Sunday, August 3, 2008

Latest ideas to improve the DK:

Link.

Most people seem to be pretty receptive to these. Let's see what Blizzard thinks.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

loved it. keep going

Anonymous said...

Can't really argue anything you have said Jayde, they all sound good.

Though I wouldn't mind having an aimable snare, that works similar to Earthbind Totem and Frost Trap.

Anonymous said...

Jayde, if you would take a look, I worked the idea that was in the other comment I left.

http://deathknight.info/forum/index.php?topic=2086.msg30826#new

It could be really do-able and useful, I would like your thoughts.

Thanks

Unknown said...

Good post I agree with you about everything except the aura talents. Blood Aura and Unholy Aura can both be useful in pve and pvp.

Anonymous said...

I somewhat don't understand your point on the aura talents, however wouldn't it be too much asked for giving all DKs all the additional effects?
I hardly believe that blizzard would implement this change without nerfing the bonus effects each of these presences offers.
Maybe they would no longer be group buffs but only apply to the DK himself (so no 10% movement increase for your group).
But honestly, why exactly do you feel that these talents are a waste?
IMO Blood and Frost Presence are fine as they are. If i want to tank as Unholy Spec i would still use the frost presence. I'd lose the group benefits (and additional frost resistance) but thats just something thats unique to the frost tree, but you are still able to tank well aren't you ? You even get other benefits in this tree like reduced cd on DnD, which still seems to be a popular AoE tanking ability (regardless of the reduced damage) ... and Bone Armor of course.
My point is: Do you reeeaally need the improved presences to do well when using a differnt spec than the presence you are using?
I can see that the unholy aura might be of use in pvp, but giving Frost Fever a snare effect (like you suggested) would IMO be much better than giving all DKs an increase in movement speed.

(Hopefully i did express my opinion understandable ... as you may have noticed english isn't my native language :))

Breathweapon said...

Thanks for reiterating the Chillblains for tier 1 idea, but I'd rather Chillblains be a 5 rank, -10% movement speed for 2 seconds per rank chance to proc on white damage (or Frost's version of Necrosis).

Too much emphasis is being put on Icy Touch and Frost Fever, and we don't need both Icy Touch and Chains of Ice as ranged snares. What we need is a melee snare, I'd take Frozen Rune Weapon = Frostbrand, what happened to that weapon enchant any way?

Agreed on Master of Ghouls, we need a pet bar and we need a permanent pet, the Ghoul is gimped if we can't start a PvP fight with it and in a PvE fight it's just huntards 2.0

I wish the Ghoul would be more of a pet, and the Unholy tree would be more of a pet tree, because both the Ghoul and Gargoyle are lame, ATM.

Yeah, Plague Strike and Degenerate need to be rolled together, and Degenerate needs to corrupt ALL HoTs.

Breathweapon said...

Oh, and please get some one to put Bone Armor on tier 5, it was/is the only reason to spec Unholy with Lichborne in Frost.

It needs to switch places with Gargoyle.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of consolidation, don't you think the Unholy tree needs to be trimmed down a bit? I found myself messing around with a possibly fun AoE PvE spec in unholy, and halfway through it I realized that there are just too many talents in the tree. They should start consolidating some of all 3 trees' talents to make it something more like a feral druid's tree. Because a DK needs to have utility outside of tanking, and it's gonna come from DPS and raid buffs. Don't force us to spec one way or the other, just make the two options mutually exclusive with the same talents.

Anonymous said...

Is it right we have 4 abilities now that cost 1 U 1 F ?
Obliterate; Death Strike; Howling Blast and Chains of Ice ...?

Even I don't like the Heart Strike and Scourge Strike as they are now. Only an upgrade that thow Blood and Plaque Strike out of the Bar.
I think we had much more utility before ...

Unknown said...

"Is it right we have 4 abilities now that cost 1 U 1 F ?
Obliterate; Death Strike; Howling Blast and Chains of Ice ...?"

You can take Chains of Ice off that list Ghostcrawler posted this the other day.

"-- We're going to try Chains of Ice as 1 Frost. Certainly not too many people seem to be complaining that the DK has too much CC. :) "

Naman said...

Agree 100% about the aura talents. They should be totally removed and/or rolled into the presences. The biggest issue I see with the talents being the way they are is that min/max could end up forcing spec based solely on the slight benefit from the auras. When they are rolled into the presences its a lot more simple. Want to DPS, Blood or Unholy, want to tank Frost. Easy and avoids forced specing deep in any tree.

ColdFire said...

Leiah can you find out if that ugly ass chicken model they are using for our flying mount is a palceholder or if that is acutually what they are going to use for the Winged Ebon mount.

Xathras said...

It all sounds good but I have to admit that until I can actually play a DK it's hard to know what would help and what would hurt.
coldfire: I'd guess that the current DK flying mount is a place holder model. Personally I'm hoping for something like the Nazgul steed from LotR.

Anonymous said...

Yeh , I thought that palgue strike should have the degen component too :) . By the way , auras were originali in the 1st tier of each respective tree , I wound't mind if the moved them back . Who would ? They could change the blood aura to a vampiric aura - similar to the Dread Lords one from WC3 . Yes , he is a demon , but they partly served in the Scourge . Oh and I would love that the ghlou mastery would allow you to have 2 ghouls at once ! Pretty nice considering that a unholy knight would become master of summons ( and heck , Necromancers back in wc3 coudl summon 2(!) skeletons of one single corpse , bet'cha they had some bones missing :) )

-- Sithril

Anonymous said...

Jayde, hopefully your immortalized name stays in ebon hold because the future death knight community owes u a great deal. Though perhaps you can answer this question for me, do u think dreani death knights will get a new racial instead of gift of the naaru?

Breathweapon said...

Unbreakable Armor and Vampiric Blood are now awesome, you should check that out, it'll make your day.

Tlobanac said...

Jayde, have you heard or seen any discussion on how they plan to implement Icy Talons? If it is still staying as a 5 point talent on the 3rd tier (I know the trees are bugged atm)? Thanks in advance.

Unknown said...

"If it is still staying as a 5 point talent on the 3rd tier (I know the trees are bugged atm)?"

Go check the talent trees again they fixed the errors.

Unknown said...

"Bone Armor
1 Unholy (The frost rune on the tree is a error.)
Instant
30 Sec Cooldown

The Death Knight is surrounded by 4 whirling bones. While at least 1 bone remains, he/she takes 40% less damage from all sources and deals 2% more damage will all attacks, spells, and abilities. Each spell or attack that lands consumes 1 bone. Lasts 5 mins."

Does that mean that while Bone Armor is up all DoTs will do 40% less damage?

Unknown said...

I know you haven't responded to my original comment about Bone Armor yet but I had additional thoughts. With the recent news that it is going to have a 3.5 sec cooldown in between charges being used doesn't that mean you will have 10.5 sec(yes 10.5 not 14 people forget the first charge has no delay) of 40% less damage from all sources. From what I have seen most people seem to think that Bone Armor reduces the attack that used the charge by 40% but that is not how it reads.

Anonymous said...

Uhm. I have a quick question. Regarding the new DEATH STRIKE ability:

"A deadly attack that deals 60% weapon damage plus X (where X varies per rank) and heals the death knight for 100% of the damage done for each of her diseases on the target. "

So lets say I have blood aura, in the blood tree. Say I have 2 diseases up (frost fever, and plague strike) (are there any others that I'm missing by going blood? According to GC - Blood/frost will only have 2 diseases).

Anyways, lets continue with the above with 2 diseases. I hit someone with DEATH STRIKE (btw 10 runic power?? SPAMABLE HEAL??). Lets say my avg weapon dmg is 1000. 60% + x, lets just assume 60% for now, is 600 hps healed. Now I have 2x diseases, so I get healed for 600x2 = 1200. That's non-crit of course. Everyone in my party is now instantly healed for 1200 hps.

Doesn't that seem a bit overpowered to you? That isn't even taking in critical hits, and other bonuses that we will get. Take an unholy + blood DK in arena, and stacking 5 dots = 3000 hps, with only 10 runic power. Hmmmmmm.. Not to mention other stuff adding to healing, and you are still dealing damage.

Seems pretty awesome to me. Death strike seems just a little OP in the current state.

Correct me if I'm mistaken in my calculations or thoughts here.

Sam said...

Death strike isn't 10 runic power. It's 1 unholy, 1 frost rune. Same cost as the new obliterate.

You're give a choice. Lower damage hit that heals you up for a bunch, or high damage strike that can do a ton of burst damage.

Sam said...

By the way,

In pvp you typically can't risk being in blood presence. Unholy presence is really where it's at, because you can dish out so many abilities a lot quicker. You don't have to worry about being caught in a gcd to interrupt, and you can dump your runic power and rune using abilities on someone a lot faster before they get peeled off of you. It's almost like rogue stance.

Anonymous said...

Ah ha! Thanks for the update. I must have missed that one somewhere in all the posts!

That makes sense. And the cost is 'steep' compared to what you get. So yeah, I'd agree with you then on the unholy presense, etc.

So many runes are using unholy. I think it's very imbalanced at the moment.

I really think deathstrike should use 1 blood 1 unholy. I know obliterate reasons for it being frost, but death strike is the essense of blood/unholy into 1 ability, which I believe is going to be a CORE ability in PVP.

Being able to death strike someone to heal you is awesome. Esp if you are unholy and have 5 dots up!

Anonymous said...

Jayde,

A couple of things I would like to see relayed to the devs on the beta forms if you could:

1) Regarding the unholy tree being "bloated". I know GC doesn't like that term. I was reviewing the talent tree on the EU site which is more updated then the USA one, and I keep finding myself frustrated with the amount of points I feel I have to put into unholy compared to the other two.

A few things I would like to see consolidated or even their points somehow lowered:

a) Impurity & Necrosis are both 5 point talents. Perhaps make these a 3 pt talent with similiar effects.

b) Magic Supression - putting 5 pts into this just to get anti-magic zone. I feel is a waste. I think AMZ is great and is needed, but I feel as if I'm "wasting" 5 pts just to get it. I don't know what to suggest or do with it, but I just feels wasted. Perhaps making Magic Supression 'better' somehow would go a long way. Make AMS last longer would work.

c) Crypt Fever - I love the new effect of increasing disease damage. 5 pts again seems a bit much, what about 3 pts again?

d) lastly, master of ghouls needs to go. All ghouls should be controlled automatically without having to spend a talent pt to get it.

Anonymous said...

Jayde, seeing as you seem to be a respected tester and a number of your suggestions have come to pass, what do you think of if where plague strike will remove one hot if scourge strike were to place a disease on the target that would behave like Nef's priest call?

Such as that you hit the target with the disease and a healer heals that target, the target would then get a debuff that could increase the amount of damage they recieve per time they are healed, or a stacking disease/dot for each heal they get while the disease is up. This would be a new "healing debuff" without being a copy/paste of MS.

I figure it would work kinda like Unstable Affliction does for a warlocks dots, make the person think about just spamming hots which would super power the disease, or stop and use a big heal to avoid the stacking dot... or hope and try to wait out the length of the disease.

This would also avoid what GC said about singling out one type of healer.. it would frustrate all of them equally >:)

Havok said...

How cool would it be to have our AOE taunt effectively freeze any targets afflicted with frost fever in place for a few seconds before they crawl towards the DK?

Potentially not very cool at all imo. I don't yet have beta access, so there may be a mechanic that I'm missing... however, pally tanks, warrior tanks and druid tanks alike do not enjoy having mobs rooted out of melee range. It makes it harder to maintain aggro on those mobs when you can't drop some damage down on them.

Not sure if DKs have enough in their toolbox to feasibly maintain threat on mobs rooted outside of melee.

If they do, then yes, phenomenal idea. =)

Anonymous said...

One thing I keep seeing is the suggestion that DKs are only able to DW in order to spare Blizzard from having to provide a bunch of 2H tanking weapons. Considering the push towards sharing gear across multiple classes, I think it may be true that there will be few 2H tanking options. On the other hand, feral tanks can use maces and staves. If Blizzard stops pushing staves on ferals, it is quite likely DKs could use the same 2H maces that ferals would use for tanking. Even the added armour would be good for DKs due to the armour multiplier from Frost Presence. The only concern would be how to convert FAP back into a usable stat for the DK.

Sam said...

Dual wield is simply extra flavor for those that don't like 2handers or prefer DW.

I don't see it being a competitive option though, since none of our trees are really built around the concept.

It's simply there for flavor, nothing more.

Anonymous said...

The moment I saw most instant attacks available to DKS were instants based off weapon damage, rather than AP, I assumed DKs would not be using DW and wondered why the talent even exists.

Many people respond that DW will be for tanking because of itemization issues. Specifically, if they are trying to unify gear across the three plate tanking classes, it makes little sense to start adding 2H tanking weapons to the game when only one class will use them. That thought led me to speculate about the possibility of them moving from druids tanking with staves to druids tanking with 2H maces so they can share the same tanking weapons with DKs.

So, if Blizzard wants to have DKs use 2H weapons to tank and they do not want to start adding in weapons that only benefit one class, I think that avoiding tanking staves and providing tanking maces is the way to go. No more tanking staves for one class, and two classes that can benefit from 2H tanking maces.

Anonymous said...

Jayde,

I was wondering if you could comment or put up something on the beta forums about Heart Strike.

I was rereading some posts on the beta forums about it, and it seems a bit weak.

Could you maybe suggest the following:

Heart Strike does 100% weapon damage + 83/disease? Rather then 60% weapon damage?

That'd make it better then blood strike w/o a doubt. RIght now, it is better then blood strike, but not THAT much better. It should be an upgrade. Keep in mind that Blood strike is physical, whereas frost strike & scourge strike are both frost/shadow damage based and will be bypassing armor.

Please let me know if that's OK or if that would be OP. I don't htink it would be, and provide more DPS boost. I think 60% weapon dmg is too low on a physical attack.

I'd also like to see the same with scourge strike being 100% weapon dmg but shadow instead. same thing as plague strike but upgraded to shadow dmg and 100% weapon dmg. I just see scaling at higher levels or TIERS being weak when we are doing 60% weapon dmg.

Perhaps I'm wrong though...as I haven't tested and played a DK yet ;)