Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 5

nilshaus · 12/07/11, 8:17 PM

Per the second iteration of the MoP talent trees, paladin and warrior masteries are unchanged (druid's is now increased armor), therefore I'd expect block-capping and the subsequent headache for blood death knights heroic scaling to continue. More experienced dk's might perceive otherwise.

Killer The Unholy · 12/15/11, 3:06 PM

Originally Posted by Taiyoken

Seems like the talents you would always pick up as a DPS are:

15Outbreak (Roiling Blood is basically pestilence that does a bit more damage? And I can't see CE being useful)

30AMZ - raidwall > personal CD

45Chilblains - this is a PvP tree so there's nothing too gamebreaking here

60VB or Death Siphon depending on the fight - if there is ranged downtime then Death Siphon could be pretty useful. VB on a Patchwerk fight.

75 Runic Corruption > other two talents? It's the least RNG mechanic compared to RE, and BT seems pretty lackluster for a DPS because you'd run into huge periods of downtime. Please tell me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure RC > RE. With 2H frost (assuming that still exists in MoP) you could pretty much have 100% uptime on RC due to the absurd amounts of RP you generate.

90 Remorseless Winter does more damage than Desecrated Ground. If there's some add fight where stunning them messes things up you could take DG.

From top talent to bottom talent I'll pick and choose specific ones:
First one is not too difficult, but if you can't see a use for CE (besides the fun factor) it's a shadow AOE for UH. Since the mastery increases shadow damage it can be an additional AOE and since FeS keeps up your diseases as it is then outbreak would generally only be needed if you have to repeat the disease adding process... otherwise correct

Second - BS reduces all non direct damage you take... AKA you save the healers from having to heal YOU 20% more every time... pretty large factor there. AMZ is awesome though I agree.

Third- chilblains is a slow... that has never been outstanding cept for Magmaw... Asphyxiate is a CC tool that DKs have never had... looks like a pretty decent change. Must have missed that part.

The next one is very dependent on the user.
75 point talent has been discussed... and I couldn't agree more with the massive benefits of RC over the other two in any aspect.

Lastly... RW does more damage... but its frost. If you are UH then DesGr will do added damage because of the extra shadow damage from your mastery as well as not being able to be CC'd. We also do not know the direct APC of the spells so they may do the same (appropriate) damage after adding the coefficient. This can help on any fight that has this feature. But generally more damage will win out and since we can respec in the middle of a raid without having to go to a trainer this may change each fight. Handy tool.

Tyvi · 02/15/12, 6:30 PM

Talents got updated: Talent Calculator - Game Guide - World of Warcraft

Good news:

- Blood gets to keep Bone Shield innately now.
- Blood Shield still works as it does now.
- Outbreak is back as a class spec. Unfortunately it's a 60 sec CD even for Blood. Didn't we already learn a lesson about how that was a bad thing just last patch?
- Raise Ally now resurrects people with 60% health. That's a great change and ensures that the ressed person actually stays alive long enough to get healed back up.
- Frost spells now have a 30 yard range innately.

Bad news:

- You still lose Death Pact or Vampiric Blood. This really sucks since CDs were fun to manage as Blood and losing them just removes more things that differentiates a good from a bad DK.
- Icebound Fortitude is 20% DR on a 3 min CD and costs 20 RP even for Blood. This has got to be a mistake (I hope).
- Taunt is still Blood only.
- Crit immunity is still Blood Presence only. This should be global, especially since that talent bugs out so much (and in fact, is still bugged right now).
- Toughness is still gone (it got baked into the Prot Warrior spec for comparison).

Other stuff:

- Mind Freeze now has a 15 sec CD and costs 10 RP.
- Frost Presence is very weird right now: it increases RP gained by 100% and doesn't provide the damage bonus anymore.
- Necrotic Strike now costs a Death Rune.
- They made the tank debuff reliant on Blood Plague/Scarlet Fever. That is unfortunate because now other DK specs cannot provide it anymore nor can it be applied from range. I suppose that was because Chillblains already gives Frost Fever a non-damage use?
- New ability: Soul Reaper, our new execute. That's nice, I guess.
- Runic Corruption got it's proc chance lowered to 45%. A nerf here was expected naturally. Maybe someone can do the math and figure out which of the 3 abilities is going to offer more Runes/min (which is more of a DPS thing anyway, I guess - but interesting nonetheless).

Netukka · 02/15/12, 7:12 PM

Other Spec specific things that I THINK got changed (some might have already been):

Blood:
-Veteran of the third war now reads 2% expertise. Same as 8 rating I guess.

Frost:
-Might of the frozen wastes seems a bit weird, giving 10% melee damage and 15 RP per swing. With the new frost presence giving 100% extra RP generation, I cant see how one could EVER use that much RP.
-Threat of Thassarian also increases FS damage by 50% and OH dmg by 50% instead of 25%. Seems like they are still going for the "DW gives bigger hits less often than 2H". Maybe they are pushing for FP for dw?

Unholy:
-Contagion increases disease damage by 100%
-Ebon plaguebringer gives 4% phys damage like frost instead of 8% spell dmg taken. Pretty major change, cant switch specs to provide different buffs anymore, but I wouldnt panic too much with MoP reducing raid buffs/debuffs.

In other news, Soul Reaper looks kinda nice. Wondering how amazingly hard its gonna hit with Unholy thanks to mastery.

Yörgle · 02/15/12, 7:26 PM

Originally Posted by Netukka

Blood:
-Veteran of the third war now reads 2% expertise. Same as 8 rating I guess.

This might be a typo (?).

Also, it's worth noting that BoneS have no cost now (Blood would have been fine, no cost is even better) but Veteran of The 3rd War doesn't give a 30-sec -CD OtB. :-/
On a side note : no more corpse explosion.

Yörgle · 02/16/12, 3:09 AM

Using the maths I'v done before :

Originally Posted by Yörgle

[b][size="3"]How to compare RE and RC :

As they might be the ones in competition, let's see how to compare them. If we consider that N is known (or a value for N is generally known as a good average), we want to know for a value of t (rune recharging time) depending on your gear / gems / enchants, if your character will benefit the most of RE or RC.

We'll then seek t = t', time for which :
E' = E"
<=> 1 / R = t' / (C x Tc x N)
<=> t' = C x Tc x N / R
If t > t' on your character sheet, you'll want to spec RE.
If t < t' on your character sheet, you'll want to spec RC.

Example with current values :
We have :R = 0.45 ; C = 1 ; Tc = 3s.

t' = 1 x 3 x 1 / 0.45 = 6.67 s, with N = 1
t' = 1 x 3 x 2 / 0.45 = 13.33 s, with N = 2
t' = 1 x 3 x 3 / 0.45 = 20 s, with N = 3
t' = 1 x 3 x 4 / 0.45 = 26.67 s, with N = 4
t' = 1 x 3 x 5 / 0.45 = 33.33 s, with N = 5
t' = 1 x 3 x 6 / 0.45 = 40 s, with N = 6

We now have a new figure for RC as C = 0,45 (down from 1).
As previously, R = 0.45 and Tc = 3s.

t' = 0.45 x 3 x 1 / 0.45 = 3 s, with N = 1

t' = 0.45 x 3 x 2 / 0.45 = 6 s, with N = 2

t' = 0.45 x 3 x 3 / 0.45 = 9 s, with N = 3
t' = 0.45 x 3 x 4 / 0.45 = 12 s, with N = 4
etc...

Many characters will most likely be between 7,5 and 9 seconds for the recharging time of their runes. On average, we're supposed to have 3 runes on recharge so RC is no longer much better than RE. My thoughts regarding this mechanics :

As Blood want primarely their FU runes to be recharged asap, I think that now RC has been adjusted, we might pick up RE (or BT if we want more control despite a lesser efficiency) as the Blood rune trick force RE to proc on the desired runes, virtually increasing its efficiency.
DPS should, in my opinion, take RC as the only case where it's less efficient than RE is when they have less than 3 runes on cooldown (which means that the rotation is not properly executed).
RC might remain far better than RE (for DPS) if, in the rotation, it's advised to keep as much rune on cooldown as possible, in order to make the RC procs apply to as many runes as you can. I wouldn't see that as a viable option for tanks as we often sit on our runes to be able to heal/shield a incoming burst.

I'd love to have your thought regarding this conclusions. =)

rh8452 · 02/16/12, 3:44 AM

IF "masterfrost" remains a viable playstyle (which it likely will) then RE may still be the better choice for frost, as U runes are extremely weak for the spec, especially with Soul Reaper costing a death rune.

At a cursory glance though, Unholy seems to be getting a lot more benefit from many of these new additions than frost will. I really can't tell what they're trying to do with frost, with FP and MotFW seeming to give a player virtually infinite RP which can never possibly all be used.

Ixnayd · 02/16/12, 4:15 AM

Well it's all very interesting but where is our magic hit?I couldn't find Runic focus neither in talents nor in abilities.I hope they just forget about it, but not removed.

Tyvi · 02/16/12, 8:18 AM

Originally Posted by Ixnayd

Well it's all very interesting but where is our magic hit?I couldn't find Runic focus neither in talents nor in abilities.I hope they just forget about it, but not removed.

That's a good point, actually. The spell hit is still there for Paladins so it probably is an oversight. Runic Power Mastery also seems to be gone for good for every spec (it would be really useful for Frost with the current Frost Presence I think) and Improved Death Strike is also nowhere to be found.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that diseases are 30 seconds duration baseline atm which is nice. Would have preferred 33 seconds to be honest so you have some slight leeway when you reapply them (provided 30 sec Outbreak makes it back for Blood) but it's not that bad.

And I hope all survival CDs are now off the GCD, too.

DarthMetatron · 02/16/12, 2:10 PM

New ability looks really good:

Soul Reaper
Requires Level 87
Melee Range
Instant cast 6 sec cooldown

Strikes an enemy for 50% weapon damage and inflicts the target with Soul Reaper. After 5 sec, if the target is below 35% health, this effect will deal 46,549 additional Shadow Damage. If the enemy dies before this effect triggers, the death knight gains 50% haste for 5 sec.

Maikro · 02/16/12, 3:42 PM

Corpse Explosion may be gone, but in its place we get:

Vile Spew
30 runic Power
Instant Cast
Causes an undead minion to erupt in a shower of bile, dealing 249 Shadow damage to all enemies within 40 yards of the minion, and infecting them with Blood Plague and Frost Fever

I can't remember if this is the same, but thought it was a nice retrofit, similar to its previous usage but with the added deliciousness of disease infection:

Unholy Blight
Instant Cast
1.5 Min Cooldown
Surrounds the Death Knight with a vile swarm of unholy insects for 10 sec, stinging all enemies within 10 yards every 1 sec, infecting them with Blood Plague and Frost Fever

Is this one new too? A slow built into Death Grip (as another talent choice):

Icy Grip
Reduces the cooldown of your Death Grip spell by 15 sec and causes your Death Grip to reduce the movement speed of the target by 50% for 6 sec.

Kawesuko · 02/17/12, 3:38 AM

@Darkmethatron. Soul Reaper looks realy nice, finaly some execute skill to use. Im just worried that if it scales with unholy mastery, and probably it is, frost again will be forgotten or played by a very margin of players. Maybe some casuals but, probably, not by hardcore players.

Yörgle · 02/17/12, 8:17 AM

Edit : deleted.

Otou · 02/17/12, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Liar

Bad news:

- You still lose Death Pact or Vampiric Blood. This really sucks since CDs were fun to manage as Blood and losing them just removes more things that differentiates a good from a bad DK.
- Icebound Fortitude is 20% DR on a 3 min CD and costs 20 RP even for Blood. This has got to be a mistake (I hope).
- Taunt is still Blood only.
- Crit immunity is still Blood Presence only. This should be global, especially since that talent bugs out so much (and in fact, is still bugged right now).
- Toughness is still gone (it got baked into the Prot Warrior spec for comparison).

I can only imagine ibf being 20% base, but no sanguine fort being some kind of rushed mistake in the calculator. It'd be silly to get rid of a dk tank's shield wall ability. It is possible that they'd stick us back at the 20 runic power cost though. Wouldn't be terrible since ams is back to generating rp for all specs.

They seem to be doing some kind of design game design change with the way taunts work (all aoe taunts were removed), so I wouldn't worry about dark command. Even if they end up removing dps taunt, we still have death grip as a class ability.

Toughness still being gone is weird, since all three of the other tank specs have an armor modifier ability (Sanctuary, Bastion of Defence, and Thick Hide). Could be because numbers aren't finished being balanced I suppose.

The standout problems I see are crit immunity blood presence and level 60 talents (aka vampiric blood as a talent).

I imagine we've all experienced the crit bug, and how annoying that can be, so I'll leave that topic alone. Since the other three tank classes are getting global crit immunity, it makes no sense for it to still be tied to blood presence. Bears and warriors are going to be able to stance change, and still retain their crit immunity, so why can't dks? Of course presence changing wouldn't be any kind of clutch dps gain for blood (our 20% rune haste is tied to blood presence, which is another piece I'm against), but the ability to pop into unholy presence for the run speed boost without fear of being crit is an awesome gain.

The biggest problems are the level 60 talents of course. The first time around I didn't worry too much about any weird pieces reguarding specs and talents, assuming that most of it wasn't finished anyway. However seeing vampiric blood still be a talent seriously worries me. In every situation I can think of, it's better to have your 1 min cd vampiric blood to stay alive.

For survival:

One of the key points of blood dk tanking is cooldown management. We don't use cooldowns because we have them, we use them because we need them. Ensuring we have the highest amount of cd uptime possible is how we stay alive in the current state of the game.
Vampiric blood (obviously) synergizes well with dk's existing mechanics. When you can pair your vampiric blood up with a rune tap, death strike, death coil heal, gift of the narru, ect. they are very powerfull.
Any good blood dk knows, the moument when vampiric blood falls off, and bone shield is still on cd, you're in for a world of pain. Looking at heroic morchock and zon'ozz for instance, the moument I run out of cds, I'm ready to call for a hand of sac or a pain suppression. This is because I know if I don't get a cd to tide me over to the next bone shield (or manage to force will of the necropolis to proc), I'll be dead.
Compared to maximizing cooldown up time, death pact and siphon don't even come close. For one you actually need something to pact with, in bloods case this is only risen ghoul or army ghoul. Neither are reliable since they have cooldowns longer than death pacts cooldown.
In the case of death siphon, you're giving up a death rune to use it. Which means you're giving up 1 death strike to use potentialy 2 death siphons. Even if we imagine they scale the healing up some more, I dobut it can come close to death strike + blood shields potential, after all death strike scales with the damage you take. For death siphon to be comparable to a death strike would create a balance problem of its own. Also theres the fact that blood already has a single rune instant heal, that doesn't interfere with death strike. Rune Tap already does the job that death siphon could.

For damage:

Someone who is looking to maximize damage, is concerned with the gcds and rescources they use. Both death pact and death siphon cost an important resource and a gcd. Vampiric blood costs neither and actually functions as a cooldown rather than a clutch heal (which has to be made use of after damage is taken).
In the case of death pact, a frost dk runs into the same problem as blood. "What am I going to pact with?" There is no dobut that that a frost dks ghoul is going to be used on cooldown, and army before the pull. They'll only have a ghoul to possibly sac for 30%~ of a given encounter. Even with this, they have to burn up 40 runic power and a global on a heal. A heal that has to be used after the dangerous damage is dealt. An unholy dk has a bit of a better case here, in that his ghoul will always be active, but he still has to give up 40 runic and a global on a clutch heal.
For death siphon, it intially seems a bit stronger since it actually deals damage. That fact is pretty much erased once you remember that death siphon costs a death rune. Theres no way a frost dk is going to want to give up his death rune for a shadow damage hit and heal. Even from the ranged perspective they've got howling blast spam. Death siphon isn't even on frost's radar. The unholy dk again has it slightly better here, since the damage done is shadow and should potentially do more than an icy touch (icy touch would also throw frost fever up for disease damage however). Even then, unholy has runic power banking and death coil spam to use for ranged damage. Also the damage bonus this talent could have occurs when the enemy "isn't" in melee range. Hopefully more flying bosses that only the ranged dps can attack aren't designed.
Compared to the ability to instant cast a vampiric blood off the gcd with no cost, death pact and siphon are pretty weak. Also since vb has a 15% health increase, you can actually use it to live through damage bursts, and you get a bonus to healing to aid in topping yourself off afterwards.

Basicly vampiric blood is too strong to be a mop talent. It'll be mandatory for tanking (no tank is giving up their active cd), and the most effective to use while damage dealing. It needs to be a blood spec ability just like bone shield.

What really needs to be in that talent slot, is some kind of heal over time effect. That way it'd actually be balanced comapred to the other abilties in its tier.

Tyvi · 02/17/12, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by Otou

I can only imagine ibf being 20% base, but no sanguine fort being some kind of rushed mistake in the calculator. It'd be silly to get rid of a dk tank's shield wall ability. It is possible that they'd stick us back at the 20 runic power cost though. Wouldn't be terrible since ams is back to generating rp for all specs.

Yeah, I hope IBF comes back the way it was but I disagree that an IBF that costs RP wouldn't be terrible. IBF, just like the other CDs, should be usable on demand so giving it a cost makes no sense whatsoever. We already have to bank some Runes for spikes at times and having to add yet another 20 RP on top of that in case you need to IBF is just terrible, especially now that we are down to 100 max RP with Runic Power Mastery gone.

And as you said, Vampiric Blood being a MoP talent just makes no sense whatsoever. They put it in the self-heal tier because... I don't know. It's an obvious tank CD, even more so than Death Pact (thought that one looks admittedly awesome for a 50% heal with no RP cost) because DP is a lot more constrictive in it's use; it's reactive healing, requires a pet and - if nothing changes - a free GCD because it is not off the GCD. It is also too niche in design for Frost to use it as a real survival CD because the ghoul is going to be popped for DPS purposes in serious play as you said. Blood is actually better off here than Frost but it is still is not going to beat VB because of all the constraints mentioned above.

To be honest, I just cannot make out the theme of that tier. It's clear that this is somehow supposed to give survival but the abilities listed in there don't have much in common otherwise, especially if you compare them to the other tiers. Is this supposed to be the give-up-DPS-for-healing tier? Death Siphon and - if you really stretch it - Death Pact would point into that direction. Vampiric Blood just doesn't fit. Lichborne might make more sense in this tier since you convert RP into healing but it is already in the L30 "PvP" tier with AMZ and Icy Grip (which is actually great because picking AMZ is going to be much easier with the other 2 choices there, I guess).
I would also say that your suggested HoT just wouldn't fit the theme of DKs or the tier. What I would suggest is something that acts like the current Dark Succor Glyph for Death Strike but is on-demand and not reliant on killing a mob. Give it a CD and make it only work in Unholy/Frost Presence so it fits the criteria of an on-demand heal that costs DPS. Something like this:

Empower Death Strike
Instant Cast 30 sec cooldown
Empowers your next Death Strike to heal you for atleast 20% of your maximum health if used within 6 seconds. Only works in Unholy or Frost Presence. Empower Death Strike does not trigger the GCD. (Cooldown resets if you fail to use Death Strike before the buff runs out.)

The numbers are obviously made up so don't fixate on that too much. All we need to know is that it would heal for more than Death Siphon because it has a CD, requires melee range and most likely will do even less damage than 2x Death Siphon. If there are concerns about Blood DKs abusing this, you can just attach the heal to something only Frost or Unholy has. For example:

Empower Obliterate
Instant Cast 30 sec cooldown
Empowers your next Obliterate to heal you for atleast 20% of your maximum health if used within 6 seconds. This Obliterate will deal 50% less damage. Empower Obliterate does not trigger the GCD. (Cooldown resets if you fail to use Obliterate before the buff runs out.)

Then, if you keep Death Pact and bring back the RP cost everything would fit in the DPS-for-healing theme just fine (that is, if Lichborne doesn't somehow end up here anyway).

And one last point:

Why is it that Death Knights are still the only class that actively cuts in their survival for AoE threat and applying debuffs? Blood Plague is going to cost you half a DS with Outbreak being on a 60 second CD whereas Hammer of the Righteous, Thrash and Thunderclap are free? Not only that, but they are also the AoE abilities of the other classes so they get to apply the debuff much faster and at no cost. A Death Knight that wants to do the same will lose atleast 1 Unholy Rune and then a Blood Rune to spread the diseases. If said Death Knight also wants to get aggro on a pack of mobs, he is losing another Unholy Rune for Death and Decay and atleast another Blood Rune for Heart Strike/Blood Boil (and usually even more if it's streaming adds or you need more threat; the Heart Strikes and Blood Boils all cut into your Death Runes by then). Roiling Blood will help here, but not by much.

So what is stopping Blood Rites to include another caveat that makes Death and Decay and Plague Strike not cost any Runes for just Blood? Would that be broken, abusable or even crazy to ask for with how the AoE/debuffs are handled with the other classes? I really don't think so since Plague Strike hits like a weak noodle so even a spammable PS isn't going to do much for us (heck, you could even have PS generate no RP or something and it would be fine) and DnD still has it's 30 sec CD after all.

I know this is relatively minor all things considered, but I just wanted to get this out since there is a new expansion coming out after all. If Outbreak goes back to being a 30 sec CD* it's not going to be a problem for single target fights but that doesn't change the fact that anything with an AoE component that also hits hard is better done with a Paladin, Warrior or Bear.

*with 33 second diseases. It's really not a good thing if you have to reapply Outbreak the moment it comes of CD because sometimes you need that GCD for a Death Strike so you risk getting hit with debuffs dropped. This is actually one of the reasons I go 3/3 Epidemic unlike most; it just gives me a little more leeway on the Outbreak timing.

EDIT: What are people's thoughts on the L75 tier for tanking? I quite like the idea of Blood Tap but I am not sure if the numbers are there yet for it to be worthwhile. Currently it's an effective 33% Runic Empowerment that you can do on demand. I get that it needs to be lower than RE because it's reliable and on demand but I feel that 33% is just a tad too low but there is no simple way to improve the chance either without doing something like silly like having one Rune Strike generate 1.5 charges or something. What could help is having Blood Tap have more charges it could stack, maybe something like 8 or 9. I don't know, this is something I would have to play with on the Beta before I can say for sure, I guess. I just really want to Blood Tap to work out. :P

EDIT2: (Not Blood related) What if Frost Presence would not only increase RP generation by 100% but also make your RP abilities cost 50% more and have them do 50% more damage in return (again, numbers are just there to illustrate the point; don't fixate too much on them)? It could be the hard hitter presence that way and it may solve the GCD issues if you can just dump RP faster. It doesn't solve the GCD capping of Rune abilities though.