Assuming WOTLK Classic happens, I have some questions

[RobertMugabe]

The Cata steamlining of Blood = Tank, Frost = DW Dps, and Unholy = 2h Dps is simply a continuation/reflection of how the class was played in ICC/ToC (the last major change to DKs came with the ToC patch afair).

If they go with 3.3.5 talents for all of it, like Classic and pretty much all WotLK private servers, Blood is THE Tank spec, while Frost and Unholy are Dps specs. Sure, you can theoretically tank with some weird Frost or Unholy hybrid build, but everybody who wants to do it properly, will be Blood.

Frost tank was amazing in ICC, especially against LK.
Unholy was also a spec you could easily play in ICC 25 hc. Easiest threat generation, great toolkit and high aoe damage.

So Blood isn't clearly THE tank spec, like not all. The reason why they chose Blood as the DK tank spec, was because more people played them as tank than they did as dps, but that's because Blood dps was bad and not because Blood was better than Frost (or unholy) for tanking. Frost was popular either for tanking and dps and for unholy, most people simply went dps, because you could get Shadowmourne and deal insane dps.

Also another (and probably the real reason why they chose that spec) reason is that Frost and Unholy tanks were just too "unique" for tanking and were possibly much harder to balance against other tanks.

[scelero]

Blood dps is all I want. Stack armor penetration and just annihilate whatevers in your path with blood strikes. Those were some of my favourite times in WoW.

This right here. I want wrath before they remove armor pen and created it so warriors didn't want leather with agility on it.

BLOOD DPS

[RobertMugabe]

Read above.

It's kind of like playing a BM Hunter for fun, despite having both SV and MM as vastly superior alternatives. Or PvE Frost Mage, or PvE Sub Rogue... You get the idea.

BM hunters were amazing with very high gearscore and a welcome addition to any ICC 25 heroic raid. The dps loss was forgettable, since their toolkit was an amazing contribution to the raid. it was always good taking 1 bm hunter.

[rogoth]

Frost tank was amazing in ICC, especially against LK.
Unholy was also a spec you could easily play in ICC 25 hc. Easiest threat generation, great toolkit and high aoe damage.

So Blood isn't clearly THE tank spec, like not all. The reason why they chose Blood as the DK tank spec, was because more people played them as tank than they did as dps, but that's because Blood dps was bad and not because Blood was better than Frost (or unholy) for tanking. Frost was popular either for tanking and dps and for unholy, most people simply went dps, because you could get Shadowmourne and deal insane dps.

Also another (and probably the real reason why they chose that spec) reason is that Frost and Unholy tanks were just too "unique" for tanking and were possibly much harder to balance against other tanks.

the only reason they chose blood as the defacto tank spec was because it was the only spec that had self healing at the time, and it fit the whole vampiric/undead stealing health from enemies to sustain yourself aesthetic they were going with for DK's, plus it had way too much self sustain relative to other specs at the time to remain a non tank spec for pvp balance reasons, as i mentioned previously, UH tank was mandatory for sindy 25hc progress due to the anti magic mitigation it brought, as to your claim about frost tanking hc lich king, i never had that experience when clearing it, and i don't know of anybody who had a frost tank in ICC (dual wield or 2h frost alike), everyone i knew had dropped frost as a tank spec at that time due to blood being a superior tank spec on single target and UH being superior for single target+AOE etc.

As a side note the reason they likely didn't pick UH as the tank spec was due to how it worked like fire mage a lot, in that at the start of the expansion it was garbage because stats weren't high enough to hit specific breakpoints and such, but at the end of the expansion it was busted strong, while obviously all roles need to see power growth to feel fun to play for most people, tanks need to be at least somewhat consistent in how they function from the getgo and not scale too high to the point of being immortal (like they were in cata towards the end).

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BM hunters were amazing with very high gearscore and a welcome addition to any ICC 25 heroic raid. The dps loss was forgettable, since their toolkit was an amazing contribution to the raid. it was always good taking 1 bm hunter.

you needed a BM hunter if you wanted to try lich king 25HC with no buff since you needed a pet taunt for post enrage.

[starstationprofm]

Blood dps is all I want. Stack armor penetration and just annihilate whatevers in your path with blood strikes. Those were some of my favourite times in WoW.

Blood was using Heart Strike, actually. An upgraded form of Blood Strike that... slowed and did extra damage, if my memory serves right.

[Valkari]

I could be remembering wrong, but for the vast majority of wrath it was blood > frost > unholy in terms of tanking. I rarely ever saw any unholy tanks, and frost was mostly played as a dungeon spec since howling blast was easy mode aggro. In wrath classic, im sure you'll be able to tank as all 3, but given the minmax culture that was present in vanilla classic, I doubt anything but blood dks will be widely accepted.

I remember tanking with a spec involving being equally into all three specs. Got all of the midtier CDs, specifically useful for Obsidian Sanctum 3 drakes, if I remember right.

[Amnaught]

One thing I'll point out is that Blizzard said if they could "do it all over again" with hero class levels, Death Knights would have started at 65 instead of 55, so they go from their starting zone to the appropriate expansion, instead of backtracking. I know it's jist wishful thinking, but like.... Please,man.

[DechCJC]

As an avid achievement Hunter, your first point has filled me with dread at the thought of having to do them again. Damn, it probably will be separate from live; No, it definitely will.

Some good questions and perfect examples of where logical changes could be made to the game.

[Nightstalker]

Server First Achievements have to stay. Want to see how degenerate people can get.

[Dorp]

Accountwide achivements were added in MoP.
Personally, I would welcome it if we could get mounts, transmogs, achivements etc from classic into retail. I just see more of an incentive to do that content.



Cold Weather Flying had to be purchased all throughout of Wrath (and that didn't change in Cata either iirc), so IMO it should stay in Wrath. No reason to make this part easier/cheaper. The way it worked was that you had to first buy flying with your main at lvl77, but then you could purchase the heirlooms and send it to alts and unlock it way earlier. Cost was 1k gold, which was a decent amount of gold back then, although something everyone could earn with just leveling.



No, keep it as it was. You could purchase heirlooms also with emblems (those were also better than the pvp ones).



These restrictions should stay, otherwise that would be too unfair and cause issues.



Actually, that's not how it worked at all. All 3 DK specs could both tank and dps all throughout wrath. In the last patch, 3.3.5, all 3 specs are very good at tanking. I have tanked ICC 25 hc as an unholy DK (not optimal, though they are the best for AOE fights and dungeons).
Again, don't change anything here. They were already amazing back then. Frost tanks are imo better than blood already.



120 per faction seems fine, I agree.



Return it. Loved that BG.



Ofc it should be. This was only removed in Cata.




yw

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I honestly don't it get why they removed this BG. I quite liked it. Was it really this unpopular?

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ToC was an amazing raid and something very unique, so it should definietely stay. Naxx was also really good, it was just heavily missunderstood. Naxx10 was designed to be as hard as a 5 man heroic dungeon at that time.

Naxx wasn't misunderstood. It was an old raid they tuned up for level 80. They literally scrapped an entire tiers worth of raiding to re-use something from vanilla wow.
ToC was a really boring raid. It's good as a sandwich raid on a x.x.5 type patch, but not worth a whole tier.

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you have to be delusional to think they would make new raids to old game...

Never said they would, I said they should. They have a chance to fix the big mistakes of the past, for an expansion that could have been great otherwise.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

blood dps was the highest single target dps spec in the game for a melee, it was gcd locked when you got your stats right and wasn't 'fun' to play in that regard, but you would always top the meters on a static boss fight that didn't require AOE, so where you get the idea it was a 'meme' from i'll never know, likewise once ICC rolled out unholy dps was the way to go thanks to shadowmourne and the scaling that str gave to certain UH abilities over blood/frost, the way the specs worked, the trinkets and weapon available literally no serious player back then played frost in ICC, DW frost was only used in TOGC because of the deaths verdict trinket from the twins, prior to 3.2 i'll be honest, out of the people i played with they flip flopped between frost and blood dps on a bi-weekly basis i played mage at the start of wrath so i can't speak personally to the dps side of things for DK at the beginning but almost everyone i saw was a blood/2h frost dps in raiding.

I'm assuming this is about retail WotLK, which is fun and all, but my comments were about a potential WotLK Classic, since that's what this thread is about. This assumes 3.3.5 talents all the way from Naxx to RS, in which case, Blood Dps is never a thing. It's always weaker than Frost, even with 100% Arp.

And no, Unholy only beats Frost on ST when you get Shadowmourne, assuming equal gear and skill. Getting Shadowmourne is first of all very time consuming, and there's still no guarantee you will get it over a any of the other Plate Dps...


As for the Tank specs, why exactly would you want to be Unholy for Sindragosa? Sure, UH has amazing magic dmg reduction, but Sindragosa (HC) Frost Breaths hit nowhere hard enough to justify losing all the good stuff from Blood to get Bone Shield and AMZ (the only Tank talents deeper than row 1 of the UH tree). Even Private servers where the bosses are buffed to do 50%+ more dmg than what they did in retail, don't run UH tanks for this.'

The only boss in WotLK that does enough magic dmg to the Tank to justify building a whole new spec for it, is Sartharion 3D while he has the drake buffs, but if they go with non-buffed retail values, any Tank can faceroll that without issue aswell.

you needed a BM hunter if you wanted to try lich king 25HC with no buff since you needed a pet taunt for post enrage.

Why though. Any Plate/Hunter can run away and pingpong taunt it like people have always done against any boss post enrage. Not like the pet won't be oneshot instantly.


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BM hunters were amazing with very high gearscore and a welcome addition to any ICC 25 heroic raid. The dps loss was forgettable, since their toolkit was an amazing contribution to the raid. it was always good taking 1 bm hunter.

Please tell me about this amazing utility that BM Hunters have exclusive access to. With all the Hunter utility talents being located in the Survival tree and all that jazz

There's no reason whatsoever to bring a Frost Tank to LK over a Blood Tank. The Frost spec has ONE single Tank talent in the tree excluding the stuff in row 1/2 that will already be picked up by a regular Blood Tank...

[Konteil]

I tanked things as Unholy. Did pretty good too.

Other Points, in order:

Separate achievements from Live, However it was in WOTLK I think you had to be 77 to unlock flying and I can't seem to remember anything about a tome you could send alts, Heirlooms only the ones that were available in WOTLK, same WOTLK Era restrictions for DKs, However WG was on the final content patch, and yes to SOTA. and fuck yes to Battle for Undercity

after you had your first 80 and had cold weather flying you could buy the tome of cold weather flying that could be used at lvl 68 for alts i believe. but you had to have it on main forst for it to show up. again tho memory is a tad fuzzy

[Unholyground]

I tanked things as Unholy. Did pretty good too.

Other Points, in order:

Separate achievements from Live, However it was in WOTLK I think you had to be 77 to unlock flying and I can't seem to remember anything about a tome you could send alts, Heirlooms only the ones that were available in WOTLK, same WOTLK Era restrictions for DKs, However WG was on the final content patch, and yes to SOTA. and fuck yes to Battle for Undercity

The Tome of cold weather flying,

[rogoth]

I'm assuming this is about retail WotLK, which is fun and all, but my comments were about a potential WotLK Classic, since that's what this thread is about. This assumes 3.3.5 talents all the way from Naxx to RS, in which case, Blood Dps is never a thing. It's always weaker than Frost, even with 100% Arp.

And no, Unholy only beats Frost on ST when you get Shadowmourne, assuming equal gear and skill. Getting Shadowmourne is first of all very time consuming, and there's still no guarantee you will get it over a any of the other Plate Dps...


As for the Tank specs, why exactly would you want to be Unholy for Sindragosa? Sure, UH has amazing magic dmg reduction, but Sindragosa (HC) Frost Breaths hit nowhere hard enough to justify losing all the good stuff from Blood to get Bone Shield and AMZ (the only Tank talents deeper than row 1 of the UH tree). Even Private servers where the bosses are buffed to do 50%+ more dmg than what they did in retail, don't run UH tanks for this.'

The only boss in WotLK that does enough magic dmg to the Tank to justify building a whole new spec for it, is Sartharion 3D while he has the drake buffs, but if they go with non-buffed retail values, any Tank can faceroll that without issue aswell.




Why though. Any Plate/Hunter can run away and pingpong taunt it like people have always done against any boss post enrage. Not like the pet won't be oneshot instantly.


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Please tell me about this amazing utility that BM Hunters have exclusive access to. With all the Hunter utility talents being located in the Survival tree and all that jazz

There's no reason whatsoever to bring a Frost Tank to LK over a Blood Tank. The Frost spec has ONE single Tank talent in the tree excluding the stuff in row 1/2 that will already be picked up by a regular Blood Tank...

you literally just said the exact same thing i did in regard to unholy DPS, in terms of unholy tank, it had the best magic mitigation which for the whole of ICC the way my guild cleared heroic it was mandatory to have because we did some crazy strats that involved high stacks on sindy, some funky stuff on putricide and we only had 1 val'anyr so needed it to mitigate some of the dmg on lich king since we lacked the meta healing comp for that fight, it's because of LK25hc that i even have a priest at all, i lvled one up after getting the first kill so i could help with subsequent clears but i digress.


pet taunt didn't share DR with player taunt in pve, meaning that it would always hit and work for the full duration, furthermore you needed every single person alive and doing max dps to kill it without buff up, Paragon were and to this day remain the only guild in the world that managed this feat, and that was with literally the most dps possible at the time, you needed a BM hunter to do the taunt pingpong with the main tank while the off tank took care of the adds etc still, and i can tell you now that is going to be the 'real' end game of this expansion as a 'classic' variant.

[muto]

Server First Achievements have to stay. Want to see how degenerate people can get.

They will get cleared in a couple days. Everyone knows now to just stack Warlocks for Yogg 0 keepers, and use Shadow Priests to soak Big Bang on Algalon.

[Rtrain]

I'm assuming this is about retail WotLK, which is fun and all, but my comments were about a potential WotLK Classic, since that's what this thread is about. This assumes 3.3.5 talents all the way from Naxx to RS, in which case, Blood Dps is never a thing. It's always weaker than Frost, even with 100% Arp.

And no, Unholy only beats Frost on ST when you get Shadowmourne, assuming equal gear and skill. Getting Shadowmourne is first of all very time consuming, and there's still no guarantee you will get it over a any of the other Plate Dps...


As for the Tank specs, why exactly would you want to be Unholy for Sindragosa? Sure, UH has amazing magic dmg reduction, but Sindragosa (HC) Frost Breaths hit nowhere hard enough to justify losing all the good stuff from Blood to get Bone Shield and AMZ (the only Tank talents deeper than row 1 of the UH tree). Even Private servers where the bosses are buffed to do 50%+ more dmg than what they did in retail, don't run UH tanks for this.'

The only boss in WotLK that does enough magic dmg to the Tank to justify building a whole new spec for it, is Sartharion 3D while he has the drake buffs, but if they go with non-buffed retail values, any Tank can faceroll that without issue aswell.




Why though. Any Plate/Hunter can run away and pingpong taunt it like people have always done against any boss post enrage. Not like the pet won't be oneshot instantly.


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Please tell me about this amazing utility that BM Hunters have exclusive access to. With all the Hunter utility talents being located in the Survival tree and all that jazz

There's no reason whatsoever to bring a Frost Tank to LK over a Blood Tank. The Frost spec has ONE single Tank talent in the tree excluding the stuff in row 1/2 that will already be picked up by a regular Blood Tank...

Unholy is better than frost after the first tier. If it wasn’t on private servers than either the tuning was off or private server players are terrible. Wmo logs at the time were so heavily favored towards unholy it wasn’t even close. Not to mention a lot of the bosses favor things like unholy a great rot damage(which also is a large st increase) iirc icc unholy and frost were at least close pre-shadowmourne; with unholy with bryntroll being slightly ahead of frost.

[hulkgor]

2 years too early for any question about Wotlk-c, i reckon.

[Nightstalker]

They will get cleared in a couple days. Everyone knows now to just stack Warlocks for Yogg 0 keepers, and use Shadow Priests to soak Big Bang on Algalon.

You still need a certain ilvl to hit DPS benchmarks. First week kills for some are highly unlikely.

[Dorp]

except they aren't charging for the expansion. it is free as long as you have a current sub to the main game.

The TBC deluxe edition that they are selling for $100 New Zealand dollars disagrees with the part I bolded.

[TheWorkingTitle]

In regards to achievements in the hypothetical WoTLK Classic,

Under no circumstances should there ever be any kind of overlap between the classic expansions and the main game. No matter which way it would go.

QFT