Blood Plague and get huge self heals) because it feels weird not having a secondary effect when Frost Fever does.
-Unholy has received tweaks to make Corpse Explosion a better burst cooldown (ghoul respawn CD) in PvP, and to redirect slightly more damage to Scourge Strike. Titanic SS numbers should be avoided thanks to the absence of 5% damage on Desecration and the Resilience changes, damage buff only through reversion to original shadow damage weapon percentages.
-Unholy Blight used to shift more damage to SS without increasing burst, but also added a second effect to validate picking it up without SS (hybrid builds or low level builds).
-Ghoul Frenzy provides a passive bonus now so that it needs not be worked into a wonky rotation.
-All defensive talented cooldowns reworked to use Runic Power instead of runes so that they fit easier into a rotation or are more easily used in PvP, but cannot be used as pre-emptively.
-Yes, Chilblains would destroy cleansing totem, but the cooldown should make that OK considering the totem can just be re-dropped, and because Frost has a higher demand to maintain Frost Fever than other specs do with other diseases.
-Blood self heals may be over the top with the suggested Blood Plague change, I am not sure if I overdid it here.
-Mark of Blood now has defensive benefit in arena for a DPS partner that needs to get topped off and offensive benefit to bring Blood into the realm of arena viability, offensive use would not selfheal the DK to prevent massive survivability and the ability would not be able to be cast defensively on the DK either. Strictly friend or enemy casts only.

Rogue wish-list up next, probably followed by Shaman or Priest. Thoughts? Flames?

[Nangz]

i approve of most changes except a few


you either forgot or removed the 10% arp from blood gorged this would be a huge dps loss


i don't like the MS effect on mark of blood as dk's don't need one our pvp isn't THAT bad but the 15% periodic effect on ss is fine.
the healing for healing done woudl be nice for pvp and the healing when YOU deal damage is nice for pve and pvp

blood burst while sounds nice due to the physical theme of blood dk's wouldn't work out very well because death coil scales with magic debuffs and other things. Plus death coil already gets launched seems a bit contradictory. And the crit for early refresh would probably be a dps loss due to the fact that it screws up the near perfect blood rotation already and this would allow more heart strikes at the cost of runic power overflow.

virulence basically is a great addition as long as it doesn't cause damage but i'd make it called scarred tissue for blood plague. If it doesn't cause damage it still has an incentive to dispell

the imp death strike ROCKS! i approve 100% uptime blood worms are cool

unbreakable armor is nice for pvp

the threat of thassarian without plague strike is lame as frost dk's use it too. Plus death strike for dw frost is situational so it shoudl be there too mostlty for pvp and even while survival spell for frost as much damage as possible it helps too


chilblains is too op against shamans. A passive totem killer......


you shoudl have fixed will of the nercropolis that talent SUCKS

[n1nja91]

Mark of Blood: This ability has been moved to tier 7 and redesigned. Now causes a 50% healing debuff to enemies and heals party members other than the Death Knight for an amount totaling any healing done to the target, similar to Divine Storm. When cast on a friendly player, they will be healed for 4% of their maximum health when they deal damage to an enemy, lasting for 20 hits or 20 seconds.

Def be playing my DK again if this happened

[elseagoat]

Wow thanks for the replies! I didn't expect a single positive non-flame reply I am honored really!

you either forgot or removed the 10% arp from blood gorged this would be a huge dps loss

I left it in the talent calculator that I made. I probably should have left it clear in the notes that it was still there, but I didn't mean for it to disappear. The goal for the Blood changes were to shift more damage into Heart Strike through talents, and by doing so, open up possibilities for other talent changes and more dynamic gameplay.

i don't like the MS effect on mark of blood as dk's don't need one our pvp isn't THAT bad but the 15% periodic effect on ss is fine.
the healing for healing done woudl be nice for pvp and the healing when YOU deal damage is nice for pve and pvp

Well, I went through a lot of ideas on Mark of Blood because I REALLY hate the current incarnation, dispellable, hardly beneficial long cooldown ability with a rune cost. I thought to myself, "what do DKs really need in PvP, especially Blood?" Well, the answers I came up with were "Controlled healing reduction, and controlled protective group utility similar to Hand of Protection." So I tried to come up with an idea that offered a choice on a long cooldown high cost spell. You either choose to cast it on an enemy to make it more difficult for that enemy to recover from a burst attempt by applying a 50% MS for 10 seconds, and healing only your party members (not yourself, I deemed that if it healed yourself the spell would be way over the top in dueling scenarios or 2v2) if that attempt is made. On the flip side, you can choose to cast it on a teammate that may be in danger to let that teammate heal himself up by doing damage, but cannot cast on yourself (again, I felt this would offer WAY to much survivability). So your healer is CCed and your Rogue is getting bursted? Toss him Mark of Blood if you are on the defensive and need your Rogue to survive. On the offensive, got an enemy healer in a crowd control, and want to make sure they have a harder time recovering from a focused burst if you don't get a kill? Cast it on your target and your team gets free heals while the healer tries harder to recover his teammate after coming out of a CC chain. I'm open to other ideas but I really like the idea of a spell that a Blood DK can use on his own party to save someone.

blood burst while sounds nice due to the physical theme of blood dk's wouldn't work out very well because death coil scales with magic debuffs and other things. Plus death coil already gets launched seems a bit contradictory. And the crit for early refresh would probably be a dps loss due to the fact that it screws up the near perfect blood rotation already and this would allow more heart strikes at the cost of runic power overflow.

The reason I incorporated this ability is because I always felt that Death Coil felt weak for Blood in PvP. So I came up with a shorter range "melee" type ability that did the same unmitigated damage as deathcoil, but was physical and thus scaled with physical damage buffs (and would scale with mangle! :O nerf!). I just always thought Death Coil felt really out of place as a dump for Blood because of how small the hits were in PvP. The reason I gave it the rune refresh secondary effect was to give it additional scaling through crit so that it is not overtaken by Death Coil with too many magic damage debuffs or buffs, and to shake up the rock solid rotation. Since more damage was shifted to Heart Strike in the tree through Imp Blood Presence and the lowering of Death Strike damage, I felt it would fit to go Blood Rune crazy and work the rotation to crank out as many Heart Strikes as possibly, dynamically of course. Sudden Doom was left untouched to avoid catastrophically huge Heart Strike + Blood Burst hits in PvP and to prevent strings of refreshed Heart Strikes by proccing Sudden Doom Blood Burst crits over and over. So, I left it as Death Coil for that reason.

virulence basically is a great addition as long as it doesn't cause damage but i'd make it called scarred tissue for blood plague. If it doesn't cause damage it still has an incentive to dispell

This one was designed around the suggestion I made for dispels in Cataclysm. Basically, you have to imagine a scenario to see how this would work. Apply FF and BP, both get dispelled, you get two stacks of Fevered Recovery. Fevered Recovery has no other effect aside from providing an undispellable "time buffer" so that your strikes can continue to hit for maximum amount for a short time after your diseases are dispelled, so you aren't forced to spam your applicators against dispellers. Now, when you decide to apply FF again, one stack gets removed, so you cant generate huge strikes through getting your diseases dispelled and then putting up normal diseases in addition to Fevered Recovery. You still lose Disease damage and secondary effects when a disease is dispelled, but you can continue to strike for maximum amounts for a short time after. That's all this really does.

the imp death strike ROCKS! i approve 100% uptime blood worms are cool

Agreed, I love those little buggers!

unbreakable armor is nice for pvp

The old absorb mechanic was way too awesome vs rogues and in PvP (I remember going completely invincible vs 10 opponents in AV and then a healer came up and we busted out of there alive, it was OP as shit) but not too hot for PvE. I think the new incarnation as of 3.3 is the opposite way around. By adding the uncrittable element in there, I think a good middle ground is reached.

the threat of thassarian without plague strike is lame as frost dk's use it too. Plus death strike for dw frost is situational so it shoudl be there too mostlty for pvp and even while survival spell for frost as much damage as possible it helps too

The reason I removed Plague Strike and Death Strike from ToT is to offset the +20% Frost Fever damage in Chilblains. Plus, I like having my big strikes and my little strikes defined from each other. Plague Strike always felt out of place when I played Frost, so this was my first choice for something to go when boosting Frost Fever damage because the double Plague Strike (when BP and PS do so little for frost) was the first to go.

chilblains is too op against shamans. A passive totem killer......

I guess I should work on my Shaman changes next, but basically this change would be in conjunction with ALL shaman totems sans Grounding gaining 10% of the Shamans maximum HP (and Stoneclaw reworked). Also, with Glacier Rot and Tundra Stalker, Frost has a HUGE demand to keep Frost Fever up, way more so than Unholy does with Blood Plague or Blood does with either. So basically, vs shamans, this would impose a pseudo 8 second cooldown on Cleansing Totem if you are Frost. Also keep in mind, this would allow priests to do cool things like break Icy Crypt or other break on damage CCs by putting abolish on a partner with Frost Fever or themselves. I like these sort of active counters in the game, that add depth and skill, and I think this change would be effective in bringing that.

you shoudl have fixed will of the nercropolis that talent SUCKS

I'll work on it. Only thing I could think of was to make it just like Ardent Defender without the self heal when you take a killing hit, but I don't want to homogenize the two talents too much so Ill think of some ideas, throw any that you have out there.

[elseagoat]

I wish that DK's became immune to the nerf hammer.

I don't. Remember when Bone Shield was 40% damage redux and Icebound Fort was 50%? Whoever came up with those percentages was a moron.

[Plutarch]

I wish that DK's became immune to the nerf hammer.

[guitar3544]

from a lore perspective, i wish we had a fear. You're supposed to make me believe a guy in dark robes makes people run in fear, but not a spiked plate wearing, gigantic blade wielding knight with glowing blue eyes that can raise the dead on a whim doesn't make people flee in terror?

I realize it would be broken in-game, but i can wish.

[Jàckyòz]

I aproove of most of the changes an yeah i do also agree, wuold be nice to be imune to that hammer :P

[Shiira]

from a lore perspective, i wish we had a fear. You're supposed to make me believe a guy in dark robes makes people run in fear, but not a spiked plate wearing, gigantic blade wielding knight with glowing blue eyes that can raise the dead on a whim doesn't make people flee in terror?

I realize it would be broken in-game, but i can wish.

Glyphed death and decay used to do this but it was nerfed because it was ridiculously overpowered.

[dr4g0n]

Tbh i like it mostly , needs some tuning abit but all ideas are reasonable.

[Uthre]

http://war-tools.com/t65965.html?b=9...33151213133151


nuff said

[Deleted]

Blood
• Death Rune Mastery: This talent no longer affects Obliterate.<- fair play
• Vendetta: Removed. <- fair play
• *New Talent* Blood Burst: Deals 443 Bleed damage instantly at max rank. Critical strikes with this ability refresh 1 Blood Rune. <- mmm could happen
• Mark of Blood: This ability has been moved to tier 7 and redesigned. Now causes a 50% healing debuff to enemies and heals party members other than the Death Knight for an amount totaling any healing done to the target, similar to Divine Storm. When cast on a friendly player, they will be healed for 4% of their maximum health when they deal damage to an enemy, lasting for 20 hits or 20 seconds. <- not gonna happen DK's dont need an MS
• Improved Blood Presence: Redesigned. Now provides 5/10% additional healing received in any presence, and causes Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes in Blood Presence to ignore 5/10% of enemy armor. <- nah wont happen. too overpowered for tanks, and they wont give blood 20% arp from talents
• Bloodworms: Removed.
• Improved Death Strike: Redesigned. Renamed to Morbid Feast, no longer increases damage done by Death Strike. Increases healing received by Death Strike by 25/50% and causes Death Strikes to summon 1/2 Blood Worms, a maximum of 4 Bloodworms can be active at one time. <- id prefer more damage from deathstrike
• Vampiric Blood: Now costs 15 runic power instead of 1 Blood Rune. < - this i fully aprove of
• Heart Strike: This ability will now deal 50% of the damage dealt to the primary target to the secondary target. The damage dealt to the primary target will no longer be considered area-of-effect damage; this ability will function similar to Sweeping Strikes or Blade Flurry. <- dont see any problems with this
• Blood Gorged: This talent will now provide the percentage damage bonus based on the target’s percentage of maximum health relative to the Death Knight’s, similar to Prey on the Weak. <- meh seems ok
• Dancing Rune Weapon: This pet now lasts for 15 seconds and may be controlled using the standard pet interface. The pet will still mimic Death Knight attacks for 50% reduced damage. This will allow the player full control of the pet without the pet obeying its own agro tables. <- seems fine

Frost
• Chilblains: Redesigned. Now increases Frost Fever damage by 10/20% and deals Frost damage to any player that dispels Frost Fever, also afflicting them with an undispellable 50% snare for 8 sec. This effect can only occur once per 8 sec. <- nah wont happen, DK dont need more CC
• Hungering Cold: Renamed to Icy Tomb and redesigned. This ability now encases all enemies in a targeted 8 yd radius in ice, preventing any action for 10 sec and applying Frost Fever. Any damage other than diseases will break the effect. <- seems ok
• Threat of Thassarian: No longer effects Plague Strike and Death Strike. <- no point
• Unbreakable Armor: Now also renders the Death Knight immune to critical strikes and costs 15 runic power instead of 1 Frost Rune. <- the RP change yes, immune to crit no
• Acclimation: Redesigned. Now provides a 1-2% reduction in spell damage taken from a particular school after being hit with a spell. Stacks 5 times. After 5 stacks, the next spell hit from that school against you will have a 50-100% chance to remove all stacks of acclimation and cause you to become immune to the next spell from that school for 6 sec. <-this is OP as fuck, wont happen


Unholy
• Blood Plague: This disease will now also heal the Death Knight for 100% of the damage dealt, but this heal may only occur once per 2 sec to prevent large amounts of healing through Pestilence. <- nah wont happen
• Virulence: Redesigned. Now provides 1/2/3% spell hit and causes targets to be afflicted with Fevered Recovery when Frost Fever, Crypt Fever, Blood Plague, or Ebon Plague are dispelled. Stacks 3 times, lasts 10 sec. Fevered Recovery counts as a disease, but cannot be dispelled, and one stack is removed each time Frost Fever, Crypt Fever, Blood Plague, or Ebon Plague are applied. <- mmmm not sure could be possible
• Corpse Explosion: When cast on player summoned ghouls, the ghoul will no longer cast Explode. Now applies a 3 second debuff when cast on player summoned ghouls. The ghoul will explode when this debuff ends, dealing 25% of its maximum health as Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yds. <- something like this could be do-able
• Unholy Blight: Redesigned. Now increases damage dealt by diseases by 10% and causes victims of your Scourge Strike ability to be surrounded by a swarm of unholy insects, dealing 15% of the damage dealt by your Scourge Strike over 10 sec. This damage accumulates like Deep Wounds or Ignite. <- OP, wont happen
• Ghoul Frenzy: Redesigned. This talent is now a passive effect that heals your summoned ghoul for 120% of the damage dealt by Claw and provides 15% haste at all times. <- meh, doubt it
• Bone Shield: This ability now costs 15 runic power instead of 1 Unholy Rune. <- this is fine, would probabaly involve an increased CD
• Scourge Strike: Redesigned. Now deals 45% of weapon damage plus 357 as Shadow damage, increased by 11% per each disease on the target. Also reduces periodic healing done to the target by 15% for 12 sec. <- again, dont need an MS effect

[elseagoat]

http://war-tools.com/t65965.html?b=9...33151213133151


nuff said

That build is garbage. You didn't pick up Pale Horse.

I kid. You likely forgot to set the level cap, there is an option to do so in the top right hand of the calc. For level 85 builds, simply max out your level 80 build, then remove the level cap, and count off 5 more talent points. That's what I did when testing possible builds to make sure I wasn't getting anything weird like a build that had every possible PvE talent in a tree with all the viable PvP talents too.

For example, at level 80, you could do this for PvP but you miss out on key PvE talents like Sudden Doom and maxxed Bladed Armor, but you still get satisfactory damage talents so your damage won't be totally aweful.
http://war-tools.com/t65965.html?b=9...33151213133151

Then at level 85, you get 5 more talent points and you can max those talents I just mentioned, which would offer significantly more damage. Sudden Doom is HUGE burst in PvP (even on live) but with this tree it is really difficult to grab without sacrificing a lot of survivability or damage in other departments, which should counteract some of the significant buffs I proposed.

But like I said, none of this is likely balanced, but I think it solves a lot of the issues myself and others have with the class. Just little things that irk us, like when Dancing Rune weapon runs off and attacks some warlock on the other side of the map that you didn't want it to because of Siphon Life, or diseases getting rapidly purged in arenas and being forced to only use disease applicator attacks and runic dumps to do damage.

[elseagoat]

Alot of people are very opposed to the idea of Death Knights getting any kind of MS. I can understand that but I would like to point out that I have not suggested any "real" mortal strike effects.

Mark of Blood would still be a 3 minute cooldown and could likely be a curse effect so that druids and mages could remove it, and would last only 10 seconds. It would function as a MS when used offensively, but because of the massive cooldown and the ability to dispel the effect, it would be more of a "heal leacher" stealing 50% of the healing done to the target and distributing it amongst your friends. As a deep Blood ability, the tree with no additional control outside of Death Grip or Chains of Ice, I can't see this being too overpowering. But, I removed the targetted 10 second Heal Leech effect and just left it as an ability that you use to save a teammate.

The Scourge Strike MS effect only applies to periodic heals. If anyone has fought a Resto Druid recently, you know how much it hurts your heart to seem them heal through your damage using only instant attacks and still failing to kill them when you set up a perfect strangulate->gnaw->explode+ERW triple Scourge Strike right after lifebloom fell off. So I thought, how can we help DKs against HoTs, the heal that we are weakest against, in a tree that is heavily dependant on DoT damage like an Affliction Warlock? I looked no further than Shadow Embrace. Mortal Strike is a shared debuff, usually 2 or 3 classes share an incarnation of it. Shadow Priests and Frost Mages share the 20% mortal strike effect, Warriors and Hunters share the 50% incarnation, and currently Affliction Warlocks are the only spec/class with the 15% incarnation that ONLY applies to HoTs so I didn't think it was too big a deal to share it with Unholy.

Blood is already great for fighting druids because of how often Heart Strike is used and thus applying the snare to druids trying to travelform several times. Frost is decent because Hungering Cold is AWESOME for letting HoTs fall off to get a Strangulate + Deathchill burst kill. Unholy is really a sustained damage spec and is thus in the worst position of the three specs when fighting HoT based healers. Thats why I picked Scourge Strike to tack the -15% HoT debuff onto.

But, like I said, none of what I say is likely balanced. I have the Shaman suggestions ready, I will post the link here. http://www.mmo-champion.com/class-sh...man-wish-list/

Rogue will be up next, those were really fun to tinker with but probably the least likely, most imbalanced, and most far-fetched of my suggestions.


Edit: I added a Glyph of Death Strike change, to lower damage a bit more so that 20% armor pen on Heart Strike wouldn't be too hardcore.