[BFA Beta] Unholy Changes Update

[Deleted]

Unholy at 116 so far, feels fine, survivability is a bit of an issue but damage feels strong. I do a lot more than my survival hunter and I thought survival was doing pretty damn well when I tested it. Cleave, ST and AoE are all strong for unholy now.

It'd be nice to see some sort of passive leech put in place for Unholy.. Survival hunter gets 10% leech from pet and it makes life a hella lot easier.. Ideally I'd like a ghoul taunt and death coil to heal the ghoul like back in the old days BUT that's never going to happen.

All in all I give Blood a 8/10 and Unholy an 8/10 so far.

Awesome, what spec you playing at the moment? also Unholy Blight does that have a seperate disease then virulent plague? or is it just another way to apply that? from what ive seen on the tool tip it looks like the old diseases.

Sorry by spec i mean talents

[Rhaxus]

actually the only negative I see at the moment is healing, we have none without spending a ton of RP to do so, no-one would ever pick death pact over wraith walk either. hunter gets 10% passive leech, do we get any?

wasn't the plan for dks to provide a leech aura as their class utility, having that one would be quite awesome, maybe 5% with twice the amount for DKs

[Yhcti]

wasn't the plan for dks to provide a leech aura as their class utility, having that one would be quite awesome, maybe 5% with twice the amount for DKs

That actually would be perfect. That's literally all I think the spec really needs and then I'm a happy camper. Maybe lower the cost of death coil slightly but that's it. So far the highest I've gotten my gargoyle damage to is 220% which had me at just under 5k dps killing a rare at lvl 111.

[Cosmic Janitor]

wasn't the plan for dks to provide a leech aura as their class utility, having that one would be quite awesome, maybe 5% with twice the amount for DKs

They scrapped the whole "everyone brings a unique buff" thing rather quietly after they probably realized that requiring 12 different buffs in a raid is just asinine, backwards, borderline pants-on-head retarded design that shouldn't even have been uttered from anyone who has experience with the game's design, let alone someone who has been around for years in this game and experienced these issues first hand. Now you only need to bring 4 specific classes to the raid (Priest, Mage, DH, Monk) and the others are bonus depending on the gimmik of said boss. Our utility is now that we can offensively dispell (together with every blood elf ingame...) and deathgrip.

[Yhcti]

Has anyone tested Unholy in a raid yet? I was focusing purely on Survival but I've moved back to DK. The azurite traits look to add a nice touch to the spec. Popping wounds granting strength, DT exploding for however much energy is left etc.. Unholy looks like it could be a giant for AoE..

I've also found Unholy Frenzy + Berserking to be amazing.. not nesecarily together as you waste 2-3 seconds popping both. I start with UF then Berserk afterwards and I then get 20% haste over 24 seconds which is REALLY nice.

[ssynec]

To those of you also leveling/questing on Beta: what kinds of talents are you taking? I feel awfully slow at level 112, and outside of DT and Epidemic when there are 3+ targets, I feel like I'm not doing much damage at all (it may just be mismanagement of resources, I've grown so accustomed to using a custom UI) - my talents are 3-2-1-3-3-3-1.

[Rhaxus]

They scrapped the whole "everyone brings a unique buff" thing rather quietly after they probably realized that requiring 12 different buffs in a raid is just asinine, backwards, borderline pants-on-head retarded design that shouldn't even have been uttered from anyone who has experience with the game's design, let alone someone who has been around for years in this game and experienced these issues first hand. Now you only need to bring 4 specific classes to the raid (Priest, Mage, DH, Monk) and the others are bonus depending on the gimmik of said boss. Our utility is now that we can offensively dispell (together with every blood elf ingame...) and deathgrip.

isn't the dispell a blood only thing? thought i saw it under blood changes. so it's DH and Monk that are required now, you can substitute priest, mage and warrior with scrolls

maybe i should try to love demon hunters... selfhealing/ leech, mobility... kinda neat cosmetic designs :| if it weren't for the annoying screams and that they are leather and those fugly demon forms, i'd probably enjoy them.

[Cosmic Janitor]

isn't the dispell a blood only thing? thought i saw it under blood changes. so it's DH and Monk that are required now, you can substitute priest, mage and warrior with scrolls

maybe i should try to love demon hunters... selfhealing/ leech, mobility... kinda neat cosmetic designs :| if it weren't for the annoying screams and that they are leather and those fugly demon forms, i'd probably enjoy them.

In beta every DK spec has the magic dispell. As for DH, I personally can't stand playing them in beta anymore. I will give it a go with a transfered character and some stats, because the premades are horrible, but if these aren't better then.. yeah no. The icing on the cake is that their strongest talent in the last tier is currently foillowing a design, which they scrapped from Rets because it was terrible.

[Yhcti]

To those of you also leveling/questing on Beta: what kinds of talents are you taking? I feel awfully slow at level 112, and outside of DT and Epidemic when there are 3+ targets, I feel like I'm not doing much damage at all (it may just be mismanagement of resources, I've grown so accustomed to using a custom UI) - my talents are 3-2-1-3-3-3-1.

Top of my head i cant remember but i faceroll through mobs. Unholy frenzy is a must have with infected claws, saves having to spam so many festerings

[Rhaxus]

In beta every DK spec has the magic dispell. As for DH, I personally can't stand playing them in beta anymore. I will give it a go with a transfered character and some stats, because the premades are horrible, but if these aren't better then.. yeah no. The icing on the cake is that their strongest talent in the last tier is currently foillowing a design, which they scrapped from Rets because it was terrible.

yeah, dark slash just needs to go, colossus smash mechanics are really not that fun, let it be a warrior talent.
do you enjoy dh right now? i didn't play them at all, so their changes probably look more interesting to me as i don't feel the loss of legion related talents/ rotations

on topic: you were right about the new "utility" of purging, it fits Dks, but it depends on the design of the bfa content to see if that is even that useful to have.

[Exerionx]

To those of you also leveling/questing on Beta: what kinds of talents are you taking? I feel awfully slow at level 112, and outside of DT and Epidemic when there are 3+ targets, I feel like I'm not doing much damage at all (it may just be mismanagement of resources, I've grown so accustomed to using a custom UI) - my talents are 3-2-1-3-3-3-1.

Granted I haven't hit 112 yet, but I'm taking 1-1-3-2-1-2-1 for levelling and it's working really well.

[Yhcti]

To the guy saying dh over dk. Nah... dk is nicer and im a legion dh main.

[Nemesquish]

To the guy saying dh over dk. Nah... dk is nicer and im a legion dh main.

Everyone always says other classes are better.

[Baddok21]

Im worried about gargoyle CD and duration, 30 seconds is to long for burst phases typically in WoW and 3 minutes is too long for M+ (2min with 20 secs is perfect) and of Course Army needs to be 4 minutes as well.

though i can hope/guess blizzard will address these things with raid Azerite traits, but im not looking forward to faulty design on purpose to be made up with items (T20 4pc, CoF etc etc)

unholy frenzy should also apply 2 wounds since over 12 seconds that will only mean your auto attacks generate 5 wounds (6 if you had 25% haste baseline before popping UF)

Defile should have its dmg nerfed (hear me out) and in exchange simply apply 1 wound per tick to all targets while also having 5 seconds shaved off the normal DnD CD, that way you can choose infected claws +Epidemic or Clawing shadows + Defile.

but still time to iterate, and these things are pretty obvious to spot off the top so one must assume blizzard has thought of this or calculated it?

[Yhcti]

Is anyone raid testing unholy? Im getting alot of downtime at the moment and its a little bit of a mood kill lol. Sv is very similar but raptor strike hits so damn hard

[Netherius]

Is anyone raid testing unholy? Im getting alot of downtime at the moment and its a little bit of a mood kill lol. Sv is very similar but raptor strike hits so damn hard

Although I haven't raid tested I'm finding I'm waiting for runes to recharge a lot, unholy frenzy is a must at this point

[pkm]

Although I haven't raid tested I'm finding I'm waiting for runes to recharge a lot, unholy frenzy is a must at this point

Once again secondary stats are showing to be very important despite ion saying it won't be so. From what I am reading here and from others ingame, haste is going to be very very important for unholy.

[Nayami]

Im worried about gargoyle CD and duration, 30 seconds is to long for burst phases typically in WoW and 3 minutes is too long for M+ (2min with 20 secs is perfect) and of Course Army needs to be 4 minutes as well.

I agree about the gargoyle. If I had to have it my way, it would just be exactly how Dark Arbiter was (model and all ). I especially agree with your points about M+, now we will cast this spell less times, it has a good chance of lasting too long for most trash packs and lastly it has less of an impact because it ramps up slower and by the time it reaches its peak, the trash mobs will probably already be dead.

[Cosmic Janitor]

WoW, they really want us to play unholy again it seems, the front page reads like a christmas carol:

Unholy Death Knight Beta Feedback Thread
Maybe option for a glyph to come in here, Glyph of the Val'kyr: Your Gargoyle takes the form of a Val'kyr/Dark Arbiter. Keep abilities the same but the aesthetics changes.
We're adding a dialog option at a class trainer in Ebon Hold to change your Summon Gargoyle talent to take on the appearance of a Val'kyr. No functional changes.

It's certainly possible to line up the explosions, but it does require a good sense of your groups damage, add spawns of a fight and positioning of the ghouls. A bit finicky, and overly complicated at times especially as people become more geared.
Corpse Explosion was a really cool fantasy that we wanted to try as a talent, but had various mechanical problem as many have pointed out. It's being replaced in an upcoming build.

All Will Serve really needs something done to it. The common suggestion of a lot of players is to have it scale with Mastery by doing Shadow damage, but with the rewording/reworking of the Mastery this might be unable to be done?
This talent slot is being worked on. Agree All Will Serve is currently pretty lackluster.

Knocking 2 minutes off the cooldown of Army really isn't significant, since we will still only be able to cast the ability once per encounter - and with its high cost and deployment time, that time will continue to be "before the fighting starts."
New talent reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 5 sec (and Apoc by 1 sec) on Death Coil casts. Currently cuts the cooldown of Army by about half during sustained combat. Generally gives a much greater feeling of having an army of the damned.

[Debilitating Infestation] is another talent that i never picked during the whole expansion.
Going to try replacing this in the tree with a talent we like better, which we added to Blood recently. Grip of the Dead: Death and Decay reduces the movement speed of enemies in the area by 90%, decaying by 10% every sec. (pending further tuning) Brings a uniquely powerful initial snare, which quickly decays in strength. Remains to be seen how the magnitude plays out.

Resource generation needs to be looked at. Even when running IC/PP theres times where I am sitting on my hands doing nothing for up to 5secs. The proc rate for wounds from IC also needs to be upped as we no longer generate energy for the Ghoul with DC so overall Claw usage is down over legion.
We'll be continuing to tune resources, including Runic Corruption chance as needed. Worth noting is we just added some proc normalization to Runic Corruption - generally not a bad idea to rein in periods of resource droughts and floods.

Another concern is Defile. Currently its massively stronger than 1 Scourge Strike + 1 Festering Wound pop. Is that simply a tuning issue that will be fixed later? Most of us really dont want to have to cast Defile for single target.
We don't intend for Defile/Death and Decay to be cast for single-target damage either, and will make changes to ensure this. Mostly will involve 1) increasing the damage of Scourge Strike and 2) reducing the damage of Defile and instead placing its value as a multi-target talent on its increased uptime (it's currently a 20 sec cooldown) compared to Death and Decay. Both of these changes should be in the next build, and we'll continue to keep an eye on this. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

[taek]

Was nice to see that blue response.

Priests in beta still have a talent called "Coming Soon!" and Unholy DKs are already getting improvements & iteration, even on cosmetics like Gargoyle-Arbiter.

Definitely going to keep on being Unholy for DPS in BfA.