Which presence is best for pvp?

In case some of you are still wondering, I've already been through this argument here. :)

Q u o t e:
If we stick to the target we can BS/BB and RP dump and repeat.

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This is key. I underlined the most important word in that sentence.

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Q u o t e:
Blood presence = more damage

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This is only true if you can stick to the target for the vast majority of the fight.

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Q u o t e:
Blood presence = bigger burst

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Actually, unholy presence is. You even already outlined how and why:

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Q u o t e:
Unholy presence - 1 GCD
IT or Chains - 1 second
Plague Strike - 2 seconds
SS/Obliterate - 3 seconds

Blood presence - 1.5 GCD
IT or Chains - 1.5
Plague Strike - 3.0
SS/Obliterate - 4.5

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Your auto attack damage is the same, since 15% more auto attack damage = 15% faster auto attack speed. Your specials are doing 15% more damage in blood presence, yes. However, you are spending your runes and doing specials 33% faster (which yields a bigger burst potential).

Let's use your own example, using some static numbers. And let's also assume that you don't even need to use chains, and you're not getting kited, which plays in favor of blood presence.

Blood presence:

IT = 575 damage (500 *1.15)
Plague strike = 575 damage (500 *1.15)
Obliterate = 1150 damage (1000 * 1.15) = 2300 damage in 4.5s This is a burst DPS of 511.

versus

Unholy presence:

IT = 500 damage
Plague strike = 500 damage
Obliterate = 1000 damage = 2000 damage in 3s. This is a burst DPS of 666.

Again, auto attack damage per second (not damage per hit) is the same, so it's a nil factor.
Once you factor in that as a melee class, you will spend a considerable amount of time chasing the target, the fact that unholy presence also offers a tool to aide in this by providing a 15% run speed tips it more in the favor of being the pvp presence.

Unholy presence is better burst damage in pvp, and better mobility. Not to mention, there also is the intangible bonus of being much less likely caught in GCD when you need to hit IBF, bone armor, or strangulate. It has defensive purposes as well, in this light, that blood presence cannot provide, due to the GCD barrier.

Edit: Fixed Math Errors.

Wow, where do I begin?

So while I was at work today, I came across this thread. I felt very compelled to get my piece in on this, since Unholy Blight has always bothered me as a 51 point talent, for several reasons.

Here's the short story (which just about everyone agreed with I think), and if you're so inclined, the long story as well. Keep in mind, I also bring up the argument that not only do we have to spend several GCDs to gain AOE threat, and have to deal with the target cap of pestilence, but we're the only tanking class without access to an AOE taunt. This means that it's DOUBLY important to let every single spec have access to essential and effective AOE tanking tools, tools that unholy blight was holding the monopoly on in the AOE threat department.

If you take some time to look over the thread and my arguments, I think you'll agree. Apparently, the devs agree as well.

In fact, it looks like they'll be implementing several of my suggestions for future changes very shortly. Here is the main list of things coming.

Things that I've been harping for especiallly lately, with factual and informed posts to back them up include:

-- Death Coil, Frost Strike, Death and Decay damage increased. (Look at any of my recent damage tests and feedback posts, including the UB thread, as well as posts on this blog)

-- Bloody Strikes and Scent of Blood swapped places. (feedback source) (This is so that other trees like frost can access it for better RP generation via tanking, for more Frost strikes)

-- Double rune abilities damage increased: Obliterate, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike, Death Strike. (feedback source)

-- Unholy Blight no longer causes Blood Plague, but had its cooldown removed. (feedback source)

-- Pestilence has no target limit. (It still has a radius limit.) Pesilence glyph now increases area. (feedback source)

-- Frost Presence now grants 10% total health in addition to its current bonuses. (feedback source)

Among others that I'm sure we'll see implemented soon. :) The rest of the changes that are coming are just gravy.

I love Blizzard. They actually listen if you have a good argument.

Current List of DK Concerns:

As I listed in this post:

With the expansion just under a couple of months away, I wanted go ahead and put together a list of concerns that I, and others, have with this class at this point in time:

1) Runeforging. We already have a blue thread on this, but hopefully this perk to the class will end up being more fun and exciting than just another set of enchants. This particular mechanic had so much potential, but this is the one area that I firmly believe didn't receive enough planning from the get-go. I really liked Hadassa's post about runeforging (found here:http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8202576984&postId=82017104353&sid=2000#0). I really wish Blizzard would be able to find the way to implement something like this in the future, if right now it's simply not possible.

2) The Ongoing debate between 2H vs DW. Personal bias aside, it would be wonderful if these two could coexist peacefully and always be equally viable at every step of gear generation. Unfortunately, given the history of gear progression with classes that have the option to dual wield, I see this being a very difficult thing to balance with regards to making both equally viable at all times. While it's normal for some specs' relative power to fluxuate as gear and encounters progress and change, usually one spec or playstyle ultimately wins out in the end. That, I believe, is the main concern on everyone's mind: In the end, which style is going to produce the higher DPS? Few are really concerned with how things are performing right now, but more concerned with how things will be performing in the future when the class's mechanics are in a much more fixed state, in relation to class balance in all aspects of PvE and PvP (where it's much more difficult to change class fundamentals if things don't work out to be balanced for 2h vs dw in the end).

3) Tanking viability. This one is pretty huge, and probably will get overall more visibility than any other issue (and rightfully so). There is a fairly large concern that I see popping up over this forum, as well as others that I follow, that DK tanks are not quite up to par with the others as of yet. As of right now, the threat seems fairly low, which essentially has everything to do with our DPS reductions, as we rely on far fewer innate bonus threat modifying abilities to generate and hold agro (with the exception of D&D). But I have to ask: As far as D&D is concerned, should it really be that way? Are imaginary inflated numbers more fun to use than actually doing more damage? Of course not. Ideally, all tanks would be more fun to play if they did generated more threat via doing more damage, rather than spamming buttons that apply debuffs that generate invisible +threat numbers to build hate that you can only see via 3rd party addons (Example: Sunder Armor vs Devastate). Doing damage is always more fun. That seems to be one of the main philosophy shifts that this expansion brings to tanking, and one that I welcome with open arms.

However, getting back to the main point, DKs seem to have lower armor than most other tanks, as well as a smaller health pool, in addition to relying heavily on avoidance without having fall-back talents such as ones that grant crit immunity early on (such as the talents druids can spec into, for example). This means that the damage we take between cooldowns and avoidance RNG procs is actually pretty high, and hurts undergeared DKs more than any of the other tanks. However, while think DKs might have some issues of tanking viability early on, I think that they might actually end up scaling with gear well enough in the later stages of content to at least be equal with the other tanks. This is mostly in part to things such as ridiculous amounts of STR on tanking gear now (thank you!), coupled with core abilities such as forceful deflection (another suggestion implemented via feedback here). Also, when our damage is balanced (raised a bit in relation to others right now, or have everyone else's lowered), our threat will be too. I'm not too concerned with threat right now, as our threat ties directly into the damage we do.

4) PvE DPS viability. I won't say a lot on this topic, as the numbers (and to a lesser degree, the talents) are still in a state of flux right now. I'm not sure where the final numbers will land, along with our place on the DPS meters, but hopefully they won't be too much lower than the pure DPS classes. Do I expect to do as much or more DPS than a destro warlock, hunter, or rogue on single fights? Or as much damage as a mage on AOE fights? Of course not. Right now I'm hoping that I can pick the playstyle of DK that I like and be at least as competitive as a DPS warrior or enhancement shaman, however. Blood DK's seem to have excellent single target DPS potential, while Unholy DKs seem to bring a lot of AOE potential. In fact, Unholy DKs seem to be the premier support class for helping your magic-users AOE down trash that much faster due to ebon plague + unholy blight. However, I'm wondering then how useful those unholy (or frost, for that matter) DKs will be on single target (i.e. boss) encounters will be. Frost, on the other hand, is just doing too little damage right now. Both Howling blast and Frost Strike are doing roughly 33% of the damage they did a couple patches ago.

5) PvP viability. I already wrote up a pretty lengthy post about this here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9336502308&sid=2000, and my position hasn't really changed much on this issue at all. While the damage/dps numbers have changed since then, the actually mechanics really have not. Thus, my opinion still holds.


Edit: Blue response.

Sorry for the lack of updates..

But there's really been nothing new to report on. I feel as if I've said just about everything I've wanted to up to this point. All I can do now is keep an eye on changes that are coming down the pipe, play with them when they come, and give further feedback.

Things are just rather slow right now, so I've spent some time over the past week playing the Warhammer online beta. It's pretty amazing how much more polished Blizzard products are, even in testing stages. Everytime I try a new MMO that hits the market, I'm always reminded just how good wow really is. The only thing I wish I could change about WoW that warhammer has, is letting people level up and gain exp/money from killing other players. The nicest thing about Warhammer is the fact that PvP yields a large amount of experience gained in their battlegrounds (called scenarios), keep battles, or just plain world pvp. It was a nice touch to actually level up off of killing another player. And while this is a nice feature, I'm not really convinced that Warhammer is going to have the staying power or the content to keep people interested in the long run. It feels very unpolished as of right now, and as a result, the gameplay feels often rushed.

In the mean time, I'll probably be mixing my time between playing warhammer between beta updates (when I can get some new things to test), until wrath is released. I'll probably just end up staying as alliance on Sargeras, which is my original home server. Tichondrius is great, but honestly it seems rather overrated. There are fantastic players there, don't get me wrong, but I kind of liked it better when each server had sort of their own cream of the crop. Now it seems that everyone and their mom moves to Tich, either because they are good, or because they know someone who is, or they want to try and improve. That's great, but what about those of us who just want to play the game to enjoy it? I really don't care for 10 minute BG queues, lengthy server login queues, or long waits on getting into the arena, either.

On that note, I'll probably be looking for a few more solid players to bolster the ranks of my guild on Sargeras in the near future. If you're interested and play there, or just interested in general, please send me an ingame mail to my druid "Mayah" on Sargeras alliance. The Tich thing just isn't working out for me very well, yet. It's been awfully hard to find a solid group of players who is looking forward to doing PvP as much as they are the new 10 man raids. Maybe I've just been looking in the wrong places.

Edit: I've also re-enabled anonymous comments.

Jayde has been immortalized once again..

Thanks to some friends over at DK Info, they've discovered that there is a new quest in Icecrown that calls upon none other than yours truly for help, as well as Munch and his newly risen ghoul, Melt. :) (Thanks, Hex!)

I had to run down for myself and check it out! =]

If you don't know what this is all about, you might want to look up The Deathknights of Acherus.



If anyone at Blizzard Entertainment is reading this, thank you. I am truly honored. :)





Best. Quest. Ever.

New Rune Strike sucks, As does the new Fel Armor:

Here, and here.

Seems like a lot of people are unhappy with this patch. Hopefully the pendulum of balance will swing back the other way, as a lot of peoples' damage right now feels awfully low. It's the polar opposite of how things were at level 60 when Blizzard introduced the new level 70 talents. Hm, which I wonder: Perhaps why they are keeping it like this for now. The damage to survivability ratio on live right now is already at a pretty uneven balance. It's nothing like season 2 was at all. Perhaps they are afraid of repeating the same mistakes they made just before TBC was released, when hunters and rogues were running around killing people in 3 seconds flat.

Hopefully I'm right, because it's a little funny watching two people with 22k hp take 3 years to kill each other on the beta right now.


Edit: More rune strike feedback here.

Lake Wintergrasp, Warhammer beta.

I know I haven't touched much on this, because I honestly haven't done it very much. I gave it my first real attempt (outside of sitting in the keep a couple weeks ago alt tabbed "farming" honor and arena points) a couple nights ago, and the first impression was not a good one. It has potential, but if I had to sum it up in one word right now it would be "confusion".

I mean, I know what the end goal is, because i sat in the keep: Use siege vehicles to knock down the keep door inside. But I guess it just gets confusing for a new player to understand how you actually accomplish that. There doesn't really seem to be a set stream of clearly defined objectives and goals. When I went to the zone a couple nights ago, I ran up to what looked like a point of interest, which was a big building that looked somewhat important.

Ok, cool. Then I proceeded to get gangraped by about 50 alliance, and get stuck in a never ending cycle of being graveyard camped by 50 more people and siege weapons. Not so cool. I saw that you're going to change the GYs to be higher up in elevation, and then hopefully flying mounts will be completed disabled in that zone.

So after finally managing to run my corpse away from the zerg, and go back to my body and res, I hearthed out. That was pretty much the extent of my experience.

On another note, I've been playing the Warhammer online beta quite a bit since Sunday, and while the PvE content and much of the game is very unpolished, I must say that I absolutely love the fact that you can level up at a pretty decent rate completely via pvp and battlegrounds (called scenarios in their terms). You can pick up a bunch of repeatable quests, queue from anywhere you are via a button on the minimap, and fight the scenario for each little zone you quest in.

It's cool because in between queues you are doing quests in PvP zones, and you gain experience, money, and loot from killing players, as well as being rewarded for doing quests in those areas. Then, when the queue pops, you get to go play out a 10 minute battleground where you earn even more experience, money, and loot.

The public quest system in the game is pretty cool too. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the mechanics in that game, but it scores a ton of points in my book by putting heavy emphasis on not just letting, but rewarding players for heavy participation in world pvp and battlegrounds while they level. It doesn't interrupt the leveling process, because killing players nets you the same thing killing mobs would. You don't actually loot the players' items, but you at least are rewarded in several ways for pvping.

As an example: I logged out monday night after almost reaching level 12. I log in last night, start running to the next, higher level area, and on the way, I get jumped by someone my level. I turn around and slit his throat (I'm playing a witch elf), and it was a decent enough chunk of exp to level me up. I gained a level, by killing another player. How freaking cool is that??

The PvE content obviously will never touch WoWs, but their PvP system does honestly deserve a glance. It would totally kick ass if wow had a system like that, because I enjoy wow's combat better than I do Warhammers.