WotLK Discussion - Talents and abilities. - Page 105

Mild Confusion · 08/24/08, 11:43 PM

Has anyone done some pvp as DK? I am curious about their pvp strengths and weaknesses. For both solo and group/arena pvp. I am wondering which spec would be most effective as well.

Pyros · 08/25/08, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by Mild Confusion

Has anyone done some pvp as DK? I am curious about their pvp strengths and weaknesses. For both solo and group/arena pvp. I am wondering which spec would be most effective as well.

Did a bit, the issue is a good part of the server plays DKs too, so it's mostly stupid RNG fights. I fought a frost mage that pretty much perfected me 3times in a row. Deepfreeze, icelance spam, waterlem. DKs are terrible when it comes to kiting. Fought an elem shaman a few times, beat him everytime even when he ankhed. Can easily interupt lighting bolts both at range(strangulate, death grip) than in melee(mind freeze), not too hard to keep in melee range against frost shock. Can soak them up nicely too. Against other melees, I guess DKs would be pretty good, but haven't seen any. Have only started PvPing since I hit 80 though, and BGs are still off on euro server. That and it crashes pretty much during the ~6hours of primetime, so can only fight a few people during the night or the morning.

I tried frost and unholy specs. Frost had some issues yesterday but seems fixed now, howling blast wasn't hitting people. It's pretty powerful, but hard to compare since frost is currently the most powerful spec for DKs, for everything(frost strike and howling blast damage is about twice as high as any other ability). It was like, chain of ice some guy, then deathchil/howling blast him for 6k, froststrike him for 3k, do some crappy melee attacks while waiting on frost runes and pop icebound fortitude, then once frost runes are back just finish him. Was pretty mindless.

Unholy has perma ghoul which you can control, it's pretty nice, bone shield which is still better than any other of the deep defensive skills in other trees since it mitigates spelldamage, and it makes up for the lack of frost spell with solid deathcoils and better dots. Overall it's ok.

Haven't tested blood because I don't really like the playstyle, it's too straightdps, which I find boring. I'm still pretty bad at PvP with the DK, and I think it'll stay that way for a while, like every other class, you need to learn the basic tricks against each class, but it's even more important with the DK since you have to plan in advance to have ressources to use your stuff. Like, runes and RP. There's also some stuff I haven't really used, so don't know. Army of the Dead is stupid in PvP however, I guess I see why they'd extend it to 20mins, in arenas it could be pretty damn brutal since those ghouls would just pileup on a few people and put some serious dps, and they can't be AEd down that easily either.

kriS411 · 08/25/08, 3:17 AM

I really like the new frost, its just FUN to throw around with 7k+ Crits.
Hope they dont nerf that again, doesnt seem like overpowered DPS overall (think i have to do some blasted lands action, while leveling im suistaining around 1000 dps after a few hours in recount).
Maybe PvP is a little bit to stong against low targets, pretty much everything below 35% should die if you Killing Machine -> Froststrike -> Death Chill -> Howling Blast it...

Blood seems more a solo/suvivability tree now, with Frost you need alot of bandages as a cost for the high amount of damage.

As the talents currently stand i'll go Frost for both PvE and PvP.

Fellwraith · 08/25/08, 3:27 AM

Originally Posted by Mild Confusion

Has anyone done some pvp as DK? I am curious about their pvp strengths and weaknesses. For both solo and group/arena pvp. I am wondering which spec would be most effective as well.

Rogues with a well-timed cloak of shadows and evasion can pretty much ruin you, even though half their skills are NYI. Any other class is pretty hard to evaluate at this point. Hunters are bugged (explosive shot does more damage than it says it should), paladins are bugged (no judgements this build), warriors are overtuned.

Basically it's people in S3 or S4 epics slaughtering any lower level people they see (particularly DKs with 0 resilience) with abilities that aren't tuned yet.

Caggy · 08/25/08, 1:27 PM

Also Strand was weird when I went in the last build. Tanks are hilarious though. The frontal ram kocks them high up.
Mages can also camp the second seat and play turret.

Sinazeel · 08/25/08, 2:17 PM

A quick couple of questions:

Does the resistance given by Frost Presence stack with the resistance from Mark of the Wild, shaman totems, or paladin auras? What about the resistance from Frost Aura, on both yourself (with Frost Presence on and off) and on other people? Same with Acclimation.

I would think that Frost Presence would stack with everything, since it's a stance-type ability, but I'm curious as to how everything else would work. If you can find the time to try to test it, I would appreciate it.

Pyros · 08/25/08, 3:05 PM

Originally Posted by Sinazeel

A quick couple of questions:

Does the resistance given by Frost Presence stack with the resistance from Mark of the Wild, shaman totems, or paladin auras? What about the resistance from Frost Aura, on both yourself (with Frost Presence on and off) and on other people? Same with Acclimation.

I would think that Frost Presence would stack with everything, since it's a stance-type ability, but I'm curious as to how everything else would work. If you can find the time to try to test it, I would appreciate it.

Seems buggy, would need to test more. Currently I'm frost aura speced, and it doesn't stack with paladin auras. However, frost presence used to stack with aura a few builds ago, and now it doesn't, but might be because of the frost aura spec. Acclimatation stacks with everything. Oh and frost aura doesn't stack with your own frost presence, like every other aura doesn't stack with the presence effect.

Bluefish · 08/25/08, 3:31 PM

Originally Posted by Pyros

Acclimation stacks with everything.

I find this interesting. I was assuming that since it gives ~the same amount of resist as the various Auras and Protections, it would be a Death Knight's way of contributing those Auras and Protections when another class is missing. If it does stack, and stacks for the whole raid, one Frost DK would be a large survivability boost in consistent same-element damage situations.

Sinazeel · 08/25/08, 5:46 PM

Originally Posted by Pyros

Seems buggy, would need to test more. Currently I'm frost aura speced, and it doesn't stack with paladin auras. However, frost presence used to stack with aura a few builds ago, and now it doesn't, but might be because of the frost aura spec. Acclimatation stacks with everything. Oh and frost aura doesn't stack with your own frost presence, like every other aura doesn't stack with the presence effect.

Frost Aura/Presence gives (level) amount of resistance, right? So that's about a 50 resistance difference between the Auras at level 80, and the resistance totems don't seem to have been given new ranks (yet?). Frost Aura seems a bit superfluous if it's a resistance-based fight, then. I could see it being useful for soloing or arena, though.

What's the amount of resistance granted from Acclimation for each stack? Given that it stacks up to 3 times, it can't be that much.

Trimm · 08/25/08, 6:15 PM

Originally Posted by Sinazeel

What's the amount of resistance granted from Acclimation for each stack? Given that it stacks up to 3 times, it can't be that much.

At level 78, its 50 resist per stack.

Pyros · 08/25/08, 6:57 PM

50 at 80 too, not sure it scales at all. Easy to get a full stack if you take regular damage though, since it lasts for 20secs.

Aura/Presence give 80 yeah(well at 80, give 1 per level), but paladin new auras give 130(new rank), I guess totems will too, so really it's more like a bandaid resist than anything. It's full passive, and gives all resists though, so I guess there might be a point for 10man raids, and maybe fights that have a lot of magic damage but where you can't really gear on resist and don't want to afford someone using a totem or an aura. Also provides the only arcane resist aura.

Still not a great talent, I see potential in it for a PvP build though, I have it in my current wintergrasp farming spec, it's a decent boost for 2points, have acclimatation too, when it starts procing I can get some nice group resist buffing.

SpaceDrake · 08/26/08, 7:06 AM

So I'm wondering if anyone has an idea about this. Crossposting from the beta forums.

I've specced my current DK as Unholy for maximum corpse-exploding good times and I thought it'd be neat to control the ghoul... for the time I'd be able to keep it up, since initially it seems like the Ghoul is a temporary thing.

I noticed something, though. He was staying around... a fairly long time.

http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k1...608_015327.jpg

... for a really long time. Far past his previous life span. At first I simply thought it was Night Of The Dead somehow extending his lifespan as well as lowering his resummon cooldown. Curious, I went AFK to deal with something else and came back a good while later.

http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k1...608_020831.jpg

So yeah. As it currently stands, Master of Ghouls turns your ghoul into a full-blown, immortal PET rather than a limited time thing. You can, however, still reduce the cooldown on re-summoning to nearly nothing.

I just wanted to make sure this functionality is intentional, as this has... somewhat interesting implications for soloing, damage dealing, grouping and tanking. I feel the need to point out that my little ghoul was being accosted by a plaguehound as I was coming back... and he barely broke a sweat killing it. I spent a short amount of time tonight seeing how far I could push this little team-up, and I got to six-on-two with plenty of steam left over for more.

Quite simply, I'm a little unsure as to just how wise a permanent pet would be for us. We're a plate class, and Master of Ghouls turns us into a plate class with an extra hitpoint buffer and pocket Rogue. It's fun, don't get me wrong, I love the little dude and already have a nickname for him, but a hard-hitting plate class with the possibility of a permanent, competent combat pet seems like a bit much to me. My next stop is going to be Outland and I intend on trying my luck against the various wandering elites there. I fully expect the result will be brutal.

So given how profoundly *great* the permanent ghoul for Unholies is, I just want to confirm: is this intentional? Is Master of Ghouls supposed to make the ghoul permanent, as far as anyone knows? I mean, it doesn't give the OMG SICK CRITZ that everyone in the beta is currently fapping over, but for real, my Paladin and my Warlock don't grind like my Unholy DK does now. I've gone for hours without needing to stop once, due to the ghoul being able to soak some hurt at the start of an encounter and due to the way Ebon Plague further buffs Death Strike. And I'm not even 60 yet, Blight is going to make this shit even more bananas. And then you have things like being able to leisurely take a ghoul into a boss fight with the resummon easily up, so you get at least two death pacts without much effort at all. And that's just the simple, wasteful version of what you could do...

Foundry · 08/26/08, 7:22 AM

The tooltip for Raise Dead says "Lasts until cancelled" in the current build (8870). Testing it just now, the ghoul I had out died out it's own accord on a timer. No points in Unholy. Confusion there as you note between tooltip and the talents.

Edit: Checking Ghostcrawler posts, this is all I can find from a few days ago, feedback on build 8820:

Not sure what is up with the Ghouls. That ability mix seems strange. They are not supposed to be up permanently. That's what Night of the Dead is for. Ghouls have always had the ability to Explode though.

Master of Ghouls was only ever intended to have a pet bar for players that wanted extra control over exactly what the Ghoul did. Hence 1 talent point.

Source

cutfang · 08/26/08, 7:40 AM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

I think the ideal solution to the first problem for the DK is one where you would want to use the proc when it activates, but you wouldn't necessarily want to use it immediately. A 10-second usewindow would let you delay use to put it in an optimal part of your cycle regardless of when it procs. Now you just need to somehow make the ability do slightly different things depending on when in your cycle you use it (affect next 2-3 abilities/runes? 3-second buff/debuff?) and you have an ability that you honestly react to.

If its an ability thats always useable, but only deals some proper damage when your proc debuffs the enemy with say, a horrific ailment, that causes your reactive ability to deal 5x its usual damage. I'm not sure if you mentioned this already when you said to raise the cost, but this ways seems to prevent macroing the ability.

P51mus · 08/26/08, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by SpaceDrake

I mean, it doesn't give the OMG SICK CRITZ that everyone in the beta is currently fapping over, but for real, my Paladin and my Warlock don't grind like my Unholy DK does now.

This has been mentioned before: the gear you get from the Death Knight quests is meant to get you through Outlands, or at least most of Outlands. It's overpowered for your level when you're ejected back into the "normal" questing world where everyone else is.

Also, what spec warlock/paladin?

For warlocks, affliction is top of the heap for grinding. I know with my warlock the main thing that stops me is finding the bodies and looting them. Demo is okay, but not as good. And destruction is being a mage without being able to conjure food/water for yourself.

Paladins I haven't had much experience beyond mid level protection (which can keep up against multiple targets fairly constantly at a certain point, as long as the enemies are melee and not casters).