Blizzard listened. Kinda. New Build.

[faithbane]

And people like you are the reason the forums are filled with more noise than signal. Learn how to give feedback without all the childish 'reeeee blizz hates my class' nonsense.

again another useless comment that adds nothing to do the conversation. unlike you, I provided a timeline, facts, examples and reasoning for why I came to my conclusion.

But keep that counter up! At this rate you will reach 11k posts with nonsense soon.

[Neuroticaine]

All the unholy DKs suddenly realizing the spec is miserable to play.

I really don't understand modern WoW players. I've been playing Unholy regularly since Warlords, and mained it for the past two expansions (well, I tried Warlock at the start of this expansion but went back to the Unholy DK by the end) and I genuinely have to say it's absolutely one of the most fun specs in the whole game for me. And an order of magnitudes more enjoyable than the dreadfully dull and boring Frost.

- - - Updated - - -

Different players want different things, best to keep the core gameplay loop light and allow players to expand through talents, which ought to appeal to everyone other than players who are greedy and want everything all at once.

Also i dont want to see cleave return and i dont like SW baseline since shadow has far too much clutter now.

I KIND OF agree that Shadow has a bit of clutter now, but turning SW: D into a talent was one of the stupidest things they've ever done to Shadow. It's an iconic spell, and I'm glad to see it returning baseline.

What I don't like about Shadow's clutter is Void Bolt being tired to the same spot that Void Eruption is in, as the way I have my hotkeys set up, I have to put it in more core rotation area, even though the slot is dead for most of the fight now (wasn't that bad when it was a rotational ability instead of cool down).

I think I'd be okay if Void Eruption were simply a cooldown I could keep with the rest of my cooldowns, and it transformed Shadow Word: Death into Void Bolt, then those two ability could share a spot in my core rotation area. 6 core rotational abilities has always been my preferred sweet spot and this would like up perfectly. You'd just have to make Void Bolt a little more spicy during execution to make sure it doesn't feel like a downgrade.

[Saberstrike]

Gargoyle had it's time in the sun but it's honestly a boring ability. There's nothing fun about pressing a button and having a dumb minion do a billion damage. If anything, I wish they'd go further and remove army of the dead, as Apocalypse fulfills its fantasy better, it's a more fun button to press, and honestly having a 8 minute cooldown in 2020 just feels horrible.

What I'd do if I had it my way is this:

Delete Gargoyle

Delete Army of the Dead

Instead of Gargoyle, put the pvp talent abomination as the 120 / 50 talent that applies disease in an aoe around it and also cleaves festering wounds onto 3 targets each time it attacks.

Buff the shit out of Festering Wounds because, let's be honest, for being the core gameplay loop of the spec it had never really done enough to feel impactful.

Like, currently in BFA the only reason wounds are exciting to pop is because we all have 3x festermight that buffs our real damage. Once that's gone, the wound system once more becomes frustratingly weak and borderline pointless other than to 'just have a gameplay loop'. I would much rather more of the damage was tied to skillful interaction of festering strike / wounds / scourge strike, than 'press minion buttons every 2/3/8 minutes, do a billion damage, then just spam your rotation into a target and be mediocre until minions are up'.

Either that or just go back to what we had in cataclysm, with 3 diseases that got renewed by festering strike and scourge strike being a filler ability that just does damage with no strings attached.

It's kind of a common problem with class design, I'd noticed. Arms Warrior's theme is big mortal strike crits? Give them a bleed that does 60% of their damage! Frost mage is about crisp shatters and big frostbolt crits? Make it all random procs! Fire is about... big balls of fire? Nah, Ignite does most of your damage. I really, really, really wish they'd take a big step back and designed classes with A THEME in mind, rather than just random off the wall changes that make sense to no one and more oft. than not just frustrate both the devs and the players.

[Asrialol]

again another useless comment that adds nothing to do the conversation. unlike you, I provided a timeline, facts, examples and reasoning for why I came to my conclusion.

But keep that counter up! At this rate you will reach 11k posts with nonsense soon.

Well that's debatable.

[Th3Scourge]

DT changes was fucking horrible for PVP and M+. Thankfully they backtracked on it

I'm indifferent about gargoyle. Would be better if it was back to the legion version of unholy with dark arbiter as the talent choice and gargoyle as baseline

[Nere]

We keep epidemic though baseline, I would call that a fair trade. Epidemic > Gargoyle

[Lazuli]

LEGION + Warrior + Draught of Souls

The whole shitshow with GCD is because of 1 stupid class with stackable cooldown and the pure wisdom of nerfing the trinket for everyone but warriors for months.

It left a scar in the mind of the community and the GCD/burst stacking was a community demand in the first place.

Blame stupid classes that stack insane burst in a few globals with no setup, blame blizzard for leaving the broken state for nearly a year, blame what ever you want, but claiming that there is no reason for the GCD change is just ignorant.

In my opinion they should have just gutted rogues and warriors with warlocks together for BfA, A full meta ongoing for a whole expansion was just silly, but leaving FOTM for 2 back 2 back expansion will be difficult to repair.

lol explain to me why rextroy has been able to exploit 1shots consistently through out bfa while the cancerous gcd changes exist. It doesn't change shit, they just wanted to slow down combat and be like ff14 aids. /shrug

If you want plenty more examples just youtube literally any bfa pvp with corruptions , you are clueless.

you may have a point that it was their intention to stop that shit initially, but its literally dead fucking obvious that blizzard cannot balance shit if their life depended on it so it is POINTLESS to have gcd on everything other than making combat slow and feel bad. Through out all bfa and in SL it will be pointless and simply bothersome.

[Saberstrike]

DT changes was fucking horrible for PVP and M+. Thankfully they backtracked on it

I honestly think it's about time they re-think the role unholy's ghoul(s) play. I liked them flirting with that idea in Legion by giving army ghouls debuffs back in Legion, and also having the one talent that gave you a little abomination with hook instead of ghoul. Those things were a lot more interesting than any iteration of gargoyle.

DT... I have mixed feelings about it as while I understand the 'skill' argument, I would honestly much rather have this utility on the player. DKs just straight up having two interrupts (one on much longer CD) would be a very interesting change, instead of tying it to a pet's mobility gimmick that is also restricted by a DPS cooldown... it's honestly kind of a bad design if you think about it. The same way as warlocks lacking a baseline interrupt, a relic of a bygone era.

It also makes no sense thematically that of all the specs to have a permanent pet unholy is one. Unholy is the 'necromancer' of WoW, and Necromancers aren't particularly attached to their pets, they summon them to be disposable fodder, not something to babysit and count on to do a significant portion of your damage.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

All the unholy DKs suddenly realizing the spec is miserable to play.

Quite the contrary. You sure you are referring to Unholy?

[Uputz]

Honestly people overreacted to the DT baked into Apoc. It was looking to be TOP Teir DPS when you added soulbinds. You could get Apoc and DT every 30seconds. OOF

[Ange]

People want allways some unique Unholy mechanic for some reason, but this are clearly not the players that main the class/spec.

Look at LEGIONs Legendary DA cooldown alignment, if you managed to align it just 2 times in one fight you had orange unholy logs, because it was so much micromanaging that most didnt even play it.

I dont get the wish for unholy as the high risc, high reward spec. We allready have frost BoS for that. Unholy should go back to be the high uptime, high DPS, low burst spec, with niche in AoE.

The current mix with wounds, but low impact, disease but low impact, pets but low impact, long cooldowns with low impact. Unholy got enough mechanics and dependencies for 2 or 3 unique specs mixed into one.

And still, with so many concepts mixed together, the spec suffers a lot of downtime in SL. I wish one class dev would take a look and just strip off the added clutter in this spec and go for a clear theme.

[bloodmoth13]

I KIND OF agree that Shadow has a bit of clutter now, but turning SW: D into a talent was one of the stupidest things they've ever done to Shadow. It's an iconic spell, and I'm glad to see it returning baseline.

What I don't like about Shadow's clutter is Void Bolt being tired to the same spot that Void Eruption is in, as the way I have my hotkeys set up, I have to put it in more core rotation area, even though the slot is dead for most of the fight now (wasn't that bad when it was a rotational ability instead of cool down).

I think I'd be okay if Void Eruption were simply a cooldown I could keep with the rest of my cooldowns, and it transformed Shadow Word: Death into Void Bolt, then those two ability could share a spot in my core rotation area. 6 core rotational abilities has always been my preferred sweet spot and this would like up perfectly. You'd just have to make Void Bolt a little more spicy during execution to make sure it doesn't feel like a downgrade.

IKR!
Thats a far bigger issue than SW: D coming back, which shouldnt be a problem but our toolkit really has expanded significantly.
Its all worse because its such a frantic spammable ability that you want on a common keypress and not some seldom pressed key. They could stand to just convert one of your other spells during voidform, your not meant to be spamming your dots so just alter SW: P, give it a high damage direct portion (void bolt) and it refreshes SW: P anyway, so win win.
I always liked shadow since it was generally always more complex than other specs, but this is getting a little out of hand.

[Kendros]

It's an ability regardless, we need less shit that we had in wotlk put into talent trees. Idk who thought that was a good idea in BFA, but it needs to stop.

I liked gargoyle as part of my toolkit, even though it was cast and forget it, I just loved the fantasy. They did it right in legion with the whole dark arbiter concept, it worked.

Gargoyle was a talent in wotlk just saying.
Gargoyle was a crap spell since wotlk when it was so overtune it could solo a player if left free casting, then it was nerfed to shit and never good again, simple low damage fire and forget. It was good again with the dark arbiter talent + LEGENDARY SHOULDERS. The talent itself without the shoudlers was pretty mediocre and gargoyle damage untalented hit as hard as auto attacks. Completely impactless.
TBH its a CD that adds nothing to the spec and if its causing GCD issues it has to go.

[Gotural]

I am always a big fervent of bringing back as many skills as possible in the game, but I think Gargoyle is fine being a talent because it's a pet CD.

There are always some situations in which having your burst linked to a secondary pet which you cannot perfectly control is not pleasant. Especially in PvP where it can get LoSed or killed really easily.

Imo either having it baseline and having a talent that allow us to replace it with something else that isn't a pet or removing it from our baseline abilities and turning it into a talent is best.

[Saltysquidoon]

Buff the shit out of Festering Wounds because, let's be honest, for being the core gameplay loop of the spec it had never really done enough to feel impactful.

Even if they are the filler they're not the tentpole of the spec which is now pets (and to a far lesser extent dots), they exist (as you point out) as something to do to get to minions and while the minions are on CD, downtime nature of the beast with a summon spec and unholy is a summon spec.

Either that or just go back to what we had in cataclysm, with 3 diseases that got renewed by festering strike and scourge strike being a filler ability that just does damage with no strings attached.

This would demonstrably not work. FS extending diseases is literally a mechanic designed around snapshotting, if you went back to that unholy goes back to the trash it was in WoD where FS literally did nothing and you only pressed it because blizz hadn't reworked the spec yet so it existed to be pressed to do nothing.

I really, really, really wish they'd take a big step back and designed classes with A THEME in mind, rather than just random off the wall changes that make sense to no one and more oft. than not just frustrate both the devs and the players.

I agree you highlighted the issue with a lot of specs. Your problem is unholy doesn't have that issue, like at all. It's just you don't want it to be a summon based spec (which is fine) so you want summons to be the problem.

[Baconeggcheese]

Even if they are the filler they're not the tentpole of the spec which is now pets (and to a far lesser extent dots)

Pets / guardians are dots in most cases. Placing a debuff on a target that does damage over time isn't different than summoning a guardian that does damage over time. Biggest difference is that the guardian persists if the target dies, but that functionality can be given to debuff based dots in a number of ways.

Coming from a lock perspective with seed the "popping" mechanic can be really fun and definitely something that could be built more around. When looking around at potential classes to play I fiddled with unholy for quite a bit and the popping mechanic definitely felt underwhelming. Having a bunch of fire and forget dots via guardians isn't really compelling either to me, its a big part of why I don't enjoy the current demonology either vs the old one.

Not that dots can't be fun, but its usually gotta be a lot more interactive than fire and forget to feel impactful unless its just an incredibly overtuned dot. Or at a minimum be something you're spreading / juggling, which isn't the case with guardians.

[rEme-]

Hi! Can someone explain to me why the standalone DT and Apocalypse is better than the merged one?
I mean, I was browsing class changes to pick a new main and I was pretty hyped about the DT/Apocalypse merge. I haven't played DK in BFA, so I may be wrong, but to me, it seemed a better design. Not to mention the synergies with the lvl 50 talent, the passive CDR and the conduit to reduce its cooldown again. Now there will be two abilities and only one will be affected by these bonuses - if they stick to the BFA version.
Why was this revert requested then? Is it easier to manage Festering Wounds which would be consumed by Apocalypse?
Thank you in advance!

[Halliax]

Hi! Can someone explain to me why the standalone DT and Apocalypse is better than the merged one?
I mean, I was browsing class changes to pick a new main and I was pretty hyped about the DT/Apocalypse merge. I haven't played DK in BFA, so I may be wrong, but to me, it seemed a better design. Not to mention the synergies with the lvl 50 talent, the passive CDR and the conduit to reduce its cooldown again. Now there will be two abilities and only one will be affected by these bonuses - if they stick to the BFA version.
Why was this revert requested then? Is it easier to manage Festering Wounds which would be consumed by Apocalypse?
Thank you in advance!

Cause as stand alone skills you have more control in PvP. And can use DT in M+ to stack aoe festering wounds, before you use your cds and deliver the pain!!!

[rEme-]

Oh, I see. Can you stack Festering Wounds in AOE situations using Infected Claws talent or the transformed ghoul does it by default?

[Saltysquidoon]

Pets / guardians are dots in most cases. Placing a debuff on a target that does damage over time isn't different than summoning a guardian that does damage over time. Biggest difference is that the guardian persists if the target dies, but that functionality can be given to debuff based dots in a number of ways.

And shadowbolt is a nuke, it's not functionally different to pyroblast after all. My point still stands reductionist minutia aside, as the poster I was responding to mentioned unholy used to be about managing your diseases (mostly through snapshot manipulation), now it's about managing pets and guardians. Wounds are now what strikes were before, something to press while your diseases/pets do the heavy lifting.

Coming from a lock perspective with seed the "popping" mechanic can be really fun and definitely something that could be built more around. When looking around at potential classes to play I fiddled with unholy for quite a bit and the popping mechanic definitely felt underwhelming. Having a bunch of fire and forget dots via guardians isn't really compelling either to me, its a big part of why I don't enjoy the current demonology either vs the old one.

Like I said before you're entitled to an opinion but the reality is the spec has always been about mucking about while your passive damage does the real work, that's what it means to be a dot/summoner spec. But that's my point, yes wounds are just there, they could be more compelling but it's not a huge issue because it's not the focus of the spec. It's like immo for destro, destro has it because locks have dots and you just put it up because it lets you press other more interesting buttons, no one is complaining destro's dot management isn't on the same level as aff's.