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  1. #1

    Morbid Feedback: Ability Pruning

    While I had initially planned not to do another one of these until public testing began, the recent lull in information (coupled with what information is currently public) leaves the community with not much to do besides reflect on what changes we have already been presented with.
    In this spirit, I hope to foster a discussion on a topic that, while very relevant to WoD changes, also has its roots in the current MoP paradigm.

    Thus, this thread’s area of focus is on the proposed pruning of certain abilities from the Death Knight arsenal.

    Questions to consider:

    -What specs have you played the the most in Mists of Pandaria? Keeping our MoP toolkit in mind, what abilities (if any) do you feel are the most deserving of pruning? Why?

    -What has been your reaction to some of the announced “pruned” abilities for Death Knights? Considering general Warlords of Draenor system changes, as well as what role you see yourself playing in the expansion, why do you agree/disagree with some of the currently proposed changes?

    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; rather try and explain what your experience over this expansion has been, and what your reaction to currently slated changes 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.

    Let's begin.

    P.S. As I did last time, 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/12945804943#1
    @MagdalenaDK
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    <Mionepony> Especially not if it's you...

  2. #2
    I don't feel DK's have very many extraneous abilities overall. I agree with some of the "merging", such as combining blood boil with pestilence, Gargoyle with Unholy frenzy, etc., but very strongly disagree with some of the changes to blood. The increase in active mitigation opportunities is great, but the cutting of Rune Strike and Heart Strike, only to replace their spot in blood's toolkit with SPELLS is a disgrace.

    Ability pruning is fine, particularly in the case of nearly useless abilities like Blood Strike, but NOT when it compromises the feel and flavor of a spec. The initial purge of AotD was a colossal mistake, as was removing minion summoning from frost/blood. These are things that change the face of a spec and are completely unacceptable in my opinion. Cut strangulate? Sure. Blood strike? It was useless anyway. Combine pestilence and blood boil? Great. Roll the effects of plague strike into Scourge Strike? Fine. Remove minions from blood and frost, and turn blood into a caster spec? HELL NO!!!!!!!!

  3. #3
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    Merging Blood Boil and Pestilence will feel like a non-change for 95% of Blood DK's, and will provide options in the first talent tier. I'm glad to see Heart Strike go as well. It provides no rotational depth that won't remain with Pestilence. Multi-target skills are a part of every other tank class' single-target skill priority (Keg Smash, Avenger's Shield, Thrash, Thunder Clap), and Pestilence will work well in place of Heart Strike. Blood Rune use will still involve decision-making, but now it has shifted to Pestilence v. Rune Tap. With Rune Tap becoming a more potent tool, the reduction of Blood Rune options is the right choice, and choosing between damage and defense is a better choice than single-target and AoE.

    Rune Strike and Death Coil are redundant. One should depart, and I prefer to keep Death Coil due to the superior functionality of ranged damage and spell damage to a physical melee attack. It cannot be cast while silenced (yet) - the one small drawback of Death Coil relative to Rune Strike.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Pisshands View Post
    Merging Blood Boil and Pestilence will feel like a non-change for 95% of Blood DK's, and will provide options in the first talent tier. I'm glad to see Heart Strike go as well. It provides no rotational depth that won't remain with Pestilence. Multi-target skills are a part of every other tank class' single-target skill priority (Keg Smash, Avenger's Shield, Thrash, Thunder Clap), and Pestilence will work well in place of Heart Strike. Blood Rune use will still involve decision-making, but now it has shifted to Pestilence v. Rune Tap. With Rune Tap becoming a more potent tool, the reduction of Blood Rune options is the right choice, and choosing between damage and defense is a better choice than single-target and AoE.

    Rune Strike and Death Coil are redundant. One should depart, and I prefer to keep Death Coil due to the superior functionality of ranged damage and spell damage to a physical melee attack. It cannot be cast while silenced (yet) - the one small drawback of Death Coil relative to Rune Strike.
    I've played blood for a majority of MoP and I tend to agree with this statement. Heart Strike really just seemed to not get used very often at all unless I fat fingered it on accident. I know the spell is monumental to Blood Dks and what not, but if it really is not being used then there's no point for it. The merger of BB and Pestilence definitely was for the better since one could just take Rolling Blood and effectively do the same thing, but with more damage.

    I think the part about being silenced needs to be addressed with DC since that could end up really bad, but I definitely agree with the fact that the ranged aspect of DC is a plus.

  5. #5
    My only major pruning concern is Frost losing Death Coil.

    Death Coil is situationally useful to Frost DK, and those situations come up fairly often. It allows us to maintain rune generation via the talent tier at range, which allows Frost DK to continue a fraction of its damage at range. It increased the skill cap for a spec that desperately needs that. Removing Death Coil is an actual nerf to Frost DK.

    If the devs deliberately decided to nerf the spec, that's fine. Their call.

    But if they removed Death Coil because "they don't use it anyway, just button bloat"-- that is wrong. Removing Death Coil is not a prune. It's a nerf.
    Last edited by Schizoide; 2014-05-27 at 03:01 PM.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    My only major pruning concern is Frost losing Death Coil.

    Death Coil is situationally useful to Frost DK, and those situations come up fairly often. It allows us to maintain rune generation via the talent tier at range, which allows Frost DK to continue a fraction of its damage at range. It increased the skill cap for a spec that desperately needs that. Removing Death Coil is an actual nerf to Frost DK.

    If the devs deliberately decided to nerf the spec, that's fine. Their call.

    But if they removed Death Coil because "they don't use it anyway, just button bloat"-- that is wrong. Removing Death Coil is not a prune. It's a nerf.
    Unless I've misunderstood their intentions, the quintessential goal of the ability pruning is to remove abilities that take up action bar space only to be used seldom - a description that fits Death Coil very well for Frost.
    Last edited by Vereesa; 2014-05-27 at 05:01 PM.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    My only major pruning concern is Frost losing Death Coil.

    Death Coil is situationally useful to Frost DK, and those situations come up fairly often. It allows us to maintain rune generation via the talent tier at range, which allows Frost DK to continue a fraction of its damage at range. It increased the skill cap for a spec that desperately needs that. Removing Death Coil is an actual nerf to Frost DK.

    If the devs deliberately decided to nerf the spec, that's fine. Their call.

    But if they removed Death Coil because "they don't use it anyway, just button bloat"-- that is wrong. Removing Death Coil is not a prune. It's a nerf.
    frost strike does more damage than death coil for frost. death coil was completely useless for frost.
    Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
    Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
    Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
    Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
    Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
    Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    frost strike does more damage than death coil for frost. death coil was completely useless for frost.
    I explained why that is not true in the body of the post you quoted. Did you read it?

    @Vereesa: The intention of pruning is to remove button bloat; abilities that took up space but could easily be replaced or combined with other abilities. Also, to remove cooldowns that were macroed together. Being situational and/or seldom-used is another reason, but I would argue that while being out of melee range is situational, that particular situation comes up pretty frequently.

    Death Coil as a ranged rune regen trigger cannot be replaced by Frost Strike. Removing it is an actual nerf, and reduces the skill cap on a spec with an already very low skill requirement and greatly inhibits the spec's ability to sustain some small portion of ranged damage, traditionally one of its strengths. Whether you personally care about that is of course up to you. I do.
    Last edited by Schizoide; 2014-05-27 at 05:28 PM.

  9. #9
    For blood: The blood boil change is a great. They could probably remove plague strike after the new talents, ditto with icy touch. Dark Simulacrum could probably go to, although I know some PVPers like that ability (always seemed way to RNG for me). Other than that I always felt blood was in a very good spot and didn't suffer from much bloat. Looking through the list of abilities I use almost every one except the ones listed above.

    With the changes they made I like the change of rune strike and death coil, to me death coil was always more iconic of a dk ability. Not loving losing Timmy but I can live with that.

    The removal of heart strike I really dislike. One of the above posters said that other tanks use multi hit abilities which is true but what wasn't mentioned is that most of those classes do have other AOE buttons they hit when it is a large group, usually in place of a single target ability. Warriors have cleave instead of heroic strike, monks have spinning crane instead of jab, paladins use hammer instead of crusader strike. I would like to keep that same system for DK's so it gives even a small amount of choice.

    Also a bit worried about how I keep seeing tweets about them slowing down blood. Blood plays faster, we have a lower GCD and part of the fun is playing fast. I have never felt like I wanted it to be slower, and I don't feel like the speed of it impedes my ability to be reactive.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    I explained why that is not true in the body of the post you quoted. Did you read it?

    @Vereesa: The intention of pruning is to remove button bloat; abilities that took up space but could easily be replaced or combined with other abilities. Also, to remove cooldowns that were macroed together. Being situational and/or seldom-used is another reason, but I would argue that while being out of melee range is situational, that particular situation comes up pretty frequently.

    Death Coil as a ranged rune regen trigger cannot be replaced by Frost Strike. Removing it is an actual nerf, and reduces the skill cap on a spec with an already very low skill requirement and greatly inhibits the spec's ability to sustain some small portion of ranged damage, traditionally one of its strengths. Whether you personally care about that is of course up to you. I do.
    if you use DC in frost. you are bad.
    Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
    Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
    Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
    Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
    Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
    Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    if you use DC in frost. you are bad.
    Thanks for contributing to the thread.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    if you use DC in frost. you are bad.
    What's better:

    * doing a little damage and proccing L75 talent for more runes for more HBs for more damage
    * doing no damage and waiting for natural rune regen, using less HBs and not doing as much more damage

    To say nothing of the PVP utility of interrupting a node flip, killing a totem, or just generally tapping someone out of range.

    If you're going to get back IN melee range, sure, pool your RP and use FS instead. But to say that DC is useless is sheer ignorance.

  13. #13
    Thanks Baphomette, but really there's no need to respond to people posting "ur bad". You're not going to convince him of anything. It's best to politely ignore them.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Baphomette View Post
    What's better:

    * doing a little damage and proccing L75 talent for more runes for more HBs for more damage
    * doing no damage and waiting for natural rune regen, using less HBs and not doing as much more damage

    To say nothing of the PVP utility of interrupting a node flip, killing a totem, or just generally tapping someone out of range.

    If you're going to get back IN melee range, sure, pool your RP and use FS instead. But to say that DC is useless is sheer ignorance.
    i dont pvp so why are you wasting time talking about it?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Schizoide View Post
    Thanks Baphomette, but really there's no need to respond to people posting "ur bad". You're not going to convince him of anything. It's best to politely ignore them.
    if death coil is so important to frost then why dont guides say to use it?
    oh wait because its useless for frost.
    Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
    Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
    Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
    Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
    Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
    Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    i dont pvp so why are you wasting time talking about it?

    This thread is not pvp specific or pve specific. A good rule of thumb is that unless a thread's topic is specific to the type of content that is referred to, all possibilities should be considered. A good place for this conversation would be here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Changes/page78

    Where i'm sure the relevant parties of this thread, myself included, would be more than happy to discuss this further.

    Reposting the purpose of this thread

    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.
    While it may seem counter-intuitive to limit actual discussion and instead make this thread a sort of dev submission form, that is the requested purpose of this thread. It mirrors a thread on the official forums for the purpose of providing feedback without discussion. If I were a dev, there would be times where I wanted people's opinions without all of the conversation that occurs naturally when people express their thoughts.

    So lets try to stay on topic and provide feedback for:

    -What specs have you played the the most in Mists of Pandaria? Keeping our MoP toolkit in mind, what abilities (if any) do you feel are the most deserving of pruning? Why?

    -What has been your reaction to some of the announced “pruned” abilities for Death Knights? Considering general Warlords of Draenor system changes, as well as what role you see yourself playing in the expansion, why do you agree/disagree with some of the currently proposed changes?

    This is not a discussion as much as it is an open stage for people's opinions and we can especially do without the flaming.

  16. #16
    Meh I tried :P He can't refute anything we say so the point is made. Some people only ever fight Patchwerk, I guess. On topic (2H Frost/Blood) :

    I dislike Horn of Winter being taken out of the rotation. It's been my habitual key to press when I know I have an empty GCD to fill, and now it's going to be a set it and forget it 60min buff like most other buffs. Fun -1.

    Thematically I'm not happy to lose Raise Dead, but I understand the devs' stance on consolidating cooldowns and I couldn't tell you how hard my ghoul hits at all. In gameplay terms I won't miss it.

    Aside from that, I like what they're doing with Blood. DKs are supposedly the spells-in-melee class and Blood is finally going to be acting like it.

    I'm not happy to lose Frost's Death Coil for reasons mentioned above. I feel that losing that capability is a subtle nerf but a very unwelcome one. As a spec that already has a somewhat deserved reputation for few enough buttons to mash, taking away the ranged RP dump entirely is not the right approach.

    On the de-pruning side, I'm not sure I like the idea of being forced into Cinderglacier and I'm jealous as hell of that 10% heal on Unholy's FC.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Nangz View Post
    This thread is not pvp specific or pve specific. A good rule of thumb is that unless a thread's topic is specific to the type of content that is referred to, all possibilities should be considered. A good place for this conversation would be here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Changes/page78

    Where i'm sure the relevant parties of this thread, myself included, would be more than happy to discuss this further.

    Reposting the purpose of this thread



    While it may seem counter-intuitive to limit actual discussion and instead make this thread a sort of dev submission form, that is the requested purpose of this thread. It mirrors a thread on the official forums for the purpose of providing feedback without discussion. If I were a dev, there would be times where I wanted people's opinions without all of the conversation that occurs naturally when people express their thoughts.

    So lets try to stay on topic and provide feedback for:




    This is not a discussion as much as it is an open stage for people's opinions and we can especially do without the flaming.
    ok then. i will keep that in mind but my question still remains not answered.

    If DC is so important for frost, why dont guides have it listed as an ability to use?(pve wise since i havent check out any pvp guides for frost)
    Anemo: traveler, Sucrose
    Pyro: Yanfei, Amber, diluc, xiangling, thoma, Xinyan, Bennett
    Geo: Noelle, Ningguang, Yun Jin, Gorou
    Hydro: Barbara, Zingqiu, Ayato
    Cyro: Shenhe, Kaeya, Chongyun, Diona, Ayaka, Rosaria
    Electro: Fischl, Lisa, Miko, Kujou, Raiden, Razor

  18. #18
    Deleted
    The good stuff:

    - Replacing Rune Strike with Death Coil.
    - Baking in Roiling Blood into Blood Boil (I am probably still gonna take a while to use the "new" name for it).
    - Heart Strike being removed. This skill is absolutely pointless. Currently, it is barely outdamaging the physical portion of Soul Reaper - and that is on diseased targets. It also loses on 3 target cleave damage to Blood Boil with reasonable AP values. So yeah, I am glad I don't have to waste a keybind on it anymore.

    What I would still like to see:
    - Getting rid of Plague Strike. It's a boring ability, even worse than Icy Touch which you can at least glyph to dispel magic abilities or cast from range (and that is even considering the fact that Chains of Ice could pretty much replace Icy Touch if they would just make it deal the same damage as IT does now). I am sure Blood Plague could be applied from some other skill, like, I don't know, the old version of Plaguebearer?

    Quote Originally Posted by Skarssen View Post
    turn blood into a caster spec? HELL NO!!!!!!!!
    But Blood is still not a caster spec even with these changes. The defining strike is still Death Strike, everything else is just fluff.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pisshands View Post
    It cannot be cast while silenced (yet) - the one small drawback of Death Coil relative to Rune Strike.
    Indeed, that is the only drawback it has over Rune Strike, otherwise it would be strictly superior (as in, better at everything; DC is still better than RS all things considered obviously). But if dangerous mobs silence you, you will have other concerns anyway. Namely that you can't use any of your cooldowns besides Vampiric Blood and Lichborne. :V
    Also, did you wash your hands before facepalming?

    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    If DC is so important for frost, why dont guides have it listed as an ability to use?(pve wise since i havent check out any pvp guides for frost)
    Because said guides generally just focus on single target, Patchwerk style bosses where you are always in melee range. Death Coil has no place then. However if you are kiting then you will be out of melee range from mobs and then you can use Death Coil for extra damage and more Rune regen. Go check some Youtube videos of Frost DKs soloing Firelands for trash epics when it was still current if you still need convincing.
    Last edited by mmocd83042b656; 2014-05-27 at 06:58 PM.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Darkvoltinx View Post
    If DC is so important for frost, why dont guides have it listed as an ability to use?(pve wise since i havent check out any pvp guides for frost)
    M8 ej said dont use deathcoil so dont!!!1
    Stop blindly following guides to the letter and actually play the class yourself, deathcoil has its uses for frost

  20. #20
    Deleted
    I like most of the changes so far, especially the mechanics changes of blood, but that's not what this thread is about.

    About the actual pruning:
    Blood:

    Replacing RS with DC. YES. I absolutely love that change. One of the best things the devs ever did.
    Making Roiling Blood baseline. I don't know why they haven't done that a long time ago. I don't care too much whether BB gets baked into Pest or the other way round, I like both abilities. Pest has the advantage of being class identity, not only spec identity, and it isn't as obnoxious as BB.
    HS removal. I'm not very keen on losing HS, since it's been part of blood forever, but in it's current form it's completely useless and I'm not gonna miss it for one second.
    Swordshattering removed. Yeah don't care one bit. I prefered SSG anyway, and having 2 runforges do the same thing (physical damage reduction) is pretty redundant.
    HoW: I'm going to miss using it as a filler spell, was a nice button to have at the bottom of the priority list. Granted I never used it much once I switched to an avoidance build, but since we are supposed to have more empty gcds in WoD im certainly going to miss it. Also removing doesn't remove button bloat (unless you would cast it from your spellbook after every wipe, which I guess gets annoying really quick).
    Ghoul: Much flavor gone, but it was a pretty useless button and not very fun, since you pressed it and then forgot about it completely.
    Blood Worms: From all changes I dislike that one the most, not because it was a wrong choice, they were mostly useless, completely random and could screw you over in CMs. I dislike that change because I was hoping they'd turn them into a raid cd to finally make them useful and give blood dks a unique raid utility (AMZ for dps, bloodworms for blood, something like that).

    Frost:
    Not many changes there, HoW and Ghoul are the same as for blood.
    Losing DC? It definatley had it's uses, and I remember using it countless times. But considering that we do extremely well when at range already, I mostly agree with removing it.
    Using CG instead of FC? I never liked FC anyway. I never before used CG, but I imagine it will do the spec mostly good (unless you permanently have enough stacks to buff most attacks).
    Frost doesn't have a problem with having to many abilities anyway, I'd rather they add some.

    Apart from that, I was sure we'd lose one disease for each spec, keeping BP for unholy and blood, and FF for frost. Having two diseases doing the exact same thing is very redundant, and it's strange that only one of them scales with mastery. If they removed one disease for each spec, they could cut IT and PS for blood/unholy and frost respectively (keep IT for frost so they have something to spend their runes/rime on when you can't aoe).

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