Monday, July 21, 2008

Frost writeup on beta forums:

Now that the NDA has been lifted, it's possible for the public to view what kind of discussions go on between the testers and the developers. I could dig up some older post from the alpha forums, but it would probably just confuse everyone as a lot of things have now been changed.

This is simply sort of an FYI for the current state of frost, at least in my opinion.

Here is the post.


Edit: And this is why I love alpha/beta forums so, so much more. The devs not only actively read intelligent posts, but they also take the time to respond to them as well. In fact, by the end of the alpha, I believe at least 30% of the threads on the DK forums had at least one blue post in them.

42 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude, I clicked the link and got logged in to your account on the forums.. I'd advise you to somehow change the link.. :P

Sam said...

Yikes! Thanks. Already changed. =]

ColdFire said...

Did you get a chance to ask them about rune customization yet Leiah?

Anonymous said...

Hey I'm from the europe boards. You are my biggest hope that the devs will read your concerns about Frost. I feel 100% the same. I leveled Frost in the Alpha..

It was fun and aside from the pretty op shatter combo with hungering cold and HB i found this tree to be very worthwhile.. but now i respecced after 15 Minutes.. especially dw has become a pain in the ass :(

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202602785&sid=2003

-Saitoz-

Anonymous said...

One Question not really related to the topic. Is the global cooldown with unholy presence on 0.5 oder 1 second?

Sam said...

1 Second gcd in unholy. I will post some heavy discussion material on blood vs unholy presences later today.

Anonymous said...

thanks alot for the fast answer :)

ColdFire said...

I would wonder which would be better now blood or unholy, cant wait to see the write up Leiah.

Beat some info out of them on rune customization as well.

Anonymous said...

Seems like you know the class pretty well. It is a shame Frost has been nerfed a tad too much.

I myself am still stuck on the decision on how to level. I like blood and unholy. I just don't know yet which one is better.

I love your movies btw, I hope you will bring us some more. Maybe a instance run? Recap of the bossfights? :)

Anonymous said...

Man, i loved my time on the EU beta of TBC for the same reason, it just felt like a place where suggestions actually had an impact.

Shame the EU lacks that... attention, i would not say its a bad thing but i would say that blue presence feels lacking here sometimes.

Praying for a key when EU gets its time, your videos have rekindled my joy for WoW, and as i said, i actually enjoyed beta testing. :P

Anonymous said...

Hey, quick question for ya that I haven't seen asked or addressed yet....

What do DK put in the ranges slot? Do they get ranged weapons like WAR, or do they get idol/totem/libram type stuff?

Thanks!

Sam said...

They get a libram-type item called a "Sigil" that will have DK-specific stats and bonuses.

Anonymous said...

Whats your opinion about Frost Strike being a Runic Power dependant style with lets say 4 - 8 seconds CD

Sam said...

That's certainly an interesting idea, and would go a long way to solve the issue if they decide to keep a 2/2/2 rune setup.

Anonymous said...

It's just that you have no other Frost style that uses RP in a non AoE solution.

Compared to unholy where you have basically 3 new RP styles that are really situational Frost really lacks something.

I don't wanna be a DC spam machine in bossfights

Perhaps you can push this idea on the US boards as you guys seem to be closer to the devs than we are in europe

-Saitoz-

ps. our server is down.. it's boring :P

Sam said...

Would be quite interesting. It would also be interesting to see an ability (or change frost strike) to drain RP and make all your strikes do frost damage, thus ignoring armor, for a duration. This would include your blood/plague/etc strikes, and actually give people a reason to use obliterate as frost spec.

ColdFire said...

Leiah do you see DKs filling a spot or two in raids if we do get stuck with 2/2/2?

Sam said...

It's too early to tell just yet, but Unholy seems to be quite awesome at DPS, utility in the form of anti-magic zone, and debuffing. (At this point anyways)

Anonymous said...

Leiah, I must ask you while you're still commenting. Will we be seeing any more of your videos soon?

Sam said...

Not really sure what you mean by soon. I do plan on making more. Not tonight, if that's what you mean. I'm really more focused on getting some solid feedback in to the devs before the next build more than anything. I've been one of the most active and vocal testers since this process began, and I have no intention to change that now.

Anonymous said...

Eh....I was afraid of that. I'd trade any of my idols or librams for any number of guns/xbows....

Oh well, maybe DK will get some some better ones.

Thanks for the reply.

Anonymous said...

@ above

the actual version you get in the starting area does +90 Damage on your BloodStrike which is pretty good.

Seeing a Dk firing a gun would not really fit the image of this class, would it?

-Saitoz-

Ps. Keep up the good work on the US Boards

Mohjoh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ColdFire said...

I kind hope that at the very least raids will want a blood DK for the aura and the strength boosting one as well, i forget the name atm. As well as an unholy for the various diseases tha they can spread about.

ColdFire said...

Hey Leiah do the runes you can put on your weapon from the runeforges stack with enchants like posions do for rogues?

Sam said...

Yes, and it stacks with frozen rune weapon.

ColdFire said...

Cool. have they shown or said anything about letting us have 2 talent specs to switch betwen yet? i kinda doubt it or i sure i would have seen more about it but figured i would ask.

BTW thanks for all the great DK info i have read here for a long time when you gave the Lock community the info and i am glad to see you playing a DK now. Keep up the GREAT work!

ColdFire said...

Whelp no chaning rune about atm it seems 2/2/2 is where they want to stick us it seems. I hope you can cahnge thier minds Leiah.

starrdumbb said...

I was just wondering what you favorite tree in Dk has been so far? Which is the most fun and why? By the way great job on the videos and keep the good work up!(Blood is best dps, frost is tank, and unlholy is magic/disease dpser right?)

Anonymous said...

Hi Jayde, great work with the videos and feedback. I check the DK posts on the beta forums very consistently, unfortunately being that i'm not in the beta I can't post there myself...I hade what I felt would be a good idea for the rune customization issue and would like for you to take a look at it. Link : http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202605420&sid=1
If you like it, it would be great if you could translate it to the beta thread! Thanks and keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Forgot to mention in the last comment that I was the original poster in that thread, and the suggestion is the edit portion of the original post! - Veksar

Anonymous said...

hey man this is a person who hasnt gotten a beta key but from what ive seen of your vids your the most competent user of the deathknight ive seen so far. i was wondering if youd wanna roll a DK with me sometime when they go live. im a hardcore pvper and its because pve is too boring unless im taking on an army. i think from what ive seen you still have a great room for potential to improve in the way you use the DK. if you ever wanna roll a dk and maybe see who the better knight is let me know aight. hell if i get a beta invite ill show you just what im made of and then some hehe. contact me sometime ddog87@hotmail.com or darkkenshin on scarlet crusade.

Anonymous said...

I've seen some new blue guys in the beta from and most of them are class designers.

I know that Kalgan is Tom Chilton, Tigole is Kaplan.

However,

Ghostcrawler = ??
Koraa = ??

Sam said...

They are on the class design team as well. They just answer to Tom, basically. They haven't been really public with their posts until recently. I think Koraa has visited the shaman forums in the last few months, as an example.

All class balancing decisions still go through Tom, I believe. Normally, I would have fed him all the feedback I have, as I have done in the past for locks/hunters and most recently: balance druids.

However, the devs have really been fantastic with DK feedback this time around from alpha and beyond, so most of my feedback has simply gone there. Apparently Tom informed me that the dev team figured out I was Leiah based on my feedback from Jayde during the alpha. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. =]

Anyways, the ultimate goal obviously is to get the DK to be effective at all their intended roles. If they are still underpowered at ship time, then they'll simply catch some buffs a patch or two down the line. I mean come on, look at rogues now. :P

Anonymous said...

Is there any chance might make some posts about the warlock class changes ?

Anonymous said...

Dude I love u for those Vids and stuff. Its rly good that u help to fix this cls, hopefully i'll reroll to a thing thats like a dark pally with speed in his bloody undead veins

More Vids pls :D

Anonymous said...

the comments about the fixed rune count 2x each type are pretty interesting.

And while I scoff at a Hero class not being hard (Ghosts comments about gimping yourself with the wrong runes) as that makes it challenging and good...

I thought of a compromise, have one rune customizable so you could get the 3 runes of your main type and still have one or two of the others.

All you'd need to do is have a mechanic in place that didn't allow for more as the energies wouldn't balance, or something of the like. That if you had an unbalanced rune setup the weapon would have no magic available.

A related thought was that your runeweapon should almost have a personality or a magic balance of it's own. I agree with the comment no the forums that it/they should not be something that you abandon as easily as other classes do.

More upfront investment could be a tradeoff to keeping the weapons viable longer for Death Knights.

Thanks for the videos and the great posts on the forum.

Sean Holland & Ina Kota said...

You know someone is doing a great job when I check their site every hour or so looking for more vids :) Keep up the awesome work--it is much appreciated.

Anonymous said...

After reading your post on the beta forums and being in beta myself the simple fix for all DK on next swing abilities is to make them cost a flat amount of RP.

E.g frost strike costs 10 RP and since on next swing abilities are off the GCD this change would be fine.

Kaziel said...

I hope you don't mind me asking some questions here about Death Knights.

The first is it's obvious you're more of a PvPer than a PvEer, of which I fall into the category of. So I was wondering if you knew any bloggers or places I can talk about the PvE side of Death Knights without it being some generally open forum filled with idiots who will chime in every 5 seconds even if I'm trying to talk to someone directly.

Anyway, for my personal questions, I thought I read somewhere that Death Coil only cost 20 RP, but your videos show a cost of 40-60 RP (not 100% certain). I'm guessing that's something that has been changed, or is it something in planning that hasn't been implemented yet.

Also, talking about Runic Power, I notice that the Frost and Unholy trees have talents which will increase the RP gained from certain key abilities. Why does Blood seem to lack a talent of this nature? I'm guessing that the decision to keep the runes limited to BBUUFF is recent and Blizzard hasn't added a talent of this nature yet? Does the lack of a talent of this nature hinder Blood's DPS value, or does having those talents as Frost or Unholy give you too much Runic Power to work with (especially Frost with it's lack of RP dumps).

I'm curious if you've done any of the 5-mans, or just stuck to doing PvP. In this case I have a question about group bosses and the 51 point Frost talent. Watching your video I can clearly see the strength of the combo of Hungering Cold and Howling Blast, but what about on enemies that are unfreezable. Bosses in 5-mans/Heroics and raid bosses and quite likely most raid trash mobs will be unfreezable. This takes out a lot of a Frost Death Knight's damage potential. In addition to the huge damage loss, there's a complete loss of the benefit of Frost Rune Mastery in it's current incarnation, which is even more vital than the other versions of this talent, considering how many of the Frost tree's abilities and talents are reliant on 1 or 2 Frost Runes. This makes me wonder about the PvE viability of the Frost tree, with Blizzard's current plan to keep the runes at BBUUFF.

This is less of a question and more of a statement, but I staunchly agree that putting the "Presence Aura" talents on the Eighth tier was a huge mistake. I'm not saying they should be in the First tier like I saw on a datamined Alpha build, but if it was the Second or Third tier, it would be available to those who really need it, that would be a simply amazing change. IMO a PvPing Death Knight shouldn't be pigeonholed into the Unholy tree just to get the Unholy Aura. The same goes for each spec.

Of course that will force players to go up into the minor tree, meaning a Blood Death Knight that wanted to PvP would be forced to spend points in the Unholy tree for the speed bonus to Unholy Presence (the ability to be kited by certain classes had been said to be an issue from your experience).

Next, it seems to me that the First tier Unholy talent Pestilence would be a must-have. Considering how many abilities and talents seem to rely on a target being diseased, I would think that being able to get more mileage out of a single Plague Strike, Degeneration, Unholy Blight, Death and Decay, or Improved Corpse Explosion would be worth the loss of two points in another tree. Something like a 51/18/2 build.

I will admit that I am assuming that it both extends the duration while not lowering the DoT ticks. For example, let's say a Disease does 900 damage over 18 seconds or 150 damage ever 3 seconds. With Pestilence would it still be 150 damage every 3 seconds, only lasting 24 seconds, or would it still do 900 total damage, and only do 112.5 damage? If it's the latter, it greatly devalues the talent for an Unholy Death Knight since they have access to about a hojillion and a half diseases anyway.

On the other hand the only sources of diseases for a Blood or Frost Death Knight are Plague Strike, Degeneration, Death and Decay, and (if the Death Knight goes 27 points into the Unholy tree) Improved Corpse Explosion. In order to maximize the value of what few available diseases a Blood or Frost Death Knight has, I would think this talent would be worth it, even if it lowered the damage per tick of their DoTs.

So can you confirm for me which way Pestilence works, and your thoughts on it as a talent?

Thanks for your time.

Anonymous said...

Leiah,

I was wondering about your thoughts on the frost thread in the beta forums (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202572281&sid=2000&pageNo=2#38).

Ghost made a second post talking about some changes they're still working on, including making anhilation available earlier in the tree to open it up to blood/unholy dk's.

Personally, I still feel this is a waste of a talent in the frost tree, and is much better suited to being in either of the other two trees (namely unholy). It has pvp written all over it I think.

Aside from that, from the builds I've been playing with (keeping in mind I'm not in beta and so can only guess at talents from what I've been reading), neither a pve specced blood dk or pvp specced unholy dk can afford any points in frost what-so-ever. Even if the talent was moved to the first tier of frost, it seems it would still not be reachable due to point minimums in the other two trees.

Do you feel this isn't the case? Or if you do, can you bring it up in the thread? I'm having a hard enough time with points as it is b/c there's just so many cool things i want!

Sam said...

I tend to reserve my thoughts on new changes until I actually see how the implement them. It's pretty hard to say whether or not I'll like all the changes when they haven't even made them yet.

They know it's an issue, so they're going to try something their way to fix it. That's fine. I'll play with it and see how I like it then, and give feedback once more.