What do you guys think?
IBF is both a blessing and a curse, although it is a far cry better than what it was in alpha (45% armor increase and stun immunity). However, it has since created nothing but problems for both us, and other classes.
It's a blessing in that it's essentially shield wall on a 1 minute cooldown that also grants stun immunity for a dirt cheap RP cost.
It's a curse because our total mitigation package seems to be balanced that it's used almost every time it cools down, which as many have pointed out, is not always ideal.
Emergency cooldowns should be for emergencies. From what I have seen from other people's math and theorycrafting on these forums, however, it seems that IBF is not balanced as an emergency button, but part of our total mitigation package.
It's a great cooldown, for sure. I just seem to be gathering that most people would rather have a flat damage reduction increase across the board at the cost of IBF mitigation, making damage intake less spikey as a whole.
And to be honest, I'd almost argue that IBF is probably too good in PvP as well, as Zeth and myself have pointed out on a few occasions. The fact that we had a 15S cooldown AMS (plus access to 1 min IBF), both of which could be used for extreme magic damage mitigation, made us pretty OP in PvP. I believe the wrong step was taken to correct this, without first properly addressing the PvE side of the issue.
I'd argue that IBF should probably go back to being a less essential, less game-breakingly good ability on such an OP cooldown (where it's only really OP in PvP). IBF needs to be toned down, base mitigation needs to come up (probably in frost presence), and AMS needs to be available more often.
Perhaps I'm alone on this, but I believe it's not good for the class as a whole to leave IBF as it currently stands. I'd rather see it going back to being a big armor increase + stun immunity, and drastically drop the cooldown of AMS for magic damage mitigation (which is more fun to use anyways, as well as what we need more of in PvP). Then, I would argue that in frost presence, our base mitigation of armor and magic damage mitigation needs to be raised by 10%.
The problem is IBF doing too much, too often. This hurts the dev's ability to balance our minimum mitigation without making us OP tanks in PvE with an IBF on a 1 minute cooldown. It also makes balancing our mitigation in PvP hard, since IBF steps on the toes of the role of AMS to a large degree, as it also provides a ton of magic damage mitigation. Shouldn't we have one cooldown for mitigating physical damage for emergencies, and another for magical mitigation? To compensate for the loss of the 1 minute shield wall, reinstate it to what it used to do, and provide high levels of physical mitigation via increased armor (and parry + dodge for use with the new rune strike?) + stun immunity. Raise the base mitigation via armor another 10% or so. Remember. We cannot block. It should be OK that our armor is higher than warriors. It shouldn't be a nightmare for healers to heal DKs through extremely spikey damage. Base mitigation is key. IBF as it currently stands is ruining this for us.
AMS needs to have it's cooldown brought down significantly (20-25s), as well as possibly reducing the damage it absorbs to around 50% or so untalented. In addition, our base magic mitigation in frost presence needs to be raised another 10% to make up for the loss of mitigation on IBF.
Thus, we'd have better PvP balance, and be more viable PvE tanks as well.
If anyone disagrees, please feel free to say why.
20 comments:
I think that while nerfing IBF is a good idea, actual implementation could hurt us, or force them to deal with it in ways that might not be optimal for either PvE or PvP.
Right now PvP is balanced around us having that ability, and our damage is adjusted accordingly. This was shown when they cut the legs off of our damage. If you change IBF to armor bonus and stun immunity, that is one way to solve the problem.
I think a better way to deal with it would be to scale the damage mitigation down. 15-25% on a 1min cooldown, then allow tanks to talent it up further maybe? Or just leave it as is. This would allow them to increase our base mitigation without nerfing our pvp survivability, and might allow them to give us a bit more leeway on AMS and reduce its cooldown.
i think one of our problems is that we don't have a "tanking" talent tree. blizzard has this weird points thingy so that a talent can only be as good as another talent. but we dk`s have to "waste" a lot of talent points on dmg. talents.
Again just based on the first 2 comments posted (mostly the one above me) I feel it is needed to remind people what blizzard set out to do with Death Knights. If everything were perfect Frost, Unholy, and blood would all be perfectly viable tank and dps specs. That is what they are trying to do and that is why frost talents include damage. Obviously this goal will not be reached any time soon, I just wish people would remember what the Death Knights are suppose to be.
Blizzard is trying to make a class without limits, whether they be because of abilities or talents.
I guess what I'm hoping is that they do get it right a few patches after release, if not complaints will rise and frost will be just like protection, useless but necessary.
It's like the class is TOO balanced. They can't give us good burst because we're too survivable, if that makes any sense. I would have figured that a 2H wielding juggernaught would be all about the burst.
Also, I do not like IBF the way it is. The "mini-shieldwall" concept has kicked in for druids, paladins and warriors. They all have a 5 min mitigation talent. If we're exepected to use shieldwall every minute on cooldown, that's not right or fun. (48 seconds without our budgeted mitigation is forever) What's the point of having an oh-shit button if you HAVE to use it. It just flat takes out the judgement that good tanks pick up through experience. It's also nice that we are the "spell damage" tanks. Traditionally, tanks pretty much don't have a whole lot of defense against spell casters and this led to things like mages tanking council and locks tanking illidan. Sure it's a change of pace, but I think it would be alot of fun (and encourage a variety of tanks) if DK's could take those rolls. Then maybe you wouldn't have to worry about your mage tank getting 1-shot on the pull or the lock tank having left over aggro. It would take some of the randomness out between tank swaps and/or pulls. I sort of see DK's vs. magic like bear armor vs. pure physical.
A fix could maybe be frost presence should have a flat damage reduction component like defensive stance or righteous fury does. However, it is not right that frost presence already does so much baseline.
The problem lies in the philosophy that all trees can tank. OK, that's cool, but where's the trade off? Maybe we just need a tank tree. I understand what blizzard is trying to do for us, but at the same time, it's hard to make it fair for everyone else.
It all reminds me of the problems that feral druids had, and how Blizzard had to super bloat their tree to force them to focus on DPS or tanking. We are very similar in this regard, in that supposedly, with a gear swap, we can go from raid DPS to raid tank. Obviously when you translate this to pvp, our damage has to take a hit because we have too much survivability baseline.
Speaking of PvP, I don't feel like I'm enough of a threat (annoying sure) for teams to try and burn me down so I can use survival cooldowns. People are just going to ignore me or CC me and my pet until I'm one of the last and just get beat down by multiple people. It sorta reminds me of arena on a protection warrior (for points!) back in the day (season 1 lol), you could damn near lock out a caster for a while, but in the end you weren't that big of a deal.
TLDR
We get too much damage from talents, and too much mitigation baseline. We need more mitigation through talents so that tanking DK's have to sacrifice a little more. IBF at 1 min has to much of a "quick-fix" feel and our tanking "niche" of taking copious amounts of spell damage (AMS) should come back down to 12-15ish seconds. I'd say put IBF at a 5 min CD just like the other tanks.
Your right, glad to see you noticing not only PvP, and PvE dps... but tanking as well. Relying on this coldown I think is what has leaned me so much towards Unholy tanking because of Bone Shield. I can almost make it so I either have Bone Shield up, or IBF every minute. On bosses this is easier, because the higher your mitagation, the longer bone shield lasts. 40% damage reduction is very good, and then when you run out of bones you can just pop IBF and have bone shield off cd when it runs out.
my god look at the lateist build notes for locks :/
From wotlkwiki.info
Affliction
* Everlasting Affliction - Now Drain Life and Haunt will reset Corruption instead of Drain Life and Shadow Bolt.
* Drain Soul - Drains the soul of the target, causing 426 Shadow damage over 15 sec. If the target is at or below 25% health, Drain Soul causes four times the normal damage. If the target dies while being drained, and yields experience or honor, the caster gains a Soul Shard. Soul Shards are required for other spells.
* Curse of Doom - If the target yields experience or honor when it dies from this damage, a Doomguard will be summoned. Cannot be cast on players.
* Haunt - Now heals for 100% of damage done. Down from 200%.
Demonology
* Enslave Demon - Lasts up to 60 sec. Down from 300 sec.
* Demonic Pact - Does not work on Enslaved demons.
* Conflagrate - Now works with Shadowflame as well as Immolate.
Destruction
* Chaos Bolt - Now does fire damage instead of chaos damage.
/facepalm
I know this is outside of what you posted... but what are your thoughts of the new build? Nerfing Holy Paladins (No healing 15 seconds, no mobility) nerfing survival hunters and hunters in general (AotV changed to passive, something we DON'T want) yet leaving this BS Unholy DK dps as is. WTF blizzard. I've loved blizzard company since starcraft was released, always dishing out balanced awesome and fun games. But WotLK is 6 weeks from shipping. 6 WEEKS. This is the most unbalanced piece of crap you have ever produced. If it ships in this version I will cancel my accounts and regret spending $50 on the expansion. I guess I'll go play a classic of yours like Wc3 or better yet SC2 and D3 when they come out, because you will spend time on them instead of rushing to compete with other games and forgetting what fans and players want, a fun balanced game.
/end qq.
Sorry jayde, but its just how I feel about the current state of classes. DK is way to imba, even though I plan on playing one I don't want to hear classes complaining about me doing good because I'm a DK. I want to be good because Im good not because im playing a rigged class.
sorry person above me, dk's arent op keep sucking it up at 1300 rating
Hi, I have 2 questions for u :D
First : I'm unholy specced for lvling and my rotation is : IT,PS,BS,BS,SS. And when I have done this rotation I have 2-3 second before being able to do something else ( SS, SS again with death rune) .... I'm doing something wrong? Or it's just the 'normal' rotation?
Second : I was searching your tanking video from previous instance ( strat, drak keep ), but it seems they have been deleted from Filefront, can you reupload them?
Thanks :D
Okai I have my answer for the first question : 2.5sec to release my RP. :p
But I really hope that you can reupload your tanking videos again please :p
I completely understand your thoughts on this. After playing a Paladin for 2+ years I have grown to hate my Bubble, which along with healing abilities, becomes the basis for how the Paladin's overall mitigation is developed.
Luckily for Paladin's, they get 3 completely different talent trees which make it possible to balance the different roles in which the paladin can fulfill. But even with a 5 min cooldown the Bubble is available as a base skill, and becomes somewhat of a crutch.
Now when you look at balancing three separate trees to allow DPS and DMG Mitigation, I can see how the DK becomes the most complicated class to balance.
Hopefully the correct changes can be made in order to balance this out, without leaving DK's with a crutch ability like the bubble is for Pallies.
"sorry person above me, dk's arent op keep sucking it up at 1300 rating"
Im talking about PVE not PVP moron. Unholy dks are doing 3700 dps. Repeat it with me THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED DAMAGE PER SECOND. No other class is clsoe in equal gear. Atleast 500-600 dps lower.
Hey there, this probably isn't a very relevant place to post this but an idea popped into my head while I was reading a post about changing Hungering Cold; What if it applied chains of ice along with frostfever to any hostile targets around the Death Knight instead of freezing them, would this be any more useful for tanking/pvp?
So you haven't answered my question about the possibility of reuploading ur video :( It's a hidden no so? :(
Hey Jayde,
I totally agree to you because in my opinion the dk's defence is high enough for pvp, maybe too much.
When i read that blizzard plans to bring the dk as the first hero class i always thought that he would be very offensive like an enhancement shaman with a lesser defence, but now he feels like a sl/sl lock who only tries to live longer than his opponents by doing less direct damage. Even a paladin is more offensive.
Btw what do you think about the idea of "chains of ice being" a disease? It would work like the mage's winterchill mechanic when somebody tries to dispell and you can get 2 disease and a snare up by using only 1 frost and 1 unholy rune so chains don't have to apply frostfever.
If you know that there's a dispeller on the other side you can simply put chains,blood plague and frostfever on the target (with a 30% dispell resist chance) an be sure that he will have problems to dispell the right one.
Of course you lower your damage because you don't have another frostrune to oblit or scourge strike but it's a good investment.
Could you post the idea in the us-forum if you like it or give me a feedback?
Great work so far . :>
quote: Unholy dks are doing 3700 dps. Repeat it with me THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED DAMAGE PER SECOND. No other class is clsoe in equal gear. Atleast 500-600 dps lower.
Uhm, have you actually played an unholy DK in the latest few patches? "THREE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED DAMAGE PER SECOND" was many patches ago. Don't base your opinions on what you have seen in the past, without taking even the slightest account for most current patches. Oh wait, I forgot that "I heard that/a friend told me that/My cousin's brother's friend said that" does not go well with logic.
Maybe they should make Bone Shield baseline and have the talent add more charges and/or lower the cooldown (Perhaps 2 minutes untalented and 1 minute talented).
Make IBF an Frost, but as you suggest change it to a big armor increase + stun immunity (perhaps combine it with Lichborne as a 5 point talent and put it further into the frost tree). Just throwing out some ideas.
So with the current change on Unholy and Frost, what will be your PVP spec now?
I only have 1 main question for you Jayde.
Do you think DK's will be able to keep up with the other classes in PvP or not?
Thanks,
Regards
Jayde are you still playing the beta and the DK ? I ask you that because you don't seems to update your blog as often as before, and you don't put your feedback anymore on the DK in PVP and PVE. For many of us, we can't play premade DK, and leveling is a little bit boring ( I already have 6 lvl 70 so I don't plan to level the DK for the beta ), so you are the only "good" feedback we can have about the DK. So after all changes, are you still planing on playing your DK? and with what specs in pve and pvp? Can you put some pvp video ( and pve if you have the time ) ?
Thanks you
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