Saturday, July 26, 2008

Vendetta change, but deathstrike stays the same? Hm.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

No offense, ghost. But I think vendetta was fine the way it was. It's actually death strike that needs to change.

I really don't see myself using deathstrike in end game scenarios at all, which is a problem: It's one of our core abilities. It's fine if Vendetta tapers off in usefulness as we level because it's simply one of those talents that's just great for grinding. Sort of like fel concentration for warlocks. It's awesome for locks, but quite useless in end game scenarios (except for that very short period of arena seasons when paladin + warlock was popular, and you could take it + conc aura for 100% no interruption on damage).

My problem with deathstrike is this: It simply doesn't have ANY functionality outside of providing a health boost on a killing blow.

When oh when am I going to care about this when I am:

A) Tanking
B) In arena matches
C) Raiding

The ONLY time I will end up using this core ability is when I am grinding mobs or doing a quest here and there. That's really kind of disappointing to be honest.

Instead of nerfing vendetta and leaving it where it is in the tree (make it more accessible to other DKs), isn't it possible to give DK's more flavor and usefulness on their core abilities, like making deathstrike only usable if the target is under 20% health, and make it some sort of life-stealing execute move? I mean give us a reason to actually use it once we're 80. What am I supposed to do with it in those above scenarios? It simply has no other use in my primary level 80 roles, and if it's current functionality doesn't change, it will simply NEVER end up on one of my tanking/dps rotations at all. In fact, I never use it while tanking now, or in pvp as is.

This is especially true in an arena match. I would simply never, ever, ever waste an unholy rune that I might have needed for a degen, bone armor, anti-magic shell, anti-magic zone, etc etc, just to have the off-chance that if my target did get bursted down in time before he could catch a heal, i'd get a measely 1300 (or 650 or so, if MS'd) heal. Deathstrike is simply not worth the unholy rune outside of grinding non-elite mobs. It really saddens me to see that instead of buffing this ability up, we're only going to be forced to less damage and have less unholy utility in our rotations and have to use deathstrike more often when leveling, only to never use it again at 80. :(

It's one thing to choose to not spec vendetta at 80, because you don't need the extra healing when killing quest mobs anymore. It's another thing completely to end up never using a core ability anymore, because it does what a talent should do instead.

Also, in regards to the frost changes, my issue with it is this:

I think that our other abilities need to benefit off the target being frozen, and not just frost abilities. I don't like how it currently is, that you need to use frost rune abilities to freeze a target (in the form of frostbite procs, chais of ice, and frost strike procs, not hungering cold obviously), and then use MORE frost rune abilities to take advantage of those frozen targets (howling blast). I think it's just another heavy emphasis on solely using frost runes, while ignoring our other abilities.

A GOOD example would be how blood strike and obliterate scale well with going deep unholy (You use a bunch of non-unholy rune using abilities that continue to scale well off your unholy-rune using abilities. Unfortunately, frost only plays well with this synergy in the form of obliterate). Frost, on the other hand, just keeps wanting you to use more and more frost-rune using abilities. The new talent blood of the north is a step in the right direction for this.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Honestly,

i don't give a shit about Death Strike or Vendetta atm because both are more or less level skills / talents.

While 2% might hurt a bit I'm not too concerned about this.

Your suggestion to Death Strike is great especially since you dont use the second Unholy Rune in a Raid Dps Setting really intelligent because you can only overwrite your Plague Strike or Degeneration with it.

But I'm having bigger issues with Dk tanking abilities. If this class is really meant to tank on par with warris, palas and droods there have to be lots of changes to be made.

I tried to point these things out in the EU Beta Boards as several other have tried but no blue in a week.

My main concern is migation.

Compare this class to our direct counterpart the warrior (dps / tank roles only)

Frost Presence will get us to their level of armor with a shield.

Now we can add 15% with the frost talent and an good amount of parry (I would guess around 15% with good gear) with Forceful Deflection.

That are our base tools.
We have eventual proc based or timed abilites.

This class feels to me like a mix of a warri and a drood but it's missing their key values.

We have high AC like druids, but we don't have their ridiculous amount of HP.

We have Parry and profit from defense rating like warriors but we miss a tree where things come together like in the Def Tree or in the Feral Tree or in the Protection Tree.

Frost offers a lot of freeze, snare and dps mechanics, some are really great.

If Frost Strike Change is tweaked a little bit together with our still bad rune specialication (i guess you can do the math.. it's by FAR the worst of the three) i say our rune problems are over.

But we really miss tanking talents in our trees. Blizz said they want to make all trees viable, but raiding is only about minmaxing, i see this every day in Sunwell.

Dk migation just sucks.

Why is blade barrier sooo deep in Blood. No Dps build will take it and no one will specc so deep in Blood to tank because it hurts you to much in other areas.

Since you seem to have more influence due to the fact you are on the american boards i would really like it if you could focus your posts a little bit around this things.

By the way.. the frost tree still seems to be overloaded with talents to me.

-Saitoz-

Anonymous said...

Uhhh it's really late in germany :/

What i meant was to look at warrior tanking and Dk tanking

Warriors have far more migation to compensate their low armor.

Def Stance and Shield Block alone with the new str -> shieldblock value ratio are a tremendous change.

-Saitoz-

But if you put in a full def build you can see how far we are left behind.

I don't want this to happen. I want to be a good alternative in most fights.

Sam said...

Understood completely. I'm still working on this internally.

Alrenous said...

Deathstrike: When used on a target with less than 20% health, applies a disease (doing lots of damage?) The disease is like doom but you get health instead of doomguards.

If you want deathstrike to be execute but not like execute, this seems to me like a way to do it.

It could also synergize with frozen targets instead if that whole freezing mechanic gets worked out.

Of course I'm just messing around here.

Sam said...

Yes, it definitely needs to be an ability that you would be encouraged to use often, that would also synergize with your other abilities.

Another idea would be, Does 100% weapon damage to the target, and additional damage for every frost, blood and unholy effect currently afflicting the target. Damage done in this manner is returned to the death knight as health.

This would give you a nice burst combo > empower runeblade to get 1F/1B/1U > Deathstrike > Obliterate.

Anonymous said...

I gotta say the change to Vendetta is pretty bad. Yes it's powerful. So is Improved Leader of the Pack. In fact, with that skill you get 4% per crit, which currently means every 6 seconds you get 4% hp. And now DK's only get it once per fight? I understand there's the issue of other Blood abilities that return health, but if they're going to nerf it by 1/3, they should move it up a tier. Or even make it one point for 4%. I know as a kitty druid even with good gear I have to stop after a while of grinding level 70+ mobs to eat and drink. (I'm talking about live but IMO live is balanced. FYI my kitty gear gets about 33% dodge, 3k atp, and 36% crit.)

TL;DR: Nerf to vendetta was heavy-handed and needless. Un nerf it.

Sam said...

That's actually a really good point. (The improved pack deal)

Alrenous said...

Actually, isn't obliterate supposed to be the execute type spell?

Of course it gets interesting with frost.

Now I'm not sure what deathstrike is even supposed to be for.

Sam said...

And thus, the dilemna has been revealed. :)

Death strike currently has no place or point in the game for deathknights other than farming non-elite mobs.

Anonymous said...

Blizzards logic behind "well lets nerf vendetta so that will make Death Strike viable" is OMFG! hand in face. You don't fix something that isn't working by needlessly nerfing something else.

Please put vendetta back and re-examine Death Strike by itself.

What about an ability to returns health as used, say something akin to how the old world life steal enchant worked. Death Strike deal shadow damage and leaches a percentage back to you.

Anonymous said...

Wish I was in the beta so I could have more to add to the conversation, but anyways.

Vendetta is one of those things that just about every DK is gonna want for leveling. Warriors have Tactical Mastery. Feral druids have Furor, Mangle. Mages get Pyro. Shammies get dual wield, flurry.

My point is there are certain abilities each class has that they really NEED to be able to effectively PvE in the style of their class. Feral druids combine versatility with solid melee damage. Mages do the burst damage thing. Hunters have their pets.

Moving away from vendetta, though, I think the bigger issue is that Blizz needs to more strictly define each spec's style of play. Death strike is unholy...? It is a blood skill! It does damage and returns life! That's blood's defining attribute, put it there! Unholy is all about diseases, AoE, and minions. I love the way the Unholy tree is fleshed out. The Blood tree is really good too. The Frost tree has problems, but those have been talked about a ton elsewhere. (Why doesn't frost have a symbiosis with diseases or blood abilities?) But blood is single-target, self-healing damage. Put a talent in tier 6 or 7, 3 or 5 points, increasing death strike damage by 200% or so when the target is below 20% health or increasing the window for the heal by 2/4/6 seconds. Something in that vein. (You see where I'm going with this?)

ColdFire said...

I hope you can get them to change it back Leiah it reaaly make no sence for them to change vendetta they way they did unless they are just trying to give us more downtime for whatever reason. I hope and assume you emailed you post you made on the beta boards to your blizzard contacts to make sure they saw it.

Anonymous said...

Jayde , what do you think of this : giving frozen rune blade a talent upgrade (or one to frost strike) that would leave a disease on the target , hence it wouldnt do any damage at all , but would make the traget be considered as "frozen" , similer to the new frost mage talent . In the end it would give us a damage booster to our spells , from Blood of the north we would have more F-runes to get even better use of it . A disease boost the damage of all DKs and finally a frozen effect lets those mages proc shatter ...

--- Sithril (too lazy to register)