So how would YOU redesign Death Knights?

[Deleted]

I personally don't think DKs are broken in any way... But, to me it does feel like Blizzard are unsure as to what direction to take us.

I wanted to throw a few ideas out there and see what others would like to be done to revamp the DK class somewhat before the next expansion. I'm not just talking about DPS or survivability either :-P Hell, I'm bored so this will likely be pretty long.

Disease Changes.

Diseases are a fairly large part of the DK arsenal but, IMO they could be re-worked/simplified so that each spec only has one disease.

Blood - Blood Plague, applied by blood strike or heart strike - Causes base nature damage over time and reduces the target's attack/casting speed by 15%
Frost - Frost Fever, applied by icy touch or howling blast - Causes frost damage over time + adds a magical vulnerability effect
Unholy - Ebon plague applied by plague strike - Causes shadow damage over time + adds a physical vulnerability effect

The damage done by each disease would obviously be more than a single disease would do today to compensate for the lack of the other one. Blood would lose access to both plague strike and icy touch. Frost would lose access to plague strike and unholy would lose access to icy touch. (I'll address the dispel/chilblains issues later on!). This change would go some way to improving the desirability of the mastery stat for both frost and unholy.

Making Crit more Desirable

Killing Machine devalues crit, which is a shame. To make crit more attractive KM and Sudden doom could work like chaos bolt. They could still proc off auto attack swings, or even auto attack crits but could have extra damage based on your current crit %

Obliterate

To make mastery more desirable for 2H frost Obliterate could be changed so that, if frost fever is on the target obliterate does 20% extra damage as frost damage (less than the 25% extra it does today to compensate for the armour penetrating effect of frost damage + Mastery). Similar to the shadow damage element of scourge strike.

Icy Touch + Howling Blast

Icy Touch's damage buffed to be the go-to single target Rime ability OR single target rune ability for DW. Howling blast's single target damage reduced below that of Icy Touch. HB's single target damage and cleave target damage now the same. This should mean use of HB in AOE/cleave situations and IT in single target situations.

Scourge Strike

Put simply the bonus strength from unholy might could be reduced or removed all together if blizzard would just buff the damage of scourge strike. It could have a higher modifier from weapon damage and deal 50% extra damage as shadow to compensate for the loss of frost fever = Better burst, possibly slightly less AOE ability depending on mastery value... And, for the love of god the shadow portion should be able to crit!

Ghoul Changes

Huddle is replaced by fortifying roar when not empowered, reducing ghoul damage taken by 50% for 10 seconds. When empowered the ability acts as a reality shift, putting the empowered ghoul in a shadow realm and making him invulnerable to any movement imparing effects, damage effects and abilties that lose control of the Ghoul for 10 seconds.

Dark transformation only requires 3 stacks of shadow infusion. Shadow infusion increases damage and HP of the ghoul by 15% for every stack.

Raise dead cooldown reduced to 1min for unholy.

Unholy now replaces Control Undead with Dominate Undead. Dominated undead minions are considered permanent pets. An unholy Death Knight can keep up to 3 different types of undead minion and summon them from a pet selection bar which spans from the Raise Dead ability. Different types of Undead minions have different abilities, the 4 main types being:

Casters (e.g Banshees - ranged spells, silence or HoTs)
Light DPS (e.g. Gheists - quick melee abilities, stuns or Bleeds)
Heavy DPS (e.g. Skeletal Swordsman - slow melee abilities, roots or bleeds)
Tanks (e.g. Abominations - Slow Melee abilities, absorbs or hook grips)

Soul Reaper

Shadowfrost damage, cannot be dispelled, still does damage if the DK dies.

Grasp

Chains of ice could be replaced by an ability called grasp (mainly for cosmetic reasons), the DK plunges his weapon into the ground and a death grip-type hand appears underneath the target, snaring him. Grasp can also be glyphed to dispel. Can be used while moving, would look awesome :-D

Talent Changes

Unholy Blight - Same as today but applies all 3 diseases (would normally only have access to one of them)
Plague Leech - 45 second cooldown, explodes for 100% of the remaining disease damage on a target, consumes the disease.
Rolling Blood - Blood Boil applies your spec's specific disease as well as buffing the damage component of Blood Boil slightly.

Lichborne - 10 second duration. When Lichborne is activated you're granted 100% RP in addition to your undead presence. Once the effect expires any remaining RP is removed.
AMZ - Now baseline for all DKs. Spell graphical effect unchanged, lasts 10 seconds, any friendly team member inside AMZ takes 35% less magical damage, replaced in talent tree by:
Mark of Blood - 1.5 min cooldown, place a Mark of Blood on an enemy. Whenever the marked enemy deals damage to a target, that target is healed for 5% of its maximum health. Lasts 15 seconds.
Purgatory - Upon taking a killing blow you're protected from death for 3 seconds. When the 3 seconds are up you will take damage equal to the damage taken during the previous 3 seconds over 10 seconds as a DoT.

Death's Advance - mainly unchanged, breaks roots/snares on use
chilblains name replaced with "sickly retreat" - victims of your diseases are slowed by 50%, Grasp roots the target for 3 seconds.

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Yeah, went a bit OTT. Would love to see some sort of defile ability too but that's not likely!

I know a lot of the above is pretty unrealistic but meh, any other ideas? :-D

[Wrien]

Gvie 2h frost the Frost Strike damage bonus from Threat of Thassarian instead of Obliterate and give DW the OBliterate damage bonus from 2h instead of Frost Strike.

or.

Add a new passive skill:

Threat of the Frozen Wastes (lol)
Increase melee damage by 10%, Frost Strike damage by 40% and Obliterate damage by 10% for both 2h and DW. Your melee skills will hit with both weapons while dual wielding.

(Remove current TOT and MotFW

[Optimus Primate]

Agree with some but not all.

- Definitely reduce amount of diseases to 1 per spec; been thinking about that for a while myself and it makes sense. Frost Disease for Frost, Unholy for Unholy, Blood for Blood.

- AMZ maybe not baseline, as AMS has that covered, but at least make AMZ move with the DK like Ring of Peace does. Would make some interesting group tactics if the team had to huddle up to the DK for protection. Think Mighty-ducks flying-V style.

- KM off all melee attacks does make it more interesting, but may increase out already outstanding burst even further.

- Icy Touch for Single damage, HB for AoE damage; should have been implemented long ago. It makes no sense that IB sits there purely for dispel (only if glyphed) and HB is our go-to ability. There needs to be a conscious choice between spending Rime procs, not just a spam attack. Also, if IT isn't glyphed, there is absolutely no use for it as a Frost DK.

- Soul Reaper has to be shadowfrost and needs to be dramatically redesigned. HAS to be. As a PvP Frost DK, I practically never use it. With healing, self healing, CCs and Immunities in the state they are, there is almost no situation where you could guarantee the opposition is going to be under 35%, 6 seconds ahead of time. Its too much of a risk in terms of wasting a rune if you try and predict it. And if you are certain the opposition is going to be under 35% for a few seconds, the choice move would be to finish them instantly with a final obliterate etc.

And this is just my own input: Chilblains needs to be baseline for frost; Final tier talents need a re-work, all are pretty poor; IBF needs RP cost removed (Standard for other classes); PoF needs Rune cost removed (Standard for other classes).

Good Post, +1.

[Saybel]

I'm already perfectly content with the class as it is - to me it's as perfect as a wow class can get now.

But to redesign it? oh god, where do I begin.

I'd probably redesign Unholy to begin with, to be more... necromancer-ish. Remove the second DoT from Frost and Blood, as they seem unneeded.

So to begin with -

Overall -

Lichborne is now passive to all death knights.
Blood Tap is now passive to all death knights, total amount of stacks raised to 15.
Outbreak is now Unholy only
All specs get a third resource - Blood (Hunger), Frost (Crystallize), Unholy (Raise)

Base rune speed regeneration reduced to 8 seconds.

T57 talents - Lichborne removed, AMZ removed.

New talents:

Shroud of the Lich; Consumes any 3 active runes to shield yourself for 30% of your current health - 1.5 minute cooldown.

Blood Armor - Causes your spilled blood to harden into spikes, 25% of the damage any attacker deals to you to be reflected back to them and damage them instead, lasts 8 seconds, no cost. - 2 minute cooldown.


75T talents redesigned - no more rune regeneration talents. New tier is concerned with raid utility. Our 3 new abilities are;

Anti Magic Zone (taken from old 57 tier) - Anti magic zone is now 12 yards in diameter. It reduces magic damage taken by all players within it by 30% for 12 seconds 2 minute cooldown

Icy fortitude - you fortify the nerves and bones of a friendly player (except the death knight) reducing all damage taken by 40%, and absorbing the next fatal attack (but not preventing it).

Blood Feast - The death knight thirsts for blood - 75% of the damage he deals for 12 seconds is divided between the raid as healing 3 minute cooldown.

Glyphs -

Glyph of Scourge Command -

Your eyes now glow with different colors according to your current presence.

Glyph of Corpse Explosion (changes)

This glyph now also works on players, additionally it does a minute amount of damage when exploding (2k~ at max level)

Glyph of the Shadow of the King -

When you perform a killing blow on a target that grants honor or experience with the detonation of soul reaper, a shadowy visage of the Lich King appears to gloat over your target

Glyph of Furious Cleaving -

Your heart strike is now 100% bloodier (Wild Strike animation)

Glyph of Frosty Obliteration -

Your Obliterate now appears as a flurry of ice.

Glyph of Killing Intent -

Transfix your gaze upon an unfortunate critter, your murderous intent causes the critter to explode and reform as a none-combat pet skeleton

Glyph of Shadow Grasp -

Your chains of ice now has the animation of a shadowy hand grasping onto your target (stole this from you vmagik <3)

Glyph of Summon Drudge Ghoul -

During your Army of the Dead cast, your weapon(s) will transform into Frostmourne for the period of the cast.

Glyph of Shadow Boil -

Your blood boil now animates as a shadowy wave.

Glyph of Scourge Power -

You now faintly glow with energy, giving you a thin colored outline dependent on your spec.

Frost -

Obliterate now deals 25% more damage when Frost fever is applied to the target.
Rime is no longer a thing.
Frost strike deals more damage to compensate for this.
Frost now has a resource called Crystallize, and an active ability with the same name. Crystallize has a maximum limit of 100. Obliterate gives 8 stacks of crystallize, Frost strike gives 3 stacks. It decays at a rate of 3 per 3 seconds.
When crystallize is activated, the Death Knight transforms into a icy bone warrior, all his abilities are empowered and do 10% more damage, crystallize lasts 1 second per 4 crystallize. the following abilites are affected in the following ways;

Obliterate; Your frozen form causes obliterate to shoot off Icy shards in all directions, causing 25% of it's original damage to be caused as splash damage to all none-crown controlled creatures within 12 yards
Frost Strike; Victims of your frost strike have their frost damage taken from the death knight increased by 8%, stacks 5 times.
Howling Blast; Howling blast applies crystal vein to all targets hit by the howling blast - when the target reaches 5 stacks of crystal vein the vein explodes, dealing 150% weapon damage to the target.

Blood -

Blood now has Blood Plague, this is applied by Blood Strike (so the ability isn't friggin useless)
Heart Strike now does 30% more damage when the target is afflicted with Blood Plague.
And, as the same with Frost, Blood has a resource called Hunger, and an active called Hunger;
Hunger - Stacks to 20, each Death Strike or Rune Strike provides half a stack of hunger, Rune Tap provides a full stack.
Hunger active - Consumes 10 stacks of hunger, the Death Knight transforms into a Darkfallen for 12 seconds, resetting the cooldown of Rune Tap. while a Darkfallen all damage causes a bleed for 8% of damage dealt, this bleed heals the Death Knight for 100% of the damage done every time it ticks. Additionally if Rune Tap is used while the bleed is active, the bleed is removed and all remaining damage is converted into healing.

Unholy -

Unholy has a third dot - Ebon Plague, Plague Strike now applies Ebon Plague and Frost Fever, Icy Touch applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague, Blood Strike applies Blood Plague and Ebon Plague. Outbreak applies all three.
Outbreak has no cooldown but costs a Death Rune.
Unholy has a new passive - Raise, each time your pet strikes the target it generates a stack of summon, Raise naturally restores outside of combat. Raise has 40 stacks, each stack grants 0.5 seconds of raise, raise cannot be generated while transformed.
Raise (active) - The Death Knight transforms into a Lich - giving him the ability to summon a pet of his choosing - additionally if army of the dead is used during raise it becomes instant and all pets summoned are of the type currently spawned by raise. The pets are as follows;

Raise: Gargoyle - Summons a gargoyle to bombard the target with Plague damage - the gargoyle does 90% less damage if Blood Plague is applied to the target
Raise: Abomination - Summons an abomination to strike down within all foes in his range - abominations do less damage to one target but large amounts to a number of targets - Abominations deal 90% less damage to any target with Frost Fever applied to the target
Raise: Val'kyr - Marks a target for the Val'kyr to attack, while raise is active all damage done by the Lich is copied and the Val'kyr deals 60% of the Liches damage to the marked target. Pets raised by army of the dead this way will do 20% of the liches damage divided among all targets in range of the marked target. Val'kyrs do 90% less damage to any targets afflicted by Ebon Plague (or if the main target is afflicted by Ebon Plague)
Raise: Empower causes you to explode with Shadowy power - Siphoning your diseases from all current targets and increasing your and your ghoul's damage by 50% and causing your abilities to act like diseases are applied to target - however any of your diseases being applied to any target will reduce your damage to it's normal amount

Raise also modifies some abilities -

Scourge Strike becomes Shadow Blast - can be used from 30 yards away, deals equivalent damage to the the original scourge strike would have done including the shadow portion.

Death and Decay becomes Defile - for every second a target stands in Defile, it's radius increases by 0.5 yards and it's damage increases by 10%

Change to dark transformation - Dark Transformation is still activated by Shadow Infusion stacks, but can be activated at any time, consuming 8 Raise for every missing stack of Shadow Infusion

Unholy mastery redesigned - Now increases damage done by all damage over time effects by 3.5% per 1% of mastery.

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Going to post this for now, started writing this post almost 2 hours ago, I have ideas but I keep forgetting and remembering them so I'll update as I remember, also the formatting will probably be a bit dodgy.

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Also, finally, yes, I realise almost all of this would make us overpowered monsters, but screw game balance, I would rather be an undead machine of doom and destruction.

[Itisamuh]

Regardless of anything else, I would make the rune mechanics like they were before Cataclysm. That was much more fast paced and fun.

[Wazooty]

Anything to make our rotation more interesting than mostly spamming 2 abilities.

Also, some cosmetic things. Like not having every single ability have the exact same animation. But that doesn't really matter since no matter what animation you give em, you're still spamming them.

[Deleted]

tbh i'd delete them from the game..

[Pull My Finger]

Seriously, they're fine. Players have the tendency to perceive a lot of the unique mechanic traits of their class as "broken" or "clunky". The truth is, every class has to deal with certain limitations and sets of problems, because trying to overcome them is part of the challenge to master the class. Limited ressources, cooldowns that clock in in an unsynchronized matter, functional bottlenecks etc. That's what makes you try and even out the edges and what makes a design concept work.

[Deleted]

@ Minxy

well played, sir.

Seriously, they're fine. Players have the tendency to perceive a lot of the unique mechanic traits of their class as "broken" or "clunky". The truth is, every class has to deal with certain limitations and sets of problems, because trying to overcome them is part of the challenge to master the class. Limited ressources, cooldowns that clock in in an unsynchronized matter, functional bottlenecks etc. That's what makes you try and even out the edges and what makes a design concept work.

I agree to an extent. I don't think DKs are broken at all, but rather than being a class that started with very little (i.e. rogues) and were then built up over time/expansions they are, unfortunately a class that started with an array of abilities and tools which have been trimmed, snipped and taken away. DKs are, in essence a simpler and more binary version of the class they used to be. They're functional but lack flavour and Blizzard have made some changes to try and hotfix the limitations of the class, be it permanent death runes, passive strength increases or Plague Strike applying both diseases! Abilities have been taken from some old trees and made passive or put in completely different specs all together without much thought being given to how that will fit the "feel" of that spec.

I disagree with your definition of a working design concept being "overcoming limitations" but I understand what you're saying. This post was more of a "if I were to make some design decisions regarding DKs" rather than "ZOMG THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE" and I was interested in seeing what other people thought could be changed, doesn't even need to be realistic :-D

[Saybel]

I have more, but I can't write it all atm, need to get ready and go out

Mainly, I'm focused about giving us something extra to do, the class is very binary and I focused more on giving us more ways to apply damage in different scenarios without creating craploads of clutter (well, unholy get a bit of clutter, but it's awesome clutter so yeah)

[Deleted]

I love my DK just the way it is!

[Wrien]

tbh i'd delete them from the game..

They currently are. CHillclains is bugged so there's no reason to play DK atm.

Remove DK's > bugged chillblains

[wonderlust]

Only thing I would change is making Frost and Unholy more balanced with each other, when it comes to difficulty. Right now, Frost is one of the easiest melee DPS specs in the game (if not the easiest), while Unholy is one of the most difficult. It's no wonder their popularity level is so different.

I would introduce at least one new mechanic to the basic Frost rotation (definitely something that is not proc-related, since they have enough of that), and remove one from Unholy (perhaps turn either Dark Transformation or Sudden Doom into something automatic, or at least into something that doesn't require the player's attention so often).

[danightryder]

alot of things for dk's need to be base like someone said, lichborne, blood tap that sorta stuff But over all i'd just change the rune system i find myself blindy stairing at my runes alot vs watching whats going on sometimes.

Post this on the main forums, they might use some ideas later on! You never know

[Saybel]

So yeah, I'm back, with some fun cosmetic stuff, you know, glyphs and the like, I'll add this to my main post too.

Let the funsies begin;

Glyph of Scourge Command -

Your eyes now glow with different colors according to your current presence.

Glyph of Corpse Explosion (changes)

This glyph now also works on players, additionally it does a minute amount of damage when exploding (2k~ at max level)

Glyph of the Shadow of the King -

When you perform a killing blow on a target that grants honor or experience with the detonation of soul reaper, a shadowy visage of the Lich King appears to gloat over your target

Glyph of Furious Cleaving -

Your heart strike is now 100% bloodier (Wild Strike animation)

Glyph of Frosty Obliteration -

Your Obliterate now appears as a flurry of ice.

Glyph of Killing Intent -

Transfix your gaze upon an unfortunate critter, your murderous intent causes the critter to explode and reform as a none-combat pet skeleton

Glyph of Shadow Grasp -

Your chains of ice now has the animation of a shadowy hand grasping onto your target (stole this from you vmagik <3)

Glyph of Summon Drudge Ghoul -

During your Army of the Dead cast, your weapon(s) will transform into Frostmourne for the period of the cast.

Glyph of Shadow Boil -

Your blood boil now animates as a shadowy wave.

Glyph of Scourge Power -

You now faintly glow with energy, giving you a thin colored outline dependent on your spec.

[dandex]

Lol, redesigning death knights made me laugh.

Redesign an older class like mage...

[Saybel]

Lol, redesigning death knights made me laugh.

Redesign an older class like mage...

It's more of a fun suggestion thread then anything, nowhere near a serious thread.

[Cerunnir]

Personally Runic Power, and how its implemented, is what bothers me the most. I feel its a useless resource, that could have been implemented in a much better way. For example for a blood DK the runic power (largly) is only used for runic strike, while a good ability they could just aswell have made it cost runes. They could add two more runes and move Runic Strike to away from Runic Power.

They could for example have made it into a slowly building resource that you can use as a cooldown. How much runic power you have gathered up decide the length, for example 100 runic gives you a cooldown lasting 20 seconds, while 50 runic give you 10 seconds.

I would also love to see unholy becoming a melee caster, with more more focus on spells.

More unlikely I would love to see the Death Knight rebranded (in the wake of the lich king) into a more Anti-Paladin/Necromancer style.

[Totle]

I'd probably want Unholy to be reworked into a more hybrid caster/melee akin to Shamans. Something like the Necromancers from Diablo 2.

They'd give up their melee weapon for a spell polearm, they'd trade in their battle plate for spell plate.

Plague Strike would be something more like a festering missile.
Rework Corpse Explosion to work on your ghoul while it's still alive (like the Black Knight's ability from ToC)
Incorporation of poison along with diseases, maybe like an aura, or a new Runeforge
Summonable Bone Walls that have low health but allow you to LoS some abilities

Their minion abilities would be magnified -
- being able to summon various types (in place of taming) with unique abilities
- having enemies killed come back as minions for a short duration

[gunnmen01]

Only one thing i would do. More than one DK per server.....