Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 7

Thyrial · 02/23/12, 2:18 AM

From everything I am seeing RC will without a doubt be better for Blood from both a survivability and DPS perspective.

As far as survivability goes, as Phanuel has stated, with RC you can sit on an F/U pair with no consequences to be sure you have a DS for damage spikes. You can't do that with RE without either wasting RE procs or not RSing which means you either end up wasting procs, wasting RP cause you cap, or using the F/U pair when you are close to RP cap and risk not having the pair to DS when you want it. RC gets rid of all three of those problems.

As far as DPS goes it's only a minor factor but with RC you will no longer have to worry about keeping a Blood Rune active to prevent Blood RE procs meaning you can HS to your hearts content. For people who were timing their HS usage well with RE this will be almost unnoticeable but being able to use them freely gets rid of the chance of dps loss by sitting on 2x Blood Runes because we didn't get a chance to use it right when the rune CD finished.

Yörgle · 02/23/12, 4:05 AM

Originally Posted by Phanuel

Honest question (that I'll probably get infracted for, whatever), have you played UH and understand how RC works?

Yes I did and I see how you prefer RC mechanic (I prefer it as well ^^). But what made me say that I think RE > RC is just crushing the numbers and seeing a better efficiency.
However, I think I understand what you guys tried to say : RE efficiency is kind of average (as it recharges one rune at a time) ; but as you know for currently playing the blood spec with RE, even if after several RS, only one rune is given back, it's just a rune put aside for the next "RS spam". Meanwhile, with RC you still have the randomness of 45% proc chance but with some consistency of always having the runes coming back together.
(Also I don't see why you'd get infracted just for asking / reminding about a mechanic. ^^)

Originally Posted by Phanuel

How are you sitting on a DS for that 'spike' moment while simultaneously regenerating runes using RS?

I wasn't suggesting that (or I didn't want to, but my english is not that fluent so...)

Originally Posted by Phanuel

This boils down to a gameplay difference between us.

Well there's the efficiency of the talent that counts also. I don't mind admitting that a player would rather lose a liiiittle bit of it for a more pleasant gamepay, but as we're in the process of determining which is a better I'm just pointing out what I think it is.
Obviously, boss mechanics can also have an strong influence on this matter.

Edit : Also, do you see another tier that is worth discussing in term of TC ? Because I have the feeling that 15 / 30 / 90 may vary from one fight to another (but it will be just guessing if X talent is useful for a fight in term of mechanic, nothing more), that 45 is useless and 60 is a nobrainer (VB).
So basically, in term of spec, I feel we just have one tier that has some complexity.

Charybdis · 02/23/12, 8:00 PM

Between the three, I'd agree RC will probably be the best option for numbers and such. It can be improved through haste, it takes practically no thought to use, and it is always working. With BT and RE, you have to game the depleted runes to get the most out of them.

However, BT might have an edge. Using it turns the rune into a death rune, so there are options based on that. Depending on how Death Siphon scales, weaving in uses of that between DS will let us press another button for both damage and health.

VB is likely to be the go-to talent though. Death Siphon requires a death rune, and if we don't take BT our only death runes will be sat on for more DS. Unholy will get the most out of it thanks to Mastery scaling and lots of death runes flying around. Frost gets permanent death runes, so they can get something out of it too. Death Pact requires having a ghoul out, and the CD on it means it's crap. Once again, it favors Unholy since their ghouls are permanent. At least it doesn't outright kill the ghoul, but in some cases taking away 50% of its health might as well.

SageoftheTimes · 03/06/12, 12:10 AM

Interesting thought I had about diseases: w/ Vile Spew, Unholy will have diseases on everything. While it's a part of the spec to have DoTs up, it brings into question how easily other specs can keep them up. With Boiling Blood, and if Pestilence can be Glyphed to refresh diseases on it's target, a 1 minute outbreak wouldn't be a problem, as you could just toss in BB once every...29ish seconds after using Outbreak. I haven't played DK in a while (since Wrath, and since I was a tank, keeping both diseases up, while necessary, wasn't that big of a concern), so what do current players feel the ease of diseases should be?

Charybdis · 03/06/12, 4:00 PM

Originally Posted by SageoftheTimes

Interesting thought I had about diseases: w/ Vile Spew, Unholy will have diseases on everything. While it's a part of the spec to have DoTs up, it brings into question how easily other specs can keep them up. With Boiling Blood, and if Pestilence can be Glyphed to refresh diseases on it's target, a 1 minute outbreak wouldn't be a problem, as you could just toss in BB once every...29ish seconds after using Outbreak. I haven't played DK in a while (since Wrath, and since I was a tank, keeping both diseases up, while necessary, wasn't that big of a concern), so what do current players feel the ease of diseases should be?

For Blood it's a great option since refreshing through a blood rune or runic power won't interfere with DS use. Because it's AOE though, it could break CC. This is usually fixed by moving active mobs away from controlled ones, but there will be clutch moments where that might not be possible.

In terms of damage, Roiling Blood is probably inferior to Vile Spew and maybe Unholy Blight. Pestilence still has the 50% lower damage rate, but nothing on VS or UB says it lowers disease damage. Unholy Blight has a 1.5 minute CD so it won't be up between Outbreak usage.

Frost will likely use Howling Blast/PS on the primary target and call it good. Using BB/Pest means not getting another OB for a bit. FF is far and away more important than BP for Frost.

Unholy has free choice between Roiling Blood and Vile Spew, but my bet is they'd take VS. Inflicting shadow damage to everything in 40 yards and infecting them with diseases for only 30 RP is pretty damn powerful. Add in Unholy's mastery and it's pretty much a no-brainer.

It's possible Blizzard will roll back the glyph of pestilence to refresh diseases, but I doubt it. That would be equal to a primary glyph right now, and Blizz isn't happy with how primary glyphs are no-brainers.

Yörgle · 03/08/12, 5:27 AM

Honnnestly, as they announced that MoP Heroics will have the kind of difficulty we encountered during LK, you don't even have to care about CC. :-/
However, even if that Boiling Blood diseases refresh would be nice, it's subjected to the return of the glyph of Pestilence, and we have nothing that indicates it will be the case.

As I see it, the tier 1 talents are about diseases in a multitarget situation. I doubt, then, that they will add a tool that makes it useful for single target.

SageoftheTimes · 03/22/12, 5:42 AM

Well, in that case, we already have remorseless winter which does plenty of damage, slows (and stuns), on a shorter CD then UB (more CDs are nice, but AoE threat CDs? Really?). And while I can totally see the appeal of it (less runes spent on bosses), it's for multi-target situations. 1.5 minutes does not a decent disease CD make. It's basically for running through dungeons and the occasional boss fight. Threat's not an issue here, and neither is tank AoE deeps. I guess I'm just disappointed, because Unholy gets cheap diseases everywhere, forever, Frost is alright, and Blood's....the red-headed stepchild.

Tyvi · 03/22/12, 8:17 AM

New glyphs on MMO, the relevant ones:

Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell - Causes your Anti-Magic Shell to absorb all incoming magical damage, up to the absorption limit.
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon - Increases your threat generation by 100% while your Dancing Rune Weapon is active, but reduces the parry chance gained by 5%.
Glyph of Dark Simulacrum - Reduces the cooldown of Dark Simulacrum by (30000/-1000) and increases its duration by 4 sec.
Glyph of Death and Decay - Your Death and Decay also reduces the movement speed of enemies within its radius by 50%.
Glyph of Death Coil - Your Death Coil spell is now usable on all allies. When cast on a non-undead ally, Death Coil shrouds them with a protective barrier that absorbs up to ((0+0.495*AP)*1) damage.
Glyph of Death Grip - Increases the cooldown of Death Grip by 10 sec but stuns targets for 1 sec.
Glyph of Enduring Infection - Your diseases are undispellable, but their damage dealt is reduced by 30%.
Glyph of Icy Touch - Your Icy Touch dispels one helpful Magic effect from the target.
Glyph of Mind Freeze - Increases the interrupt duration of your Mind Freeze ability by 1 sec, but also raises its cost by 20 Runic Power.

Dancing Rune Weapon one is obviously shit unless threat becomes a problem (which is doubtful). The other glyphs are pretty nice though, especially Death Coil. Depending on the AP scaling it might make dropping Lichborne a non-issue. I also like Icy Touch to help with offensive dispels. Third glyph I'd pick would probably be AMS or DnD depending on the encounter.

Otou · 03/22/12, 10:23 AM

Since I managed to get into the first round of beta invites, I figured I'd share some dk info mmo-champ hasn't gotten to yet.

Class / Spec changes:

Sanguine Fortitude and Vampiric Blood are Blood spec abilties.
Dark Command is still blood only. In addition, death grip still taunts, but there is a minor glyph that allows you to disable it.
Bone Shield does indeed have no rune cost (but it's still on the gcd).
Control Undead seems to work on most undead mobs.
The only immune undead seem to be dungeon/raid bosses, and npcs specifically flagged immune to crowd control.
Basicly has the same rules as a priest's mind control.
Frost Presence also contains the runic power mastery talent. So it now doubles runic power generation, and increases your cap to 130.
Mind Freeze has no runic power cost baseline.
Raise Dead is a 2 minute cooldown baseline. (Unholy doesn't have a cooldown reduction ability anymore.)
Outbreak is 1 minute for all specs. There is still no 30 second cooldown reduction currently tied to Veteran of the Third War.

Talents:

Vile Spew seems to only be useable with Raise Dead and Army of the Dead ghouls.
Neither blood worms nor Control Undead minions were able to use it (forgot to test gargoyle). However, vile spew only occurs once per cast.
It simply chooses your closest ghoul for the detonation point, rather than causing all undead to cast it (it's flagged as your spell in the combat log).
So there won't be any particular advantage to vile spewing with army/multi minions in aoe situations.
It also costs 60 runic power, does not proc runic empowerment/corruption/blood tap, and does fairly low shadow damage.
Unholy Blight itself does 0 damage, but applies full strength diseases to any enemies within 10 yards. The pulses also seem to count as melee hits, since they proc'd gurthulak and my trinket.
Anti-Magic Zone now has a targeting circle, similar to death and decay.
You can place it anywhere within 30 yards of you character. (Yes it no longer has a rune cost, just gcd)
Death Siphon now deals shadowfrost damage, allowing it to benefit from frost and unholy mastery.
Vampiric Blood was reaplced by Conversion.
Conversion is a heal over time that consumes runic power, similar to a bear's frenzied regeneration. It consumes 10 runic power every second, and in exchange heals for 3% of your maximum health.
When you can no longer supply it with runic power, the effect ends.
This ability has no cooldown, but is on the global cooldown. (Wonder who thought of this one? *wink*)

Glyphs:

Dark Simulacrum can be glyphed to reduce the cooldown by 30 seconds, and increase the duration by 4 seconds. However, it's possibly bugged, and glyphing it simply gives it no cooldown.
Death Coil can be glyphed to shield non-undead allies. However, this glyph effect does not work on yourself. It must be used on other friendly characters.
Mind freeze can be glyphed to increase spell lock duration by 1 second, by doing so increases the cost by 20 runic power. As a reminder, it no longer costs runic power baseline.
You can glyph to retain 50% of your runic power when you swap presences.
The Unholy Command talent has become a glyph.
There is a new minor glyph that removes death grip's taunt (this is our only change to minor glyphs, which makes me sad).

Tyvi · 03/22/12, 11:27 AM

That's some good news with Vampiric Blood being baseline and AMZ being targetable. It's a shame that Death Coil cannot be self cast since it's probably already much less healing than a LB DC is now (according to MMO it has a 50% AP scaling so we can expect something around 30k absorbs with 60k AP which is lower than what we can heal for now). Don't get me wrong, it's still a good glyph for 2 tank fights but I actually looked forward to an absorb on myself with RP instead of the reactive heals we have with LB now.

Conversion also looks pretty good, especially if it doesn't get a CD. Not as good as Death Pact for burst healing but it will have it's place which is a good thing. Death Siphon is obviously a DPS talent what with the Shadowfrost component.

Outbreak having a 1 min CD is still weird considering they explicitly made it a 30 sec CD for Blood because the trade off between diseases and DS was deemed stupid.
I believe AMZ is off the GCD now, isn't it? So it being on the GCD on Beta is weird. Same with Bone Shield. Does BS still increase by 2%?

Otou · 03/22/12, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by Liar

I believe AMZ is off the GCD now, isn't it? So it being on the GCD on Beta is weird. Same with Bone Shield. Does BS still increase by 2%?

Poor choice of words on my part. I was referring to the fact that you can't cast them during a global cooldown.
Neither bone shield nor amz actually consume a global, but they can't be cast during one. That's what I meant with "on the gcd".

Nope, bone shields +2% damage component is gone. Also ds, hs, and rs weapon damage scaling is incredibly low. They're at 75, 90, and 90 respectively.

Gharlane · 03/23/12, 10:00 AM

Originally Posted by Otou

Nope, bone shields +2% damage component is gone. Also ds, hs, and rs weapon damage scaling is incredibly low. They're at 75, 90, and 90 respectively.

Bone shield still increases damage by 2% - no weapon equipped 876 melee damage with no bone shield, 893/894 with bone shield running. The spell does not mention it but the tool tip still shows it.
Outbreak on a 1 minute timer is less of an issue than it is on live since there is only 1 tank debuf which is applied via blood plague so its just 1 gcd either way though at a rune cost.

--

Gharlane

Otou · 03/23/12, 1:52 PM

Originally Posted by Gharlane

Outbreak on a 1 minute timer is less of an issue than it is on live since there is only 1 tank debuf which is applied via blood plague so its just 1 gcd either way though at a rune cost.

It still comes at the cost of a death strike every 29 seconds. Even if you opt to only keep up blood plague. We can't death strike with just 1 frost rune, and it will leave awkward points in your rotation where you decided to use 1 unholy rune.

The other problem with it, would forcing blood to take unholy blight in tier 1. If we have to deal with 1 minute outbreak and 30 second diseases, we can't even look at the other options in the first tier.

Frost is also forced to take unholy blight, since none of the other options are relevant to their spec for disease up keep. 2/3 specs not having a choice probably merits a change in the tier 1 talents, so I'm hoping something gets adjusted there

Tyvi · 03/23/12, 10:33 PM

Anyone else think the DRW glyph idea of trading something for -5% parry is on the right track? Obviously we can all agree that said something should not be threat because threat is irrelevant. What do you guys think about:

1a) -x% parry, +y seconds DRW uptime?
1b) +x% parry, -y seconds DRW uptime?
2) -x% parry, +y damage dealt while DRW is up?
3) -20% parry, +y magic damage reduction?
EDIT
4) -% parry chance, +increase rune regen (maybe even instantly refreshing some Runes when cast, say 2 Death Runes?)?
5) removing the RP cost, adding a rune cost of 2-3 and reducing the CD to 45 secs (the trade off here would be a Death Strike vs DRW)?
/EDIT

You know, something like that. I actually like all 3 choices myself and just given the current content all of them would be handy (maybe 1a less than the others but I am sure it's situational enough to consider). Even taking 2) which is the one I would see as the likeliest to implement because it doesn't mess with tank balance is one I would have definitely used on something like our first Ultraxion hc kill.
I get that +damage glyphs are not popular anymore for DPS classes but I think it should be alright for tanks still. That said, the other choices are also good so I hope they will go for the tankier suggestions.

Also, what's up with the weird on-the-GCD but sort-of-not-on-GCD issue with Bone Shield and AMZ? All the other tanks have their 20% DR equivalent of the CD and at no cost (don't get me wrong, I am glad it doesn't cost a rune anymore but we might as well go all the way to equality here; remove the +2% damage buff if you have to) and I believe (someone correct me if I am wrong) Disc Priest's Barrier is also off the GCD which would be the AMZ analogue.

Can't add much more than you said on the Beta forums about Tier 1 talents, Otou. Except for Unholy Blight Blood has no choice there. Roiling Blood would be great if it also refreshed diseases on the primary target but as it is I don't see anyone picking that up.

Since noone has mentioned it so far I assume it didn't get changed but just to be sure: Is Blood Shield still working the same as on live? Is Death Strike still generating Blood Shields through misses/avoids and how much expertise - if any - do we still get from Veteran of the Third War?

Otou · 03/24/12, 2:18 AM

Originally Posted by Liar

Anyone else think the DRW glyph idea of trading something for -5% parry is on the right track? Obviously we can all agree that said something should not be threat because threat is irrelevant. What do you guys think about:

1a) -x% parry, +y seconds DRW uptime?
1b) +x% parry, -y seconds DRW uptime?
2) -x% parry, +y damage dealt while DRW is up?
3) -20% parry, +y magic damage reduction?

This idea is a lot better than trading the parry for a threat modifier increase. Even with death strike, heart strike, and rune strike doing a fraction of their live damage, threat wasn't an issue. If we were to see glyphs modifying rune weapon, +damage increase or +magic damagic reduction is a better exchange for the parry.

Originally Posted by Liar

Also, what's up with the weird on-the-GCD but sort-of-not-on-GCD issue with Bone Shield and AMZ? All the other tanks have their 20% DR equivalent of the CD and at no cost (don't get me wrong, I am glad it doesn't cost a rune anymore but we might as well go all the way to equality here; remove the +2% damage buff if you have to) and I believe (someone correct me if I am wrong) Disc Priest's Barrier is also off the GCD which would be the AMZ analogue.

Legacy of their old rune costs is the only thing I can imagine? Doesn't really need to be there.

Originally Posted by Liar

Since noone has mentioned it so far I assume it didn't get changed but just to be sure: Is Blood Shield still working the same as on live? Is Death Strike still generating Blood Shields through misses/avoids and how much expertise - if any - do we still get from Veteran of the Third War?

Yep, it works exactly same as live. "I get the impression", that the proposed blood shield and bone shield changes were dropped for now. This is probably fine since there will be block dr. With block also being on a sperate combat table roll, like a melee special's critical hits, block capping is effectively gone.

Death Strike is currently still blood shielding even when avoided. No idea if this will stick around.

Veteran gives us 2% expertise, like the tooltip says. So if you stand around naked, your expertise reads 2%. I'm not sure if the hit/expertise changes are actually active though.

Originally Posted by Liar

Can't add much more than you said on the Beta forums about Tier 1 talents, Otou. Except for Unholy Blight Blood has no choice there. Roiling Blood would be great if it also refreshed diseases on the primary target but as it is I don't see anyone picking that up.

Yeah, I'm trying to keep DK suggestions consolidated in this thread. If anyone has some ideas, post them in there.

I'm currently suggesting that:

Rolling Blood makes Howling Blast and Blood Boil apply all diseases, but with pestilence's 50% damage penalty on all targets (even primary). Contagion's diseases and HB's frost fever would over rule the penalty.
Vile Spew should no longer require a minion. This way all specs can access it.
Unholy Blight should have a 1 minute cooldown. This way frost and blood can use it to offset outbreak.