Morbid Feedback: DK L-75 Talents

[Magdalena]

Inspired by some of Lhivera’s threads on the Mage forums, I’m taking the initiative to foster similar conversation in the Death Knight community.
This type of thread aims to concentrate discussion on a very specific topic that is pertinent to Death Knights, in the hopes that narrowing our focus so closely will result in more clear and focused feedback that the developers can focus on.

Depending on how successful I feel this venture is, I will create further “Feedback Collating” threads that focus narrowly on specific topics for the community to reflect upon.

This thread’s particular topic is Level 75 Talents in the Mists of Pandaria context.

Some questions to consider:

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

Guidelines:

-This thread aims to give individual community members a chance to voice their opinions and experiences. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer when it comes to said opinions.

-Each poster’s goal should be to try to clearly and succinctly provide what feedback they think is pertinent to this topic. Opinions about what other people might post (whether it be factually incorrect, or simply something you disagree with) are less useful.

-Words like “clunky”, “scaling” and “broken” are taboo. They provide no useful context for either the developers or the community to refer back to. Remember: The more effort you put into (succinctly!) explaining your point of view, the better the chances of it being understood and reflected upon by relevant parties.

-This is not a wishlist thread. Please don’t use it as a space to voice what you hope happens in the coming expansion; rather try and explain what your experience over this expansion has been.

-My participation in this thread will be limited. On occasion, I will attempt to summarise and paraphrase good points made by other players; probably asking if my stated understanding of their point is accurate.

I look forward to seeing what the community has to say on this topic.

P.S. I've posted this on MMO-C more for the sake of EU players, as I do not have direct access to their forums. US players, please do consider posting your thoughts in this thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/12091329432

[AndyF1069]

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

When it was current, I took part of Mogushan Vaults and Heart of Fear as raid leader. When spots have been available in my new guild, I have taken part in Throne of Thunder and Siege of Ogrimmar. Sadly my raid time this expansion has been out of my control and is low, and does not reflect my skill level or abilities. I have quite a thorough understanding of my class. Outside of raiding I take part in lots of solo content. My main spec is unholy but I play blood quite frequently. I rarely ever use frost. If PvP is to be included, I have casually done 2s with no voice communication up to 1900 as unholy.

What has your experience with the L-75 talents been?

Unholy - At the start of the expansion I used rc as I was accustomed to how it felt during cataclysm. As with all expansions, haste levels were quite low so rune regeneration was slow, even with the rc procs. I eventually switched to blood tap after reading up on opinions and I haven't looked back. What I like about blood tap is that you are guaranteed to get charges. There is no 45% chance to get a charge. As unholy is very dominantly a 1 rune attack spec (obviously using festering strike with b+f runes when appropriate) I found that blood tap benefited my playstyle, including pvp for necrotic strikes. It is possible to waste rune regeneration from re/rc procs in certain circumstances (such as frequent sudden death procs) where you generate runes faster than you can spend them, but being able to store blood charges means I rarely waste my abilities. Initially I found that struggled to maintain diseases between outbreaks as I was performing less festering strikes than normal due to the increase in death runes, but that is no longer an issue now that plague strike applies two diseases and the frequency of strength procs from trinkets encourages a new application. The rng aspect of re/rc is off putting for my play style and I do not wish to have to use either if I have the choice. If runic empowerment would restore the rune as a death rune, I would choose that over runic corruption.

Blood - I have tried blood tap but didn't enjoy how it felt as blood. My play style as blood (both for tanking and soloing) is to pre dominantly focus on death strike and rune strike and to only ever use heart strike as filler, the exception being cleave fights. I never have two blood runes regenerating at the same time if I can help it and as a result, runic empowerment usually only applies to the runes I need for death strike. I have never tried runic corruption as blood, I find runic empowerment to give me exactly what I need for both tanking current content in tank gear and for soloing in dps gear.

[Schizoide]

I have experience with all PvE content in MoP, including raids, scenarios, heroics, soloing old raids (although not at your or Mione's level) and scaled content like challenge modes, where I am 9/9 gold. I played all 3 specs at various points, but primarily Blood and Frost.

I tried all three L75 talents in all specs.

I would prefer to use RCorruption by a huge margin. It plays smoothly. I don't want to micromanage my resources. I use RCorruption as Blood.

I hate REmpowerment as Blood, as it forces rune tetris. It is not usable as Unholy, so I didn't use it there. I tried it as Frost but prefer macroed Blood Tap. It's fine for 2H frost, but for DW masterfrost you need to game against Unholy runes, and I hate that.

I'm not a fan of unmacroed Blood Tap as DPS, where again I really don't want to micromanage my resources. I exclusively use it macroed. Unlike REmpowerment, though, I don't feel the unmacroed Blood Tap gameplay is inherently negative, that's just my personal preference. I do feel that accepting the challenge of playing BT unmacroed should offer a more substantial advantage than macroing and forgetting about it. The macro should probably be broken somehow-- but not by putting Blood Tap on the GCD, that was proven to not work in beta.

I would like to see the L75 tier removed from the game. Runic Empowerment should be drawn, quartered, buried at a crossroads, and the earth salted so nothing grows there for 1000 years. Runic Corruption should be baseline, and Blood Tap buffed and used in another tier.

Barring that happy but probably unlikely conclusion, the L75 tier needs to be moved to L60 or below, because leveling a DK without a rune regen talent is torture.

[Vereesa]

RC is the worst talent there because haste makes it shorter. I'd like fixes on that front.

[Vladimeir]

RC is the worst talent there because haste makes it shorter. I'd like fixes on that front.

?? You still get the same amount of runes back on each proc. Haste has no bearing on it. Do you feel that with more haste you should get more rune regen from the talent proc? If so, consider RC would be overpowered because it double dips on haste.

RC is considered the "worst" (by a marginally small amount) because it can't be gamed as the other two talents can be. RC is obviously a poor choice for blood. And blood tap when played right is far superior because you can get on demand death runes (but very few players can play it perfectly enough for it to be that advantageous over RC)

[Vereesa]

?? You still get the same amount of runes back on each proc. Haste has no bearing on it. Do you feel that with more haste you should get more rune regen from the talent proc? If so, consider RC would be overpowered because it double dips on haste.

RC is considered the "worst" (by a marginally small amount) because it can't be gamed as the other two talents can be. RC is obviously a poor choice for blood. And blood tap when played right is far superior because you can get on demand death runes (but very few players can play it perfectly enough for it to be that advantageous over RC)

Anyone with at least one working eyeball can see it's the worst. The duration gets reduced by haste. I even checked raidbots.com's top 100 and saw most people weren't using RC which proves my point.

[Raugnaut]

RC is the worst talent there because haste makes it shorter. I'd like fixes on that front.

When it was unholy-only, it's duration was unaffected by haste, making haste unholy's best stat by a landslide, as the more haste you had, the more runes you recovered with RC. With it becoming an option, it had to provide a similar amount of runes compared to the other 2 options, which do not scale with haste as much as old RC, so it was made ot have a shorter duration the more haste you have.

For the talent tree itself, its good imo. All 3 provide the same thing in different ways, and change the playstyle depending on which one you pick. The only problem is not having it for the first half of leveling a DK- it should swap places with the lvl 57 talent tier so that leveling DKs have access to it earlier. (The lvl 60 talent tier provides valuable self-healing at a lower lvl, so it should remain where it is at. The lvl 57 talent tier currently provides a number of talents that have almost NO use while leveling, so should be moved to a higher level)

- - - Updated - - -

?? You still get the same amount of runes back on each proc. Haste has no bearing on it. Do you feel that with more haste you should get more rune regen from the talent proc? If so, consider RC would be overpowered because it double dips on haste.

RC is considered the "worst" (by a marginally small amount) because it can't be gamed as the other two talents can be. RC is obviously a poor choice for blood. And blood tap when played right is far superior because you can get on demand death runes (but very few players can play it perfectly enough for it to be that advantageous over RC)

When it comes down to it, theres really only 2 choices for blood-RC and BT. RC WILL provide more death strikes over time compared to BT, but yes, being able to have an "extra" death strike whenever you need it is very powerful for blood DKs. RE is pretty much frost-only.

[Schizoide]

RC is the worst talent there because haste makes it shorter. I'd like fixes on that front.

I thought you were busting Magdalena's balls based upon her latest tweet, but I guess you were serious? See this recent post by SSHA to explain why you're wrong.

Yet another datapoint why the L75 talent tier needs to be changed, so many totally competent DKs progressing through heroic content don't know how it works, even now in very late patch 5.4.

@Mione, I macro Blood Tap too and strongly feel it's the optimal way to use the talent for the vast majority of players. But I don't think that's a good thing-- an ability should not be optimally macroed, because that offers zero actual gameplay, and people who want a passive talent can just choose Runic Corruption.

That neatly illustrates the second huge problem with the L75 tier-- it doesn't offer interesting choices. The concept for the tier was strong in MoP development, allow DKs to choose their rune regen. But in actual practice, it doesn't really matter which one you choose in either performance or gameplay. You either choose RC or (probably macroed) BT, both of which are passive.

RE does offer gameplay, but I see rune tetris as negative gameplay, and it is marginally the wrong choice for performance anyway. Even Blood doesn't use RE these days, because tank thinking has evolved past optimizing for the most Death Strikes per minute.

[Vereesa]

I thought you were busting Magdalena's balls based upon her latest tweet, but I guess you were serious? See this recent post by SSHA to explain why you're wrong.

Yet another datapoint why the L75 talent tier needs to be changed, so many totally competent DKs progressing through heroic content don't know how it works, even now in very late patch 5.4.

A bunch of text on a website doesn't make things true. Except in the case of raidbots' top 100. That proves my point.

[Deleted]

The only problem is not having it for the first half of leveling a DK- it should swap places with the lvl 57 talent tier so that leveling DKs have access to it earlier. (The lvl 60 talent tier provides valuable self-healing at a lower lvl, so it should remain where it is at. The lvl 57 talent tier currently provides a number of talents that have almost NO use while leveling, so should be moved to a higher level)

You summed up my thoughts on the talent tier perfectly. Waiting until level 75 for a core part of our rotation makes no sense.

[Schizoide]

A bunch of text on a website doesn't make things true. Except in the case of raidbots' top 100. That proves my point.

I thought you were a strong poster, but I may have confused your name with someone else's. My apologies.

[Revi]

Some questions to consider:

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

PvE. Raided with a 25-man guild since ToT. Done ToT on normal/heroic and SoO on normal, currently missing last 4 bosses on heroic. Also done all the content in 10-man. Been tanking in main raids, and dps'd as both unholy and dw frost on off-nights/flex. Will be answered this from a tank perspective though, as there's where i have the most experience.

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

As blood, I've used Blood Tap for the entire expansion, because it's the only correct* choice. The RNG of the other talents can lead to death on progress content if you get a streak of bad luck. Blizzard really didn't give me any choice in that talent tier (and very little in others)

* You could do perfectly fine with any of the talents, but all in all BT is the optimal choice.

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

As i said, i feel the only "correct" choice for blood is Blood Tap because it's predictable, i can control it, it's one less risk factor.
What bothers me is that if i picked another talent, such as Runic Corruption, i'd be at the mercy of RNG without gaining any significant advantage in the long run, the risk vs. reward proportions are way off.
Overall i feel like the ONLY interesting tier, where i have an actual decision to make on some fights, is the lvl 58 tier. I think if Blizzard wanted to add some more interesting talents, the lvl 75 tier should be the one they replaced.
The tier has been one of those "choose talent A every time, then never think about it again" and the only reason any specc has used anything else this expansion is because RC was bugged, and scaled with haste. Now that it's been fixed, RE and RC might as well not exist.

All in all, a horribly balanced tier, and even if they balanced it, it would be boring with no real impact on game-play.

-Words like “clunky”, “scaling” and “broken” are taboo. They provide no useful context for either the developers or the community to refer back to. Remember: The more effort you put into (succinctly!) explaining your point of view, the better the chances of it being understood and reflected upon by relevant parties.

I disagree with "clucky" it's a very useful word to describe how a talent feels, as long as you explain why. Even the devs have used to numerous times to describe why they didn't like certain mechanics, and if i had to choose one word to describe RE and RC, clunky would be it.

[Vereesa]

I thought you were a strong poster, but I may have confused your name with someone else's. My apologies.

Practice makes perfect, right?


What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

• I've completed all PvE content in Mists of Pandaria and have played all the specs to varying degrees. My PvP experience is pretty limited this expansion, having only played to ~2.1k during the last week of S14, but I feel I'm pretty knowledgeable about it nonetheless.

What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

• T14 mostly 2H Frost with RE with a little bit of tanking on the side. I did the first half of T15 progression as BT DW Frost and the rest as BT UH, only switching to RC at the very end of farm once the RC bug became public knowledge. T16 was predominantly DW Frost, and I switched to BT UH for 25-man farm. PvP-wise I've only ever used BT since it's miles ahead of the alternatives due to Necrotic Strike which is something I'd like to see addressed.

Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

• As has already been said; rune regen needs to come earlier than level 75, preferably right at 55. I still feel as I did during the MoP beta, that rune regen shouldn't take up a talent row and RC/BT needs to be a choice (one that's not a glyph or talent, perhaps something along the lines of the new Human racial wherein you can choose which secondary stat to boost). Also, as a special snowflake manual-user of BT, I feel macroing it should be abolished.

[Bakey]

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

Came back immediately prior to SoO after being gone since Dragon Soul, played all 3 DPS specs (Unholy, 2h Frost, DW Frost) and tanked in SoO normals.

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

Unholy/Blood - I run Runic Corruption because I didn't want to fool with another button for Blood Tap.

2H/DW Frost - I macroed Blood Tap to Frost Strike, again because I didn't want to fool with another button.

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

Blood tap is nice, but with devs already talking about removing extraneous buttons for WoD, I don't see it staying in it's current form. Runic Corruption is okay, but doesn't really do anything interesting. The L-75 talents also make leveling a DK really clunky until you get to 75. I think this talent tier needs a big overhaul and needs to be moved to level 60 or so, making leveling DKs less painful between 55-75.

[Rawley]

11/14 HC, Unholy and Frost.

Played with all 3 talents. Never was a big fan of BT. Theoratically BT is a DPS increase, however in practice I find it much more usefull to have RC due to the ''random'' nature of the talent. On the pull with my trinkets up I have 2 x 45% chance to proc RC, whereas BT I need to do atleast 3 DC's to get 1 rune back. By that time my Galakras Trinket Proc has usually already worn off.

BT in most cases just feels a bit static. ''Press X when you have X amount of charges!'', that there is not intuitive gameplay. Same goes for RE and Frost. As 2H Frost you just ignore it completely and spam your runes on Oblit, and DW you'll have to make sure to never ever spent that second Unholy rune. Just imagine being a Rogue and never go below 2 combo points, else it can potentially be a DPS loss, plain stupid in my opinion.

RC on the other hand sure is random, but when it procs 3 times in succession it sure puts a smile on my face.

[Kozzii]

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

I was 15/16H in 5.0 as a Blood Death Knight using Runic Corruption throughout. 13/13H in ToT as Frost using both 2h Frost (with Runic Corruption) and Unholy (with Runic Corruption). I am currently 14/14H as DW Frost using Blood Tap.

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

I have good experience with all of them, but I have been using Blood Tap the least amount (about a month). I mainly used RE for 2h Frost as my offspec in 5.0, and RC in 5.2 because of the way that talent worked with the trinkets of that tier. I finally got some good 1 handers to try out DW Frost about a month ago and have been using BT. I have since became comfortable using that talent as well as the other two.

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

I personally love BT and am kicking myself for not taking it sooner. The amount of control you have when it comes to regenerating runes feels really good compared to a random chances of the other two. Overall though, I'd say Blizzard has to re-think the entire L-75 tier, as the other two talents just fall short of BT.

[Skarssen]

- Cleared all heroic content, while current, since 4.0. Most experience is with frost, but some backup tanking duty under specific circumstances.

- I have played all 3 L75 options for both frost and blood. I find RE the most irritating option, regardless of rune return rate. I have used RC for blood and BT for frost in both ToT and SoO

- Blood tap is my preferred choice for both PVE and PVP (frost). The control of unmacroed BT is what makes it valuable. I understand some players don't like having to manage a 3rd resource, but the whole point of BT is the control and using it macroed removes the primary advantage.

- I stick with RC for blood primarily because my attention is usually spread thin while tanking. I think BT is still best while tanking, considering the potential need for on-demand death strikes, but RC works fine for me.

- most players will just go for whatever option offers the highest rate of rune return. The fact that all 3 are so close (ignoring BT's control) makes personal preference viable, but I think reserving an entire talent tier for this is a colossal waste.

- If we had the old BT back (refreshes 1 rune as a death rune, ~20sec CD), I would stick with RC. But I don't like not having an option for an on-demand rune (ERW CD is far too long imo).



-

[Nomisno]

I see no reason a fresh level 55 Death Knight would ever need Lichborne, AMZ, or Purgatory, compared to the rune regeneration talents.

BUT YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO MY 70 DK ;_; Would be best to switch first tier with 75 tier :>

-What type of content have you attempted this expansion? What specs have you had particular experience with in MoP?

Did (mostly 10 man) raiding until 5.3 which was when our group split up, not much hc though. Obv as much soloing as possible. Played mostly blood, unholy as second specc - actually in some raids I played unholy because my dps gear has always been better than the dps gear of my co-tanks

-What has your experience with the L-75 talents been? For instance, how many of them have you played with at length, and with which spec(s)?

I was always too lazy to bind BT to macros and felt like macroing it isn't pushing it to its max. I dislike pressing it manually and I think it requires too much attention if you want to use it (close to) perfectly. Thus I played with RC almost the whole expansion, felt pretty good and nobody in my raid ever complained. I never used RE - why would I want a stupid rune I don't even need?

-Drawing upon your own experience and observations, what are some of your thoughts on the state of the L-75 talents in MoP? If you could communicate a specific point to the Blizzard developers concerning them, what would it be?

I'm pretty fine with BT even though I don't like to use it, but that's just me. RE however is used by the least players, doesn't even make sense (everyone does better with RC), so why don't we change it to something different? Another passive one would be more or less meh since I can't think of anything doing a smoother job than RC. Another active one would be cool, maybe some mixture between active and passive (example: when using an ability you ALWAYS (not just a % chance) gain some rune reg, but only a little (10% or so). Could be used timed and still does as nice as RC, however you don't need to press an additional button. Would use).
Also, my opinion to the placement of those talents is everyones opinion to the placement of those talents, DKs feel slow as shit under 75. Do never never never replace with 56 or 60 tiers though ;_;

[Deleted]

I cba writing a wall of text, so here's my TL;DR:

Done all hc content while it was relevant, I don't do PvP, I hate this tier of talents since there's always going to be one superior option and if you don't take it you're Jewing yourself over. I personally think RC should be baseline for Unholy and RE baseline for Frost again, with Blood Tap being a Glyph for both specs.

[Nomisno]

Blood Tap being a Glyph

WTF. You mean one replacing the passive effects? That would be the hugest glyph ingame O_o