Warning for Feorthas: 6. Do not post unless you have something new and worthwhile to say.

• bartolimu · 02/12/09, 12:45 PM

Post: Death Knights 3.1: Giving XI an aneurysm is just a fringe benefit (Updated 2/11)
User: Feorthas
Infraction: 6. Do not post unless you have something new and worthwhile to say.
Points: 0

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

"I stopped myself from wishlisting....UNTIL NOW!" Next time stop yourself from wishlisting entirely.

Original Post:

I've kept my "patch wishlist" mostly to myself but, looking at the changes so far, I'm going to hazard some prognosticating and wish-listing regarding frost, as well as some more general themes of the class and how they're getting reworked.

General Themes:
-You're disease based stupid: The importance of Frost Fever and Blood Plague will be increasing; however, I'd also wager that Icy Touch and Plague Strike will become more of a means to an end than decent damage abilities, as IT is now. A ranged attack that can crit for 3k frost damage for one rune AND add a disease which MAY apply additional effects feels like a bit much. I almost want to make the leap to an 8-10 yard pestilence--that's cast range, not jump range--to assist in spreading diseases more effectively, but I think that's less likely and would be a mostly convenience/pvp buff (although having my current target wander 2 yards out of melée range during an AoE pack definitely happens way too often for my tastes).
--Disease-based "wish": Each tree gets a flavor disease--blood's being the the weakest, but attached to the strongest strike (BS), UH's Blood Plague being the most powerful, but attached to the weakest strike, and UB counting as a 3rd disease while it's up--that gets buffed by talents around the trees; FF is a great example (WF buff & Slows). Additionally, diseases do semi-crappy damage but stack and roll for each DK up to... I dunno, 3 or 5 stacks of each (doing better damage than now by the full stack) and each tree would have a strike/ability that would allow it to consume it's flavor disease for... Something. Anyway, this is the biggest and most out-there wish but I think it would be damn cool (and you simply make strikes/abilities scale by some low % per disease--say 1%/disease for Obliterate--making it possible that some trees want higher average disease levels (less conflagging of their diseases or whatever) but others like quickly building up stacks and burning them down).

-Pushing one button does not result in win: Buffing diseases and/or disease creating strikes already fixes this... Mostly. I still think a nerf to Icy Touch and a corresponding buff to Frost Fever and/or Frost Strike to compensate is in order to counterbalance it.
--Additional buttons to push wishlist: Give Hungering Cold a better PvE use. Maybe make it some sort of 30-second burst ability instead of CC (as with the UH/Blood 51pt talents); maybe add the initial damage back in and keep the CC (an additional HB that cost RP and was usable every minute (and CCd adds) wouldn't be too imba; unsure of PvP ramifications though)

-Less talent point cost for utility: This is becoming a fairly class agnostic theme as of late--allowing classes to spec into powerful raid buffs brought by other classes (that may be absent) to allow for more group composition flexibility--and the reduction in talent points from 9 to closer to 6 (thats my guess) in Frost for FF-Windfury is definitely appreciated; however, are there raid utility talents in Bld/UH that are equally as bloated and/or are they lacking an equally powerful talent? (Ebon Plague and Aboms Might look fine at first glance though, so they're probably ok)
--Wishlist: this actually looks fine; nothing to add.

-Frost Tree Reshuffle, talent moves in UH: Based on rumors, we're looking at the PvP Frost Fever slow talent pair moving to the top, swapping with Glacier Rot, FF-WF going down from 9pts to less (again, my guess is 6), and a reduction in BotN to 3pts to match DRM and the unholy equivalent. All look like solid changes, allowing other specs to get additional utility from FF very easily while requiring a deeper investment to get all of the FF damage buffs. I also love the Garg/UB swap and wish it had been that way since day 1.
--Wishlist: While it is tempting to swap Annihilation to the top of the tree, I like it requiring an investment; 13pts for 3/3 may be steep but I don't think that it would be totally unacceptible to have FF-WF as a 16pt talent rather than the 21pt it is now, making 51/20 builds more prevalent (more variety is almost always good, as long as one spec isn't horribly OP compared to the rest). I'd also consider burying Nerves of Cold Steel 5/10 points deeper, but making it a 5 point talent for a larger Offhand bonus.

I know I missed commenting on at least one change, and that some of the wishlist ideas are a bit, well, wishlisty but I think that at least one or two could add to the discussion in an interesting way, especially the stacking disease thing (and, to go with that, UB would stack up to the max disease charges over its duration and then act like a normal disease (12 or 18s timer, etc etc)).