**Please forgive me, I know that there is already a giant thread on this but I felt that one more couldn't hurt given the complexity of my arguments not to mention it's kind of hard for people to sort through a 80 page thread; So please just bare with me**
Over the past few weeks now there has been numerous discussions via Twitter and MMO champion that I have been reading and discussing why the devs specifically Ion Hazzikostas(WatcherDev) and Chadd Nervig (Celestation) are defending the Death Knights rune regeneration tier claiming it adds and changes our play styles and mixes up our rotation; all of which is false.
These abilities are all essentially passive. How can a passive ability add gameplay or mix up a rotation? The intent of a passive ability is that it's an extra skill that I don't have to manage and can forget about. How does getting an extra rune every "x" seconds from BT add to my gameplay? How does having a 45% chance to regenerate a rune upon Frost Strike change my rotation? It doesn't because I'm still going to be hitting Obliterate and then FS. It doesn't mix anything up at all.
I understand the you guys want provide us with variety so that if a DK likes the feeling of 100% increased rune regeneration for a few seconds over getting 1 rune every few seconds then he can pick a talent to fit that play style. The negative part of that philosophy is that you are encouraging the player to not play to their highest potential. A top player or a logical player is always going to pick the one that yields the highest damage increase overall. In a PvE setting why would I pick the talent that makes me do less damage over the other options? As a PvP player there is only ever one option no matter what your spec because at the end of the day RNG is always bad thus making BT the only option that allows you to get a rune at will most likely for NS.
Going into Mists of Pandaria you guys set out to make talents interesting and fun, and this talent tier doesn't accomplish either of those two principles. Three passive talents choices that are all RNG are not fun nor interesting because they are all just ignored. In fact most of our talents are that way, some taken from previous abilities we already had as baseline and others that are again RNG or passive.
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Blood Tap - No one in their right mind uses this ability the way it was meant to be as manual activation and macroed activation both provide the same exact DPS result. Why would I waste the time managing the button when I can get the same result from a macro. This ability is just straight up passive.
Runic Empowerment - A static passive ability that gives us a chance to regenerate one rune just like Blood Tap. The only difference being I'm not getting an extra button to put on my bar that doesn't matter anyway. The result being that getting a confirmed rune with BT is always better than relying on RNG which could result in less runes than BT.
Runic Corruption - By far the worst of the 3 talents currently making it a less desired choice overall. While both Blood and Unholy can pick and choose between all three it all again leads back to which one results in the highest damage or survivability.
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This talent tier needs to be scrapped and handled the following way. Proceed to make Blood Tap baseline again just as it was in Wrath of the Lich King and in Cataclysm but its original state so that way it can no longer be macroed and again is just a clickable skill. This allows all three specializations to benefit from the on demand rune regeneration that we all use currently anyways.
Runic Corruption and Runic Empowerment need to be baked into a single talent and the one you get is based on your specialization. Many other classes talents worked like this and I'm not sure why the same design hasn't been incorporated into any of the Death Knight talents. Blood and unholy get runic corruption and frost gets RE just like it is meant to be. Frost has always used RE and always will. The other and better option is to turn them into glyphs so that every DK can still have access to them which is what you guys wanted anyways but without wasting 3 perfectly good talents spots.
There are just so many other amazing talents that could be put in place of this static tier. Here are some cool example talents I came up with.
Void Grip - Change the function of your Death Grip based on your specialization.
- Blood - Gorfiend's Graps now deals "x" shadow damage and all enemies are fixated to you for 3 seconds.
- Frost - Pull the target to your location freezing it in place for 6 seconds. The target takes "x" shadowfrost damage for the duration. Damage other than the death knights diseases breaks the stun.
- Unholy - Your Death Grip no longer pulls the target to your location but instead summons void tendrils that roots the target in place for 10 seconds dealing "x" damage for the duration.
Shadow Power - Turn your signature attack into a even more powerful version.
- Blood - Death Strike turns into Soul Strike a powerful strike that causes 30% additional healing and absorbs from Blood Shield.
- Frost - While wielding a two-handed weapon Obliterate turns into Obliteration, a massive strike that deals "x" shadowfrost damage. While dual wielding Frost Strike turns into Razor Slash a powerful strike that costs 3 less Runic Power.
- Unholy - Scourge Strike turns into Corrupted Strike a powerful strike that corrupts the target dealing "x" shadow damage over 8 seconds. This effect can only activate once every 30 seconds.
Vile Spirits - Summon three vile spirits with "x" health that attack nearby enemies for 12 seconds. Each spirit explodes dealing "x" shadow damage to nearby enemies within 5 yards when they die or the duration expires.
All of my example talents are fun, and are used in different situations. There would never be one that you would pick throughout the entire expansion like we do now with a rune regen talent; This is way talents are suppose to function which is to offer choice.
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Those were just the tip of the iceberg and i'm sure we could all agree when I say my 3 talents ideas sound a hell of a lot better than those rune regen talents right? Other people could come out with better stuff than I could. Let me know what you guys think and post your suggestions.