DKs: What we like and don't like.

#1 - May 6, 2012, 3:24 p.m.

This first post was written by Magdalena of Darkspear. They are his own thoughts or ideas. My posting it doesn't constitute an endorsement of those thoughts or ideas.

We’ve been told that the most “useful” type of feedback is describing what we like/dislike with regards to our class design, as opposed to theorizing what could work as a great fix. While I may take strong issue with Ghost’s logic in this case, I thought it might still be worth it to frame a series of points in this style.

So here goes.

I don’t like:

*Blood’s AoE situation. As Blood, my AoE threat is quite weak because of DnD being on a 30 second cooldown and having its damage significantly nerfed when compared to Live. My Blood Boil barely tickles mobs, and most importantly: Gaining AoE threat means a significant loss to my mitigation because I’m sacrificing runes that could go to Death Strike.

More on that here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4847054872

*Unholy’s AoE situation: I have zero burst AoE as Unholy and thus am put at a disadvantage for any encounter that demands rapid switching and burst, as many have in Cataclysm. I become progressively weaker in this field as my raid gears up and is able to put out more DPS in AoE situations, while mine still requires long ramp up. I’m also left with incredibly annoying orphan Frost Runes towards the end of my AoE rotation and have no way to dump Runic Power in an AoE move.

More on that here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4768328272

*My Level 75 Rune Regen talents don’t feel like a fun choice because they don’t address the inherent flaws of the rune system. I’ll still suffer from “Feast or Famine” syndrome, and to make matters worse, THIS IS THE REASON FOR OUR FEEDBACK LOOP!!! They all can and will be mathed out as to which is the best one within a % of a % and we shall post it on EJ and all shall follow our word or be banished to the Nether.

More on that here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4661688210

*Presences: I’m unable to store extra resources (like say, Runic Power) in Blood or Unholy Presence because Runic Power Mastery is now tied into Frost Presence. The same can be said of the 1 second GCD which I wish I had baseline, rather than just for Unholy Presence. I don’t like how you seem to be encouraging Unholy to “stance-dance” with the new Glyph of Shifting Presences, due to its poor Runic Power generation.

More on that here:

*Plague Leech: Seems like a horribly counterintuitive talent, which, in conjunction with Glyph of Outbreak, can function as yet another annoying, form of Rune Regeneration. It makes zero sense in a tier of talents that emphasizes SPREADING diseases (rather than consuming them) and it mathematically sims out to be a stronger DPS gain than the other two talents, thus removing any semblance of choice for min-maxxers.

*Runic Power dumps and Rune Regen: Many of my Runic Power dumps do not proc my talented Rune Regen mechanics, thus causing hiccups in my rotation and annoying downtime. As Unholy, this is particularly aggravating, because I’m not even able to stack Shadow Infusion on my ghoul when AoEing or using my Gargoyle.

More on that here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4856725890

*My cooldowns as Unholy. Gary the Gargoyle doesn’t scale with my mastery, and Unholy Frenzy causes its recipient to lose health. Even worse, it’s better used on another class over me (i.e. Fury Warriors).

*Killing Machine devalues my Crit rating as Frost. It isn’t a fun or interesting mechanic as it doesn’t give me any incentive to “choose”, only to gnash my teeth in frustration when I waste it on Frost Strike instead of Obliterate. This doesn’t seem to have changed much from Live to Beta.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#217 - May 15, 2012, 10:23 p.m.

As promised, here are some responses to some of the more common DK questions we have seen. There are several threads on the topic, and I don't mean to suggest anything by posting here instead of somewhere else. It's also not possible to address every single (often contradictory) point brought up by every player, but hopefully this will give you some idea of where we are coming from.

Q: Every DK is going to take talent X.
A: We haven't been convinced yet that that is the case. Please keep providing feedback on talents you like and don't like and we'll consider it.

Q: Blood's AE threat is too weak.
A: Blood's AE threat should be comparable to other tanks and we'll make sure that that is the case. Remember that AE tank threat is intended to hold aggro against AE DPS threat. That is to say, if you have a DPS going to town on a single-target, your AE buttons are probably not sufficient to hold threat in those cases (otherwise there would be not distinction between a tank single-target and AE rotation). We don't want to buff Death and Decay for all DKs, but we could for Blood if needed.

Q: I don't want to stance dance.
A: You shouldn't have to. Our intent with the Glyph of Shifting Presences is largely to make it easier for a DPS DK to go Blood to "turtle up." We don't want Frost and Unholy DKs to shift a lot between Frost and Unholy Presence. If you feel like the right thing to do is swap frequently between the two, that's not intended and something we'd want to fix.

Q: What Presences should Frost and Unholy use then?
A: Dual-wield Frost should use Frost Presence. 2H Frost and all Unholy DKs should use Unholy Presence. Our thinking goes that a DK using a 2H will be flooded with more resources than they can spend unless they are in Unholy.

Q: Unholy DKs lack burst AE.
A: There are numbers we worry about and there are numbers we don't. We want all specs to have comparable AE damage (and single target damage too). AE damage in particular is very sensitive to combat length. Different specs do better on short AE cycles than long AE cycles, and we're okay with that. If you aren't AE'ing for very long, then Frost DPS will probably beat Unholy. We're okay with that. We aren't trying to guarantee DPS to be identical in all situations, or else the classes and specs really start to blend together. Overall, Unholy's damage is designed around lots of abilities, including managing diseases, so none of those abilities are going to hit super hard on their own.

Q: Why doesn't the Gargoyle scale with mastery?
A: Because it ultimately doesn't need to. We want mastery to affect portions of damage (or healing) and not just be a +10% damage stat that scales perfectly no matter what you do. If the Gargoyle does more damage for DKs with comparatively low mastery, we don't think that's a problem. Now if the Gargoyle damage isn't high enough across the board (especially in PvE -- it's still useful in PvP) then we can buff it.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#218 - May 15, 2012, 10:23 p.m.

Q: I don't like that Killing Machine devalues crit and that I can waste it on Frost Strike instead of Obliterate.
A: We make abilities guarantee crit when they hit for really hard damage. The alternative is their damage is unpredictable, which can cause balance problems especially in PvP. We think there are plenty of tuning knobs to make sure crit (and haste and mastery) are all relatively valuable for Frost. As far as Obliterate goes, using KM the most efficient way is one of those mechanics we put in to elevate some players or rotations over others. The most interesting rotations (for any class) carry some risk of failure (and by “failure” I mean inefficiency not a total collapse of your DPS). There are times when you may want to Frost Strike on a Killing Machine. If you really want to Obliterate instead, you can hold the attack for a second or two. If you “fail” and “waste” a KM on the occasional Frost Strike, your DPS won't drop that much.

Q: Soul Reaper needs to do Shadowfrost damage.
A: We made a couple of talents do Shadowfrost damage because we want them to be of relatively equal value for both Frost and Unholy. That's not necessary of core abilities, because there is no risk of a given player not taking the ability. We're fine with Shadow doing more damage in execute-range, so long as Frost's damage is higher the rest of the time to make up for it.

Q: Army of the Dead feels weak.
A: That's entirely possible. It's on a long cooldown so there's no reason it should feel wimpy. There is probably plenty of room to buff it.

Q: Runeforging is boring.
A: We agree that this feature has not lived up to its potential. We still have plans to address it, though it's not on our "must fix" list for Mists. The current system works fine and we'd rather not monkey with it unless we have a system that we are certain will be an improvement. We don't want to cause a lot of confusion about which runeforges various DKs are supposed to use.

Q: I hate casting Unholy Frenzy on Fury warriors.
A: I'm not quite sure I understand the issues with this concern. Unholy Frenzy is haste (not attack speed, but actual resource-generating haste). There should be plenty of classes who like haste. Even today we see a lot of guilds just use it on their highest DPS player, which often is not the Fury warrior. We'd like to keep the design as a buff you can put on someone else, just because that's what it was back in the Warcraft RTS days.

Q: Why is Plague Leech a dps increase compared to the other talents?
A: It isn't intended to be. All of those talents are rune conservation talents. Roiling Blood gives you free Pestilence. Unholy Blight likewise saves you disease runes.

EDIT: I switched Frost and Shadow in execute above.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#228 - May 15, 2012, 11:20 p.m.

I think you have this backwards, right now Unholy will do much higher execute damage because they have 25% strength and Master effects Soul Reaper because it's Shadow damage. This would be fine if Frost still had Merciless Combat but they lost that ability.

Yeah, you're right. I just typed too fast and switched them. Fixed.

Also Unholy Frenzy isn't that useful when it's optimal for the class to stack Haste already, plus Fury gets the large Mastery bonus from it being an Enrage.

Hmm, that's not intended. Enrage means an awful lot of warriors for now. It's probably not necessary that Unholy Frenzy needs to be dispelled in PvP anyway so we can just make it not an Enrage.