Blizzard thinking about AoE? Don't stop there.

[elseagoat]

Why stop there? The whole class is facing rotational issues even outside of AoE.

Pestilence
We're starting to think that the ship has just sailed on Pestilence. As I said, our original intent was that Blood Boil be the main AE attack, but now we're considering making Blood Boil more for tanking, letting Frost use Howling Blast and letting Unholy use Pestilence, because, you know, diseases.

Something like that. Full strength might be too powerful, but we'll see. Unholy still has a few too many talents like Improved Icy Touch and Corrupting Strikes, so this might be a good replacement (though likely deeper than those two examples).

I would post on the official forums but my account will be inactive until Cata comes out, Wrath has gotten pretty dull and I have already fallen behind on gear due to being inactive for a while. Anyways, I have a few ideas on how to fix a few of the issues that seem to have appeared in Beta. I am not in beta, so if I am completely off base with how things are working or missed an issue that you are experiencing, please correct me.

My understanding is that we are facing the following issues.
-AoE rotations are extremely clunky for Frost and Unholy.
-Death Rune Mastery conflicts with Blood Shield implementation in Blood's rotation.
-Dirge encourages Dual Wielding as Unholy, by buffing single rune attacks.
-Ghoul Frenzy encourages Dual Wielding as Unholy as it has no scaling with Weapon Damage.
-Dirge (when it does not encourage Dual Wielding by buffing SS and FS in its previous form) generates too much RP.
-Chill of the Grave generates too much RP, making the two-handed weapon talent provide zero benefit.
-Dirge and Chill of the Grave are boring passive talents anyways.
-Runic Empowerment does not actually proc any sort of randomness in a rotation, due to the way it works it is best used as a method to speed up rune generation thus reducing free globals for procs and encouraging Dual Wielding for Unholy.
-Corpse Explosion, the most awesome ability in the game, has been removed. This is probably the most important.
-Unholy and Frost have very repetitive Runic Power dumps and I believe I have seen many requests to see more buttons to push during an RP dump.
-Unholy is rocking a counter-heal, disease anti-dispel, AMZ, and the Ghoul for PvP while Frost is still stuck with only Hungering Cold and a moderately useful in PvP Pillar of Frost now. Once again Unholy is the go-to PvP spec.
-Top tier Unholy and Frost are very disorganized and sub-spec unfriendly.
-Frost Presence is the go-to DPS spec, and Unholy Presence is still a poor choice for DPS and now likely in PvP too.

The following suggestions are just that, suggestions. You can skip over this part as the important area of this post is above, those are the issues that I would like to see ironed out in beta before release and hopefully others would like this as well (unless I am wrong about some of them). If you agree, especially if you are a Beta tester, please forward this onto the official forums and feel free to tell me where I am wrong or if I have missed any issues that you have experienced.

I have posted an explanation with each suggestion to highlight how it would tie into each issue and how it may alleviate the issue.

Class Wide Suggestions

1) Rune Strike- 20 Runic Power. Strike the target for 200% weapon damage plus [ 20% of AP ]. Can't be dodged, blocked, or parried. This attack causes a high amount of threat. Each rune you spend has a 20% chance to activate Rune Strike. This is the idea for a replacement for Runic Empowerment, which I absolutely HATE because it does not exactly function to add randomness to a rotation, instead it functions simply as a form of faster rune regeneration, clogging our globals for “cool procs.” I want Runic Empowerment gone more than anything.

2) Chill of the Grave and Dirge need to go, they too clog globals by generating far too much RP. They are also mandatory and boring, and Chill of the Grave in particular makes the two-handed Frost talent unable to provide a benefit because there is simply no room for extra Runic Power.



Blood

1) Exsanguinate- 40 Runic Power, 15 yd range. Draws blood from the enemy, causing it to take X Bleed damage instantly. You draw this life force into your own body, bolstering your defense and causing you to take X% less damage from the next attack that hits you. This effect stacks up to 5 times and each time you take damage one charge is consumed. I always wanted Blood to have a unique Runic Power dump other than Deathcoil. Deathcoil just never seemed to fit. If the “X%” were tuned right, this could replace Bone Shield (which I also feel is unfitting for Blood) and as an ability that is active most of the time, would help with the issue of DKs taking “spikey” damage. Many will disagree with this one because they like the cooldown nature of the DK tank spec.

2) Blood Parasite 2/2- Your Heart Strikes have a 50/100% chance to spawn a Bloodworm. The Bloodworm attacks your enemies, gorging itself with blood until it bursts to heal nearby allies. In conjunction with the suggestion after this one, this alleviates the issue of Death Rune Mastery conflicting with the Blood Shield bonus, plus I have always wanted to spawn Bloodworms on command.

3) It would be nice if Blood had a way to use that extra Frost Rune that it has in an AoE rotation for something other than Icy Touch. An idea for this that I had was to bake an effect into an existing talent that does the following: If any Frost Runes are active when all of your Blood and Unholy Runes go on cooldown, there is a 50/100% chance that your Blood Boil will cost one Frost Rune instead of a Blood Rune. This effect lasts for 10 sec or until a Blood Rune activates. A good talent to bake this in to would be Sanguine Fortitude.

4) Blood Shield- Each time you are healed via your Death Strike, Bloodworms, or Rune Tap, you gain 50% of the amount healed as a damage absorption shield. Absorb increased further by mastery rating. This too is to help out with the conflict between Death Rune Mastery and Blood Shield. With a bit of an increase in Rune Tap’s cooldown to accommodate a damage shield built into it, and assuming the damage shield rolls, this would make the Mastery a bit more “all encompassing” without too much harm to the awesome active nature of the Mastery.



Unholy

1) Make Corpse Explosion trainable, costing 1 Unholy Rune. Adjust damage as appropriate. This was an extremely unique and fun ability; I am very disappointed to see it go.

2) Corpsemaker 2/2- Your Death and Decay spell will exhume one corpse every 2/4 seconds during its duration so that you may detonate them with Corpse Explosion, and while standing in your own Death and Decay, your Festering Strike will cause you to instantly unleash a Blood Boil dealing 100/200% of normal damage free of cost, but your Festering Strike will deal 25/50% less damage to its primary target. The purpose of this is to help with Unholy and Frost’s completely garbage AoE rotations. Combined with Corpse Explosion, this turns Unholy’s AoE rotation into something like this: PS->IT->Pest->DnD->Fest->Runic Dump->CE->Fest->CE->Fest…repeat. Would need to be in first tier Unholy within easy reach of Frost.

3) Hungering Dead- 40 Runic Power, 20 sec CD. Calls forth 2 gluttonous Ghouls to attack the target for 15 sec or until they deal (X% of AP plus Y) damage, gorging themselves until they burst, dealing Shadow damage equal to the amount of damage they caused divided among all enemies within 8 yds. Can only be used on targets at or below 25% health. The purpose of this spell is to give Unholy an option on what to spend Runic Power on other than Death Coil. Since I like the idea of “bursting” guardians introduced by Bloodworms, execute effects, and lots and lots of Ghouls, this is what I came up with. I thought it was pretty cool but probably too complex to be realistic. Getting rid of Ghoul Frenzy and replacing this would be an awesome way to deter dual wielding, and the ability could be tuned so that each of the ghouls summoned by this ability does a small percent of weapon damage on each of their attacks so that it scales better with a 2hander. The idea is that you are essentially applying a complex DoT that deals a scaling maximum of damage, and then at that time instant damage is dealt that equals the total amount of damage dealt by the DoT.

4) Scourge Strike- 1 Unholy. An unholy strike that deals X% of weapon damage plus Y. In addition, Scourge Strike will cause your Blood Plague and Frost Fever effects on the target to instantly deal additional damage without altering their normal flow of damage. I am very sad to see Scourge Strike still existing in its current incarnation. It might as well be an entirely physical strike like Obliterate and just have it be boosted by Shadow damage modifiers, it is completely pointless to make it as complex as it is now. I am also upset about how passive the Unholy Mastery is. This idea would tie Scourge Strike into the Unholy Mastery by granting an additional tick on your diseases when it lands, making both Scourge Strike and the Mastery more interesting while tying it into other aspects of the tree with some of the other ideas I have further on.

5) Cadaverous Regiment 2/2- Your Rune abilities no longer trigger Rune Strike. Instead your Frost Fever and Blood Plague diseases reduce the remaining cooldown on Summon Gargoyle by 0.5/1 second and Army of the Dead by 1/2 seconds. In addition, the channeling time of Army of the Dead is reduced by 50/100%. This would allow Scourge Strike, pets, and diseases to all tie in together. It would also make Army of the Dead less of a gimmick to use at the beginning of the fight, and would work great if they removed the taunting effect of the Ghouls and replaced it with a medium glyph that gave the same effect. Numbers need to be tweaked.

6) Unholy Presence- Infuses the death knight with unholy fury, increasing attack speed and rune regeneration by 10%, movement speed by 15%, and your summoned Ghoul’s attack speed by X%. Only one Presence may be active at a time. This is simply an idea to boost the effect of Unholy Presence in a manner that is more Unholy specific so that Unholy would choose to stay in Unholy presence during PvE. Obviously the number would need to be tweaked, its just an example.

7) It would be nice if Resilient Infection were reworked so that it procced a free Plague Strike or Icy Touch in accordance with the particular disease that is dispelled, unlinked from virulence, and moved to tier 1. Viscous Strikes should definitely be moved to tier 2, not just to make room for this suggestion, but because it is so Unholy specific and mandatory that it really should belong in later tiers and away from the reach of other specs that will never take it. Instantly granting a Rune is great, but then using that rune to re-apply the disease puts it back on cooldown, plus Frost needs this way more than Unholy.



Frost

1) Black Ice- Your Rune abilities no longer trigger Rune Strike. Instead, you have a 30/60% chance when you Frost Strike to gain the Black Ice effect lasting 30 sec. After reaching 3 stacks, your next Death Coil within 10 sec will be converted into a Shadowfrost Coil. Shadowfrost Coil will deal 130% of Death Coil’s normal damage as Shadowfrost damage, and benefits from the effects of Icy Reach, Killing Machine, Frozen Heart and Mastery Rating. This is an idea that I had to add some more randomness into Frost’s rotation. It is important to note that it would still cost RP, so you would be replacing a Frost Strike with this effect, therefore numbers would have to be tweaked to make this a DPS gain but by leaving the RP cost this becomes an alternative button to push during an RP dump rather than just a “free spell” proc.

2) Chilblains 2/2- Your Chains of Ice spell freezes enemies in place, unable to move, for 5 seconds when cast on enemies already afflicted by your Frost Fever. I agree with the CoI change, but I disagree with the relative positions that it puts Frost and Unholy in with respect to PvP utility. First rune regeneration is slowed, reducing CoI output, then Scourge Strike becomes 1U in cost thus freeing runes for Unholy to use CoI more, then CoI is changed from a “CC” to a snare. In addition, Unholy still has the utility of the Ghoul, lower DG coodlown, AMZ, and now Necrotic Strike (which Frost really wont be using as Obliterate is way better than IT or even HB + Necrotic Strike). This is just an idea to add more control into Frost’s repertoire of PvP utility, and of course it would be diminished.

3) Blood of the North- Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 10% and whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence, there is a 100% chance that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates. Death Runes count as a Blood, Frost, or Unholy Rune. In addition, whenever your Blood Boil deals damage to 2 or more enemies, the cooldown on your Howling Blast is refreshed. This, combined with Corpse Explosion and the Corpsemaker talent I suggested, would help Frost’s botched AoE rotation and turn it into something like this: IT->PS->Pest->HB->DnD->BB->Runic Dump->HB->CE->BB->HB->CE->BB… repeat.

[Organoth]

I don't know much about Frost as I've never liked it and play a Blood tank on live with an Unholy OS. I like the idea of getting rid of Pest, for specs other then Unholy, so long as Blood Boil is modified with sufficient threat to make up for it. I know they want tanks to work harder on threat in Cata and the combo of Pest and BB helped with the "fire and forget" style of threat in WotLK. At the same time we are supposed to be getting away from mas AoE pulls so focusing single target with our BB hitting the single mobs should be enough to keep threat on those other targets against things like healer aggro. Making BB Blood spec only will also keep Unholy from being OP on group pulls. They can spread their dieseases with Pest but can't spam BB for extra AoE damage.

I know they are trying to balance BBs threat with how much damage it causes but if it's gonna be a Blood only talent they can just make it cause extra threat like Icy Touch. Since IT will no longer be causing extra threat in Cata it would make the change to BB a balance trade-off. I don't know how it's working on Beta but one way to help with this change is with Scarlet Fever. It's not a diesease but we are able to apply it to all targets using BB. It's just a debuff but if it generated a little threat we should be fine and dropping Pest from our rotation would help with our limited Rune system.

[elseagoat]

I don't know much about Frost as I've never liked it and play a Blood tank on live with an Unholy OS. I like the idea of getting rid of Pest, for specs other then Unholy, so long as Blood Boil is modified with sufficient threat to make up for it. I know they want tanks to work harder on threat in Cata and the combo of Pest and BB helped with the "fire and forget" style of threat in WotLK. At the same time we are supposed to be getting away from mas AoE pulls so focusing single target with our BB hitting the single mobs should be enough to keep threat on those other targets against things like healer aggro. Making BB Blood spec only will also keep Unholy from being OP on group pulls. They can spread their dieseases with Pest but can't spam BB for extra AoE damage.

I know they are trying to balance BBs threat with how much damage it causes but if it's gonna be a Blood only talent they can just make it cause extra threat like Icy Touch. Since IT will no longer be causing extra threat in Cata it would make the change to BB a balance trade-off. I don't know how it's working on Beta but one way to help with this change is with Scarlet Fever. It's not a diesease but we are able to apply it to all targets using BB. It's just a debuff but if it generated a little threat we should be fine and dropping Pest from our rotation would help with our limited Rune system.

I recall watching a beta video on youtube of a Blood tank who commentated that it was much more difficult to hold aggro on AoE pulls than on live. So it is quite possible that Pest is not doing "too much for" Blood tanks. If anything, I like how the Blood rotation for AoE packs works on paper, its far better than Unholy and Frost right now. DnD->IT->PS->Pest->BB->BB->Blood Tap Death Strike->RP dump->DS->BB->BB->DS->RP Dump->BB spam or something to that effect. It is still awkward because of that lone Frost Rune at the beginning, but not as bad as Frost and Unholy thanks to Crimson Scourge and Death Rune Mastery providing tons of ways to get off a Blood Boil.

I really hope, however, if they do go the route of making each spec have a specific AoE, that they do it in a way that doesn't screw with rune cooldowns.

For example, if Frost uses DnD and Howling Blast, then the Blood Boil idea I have posted for Blood of the North where it refreshes Howling Blast when it hits 2 or more targets would work perfectly. BB would then only be a means to generate more Howling Blasts and could have nerfed damage (which it already does) for non-Blood specs.

Unholy could have the old version of Pestilence back where it does isntant damage, and perhaps deal 100% disease damage to other targets too, but then what do we do with those lone Frost Runes? That is why I came up with the Corpsemaker idea, that procs a "behind the scenes" Blood Boil that goes off automatically by your Fest damage is reduced on the primary target so as not to interfere with single target rotations.

Blood could still use some help with the lone Frost Rune in its rotation too. Perhaps a talent that converts Frost Runes into Death Runes when all other runes are on cooldown would be an idea. I'll throw that in too because I like that possibility. If Blizz went with Consider's Rune Strike proc idea, then Blood would have its proc attack for free Globals, Crimson Scourge really only works once every 25+ seconds as a way to get Scarlet Fever back up on single targets its not a true "proc" in the sense that it doesn't throw off a rotation, it just gets built in.

[Foibles]

Why are you complaining about aoe? This is vanilla again, and aoe doesn't exist. We aren't mindlessly spamming aoe spells anymore. Why is that so hard to understand for some people? This isn't WotLK's World of AoEcraft anymore ffs.

[elseagoat]

Why are you complaining about aoe? This is vanilla again, and aoe doesn't exist. We aren't mindlessly spamming aoe spells anymore. Why is that so hard to understand for some people? This isn't WotLK's World of AoEcraft anymore ffs.

AoE trash packs still exist in Cataclysm. I would prefer if I either threw out an AoE on cooldown here and there during these encounters WITHOUT messing up my single target rotation, or had a rotation that I could switch to during these encounters. In beta, we have neither. We have abilities, all of which cost odd runes, that we throw out on AoE trash and then attempt to salvage a single target rotation with the remaining runes (salvage being used loosely here because its not really possible) while we wait for the cooldown on Death and Decay or the timers on our Pestilenced diseases to run out.

Either way:
1) AoE trash still exists in Cataclysm, even more so than Vanilla, apparently only a bit scaled back from LK.
2) AoE trash existed in Vanilla.
3) As long as AoE exists, and Death Knights do not have a proper way of handling these encounters (which is apparently true in beta, not in LK), there is a problem.
4) Blizzard just posted about DK issues with AoE in beta, does it make sense to you that they would say that they are going to toy with DK AoE if AoE is going to be meaningless?
5) AoE is not even the main topic of this thread.
6) Why is it so hard for you to understand that when it was said that AoE would be scaled back that didn't literally translate to "you will never encounter an AoE trash pack in any instance ever?"
7) Why is it so hard for you to read and/or post constructively and/or be polite? ffs.

[Foibles]

AoE trash packs still exist in Cataclysm. I would prefer if I either threw out an AoE on cooldown here and there during these encounters WITHOUT messing up my single target rotation, or had a rotation that I could switch to during these encounters. In beta, we have neither. We have abilities, all of which cost odd runes, that we throw out on AoE trash and then attempt to salvage a single target rotation with the remaining runes (salvage being used loosely here because its not really possible) while we wait for the cooldown on Death and Decay or the timers on our Pestilenced diseases to run out.

Either way:
1) AoE trash still exists in Cataclysm, even more so than Vanilla, apparently only a bit scaled back from LK.
2) AoE trash existed in Vanilla.
3) As long as AoE exists, and Death Knights do not have a proper way of handling these encounters (which is apparently true in beta, not in LK), there is a problem.
4) Blizzard just posted about DK issues with AoE in beta, does it make sense to you that they would say that they are going to toy with DK AoE if AoE is going to be meaningless?
5) AoE is not even the main topic of this thread.
6) Why is it so hard for you to understand that when it was said that AoE would be scaled back that didn't literally translate to "you will never encounter an AoE trash pack in any instance ever?"
7) Why is it so hard for you to read and/or post constructively and/or be polite? ffs.

This is the only point worth responding to, and I don't think you realize why.

[elseagoat]

This is the only point worth responding to, and I don't think you realize why.

Why? Because you think you are awesome and there is no possible way any opinion other than yours could be valid. Check your totem bro.

I no longer care, not even a little bit, about this discussion that you somehow think is pertinent. Feel free to talk to yourself from here on out.

[Confessor Kahlan]

Nice inception reference if it was.

[ChildeRoland]

Nice inception reference if it was.

Off topic, but I love your username <3

[elseagoat]

Nice inception reference if it was.

Gracias. It is only the most badass movie in the history of badassness and movies. Ever.