The Fundamental Problem With Death Knights

[Nnyco]

It wasn't tricky, your abilities used specific runes and all you needed to do was learn a rotation. No different than now.

It wasnt tricky but clunky as fuck, having to icy touch during aoe for example.

[Absintheminded]

It wasnt tricky but clunky as fuck, having to icy touch during aoe for example.

That's what Death Runes were for, not to mention the fact that you simply needed to use IT for a disease (unless you were disease less Blood).

I'd like to add, that if you were Frost, HB originally used a Frost Rune. If you were unholy, you would only really need one IT every 15 seconds or so, because DnD used one of each rune. Seriously, it wasn't clunky at all.

[Nnyco]

That's what Death Runes were for, not to mention the fact that you simply needed to use IT for a disease (unless you were disease less Blood).

I'd like to add, that if you were Frost, HB originally used a Frost Rune. If you were unholy, you would only really need one IT every 15 seconds or so, because DnD used one of each rune. Seriously, it wasn't clunky at all.

As unholy you had festering striked twice to make your runes uudddd shortly before aoe started, then you bloodboiled 4x to aoe and they became normal again.
After you had uuffbb, you used blood runes for bloodboil and had frost runes left only useable for icy touch, or the alternative where you used festering strike again to convert em to death, but that is basically the same amount of bloodboils as if you icy touch'd.

[Zarvel]

It wasnt tricky but clunky as fuck, having to icy touch during aoe for example.

At least there was an aspect of decision making to the class in that regard. Having both diseases up and maintaining the dots actually contributed to your dps as an unholy and a frost death knight, not to mention their contribution to creation of death runes which added to player agency. The "clunky" design had unintentionally given frost/unholy some amount of depth and decision making that is completely absent these days.
Now it's just - get 1 disease up (either spec) -> dump all remaining runes to prep for a cooldown (BoS or Apoc) -> use fillers and resource free dmg procs like rime and sudden death -> wait for cd's to come back up while you repeat a dull and weak hitting filler. You no longer have to worry about rune management as a DK, which is unfortunate, the class was supposed to revolve around that resource.

Where's my death rune management? Where's my skill-based reward in the gameplay? Why is my setup process so long in both dps specs? Why does everything hit to weak outside the 1.5-2minute long CDs? Why have you removed the choice I had to tank as any of the 3 specs? Why have you removed the choice to DPS as any of the 3 specs? Forget 3, not even a choice between 2.... DK was a hybrid class for tanking and DPS, far cry from it now. We're a generic builder spender now.
They band-aid the lack of depth in game play and the lack of bursty damage that the class is missing baseline, with stuff like talents and azerite traits.
I keep bringing up the necrotic plague UH build from WOD on any dk related topic I post in, and for good reason. They hit peak design for unholy in WoD, with NP and with Arbiter, and the fact that it was an actual choice and oh, we also had a pseudo-execute ability in SR. Frost for me had hit it's peak in Cata and has only been downhill since. Like someone else had brought up in this thread, the fact that BoS has been the reigning ST talent for 2 expansions in a row is a damn shame and a clear fault in class design.

Just giving DK's flat % aura buffs to their damage (happened twice this expansion already) won't make up for what they're lacking. DK's have become the meme of "easiest melee class to play" because blizzard's been moving them in that direction with bad design decisions. And they for some reason have accepted this meme and continue to change/balance it while keeping that perception alive.

[Absintheminded]

As unholy you had festering striked twice to make your runes uudddd shortly before aoe started, then you bloodboiled 4x to aoe and they became normal again.
After you had uuffbb, you used blood runes for bloodboil and had frost runes left only useable for icy touch, or the alternative where you used festering strike again to convert em to death, but that is basically the same amount of bloodboils as if you icy touch'd.

I'm only talking from the POV of Wrath. Festering Strike was added for Cata. I don't really care for DK post-Wrath. Just for the record I'm perfectly fine with HB/BB/DnD for Frost AOE and BB/diseases/DnD for UH.

[Nnyco]

I'm only talking from the POV of Wrath. Festering Strike was added for Cata. I don't really care for DK post-Wrath. Just for the record I'm perfectly fine with HB/BB/DnD for Frost AOE and BB/diseases/DnD for UH.

Wotlk dk was even more clunky.

[Unholyground]

The 2handed frost situation is easily fixed via transmog by adding the number of both auto/ability attacks as one number and allowing to transmog your main handed weapon into a 2handed weapon, and since the other 2 specs cannot use 1handed weapons there is no way to glitch it out or abuse it.

This is the easiest solution and under the hood not much would have to change to accomplish this.

[Socialhealer]

100% agree with your assessment that Death Knights should be one of the hardest hitting classes in the game.

A slow moving Juggernaut of death. The fact that "bursting" a sore on Unholy does pitiful damage is really weird to me. Diseases should do consistent DoT damage then if you get on top of them you should hit like a truck.

We have the worst mobility in the game.


Frost... Haven't touched Frost since it went dual wield. Fuck that.

nah unholy is a slow moving unkillable force, love seeing unholy dks in bgs 9 million damage, 7 million healing, fucking resto knights.

[Aleksej89]

Dual wield should not be a DK thing at all IMHO, never liked that it was a part of the class in wow.

Frost always felt shite cause its abilities were without any personality or character.
It has "frost fart" and "hit harder" type of attacks... that is it... really lame and boring and not even memorable.
The spec is a generic basic fighter with blue colored attacks... braindead simple mechanics...
Frost Mages at least have "icicles" and "shatter" mechanic that somewhat resembles a frost theme.

Unholy has a lot of character (unlike frost) with the disease spreading and frenzied undead pets and the overall theme of plague/undeath.
However its gameplay mechanics have often been impractical or just not all that convenient to use or keep track of.
But at least the "fantasy" of an unholy oriented Death Knight is portrayed well in unholy.

[Absintheminded]

Wotlk dk was even more clunky.

lol Ok. It was quite simple, and wasn't clunky for me at all.

[Kithelle]

Always felt Unholy should probably be a death by a 1000 wounds while Frost makes more sense with the big weapon...also be nice since we only have 2 melee pet specs and both of them are 2H...would set it a little more apart from Survival if Unholy were DW.

[Zorachus]

If any Death Knight spec was going to dual wield, makes most sense for Unholy, with the spreading of diseases seems would be smarter to have two weapons that do that, sort of like Assassination Rogue. And Frost should only be a giant 2h weapon, smashing the enemy with gigantic blasts.

But the biggest issue with DK's in BfA is the slow rune regeneration, and cool down and wait times for spells to be ready. I want it to fele almost like Lust is on 24/7, super fluid fast spell casting.

I want a nonstop smooth rotation of Outbreak X1, Festering Strike X1, Scourge Strike X2 or 3, Epidemic X1, and let me rinse and repeat that nonstop with zero waiting and keep it gong smooth at wrap speed. ye sit's easy to start off with that rotation I just gave, but once you start doing a second round of it, some slow downs come up, and then a third round of it forget it, there's major slow downs.

Or I can just Scourge Strike x 3 or 4 and Death Coil X 1, rinse and repeat, that works, but doesn't do much. Which is my quick World Quests rotation for fast kills, and is fun.