Reroll from Dk

[Shiira]

I got rank 3 on nazgrim this week.

I was 17th in my raid.

That's pretty extreme, my performance elsewhere is less polarised.

I have a rank 36 on protectors where I was 16th, a rank 37 on juggernaut where I was 12th, a rank 16 on dark shamans where I was 7th, a rank 33 on malkorok where I was 12th, a rank 20 on spoils where I was 4th, a rank 22 on thok where I was 12th.

Our relative lack of scaling as dw frost is exacerbated on farm content by everyone getting high cooldown uptime due to short kills and us not benefiting as much from it due to bad cooldowns. Progress logs are far more relevant to actual class balance, I wasn't exactly tearing up the meters on progress either but I was definitely doing better than I am now.

[Methosmv]

Not to mention you'll get a free 90 on release. I wouldn't get too hasty about changing things just yet. Wait and see, then get it free!

Ok I've not been a WoW player for years,, how do we get a free 90 on release? Don't remember that when MoP came out or did I just miss something?

[Freya6]

In WoD you can choose one class and autoboost it to 90.

My comment is this, whereas not helpful, I love this class so much I wouldn't change to another even if we were rockbottom. But that's just me probably. The solution for not getting into raids etc is either make your own raid team, or raid with people who don't just look at what's the fotm class to take into their raids. And since fights do vary on how well or not we perform, we are still useful and quite there on the dps meter. Apart form us being quite valuable if we use our talents well in relations to said mechanics. Not that other classes can't do the same and do more dps, but the point remains, why would you even need that. Why would you need that extra 30-40k dps in fights we can't output it when you can down said content already anyway.

I get that it's frustrating, I also want the effort I put in the game to be awarded with the ability to match or outmatch other classes, though at least I've chosen to play with people who prioritise raiding together than just getting whatever fotm class there is. Else half the dpses would be locks and mages.

[Raikh]

I think I've got it wrong anyway about ilvl, it's still going up. The difference is that the gear simply has less stats on it. The examples given at Blizzcon are as follows.

Current ilvl 530
490,873 HP
20,640 Int
46,928 Fireball

Post squish ilvl 530
30,375 HP
1100 Int
2209 Fireball

So go slow with me how does having less stats on items mean we will still bad if there's some kind of magical 560 ilvl break point that DKs suddenly stop scaling well? Isn't too many stats meant to be our current problem?

Your patience is appreciated.

You basically said it, gear just have less stats. Assuming the item quish occurs in a prepatch 6.0.1. From that point on the numbers are dratsically lower. But in comparison our output will be the same. If you had 25% crit before you will still have 25% crit, if you had 100% mastery you will keep it. As numbers on stats go down the requirements for 1% of a stat do also go down by the same degree.
Your HB will now crit for lets say 60k instead of 600k (the actual output will go down by more, around 95% given blizzcon numbers) so our overall dps will go down by the same degree, instead of 400k, 40k. Now the same applies to a warlock, he does now instead of 500k dps, 50k dps meaning the percentual difference between the classes stay the same.

The squish doesn't change what stats do for us, just the number scale channges, its absolutely an aestehtic change as numbers statrting to look really ridiculous. (I personally have no problem with high numbers but i can imagine that it is irritating for players sometimes.)

If we now look at the stat reset with WoD, now assuming we just would go back in time to hc 5mans/t14 with current class design and how spells work. What would pierce into the eye is, that especially frost dk would be op over the top and has to be adjusted aka nerfed to the ground. If we assume now all classes would start in line with about 10% difference between highest and lowest dps.

Now we start into the content, equal to everyone else or maybe even a bit better. We jump from ilvl 463 to ilvl 496 and are still okay, we got setboni, wepaons trinkets and such. Specs like Firemages, Boomkins, afflis have low haste/crit making the double dipping of sec stats not too strong (having less procs, dot ticks and such).
Now we take 509 heroic gear, 13 ilvls difference. Their stats increase by 1,01^13 which is about 13,8% increase in stats so if we have 10k sec stats in 596, we will have about 13800 in 509.
For it being simple i will just reduce it to only having crit, being considered as the best stat.

The dk now gets 3800 additional crit (500 crit = 1% for this example) He had 20% crit form the former 10k crit, now reaching 27,6% crit. Thats about 6,3% dmg increase.
Caster Class A now gets the same thing, up from 20% to 27,6% getting 6,3% dmg increase. BUT the caster also gets more procs resulting in more dmg from crit, meaning that crit does not only increase the rough dmg but also increases procs which result in higher dmg anyway. This means that A gets actually more than a 6,3% dmg increase but lets say 7%, about 10% more than the dk gets from the gear upgrade.

So the dk had 100k dps with 0% crit, jumping now to 127,6k dps with ilvl 509, A now jumps from the same 100k to 130k dps.
So now we jump into heroic ToT 535 ilvl, being an increase of whole 26 ilvl.
13800 * 1,01^26 ~ 17900 stats now being available.
Both jump from 27,6% crit to 35,8% crit, being a 6,4% increase in dmg. The dk jumps to 135,8k dps and A to 139,4k dps.

Result: A got 3,6k dps more from the gear than the dk and from increase to increase the difference gets bigger, at first difference was 2,4k, at 535 it is already 3,6k being a full 50% increase in difference.

For this example the difference is quite low, in reality it is much higher, especially as we have 3 stats which can work this way. Additional we also have a negative sclaing, due to km procs we don't get the full 1% gain from 0->1% crit but only lets say 0,8%, meaning we wouldn't even jump to 120k, but only to 116k.
If we now take haste in, which increases the number of km procs crit might go even lower, from 0,8 to 0,75 or so, meaning the more of one stat we get, the less we can gain from another. (this is especially for frost 2h, as we can focus km procs on oblit and it makes up for a huge part of our dmg alone)
For A it might be the other way round getting even more out of crit because of getting more chances through more dot ticks which lets them skip weak filler for their oblit equivalent.
We have one stat which works similar, which is haste, but it loses its worth way to early, additionally it potentially hurts the value of another stat instead of increasing it.

So now coming towards the current situation. Lets say at the end of ToT the dk had 200k dps and A 240k dps. Developers now thinking, yea that sucks have to buff dk. They see yeah 20% more needed to be on par with A, so dk gets a straight 20% buff. But we still scale the same way and A scales the same way. We get 20k dps he may gets 25k and the difference increases again.
If we now look back at ilvl 509 at which dk did 127,6k dps and A did 130k dps. Dk got buffed by 20%, so now he's doing 153,12k at 509 being way stronger than A.
This difference shrinks up to being 0 at 353 at the end of ToT (taking the 200k/240k example of course)

So until end of ToT we are stronger than A and since from that we get weaker again.

Now the new expansion kicks in and balances everything back to 100k, including itemsquish it may now be 10k. The dk going up to 12,76k, A going up to 13k etc. With same mechanics its starting over and over and over and over again and we shouldn't expect shit to change.

[Skarssen]

I like when I got to the isle on my DK and pick up the Chi-ji buff.......and nothing really feels any different. Contrast that to my fury warrior, which with the Chi-Ji buff feels like a warrior jacked up on testosterone, amphetamine, cocaine, and ammonia salts.

[Kronik85]

You basically said it, gear just have less stats. Assuming the item quish occurs in a prepatch 6.0.1. From that point on the numbers are dratsically lower. But in comparison our output will be the same. If you had 25% crit before you will still have 25% crit, if you had 100% mastery you will keep it. As numbers on stats go down the requirements for 1% of a stat do also go down by the same degree.
Your HB will now crit for lets say 60k instead of 600k (the actual output will go down by more, around 95% given blizzcon numbers) so our overall dps will go down by the same degree, instead of 400k, 40k. Now the same applies to a warlock, he does now instead of 500k dps, 50k dps meaning the percentual difference between the classes stay the same.

The squish doesn't change what stats do for us, just the number scale channges, its absolutely an aestehtic change as numbers statrting to look really ridiculous. (I personally have no problem with high numbers but i can imagine that it is irritating for players sometimes.)

If we now look at the stat reset with WoD, now assuming we just would go back in time to hc 5mans/t14 with current class design and how spells work. What would pierce into the eye is, that especially frost dk would be op over the top and has to be adjusted aka nerfed to the ground. If we assume now all classes would start in line with about 10% difference between highest and lowest dps.

Now we start into the content, equal to everyone else or maybe even a bit better. We jump from ilvl 463 to ilvl 496 and are still okay, we got setboni, wepaons trinkets and such. Specs like Firemages, Boomkins, afflis have low haste/crit making the double dipping of sec stats not too strong (having less procs, dot ticks and such).
Now we take 509 heroic gear, 13 ilvls difference. Their stats increase by 1,01^13 which is about 13,8% increase in stats so if we have 10k sec stats in 596, we will have about 13800 in 509.
For it being simple i will just reduce it to only having crit, being considered as the best stat.

The dk now gets 3800 additional crit (500 crit = 1% for this example) He had 20% crit form the former 10k crit, now reaching 27,6% crit. Thats about 6,3% dmg increase.
Caster Class A now gets the same thing, up from 20% to 27,6% getting 6,3% dmg increase. BUT the caster also gets more procs resulting in more dmg from crit, meaning that crit does not only increase the rough dmg but also increases procs which result in higher dmg anyway. This means that A gets actually more than a 6,3% dmg increase but lets say 7%, about 10% more than the dk gets from the gear upgrade.

So the dk had 100k dps with 0% crit, jumping now to 127,6k dps with ilvl 509, A now jumps from the same 100k to 130k dps.
So now we jump into heroic ToT 535 ilvl, being an increase of whole 26 ilvl.
13800 * 1,01^26 ~ 17900 stats now being available.
Both jump from 27,6% crit to 35,8% crit, being a 6,4% increase in dmg. The dk jumps to 135,8k dps and A to 139,4k dps.

Result: A got 3,6k dps more from the gear than the dk and from increase to increase the difference gets bigger, at first difference was 2,4k, at 535 it is already 3,6k being a full 50% increase in difference.

For this example the difference is quite low, in reality it is much higher, especially as we have 3 stats which can work this way. Additional we also have a negative sclaing, due to km procs we don't get the full 1% gain from 0->1% crit but only lets say 0,8%, meaning we wouldn't even jump to 120k, but only to 116k.
If we now take haste in, which increases the number of km procs crit might go even lower, from 0,8 to 0,75 or so, meaning the more of one stat we get, the less we can gain from another. (this is especially for frost 2h, as we can focus km procs on oblit and it makes up for a huge part of our dmg alone)
For A it might be the other way round getting even more out of crit because of getting more chances through more dot ticks which lets them skip weak filler for their oblit equivalent.
We have one stat which works similar, which is haste, but it loses its worth way to early, additionally it potentially hurts the value of another stat instead of increasing it.

So now coming towards the current situation. Lets say at the end of ToT the dk had 200k dps and A 240k dps. Developers now thinking, yea that sucks have to buff dk. They see yeah 20% more needed to be on par with A, so dk gets a straight 20% buff. But we still scale the same way and A scales the same way. We get 20k dps he may gets 25k and the difference increases again.
If we now look back at ilvl 509 at which dk did 127,6k dps and A did 130k dps. Dk got buffed by 20%, so now he's doing 153,12k at 509 being way stronger than A.
This difference shrinks up to being 0 at 353 at the end of ToT (taking the 200k/240k example of course)

So until end of ToT we are stronger than A and since from that we get weaker again.

Now the new expansion kicks in and balances everything back to 100k, including itemsquish it may now be 10k. The dk going up to 12,76k, A going up to 13k etc. With same mechanics its starting over and over and over and over again and we shouldn't expect shit to change.

I really do appreciate all the time your taking to type this out. ToT is the part that confuses me the most, mostly because your example is wrong. "A" does not do 240k DPS vs our 200k, we are the top DPS spec in ToT, Warlocks are shit in ToT gear yet they tear SoO a new one. So ye that bit seems backward in my mind.

I honestly can't get my head round the idea that we can be godly in ToT gear which is far far far more powerful than anything we are going to see....potentially ever unless Blizz want to move to a bigger integer. If Warlock strength comes from SoO gear that we will never ever see again and we do better than them in less powerful gear and gear in WoD is less powerful then....then I'm confused...like always really.

To try and clarify DKs sim the highest in ToT gear, people say that's coz we had baseline buffs, fine cool, I understand this. We then get "outscaled" as the tier goes on in gear that will never exist again. I don't get how we can be fine in ToT gear yet be terrible in WoD gear when it's less powerful.

/edit: Looks like I misremembered, we aint the top in ToT T15HC sims (on 5.4) but it's a much better position than what people see now. I'll leave the language such as "god like" unedited, but calling me on it is a pointless endeavour.

http://simulationcraft.org/540/Raid_T15H.html

[Deleted]

In Cataclyzm we had such problems like ATM ? I don't really remember of it. I still hoping for the next content we get some changes , to become a little better. Warriors were always good. At 5.0-5.1-5.2 SMF warriors were great. In 5.4 Arms become viable to AOE fights, and it's really great, and TG is awesome for single target fights.
Why we can't get a maybe just a portion from this love. In 5.2 we get a big nerf just because we become viable again. I don't want to be top dps, just want to minimalize the dps difference between the classes. It's ok for me that we are at the bottom, with a minimal, but currently there is huge difference between classes. Lock dps are mega op, stand highly on the top as we can see it nearly every soo fight. That would be ok for me, if it wont be so much higher. I don't really call this a class balance.
I asked the problems because, maybe we can get some minor changes in dps to WoD , which would be really helpful.
I'm not crying , just don't know what else left for us. Maybe hoping, and waiting.

[zoomgpally]

Stay a Death Knight. Something tells me they are going to be viable again in the next expansion.

Also, Sindragosa's breath. Because who doesn't want to breath fire like a dragon?

Undead frost dragon...

Breathing fire?

- - - Updated - - -

Hello everyone.I'm a dps Dk and I'm thinking on to reroll an other class in WoD. Currently we have really bad scaling with gear. I'm in our raid team, but because raid system will be better ( heroic10-20, mystic20) and we will get new dps players in the next content I really feel that i need to reroll to something better if things remain unchanged in WoD(especially if I want to keep my raid spot). We nearly at the bottom most of the fights, and it's just boring because i think i do everything what i can but the results are dissapointing. So I'm just curious about other ppl's maybe feel the same , and if they do which class they want to choose.

Heroic will be 10-25

And you should wait for beta, preferably late beta before judging if a class/spec is viable

[Raikh]

I really do appreciate all the time your taking to type this out. ToT is the part that confuses me the most, mostly because your example is wrong. "A" does not do 240k DPS vs our 200k, we are the top DPS spec in ToT, Warlocks are shit in ToT gear yet they tear SoO a new one. So ye that bit seems backward in my mind.

I honestly can't get my head round the idea that we can be godly in ToT gear which is far far far more powerful than anything we are going to see....potentially ever unless Blizz want to move to a bigger integer. If Warlock strength comes from SoO gear that we will never ever see again and we do better than them in less powerful gear and gear in WoD is less powerful then....then I'm confused...like always really.

To try and clarify DKs sim the highest in ToT gear, people say that's coz we had baseline buffs, fine cool, I understand this. We then get "outscaled" as the tier goes on in gear that will never exist again. I don't get how we can be fine in ToT gear yet be terrible in WoD gear when it's less powerful.

/edit: Looks like I misremembered, we aint the top in ToT T15HC sims (on 5.4) but it's a much better position than what people see now. I'll leave the language such as "god like" unedited, but calling me on it is a pointless endeavour.

http://simulationcraft.org/540/Raid_T15H.html

The ToT example i was using considered to look back in time, meaning that at the point i described it it was active content, so without the 5.4 buffs. I wanted to show that the difference between dk and A is not percentual constant one but is increasing beyond that.
And we remember frost was in a horrible condition at the end of ToT.
Those balance buffs are gamebreaking if you would do ToT while SoO is the active content, without the gear influence of SoO gear of course.

For your WoD confusion. Starting in WoD is just like starting into MoP, just the number scale is smaller, which is completely uninteresting for our problem.
How were we in t14, we were quite strong in 463 and slowly went down the latter when the raid got normal gear and hc gear.
If nothing changes it'll be the same we will start considerably strong and the more progress occurs we will go down the ladder again.

I think you misunderstood me in that point, we won't start terrible into WoD, we'll leave the first tier terrible again requiring buffs to make us somewhat competitive.

I hope that is what you meant. If not please clarify it for me a bit again.

Blizz basically tries to reset our decay with every patch and hard resets it with every expansion.


Also wanted to point out my opinion here, as that also might make my explanations more clear, knowing about my point of view.
I think its sad that our class mechanics bear so little potential and that the dk class seems to be uninteresting to blizz in design terms.
I really enjoy my dk and really don't want to give my dk up at any point in time. My wish would just be to feel like a full class, meaning some more utility which gives me choices how to handle things and gives the dk its own strengths beyond dmg. (like movement, teamplay(raid cds or synergy with something within the raid))

I also think it can't work to be the constant only class, we are currently good at doing things in constant scenarios other a good time frame. So in a normalized environment (burst flatened out, no spontaneous change of fight situations, equal class treatment), but the evolving raiddesign walks away from constant situations and the dk starts to lag behind as he has not the toolkit so find a really good place for himself.

I really hope that the fresh wind WoD brings to the raid design carries over to the dk filling our gaps completing the work blizz left behind failing to introduce the dk properly in wotlk.

EDIT: @dkwarrior
Problems were pretty much the same in Cata, with the exception that blizz tried more adjustments, but never found a sweet spot, we jumped back and forth from top to bottom as it either didn't hit how blizz imagined the dk to be or just broke pvp by insane output and so on. Also the strength increase through gear in MoP was greater than ever before, in cata the process was slower and more subtle. (and with that a bit weaker in effect)

[Kronik85]

The ToT example i was using considered to look back in time, meaning that at the point i described it it was active content, so without the 5.4 buffs. I wanted to show that the difference between dk and A is not percentual constant one but is increasing beyond that.
And we remember frost was in a horrible condition at the end of ToT.
Those balance buffs are gamebreaking if you would do ToT while SoO is the active content, without the gear influence of SoO gear of course.

For your WoD confusion. Starting in WoD is just like starting into MoP, just the number scale is smaller, which is completely uninteresting for our problem.
How were we in t14, we were quite strong in 463 and slowly went down the latter when the raid got normal gear and hc gear.
If nothing changes it'll be the same we will start considerably strong and the more progress occurs we will go down the ladder again.

I think you misunderstood me in that point, we won't start terrible into WoD, we'll leave the first tier terrible again requiring buffs to make us somewhat competitive.

I hope that is what you meant. If not please clarify it for me a bit again.

Blizz basically tries to reset our decay with every patch and hard resets it with every expansion.


Also wanted to point out my opinion here, as that also might make my explanations more clear, knowing about my point of view.
I think its sad that our class mechanics bear so little potential and that the dk class seems to be uninteresting to blizz in design terms.
I really enjoy my dk and really don't want to give my dk up at any point in time. My wish would just be to feel like a full class, meaning some more utility which gives me choices how to handle things and gives the dk its own strengths beyond dmg. (like movement, teamplay(raid cds or synergy with something within the raid))

I also think it can't work to be the constant only class, we are currently good at doing things in constant scenarios other a good time frame. So in a normalized environment (burst flatened out, no spontaneous change of fight situations, equal class treatment), but the evolving raiddesign walks away from constant situations and the dk starts to lag behind as he has not the toolkit so find a really good place for himself.

I really hope that the fresh wind WoD brings to the raid design carries over to the dk filling our gaps completing the work blizz left behind failing to introduce the dk properly in wotlk.

EDIT: @dkwarrior
Problems were pretty much the same in Cata, with the exception that blizz tried more adjustments, but never found a sweet spot, we jumped back and forth from top to bottom as it either didn't hit how blizz imagined the dk to be or just broke pvp by insane output and so on. Also the strength increase through gear in MoP was greater than ever before, in cata the process was slower and more subtle. (and with that a bit weaker in effect)

I can't say I understand mechanically what your trying to express, but I think I at least get the theory. Ilvl, stat budget is irrelevant(ish), but the comparison comes from tiers. With current scaling Frost DW would be good in the first two raid tiers but would fall behind in the third tier.

That being the case I can't honestly say it seems like too heavy a price, DK's were taken on progress in SoO. If you've got a DK and they are good and geared there's no real reason not to bring one unless your raid leader wants to pretend they are going for world first...late to the party.

Now don't get me wrong, it is a problem. I'm just saying if it doesn't manifest till 6.3 then meh...I mean really. So much shit could change between now and then it almost seems pointless to contemplate.

I'm with you about DK's feeling "uninteresting" atm, Killing Machine as a proc/mechanic is just fail. Then again I've been maining this char since Wrath went live, WoD could be time for change.....waiting till the WoD beta before jumping ship seems more sensible though.

[Raikh]

Just a smaller post again as i've seen something false in the similar topic thread from today, as it felt a bit of reference to my posts here.

The point is, every content is basically a viscious cycle. We start at a good/okayish position into the content and get weaker reaching the deepest point BiS gear for that content.
So then blizz readjusts classes for the next content, sees dk is a bit low, gives us a buff so we start at a good/okayish position again and it the whole process repeats, until the end of the expansion.

The result: We suck at the endgame of every content, while starting off competitve. If you would now take old gear and go into the old content while it is outdated frost dk would be strong because we CAN only be balanced around 1 content at a time.

This is for worldfirst guilds not such a serious problem as they don't get to BiS until they're done anyway. But it is a problem for those who reach some BiSish state until killing the final boss on heroic.

The reason why raidbots shows us so bad are the consequences following from this scaling behavior.

But anyway, i think this discussion is only necessary if blizz doesn't acknowledge this issue properly for WoD so lets wait until beta hits. Understanding thi sissues doesn't make someone a better dk, nor makes it our current situation better.

I will simply call it a design fail and we should make the best of it, we should only get really loud when blizz ignores us in the beta and should've good arguments prepared which raidbots/logs/soimcraft alone can't offer.

p.s.
Someitmes i kinda suck keeping it short -.-

[Shiira]

we CAN only be balanced around 1 content at a time.

Which is why so many of us have been complaining about scaling issues for most of the expansion, but blizzard still refuses to discuss this point.

[Deleted]

How gona we see that something has changed when beta comes out, if we are competive at the start of every expansion ?

[Shiira]

We won't.

All we will have to go on for a while are sims for higher levels of gear.

But maybe by then our scaling issues will be fixed anyway, who knows.

[Deleted]

we were good in ToT but not top... and the only reason we were good is because of the festerblight playstyle with Feather and the bugged rppm due to unholy pres and runic corruption.

[Skarssen]

we were good in ToT but not top... and the only reason we were good is because of the festerblight playstyle with Feather and the bugged rppm due to unholy pres and runic corruption.

Unholy was good. Actually, very, very good at the start when the "festerblight" style first became popular, but it eventually fell down considerably until the end of ToT when it was smack dab in the middle (which is fine). Frost however, was bordering on non-viable. I still played it, because I despise unholy and my guild only killed heroic Lei Shen with a couple of weeks to spare, but it was horrid.

And it will be very easy to see if Blizzard has addressed the scaling issue when beta comes out. If they don't change the way KM works, don't change frost's mastery system, and don't address the relative lack of AP scaling on core strikes.......we will have the same issue at the end of 6.1. KM granting ~35% crit on OB and FS (when others only have ~20% crit chance) combined with not having reached a haste breakpoint means we will be relatively strong at the start, but it won't last. Just like it hasn't since.....4.1?

[Evida]

It seems to me sometimes DKs are just punished for the 1st pvp season they were introduced...
like "sorry guys you see we are trying to keep those AMS guys on the bottom!"...
:/

[Deleted]

Ok , i understand it now, still hoping for a better future. If nothing has change we can overpost the designer's tiwitt page :P
Now GC was gone, how is this impact the class balance team ? Just can't understand why they can't fix this for 2 contents.
Ok, i stopped crying, and wrote stupid things.

[Deleted]

I like when I got to the isle on my DK and pick up the Chi-ji buff.......and nothing really feels any different. Contrast that to my fury warrior, which with the Chi-Ji buff feels like a warrior jacked up on testosterone, amphetamine, cocaine, and ammonia salts.

Yeah, there is a pretty big difference between DKs and Warrs already. But have you ever tried it on a Warlock? My Chaosbolt casts went from 700k to 1.3M (just with the buff) ontop of being considerably faster aswell. And that is with pretty low 540 ilvl. So while Warrior secondary stats scaling is good, its just thru the roof on warlokcs. I literally mroe than double my dps with the Chi-Ji buff. How much are DKs getting? Maybe like 30-40% more dps?

[Slant]

Except that he is 100% right. I too will be leaving DK's, because it is just no fun gaining gear and watching EVERY OTHER FUCKING SPEC zoom past you. I don't like starting strong and finishing weak as hell. It completely kills one of the main features of the game (for me anyway), which is character power progression. You can say "wait till Beta" and the like, but DKs have been this way since at least 4.0 and Blizzard has demonstrated that they don't think its a problem by just repeatedly buffing base damage at the start of every single tier.

So will I. I'm fed up of being at the bottom of patches. Everytime we get a decent buff on PTR it's nerfed into the ground before release. I'm done with the class, I'm done with melees. Going to reroll warlock for their versatility. And I've been DK since the class came out in WotLK.