[BFA Beta] Unholy Changes Update

[Tr0xa]

How often Blizzard is updating beta build? Once a week or two? Or rarely? I'm just wondering when beta-testers will be able to check new improvements and give us some feedback.

[Deleted]

Finally got my BETA and got to test the new unholy dk, got to say I'm enjoying it, the full dot, cleave and rot style is really enjoyable. Also actually having your pet deal some good damage is a nice change! for example my SS is critting around 1-1.2k and my pet crits are around 1k also. I understand this is 110 and not 120 so the scaling may change but looking good so far.

Also much more enjoyable to use the new SI to lower the cooldown on DT, you no longer need to wait for the pet to come out of enrage, no more having to bank up so much DC's and RP to get it back into DT.

Haven't managed to play around with the different talents to see what is the most optimal so far but it looks like we have a lot of variety depending on the situation, only let down is the new Soul Reaper... very very disappointing, i would really enjoy just having it back to the execution version.

Anyone else agree with the Soul Reaper? or even like the current iteration?

[Yhcti]

The spec is really great, it's just the downtime kills me, you'll have such a fluent rotation then BAM 5-6 seconds of nothing... other than that. Unholy is really nice. Several DPS cooldowns in DT, Unholy Frenzy, Army, Apocalypse and Racials

[Th3Scourge]

Glad to hear they are going to do something about All Will Serve. It's just a bland talent that doesn't really fit with any of the class. It's just a skeletal archer. Would be WAAAAYYYY more flavorful to make it a caster that actually does something (debuffs the target/AoE).

There are so many Undead to choose from like a skeletal mage for example (Coldwraiths make perfect sense IMO, like my pic )

[Cosmic Janitor]

Anyone else agree with the Soul Reaper? or even like the current iteration?

Yeah the new soul reaper is completely disjointed from the rest of the spec, but I'd gladly sacrifice it for some of the other things. Getting rid of Abom and now having the option to have valkyr again is enough to raise my spirits alone .

Still not sure about the movement CDs, for my use cases it feels still like a nerf, but I guess everyone get's gimped in that regard.

[Nayami]

Yay! We'll still have access to our Val'kyr!

Looks like some more nice changes are coming for Unholy, can't wait to see what they're gonna do with All Will Serve.

Hopefully we'll see some Frost changes soon as well.

[Deleted]

For anyone who hasn't seen the update on MMO -------


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.

[Nayami]

Anyone else agree with the Soul Reaper? or even like the current iteration?

It feels meh at best tbh, even if numbers were tuned and it was actually a hard-hitter for its CD it just feels off because the haste buff is only applied if the target dies so most of the time it will be just a plain old shadow damage spell that is used on CD.

I would prefer it if you get a stacking haste buff while SR is dealing its damage and if the target dies while SR is active then its cooldown is reset to allow it to be used more often but only in certain scenarios.

[Deleted]

It feels meh at best tbh, even if numbers were tuned and it was actually a hard-hitter for its CD it just feels off because the haste buff is only applied if the target dies so most of the time it will be just a plain old shadow damage spell that is used on CD.

I would prefer it if you get a stacking haste buff while SR is dealing its damage and if the target dies while SR is active then its cooldown is reset to allow it to be used more often but only in certain scenarios.

Hmm sounds like a good interaction perhaps not the reset because that would be so over powered in boss fights with adds haha.

I do feel like unholy struggles with execution phase and soul reaper would be a cool helper there to bring it back to the 3 second debuff and if below 35% on expiration it would hit for a truck load... also really fun to use properly in arena and pvp.

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Also to further this Soul Reaper discussion, as far as im aware it is still a magical debuff right? so it will just get dispelled.

[Th3Scourge]

Hmm sounds like a good interaction perhaps not the reset because that would be so over powered in boss fights with adds haha.

I do feel like unholy struggles with execution phase and soul reaper would be a cool helper there to bring it back to the 3 second debuff and if below 35% on expiration it would hit for a truck load... also really fun to use properly in arena and pvp.

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Also to further this Soul Reaper discussion, as far as im aware it is still a magical debuff right? so it will just get dispelled.

I feel like they really need to look to the past iterations of Unholy to find the answers. MoP unholy had some great utility and interesting spells that should make a comeback

[Deleted]

I feel like they really need to look to the past iterations of Unholy to find the answers. MoP unholy had some great utility and interesting spells that should make a comeback

Yes most definitely, i personally enjoy the rot pet damage playstyle, i know some people just want to see big numbers etc... but for me Unholy is about controlling undead minions and rotting your enemies down, i am really happy that unholy blight is back and the pet damage seems to be scaled up now which is nice.

[Nayami]

Hmm sounds like a good interaction perhaps not the reset because that would be so over powered in boss fights with adds haha.

I do feel like unholy struggles with execution phase and soul reaper would be a cool helper there to bring it back to the 3 second debuff and if below 35% on expiration it would hit for a truck load... also really fun to use properly in arena and pvp.

Man I would love for that version of SR to be back... It was hands-down the most interesting execute ability (imo at least). I remember being complete crap at using this spell at first, but after you got used to it you realise how effectively it could be used other than simply waiting for your target to drop below the 35% threshold. I especially liked it in PvP since health levels would fluctuate like crazy. I remember applying Soul Reaper on enemy healers in arena when their health was still at 90% because my warrior partner and I would blow up the healer and most of the time SR would trigger and if it was a critical strike... rip healer for sure.

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I feel like they really need to look to the past iterations of Unholy to find the answers. MoP unholy had some great utility and interesting spells that should make a comeback

MoP had a lot of fantastic classes tbh. I remember (other than DK) classes like rogues, mages, monks (RIP Fist-weaving <3) and warlocks being super-fun. I didn't try out all the classes during MoP, but I definitely loved the ones I tried out.

[Deleted]

SR would trigger and if it was a critical strike... rip healer for sure.

Even if it procced with no crit that thing hit hard as F! such a cool ability and worked really well with Necrotic strike back then healers would have to try and out heal a huge debuff and the SR before it went off haha good times...

[Baddok21]

I wonder if the army/apoc reduction talent will be moved to Tier 100, because outside of that it will instantly replace w/e talent it competes with in any other tier.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I wonder if the army/apoc reduction talent will be moved to Tier 100, because outside of that it will instantly replace w/e talent it competes with in any other tier.

Not even sure what the guy the blue quoted was responding to. At first I thought this was about the unholy infusion, but apparently that only affects DT. I agree though, it's such a powerfull thing, it only would fit in the last tier or it will eclipse all other options in lower tiers for ST.

[Acelius]

I feel like they really need to look to the past iterations of Unholy to find the answers. MoP unholy had some great utility and interesting spells that should make a comeback

Man, I miss playing the Festerblight style back in Throne of Thunder. Was so much fun.

[garonne]

You shouldn't be looking at soul reaper for mainly the haste buff. That row is there for rune regeneration. The haste just an added bonus as its granting us a rune when we use it.

[Kendros]

Finally got my BETA and got to test the new unholy dk, got to say I'm enjoying it, the full dot, cleave and rot style is really enjoyable. Also actually having your pet deal some good damage is a nice change! for example my SS is critting around 1-1.2k and my pet crits are around 1k also. I understand this is 110 and not 120 so the scaling may change but looking good so far.

Also much more enjoyable to use the new SI to lower the cooldown on DT, you no longer need to wait for the pet to come out of enrage, no more having to bank up so much DC's and RP to get it back into DT.

Haven't managed to play around with the different talents to see what is the most optimal so far but it looks like we have a lot of variety depending on the situation, only let down is the new Soul Reaper... very very disappointing, i would really enjoy just having it back to the execution version.

Anyone else agree with the Soul Reaper? or even like the current iteration?

I like how it work on live now, but if it has to change id rather have the execution version it was great for stealling kills in pvp.

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Glad to hear they are going to do something about All Will Serve. It's just a bland talent that doesn't really fit with any of the class. It's just a skeletal archer. Would be WAAAAYYYY more flavorful to make it a caster that actually does something (debuffs the target/AoE).

There are so many Undead to choose from like a skeletal mage for example (Coldwraiths make perfect sense IMO, like my pic )

Skeletal mage just like those in Strat or Scholo would be perfect.

[Baddok21]

looks around awkwardly

the new changes to the DK pass of talents has been everything i mentioned

[Deleted]

Man, I miss playing the Festerblight style back in Throne of Thunder. Was so much fun.

It was a lot of fun. Accidentally on purpose spreading dots to kited bats was especially fun