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

• Vulajin · 03/03/09, 4:18 PM

Post: Pet Discussion - (Garg, AotD, Ghoul)
User: Holeyfield
Infraction: 6. Do not post unless you have something new and worthwhile to say.
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Maybe you shouldn't have posted it at all. We're not interested in your great new ideas for talent tree overhauls, and they don't make for good discussion beyond "wow that's a good idea I wish Blizzard would do it" or "wow that's a terrible idea you should die in a fire." I'll leave it up to you to guess which category yours fell under.

Original Post:

A compilation of Death Knight suggested changes: The Master of Ghouls talent should be removed, and made baseline; with the following suggestions...

Raise Dead

The Raise Dead spell could be easily changed to a 10 second cast, similar to the Warlock summoning spells, and the regent removed. This change could then be used to alter the Glyph of Raise Dead to allow 70-100% interrupt resistance.

The next glyph this would affect is Glyph of the Ghoul; and this glyph could be changed to 'Increases the Attack Power of a Ghoul pet by 10%.'

New spell:

Dominate Dead
FFUUBB
Channeled
Casting time: 20 seconds

This spell is basically turned into a 'Tame Beast' for Death Knights. It allows the 'taming' or more accurately 'dominating' of an Undead-type creature. Certain Undead-types could be broken up into three groups, being Ghoul, Skeleton, or Banshee.

This ends up being a cross between the Warlock and Hunter pet styles. You don't need a 'Raise Dead' option because you simply re-summon your pet just as a Warlock might, and locking in names just as Warlock pets have consistently the same name. The other aspect is that a Death Knight can dominate an Undead-type and replace the default Ghoul with a different pet skin/subclass.

Ideally Death Knights wouldn't have stable access, making the pet-choice a little harder since it would be an inherent design limitation purposefully implemented to promote pet variety in both what pet-skins were used and what role they served as.

Another option for the Master of Ghouls talent might be to retain it, and let is serve as a requirement to access 'Stable' slots, as a true 'Master of Ghouls' one might be able to control them even when not present.

I would suggest the three primary classes of pet sub-type be divided into the three proposed categories in order to give them specific family skills for the intended purpose they would each have. For example, the Ghoul subclass could be the Generic/PVP pet; while the Banshee might be the 'ranged' pet; similar to the purpose a Warlock's Imp serves, while the Skeleton might be the more focused PVE/DPS-style pet.

The option to Dismiss a pet would be separate with another command similar to Hunters allowing one to 'Release' a pet forever, and restore your default Ghoul when the Raise Dead spell is cast while the Death Knight has no special pet 'equipped' or Dominated through use of a Release command or by removing it to the Stable.

Avoidance would need to be made baseline, as with Warlock pets, but these changes allow for more bonuses to be moved to the Undead-pet from the Death Knight in the first place. For instance, the Haste copying affect from the Ghouls now could be replaced with copying the Death Knights resistances, STR, STM, and perhaps even Armor based on a portion of the Death Knight statistics.

These changes allow Ghouls to be considered a more regular aspect of the Death Knight, and I feel fits more in flavor with how Death Knights have been treated in the past and gives them a unique niche. This gives the game 2 ranged pet classes, one each of physical and magic damage, and a third pet class designed for melee use with a mix of both damage types.

This then moves us on to the talent trees themselves...

Unholy could be reworked slightly in order to basically make it slightly more in line with the Demonology/Beast Mastery-style talent tree. Frost could be mainly left alone, and the Blood tree could be given more emphasis to make it more of the Single Target/AOE damage-style tree, so that when different style of Death Knight were talented for DPS they could balance out, but get their DPS through different styles with slightly different abilities.

The Unholy tree would probably require the most adjustment, but even then only a few talents would need to be changed. Such as changing Desecration to affect pet damage, and changing Night of the Dead to perhaps still lower the 'cool-down' period on 'Army of the Dead' and have an alternate side-effect of improving pet damage by 5/10%.

Another option then for handling abilities currently in place might be to just remove them and make them pet-types. For example, the Gargoyle skill talent could be removed and replaced with the ability to tame Gargoyles, which aren't technically Undead. Then since the Gargoyle is a permanent pet-type now it can be more easily balanced with other pet types to make it function several roles, perhaps as a Ranged version of the PVE/PVP pet, in some respects like the 'Felguard' does for the
Warlock class.

I was trying to post this in the WoW Suggestions Forums, but those things are broken beyond repair, and I can't get them to work long enough to post so... Whatever, right?

Anything I missed? Feedback? I realize ideas aren't likely to see the light of day, but if it puts a bug in somebodies ear it's probably worth the effort. Also, if somebody wouldn't mind posting this for me where I was trying to get it that wouldn't be bad either. Not sure why I can't get them to work, but meh, easy come easy go, I guess.

Edit: Maybe I should have posted this in a new thread? I wasn't really sure if we wanted people throwing 'idea' posts up in new threads though, as it seemed like it would probably turn into a waste of space quickly.