Thursday, August 14, 2008

Blood worms feedback:

They just haven't worked well since alpha. Their pathing and AI sucks. You obviously aren't going to give us a pet bar for them and let us control them. They're weak to AOE damage, minimally useful in coordinated pvp, useless while tanking, and mildly useful (but ultimately low on priority) for raiding. You're better off skipping them to min/max for raiding.

From what I've noticed, the only thing that they are REALLY good for is soloing elite quests. That's really it, and it's a pretty poor end game use.

So just scrap 'em.

Give us a new talent that would be more universally useful in more situations, and not just for leveling.

What about something like an improved death strike?

3/3 points: Every time you score a critical strike, you have a 33% chance to gain imp. death strike buff (whatever you want to call it). This makes your next two death strikes cost no runes.

There you go. Similar healing, useful without poor pathing and AI, controllable, no blood worms running around getting themselves killed and pulling adds.

Get crazy creative with the proc method, but it might be time to just scrap the little worm guys and turn a new useful ability (the new deathstrike) into something more useful via a mid blood talent. This would also share wonderful synergy with death rune mastery, and set up for some nice burst.

They're just currently pretty "meh" once you get capped out in levels, and start assuming end game roles.

Blood worms are like the new vendetta (and they've made vendetta basically obsolete), but a lot better, and don't require a KB. That's great, but I just don't see these guys being all that useful later on. It certainly does add a lot of flavor to the class, don't get me wrong. I love the blood worms when I'm farming, leveling, or taking on elite mobs. Heck, they're even OP in 1v1.

I just think that you could get a lot better use out of free death strikes (which would become free blood runes via DRM, which do fantastic damage via heart strike, which would become free crit death coils via sudden doom, which would become free bloody vengeance procs). That kind of synergy is really hard to overlook, and would provide far more use for end game scenarios in just about any situation.

Again, just my opinion.

15 comments:

ColdFire said...

Going to have to disagree with you on the scraping Bloodworms part. I like how i see them being used and how they function. Only think i will agree with is that they dont need to be on agressive. They should just attack whatever thier DK is attacking and go with that. I really hope that they do not make this change and get ride of them, tweak a bit ok but not as you suggest.

Sam said...

I honestly can't believe that noone else can see the benefits of that change, while eliminating the unruly and flaky mechanics of the worms.

Replace blood worms with a talent that can proc to give you two free death strikes. That's at least the same amount of healing (probably more depending on crits) that burst heals you up front (better for harder pve encounters, as well as pvp) that you'd get from blood worms, 4 free instant death runes giving you this:

2 blood + 4 death = 6x heart strike = massive damage = huge chance for sudden doom procs = lots of free death coil crits = free bloody vengeance procs (because BV procs even on spell crits such as deathcoil).

I honestly can't believe why people wouldn't like this sort of change, and rather keep some crappy blood worms that run around, die to AOE, and agro random crap.

It just makes so much sense, and has wonderful synergy with the entire tree. Amazing.

You'd really, realy rather have blood worms instead of that type of synergy? Really?

ColdFire said...

I not a big fan of having to wait for some random proc to be able to use Death Strike. I like the consistance of being able to use it for the death rune when i want to, not when some random proc dictates that i can. I also like the way they have it set now you can either heal with Deathstrike and get 2 more HS next rotation or obliterate if you want to.

Also not everyone will think in the same way you do on all things Jayde so i am not surprised not everyone likes the suggestion, its bound to happen.

Anonymous said...

No one is arguing whether or not your suggestion is good or bad, we're arguing Blood Worms are an appealing part of Blood and Blood Worms shouldn't be trashed if they can be tweaked.

IMO, the Death Knight doesn't have enough "minion" abilities, and they're a big aesthetic selling point.

Alrenous said...

All I have to say is blood craze. Blizzard has done levelling-only talents before.

Wikt said...

Wouldn't mind seeing Bloodworms go. It's a slightly decent talent for Blood levelling but not much else, of course.

but I think Death Strike having a free rune proc would be somewhat OP considering how much self-healing would this mean.
Suddenly getting back ~2k HP (and that's an estimate from my crappy gear) without burning any runes, then Heart Striking the enemy to death sounds way too good to me.
Keeping the talent around as an option would be fine - if someone wants the little annoying gits for what little they are worth, he'll spend the points, otherwise he'll get something else for the 3 poitns. I wouldn't miss them, though, if the talent was replaced.

Anonymous said...

I think bloodworms are a fantastic idea overall, and I don't see how they are not beneficial in PVP.

HOWEVER, I will say that Jayde's suggestion does sound more appealing to me, but it also sounds a lot more powerful.

How can having 2 death strikes for FREE be horrible? If anything, it's OP, much moreso then blood worms.

ALthough a 30% chance isn't high, when that does proc, it's OMG!!! Esp if those free death strikes turned into 4 death runes (2 free death strikes at 1u1f each with death rune mastery) is awesome. You could then Obliterate 2x, or Heart strike x4, in addition to still having your other blood runes available to you.

It does give more synergy, but I think having it give 2 free death strikes is too much. This is my personal opinion, although no one asked :P

Improved Death Strike (replaces blood worms): Has a 10/20/30% chance of making your next death strike cost no runes. In addition, the damage healed from your death strikes is improved by 10/20/30%.

I still would also like to suggest that all Rune Mastery talents, just provide 1 rune of that type to the DK at all times. So Blood Rune Mastery gives 3b,2f,2u.

I don't like this RNG stuff about having the runes come back in half the time.

OR

Rune masteries decrease the total time it takes to regen a rune by 2 seconds. So Blood Rune Mastery means all blood runes regen in 8 seconds, instead of 10.

Anonymous said...

i like the suggestion about the rune mastery, but the second one sounds better to me, because the first would be too good.

to come to the blood worms: i think most of those who say "olol need my bloodworms!" just dont know what jayde´s aim is. he wants to have a useful ability in endgame, which is more important than the short level stage.

but i dont know what i should think about it. blood worms are a nice idea which should be kept, but the way they are now is just not good enough... but i dont have a suggestion on it at the moment

Anonymous said...

Bloodworms can still be useful in endgame with a few changes, just saying 'lolz scrap them completely' isn't exactly creative.

Even so, bloodworms deal a nice amount damage. They heal for about 200~ a hit, so therefore should be dealing 200~ a hit? (I've not checked the numbers myself on beta).

That's an awesome amount of damage especially if you have multiple procs.

I've said in another place that bloodworms are one of the small little aspects of DK's that make them standout. Rolling key abilities into strikes just turns us closer to a rogue-like class - which just isn't fun.

Bloodworms also carry on attacking/healing/interrupting even if you yourself are CC'd/stunned.

With tweaking, bloodworms can be incredibly useful for leveling, PvE AND PvP. Scrapping them entirely is a poor idea.

Anonymous said...

what about that:

the bloodworms get a higher amount of hp (like 1k or sth) and every dmg against them heals you for half the dmg. everytime you get them out they taunt your target, which kills them quickly, you get hp back and dont get strikes at this moment.
--would be useful in pvp (when they are AoE´d you get hp, if not they hit someone or even taunt pets)
--in PvE Dps (they do damage and maybe its ok for the mt to just relaxe a second from the damage because they take it for a moment) --and i think i dont have to explain it for tanks.

i dont know... just an idea to not remove them completely from the game

Anonymous said...

I love this idea. Two death strikes, though, is gonna come under some different scaling issues opposed to the worms, so you might wanna consider changing it to 3 points, 5/10/15% chance on crit to get one free Death Strike, with no internal cooldown. Or 10/20/30% with a 15-20 second cooldown.

Anonymous said...

Each class has talents that are useful in Solo'ing or raiding etc. To scrap a talent just because it doesnt seem end game viable doesnt mean it is not useful.
Sure leveling can take 2-3 weeks for most people. What about slow levelers ? Or solo grinding mats or whatever.

Not all talents have to be viable for end game, some can just be helpful and useful in terms of solo'ing.

Anonymous said...

I think the biggest problem with bloodworms is the 'pet' pathing and having the bloodworms actually be useful in PVE and PVP endgame though.

The problem is them getting in range or go off attacking something that they shouldn't, etc. Using Jayde's suggestion (although I like mine a tad better but i'm biased :P), allows the DK to be able to control the healing gained and extra damage done through another means (aka another death strike for free).

Blood worms are cool, ghouls are cool, but neither of those makes a DK. A DK is completely different then any other class just based off the rune and runic power abilities.

It isn't going to ruin the class to get rid of bloodworms, and it isn't a class defining ability. If it were, they would have not made it a talent and just provided this via a skill.

Anonymous said...

Blood worms are being kept by blizzard just to go with the DK theme. However I thought (stupid idea i know) that perhaps every kill you could get like a blood flesh point and then unleash them into a single controllable pet that lasts for 20 seconds. The Worm would be more powerful depending how many blood flesh points you had or something. This just seemed like a good idea because it takes care of the Blood worm AI problems, as well as rounding out the minion feel and going with the DK bring stuff back to life them. Also it would make people think about when they want to use it. And as a PvP aspect if you've been killing for a while and your suddenly outnumbered. ( you've probably got maybe 60 kills by this time . On the other hand this spell is not OP like the Death Strike ability. And also does not make us like rogues at all. ( pass idea to blizz if you like it )

Zerthai said...

Blood worms as a viable tanking talent:

1) DK summons them using runic power

2) They are not on a timer. But function more like dmg absorber. As the DK takes dmg worms soak it up evenly. (Imp blood worm)

3) Worms still heal DK when they dps. In addition the DK heals the worms through doing dmg on its target.

4) Have an option of putting worms on passive or aggressive. (Imp blood worm)

The synergy with vampiric blood, blood aura etc would be pretty Imba I would say depending on the base ammount healed (both ways).

Blizzard can you make this happen in some way?