UH is a design patchwerk

[Lodravel]

What were they thinking when they reiterated on this class over the past expansions? It's like they took several puzzle pieces and duct taped them together instead of solving the puzzle to make a fitting picture.
We've got a pet, we've got the runic system, we've got festering wounds, we've got a disease... and it's like most of these parts function independantly of one another. It doesn't flow together.

You manage your pet but it has no effect on festering wounds, the other core mechanic. You manage your wounds but then you get random Death Coil procs thrown at you. On top, you need to reapply a dot every couple seconds. Not complex or difficult - Everything is just so disjunct!

I guess I'm just frustrated because I enjoy the spec and I can see that it could yet be better.

[Runicblood]

I strongly disagree and enjoy the spec very much and feel like i have some nice flow going when i run m+.

Pet has effect on festerinng wound if you spec into infected claws. I feel our "core mechanic" this patch has moved away from festering wounds though. This patch it's all about stacking mastery and getting maximum pet damage out with unholy blight and army of the damned. Pump out armies and DT, drop the cooldown asap with death coils and epidemics.

It is a slightly different feel to BFA, but all in all I think I enjoy it more and actually feel good playing.

How could you see it improved? Where's the turnoff?

[hasslehoof]

What were they thinking when they reiterated on this class over the past expansions? It's like they took several puzzle pieces and duct taped them together instead of solving the puzzle to make a fitting picture.
We've got a pet, we've got the runic system, we've got festering wounds, we've got a disease... and it's like most of these parts function independantly of one another. It doesn't flow together.

You manage your pet but it has no effect on festering wounds, the other core mechanic. You manage your wounds but then you get random Death Coil procs thrown at you. On top, you need to reapply a dot every couple seconds. Not complex or difficult - Everything is just so disjunct!

I guess I'm just frustrated because I enjoy the spec and I can see that it could yet be better.

because they felt like changing one of the best specs in the game in the name of class fantasy during legion. it's so fucking sad what we've got compared to what we had.

[Nerovar]

I fully agree. Death Knight in general is an absolute monstrosity in terms of design since Legion.

[Lodravel]

I strongly disagree and enjoy the spec very much and feel like i have some nice flow going when i run m+.

Pet has effect on festerinng wound if you spec into infected claws. I feel our "core mechanic" this patch has moved away from festering wounds though. This patch it's all about stacking mastery and getting maximum pet damage out with unholy blight and army of the damned. Pump out armies and DT, drop the cooldown asap with death coils and epidemics.

It is a slightly different feel to BFA, but all in all I think I enjoy it more and actually feel good playing.

How could you see it improved? Where's the turnoff?

I also like the spec and I quite enjoy the gameplay! Then again, I'd like some more interaction between the mechanics. Stuff like infected claws should be baseline. I'd also appreciate if the virulent plague mechanic would somehow be more tied into our rotation other than just being a "push this button every X seconds".

Just off the top of my head. Game design is easy to criticize but to come up with something that could actually work, that's the hard part. Hence why I'm only doing the former. Haha

[Saltysquidoon]

Unholy was in the wilderness after snapshotting was removed, the majority of the spec's gameplay was dedicated to extending super amped dots which just stopped being possible. Playing an unholy DK in wod was basically just playing the game of 'how few times can I realistically press festering per encounter'.

I suppose there is an argument to be made that the 'coil empowers timmy' and infected claws interactions should be baseline to complete the circle. But that's really just an argument of how much of essential kit vs bonuses should be tied up in talents.

People are just too caught up in 'unholy is the dot spec' or believe that festering wounds is the core part of the spec, they're not, they're just something to do while your pets do the heavy lifting. Unholy is a pet spec now.

[Re4leader1]

Don't worry, UH will be clunky AND weak when blizz goes too far with their nerf next week...

[VinceVega]

What were they thinking when they reiterated on this class over the past expansions? It's like they took several puzzle pieces and duct taped them together instead of solving the puzzle to make a fitting picture.
We've got a pet, we've got the runic system, we've got festering wounds, we've got a disease... and it's like most of these parts function independantly of one another. It doesn't flow together.

You manage your pet but it has no effect on festering wounds, the other core mechanic. You manage your wounds but then you get random Death Coil procs thrown at you. On top, you need to reapply a dot every couple seconds. Not complex or difficult - Everything is just so disjunct!

I guess I'm just frustrated because I enjoy the spec and I can see that it could yet be better.

I REALLY enjoy UH DK right now. AS i have in BfA.
The pet and the wounds work together. The disease is a quick thing on top.
Not everything has to be intertwined.

I think it is good as is.

Frost on the other hand is boring as hell.

[Lodravel]

I REALLY enjoy UH DK right now. AS i have in BfA.
The pet and the wounds work together. The disease is a quick thing on top.
Not everything has to be intertwined.

I think it is good as is.

Frost on the other hand is boring as hell.

Fair enough, although there's always room for improvement IMO. When did you start playing UH?

And yeah, frost is boring as hell. :'D

[VinceVega]

Fair enough, although there's always room for improvement IMO. When did you start playing UH?

And yeah, frost is boring as hell. :'D

I played my DK for all specs over the years as an alt bascially since wotlk^^
Never on a high level in either mythic raiding or dungeons. But i got into heroic and Mythic+ up to 10.

I think the only thing i would chang is to make it a bit easier to apply the wounds. Tone down the damage inr retrun. But sometimes it seems a bit difficult to get them up before you want to make everything explode in a ball of disease^^

[Runicblood]

make it a bit easier to apply the wounds. Tone down the damage inr retrun.

What's so hard about pressing (in my case) 2 -> tab -> 2 -> tab -> repeat until satisfied -> dnd -> spam scourge strike

edit: it gets even easier if you have infected claws. Pop DT -> DnD -> spam scourge strike, everything will have festering on it anyways

[Greengrim]

I strongly disagree and enjoy the spec very much and feel like i have some nice flow going when i run m+.

I second this opinion.

[LordVargK]

because they felt like changing one of the best specs in the game in the name of class fantasy during legion. it's so fucking sad what we've got compared to what we had.

That can be said of very many specs that were changed in Legion. Is there any spec that was improved and not butchered?

But OT: I enjoy playing UH, even though it IS a patchwerk of independant systems.

[VinceVega]

What's so hard about pressing (in my case) 2 -> tab -> 2 -> tab -> repeat until satisfied -> dnd -> spam scourge strike

edit: it gets even easier if you have infected claws. Pop DT -> DnD -> spam scourge strike, everything will have festering on it anyways

Never said it is hard per se. But just very... chaotic. And for a new play unholy isone of the more difficult classes to have consisten damage.

No class in wow is hard. Not one single class or spec. One or two weeks and you have everything down. Mechanics and your reaction to them are the hard part.

[Lodravel]

That can be said of very many specs that were changed in Legion. Is there any spec that was improved and not butchered?

But OT: I enjoy playing UH, even though it IS a patchwerk of independant systems.

Huh. Can't actually think of one. Maybe fire mage but only because I couldn't stand the WoD version.

[cordrann]

That can be said of very many specs that were changed in Legion. Is there any spec that was improved and not butchered?

But OT: I enjoy playing UH, even though it IS a patchwerk of independant systems.

Fury and arms were both massively improved going from WoD to legion. DK was so good in WoD though, it was destined to be worse after a major rework. I quite liked going back and forth between breath and plague build in HFC on unholy. Also the permanent breath build for blood was crazy fun in BRF. That might just be because it was so op though.

[saixilein]

i agree. I just did some pvp with UH DK back in Cata/MoP, but after that he never felt so cool again. I like to spread dots, kite my Enemy etc. After the Rework i realy disliked UH DK. Same with Fury Warrior. Liked Fury A LOT in Cata & MoP PvE, since Legion its meh.

[msdos]

I abandoned Unholy because of the design. Imagine everything you listed, but then you have to manage the pet in M+ and PVP. It teetered over the top for me. They just now cut down on the ramp up in Shadowlands, but they were dumpster tier in Legion until they changed Taktheritrix. The Sephuz thing was a bug and got fixed. The skele mages were broke for Uldir tier. The AOE was redundant and conflicting as you don't have the GCDs to epidemic but also SS everything in your D&D. The gargoyle was never picked in BFA. Necrotic Strike was neutered.

They could trim some of Unholy's stuff down and just have the gargoyle do more, but they want it to be a turbo piano spec apparently.

[Kaleredar]

DoT snapshotting was a fundamentally bad design. A class’ entire identity and mechanical playstyle shouldn’t be defined strictly by obtuse math that isn’t even remotely readily apparent or even particularly intuitive. If you need to do google research to figure out even the basics of how a class is “really” supposed to function, as was the case with snapshotting, the class is poorly designed.

As it stands now, UH DKs might have a lot of buttons to press, but they at least feel like they’re all feeding into one another. Spend Runes to generate RP, spend RP to proc corruption/lower CD empower ghoul. Every ability (apocalypse, gargoyle, epidemic, whatever) feeds in to or benefits from some part of that. For as many abilities as they have, they don’t really have any floater filler abilities that don’t fit in to their broader playstyle.

I also think, in a broader sense, UH DKs are more succinctly designed. For example, Drop DnD, an ability you’d use in aoe situations anyway and boom, your scourge strike now cleaves. That’s pretty smart design. Many other classes have AoE abilities that are sort of “it’s basically this other single target ability you use, but in aoe situations you spam this bastardized version instead” that clutters up your action bar.

[SunspotAnims]

A good way to sharpen the identity of the spec would be to fold Festering Wounds (both as a resource and a source of damage) into the minion aspect. Instead of applying wounds, you summon fodder minions, and instead of bursting wounds, you sacrifice minions.

It would look cooler, sharpen the disparate minion and wound facets of the spec into one mechanic, and detaching the "wound" resource from each target makes target-swapping easier.