Saturday, August 2, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
PvP is an unholy rune hog:
Here are my ideal fixes as of this writing to help balance this issue out, making the DK a much more fluid and viable PvP class.
This was my final pvp feedback from the alpha:
So many of us on the Lich King realm took part in a friendly PvP session consisting of a lot of duels and some 3v3 matches near the nagrand arena. It was a lot of fun, but also educational as far as class mechanics stand right now.
I went with a 0/34/32 build with Unbreakable armor, chillblains, howling blast, deathchill, frigid dreadplate, and down to anti magic zone/bone armor in unholy.
The Good:
Anti Magic Zone is incredibly useful. Yes, I can still be afflicted by magical CC's, but if I'm getting hammered by lots of spells, it's a VERY useful safehaven to retreat into while I wait for runes to recharge, or to counter big incoming spell cooldowns, such as a PoM Pyro. I can see this single talent being the sole reason to spec unholy for pvp, purely for the sake of going against casters. This is THE single best anti caster ability in the game right now. Wow. Incredible. It eats any incoming magical damage cast on me until the 30s duration is up, or it eats 10,000 magic damage, whichever comes first.
Lichborne is fantastic, and got the changes it needed. I can use it to break out of fear AND deathcoil, (since it technically makes you undead, and undead are immune to deathcoil), and it's off the gcd and costs no runes. That means you can actually use it as an emergency, on demand ability as it should be. Fantastic talent. The risks associated with being shackled/turn evil should be a fine counter. You trade being immune to a couple types of CC to being vulnerable to another. I.e. A deathknight who breaks out of a shadowpriests new horror effect "fear" bomb with lichborne now runs the risk of then being shackled by a skilled priest that drops shadowform. Seems fair. Given the trade off, though, it might need a lower cooldown to 3 minutes. 5 minutes is a bit much. If there was no downside to using the ability, 5 minutes would be more acceptable.
Chillblains makes my icy touch do what chains of ice should do: Snare the target so I can actually catch people for just long enough for me to do meaningful damage sometimes. Both Chains of Ice and Chillblains will be rather useless vs druids, though. Any non-spammable snare really is. Chillblains with icy touch is arguably better than chains of ice would be even with the shorter duration. Why? Because it does damage in addition to snaring, and it slows their attack/casting speeds, and it can crit, and it doesn't have a ridiculous 20 second cooldown. Even if the proposed Chains of Ice to 1 rune change goes in, I would still say that Chillblains with icy touch is far better. However, neither of those really solve the issue of keeping someone snared that can shapeshift, or dispel themselves. I still feel incredibly kitable even with chillblains, and it sucks. As a side note: I noticed that if you dispel chains of ice off yourself, it will THEN apply the snare debuff, so to get rid of chains of ice while rooted, you will have to dispel yourself twice to regain movement speed. Not sure if that's working as intended.
Frigid Dreadplate + Unbreakable Armor is absolutely fantastic vs warriors. I'm in greens and I can take down my fully geared s3 geared warrior buddy, who's dual wielding season 3 2hand weapons no problem. Between my great melee mitigation and combination of strikes + spell damage that cuts through armor, taking down warriors really isn't that difficult at all. This was probably my easiest fight.
The Bad:
Bone Armor needs some work. I really love the concept of this ability: In theory, it's great against things that hit slow and hard. What comes to mind when I think of that besides warriors? Mages and warlocks. It cuts dot damage nearly in half, which is very useful, and it cuts those big mage bolts in nearly half. So what's the problem, you ask? It's dispelable and spell stealable. I figured I had the one up on an arcane mage I was fighting by popping this up as he put up arcane power, thinking I'd be able to negate a lot of damage on his next spells. Not the case, sadly. He simply spell stole it, and it made me have a much harder time killing him. Warlocks simply devour it off of me within 1s of the start of the fight. This really needs to be a physical buff. Also, I have to wonder. Why does this have a double rune cost, but something that's obviously MUCH more powerful like anti magic zone, simply costs 1 unholy (which I like, btw). 1 frost 1 unholy for 40% reduction on the next 4 hits vs 1 unholy for 10,000 magic damage reduction for everyone under my safe bubble? Definitely doesn't seem proportionate.
All the ghoul talents = worthless for arena/duels. I could see them being midly entertaining in the battlegrounds. That's about it. I really feel like these need some work. They're still way too much of a pain in the rump to keep around, and I don't feel like wasting 8 points in unholy to make them worthwhile, if they're still going to be 100% useless in arenas/raids. That makes those 8 talent points not fun. If you're going to keep ghouls non arena/raid friendly, then those talents that buff the ghouls REALLY need to give great secondary benefits as well. I don't consider 5% strength to be worth 5 talent points at all in situations where I can't use the ghoul. 10%? Maybe, but still doubtful, especially when you consider how useful the other talents (such as unholy command) are in the context of something like the arena.
Shadow of Death I still don't like. 1% to all stats is a little deceiving. It's really just 1% to str/stam/agility. Nothing to really get excited over. Fun talent to use a few times, but the passive bonus is just very unexciting.
Corpse Explosion: Same thing here. Absolutely useless in arenas. I would probably never pick this up. That's really 3 talent points to make it decent that do nothing in competitive pvp. Fun for 5mans, though. Gets a nice "wow" factor when you use it in groups that haven't seen it. Pain in the ass to target corpses still, too. Too frustrating and situational for me to convince myself to pick up.
Also, I feel like the early tiers of blood really don't have much to offer for pvp utility. It's a bunch of nice passives that increase your crit, parry, or AP. That's great I suppose. But, it's not nearly as useful as things like Anti magic zone, chillblains, unbreakable armor, so I feel like those early blood talents just don't have enough to compete. In addition, speccing deep into blood makes you even easier to kite, so I tend to just shy away from the blood tree completely for pvp. It has way too many passives, some of which are very situational, and a lot of which require on scoring a KB, which are obviously useless in the arena. Talents such as vendetta and butchery that are must-haves for leveling, suddenly become obsolete and you never look at them again.
I still FIRMLY believe that death grip needs to cost a fixed amount of runic power instead of using an unholy rune. I find myself chasing after enemies often with a bunch of runic power saved up, and I try my best to save my unholy runes for a well-timed bone armor, a degeneration (If it worked. I'll get to that), plague strike.. I am going to plead with you devs and ask that you consider playing around with DG using RP instead. I REALLY hate how it uses an unholy rune in PVE even more than PvP. I pull a loose mob back to me, but every lost unholy rune is lost dps, and lost ability to apply diseases that I could then spread with a blood rune for a blood boil. I feel as if it really limits my dps/tanking rotation for the next 10 seconds once that unholy rune is down.
Degeneration appears to be broken, as it's currently not negating the effect of any druid hots I tried countering when fighting a balance druid.
Anti Magic Shell: I must say, this ability is pretty underwhelming. It only grants 11 runic power when it absorbs a spell? Really? That's kind of a let down. It doesn't stop any magical CC's. This ability is best used as a reactive ability to incoming cast-time nukes. I always have to keep an unholy rune handy just in case I manage to catch or counter a spell coming at me. Eh, I dunno. It's ok. It's not nearly as cool as I thought it was going to be. It holds no candle to anti magic zone, which is understandable I suppose.. But Anti Magic Shell just feels underwhelming at the moment. You spend an unholy rune for 5s worth of protection from some magical abilities (not all), and the amount of RP you absorb feels pathetic. This ability seems merely gimmicky at the moment. It pales in comparison to warrior shield reflect, which only costs 25 rage (easily gained with stuff beating the crap out of you and nuking you while you hit things), has only a 10 second cooldown, is technically 100% spell damage reduction, and it reflects (obviously) the spell back at the caster. Seriously. What the hell? Warriors base anti magic ability is far superior to anti magic shell in nearly ever way. Why? Oh, and spell reflect DOES stop magical CCs, in addition to spells. Not only that, but it reflects them. It's a very valid tactic to have warriors time it to reflect sheep back at mages. Sigh. Pretty disappointed with this ability so far.
Finally, I'm going to bring up something I've mentioned in another thread, but I feel as if it needs to be repeated and re-emphasized: Annihilation talent in frost needs to be moved to unholy.
There are a few reasons for this, so please hear me out:
First, a great tactic for deep frost builds is to lay into someone with a bunch of spells and strikes (this includes disease-based strikes), obliterate to remove the diseases, and then pop hungering cold. Then you can let your runes charge up while your target is frozen, pop a deathchill + howling blast + more strikes for great burst. This doesn't work, however, if you take annihilation. In addition, beyond combos like this, deep frost builds typically don't/won't use obliterate much. Finally, I find myself not wanting to use those big damage obliterates while specced deep unholy, simply because I hate losing all those debuffs I worked so hard at putting up, ESPECIALLY while specced for ebon plague bringer. If you are specced EP at the moment, you simply should not obliterate ever, even though obliterate is designed to best be used on heavy disease-afflicted targets. Is using obliterate and wiping those diseases + stat loss + 9% increased magic damage taken on the target worth snagging 800 more damage off of an obliterate vs another strike? No, of course not.
It's for these reasons that I firmly believe that annihilation would be a talent best served in the unholy tree.
I think that about wraps things up for feedback for this build. Hope this is useful to someone
I went with a 0/34/32 build with Unbreakable armor, chillblains, howling blast, deathchill, frigid dreadplate, and down to anti magic zone/bone armor in unholy.
The Good:
Anti Magic Zone is incredibly useful. Yes, I can still be afflicted by magical CC's, but if I'm getting hammered by lots of spells, it's a VERY useful safehaven to retreat into while I wait for runes to recharge, or to counter big incoming spell cooldowns, such as a PoM Pyro. I can see this single talent being the sole reason to spec unholy for pvp, purely for the sake of going against casters. This is THE single best anti caster ability in the game right now. Wow. Incredible. It eats any incoming magical damage cast on me until the 30s duration is up, or it eats 10,000 magic damage, whichever comes first.
Lichborne is fantastic, and got the changes it needed. I can use it to break out of fear AND deathcoil, (since it technically makes you undead, and undead are immune to deathcoil), and it's off the gcd and costs no runes. That means you can actually use it as an emergency, on demand ability as it should be. Fantastic talent. The risks associated with being shackled/turn evil should be a fine counter. You trade being immune to a couple types of CC to being vulnerable to another. I.e. A deathknight who breaks out of a shadowpriests new horror effect "fear" bomb with lichborne now runs the risk of then being shackled by a skilled priest that drops shadowform. Seems fair. Given the trade off, though, it might need a lower cooldown to 3 minutes. 5 minutes is a bit much. If there was no downside to using the ability, 5 minutes would be more acceptable.
Chillblains makes my icy touch do what chains of ice should do: Snare the target so I can actually catch people for just long enough for me to do meaningful damage sometimes. Both Chains of Ice and Chillblains will be rather useless vs druids, though. Any non-spammable snare really is. Chillblains with icy touch is arguably better than chains of ice would be even with the shorter duration. Why? Because it does damage in addition to snaring, and it slows their attack/casting speeds, and it can crit, and it doesn't have a ridiculous 20 second cooldown. Even if the proposed Chains of Ice to 1 rune change goes in, I would still say that Chillblains with icy touch is far better. However, neither of those really solve the issue of keeping someone snared that can shapeshift, or dispel themselves. I still feel incredibly kitable even with chillblains, and it sucks. As a side note: I noticed that if you dispel chains of ice off yourself, it will THEN apply the snare debuff, so to get rid of chains of ice while rooted, you will have to dispel yourself twice to regain movement speed. Not sure if that's working as intended.
Frigid Dreadplate + Unbreakable Armor is absolutely fantastic vs warriors. I'm in greens and I can take down my fully geared s3 geared warrior buddy, who's dual wielding season 3 2hand weapons no problem. Between my great melee mitigation and combination of strikes + spell damage that cuts through armor, taking down warriors really isn't that difficult at all. This was probably my easiest fight.
The Bad:
Bone Armor needs some work. I really love the concept of this ability: In theory, it's great against things that hit slow and hard. What comes to mind when I think of that besides warriors? Mages and warlocks. It cuts dot damage nearly in half, which is very useful, and it cuts those big mage bolts in nearly half. So what's the problem, you ask? It's dispelable and spell stealable. I figured I had the one up on an arcane mage I was fighting by popping this up as he put up arcane power, thinking I'd be able to negate a lot of damage on his next spells. Not the case, sadly. He simply spell stole it, and it made me have a much harder time killing him. Warlocks simply devour it off of me within 1s of the start of the fight. This really needs to be a physical buff. Also, I have to wonder. Why does this have a double rune cost, but something that's obviously MUCH more powerful like anti magic zone, simply costs 1 unholy (which I like, btw). 1 frost 1 unholy for 40% reduction on the next 4 hits vs 1 unholy for 10,000 magic damage reduction for everyone under my safe bubble? Definitely doesn't seem proportionate.
All the ghoul talents = worthless for arena/duels. I could see them being midly entertaining in the battlegrounds. That's about it. I really feel like these need some work. They're still way too much of a pain in the rump to keep around, and I don't feel like wasting 8 points in unholy to make them worthwhile, if they're still going to be 100% useless in arenas/raids. That makes those 8 talent points not fun. If you're going to keep ghouls non arena/raid friendly, then those talents that buff the ghouls REALLY need to give great secondary benefits as well. I don't consider 5% strength to be worth 5 talent points at all in situations where I can't use the ghoul. 10%? Maybe, but still doubtful, especially when you consider how useful the other talents (such as unholy command) are in the context of something like the arena.
Shadow of Death I still don't like. 1% to all stats is a little deceiving. It's really just 1% to str/stam/agility. Nothing to really get excited over. Fun talent to use a few times, but the passive bonus is just very unexciting.
Corpse Explosion: Same thing here. Absolutely useless in arenas. I would probably never pick this up. That's really 3 talent points to make it decent that do nothing in competitive pvp. Fun for 5mans, though. Gets a nice "wow" factor when you use it in groups that haven't seen it. Pain in the ass to target corpses still, too. Too frustrating and situational for me to convince myself to pick up.
Also, I feel like the early tiers of blood really don't have much to offer for pvp utility. It's a bunch of nice passives that increase your crit, parry, or AP. That's great I suppose. But, it's not nearly as useful as things like Anti magic zone, chillblains, unbreakable armor, so I feel like those early blood talents just don't have enough to compete. In addition, speccing deep into blood makes you even easier to kite, so I tend to just shy away from the blood tree completely for pvp. It has way too many passives, some of which are very situational, and a lot of which require on scoring a KB, which are obviously useless in the arena. Talents such as vendetta and butchery that are must-haves for leveling, suddenly become obsolete and you never look at them again.
I still FIRMLY believe that death grip needs to cost a fixed amount of runic power instead of using an unholy rune. I find myself chasing after enemies often with a bunch of runic power saved up, and I try my best to save my unholy runes for a well-timed bone armor, a degeneration (If it worked. I'll get to that), plague strike.. I am going to plead with you devs and ask that you consider playing around with DG using RP instead. I REALLY hate how it uses an unholy rune in PVE even more than PvP. I pull a loose mob back to me, but every lost unholy rune is lost dps, and lost ability to apply diseases that I could then spread with a blood rune for a blood boil. I feel as if it really limits my dps/tanking rotation for the next 10 seconds once that unholy rune is down.
Degeneration appears to be broken, as it's currently not negating the effect of any druid hots I tried countering when fighting a balance druid.
Anti Magic Shell: I must say, this ability is pretty underwhelming. It only grants 11 runic power when it absorbs a spell? Really? That's kind of a let down. It doesn't stop any magical CC's. This ability is best used as a reactive ability to incoming cast-time nukes. I always have to keep an unholy rune handy just in case I manage to catch or counter a spell coming at me. Eh, I dunno. It's ok. It's not nearly as cool as I thought it was going to be. It holds no candle to anti magic zone, which is understandable I suppose.. But Anti Magic Shell just feels underwhelming at the moment. You spend an unholy rune for 5s worth of protection from some magical abilities (not all), and the amount of RP you absorb feels pathetic. This ability seems merely gimmicky at the moment. It pales in comparison to warrior shield reflect, which only costs 25 rage (easily gained with stuff beating the crap out of you and nuking you while you hit things), has only a 10 second cooldown, is technically 100% spell damage reduction, and it reflects (obviously) the spell back at the caster. Seriously. What the hell? Warriors base anti magic ability is far superior to anti magic shell in nearly ever way. Why? Oh, and spell reflect DOES stop magical CCs, in addition to spells. Not only that, but it reflects them. It's a very valid tactic to have warriors time it to reflect sheep back at mages. Sigh. Pretty disappointed with this ability so far.
Finally, I'm going to bring up something I've mentioned in another thread, but I feel as if it needs to be repeated and re-emphasized: Annihilation talent in frost needs to be moved to unholy.
There are a few reasons for this, so please hear me out:
First, a great tactic for deep frost builds is to lay into someone with a bunch of spells and strikes (this includes disease-based strikes), obliterate to remove the diseases, and then pop hungering cold. Then you can let your runes charge up while your target is frozen, pop a deathchill + howling blast + more strikes for great burst. This doesn't work, however, if you take annihilation. In addition, beyond combos like this, deep frost builds typically don't/won't use obliterate much. Finally, I find myself not wanting to use those big damage obliterates while specced deep unholy, simply because I hate losing all those debuffs I worked so hard at putting up, ESPECIALLY while specced for ebon plague bringer. If you are specced EP at the moment, you simply should not obliterate ever, even though obliterate is designed to best be used on heavy disease-afflicted targets. Is using obliterate and wiping those diseases + stat loss + 9% increased magic damage taken on the target worth snagging 800 more damage off of an obliterate vs another strike? No, of course not.
It's for these reasons that I firmly believe that annihilation would be a talent best served in the unholy tree.
I think that about wraps things up for feedback for this build. Hope this is useful to someone
And even more:
1) Presences:
My primary concern is going to mostly be blood vs unholy, since frost is essentially for tanking. My biggest concern is how valuable the 0.5s gcd is going to be vs 15% damage caused via blood presence, which is just absolutely huge.
Your auto attack DPS will be the same, (15% extra haste = 15% extra damage), so the real question lies in the 15% damage via your specials vs the ability to pump out those specials quicker. It's too early to tell right now just how valuable that faster gcd will be, but I can definitely see the benefits. Sure, your first plague strike might do 15% more damage in blood presence, but your second one is going to take 50% longer to hit (1.5s gcd vs 1.0s) the target. In addition, it can be pretty game-breaking to be caught mid-gcd and unable to interrupt that game-winning heal because you were in blood presence instead of unholy. Time will tell, but obviously not many people will be using unholy presence just yet, as pvp is all but dead right now on the alpha servers. There's just no point to using unholy aura right now, so it isn't going to get the testing and feedback it needs just yet.
2) PvP:
As someone who held a 3v3 team on BG9 with some notable players with a 2300+ rating in season 2, and had several other teams that were 2200+ in 2v2 and 5v5, I take this area very seriously.
First and foremost, let's talk about mobility:
Unholy aura seems like a fantastic talent, but it's position in the tree makes it mutually exclusive to several other builds/trees. 10% Extra run speed for the group that will stack with your run speed enchant seems almost required, especially in a tree that has such amazing pvp talents such as bone armor, anti magic zone, unholy command (yes, 10s lower cooldown on death's grip is huge), on a pale horse, and lichborne. The initial problem with ret paladins was their issue of getting kited all over the place. This was solved in part due to the pursuit of justice talent relatively early in ret (even though I think more paladins than ret could really use this talent in pvp, especially holy). This talent would also be an assassination rogues' best friend, granting them a total of 25% movement speed increase.
Next we have chillblains, which seems required for one basic reason: Chains of ice has way too many drawbacks. Deathknights have 0 dispel protection for their frost abilities right now, and with chains of ice being so ridiculously expensive to use, in addition to its 20s cooldown (why?), I just don't see any frost build being successful in pvp without chillblains. This is essentially the frost tree's version of unholy aura, except it isn't really active 100% of the time. Once you factor in how ridiculously easy a lot of classes will be able to cleanse it, not to mention you can't exactly trinket out of getting chased by someone faster than you (as you would be faster than most with unholy aura), this talent becomes less attractive for your hardcore pvper, and even less so for your pver.
Death's grip will act as a wonderful "get back over here" type of ability, once our target makes his/her escape.. but as of right now, it's a little lackluster, as the target that was kiting me right before using it can typically run right back away, especially if I'm still snared. I wish this ability had a 1-2s root tacked onto it as well. There seems to be some lag when Using it. when I use it on pvp players, it takes them a few seconds to get pulled back to me as they fly through the air, and sometimes they land next to me out of melee range. Without unholy aura, using this ability in its current form does me absolutely zero good sometimes.
Speaking of death's grip, I would rather have this ability use 10 runic power instead of an unholy rune. I mean it's an ability that's essentially used in a situation like intercept, where you need to get back on your target, yes? So you more than likely already have a bunch of runic power to spend, and nothing really good to spend it on. I think DG would be an excellent ability to have use RP. Right now, all I really use it for is deathcoil spam, and I find myself wishing I had more interesting abilities to use it on. Not to mention, this would save an unholy rune and allow me to use my bone armor/anti magic shell/diseases more often. Wouldn't it make sense to use an unholy rune to eat that incoming spell via anti magic shell, which would charge your runic power, and use that RP to pull the caster towards you? Seems more logical to me to do it that way, rather than to spend an unholy rune eating that spell, and another to pull the caster towards you, and then use all that runic power on..... a deathcoil? And then not have any unholy runes available to bone armor/disease.. Please consider this change.
Chains of ice I won't really touch on that much, as I feel this ability has too many restrictions placed on it. Double rune cost, 20 second cooldown, and absolutely 0 dispel protection make this ability a lot weaker in practice than it looks on paper. Even if it only cost 1 frost rune, and had 0 cooldown, I could still see a lot of classes simply trinketing out, or dispelling it off of themselves or their teammates. Is it really so OP to have so many restrictions? If anything, I think this is another one of those abilities that would probably be better off using a discreet amount of runic power, rather than runes.
3) Runic Power PvP Utility:
I can't stress this enough. Death knights have essentially ZERO utility via runic power for pvp builds right now, other than deathcoil spam and the occasional icebound fortitude. Ok, so as an anti caster, I have one single ability (which is essentially pummel), that uses runic power. That's it. I feel like our control/utility type abilities of chains of ice and death's grip would be much better off if they used discreet amounts of runic power. It feels incredibly boring to only really have deathcoil and the occasional mind freeze as your only option to use runic power on vs casters.
Use the 51 point talents you say? I could see possibly hungering cold be useful in pvp, but definitely not unholy blight. Dancing rune blade would be fun to use, if it weren't for the fact that deep blood builds (51+) have access to neither chillblains, nor unholy aura. Deep blood spec DKs will be the most easily kited melee class/spec in the game.
Even still, those 51 pointers are on lengthy cooldowns. Where is the utility between? I'm beginning to feel like that, vs casters, my runic power bar is essentially my deathcoil charging bar. At least vs melee, I have the option to use icebound fortitude every minute (which is still rather lengthy, considering the lack of variety of RP abilities).
My primary concern is going to mostly be blood vs unholy, since frost is essentially for tanking. My biggest concern is how valuable the 0.5s gcd is going to be vs 15% damage caused via blood presence, which is just absolutely huge.
Your auto attack DPS will be the same, (15% extra haste = 15% extra damage), so the real question lies in the 15% damage via your specials vs the ability to pump out those specials quicker. It's too early to tell right now just how valuable that faster gcd will be, but I can definitely see the benefits. Sure, your first plague strike might do 15% more damage in blood presence, but your second one is going to take 50% longer to hit (1.5s gcd vs 1.0s) the target. In addition, it can be pretty game-breaking to be caught mid-gcd and unable to interrupt that game-winning heal because you were in blood presence instead of unholy. Time will tell, but obviously not many people will be using unholy presence just yet, as pvp is all but dead right now on the alpha servers. There's just no point to using unholy aura right now, so it isn't going to get the testing and feedback it needs just yet.
2) PvP:
As someone who held a 3v3 team on BG9 with some notable players with a 2300+ rating in season 2, and had several other teams that were 2200+ in 2v2 and 5v5, I take this area very seriously.
First and foremost, let's talk about mobility:
Unholy aura seems like a fantastic talent, but it's position in the tree makes it mutually exclusive to several other builds/trees. 10% Extra run speed for the group that will stack with your run speed enchant seems almost required, especially in a tree that has such amazing pvp talents such as bone armor, anti magic zone, unholy command (yes, 10s lower cooldown on death's grip is huge), on a pale horse, and lichborne. The initial problem with ret paladins was their issue of getting kited all over the place. This was solved in part due to the pursuit of justice talent relatively early in ret (even though I think more paladins than ret could really use this talent in pvp, especially holy). This talent would also be an assassination rogues' best friend, granting them a total of 25% movement speed increase.
Next we have chillblains, which seems required for one basic reason: Chains of ice has way too many drawbacks. Deathknights have 0 dispel protection for their frost abilities right now, and with chains of ice being so ridiculously expensive to use, in addition to its 20s cooldown (why?), I just don't see any frost build being successful in pvp without chillblains. This is essentially the frost tree's version of unholy aura, except it isn't really active 100% of the time. Once you factor in how ridiculously easy a lot of classes will be able to cleanse it, not to mention you can't exactly trinket out of getting chased by someone faster than you (as you would be faster than most with unholy aura), this talent becomes less attractive for your hardcore pvper, and even less so for your pver.
Death's grip will act as a wonderful "get back over here" type of ability, once our target makes his/her escape.. but as of right now, it's a little lackluster, as the target that was kiting me right before using it can typically run right back away, especially if I'm still snared. I wish this ability had a 1-2s root tacked onto it as well. There seems to be some lag when Using it. when I use it on pvp players, it takes them a few seconds to get pulled back to me as they fly through the air, and sometimes they land next to me out of melee range. Without unholy aura, using this ability in its current form does me absolutely zero good sometimes.
Speaking of death's grip, I would rather have this ability use 10 runic power instead of an unholy rune. I mean it's an ability that's essentially used in a situation like intercept, where you need to get back on your target, yes? So you more than likely already have a bunch of runic power to spend, and nothing really good to spend it on. I think DG would be an excellent ability to have use RP. Right now, all I really use it for is deathcoil spam, and I find myself wishing I had more interesting abilities to use it on. Not to mention, this would save an unholy rune and allow me to use my bone armor/anti magic shell/diseases more often. Wouldn't it make sense to use an unholy rune to eat that incoming spell via anti magic shell, which would charge your runic power, and use that RP to pull the caster towards you? Seems more logical to me to do it that way, rather than to spend an unholy rune eating that spell, and another to pull the caster towards you, and then use all that runic power on..... a deathcoil? And then not have any unholy runes available to bone armor/disease.. Please consider this change.
Chains of ice I won't really touch on that much, as I feel this ability has too many restrictions placed on it. Double rune cost, 20 second cooldown, and absolutely 0 dispel protection make this ability a lot weaker in practice than it looks on paper. Even if it only cost 1 frost rune, and had 0 cooldown, I could still see a lot of classes simply trinketing out, or dispelling it off of themselves or their teammates. Is it really so OP to have so many restrictions? If anything, I think this is another one of those abilities that would probably be better off using a discreet amount of runic power, rather than runes.
3) Runic Power PvP Utility:
I can't stress this enough. Death knights have essentially ZERO utility via runic power for pvp builds right now, other than deathcoil spam and the occasional icebound fortitude. Ok, so as an anti caster, I have one single ability (which is essentially pummel), that uses runic power. That's it. I feel like our control/utility type abilities of chains of ice and death's grip would be much better off if they used discreet amounts of runic power. It feels incredibly boring to only really have deathcoil and the occasional mind freeze as your only option to use runic power on vs casters.
Use the 51 point talents you say? I could see possibly hungering cold be useful in pvp, but definitely not unholy blight. Dancing rune blade would be fun to use, if it weren't for the fact that deep blood builds (51+) have access to neither chillblains, nor unholy aura. Deep blood spec DKs will be the most easily kited melee class/spec in the game.
Even still, those 51 pointers are on lengthy cooldowns. Where is the utility between? I'm beginning to feel like that, vs casters, my runic power bar is essentially my deathcoil charging bar. At least vs melee, I have the option to use icebound fortitude every minute (which is still rather lengthy, considering the lack of variety of RP abilities).
Further early alpha feedback:
I think I'm beginning to like the DK less and less the more I play it.
The more I realize how limited the rune/runic power mechanic is, the less fun it becomes, which is a pretty big red flag that something is wrong. I wish I could talk to you on vent about it sometime, eh but I know you're busy. Ah well, it is still early in the process.
Someone made some pretty valid points here that I gotta say I've noticed as well. And to tell the truth, with as much time as I spend simply chasing after my balance druid buddy that I duel all the time, I really really wish I had more ranged silences than strangulate which is on a 30s cooldown and needs all runic power to be worth a damn.
I also find myself wishing I simply had a single target CC of some sort... like.. an incapacitate, or a knock back, or a single target freeze, or something. Something frost based (but only if chains of ice was 1 rune cost, darnit!).
One last thing is, I feel like... I dunno... I don't have a big nuke or burst damage ability other than a death's chill + howling blast which is technically 3s and not on demand. You know? I mean I don't have this big scary mortal strike attack that I could bust out on someone, which is weird cause I keep seeing talents for this thing called "obliterate" but I have no idea what it is. I'm hoping that would address the issue. I feel like once I get close to chox (the druid), I just can't do enough damage in those few seconds between when I'm getting rooted to put any fear of death into him, while I get kited around and die to dots + nukes between strangulate.
I certainly don't feel like much of an anti caster at this point other than an Anti HoTer, since degeneration is splendid at countering hots. (kudos there!)
Part of being anti caster (who excels at ranged combat obviously) is either being able to constantly close the distance to them like a warrior or rogue, or have lots of ranged interrupts and ranged damage to match or scare them into thinking twice about standing there and nuking (ala hunter).
At this point, I'd also gladly give up mind freeze for earth shock, as the range on mind freeze is just pathetic.
I would also kill to have more runic power type abilities that were effective and weren't totally dependent on having a full bar to be worth it, as I find myself holding onto a full bar (wasting future RP generation) just for the right time for when I need to blow a strangulate, as it's on a 30s cooldown.
Developer response:
The more I realize how limited the rune/runic power mechanic is, the less fun it becomes, which is a pretty big red flag that something is wrong. I wish I could talk to you on vent about it sometime, eh but I know you're busy. Ah well, it is still early in the process.
Someone made some pretty valid points here that I gotta say I've noticed as well. And to tell the truth, with as much time as I spend simply chasing after my balance druid buddy that I duel all the time, I really really wish I had more ranged silences than strangulate which is on a 30s cooldown and needs all runic power to be worth a damn.
I also find myself wishing I simply had a single target CC of some sort... like.. an incapacitate, or a knock back, or a single target freeze, or something. Something frost based (but only if chains of ice was 1 rune cost, darnit!).
One last thing is, I feel like... I dunno... I don't have a big nuke or burst damage ability other than a death's chill + howling blast which is technically 3s and not on demand. You know? I mean I don't have this big scary mortal strike attack that I could bust out on someone, which is weird cause I keep seeing talents for this thing called "obliterate" but I have no idea what it is. I'm hoping that would address the issue. I feel like once I get close to chox (the druid), I just can't do enough damage in those few seconds between when I'm getting rooted to put any fear of death into him, while I get kited around and die to dots + nukes between strangulate.
I certainly don't feel like much of an anti caster at this point other than an Anti HoTer, since degeneration is splendid at countering hots. (kudos there!)
Part of being anti caster (who excels at ranged combat obviously) is either being able to constantly close the distance to them like a warrior or rogue, or have lots of ranged interrupts and ranged damage to match or scare them into thinking twice about standing there and nuking (ala hunter).
At this point, I'd also gladly give up mind freeze for earth shock, as the range on mind freeze is just pathetic.
I would also kill to have more runic power type abilities that were effective and weren't totally dependent on having a full bar to be worth it, as I find myself holding onto a full bar (wasting future RP generation) just for the right time for when I need to blow a strangulate, as it's on a 30s cooldown.
Developer response:
"Yeah, there are some valid points. It’s definitely still a possibility to change runic power abilities to use discreet amounts of power.
Aside from that, we do plan to get chains of ice down to 1 frost rune (possibly frost/unholy though)."
Early frost feedback from alpha:
You may notice, after glancing over this, that several of these changes were indeed made:
1) There's still not enough synergy with frozen targets. We currently only have 3 ways to freeze a target. Random proc from mind freeze/icy touch, random proc from frost strike, and using our 1min cooldown hungering cold which requires 51 points in for the only guaranteed way to do it. So we get 2 random abilities that use up frost runes that MAY have a slight chance to freeze the target, and a long cooldown on demand one.
2) Once the target is frozen via mind freeze/icy touch/frost strike... then what? It lasts for maybe 3 seconds at best, and if you just used your last frost run, half of the time you can't even howling blast them before it wears off due it breaking on damage, no runes are available, and/or howling blast is on cooldown anyways. Soooo most of the time I see the target get frozen and say "neat", and that's about it, as I don't have enough tools to take advantage of it.
3) Hungering cold is fantastic. I really like this ability, I just wish I could use it more often. It's so strong, that I typically don't even need full runic power to use. I wish we had a single target version of this ability as a base ability.
4) Death's Chill needs to be off the global cooldown. So does Blood tap. It's beyond frustrating to find my target gets frozen and I wan't to pop a crit howling blast, but by the time I've waited for the gcd so I can howling blast, it's already broken. Same thing with needing an emergency frost rune via blood tap. It just takes too long to react to the situation due to GCD. I have to basically spend 3 seconds to get that emergency situation combo off, and by then, the situation is typically gone! Don't like it.
5) Howling blast is amazing, but I wish I had more tools that took advantage of a frozen target in someway. Doesn't have to be tripple damage to frozen targets ability, but something. Could be even single target. Also, it would be really nice if we had a runic power ability that could fill this role. It seems that most of the abilities that build up to the frozen target scenario (with the exception of hungering cold) require frost runes. It would be fantastic if we had the choice of doing rune-ability > runic power and vice versa to build our frozen target combos. Options are great, depending on the situation.
6) Icy talons needs to reduce gcd by the proper amount, since it's technically spell haste. I know someone already mentioned this, but it needs to happen.
7) Killing machine and unbreakable armor feel too bloated. Please consider 3/3 versions.
8) Endless winter feels like too weak of a talent. Perhaps if more talents were included to make it feel stronger, such as increasing the duration of your mind freeze interrupt/lockout, as well as making the effect of death's chill last a couple seconds longer to buy you time for another frost rune to perhaps recharge. Perhaps make this a 3/3 talent. Also needs to affect chillblains sorely.
9) New talent needed: Winters Reach: Increases the range of all frost spells and abilities by 10/20% Mind freeze especially needs this, but would also be a boost to the core ability of icy touch to the frost tree. Extra range on hungering cold/howling blast would be fantastic as well.
10) Frost Rune Mastery feels extremely week, and only really procs when you use hungering cold, meaning this talent doesn't really see a whole lot of benefit unless you're 51+ points in. Please change this.
11) One final thing: I really hate how hungering cold breaks on disease damage. Frost and Unholy don't get along very well. While level, we're taught that keeping diseases on as many targets as possible is a good thing. It allows us to blood boil when needed, and its a lot of extra threat. Now, once you train Hungering Cold from 51 frost, you're taught the opposite: Just in case you need to use it. I really find myself conflicted. Should I spread my diseases around (Ok, I probably could have worded that better), or should I not in case I need to pull an emergency HC out of my ass? I dunno. Feels counter productive, frustrating and more importantly: Not fun.
1) There's still not enough synergy with frozen targets. We currently only have 3 ways to freeze a target. Random proc from mind freeze/icy touch, random proc from frost strike, and using our 1min cooldown hungering cold which requires 51 points in for the only guaranteed way to do it. So we get 2 random abilities that use up frost runes that MAY have a slight chance to freeze the target, and a long cooldown on demand one.
2) Once the target is frozen via mind freeze/icy touch/frost strike... then what? It lasts for maybe 3 seconds at best, and if you just used your last frost run, half of the time you can't even howling blast them before it wears off due it breaking on damage, no runes are available, and/or howling blast is on cooldown anyways. Soooo most of the time I see the target get frozen and say "neat", and that's about it, as I don't have enough tools to take advantage of it.
3) Hungering cold is fantastic. I really like this ability, I just wish I could use it more often. It's so strong, that I typically don't even need full runic power to use. I wish we had a single target version of this ability as a base ability.
4) Death's Chill needs to be off the global cooldown. So does Blood tap. It's beyond frustrating to find my target gets frozen and I wan't to pop a crit howling blast, but by the time I've waited for the gcd so I can howling blast, it's already broken. Same thing with needing an emergency frost rune via blood tap. It just takes too long to react to the situation due to GCD. I have to basically spend 3 seconds to get that emergency situation combo off, and by then, the situation is typically gone! Don't like it.
5) Howling blast is amazing, but I wish I had more tools that took advantage of a frozen target in someway. Doesn't have to be tripple damage to frozen targets ability, but something. Could be even single target. Also, it would be really nice if we had a runic power ability that could fill this role. It seems that most of the abilities that build up to the frozen target scenario (with the exception of hungering cold) require frost runes. It would be fantastic if we had the choice of doing rune-ability > runic power and vice versa to build our frozen target combos. Options are great, depending on the situation.
6) Icy talons needs to reduce gcd by the proper amount, since it's technically spell haste. I know someone already mentioned this, but it needs to happen.
7) Killing machine and unbreakable armor feel too bloated. Please consider 3/3 versions.
8) Endless winter feels like too weak of a talent. Perhaps if more talents were included to make it feel stronger, such as increasing the duration of your mind freeze interrupt/lockout, as well as making the effect of death's chill last a couple seconds longer to buy you time for another frost rune to perhaps recharge. Perhaps make this a 3/3 talent. Also needs to affect chillblains sorely.
9) New talent needed: Winters Reach: Increases the range of all frost spells and abilities by 10/20% Mind freeze especially needs this, but would also be a boost to the core ability of icy touch to the frost tree. Extra range on hungering cold/howling blast would be fantastic as well.
10) Frost Rune Mastery feels extremely week, and only really procs when you use hungering cold, meaning this talent doesn't really see a whole lot of benefit unless you're 51+ points in. Please change this.
11) One final thing: I really hate how hungering cold breaks on disease damage. Frost and Unholy don't get along very well. While level, we're taught that keeping diseases on as many targets as possible is a good thing. It allows us to blood boil when needed, and its a lot of extra threat. Now, once you train Hungering Cold from 51 frost, you're taught the opposite: Just in case you need to use it. I really find myself conflicted. Should I spread my diseases around (Ok, I probably could have worded that better), or should I not in case I need to pull an emergency HC out of my ass? I dunno. Feels counter productive, frustrating and more importantly: Not fun.
Early Deathknight Design Philosophies.
Some of you have expressed interest in the thought process that goes into decisions when creating or refining classes. I thought I'd share some of those with you today from the early alpha period from a few months back. I'm going to cover some developer thoughts in regards to some aspects of the death knight. Here are some:
"The reason the presences cost runes to switch is because their effects are so dramatic (more than pally auras) I wouldn’t want players twisting presences while they fight (ie: between swings) to maximize effects. That would feel like shitty required gameplay (and I wouldn’t want to put them on the same gcd as normal abilities).
"The reason the presences cost runes to switch is because their effects are so dramatic (more than pally auras) I wouldn’t want players twisting presences while they fight (ie: between swings) to maximize effects. That would feel like shitty required gameplay (and I wouldn’t want to put them on the same gcd as normal abilities).
As far as unholy goes, faster gcd does also equate to a dps boost, your runes will come back sooner since you’ll have spent them faster. Also, you gain the intangibles of not being in gcd when you need to interrupt, etc. If it still feels like too much of a dps loss it’s not hard to adjust the attack speed increase more to offset it.
We considered having unholy presence speed up rune regen, but we didn’t want to balance “more damage” from blood against “more fun” from unholy. Also, the issue of waiting on runes to cool up is easy to adjust too. First, we’re tweaking rune costs to see if that does it, but if we need to we can always make the cooldown on runes 8s instead of 10s, it changes the feel a lot.
Btw we found in our testing that 10s rune cooldowns feels more like a warrior pace, 8s feels like a rogue pace. We felt like DK should in theory feel more like the warrior’s pace.
We’ve also made a few changes to rune costs on various abilities that should have you spending a bit less time waiting for runes to cool up. Also totally agree that we need to start you off with a bunch of flight points (or all)."
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