Necrotic Plague seems rather underwhelming

[Dasani]

So I was dinking around on the beta and playing with the level 100 talents and before actually playing I was thinking how Defile and Necrotic Plague would both be pretty nifty and I couldn't wait to try them out and etc so that is basically the first thing I did.

I really, really dislike necrotic plague unfortunately.

For those who haven't played with it yet, when you apply it to a target, it starts at one stack and starts increasing each tick as you would expect it to. And it "spreads" to new targets with each tick although it never leaves the original target like the lich king's necrotic plague does. When it spreads to new targets, each new instance of the dot begins at the same stack count as the original and it is given a duration equal to the remaining duration from the original disease.

There is also no way to refresh the disease. It basically just slowly ramps up and spreads, then it hits 15 and boom, it's gone. You have to re-apply it and start over at 1 again.

Now the functionality it's self is kind of annoying, but i'd be ok with it if it was like a decent damage increase over your other diseases. The problem is, it isn't. At around 10 stacks necrotic plague does about the same damage as blood plague + frost fever. So past that it does a little more, capping out at 15 of course, but for all the stacks earlier than that it is less damage. I don't have a damage meter at the moment but it's hard to imagine a disease that does less damage than your other 2 combined could somehow end up doing more damage than them when it spends 2/3rds of the time doing less damage.

And I mean yeah it's beta, they haven't done the final damage tuning pass yet and all that jazz, but considering how close the damage is with NP and the other two diseases, even when they tweak the final numbers I really feel like the relation between the diseases and necrotic plague will be pretty similiar to what it is now in terms of damage. I mean it's entirely possible it might blow the other 2 out of the water when it's done, but I doubt it.

Anyway, just a little disappointed by it and was wondering if anyone else has played with it and had a similar experience or if they have perhaps found some use for it?

If only the disease had the full 30 second duration each time it spread, you could have it jump back to the original carrier once his fell off and have it work like a never ending wild fire of spread and growth but unfortunately it's functionality prevents that. If you take that plaguebringer talent you can jump it's stacks up to 15 a little faster than it goes on it's own so you can get more ticks at max stacks but it still just feels so underwhelming and I also find it very annoying to have to re apply it every 30 seconds.

One really cool thing I did notice in my time playing with it though is it can help me get out of things that i'd normally be defenseless against. A good bit of my testing was done in 25man ICC where i'd just use abilities and watch and see what they did. Those big ol spiders would wrap me in webs which stunned me. Normally someone else in your raid would switch to them and kill them to get you out, and you are helpless to save yourself, but my necrotic plague jumped on that web and broke it for me. Might be some potential there, although generally things like that (using ice tombs on thok for example) have a lot of health and your disease does insignificant amounts of damage relative to that health pool, but the concept is kinda neat at least, might prove useful somewhere somehow. I wonder if your necrotic plague when used on garrosh would cause it to jump to you after you got mind controlled? Would be kinda funny to die to your own disease.

[Deleted]

It ticks faster than BP and FF doesnt it tho? every 2 instead of 3 secs

[Deleted]

I haven't tested the lvl 100 talents yet, but if NP, over the course of its duration, does the exact same damage as BP/FF, it would still usually be a damage increase (provided the target lives long enough)
For Frost, your NP stacks a lot faster because of HB (especially for DW) and PB (PB might even be mandatory for frost if you pick NP)
For Unholy, it allows you to play the festerblight rotation, so basically it's always at 15 stacks
For Blood, it speeds up your RP generation, thereby increasing your damage (currently, NP is mandatory so that part is going to be nerfed)

Apart from that, it benefits far more from PB and UB than your normal diseases.

[Sarkol]

You CAN extend NP with Festering Strike by the way. Unholy is getting the Festerblight rotation back, but this time it's keeping NP at 15 stacks. As you can keep it at 15 stacks, it will jump at 15 stacks, therefore doing maximum damage. This is only for Unholy though. The problem of it dropping off can also be solved by just using an ability on another mob so you have two initial NPS rolling.

The damage pass isn't done as you say, but even so, you can and will stack NP quicker than is normal, so the less damage at lower stacks won't matter as much. For Raids i'll be using Unholy Blight which will give a full stack in a matter of 10 seconds or less. Plaguebearer is good for this too. As Frost, you will be using Howling Blast which adds stacks etc. It will be tuned for a big damage increase, and the jumping has big potential. It also lets us damage ranged packs of mobs without going there using Icy touch etc.

I'm not in Beta, but for Unholy at least you have every tool to keep it at max stacks and spread it around, and Frost should be able to stack it quickly. The built in jump is just a big quality of life thing imo. Free jumps when you can Pestilence anymore, or when new adds join a fight and it's hard to spread.

[Puupi]

What happens to NP stack if you reapply NP while it's still rolling? Stack and duration reset? Or duration reset? Or can it be reapplied while it's still on (aka "a stronger version of this spell is already active")?

[huth]

Stack+1, duration unchanged.

[Sarkol]

What Huth said. Every ability that applies diseases will apply one stack, but the duration stays unchanged. However Pestilence will find the longest duration NP in range, and spread it to all other targets. Festering Strike is the only ability in the game that can extend NP's duration.

[Callsignecho]

Testing it out and speaking in terms of Blood, NP is quite underwhelming. All it does in increase your RP gained and damage output. The only defensive value that it possibly gains you is if you take Lichborne and heal yourself with the extra RP generation during a high damage intake part of a fight. I can keep the Enhanced Death Coil perk (increase in health pool) up quite high without the extra RP from NP.

Defile seems like the way to go for Blood. It benefits from the Crimson Scourge proc.

[Dasani]

It ticks faster than BP and FF doesnt it tho? every 2 instead of 3 secs

You know, I actually forgot about that. It is every 2 seconds as opposed to 3, so I suppose it is more damage.

So I just tested it, and you're right, I can extend the disease's duration as unholy. That is kind of insane, getting to 15 stacks and keeping it there is outrageous amounts of damage if the disease never falls off, I seriously doubt that will make it to live in it's current state because frost and blood can't compete with that.

At level 100 in ilevel 660 gear, my necrotic plague is doing about 8k every 2 seconds at 15 stacks. My frost fever and blood plague are doing about 2k and 2.7k respectively every 3 seconds.

As frost (which is what I was testing earlier as I didnt have an unholy spec) frost fever and blood plague are doing about 1500 and 1100 while necrotic plague is doing 4317 at 15 stacks (which you can't keep up or maintain, frost has no way to extend so it drops off and resets).

So being unholy just seems kind of incredible for necrotic plague now. By extending it indefinitely and keeping it at 15 stacks you do crazy amounts of damage, and when it falls off nearby targets, it is immediately reapplied at the full 15 stack strength. Very fancy. I just wish blood had some way of refreshing it, using pestilence does not refresh it's duration and there is nothing else I can see to boost it.

[MagmyGeraith]

I actually thought the opposite. I thought Necrotic Plague was great, testing it both as blood (in a large AoE situation) and I loved it as Unholy.

When testing Defile as Blood I was really disappointed. I didn't notice them gutting the radius increase a few patches ago.

[SunspotAnims]

Eh, I'll see how changes over the course of testing, but I'm still currently planning on taking it (along with Plaguebringer) for my frost DK when it goes live. With that, I have the benefit of being free to take Plague Strike off my bars and I can use Frost Strike/Howling Blast to help it stack quickly. I didn't realize that the stacks actually capped at 15, though. I just thought that was the maximum it could go without stacks from Plaguebringer or additional applications.

Anyway, the current benefits (that I can think of) still boil down to roughly 50% increased damage from diseases (and all diseases deal 20% more damage from a leveling perk, too,) self-spreading diseases (though that's sort of redundant for me because of Howling Blast, still, it's helpful,) and one less button that I have to press in my rotation (though I think that benefit may only apply to Frost- maybe Blood, too. I haven't really thought about it.) I still want to use it, but I'll see how it turns out.

[Dasani]

Now that i've messed with it in unholy, think i'm in love with necrotic plague. But I just wish blood (and frost) had a way to extend it's duration. That duration extension makes it insanely good for unholy.

I also like the fact you can plague leech it off your target and as long as theres another enemy nearby the disease is instantly reapplied automatically. Nifty nifty stuff, just wish it was better for blood. Still seems like a big headache to use it atm.

[MagmyGeraith]

Now that i've messed with it in unholy, think i'm in love with necrotic plague. But I just wish blood (and frost) had a way to extend it's duration. That duration extension makes it insanely good for unholy.

I also like the fact you can plague leech it off your target and as long as theres another enemy nearby the disease is instantly reapplied automatically. Nifty nifty stuff, just wish it was better for blood. Still seems like a big headache to use it atm.

I agree completely. Originally Plaguebringer was going to allow Death Coil/Frost Strike to apply diseases, which would have been great with Necrotic Plague for Blood. I assume blizzard changed it because it would make diseases so brainless. :[

[Clash the DK]

With that, I have the benefit of being free to take Plague Strike off my bars and I can use Frost Strike/Howling Blast to help it stack quickly.

This was something that I originally got excited about; Taking PS off my hotbar would have been great. But then I came to the awful realization that we still have to use PS to burn U runes during AoE phases just to generate resources. So for Frost, not much really changes when you take NP. You track FF instead of BP. And while you're not using PS in your single target priority, timing the use of HB takes it's place.

* This is just another reason why Obliterate should cost U/U.

[Maxweii]

So I just tested it, and you're right, I can extend the disease's duration as unholy. That is kind of insane, getting to 15 stacks and keeping it there is outrageous amounts of damage if the disease never falls off, I seriously doubt that will make it to live in it's current state because frost and blood can't compete with that.

Unholy is going to be trading more runes into Festering Strike to be able to maintain that 15 stack NP though. Especially if here is time where you need to do a small target switch with some distance between them, once you get back you might have to dump death runes into FS to keep it up. Festerblight kinda balances itself out because of that, dots do more damage, but you do slightly less because of maintaining the dots.

[Sarkol]

Yes. Festerblight requires more resources thrown into Festering Strike, so it balances out. However, in a fight where we get the opportunity to readily spread/NP can spread itself, our long duration, 15 stack disease, our dps will sky rocket.

[Ruudax]

As blood I was really looking forward to NP until I found out it couldn't be refreshed/maintained. I think I will be taking defile since I don't fancy orphaning the runes I use for Death Strike.

[Pr0ev0lution]

I was playing around with it as unholy in skirmishes and quite like it however my big problem is it doesn't apply things such as chillblaines which is kind of annoying.

Need to still test instances and I think its gonn be great for tanking packs of mobs its gonna give a decent amount of rp which will obviously translate into more runes.

[Mendenbarr]

It's actually super super overpowered right now, and if nothing changes, will be mandatory for all dks of every spec. I forsee BoS getting significant buffs and NP getting a much needed nerf.

[Aeriel]

It's actually super super overpowered right now, and if nothing changes, will be mandatory for all dks of every spec. I forsee BoS getting significant buffs and NP getting a much needed nerf.

NP should do the same base damage (or up to 110%) as FF+BP (at 15 stacks). This is a DPS increase for Frost and Unholy due to the Mastery gain on the off-spec disease. Blood also is a DPS gain due the increase in RP generation.

BoS, on the other hand, needs to do more damage than 5 Frost Strikes or 3 DC over 5sec or else it will be devalued due to the loss in Rune Regen from pooling RP. That or a reduced RP cost for greater uptime. Though, again, that interferes with the Rune Regen talents.

Defile is getting to a better place, but I only see it being viable in AoE scenarios. If it is strong enough for single target DPS gain, then it will be too powerful in AoE. However, Blood could benefit from the damage reduction in single target with a physical boss, which might create enough of a niche regardless.