Constructive ideas to fix dps specs

[Deleted]

So this thread is meant to give true solutuins to the 2 specs by constructive ideas ( trolls and 2 handers pls leave now!)
First Frost: besides its tuning is horrible, it offers nothing to be unique or simply become a more interesting spec.
Personally i like BoS because it gave a New mechanic to the spec, but blizz cant balance other spells to become just as competitive as this. Pillar of Frost should be off the gcd. We wasting potential dmg increase by the fact that its on gcd, and in pvp it should come back to 15% base start up from 10%.
Talents could use some refreshments...
Deats reach should be baseline on all dk specs, frostwyrm fury should be baseline. Cold hearth talent feels bad because it gives u an extra button that you have to push once every minute. You cant interact with it. Boring.
Death pact have to removed and replaced with something Thats actually helps in both pvp and pve.
Obliteration also problematic since PoF on gcd which again casuses an important second loss, also i somewhat miss the old spell what made obli cost 1 rune.

I will Dwell into unholy when i will have More time

[Worloch]

For unholy, I would like to see:

1) Remove Army of the Dead (don't freak out, there's more)
2) Bake the damage that AotD used to do in to Apocalypse - I don't mean straight up, I mean prorated to match the CD's so that over the course of a fight, it would essentially equal out
3) Rename Apocalypse to Army of the Dead

Keeps the iconic Army of the Dead for UH, moves the damage out from an 8 minute CD to something we use semi-rotationally, and remains thematic to the spec.

Some number tuning is needed for UH, mostly for ST, but that could be accomplished with tweaking our strikes (SS, FS) and Disease (VP) damage.

[Nathreim]

Remove wounds as a mechanic its a worse version of combo points.

Festering strike now just renews the disease duration.

Add a new disease or buff our disease significantly.

Buff SS and DC damage.

Increase the flat rune recharge rate.

[korijenkins]

Remove Breath of Sindragosa and buff everything else accordingly.

Combine Remorseless Winter and Death's Advance into one ability that functions as a toggle. Without it toggled, you gain the passive effects of Death's Advance. With it toggled, you reserve a rune and gain Remorseless until toggled off at the cost of like 20% move speed.

Also make Wraith Walk a baseline ability. No reason I should have to choose between mobility and a defensive.

[Sulika]

So, DPSing as DK right now is ok in Uldir but pretty poor in Mythic+. I think a lot of the M+ issues comes down to being dependant on three separate party buffs none of which DK can provide. It just means you are always at an artificial 15-20% DPS deficit and given you have little by way of utility to make up for it that's pretty hard to overcome. I'm certainly not the first to say it but whoever decided to bring back party buffs I have no idea what they were thinking. They were removed for precisely this reason that classes just ended up feeling gimped when they were missing and when you are trying to make competitive 5 man content it just doesn't work and even for the classes that do have them they are either a boring passive buff or a button that you press once while not in combat and then forget about. They provide almost nothing by way of gameplay.

It also is very noticable in M+ that the two pieces of utility DPS DKs do provide, namely Death Grip and Raise Ally, have both become annoyingly clunky to use. Death grip on the GCD means it doesn't really work as a clutch interrupt like it used to and the runic power cost on Raise Ally makes it effectively useless a lot of the time. It sucks when the tank or healer dies and you have to wait three seconds for runes, then spend another two globals casting abilities on a boss that is one shotting people before you can res them. So you end up having to try and play around a 30 runic power reserve which sucks.

In raids as Unholy I find myself really missing the Dark Arbiter mini-game. It made for a nice DPS highpoint and gave the spec a noticable niche with strong single target moments. Right now as Unholy you are basically doing the same thing start to finish through the entire fight. I do also find myself starting to tire of just how clunky Unholy AoE feels. Certainly Epidemic has helped but when effective doing effective AoE depends on Festering Wounds, Death and Decay, Epidemic, Scourge Strike and Dark Transformation it's just a bit of a mess. It always feels like you are deciding which part of your AoE you will forego, you can have Festering Wounds on the target but then you'll have no runes to Scourge Strike with, or you can skip putting up wounds and Scourge Strike. And when Death and Decay is such a short window (and that's even assuming the fight is stationery) as often as not you end up with no runes to Scourge Strike with while it is down. It works ok on longer sustained AoE windows like M+ trash but it almost never feels satisfying in a cleave situation with a boss add in raids.

For Frost I actually like Breath of Sindragosa and I am ok with it being the strongest talent of that tier since it is the most awkward to use. I actually think a lot of Frost's playstyle problems could be solved just by swapping Glacial Advance and Icecap on the talent tree and tweaking the numbers a bit.

All that said, if I had to offer a lazy one hit fix for DK DPS in general I would say to make Necrotic Aura baseline and make it also work vs PvE targets. I generally dislike when people suggest "make X baseline" as a fix as it is often just lazy thinking and boils down to little more than saying "we should be stronger, if we had one extra thing at all times we would be stronger so give us that". In this case however if you are looking for the laziest fix I think that would work decently. It would give DPS DKs a nice utility buff for M+ (don't have it stack with the DH magic damage buff), it would allow basically an extra PvP talent to both specs and it would basically have no impact on Uldir raiding where Frost is doing very well and Unholy, while a little on the weaker side is really quite average overall.

[msdos]

Yeah these are all good ideas.

I'll just speak on Unholy right now, because I feel it is in most dire shape:
Do something with AOTD, do something with wounds and do something with the AOE, there's too much of it.
Having to ponder over if I need to send my ghoul into the packs for the additional cleave is just too much for this spec, does anyone at Blizz play this at a high level? There is so much crap going on, it's almost like Afflic back in the day.

The wound mechanic could just be wrapped into the ghoul. Let him apply wounds, then give us an ability that allows him to pop them or us to pop them, all at once, consecutively, whatever.
Army could be made weaker and the CD lowered to like 5 minutes.
For aoe, just make Defile baseline for Unholy and take Epidemic off the GCD.

[Tsagam]

I really want to have festering wounds act like combo points, so target switching is easier. Would be cool that the diseases burst from us instead of only the target.

[itzdish30]

I really like BoS, but as you all know it sucks getting knocked out of range while using it, that's why I think they need to make Death Grip pull you into any mob/boss that is not grip-able, would solve a lot of issues with BoS.

[Sulika]

I really want to have festering wounds act like combo points, so target switching is easier. Would be cool that the diseases burst from us instead of only the target.

There are some useful things with having them tied to the individual targets. It lets you set up chain reactions with Bursting Sores where you stack wounds on multiple targets then once the first one dies all the wounds on him burst, making another target die and so on. It is also very much tied into the cleave effect on Death and Decay and how that ties into your ghoul adding wounds to the target with Infected Claws. So I would say keeping Festering Wounds tied to whoever they land on is actually a good thing and I wouldn't personally like to see that changed.

When it comes to AoE though I more and more feel that Death and Decay is the issue and I think that if that was removed the spec could become much more interesting. Ignoring numbers for a minute suppose they did:

1. Remove Death and Decay.
2. Bake the Bursting Sores effect into Festering Wounds as a whole.
3. Shorten the cooldown on Unholy Frenzy to 30 seconds (maybe drop the haste increase from 20% to 10% to compensate).
4. Give Unholy Frenzy the added effect that while it is active your Scourge Strike cleaves all nearby targets.

That actually would make for more fun and controllable AoE. It would be a single target boost from the extra Unholy Frenzy power (going from 12 seconds uptime per 75 seconds to 30 seconds uptime per 75 seconds) which would probably equate to about a 5% boost to single target, maybe a bit more if you factor in the extra wounds but it would make AoE a lot more fun, adding some extra passive cleave via Bursting Sores and the combination of ditching Death and Decay and tying the scourge strike cleave to Unholy Frenzy instead would fix the "too many abilities to use and no resources to use them" issue you get trying to AoE now and make AoE the much more straightforward case of just bursting as many wounds as you can and getting off as many scourge strikes as you can while UF is up.

There would be some talent tree gaps to fill and they would need to buff Army of the Damned and Summon Gargoyle a bit to compete with the stronger Unholy Frenzy. The downside might be that Unholy Frenzy becomes a required talent for any fight with AoE but I think it would work pretty well.

[Nerovar]

BoS needs a 1 minute CD to be a viable and functional talent. Remove Empower Rune Weapon from the GCD same goes for Unholy Frenzy. Nerf dot damage slightly, nerf army of the dead and give good dmg buffs to our single target abilities across the board. Bring back presences baseline and conversion as a talent for sustain (instead of Death Pact which should also be baseline).

[MechaCThun]

My suggestions for Unholy:

• Bursting a Festering Wound has a ___% chance to spawn an Army of the Dead ghoul (or a completely different undead minion to add to class theme. Maybe a sp00ky skelly man?) to attack the target for ___ seconds. Scales with Mastery. Make it a talent to replace "All Will Serve" in the level 15 talent row.

• Bring Scourge of Worlds back in some capacity. Instead of just SS/CS it benefits have it also benefit FS.
  Example: Death Coil increases your Scourge Strike (Clawing Shadows if talented) and Festering Strike damage against that target by ___% for 6 seconds.

• When you proc Runic Corruption you also gain ___ runic power. This could be pretty over powered, so I was thinking like 5 or 10 runic power. Essentially this makes all of your runic power generating abilities just generate 5/10 additional runic power but only on Runic Corruption procs.

[Cromm]

I wouldn't mind seeing Scourge of Worlds come back as a competitive choice that ups our single-target damage. Like the above poster, make it a simple "Death Coil increases damage of your next SS/FS by X%."

Allow us to heal our pet with Death Coil again. Linked to that: make Death Pact for Unholy give us 50% hp but hits our pet for 50% of its hp.

Building off that, remove Death Pact from Frost and give them back "Ice in Your Veins" (probably just call it Icy Veins, or Frosty Arteries, or whatever): When IBF is active, your Death Strike heals you for 300% (or whatever) of its normal value.

Building further: make Death Strike cost 35 RP. Or unnerf its healing done. Either way, make it worth using.

Give all specs Antimagic Zone back as baseline. Replace the PvP talent with Lichborne: for X seconds, you are immune to all fears, charms, and sleeps (are those still a thing?)

Make Frost less reliant on BoS. Make Obliterate actually...well, obliterate? This is just numbers tuning really, should be relatively easy.

These are more pvp focused, but work for pve too. DK always were highly survivable, with excellent self healing due to lifesteals, but theyve consistently nerfed that into the ground while not giving us any mobility or CC in return. Im fine with having low cc and mobility if I actually hit hard as hell and am tough as nuts, like DK used to be. So give us our damage and self healing back IMO. Its what the class has always been about.

[msdos]

I gotta tell ya, ideas for Unholy that make the spec more complex and make you think about more stuff ain't gonna work. It needs to be simplified if anything.

[arth]

Take into consideration the changes and how it would affect your rotation as a whole, I would envision unholy to be something like:

• Festering strike:
  
  • Remove wound mechanic
  • add new mechanic "applies debuff on target to increase magic damage taken by x% for y seconds"
    
    comments: By having it just renew diseases, I'm afraid it would make the rotation boring with spam of SS and the occasional FS.
• Remove Clawing Shadows Talent (Keep scourge strike, add new talent to buff SS shadow damage or physical damage)
• Optional: New Mechanic for Soul Reaper (cd = 1min)
  
  • Marks the target with SR debuff
  • while attacking the target gain a stacking buff (ex: Reaping) upon gaining 10 stacks, soul reaper activates [Allowing you] to unleash a powerful attack.
    
    comments: this is more of a fantasy thing where you gain reaping energy to perform an ultimate move :P every 2ish min.

[Sarrgoth]

What really bothers me as unholy is that we used to be AoE gods. Now, packs die too fast because our AoE requires ramp up and a whole lot of GCDs. Unholy still does good AoE dmg. But you have to be stacked on runic power for epidemic and burst wounds on top of that, if you have bursting sores talent... Sick of demon hunters

[msdos]

What really bothers me as unholy is that we used to be AoE gods. Now, packs die too fast because our AoE requires ramp up and a whole lot of GCDs. Unholy still does good AoE dmg. But you have to be stacked on runic power for epidemic and burst wounds on top of that, if you have bursting sores talent... Sick of demon hunters

Yeah, I wanted Epidem off the GCD in my suggestion. Having it on there is a special type of stupid. It's basically an artificial layer before you can use your AOE. It makes zero sense.

I also started going bursting sores in all situations because recasting the disease is retarded. More of a personal choice than an optimal one.

[endorus]

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic. This is entirely unrealistic for BFA as the changes are too much, but this is my ideal variant of the UH DK, it won't be to everyones taste.
What I’d like is to see unholy be more a mash-up of WC3 heroes and minions and add some utility and defensives which would be a nice bonus.

I haven’t really accounted for balance here with regards to numbers.

Precursor
Apocalypse "It shall sow destruction and war. Famine and death. It shall tempt with power, and then bring an end to all life."
Aranelle “Ugggh - that blade - what is that you carry? Disease and rot surround you, Death Knight!”

With my current gear AotD ghouls claw for ~204, Melee for ~611 (hits) and have 66,430HP

Mechanic/Talents changes
Remove Festering Wounds
Remove Wraith Walk Talent (Wraith Walk becomes baseline)
Remove Death Pact Talent (Death Pact becomes baseline)
Remove Spell Eater Talent (reduced effect baked into AMS)
Remove Pestilent Pustules
Remove AMZ PvP talent (AMZ becomes baseline)
Swap Army of the Damned (T7) with Soul Reaper (T4)

Have to clean up talents due to talent loss/wound removal
T1:
Infected Claws – Ghouls have a x% chance to deal additional shadow damage on melee hit.
T2:
Bursting Sores – FS strikes an additional nearby target for x% [reduced] damage
T4:
Army of the Damned (from T7) – Upon death, your army of the dead Ghouls grant Runic corruption
New: Doomed Existence - Further FS when at 8 Ghouls creates a 9th and instantly causes Corpse Explosion
T5:
New: Regenerative Wraith – Your Wraith Walk heals you for 4% of your maximum HP per second.
New: Harmful Wraith – During Wraith Walk you deal x damage to all enemies within 8yrds
New: Impervious Wraith – You step deeper into the shadows making you immune to physical damage for the duration of Wraith Walk.
T6:
Pestilence – Your Death Coil creates a cloud of undeath around the target dealing x damage per second to enemies within 8yrds. Lasts 3 second, stacks up to 5 times.
Epidemic – As current except it additionally cause Corpse Explosion
T7:
Soul Reaper (from T5) - Rip out the souls of all enemies in front of the Death Knight, dealing [ x% of Attack Power (to be increased)] Shadow damage over 8 sec. 1.5m Cooldown
Unholy Frenzy - Incites you into a killing frenzy for 12 sec, increasing Haste by 20% and your auto attacks cause Corpse Explosion.

New Abilities
New: Vampiric Aura (passive) – Undead minions under your control recover x life per hit (this obviously scales well with haste)
New: Vampiric Aura (active) – Your Vampiric Aura extends over the battlefield. All Party/Raid members gain 10% leech for 10s - 60s cooldown.
New: Corpse Explosion – When triggered with at least one Army of the Dead Ghoul active, the Ghoul with the lowest HP explodes for 1,200 shadow damage
New: Wraith Walk – Unchanged [As current]
New: Anti-Magic Zone – Unchanged [As current]

Functional Changes
Festering Strike – Strikes the target for [unchanged] physical damage summoning 2-3 ghouls from your Army of the Dead
Ghouls summoned by festering strike are now permanent, up to a maximum of 8 ghouls can be active at once.
Scourge Strike - An unholy strike that deals (30% of Attack power) Physical damage and (16.5% of Attack power)% Shadow damage, causes Corpse Explosion.
Death Coil – Does x shadow damage, the essence of death radiates from your target healing all undead minions under your control for x% of the damage done.
Death Pact – Consume the undead essence from one of your Army of the Dead destroying the Ghoul and healing you for 100% of the consumed HP.
Army of the Dead – Raise a legion of Skeleton Warriors (4) and Skeletal Mages (4) to attack your primary target for 15 seconds, the duration can be extended by spending RP – 3 runes, 3m Cooldown [Skeletal Mages provide the “Unholy Vigour” buff to all undead minions increasing attack speed by 2.5% each (10%), Skeleton Warriors provide the “Unholy Brawn” buff to all undead minions increasing attack power by 2.5% each (10%)
Apocalypse (imagine this as Unholy BoS) – Your Ghouls decay rapidly, spreading rot and disease. Dealing 1,500 damage instantly per active Ghoul (x damage per ghoul and draining 5% of their HP every 0.5) lasts until all original Ghouls die [new ghouls can be created but are not a part of the apocalypse, this also means that by using FS to generate RP (for DC) you will have 8 ghouls back up within 1 GCD of Apoc ending, no DPS loss]
Dark Ritual – Continuously drain the HP of all your ghouls returning 100% of it to the Death Knight, lasts until cancelled. While under the effects of the Dark Ritual your Ghouls do no damage and your damage done is reduced by 50%

Balance Considerations:
It’s not possible to become immortal through FS/DP as the rune cost to use FS (2) and DP (1) continuously is too high.
Dark Ritual can be used as long as you have Ghouls active however the damage loss would be too great to use for anything other than a defensive (reduced damage done by DC affects how much ghoul healing you can do, the fact they can't attack means they can't benefit from Vampiric Aura)
Apocalypse is not sustainable indefinitely as the RP cost of DC to sustain the HP of ghouls is too high
HP and Damage of Ghouls will need to be reduced to account for the healing/damage done when using the Ghoul HP pool as a resource and also the fact that they are now permanent.

What has basically happened is that wounds have been replaced with ghouls, the benefit is that target swapping is just a leap away, more on demand AoE higher sustain and utility.

You want to keep your "stacks" of ghouls high for CDs, AoTD, Apoc or Dark ritual and try and maintain them with DC when using Apoc. Apoc and AotD pair well however don't line up so management/offset is required, you want to spend RP as soon as possible and as a result need to spend runes quickly.

In my mind it's a pretty fluid spec with high activity.

I've done a frost and blood one too, but i'll see how well this is received before i spend time to flesh it out!

[Bazull]

i love these suggestions