Oddities of the Death Knight Talent Trees. 06/02/11

[kerwyn]

Butchery is a goddamn amazing leveling talent for 2h frost. That spec swims in RP and the move of it you have the faster you can explode things with ridiculously huge frost strikes.

[Psychos]

First of all, Desecration is not a PvP only talent. Second of all, why do you expect Butchery to be a great talent? It's in the first tier of the blood tree. Most trees have insignificant talents at the top. About your views on the unholy tree, you can quite clearly see that you've not extensively played unholy this tier. Epidemic is a must for our priorities to be consistent, without it you'd have to spend death runes on festering strike, which is invariably bad from a DPS standpoint. Also, you have TWO leftover points when spec'ing unholy. TWO. POINTS. All the rest of the points are used on DPS increasing talents except one point in Desecration, which is a great talent in and of itself (would be ever better if it could be applied from range but). So yea, I agree with some of your points, but you're not very informed about how things actually work in a raid environment. The utility talents you can grab as an unholy DK, such as 3/3 AMS and 2/2 Desecration are very useful in alot of the fights in this tier of raiding. Of course in the end it all comes down to how your raid group wants you to act. Maybe they don't need your utility, who knows.

[Herald]

First of all, Desecration is not a PvP only talent. Second of all, why do you expect Butchery to be a great talent? It's in the first tier of the blood tree. Most trees have insignificant talents at the top. About your views on the unholy tree, you can quite clearly see that you've not extensively played unholy this tier. Epidemic is a must for our priorities to be consistent, without it you'd have to spend death runes on festering strike, which is invariably bad from a DPS standpoint. Also, you have TWO leftover points when spec'ing unholy. TWO. POINTS. All the rest of the points are used on DPS increasing talents except one point in Desecration, which is a great talent in and of itself (would be ever better if it could be applied from range but). So yea, I agree with some of your points, but you're not very informed about how things actually work in a raid environment. The utility talents you can grab as an unholy DK, such as 3/3 AMS and 2/2 Desecration are very useful in alot of the fights in this tier of raiding. Of course in the end it all comes down to how your raid group wants you to act. Maybe they don't need your utility, who knows.

I feel like you read only the bolded words in my post and ignored the rest.

[Nangz]

i'm just quoting to add a couple of things:
about talents on release, that was exactly my point, there has always been stuff that needed to be fixed, sometimes it's predictable, sometimes it isn't, that's the reason we have patches, is it perfect? no, is it better then 3 more months of raiding ICC and RS and having Cata out just now? YES!
on 10 mens you don't have 3/4/5/a billion people bringing the same buffs and debuffs, you have 2 tanks, you don't always get to pick the classes, if you have a DK and the boss isn't Argaloth he HAS to keep up the diseases on what he's tanking, diseaseless blood is for a few lucky snowflakes who can have other people bringing the same stuff for them, most of us humans have to work their asses off for 100% uptime on Frost and Scarlet Fevers
Butchery, no matter how much you might scream and cry about it IS a dps talent, it's for the lack of any kind of alternative? well, yes, but it's still in any cookie cutter frost spec, and will probably be in any unholy spec once the patch hits the server and unholy DW will die. PLUS it can be a GREAT dps talent on any fight involving adds, ever tried magmaw as frost? throw 2 howling blasts on the parasites, and then turn back on the boss with a full RP bar, ever tried maloriak? same stuff there

stop thinking about your little nieche of happyness and try to watch stuff on the large scale, you may realize it's not all perfect, but we're not as doomed as you like to describe


EDIT: some math: DRW costs 60 RP, that's 2 Rune strikes, with 50% more threat generated with the sword active if you can't thorw off 4 rune strikes for the duration, or equivalent threat, you're doing something terribly wrong when tanking, i mean, it's 12 seconds, that's 8 global cooldowns, saying it's a threat loss is stupid

I wanted to talk about the bolded part. Apart from what you're saying being quite correct in my opinion I also wanted to add something. At the end of WOTLK in one of the patches that came around during ICC DRW was transfering a percentage of its threat to its user. This was when DRW was a debuff bear in mind. Now the mechanic has changed over the course of wotlk but from what I was able to tell, when DRW was active from a buff- no threat gained from it. When DRW was active from a debuff- threat gained from it.

My question is to whether there have been any tests to see if DRW still produces its own threat which is then transfered to the DK.

If it is then it is even MORE effective as a tanking/tps cooldown.

[Herald]

It's ridiculous how personable people are making this thread. I feel as if only a few people have remembered that WoW is a video game. WoW is a malleable entity, it's not an untouchable reality.

I ask for only a few things:

1. Stop accusing me of living in bubble separate from the rest of the WoW playerbase.
2. Stop saying that I've described Cataclysm as "half-assed" or "poorly done". I said "rushed" and "incomplete".
3. Do not call me a doomsayer. Stating that certain designs are poor or peculiar does not make me a doomsayer. It's just a game.
4. Please provide more evidence to support your opposition than "on this one encounter, it really shines". This is a fine argument for clearly optional talents but not for unavoidable talents like Butchery and any of the PvP centric talents in Unholy's first two tiers.

EDIT: some math: DRW costs 60 RP, that's 2 Rune strikes, with 50% more threat generated with the sword active if you can't thorw off 4 rune strikes for the duration, or equivalent threat, you're doing something terribly wrong when tanking, i mean, it's 12 seconds, that's 8 global cooldowns, saying it's a threat loss is stupid

No one said it was a threat loss once glyphed. The issue with DRW is the redundancies. The threat aspect of the ability only exists in the glyph and the glyph only exists because of the cost. It's just very poor design that leads to unnecessary inhibitors while accomplishing nothing to compensate.


The overwhelming response of "well, things are always borked one way or another" is appalling to me. Change does not happen from a stagnation. There are clear and present design flaws in this class as well as others and you should feel obligated to assist Blizzard is refining their designs as best as they can.

If you completely disagree with something I've labeled as "poor design" or "a flaw", then state it and tell me why; I mean, really tell me why as I have really told you why I believe it's a flaw. Show some civility and sanity; yes, even on teh interwebz.

[Deathquoi]

while i agree on most of the post
Butchery IS definitely lackluster but if you do the math over the course of say JUST a boss fight of say 8 minutes you have:

(2RP/5 sec)* 480s in an 8 minute fight you get 192 rp. at roughly 32 RP and 34 RP per DPS ability you get roughly 6 extra FS or DC totaling 60k-100k damage total give or take buffs and/or crits. though this is really not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things it is a tier 1 ability. most tier 1 abilities don't provide anything stupendous except for blade barrier as a tank. It in itself isn't wonderful but it does do its job.

---------- Post added 2011-02-07 at 01:31 PM ----------



lol well this is a DK forum not a general forum to compare pallies (or any other class regardless of what the post is trying to point out)to DKs in any manor at all.

Your reading comprehension is atrocious, man. I'm just saying that most classes are totally fine, and if any class is having issues, it's ironically the one class that the OP seems to think is doing OK.

[Herald]

Your reading comprehension is atrocious, man. I'm just saying that most classes are totally fine, and if any class is having issues, it's ironically the one class that the OP seems to think is doing OK.

Ret spec is not a class.

[Deathquoi]

Ret spec is not a class.

It is part of the paladin class.

[zabraba]

- Blood Rites: Whenever you hit with Death Strike or Obliterate, the Frost and Unholy Runes will become Death Runes when they activate. Death Runes count as a Blood, Frost or Unholy Rune.

Flexibility. Need attack speed debuff? Death rune. Need damage done debuff? Death rune. Need Bone Shield for a minor cooldown? Death rune. Terrible point.

- Butchery: Whenever you kill an enemy that grants experience or honor, you generate up to 20 runic power. In addition, you generate 2 runic power per 5 sec while in combat.

I don't know about you, but I happen to enjoy an extra attack once in a while. Not something immediately apparent, but for you to discredit a talent that effectively gives you an extra attack every once in a while is pretty ignorant.

- Crimson Scourge: Increases the damage dealt by your Blood Boil by 40%, and when you land a melee attack on a target that is infected with your Blood Plague, there is a 10% chance that your next Blood Boil will consume no runes.

AoE threat. Not sure why you wouldn't think this is worth it. Helps aggro in heroics, especially PuGs that have no clue how to attack the same target as you. Definitely helps on Halfus whelps. Pretty self explanatory why this talent is worth it.

Dancing Rune Weapon: Summons a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 12 sec, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage. The rune weapon also assists in defense of its master, granting an additional 20% parry chance while active.

High cost yes, but I'm still wondering why you don't think having yet another cooldown is worth it. Combine that with another minor cooldown and it's pretty effective. Mid-fight on boss fights you don't need to use your RP nearly as frequently and can pool up for somewhere you'll need a cooldown. Flawed? Maybe. Worth it? Yes. Good for burn phases too.

- Nerves of Cold Steel: Increases your chance to hit with one-handed melee weapons by 3% and increases the damage done by your off-hand weapon by 25%.

Don't see why placement is a problem here. Blood DW tanking and DW Unholy (starting tomorrow) are both gimped and it's not worth picking up this talent in that case. Bad players are going to be bad with or without this talent. Blizzard doesn't have to spoonfeed every terrible player and prevent them from picking up this talent by placing it differently.

- Hungering Cold: Purges the earth around the Death Knight of all heat. Enemies within 10 yards are trapped in ice, preventing them from performing any action for 10 sec and infecting them with Frost Fever. Enemies are considered Frozen, but any damage other than diseases will break the ice.

Do you not raid or something? There are several encounters which benefit from the use of Hungering Cold. Effectively another interrupt in some cases and CC is definitely a help on certain encounters. No real reason not to take it to begin with, so why care if it's linked?

- Unholy Command: Reduces the cooldown of your Death Grip ability by 10 sec, and gives you a 100% chance to refresh its cooldown when dealing a killing blow to a target that grants experience or honor.
- Desecration: Your Plague Strikes and Scourge Strikes defile the ground within 7 yards of your target. Enemies in the area are slowed by 50% while standing on the unholy ground. Lasts 20 sec.
- Resilient Infection: When your diseases are dispelled by an enemy, you have a 100% chance to activate a Frost rune if Frost Fever was removed, or an Unholy rune if Blood Plague was removed.

Resilient Infection is definitely useless in PvE at the moment, but I see no reason why Desecration or Unholy Command wouldn't have some uses. Short CD Death Grip or an add slow are pretty nice in certain situations.

Epidemic - Increases the duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 12 sec.

Let's see. More damage to targets you're not actively attacking, less reliance on Festering Strike, less times a Frost DK has to waste runes reapplying diseases. Sounds like a worthless talent to me. I mean, who in their right mind would want extra DPS? Just because it doesn't specifically say it adds DPS doesn't mean it's not a DPS booster in some way.

Another glaring fault of the Unholy tree is the amount of useful talents packed into the last four tiers. A talent like Improved Anti Magic Shell (which is useful for all three specs) can be higher up in the tree and still be linked to Anti-Magic Zone. The entire Unholy tree lacks consistent coherency.

Take your points out of Contagion and maybe a point out of IBT or RPM? Not hard to get 3/3 MS and AMZ without sacrificing a whole lot.

The only good point you had was about BCB. Seriously, find something better to do with your time than whine about talent trees that aren't broken.

[Muraza]

If it is then it is even MORE effective as a tanking/tps cooldown.

If you have to use DRW as a TPS CD, you should probably stop tanking. Its more or less just a defensive CD for the 20% parry you get when you pop. Unsure if its DS's will heal you as well but its a survivability CD not a TPS imo.

[mordale]

I find Resilient infection a bit odd... Being an Unholy talent, why take a talent that takes effect when your diseases are dispelled, when Unholy Blight a few points down makes your diseases undispellable anyway? I mean, Blood and Frost specs can take them as optional PvP talents I guess...but it pales in comparison to the other 2nd-tier points such as hand of doom, Imp. Blood Tap, Lichborne, On a Pale Horse...

indeed, granted i feel the whole current disease system could use a bit of a anti-redundancy scrub.

[Enigma3d]

Herald, I'm going to restate what a couple of people have said already, but a lot of us aren't taking issue with the points you have raised, but rather with the conclusion that you draw from them about Cataclysm being rushed out in an unfinished state. Someone mentioned that compared to other expansions, cataclysm is amazing, and you responded that just because something used to suck a lot worse, doesn't mean that it still not being that great is good. I agree with that statement, but I believe you missed the point, with so many people coming from so many different directions, and some saying very similar things.

The point was, even if there are still problems, there will always, and I mean ALWAYS, be problems, and the presence of said problems does not mean that the game was shipped in an unfinished state. Game balance, class and talent tweaking and refining, is an ongoing process, and will NEVER be done. Hell, when WoW finally finishes, it will STILL not be done. But that's true for every single game on the market today, most especially those in the RPG genre, MMO or otherwise. I repeat, it does not signify that the game was rushed, and shipped unfinished.

[Desminn]

Indeed, vanilla was a strange creature. Priest armor buff giving ATTACK POWER? And a talent that increases the attack power buff? Best. Caster buff. Ever.

gotta love the survial hunter tree hope you like being a rogue with traps lol

[Herald]

Flexibility. Need attack speed debuff? Death rune. Need damage done debuff? Death rune. Need Bone Shield for a minor cooldown? Death rune. Terrible point.

Flexibility. Need attack speed debuff? Frost rune. Need damage done debuff? Unholy rune. Need Bone Shield for a minor cooldown? Unholy rune. Need a 10% heal? Blood rune. Need more runes? Improved Blood Tap. Terrible counterpoint? Death ru-err, yes.

In case you don't see it, I'm illustrating to you that using an Unholy rune turned Death rune to activate an ability which costs an Unholy rune does not somehow make it better. To be clearer, any abilities which are activated via Frost or Unholy runes do NOT benefit from Blood Rites.

I don't know about you, but I happen to enjoy an extra attack once in a while. Not something immediately apparent, but for you to discredit a talent that effectively gives you an extra attack every once in a while is pretty ignorant.

Once in a while? You mean once every 1.5 minutes? You mean five extra attack over an eight minute fight assuming that you're attacking your target nonstop so as to truly benefit from the extra RP? Raid encounter are far too mobile for Butchery to really standout as an "extra" resource.

AoE threat. Not sure why you wouldn't think this is worth it. Helps aggro in heroics, especially PuGs that have no clue how to attack the same target as you. Definitely helps on Halfus whelps. Pretty self explanatory why this talent is worth it.

The secondary effect isn't entirely necessary, it's still boring and clashes with any Blood DK who doesn't need to manage their own debuffs and will wisely choose to put out another DS instead.

High cost yes, but I'm still wondering why you don't think having yet another cooldown is worth it. Combine that with another minor cooldown and it's pretty effective. Mid-fight on boss fights you don't need to use your RP nearly as frequently and can pool up for somewhere you'll need a cooldown. Flawed? Maybe. Worth it? Yes. Good for burn phases too.

I'll say it again; DRW is horribly designed. It has a high cost because it provides extra damage and can be glyphed to produce extra threat to offset the threat loss from the high cost. Do you see the problem now? The glyph and the high cost only exist because of the other and cause unnecessary inhibitors; that's really poor design.

Don't see why placement is a problem here. Blood DW tanking and DW Unholy (starting tomorrow) are both gimped and it's not worth picking up this talent in that case. Bad players are going to be bad with or without this talent. Blizzard doesn't have to spoonfeed every terrible player and prevent them from picking up this talent by placing it differently.

It causes a ton of confusion for new DKs. As well, if Blizzard only intends for one spec to dual wield (which they do) then placing this DW specific talent at the top of the tree while it's only useful to one particular Frost tree spec is horrendous design. The top two tiers of a talent tree should be talents which serve a purpose for any of the three specs; they should be talents which any spec can utilize and excel with given the correct scenario. Blood and Unholy have talents like this in the top two tiers, NoCS does not fit that bill and should probably swap spots with OaPH or Endless Winter if not just baked into Threat of Thassarion; it's not like DKs don't start the game with enough points to pick up both talents.

Do you not raid or something? There are several encounters which benefit from the use of Hungering Cold. Effectively another interrupt in some cases and CC is definitely a help on certain encounters. No real reason not to take it to begin with, so why care if it's linked?

It's pseudo-CC, like Desecration on HLK, it's nice to pick up for a few encounters, but forcing such a situational talent into the action bar of every Frost DK is ridiculous. I'm just happy that our Major Glyph selection for our DPS specs is so mediocre that picking up Glyph of Hungering Cold doesn't take away any potential DPS.

Resilient Infection is definitely useless in PvE at the moment, but I see no reason why Desecration or Unholy Command wouldn't have some uses. Short CD Death Grip or an add slow are pretty nice in certain situations.

The Death Grip talent will never be useful to DPS DKs in a raid environment because if you are ever presented with a situation where you, as a DPS, must Death Grip a mob, your Death Grip should not be on cooldown. While Desecration is nice for a couple fights, it has no off switch. Once you spec it, you're stuck with it. There are much, MUCH more flexible AoE snares than Desecration.

Let's see. More damage to targets you're not actively attacking, less reliance on Festering Strike, less times a Frost DK has to waste runes reapplying diseases. Sounds like a worthless talent to me. I mean, who in their right mind would want extra DPS? Just because it doesn't specifically say it adds DPS doesn't mean it's not a DPS booster in some way.

You needed to read more carefully. The point here is that Cata beta had diseases which were 30 seconds baseline and 48 seconds with Epidemic. Clearly, having such long disease durations wasn't a good idea, but instead of eliminating Epidemic and giving us 30 second disease duration Blizzard opted to cut both disease duration and Epidemic so that maximum disease duration became 33 seconds. It was a massive slap in the face and extremely lazy on Blizzard's end. Sure, it's clear that they ran out of ideas for the Unholy tree; it's stacked with PvP talents up top and the Virulence replacement is a weaker version of Unholy's new Mastery.

What Blizzard could and SHOULD do is remove Epidemic, make diseases 30 seconds baseline and move BCB and Abom's Might out of the Blood tree and into the first two tiers of Unholy. Talk about your obvious fixes.

Take your points out of Contagion and maybe a point out of IBT or RPM? Not hard to get 3/3 MS and AMZ without sacrificing a whole lot.

Those are all terrible ideas and big DPS losses.

The only good point you had was about BCB. Seriously, find something better to do with your time than whine about talent trees that aren't broken.

The only good point you had was.... umm... Well, you didn't actually make any good points...

[thugthrasher]

I feel like you haven't tanked much with some of your comments. I could be wrong, but it seems like a couple of your comments are based more on looking at the talents in theory rather than in real world situations.

Flexibility. Need attack speed debuff? Frost rune. Need damage done debuff? Unholy rune. Need Bone Shield for a minor cooldown? Unholy rune. Need a 10% heal? Blood rune. Need more runes? Improved Blood Tap. Terrible counterpoint? Death ru-err, yes.

In case you don't see it, I'm illustrating to you that using an Unholy rune turned Death rune to activate an ability which costs an Unholy rune does not somehow make it better. To be clearer, any abilities which are activated via Frost or Unholy runes do NOT benefit from Blood Rites.

Not quite right. In an ideal world, where you have a blood, frost, and unholy up at all times, the death runes are basically useless. They get VERY little use if you only have frost and unholy up as well (they got more before today if you needed a blood boil and they will still RARELY get used when you are not taking much damage for some reason and the extra damage from a heart strike is useful).
However, in the real world, where people make mistakes and unexpected situations happen, sometimes you'll have a frost rune up, but no unholy for some reason and you'll need to suddenly Bone Shield (say your healer made a mistake and then RE just procced a frost rune for you). Or let's say that had to DS once more than usual in order to keep yourself up and your raid needs the debuff from IT more than that of PS (from you), if RE procs an unholy rune, you can't use it for IT...if this rune was a death rune, you are able to provide maximal benefit. Without Blood Rites, you are unable to do this in an unexpected situation.
Sure, having blood rites turn our blood runes into death runes would be more useful, but as it is now we can create death runes out of ANY rune type, which makes us the most flexible spec as far as that is concerned, so it's still a bonus.

I'll say it again; DRW is horribly designed. It has a high cost because it provides extra damage and can be glyphed to produce extra threat to offset the threat loss from the high cost. Do you see the problem now? The glyph and the high cost only exist because of the other and cause unnecessary inhibitors; that's really poor design.

Or the cost is there because Blizz wanted us to have to pay a price for this particular cooldown. Because they felt that us having an extra defensive cooldown with no cost was too powerful. And it's not like it's cost is THAT high. I am not usually capped on RP unless I am preparing for LB, but I usually have some just going through my rotation because of RE procs and the like allowing me to use my runic abilities more often (and since i'm not having any threat issues, I'm not spamming RS to get threat). This means it actually doesn't take THAT much planning to use DRW. It actually usually affects my ability use less than popping Bone Shield, honestly. So the cost could easily be there to offset having the cooldown and the glyph is there to mitigate the potential threat loss for the cost (and let's add that with the glyphed DRW and then 2 RSes, you can probably generate as much threat with 3 GCDs as you could with 3 RSes in the same time, so if you need emergency threat, it's a good way to go).

You needed to read more carefully. The point here is that Cata beta had diseases which were 30 seconds baseline and 48 seconds with Epidemic. Clearly, having such long disease durations wasn't a good idea, but instead of eliminating Epidemic and giving us 30 second disease duration Blizzard opted to cut both disease duration and Epidemic so that maximum disease duration became 33 seconds. It was a massive slap in the face and extremely lazy on Blizzard's end. Sure, it's clear that they ran out of ideas for the Unholy tree; it's stacked with PvP talents up top and the Virulence replacement is a weaker version of Unholy's new Mastery.</QUOTE>

What Blizzard could and SHOULD do is remove Epidemic, make diseases 30 seconds baseline and move BCB and Abom's Might out of the Blood tree and into the first two tiers of Unholy. Talk about your obvious fixes.

As for this (less a tanking issue than a general DK complaint you were making)
So, you are basically saying Epidemic is useless because it used to be more powerful?

Sure, one thing Blizzard could do was provide 30 second base disease duration and remove epidemic. But then those talent points go somewhere else, so that makes us more powerful.
So it's probably a balancing decision. And there are other options than epidemic if you don't feel 30 second diseases are necessary (diseaseless tanking would not want it necessarily, for instance).

A lot of what you are saying are the problems with DKs seem to be "This is what blizzard should have given us to make us as powerful as possible" which is not their job. What they gave us is what they felt was balanced with other classes (and they were right in some cases and wrong in others, because they are human). This is not always ideal. Sure, it would be best for us to have 30 second diseases baseline, but that's not necessarily balanced. It would be best for us if DRW was free, but that's not necessarily balanced. It would be best for us if Blood Rites turned our Blood runes into Death Runes, but that's not necessarily balanced. It would also be better for us if IBF gave us 100% Damage Reduction for 1 minute, why aren't you arguing for that? Oh, right...balance.

[Reinhard]

Another ability which I find clunky is Bone shield.
It costs an unholy rune so that's pretty much one less deathstrike which is your primary mitigation ability.
This is an emergency cooldown which not only asks you to have a rune ready, but one that you would gladly use to heal/shield yourseld.
It makes boneshield use very circonstancial.

In the mean time we do not have much use for our blood rune for anything but threat/dps.
I wouldn't mind having boneshield costing one blood rune.
I am not so sure about the +2% DPS part too for a tanking ability.
I would gladly part with it in exchange of having the ability not trigger the GCD.

[thugthrasher]

Another ability which I find clunky is Bone shield.
It costs an unholy rune so that's pretty much one less deathstrike which is your primary mitigation ability.
This is an emergency cooldown which not only asks you to have a rune ready, but one that you would gladly use to heal/shield yourseld.
It makes boneshield use very circonstancial.

In the mean time we do not have much use for our blood rune for anything but threat/dps.
I wouldn't mind having boneshield costing one blood rune.

It's not just an emergency cooldown. Because of it's 5 minute uptime when not being attacked, it's great to put it on before a pull and then wait for your unholy rune to come back off of cooldown.

It does suck sometimes that it costs an unholy, but that unholy doesn't always cost you a rune strike. If you had RE proc an unholy rune and you won't have a frost rune back up until you have another unholy up, then that's a great time to use it.
As far as blood runes go. You can actually use one for BS as you can Blood Tap to turn a Blood into a Death Rune. You can do this once a minute, so you could theoretically use Blood Runes all of your DS (and if blood tap is glyphed, it costs you no health).

Again, it's probably a balancing issue. A 1-minute cooldown that stops 20% damage for at LEAST 4 attacks (more if there is AoE or multiple attacks w/in blood shield's ICD) is likely a little too powerful to have cost nothing, and blizz probably thinks it's too powerful to cost a blood rune (which are the less useful runes for blood at this time, for sure).

[zabraba]

Well I'm done with this thread. OP apparently doesn't like when people disagree with him. I presented several good points and was immediately shot down as if I had no knowledge of the class I'm likely more experienced in than the OP. The OP might want to spend his time doing something other than whine about how talent trees aren't exactly to his liking and then cry every time someone disagrees.

For the record, Contagion is only a DPS loss on AoE fights, therefore a great drop of points in many cases that you would need AMZ or MS. You know, since you were critiquing circumstantial talents and then saying Contagion is that big a DPS loss. Dropping a point in IBT means 2 free ScS instead of 3 every minute and a half. Dropping RPM is one less DC every time AMS fills your RP bar. You whine that Butchery's occasional extra attack is worthless, yet extra attacks of approximately the same frequency are apparently a large DPS loss. You completely missed and disregarded the value of death runes and I'm not even going to argue with someone who doesn't see the value of a tank having flexibility with a very restrictive resource system. Learn your class and stop whining.

[Deathquoi]

Blood Rites is truly crap and I don't see how anyone could defend it. Turning FU runes into death runes just to use them as FU runes is just useless. There's not really any situation where it provides any utility at all.

[Sunseeker]

Hungering Cold would, IMO, be a much better talent if it was a single-target, ranged CC, perhaps an upgrade to chains of ice....give me those cool LK ice tombs yes plz.

And yes, most of the 1st tier talents should be class specialization. Blizz wants Frost to be DW? Make it a specialization. Blizz wants unholy to have longer diseases? Make it a specialization. To some end, I think this is what happened in 4.0.6 with rolling the 9% hit into Runic Focus, it just needs to be taken further.

Blood's biggest problem is, IMO, that a lot of it's design still goes back to the days when it was a self-healing DPS spec, and not a tank spec. Frost has some of this issue too. Icebound Fortitude is still clearly Frost themed even if it's not specifically for Frost, blood-caked blade would be AWESOME with haste-enhanced DW, but no, that's a Blood talent and Blood doesn't even use diseases! Frost still has Lichborn, which is clearly a tanking talent wut?

While what's been said here is true for many talents of many other specs, Cata was a step in the right direction of removing a lot of talents that were just "part of the spec" talents. I think if Blizz were to dedicate another round to repeating that process, rolling "part of the spec" talents into the spec and putting DPS talents in DPS trees and tank talents in tank trees, we'd see improvement across the board.