4.0.6 – PTR First Glance
January 6, 2011 114 Comments
The PTR is up for the next balancing (not content) patch. The DK changes, courtesy of Mmo-champion, are as follows:
Blood
- Blood Strike damage is increased by 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target, up from 10%.
- Heart Strike now deals 120% weapon damage, up from 100%.
- Blood Boil base damage increased by 20%, from 297 to 357.
- Blood Presence now increases armor contribution by 30%, down from 60%.
- Death Strike now heals for 15% of the damage sustained, down from 25%.
- Crimson Scourge now has a 5/10% chance to proc from melee attacks on a target infected with your Blood Plague. (Old – 50/100% chance to proc from Plague Strike)
- Will of the Necropolis no longer regenerates a Blood Rune but makes your next Rune Tap free instead.
Frost
- Runic Empowerment wording changed to add “successfully” use Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike.
- Rune Strike now deals 180% weapon damage, up from 150%.
- Might of the Frozen Wastes now also has a 4/8/12% chance to proc from your melee attacks. 15/30/45% chance to proc from auto attacks remain the same.
- Killing Machine no longer affects Icy Touch.
Unholy
- Scourge Strike now deals an additional 18% Physical damage done as Shadow Damage for each disease on your target. Up from 12%.
- Unholy Might now increases your Strength by 5%, down from 10%.
- Desecration now also affects Necrotic Strikes.
Suffice is to say… wow. Some of these changes are great, some are horrible. Some are justified, some less so. There is a lot here to take in for all three specs, although it’s obvious this is only the tip of the iceberg (as evinced most clearly by the lack of any sort of Howling Blast tweak, Unholy mastery change, and so forth). Unfortunately, this came out at a bad time of day for me, and I have to leave for work shortly, so I can only offer my initial thoughts and commentary to it all; math and more in-depth analysis will come later, of course!
Although I won’t delve into it too deeply, as tanking isn’t the main interest here and as there’s likely something missing (there really has to be), but the Death Strike nerf is way over the top, and just plain illogical. It solidly puts mastery below avoidance (and stamina, but it was already there, in my opinion, and with one being a primary stat and the other being secondary, they’re often not in direct competition), essentially killing the stat. It means our damage taken, even if you assume 0% overhealing and near-perfect DS usage, is higher than any of the other three tanks… while also require more attention due to being active instead of passive. Even if DS was too strong by whatever metric, a 25% nerf to the ability is more than was necessary.
As to the other Blood changes, they’re nice enough. Our damage was below that of other tanks and it’s nice to see it being addressed. Yes, threat may not be a problem, but a dps discrepancy in tanks is still very important – when you’re trying to hit an enrage timer, if one tank does 1k more dps than another, that’s just as remarkable as one dpser doing 1k more dps than another… and the gaps are currently equal to or greater than that number between the specs. Crimson Scourge is somewhat decent now, although it still boggles my mind how that got through all of beta without being touched. The Blood Presence change is simply a tooltip correction. So forth.
Anyways, moving on to what really matters: the dps specs!
Frost DW was untouched, aside from the meaningless Killing Machine change. As said, however, these patch notes appear very incomplete, and I would expect much more to come. If anything, the removal of IT from KM likely signifies something to come causing us to actually use IT instead of Howling Blast, but time will tell.
Frost 2H received a decent buff: basically, on top of the 45% chance per auto-attack, Might of the Frozen Wastes now has a 12% chance to proc per yellow (melee) attack, which should significantly improve the talent, and thus the spec’s overall dps. Will it be enough to make the playstyle viable? Only math will tell, and I will certainly get to that this evening. What I will say is that it makes Frost 2H have a hilarious feedback loop through all of its talents and, especially, haste. More white attacks feed more MotFW procs which feed more FS which feeds more MotFW procs (which feeds more FS which feeds more MotFW which feeds… so on). On top of that, more FS feeds more RE procs which means more Oblits which feeds more MotFW procs which feeds more FS… and so on. And haste improves both the number of white and yellow attacks, and so feeds into it as well. A flow chart of it all would be quite amusing! The actual numbers will be interesting although if I had to guess, no, this won’t prop the spec up enough to compete with, say, Frost DW, let alone Unholy. It’s a start, though, if a curiously, unnecessarily complex one.
Unholy DW takes a double hit from the Scourge Strike buff and the Unholy Might nerf, which I can tell just by doing the numbers in my head will put the spec on the back burner, at least for this tier. Without Sudden Doom and/or Nerves of Cold Steel being touched, I still wouldn’t right off the build making a comeback in later content, but that’s another problem for another day, and it may not arise, anyways.
Unholy 2H does take a hit; the SS buff doesn’t quite outweigh the UM nerf, by my quick estimation, but it’s not very noticeable, and nothing much to worry about. What the changes do do to the spec is get rid of DnD from our single target rotation, so that’s a huge plus. Nothing else otherwise.
Blood’s survivability got a large hit, while the dps/threat got a nice, needed boost. Frost DW was untouched, while Frost 2H was buffed, although probably not by enough to make the two even, and HB went unaddressed. Unholy DW is out of the way for now, and Unholy 2H got the lightest of nerfs to its damage. All in all, very interesting stuff, although not half as interesting as what we’ll likely see come to the PTR in the coming weeks.
As I said, expect a more through look at this all later in the night.
Consider This... 
The Damage changes are nice to in-line us with Ferals, but I thought Blizzard preferred to nerf 1 Spec than to buff 3?
Btw, there’s a new one Bibi just added:
Blood Strike damage is increased by 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target, up from 10%.
Rejoice Frost, the Beta change done to BS was reverted 🙂
“Blood’s survivability got a large hit, while the dps/threat got a nice, needed boost.”
Tbh all Threat is faceroll right now…..
The threat aspect isn’t important, but the dps one is. Blood DKs were well behind all three other tanks in damage, and by a pretty decent margin.
It’s not an issue which got much discussion because most tanks are too focused on survivability and the like (which, don’t get me wrong, is important, but which has a limit – you survive, or you don’t, and once you can without undue worry, extra survivability doesn’t actually do much. Damage, on the other hand, always helps – more of it makes the fight go by faster, which makes everything easier. Survivability has a cap, almost, while damage doesn’t. Almost akin to EH verse avoidance, in a way. Once all tanks reach a certain level of survivability, one should turn their balancing eyes to the damage. I could write a whole essay on the topic, as it’s one which 95% of tanks – even the most intelligent ones! – don’t seem to even think of, but that’s beside the point. Suffice is to say, damage from tanks matters as much as anything else).
I see. Well that explains that. Thanks for clarifying 🙂
Still… Buffing Blood Boil without a Howling Blast alteration? Lol….
Yeah, there’s more to come, no question. Quite eager =o.
Just a caveat to the threat is faceroll; the good news is that single target threat should not be an issue for any reasonably competent tank, but aoe threat is still something to pay attention to – which is at it should be.
I’m pulling adds off ferals in particular even when I’m sticking to their target like glue both in pug heroics and in raids. After pest/DnD and a few blood boils, I tend to get several adds on me, providing a minor counterpoint to the threat is faceroll situation.
As is usually the case, I agree with everything Consider is saying here. These changes are woefully incomplete.
In particular, I was hoping to see the changed unholy mastery. It’s a real pain reforging ALL my gear when I switch between frost and unholy.
I would have chosen to buff frost 2H in a different manner. The spec already has tons of runic power. What it really needs is a talented runeforge that includes both the razorice and fallen crusader effects.
From what I remember DS had always been changed to a max 20% healed, but the tooltip hadn’t been updated.
The change would take it from 20% to 15%, rather than a bigger 25%-15% difference.
Could be mistaken.
Yes, current Live DS heals for 20%.
Even so, the nerf is of 1/4th of it’s power. Death Strike – Blood Shield can be overpowered in some situations if used correctly, but nerfing it’s power by 1/4th is a stupid way to go about it. Just alter the Blood Shield design slightly.
Like this they’re making Stamina/Avoidance way more viable than Mastery.
Stamina is the primary stat for tanks, like strength/agility/intellect for DPS, so from a design standpoint it should have more value than secondary stats. Avoidance and mastery should be roughly equal for tanks.
The reality is that with much larger health pools in Cataclysm eliminating 1-shots and even largely eliminating 2-shots, players reasonably devalued stamina. It’s not really seen as a primary stat these days. If I were a dev, I would try to correct that.
At this moment the stat DK Tanks care most about on Live is Mastery actually, with another playstyle being equally viable: Stamina/Avoidance. One is just less dependent on Self-Healing and Hit/Expertise than the other.
Top World Tanks are/were gemming full Stamina and Reforging for Avoidance because they Undergeared Heroic Modes.
Actually Mastery-stacking isn’t dependent on hit/expertise at all. It does just as much overall reduction at cap as it does without a lick of either on gear.
Actually if your Death Strike misses, then you’re set back 1.5 seconds. This could drastically reduce the strength of your Blood Shield. Also, the more you miss, the more GCDs wasted, so yes, Hit and Expertise do have an important role for a Mastery Tank. If that Death Strike doesn’t connect the amount of Mastery you have is irrelevant, because that Blood Shield never goes up.
Of course, this makes DS an even worse tool for dps DKs, which is a genuine concern. I barely hit that button now anyways, because it’s going to do so little to help with a bad situation; after this change if things are going poorly, I’ll just roll over and die (after using ams/ibf and cookie).
DPS DKs almost never got more than the 7% heal anyway, in PvE at least. It’s really not much of a change at all for us.
The developers did promise to buff death strike for frost/unholy, so that’s another aspect of why these notes are unfinished.
Yea these cant be complete as it stands right now these changes seem illogical at best. Nerfing Death Strike, and the weird way in which they changed MotFW just baffles my mind.
Great, no mastery change, we lose 5% str, and for that we gain desecration on necro strike? Complete crap, hell they buffed warrior damage so we’ll die even quicker. Really hope patch notes aren’t complete yet.
Desecration on NS is a welcome change, I can already think of a couple situations where it helps.
Warrior changes…so and so. I think they lost some of their mobility and that’s one of their strong points at the moment.
Most of all I’m happy for the MotFW change. It’s much bigger than the datamined one and it’s gonna bring 2H Frost back to the game. Now if only they could make it so Howling Blast ignores all non-primary CCed targets I would be happy.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1765534540
Better patch notes here.
Most important one for DPSers are these two.
# Howling Blast now deals 40% less damage to all targets other than the primary target of the spell.
# Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon.
The best way to change MotFW in my opinion. Doesn’t screw it up even more by adding additional resources we can’t use, but rather boosts the damage of our strikes with a 2H. The HB chance was to be expected as well.
With the full notes being up on Bliz’s forums (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1765534540), the Runic Corruption, Might of the Frozen Wastes and Howling Blast changes seem most significant to me.
12% more melee damage seems really huge for 2H Frost.
looks like mmo mis-mined some of the data initially. The changes look more complete, and more sensible than what consider initially posted.
Especially HB doing 40% less damage to non primary target.
That howling blast change isn’t as bad as I feared, but it’s still pretty mediocre, forcing players to use icy touch on rime around CC mobs.
And still no unholy mastery change! Sad panda.
Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.
That is an awesome change!
MMO-Champion didn’t have all the Patch notes:
Death Knights
Icebound Fortitude now breaks stuns when used, in addition to providing immunity to them.
Necrotic Strike’s absorption effect is now reduced by the target’s resilience.
Talent Specializations
Blood
Crimson Scourge has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a 50/100% chance to make the next Blood Boil free when Plague Strike is used on a target with Blood Plague, the talent now gives a 5/10% chance to provide a free Blood Boil when the death knight lands any melee attack on a Blood Plagued target.
Will of the Necropolis no longer refunds a Blood Rune when it resets Rune Tap’s cooldown. Instead it makes the next Rune Tap free while Will of the Necropolis is active.
Frost
Howling Blast now deals 40% less damage to all targets other than the primary target of the spell.
Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon.
Unholy
Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike.
Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.
Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%.
Glyphs
Glyph of Death’s Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne.
—————————–
From the Battle.net website
I’m reading from two different sets of PTR notes on mmo-champion. I’m assuming the one posted here is the datamined, while the other one (the one Kegbane posted) is the official. Strictly looking at the official PTR notes, due to the change to the Glyph of Death’s Embrace would the Lichbourne spec be no longer viable?
Also, with the change to the trinket “Fury of Angerforge,” is it a viable trinket for Unholy? Understandably, it may not be if Blizzard decides Unholy should be a 2H-er spec, but hypothetically speaking, would it be a viable trinket for DW Unholy?
For Tanks? Lichborne Sub-Speccing still works. 80 RP = 0-100%.
eh? Well that’s probably a little extreme. pretty sure my DC in tanking gear heals for about ~23k or something there abouts with the glyph and raid buffs.
Its still a powerful cooldown, but you are not going to heal yourself to full with it like you can now. Probably worth 60-70k hp in current gear. More if you have un-glyphed VB to use at the same time. More powerful than say, Ardent Defender which is worth 15% max hp, and only if you get killed during its 6 second duration. Balanced by the fact that you need to have saved up enough RP to be able to use it properly, making it less of a good “oh shit” button, and more of a “I know some shit is hitting the fan soon so im going to save up and use it then”.
Are you taking into account full Vengeance? That tends to take it over 30K. Then there’s also Glyph of Death Coil which increases Healing by 15%.
The lichborne heal really is that strong. It does take 3 GCDs, and you have to have the runic power stored, but in that build you’re taking RPM anyway, so 130 rp, is 3 DCs, a DS and another DC, even without getting the rp back. That short sequence, you can go from nearly 0 to full. Also lichborne lasts for about 14 seconds, so there is plenty of time to launch another DC or two at yourself during that time after the initial burst. You have to consider its much more than LB -> 1 DC, it’s the entire sequence.
If you really want to see crazy self heals pop it with VB up. Honestly, and it’s not the ability of DC to heal, or LB, or the refunding of runic power that makes this OP, all of them pretty much contribute to that. Makes me wonder where they will go with next in attempts to nerf this ability.
Even if it is 30k, 2 or if you’re quick maybe 3 deathcoils is still only 90k. Thats half your health, not 0-100%.
And with Glyphed VB for 40% increased Healing you can easily hit 100%
Kinda getting a bit far away from what you said though really aren’t we, which is what I was getting at. You said 80RP was full health.
What you mean is, 120 rp and 2 cooldowns is full health.
Personally, I prefer to just use VB on cooldown to save healer mana.
just saw this change on mmo-champion and was wondering if that trinket would come closer to
heart of rage in bis list for pre-hardmode 2h unholy.
“The Fury of Angerforge internal cooldown has been drastically reduced so this trinket will build up charges much faster.”
Yeah, I’m glad I read the Blizzard Offical Changes post before I read the data-mined ones.
“Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon.”
That’s pretty spectacular from what it sounds like. And yes, most of the data-mined changes were only in fact tool-tip changes. Most of our spells have functioned that way for quite some time. Overall, Blood tanking got buffed, Frost AoE got toned down, 2H Frost got some needed love, DW Frost remains the same (I think this is the ideal dps they are going for for DKs), and 2H Unholy got toned down a bit. Good changes all around in my opinion. Surprised they haven’t completely nailed the coffin shut on DW Unholy, but maybe they just want to make it non-competitive, as opposed to outright impossible (making DW a Frost-only passive, or moving Nerves of Cold Steel out of reach for Unholy).
Also still no mention of rebuffing DS for Frost/Unholy self healing, makes me a sad panda when i hear of other classes havin better self healing when they never had any before and our class where it was a niche is nearly to the point where the loss in dps isnt worth the gain in health….5 DS is destroyed by one random aoe trash spell, let alone how long it would take to get the resources to do those 5 DS’s
people kept argueing that 15% on our new health pools would be to much, but honestly, with the damage we take (similar to what it was on the beta, only was a lil worse), i think the 15% was about right, maby a touch high, maby 12%? but even 10% was weak while we had it, tho our health pools were smaller then….
i wouldnt mind a 7% + 2.5% per disease either… .then unholy is lookin at 14.5% while frost is at 12% + Lichborne – IF your fully diseased, otherwise zip….maby have the lil extra healing tied in with the mastery too… wouldnt mind that atall…
ALOT they can do, but what i want more than most things is our Self Healing back to a reasonable level, i wish Pale Horse was more accessable to everyone OR stacked with other movement effects (like guild perks) and i would love to see Mind Freeze made either free or with some form of reduction in cost like i read someone talkin about with RC/RE reducing its cost/makin it free – i HATE when that last Death Coil fires off and im out of runic even tho i really didnt mean to fire that one off but i already pressed the button and theres no stopping it now! so now im without runic (or a blood rune) and a spell is about to wipe the grp! BAH!
Hell, Gift of the Naruu now heals for substantially more than DS – the only thing not makin it more powerful would be the 3min cooldown, but shit, if they can make a racial that heals for 20% then why the heck is our DS heal so weak…
Because we pump out 6+ Death Strikes a minute. The two abilities are apples and oranges.
yea but one is a frekkin racial and the other is one of the main design idea’s for DK’s – when a basic racial starts to get as powerful as a class design goal ability thats pretty sad….
same with warriors gettin their 20% heals (dont remember what its called or know the cooldown) and a rogues Recouperate, now nearly every class has a self heal and ours was dumped into the dirt unless your blood where the shield makes up for the CRAP heal you get..
“Glyph of Death’s Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne.”
Wow, they’re really killing DK self healing.
First blood presence became the tank presence and lost the passive self-healing based on damage dealt. Next the changed death strike so it didn’t heal you based on the damage dealt, but instead based on some portion of your health and the damage done to you. Now it’s lichborne they’re going after?
Leveling to 85 I tried to use death strike to heal myself while fighting mobs (and I really needed it because with the Blood Presence change, the only self-heals I got were from fallen crusader), but I found that using the runes for a death strike instead of damage just made the fight last longer, making the total damage I took higher. Basically DS is useless as DPS in PvE or PvP these days because it heals for so little.
Meanwhile, while tanking it is decent, but nowhere near as good as it used to be, and nowhere near what paladins can do. If my healer DCs or dies, DS will mean I’ll die more slowly, but I’ll still almost certainly die. This is most visible when trying to solo old content. I used to be able to solo old-world raids without a problem, but not with the 4.0 changes, meanwhile Paladins can easily spec to do it.
I really don’t know what problem they’re trying to fix with these nerfs to self-healing. Compared to my other plate-wearing friends, my self healing already seems very low.
Lichborne self heals with the glyph are totally overpowered. In both a tanking capacity and a PVP standpoint.
In arena as unholy I healed for 200k in a 2 minute game using it. Thats 160% of my health or something stupid. There are no classes I’m aware of that can do this, certainly not with instant casts on a 1 second GCD.
As a tank, it is also pretty OP, as was DS/Blood shield in my opinion… but as I said to someone else on here a few days ago… I knew the nerfs were coming despite what anyone less objective wanted to think. But I also knew the nerfs would be too much.
As I said when the beta cata changes were announced, a self healing tank is a terrible mechanic. It is too hard to balance, and it’ll always be too good, or inconsequential (and therefore sub-optimal).
I can’t see how they can ever make it work. “You take more damage” or “you take more damage but heal for more than the extra damage you take”. Currently we are at the second statement, which is by definition.. overpowered. The first statement says “You wont survive a hit that another tank would”. This is then bias against us. Even if we healed for the EXACT amount of the extra damage taken, we’re still an inferior tank. Remember that healers cant depend on our self heals either. Runes might be on cooldown. So they have to heal that extra damage we take anyway, and our whole mechanic just dies right there.
So you see, to my mind, it has to be overpowered to be worth it at all.
Add to that the fact that a tank who can heal himself is always going to be gimped or OP at certain gimmick fights, and you’re left with a very sorry state for the spec if you ask me.
I’m perfectly fine with the lichborne self-healing nerf, as long as the promised death strike self-healing buff for frost/unholy comes through.
Yea me too, but if it stands as now, where Frost and UH are felaint on 7% healing from DS it will destroy our already fragile survivability in PvP…..Now with that being said, if they kept it as is, nerfed Rogue, Feral, Warrior, Afli Lock, Enh shaman, Ret self healing and nerfed Frost mages plethora of Frost Novas then I would be even happier, but I dont see them nerfing the survivability of 6 classes (who are more survivable then DK’s with the LB nerf-LB actually brings us on par with those) So I am holding out hope for a buff for Death Strike for Frost and UH.
They still need to nerf Frost mages though, and im not so sure the nerfs to ferals are enough but we’ll see.
uh, ret self healing?
Ret self healing is a perfect model if you ask me. Exactly the same as us really, if DS worked. They have to give up alot of DPS to use WoG instead, which is how pvp self preservation should be really.
With two classes that can remove divine shield, ret is probably one of the softest targets at the moment. Add to that the fact that bubble doesnt mean a full hp bar for a ret anymore. He certainly cant top himself back up.
Frost is ridiculous as always, and while the heroism change to arena will help against mage teams.. a well played frost is stupidly hard to counter as any melee dps. Ironicly, the IBF change may help a little with that, and ofc with rogues. We actually have a better time than most melee with AMS already so, its difficult to say what they could do. Up the cooldown on the pet’s nova would be my choice. Tbh killing the pet is still one of the best tactics in that regard, it has a 2 min cooldown the same as our pet, which can be reset once with cold snap. Minor tweaks could probably assist here, rather than swathing nerfs.
The only issue with ferals is the damage they can put out, which is high and largely cooldown based. Sure, they’re un-cc-able nature is annoying, but they’re even softer than rogues to kill without evasion. Forcing a feral into bear is the best counter I find.
Tbh I think Blood is the new Bubble Class in PvP.
With Glyph of Vampiric Blood increasing Healing by 40% you can do
Raise Dead > Death Pact > Rune Tap > Death Strike.
Full HP. Or even
Rune Tap > Raise Dead > Death Pact > WoTN Rune Tap > Death Strike.
Even fuller HP.
I haven’t stepped into arenas, my pvp gear currently sucks, and I have stayed away from BGs because of this. My Cat pvp experience is pretty much limited to tol barad, so take what I say with that in mind. I feel the nerf to DS is probably due to pvp. I last a pretty long time, even against casters. Against almost any melee it’s pretty easy, as all tanks are now designed with defending against melee in mind. We’re talking like stupid easy. It’s going to take more than one to kill me.
Casters, best I can say is bring friends. They are probably going to light you up if they see you coming and it is only you. If you happen to find yourself next to a frost mage, just pop ams right away. Stop those first two roots from taking affect.
I’m curious if the IBF change goes through how that will work with deep freeze (which is considered a stun). If that causes IBF to completely remove the root that would be awesome.
what do they want from uh 2h?Getting UM down al the way from %15 to %5 .I think on the next patch they will remove UM .failzzard
I am not sure on the DS nerf being uncalled for. While the straight comparison of 40% blocked vs 15% healed seems out of whack, you can have the blood shield up prior to the spike, and continute to heal afterwards, so it’s not exactly 1 to 1.
Mathematically, it’s extremely hard to model, but in practice, when I have done argaloth with paladin tanks from my guild, I have taken 80-85% of the damage they do, and healed for 120% of that. ( I always lead in due to spike threat from DRW )
To be fair, argaloth is biased a bit toward dk tanks due to increased value of short cooldowns and increased aoe heals from dps clumping, but it’s still suggestive.
“Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.”
This change was of particular interest to me. The first thing I thought about when reading it was Runic Power Mastery.
Currently its value is negated due to not wanting to waste potential RC procs by 3 back to back Death Coils. This change takes care of that.
Simultaneously however, I was kinda bummed out. I currently have the 2 “floater” points in Magic Suppression. Of course, I know all we need is 1/3 in order to have a Damage:RP ratio similar to WoTLK- the reason I love 3/3 is because it completely eliminates magical damage. It’s not “83% less”, it’s a full “100% less”, which is currently equal to roughly 52k damage in my case.
This difference might not seem all that relevant, but in an expansion where healer mana is limited and self healing has taken such a big hit, extra survivability is always awesome, especially considering Unholy DKs often intentionally sidestep into damage that could have otherwise been avoided.
So my question is this: What if the 2 points for RPM didn’t come from Magic Suppression, but instead came from Improved Blood Tap? I haven’t run any sims on this, so feel free to point out if this is suboptimal.
But my reasoning was: If RC can now extend beyond 3 seconds (up to a highly unlikely but potential 12 seconds with 3 Death Coils and a Sudden Doom proc), wouldn’t this take care of the potential empty GCDs where a 30 second cooldown Blood Tap (as opposed to a 60 second cooldown) would have helped us? After all, we still make use of the skill, just at a longer cooldown.
Tl;dr: Could we keep 3/3 Magic Suppression and talent into 2/3 RPM by taking points from Improved Blood Tap, or is it suboptimal DPS to do so?
Edit: Should have mentioned- while I’m aware that the aforementioned 12 second RC proc is highly unlikely, a 6 and rare 9 second long one most certainly is.
It’s also worth noting that the 2 extra points in RPM, aside from providing extra RP storage, will also allow us to stack DT faster.
I actually have fallen in love with the 30 second cooldown on Blood Tap. It lets me do so many good things on demand: pop Dark Transformation (probably gets the biggest use from me, I’d rather use a Blood Rune than an Unholy Rune anyway), Death and Decay, Strangulate (I’ve found that more and more I wish we could access the free Mind Freeze talent with all the interrupts needed in this raid tier), and even an extra Scourge Strike if nothing else.
I do agree- having Blood Tap so readily available for the uses you’ve listed is an excellent way to fill up empty GCDs or mild burst (in the form of Dark Transformation). The question now becomes though: With an increased amount of RP storage (assuming we are 2/3 in RPM) and Runic Corruption now being able to last beyond the initial 3 seconds, is the demand for a 30 second Blood Tap as much of a DPS increase?
Any math on the matter would be welcome!
Way I see it wouldn’t the stacking Runic Corruption give less reason to go for Runic Power Mastery at all, thus freeing up a potential 1-2 points? I mean if there’s no need to hold back on Death Coils due to Runic Corruption then you can easily whack 2-3 in a row at any point in time when you’re over 80 Runic Power.
IMO DPS shouldn’t even have access to Imp. Blood Tap since it basically forces them to go Sub-Spec Blood (it does, doesn’t it?) for it but that’s me.
Talented into RC, an Unholy DK’s Death Coils cost 34 RP, allowing for a maximum of 2 with a full RP bar and an extra with a Sudden Doom proc. The third one becomes available very soon after if you have Butchery working to generate more RP, but that’s besides the point.
Currently we don’t talent into RPM at all since back-to-back Death Coiling was discouraged due to wasting RC procs.
The main reason the talent now looks more attractive is because it allows for more storage of AMS-generated RP as well as being able to stack up Shadow Infusion on a ghoul more quickly. One point in it alone will allow an Unholy DK to be able to store enough for 3 Death Coils worth of RP.
My only question is: Can we still keep those 2 floater points that were available before in Magic Suppression and still get RPM by sacrificing Improved Blood Tap? Is the potential DPS loss of a 60 second BT cooldown (up from 30 seconds) overshadowed by the addition of survivability and more potential DPS?
Also, yes we do subspec Blood, but the top tier talents are also a direct DPS increase- more so than say Icy Reach or On a Pale Horse in Frost would be. I’m doubtful that removing Improved BT or moving it down the tree alone would caused us to subspec Frost. I’m sure Consider can crunch out the actual numbers on this.
Nothing in Frost Sub-Spec beats Bladed Armor that’s for sure. Although Imp. BT in T2 doesn’t leave a spec with a lot of free points to spend either.
So Blood now has two procs. Who else would wager that we’ll be seeing more power auras for Crimson Scourge’s Blood Boil and Will of the Necropolis’ Rune Tap procs?
Unholy Might seems a bit low (I could get 5% Strength by wearing all plate, it’s not even THAT HARD to get buffs that small), but I spose it’s balanced out by the SS buff (and hey, they were planning on nerfing us anyway, even if the SS buff doesn’t completely compensate for the UM nerf… I still expect a 50% DT/SI nerf for good measure when the Mastery comes out since we CAN’T BE COMPLETELY RID OF THE BLOODY STAT so we’ll have some anyway…).
Sly move on promoting Strike damage to knock down dual-wield there, I honestly just expected them to move NoCS or change SD to only use 2H attacks to kill the spec altogether (just like every other DK <.<).
Tbh I hope they bring back Blood Bubble Animation first, and then worry about Power Aura procs.
Apart from that, I was also personally hoping they’d move NoCS but I guess not…. Oh well 😦
Consider, aside from this topic, what always perplexes me about you is that if you promise a post or an update later that day, you never keep this promise. I’ve been reading your blog for about half a year now, and in that period you promised several updates/posts to come on the exact day you announced them, but ultimately you never ever in that time stuck to that schedule of yours.
I don’t want to criticise you, especially since you’re doing this in your free time and because I enjoy reading your stuff. I just don’t get why you keep announcing updates/post when you never actually post them in the short run. Eventually you get to posting them…. but, well, how do I end this post? Yeah, you just don’t have to promise anything, so nobody is expecting something to turn up that day, or you could be a little bit vague like: “when I get to it over the course of the next few days”. Do you catch my drift? ^^
Best regards
I finally got the hang of working with Runic Corruption by chaining 3 sec procs (as much as possible, getting good dps improvment over not-caring way of doing it )and now they set it to eazy mode. But I don’t mind, more focus on fight mechanics is more fun then more focus on auras and timers, at least now, when the fights are new.
Good luck with the new math, take your time. Thx.
I have not read through all the comments, but wondering if you’ve addressed the change to MotFW. With it now increasing damage with 2h by 4/8/12% rather than just add proc to yellow damage. Will this make Frost just as viable as 2h unholy in terms of DPS output? I’m very curious to know this, as I always did like frost more so than unholy, mostly cause I didn’t have to baby sit a pet as much.
So any chance to be able to switch back and not lose out on any DPS would be great!
I am a little confused right now because that buff to scourge strike damage is not on the current PTR patch notes … and if they intended this we got quite a big nerf.
Maybe this is a silly question, but the wording of the new MotFW leaves me wondering- does the bonus damage strictly apply to melee auto attacks or will it apply to any melee attack (OBL, BS, etc)? Not sure if there has been any testing yet, but I figured it was worth asking.
When’s your next blog coming out? I’d love to see what your opinionis on the numbers behind the frost and unholy changes.
Will the proposed Frost changes in the datamined notes push 2H to comptetiveness? I always like frost more so in PvE casue of the proc based nature seems fun.
Rather have my dps spec rely on pure skill so I control whether or not I hit a top 10 world parse. Not that im hardcore raiding right now anyways … but if i were….
Well, the anticipation is killing me. Zarhym says that the patch notes will be updated soon (they’ve been “focusing on updating them the better part of the day”). Here’s to hoping that the Blightcaller change is one of them!
Prolly might already know by now if WoWhead wasn’t broken…
I’m on PTRs. No new Unholy Mastery yet. Guess next Build.
Here are some Screenshots for the unlisted changes however (mostly Weapon Damage for Blood and Scourge Strike): http://pwnwear.com/forum/post14624.html#p14624
So basically the same as this post and http://www.war-tools.com/t71527.html
Still killer anticipation…
Oh goody. The locks and shammies already see their changes.
Zarhym, you’re such a tease… Really know how to make a DK beg!
The new patchnotes are up:
Blightcaller renamed to Dreadblade and increases shadow dmg by 20% +2.5/masterypoint (even though the tooltip on mmo champ reads the double amount),
And finaly virulence has been replaced by something usefull.
Death Knight
Frost
Runic Focus now also increases spells change to hits by 9%. Spells are all Death Knight abilities that are not direct weapon strikes.
Unholy
Blightcaller is now called Dreadblade and Increases Shadow damage done by 20%. Each point of Mastery increases Shadow damage by an additional 2.5%.
Virulence no longer increases chance to hit with spells. Now increases the damage done by your diseases by 10/20/30%.
Sudden Doom now only procs from main-hand auto attacks, proc rate no longer specified and now just shows up as “higher than rank 1”, “higher than rank 2”.
Necrotic Strike casting time increase effect now lasts 10 sec, down from 15 sec.
From MMO champ, datamined ofc.
DW unholy dead for all tiers?
Mastery change, zzzz btw
Clone of frost, I guess its more significant than disease damage.
Creative solutions aren’t always the best, which can be seen with our blood mastery. I wonder though if it is enough to push mastery at least somewhere in the direction of haste/crit/expertise.
Enchant Bracer – Major Strength – Permanently enchant bracers to increase Strength by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item.
>_<
Well it affects Death Coil, Blood Plague, hopefully Scourge Strike’s Shadow portion etc. It kinda looks better than the previous one. Also isn’t DnD shadow damage? Single target DnD might be back.
By itself it shouldn’t be sufficient to cover up for the nerfs we got in the previous build, but with the new Virulence we are probably fine.
The SD change seems like the nail in the coffin for DW Unholy.
Glyph for mobility in unholy as well, seems op at first glance o.O
er, glyph = talent. T4 unholy.
Death’s Advance (Tier 4) *New* – While your Unholy Runes are both depleted, movement-impairing effects may not reduce you below 100% of normal movement speed.
A thought occurs.
Old mastery is folded into new Virulence, so no DPS loss.
Where is the 20% from new base-mastery coming from? Surely thats a huge over-all buff without any further nerfs?
5% str loss coupled with a moderate sudden doom proc rate loss (Not to say that’ll happen, but that it’s possible) could easily over shadow the mastery change buff assuming they decided not to double buff scourge strikes shadow damage (12 to 18% + mastery.) That said, unless they DO double buff scourge strikes shadow damage, DnD should still be used single target. Which is disappointing. Sure, dw is dead.
Atm though, it’s pretty easy to come up with scenarios where Unholy is slightly nerfed, slightly buffed, or doesn’t really move at all in terms of dps.
Well you have to remember that Unholy Might nerf hit our strength down 5%. The Scourge Strike buff didn’t come near increasing it.
And we’ll prolly still see a change to DT in the future. So don’t get too comfy…
The old Unholy mastery was 40%, new Virulence is 30% so it’s not a complete transition.
So they gave everyone Virulence, then made UH’s mastery into a talent and offset the Unholy Might nerf further by enhancing shadow damage (after having already increased the shadow portion of Scourge Strike).
Interesting. I’m sure (probably lots of) nerfs are incoming. Increased shadow damage (affecting DnD, Blood Boil, Blood Plague) and increased disease damage (BP again, FF), in addition to what we already have, I think we’re going to see them nerf Pestilence in some way since UH is going to have more powerful DnD’s too.
I have to say, I always suspected they’d cheap out and make the mastery shadow damage. It makes sense, if a bit boring. It’s a lot easier to keep balanced with Frost’s version once they HAVE balanced it. It also makes sense for the tree. I think things are going to be undergoing a lot of tweaks to get it right, though. They should have done this kind of change BEFORE they shipped, but that’s just more proof they aren’t the, “Release when it’s done” company they once were.
About time they boosted Death Strike’s usefulness for DPS. Thanks, Glyph of Dark Succor. Sincerely hope it doesn’t become a prime glyph, but stays major or goes minor. Death’s Advance is an interesting PVP talent in that I can see real use for that talent in PVE (especially 1 pt), if it actually works in PVE situations.
RIP, crappy Virulence. I will not miss you.
@HisDivineOrder:
They should have done this kind of change BEFORE they shipped, but that’s just more proof they aren’t the, “Release when it’s done” company they once were.
Your logic is kinda wrong. It’s a MMO, it’s never done. There has never been a patch like this one without tons of changes, does that mean Vanilla shouldn’t have ever released? They have said that the goal is for the game to be in a shipping state and it is. If anything, we can’t complain because DKs are in a quite good position right now.
(after having already increased the shadow portion of Scourge Strike).
That was datamined and could be wrong. We’ve yet to see it in any of the patch notes and given the recent change of plans in our new mastery they might leave SS as is and let our mastery buff the Shadow portion of SS.
Datamined, and shown on the PTR. Just cause it wasn’t shown on the patch notes doesn’t mean it won’t happen…
I’m with HDO here sorry buddy. Blizzard used to be about polish and making sure the job was at least finished before release. The obvious delay in the expansion release followed by a rush near the end of beta clearly indicates to us that they were pressured into a release they were not ready for.
sure, mmo’s are never ‘finished’.. but there are times when developed content is complete and times when it needs more work before being released. Blizzard used to be all about polishing major patches and so forth. 4.0.3 has been the worst patch they’ve released, hands down. The sheer amount of bugs, problems and ongoing issues has been enormous compared to previous patches and expansions.
The SS change makes sense, pushing DW unholy further away and making sure we do not use DND on single targets. I would believe it, for now.
As said above though by myself and others.. I would expect more nerfs before this is over. Atm on the face of it, surely this all works out as a buff when all is said and done.
“I’m with HDO here sorry buddy. Blizzard used to be about polish and making sure the job was at least finished before release. The obvious delay in the expansion release followed by a rush near the end of beta clearly indicates to us that they were pressured into a release they were not ready for.”
Agree with this. I’ve said it since before they even launched. They had announced for December 7, and at the end they were sliding. Tol Barad design is currently fail. Classes are broken. Dev interaction with Players during Beta was minimal and horrible, just plain terrible. Bad launch.
/Blame Activision.
Hm, sorry but I disagree. What isn’t polished? And how is it the worst patch?
Having seen the game both in beta and live, it’s like day and night. Our trees mostly work, Unholy had ability-synergy right out of the box, DW Frost is working as intented and they are both very close one to another. Also both have PVP value.
As a class I don’t think we have ever been so close to “balanced”. Instances work, actually pretty much everything works. Remember TBC where, besides Karazhan, SSC and TK were pretty much beta-tested on live by guilds and were horribly broken? Not to mention the state of the classes (SPs having a great start with horrible scaling, Warlocks being amazing throughout etc.). WotLK while better then TBC launch, had lots of problems of it’s own: Horrible class balance (Season 5), undertuned instances etc.
The only thing that was wrong about Unholy was it’s mastery. We aren’t the only ones with a mediocre mastery (SPriests come to mind), but hell everything else works. It’s like they nailed 8 out of 10 issues. That’s very good for a release. Might even be their best one to date.
I honestly don’t know what you didn’t like.
Regarding the SS change, you’re right. Just found a ss of the PTR tooltip. I thought that it wasn’t in, because Wowhead’s 4.0.6 spell comparison checker would show everything else besides the SS change. My bad there.
The list of problems with this patch is endless. Sure we’re in a good spot… but Ret paladins? Priests? Rated BG wins counting as a loss for no reason. The crash/DC issues, endless loading screens. You mention class balance being terrible in TBC, how is it good now? The slew of pvp changes should tell you that even blizzard know they are way off the mark with some specs. Those are just the general things that spring to mind, there were another 5000 irritant problems because of failed testing.
I mean, ret paladins.. the guardian of ancient kings bug/issue was reported months ago, early beta. 20% base str instead of 20% total str. Not a hard fix. Did it get fixed? No. It went live, and was live.. bugged.. for weeks. It smacks of being rushed. Feedback not being acted on, reports not being acted on.
Then lets look at our own specific annoyances;
Pet crit scale not working
Pet bugging on, what, 4 encounters?
Mastery useless
Sure; there are always bugs and we should accept it – to a point. But when things that are dutifully reported by players during beta dont get touched until weeks after the product is shipped and sold – that screams of rushed development deadlines.
Maybe it is subjective and thus, this argument is pointless.
The balance now IS much better than in TBC. Yes, Ret pallies suck etc but at least every class has at least 1 spec that can PVP with. In TBC, hunters didn’t even have 1 good spec, Shamans the same. Maybe you started out in TBC or were playing a Rogue back then ( 😛 ) but the amount of problems TBC had were staggering.
Us having a shitty mastery is not really that big of a deal if everything else works. The game is in a shipping state even with that. You make the false assumption that a company could get this game to a perfect working condition prior to release, it couldn’t. Also most of the changes happening now are part of PVP / numbers changes. All the needed data to justify these changes couldn’t come from beta testing, it had to be from live. It needed a bigger and realistic sample. Now that they have that, they can go ahead and do them.
Nobody said it should be perfect, I just don’t think ignored ticketted issues that go live for weeks after being reported early or mid beta is really any stance to say you have a polished product to ship. Turn the argument around, you’re the one saying it is polished. Can you really say it is, within good reason, given the sheer amount of hotfixes this time around?
Really? Hand on heart really?
They needed a bigger sample to see that the ret pet was 20% base str instead of 20% str? You actually believe that? They needed a bigger sample to see that every single pet and totem vanishes in the p3 of Al’Akir? That every single pet bugs out on magmaw and stands there doing nothing during normal p1? You can’t seriously believe that is true. One single person who actually experienced these things could tell you its un-intended.
Nobody is saying we’re not in a good place, but some specs can’t even PVE because of how broken they are. Disc priests, totally useless in raid content. Shields didn’t even scale. They are buffing them by.. what.. 200%? The mainstay of the spec is 200% off the mark. Thats not a sample size issue. That is a “we didn’t get around to checking the reports” issue.
I’m not a person who criticizes blizzard on a whim. There is far too much evidence in this case to say that the product was rushed to defend it blindly with “its an mmo, there will always be bugs!
As I said, this is kinda subjective and it might be a never-ending discussion which makes me a bit reluctant to keep it going since people might look at it as a “13-year olds fighting in the official forums for whatever” discussion 😛
You mention hotfixes, they’ve said that back then (release of previous expansions) they couldn’t hotfix that many stuff without a patch, and it’s true. Go read the patchnotes for each expansion. Spells going through Ice Block, Rogue’s stealth breaking, Rogue getting more DPS through a bug in HfB, Hit Talents (Mage and someone’s elses I don’t remember) not affecting half of their abilities.
These are major concerns, compared to our mastery issue or even our pet scaling. Yes it should work, but if the class can perform it’s weight it’s not game-breaking. That’s why I’m saying that we’re in a good position, not because it’s good to be OP or anything but because we can fulfill our roles just fine, we are not broken. That’s the difference between shipping state and non-shipping state. Yes, some of these have been reported for quite some time but they might be low on the priority list for the above reason.
I’m just disagreeing on your point that 4.0.3 is the worst patch ever released. It’s not and it’s not perfect either. It is good and polished (hand on my heart! 😛 ) compared to previous launches that were running for some time, because they couldn’t hotfix.
On the subjective part…for example you say that Disc priests are useless in raids, I disagree. My friend healed just fine through BWD, BoT, ToTW as Disc. I even asked her on this and said that she doesn’t have any trouble at all, her only difficult moment was the beginning in Heroics and early raids due to lack of gear. That’s solved now.
Frost
Runic Focus now also increases spells change to hits by 9%. Spells are all Death Knight abilities that are not direct weapon strikes.
Unholy
Blightcaller is now called Dreadblade and Increases Shadow damage done by 20%. Each point of Mastery increases Shadow damage by an additional 2.5%.
Virulence no longer increases chance to hit with spells. Now increases the damage done by your diseases by 10/20/30%.
Sudden Doom now only procs from main-hand auto attacks, proc rate no longer specified and now just shows up as “higher than rank 1”, “higher than rank 2”.
Necrotic Strike casting time increase effect now lasts 10 sec, down from 15 sec.
:O
We lost 5% strength, however the buff to SS dmg will be enough to cover a decent portion of it. And the boost in aoe damage from our new mastery is something I won’t complain about. Now if only they’d touch on DW frost’s current single target inferiority I’d be really happy.
Fellow Engineers, rejoice!
“Synapse Springs now increase Agility, Strength, or Intellect (whichever is highest for the character).”
And, something else of note:
“If Death Strike is used while a Blood Shield is already active, the new absorb will stack with the old one instead of replacing it.”
Kinda annoyed that I did leatherworking a few weeks back and now they’re fixing it.
Oh well, still not a reason to change away from it.. assuming they don’t over-buff engi. I’m enjoying the free leg/wrist enchants!
I knew this would happen, it was inevitable, To waste your time and resources leveling an obviously silly profession for one single item is asanine hence I refused to do it. I’ll be happy with my JC and BS like I always have. It was obvious Blizzard would do this too so its sort of funny lol.
Engi does work out better doesn’t it. Great. Levelling the two worst professions in the same expansion. In the same content patch even!
This is your fault, Consider. 😡
bleh ;p
I’ll admit, I was *very* close to dropping Engineering, even though I knew a change like this was inevitable. This was more due to Alchemy envy than anything else- I’m a big moneymaker and flasks/potions/transmutes, even with an alt for farming mats, are a huge financial drain.
Blacksmithing is a staple I am likely to always keep- solid, consistent bonuses and a decent amount of money to be made if one utilizes resources correctly.
For now though, that Engineering change can’t come soon enough!
Not even a tweet from Consider btw, is the poor fellow now out of touch while working at his new job? :s
Here’s a quick update he did. He also says he hopes to get something up this weekend. Although I guess I wouldn’t mind if he waited until Blizz finishes announcing all the changes they’re doing.
RT @considerit1 Consider
I’m almost happy I’ve been too busy to blog on the patch changes… considering everything I would have said just got flipped around.
yeah you can see those in the top right buddy
I was trying to find out if the new synapse springs (gives 96 str on use) would put Engineering back to the top as Best Professions. Would it be better than a passive 80 str? I’m only thinking it would be awesome just to time it with Gargoyle/DT/BL
Thanks,
Am I the only one that has experienced Death Strike consuming 3 runes occasionally throughout a fight? I’ve tried reporting this issue on the forums but the thread got zero responses. Am I seeing things or is it really happening? Some confirmation from the community would ease my mind greatly.
Zarhym’s being cryptic now. New update as of a half hour ago:
“Classes
* Death Knights
o Death Coil
o Heart Strike
o Improved Death Strike
o Dark Transformation
o Magic Suppression
o Rage of Rivendare
o Shadow Infusion
o Glyph of Dark Succor”
No changes mentioned yes, but still call for possible concern, no?
I am seeing… I am seeing…
Nerf patch.
Here we go, went fishing through the patch notes:
– Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.
– Heart Strike now deals 175% weapon damage plus 15% per disease, up from 120% plus 10% per disease.
– Improved Death Strike now increases the damage of Death Strike by 30/60/90%, up from 15/30/45%.
– Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%.
– The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third.
– Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.
– Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%.
– Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence.
Out for a day… time to update the wartools again!
They’re REALLY hitting up Blood’s damage output…
DT/SI nerf was incoming and we knew it… Not as much as I thought though…
9% Rage of Rivendare nerf? I’m no good with numbers but that still seems pretty small to me…
I guess they figured AMS was a contributing factor to our DPS output? Not that it matters, with three points in Magic Sup. we’ll still prolly get RP-capped after a tick or two of raid/heroic-level damage.
And I spose the Dark Succor nerf was necessary since it meant that, in arena anyway, Frost and Unholy would have a field day healing to 60% in a few seconds…
And by the ~10% RoR/DC nerf seeming small, I mean in comparison to everything else that’s happened to us in the PTR: SS buffed, Dreadblade’s addition (which effects more abilities than Frozen Heart), Runic Corruption stacking on itself, Virulence’s change causing almost no loss of disease damage…
Though when you throw in Unholy Might’s nerf…
…
Hmm.
Substantial nerfs now then I guess. Still, I wonder how competitive it’ll be. Most fights I am usually about 15% clear of the nearest dps, a shadow priest, I actually don’t think just judging from the gut with these numbers that it’ll actually bring us down substantially lower than other classes.
Remains to be seen when people chew over the math of it all.
Think this is just because of the new Mastery. They can’t lower that or Mastery will suck again, so they just nerf the rest a bit.
On the bright side, less damage from Pets means less “free” damage, someone said Pet was main reason for insane Strength scaling too wasn’t it?
The pet glyph is one of the main reasons yes. Since the pet also scales with haste though I would presume that they both get devalued by the nerfs slightly. I have no idea about how much for each, I would hope that it str still outvalues haste/mastery. the biggest stumble for mastery ofc being that it doesn’t affect the pet at all, while str and haste still affect both. I would guess that the mastery and damage changes for abilities would mean we do closer to 50% shadow damage total now, meaning that mastery would probably be at least similar values to crit/expertise. But there may be factors I have not thought about. I’m just guessing from a general standpoint.
Need to wait for Consider to re-emerge for the numbers I guess. I’m terrible with numbers.
Sudden Death is currently broken on PTR for me. Not getting any procs with a 2h since they changed it to just main hand. Anyone having the same problem.?
That’s just ridiculous there is no data available that proofs that DK’s are superior by such high amounts.which would warrants nerfs in this magnitude. The new mastery sucks monkeyballs with not working on the shadowportion of scourge strike, it basically increases only bloodplague by a somewhat funky amount and deathcoil which is just as bad as the old one. There is nothing which outweights the given nerfs.
Uh, you’ve kinda got your judgements a bit wrong here.
With pet nerfs and new mastery we will be doing way more than 45% of our damage as shadow damage. (Assuming the ss shadow portion is supposed to be affected). It is decidedly better than the old one.
The other nerfs are not really as severe as they look. The pet damage is probably the most severe.. but that is to reduce the proportion of our dps which is done by it. Its actually quite a welcome change.. and your slight rage here is kinda mis-informed. I’ve seen no nerfs which were not justified, as of yet.
Ofc, we all hope and assume that new mastery is supposed to work on all our shadow damage. For now I would assume that is the case, until you see or hear otherwise.
After the more recent extra buffs to blood dps, do you think that it could possibly turn out to be the best spec for aggro-independent fights or tasks (wind platform heroic council comes to mind?). I’m thinking fights where you can get resets too (mind controls and such).