If the rune system is cheese-able, it will be cheesed. It doesn't matter if blizzard `wants` us to use an all-around rune spec. The max DPS/threat rune spec will often NOT include the ability to use icy touch, chains of ice, death grip, degeneration, bloodboil, and death & decay, to name the ones off the top of my head. But it's easy to see how sometimes you would need some of those. If I'm blood or unholy spec, there's no way I'm crippling my DPS and threat just because I need to use chains of ice or icy touch slow sometimes. It is a real possibility now that Bliz is just going to annoy the hell out of your group by making them wait while you go back to town every time you have to cast a non-DPS spell, a very un-blizzard-like move. Maybe in raids DKs will just be allowed chill in Dalaran or whatever during hall trash and get summoned in for bosses with their new rune set up.
Why couldn't a 10-30 min cd on rune changing just be added? It wouldn't require a trip back to town every time you needed to switch runes for a gimmick fight, and the cooldown would be sufficiently long enough to fit with blizzard's idea of not having DK's re-running between every fight
Blizzard is usually neither stupid nor deaf to feedback (the exceptions are generally in things that affect considerably less of the player-base than their new 5-person dungeon tank shortage solver). I have full confidence that whatever rune system hits live will not require a trip back to town mid-instance, unless players are seeking the same sort of edge for which a priest will go into Sunwell CoH specced, respec IDS for Brutallus, and then spec back to CoH for Felmyst and the Twins. And needless to say, that kind of edge is not something that is needed in any stretch in anything but progression raid content.
The town running goes for talents the same way, it just cost more.
And what consequenses does spending more money have?? Maybe it means that you are restricted by your gold amount when you respec?
Seriously, if anyone thinks that gold cost is not restrictive, gold is the main restrictor of anything out of combat! The main restriction on talents is not that you can't do it anywere, its that it costs a ton of gold.
People remember the beta were talent respecs were free? People respeced all the time, in every instance runs you always had optimal builds on everyone and so on, it will be no difference at all with runeforges if its done only at towns. Actually putting a 30 min timer would kill their raiding more since if they tank one boss they would not be able to dps the next one while now all you need is to port and summon the tanking DK which in total should not take more than ~30-60 seconds.
I can't see a problem with letting deathknights re-rune anywhere on a 15 minute cooldown. 15 minutes seems long enough to make it impractical to re-rune between pulls but not too long so that you won't be able to DPS the next boss after (off)tanking the previous one, especially if there's any amout of trash between the two bosses.
I feel like the rune system should have more freedom than the talent system, in that you shouldn't need to go back to a major city every time you want to re-rune. At the same time, letting us re-rune anywhere without a cooldown gives a bit too much freedom.
Another option would be to make re-runing cost a reagent possibly?
How is this discussion served by you bringing up stuff people have already raised, and other have responded to, again? If you don't understand how weapon itemization doesn't dictate anywhere near as many different combinations as rune setups then please go and educate yourself.
This topic has been done to death in this thread and I don't see why we should keep going over it, especially considering how far the discussion has gone from what we know to be in the game; it has become far too abstract and potentially irrelevant.
It would be helpful if you quote or otherwise make clear who you're talking about. "You" is a little generic here.
Your posting is immediately after mine, so perhaps it was me. I am not bringing up anything, merely responding to someone else. And unlike the majority of postings on this site, I am actually asking for clarification so people don't continue to discuss a topic with different hidden assumptions. That's useful.
They could also slap on 50g rune fee when you swap your runes in town to drive the point clear that they want DK's to think twice before choosing a "bleeding edge" DPS setup.... ie. yes it might allow for bleeding edge dps, but at a loss of your other abilities. It's much the same as a druid tanking one fight, then being asked to do ranged damage (or healing) for 2nd boss. He can do it provided he has gear and gold.
The way it looks to me, DK is being optimized for a 2B/2F/2U split, with runes charging up every 10 seconds it means you can't spam your ablilites. a 6B/0F/0U or even 4B/0F/2U would allow to spam the crap out of basic blood spells. with 6 blood runes and 1 rune cost ability, runes would charge up faster than you could use them.
That said, blizzard has stated repeatedly runes will be attached to the weapon - so a simple weapon switch would fix your issues. Many other classes already need to have more than one weapon on hand (or one gearset on hand), I don't see how DK's will be any different.
I don't follow your logic with the 2/2/2 split. With 6 runes and 1-cost abilities on a 1.5s GCD, they all charge up faster than you can use them regardless of whether they're blood or not. And I see nothing in the abilities optimizing any sort of DK for a 2/2/2 split, being able to use any ability in theory comes at too high an opportunity cost for using the ones you're speced for. Optimizing such a split for all DKs would also seem to make the ability to select your runes pointless from the start.
Adding a 50g re-runing fee makes re-runing as difficult as respecing (more so, for the first 9 times), which is what they said they wouldn't do. The arguements about how it provides permanence are perfectly valid, as they're also valid for talents, but they're supposed to be strictly more flexible, you have to come up with something different. A 5g re-runing cost would be a bit dissapointing, but not completely unacceptable. It's worth noting that a 5g reagent has the same fiscal impact as a 5g fee, while enabling it to be done in the field instead of via NPC. Personally I'd prefer a farmable, rather than purchasable, reagent (so long as its AHable as well).
Runes have been described as etched on the weapons in terms of lore, not necessarily in terms of game mechanics. As far as multiple weapon sets, my concern is the amount, which I've gone over in detail above--basically that gimmick fights may require you to have one weapon only for that fight, which is a bigger deal from the view of gear availability than bag space.
As far as multiple weapon sets, my concern is the amount, which I've gone over in detail above--basically that gimmick fights may require you to have one weapon only for that fight, which is a bigger deal from the view of gear availability than bag space.
The assumption behind this argument is that Blizzard actually intends for a character to be able to produce optimal performance in every situation. This strikes me as a bad assumption -- I suspect that Blizzard is perfectly OK with DK's having to select a rune combination that makes some compromises between the various situations they're going to have to deal with over the course of an instance run, and uses a required trip to town for a rune change as an incentive to do just that. Of course they won't be able to prevent some people from making trips in between bosses to reconfigure runes, but I see no reason to expect them to make it convenient for those people.
You're correct in a sense, but that just shifts the problem rather that solving it. The problem really would be the friction between the game designers who give that slack, and the players who nonetheless see such a possibility as a necessity, and bemoan the clearly flawed mechanics that 'force' them to port back and forth so much. You're absolutely right that any gimmick fight wouldn't require everything else to be min-maxed to succeed, but min-maxing it would still give some sort of advantage. And if three mages are 'required' to do a (pre-nerf) heroic, then visiting town every boss fight is 'required' for a DK to participate.
You're absolutely right that any gimmick fight wouldn't require everything else to be min-maxed to succeed, but min-maxing it would still give some sort of advantage. And if three mages are 'required' to do a (pre-nerf) heroic, then visiting town every boss fight is 'required' for a DK to participate.
Right -- but we all know that three mages, or even one mage, is not required to do that heroic, and that people who actually insist on stuffing that many mages into their group are simply trying to minimize challenge and maximize speed. I think it's perfectly reasonable for Blizzard to allow this without actually facilitating it.
It's just another aspect of what specs are. If Blizzard wanted to, they could permit respecs on the fly, so you could always and conveniently have the best possible spec for every fight. But they don't want that -- they want you to have to make compromises. And yes, there is some friction between the players and the developers about whether or not that's good game design, but if the developers feel they're correct on this point -- and certainly it seems as if they do -- I think we can probably expect them to carry that philosophy forward.
This doesn't mean they will, of course. If I had to put money down right now, I'd bet on rune changes being free but requiring a runeforge, with no cooldown. But who knows -- maybe you'll be able to scratch them into your sword with a rusty nail whenever you're out of combat.
I think saying people will have to respec runes for every fight is leaning a bit towards hyperbole. I mean do you currently get your DPS warrior to respec for a trash pack he has to tank, or does he just throw on some gear, and the rest of the group accepts his threat gen wont be as good as it could be and so doesn't kill his target first?
So unless DKs are completely underpowered without the optimal rune setup I imagine nobody will re-rune for trash.
As far boss fights, are the really all going to have gimmicks for DKs? Because any non-gimmick fight you're probably going to keep your standard rune setup. Yet again, getting back to the warrior example, for a lot of fights if you dont need more than one tank another prot warrior just devastate spams. Not optimal, and maybe for a first kill you'd get him to go respec if you were just missing an enrage timer or something, but in reality most of the time it gets the job done. Do we really expect DKs with a sub-optimal rune setup to be any worse off than prot warriors in fury gear? I'd be surprised if it was balanced it that way, in fact given the niche the DK looks to be aimed at filling I'd expect the difference in performance to be less.
So you've really only got the gimmicks, and that's hard to tell. At the moment, there is pretty much one gimmick fight per tier where you need a magic tank. Sure, to show off the death knight you double that, whatever. So you re-rune for two fights a week. I really don't see this as being a huge deal, especially now you can summon people inside instances.
Comparing talents to a rune setup is like comparing apples to grapefruit. If a feral druid wants to heal they simply swap gear, shift out of bear from and heal. Their heals just won't be as effective. If a deathknight wants to tank with their "bleeding-edge" DPS spec, then they switch gear, swap presences and re-rune. Just by re-runing, s/he's not becomeing the be-all end-all DK uber tank, they'd still need to respec for that to be true.
If DK abilities are similar to most other class' abilities in that, without talents improving them, they are underpowered, then allowing them to re-rune at any given momment would not be a game breaking mechanic. Just because an Unholy DK puts 6 frost runes on his blade doesn't mean his Icy Touch will be powerful. It'd be like a resto druid trying to starfire/wrath spam. Possible and not strictly terrible....but not impressive.
However, if DK abilities are of good base power, then the DK's should not be allowed to freely re-rune.
My guess is that re-runing will not be nearly as powerful as respecing. And my opinion is that DKs should be allowed to re-rune relatively often. I think a reagent cost is the best balance. It allows players who want to do only one thing to gimp themselves on adaptability, but isn't so terribly harsh that they are unable learn from a mistake or unforseen circumstance. I.E. Party wipes. Sham ankhs and rezes everyone and while others regain their mana the DK slots a frost rune to be able to kite an add the next time they pull. Now if the DK was an ele sham, instead of spamming LB the main target like he did when the party wiped; he will frost shock kite the add. Balanced? Fair?
Re-runing for a DK will probably be more similar to regearing than respecing. DK gear will likely be similar for both tanking and dpsing judging by Blizzards gear consolidation kick.
It is a very different mechanic and it will be fun to see how it plays out. No other class can lock themselves out of using specific abilities (a small concession to rogues backstab-esqe abilities here). So does Blizzard give them the freedom to change tatics momments ahead of time or will the boyscout approach be better. Everytime I fly out of Shat on my Priest I have access to everyone of my skills. Should/can/will a DK be the same?
Generally, if you intentionally lock yourself out of some abilities in order to skew your runesetup, the resulting setup will be a very specialised one that is very powerful for its use. Should a DK be allowed to freely change such setups so easily? Because this might result in the DK being too powerful for all situations because it is too easy to change rune setups.
It also renders the splitting into the 3 types of runes meaningless because the DK can always switch around those runes to suit his or her needs. So, they will always have the available type of runes to use in all situations. They already took pains to put tanking and dps talents in all the trees which makes it look like they want each tree to be able to tank and DPS fairly well.
So to further make it possible to have a very flexible rune setup might be just a bit too much.
Rune Setup is OBVISOUSLY more like shiftshaping than respecing. As it was said before, A DK won't be able to change roles without respecing. (you won't be able to do good in PvE with a spec PvP..) That's actually the case for most of the builds. (some strange builds can do PvP, PvE and even different sort of PvE with the same spec, but let's say it's actually pretty rare, and marginal. )
Rune Setup defines the possibilities and the tactic of a portion of time : a battle, 15 min., 30 min., other... That's what's interesting. You need to choose carefully your Rune Setup.
I wouldn't be annoyed if it was as difficult to change as talents, because, as talents, that's a part of the character identity. Actually, I think I would enjoy a restrictive system like the talent one. No cost, but 24 or 48 hours limited. If not 1/week.
The sad thing of this idea is that it forbids immediatly all the Rune Setups without a certain type of rune. Because playing without 1/3 of the spells if not more, is boring, and kills the gameplay. So you would have only 1/1/4, 1/2/3 or 2/2/2... :/
The same problem will remain as long as changes in Rune Setup won't be possible between fights, or every xx minutes, where xx is reasonably low.
So I think that, for the quality of the gameplay, it would be better to be able to change Rune Setup easily between battles. That would demand reflexion for each battle/pack/boss, every time. (though most of the time, the DK frost tank would have to choose between 0/5/1 and 1/4/1, there will be some special pack and situations where maybe 0/6/0 will be better, and other where 4/1/1 will ne more useful, etc => that makes the things interesting)
Edit : being overspecialized is not a problem as long as fights are balanced with that in mind.
As far as i know Blizzard hasn't stated how will different weapons interact with the rune system. The most logical solution would be to have runes detached from the weapon you're using, in order to allow weapon-swap without modifying the runes you have up.
However, allowing different runes per different weapons, and weaponswapping considering all runes as "exhausted", pretty much looks like the change warriors go through when swapping from dualwielding to sword+shield, as in, allowing them to use different abilities (shield bash and slam, spell reflect, etc) at no huge cost.
Lets ground this discussion in fact, please. Here are the various spells and abilities that a Death Knight cannot use with a given Rune setup. I'm using information from wotlkwiki.info. Please correct me if I've got some costs or abilities wrong so that I can fix the list.
0 Blood can't use...
* Blood Strike - 60% weapon damage plus XX for each disease effect on the target.
* Blood Presence - Main DPS Presence
* Plague Strike - 100% weapon damage plus XX and plagues the target, dealing XXX shadow damage over 12 sec.
* Death and Decay - 1.5 second cast 8-second AoE
* Death Pact - Sac a ghoul, get hp.
* Rune Tap - Convert a Blood Rune into a Death Rune, which counts as any Rune
* Obliterate - 100% of weapon damage plus XX and YY for each disease on the target, but consumes diseases
* Rune Tap (Blood Talent) - Eat a Blood Rune, gain hp.
* Mark of Blood (Blood Talent) - Steal heals from an enemy.
* Hysteria (Blood Talent) - Uber melee buff.
* Heart Strike (Blood Talent) - Probably PvE negligible. Chops 20% from target's max hp or 3k, whichever is less.
1 Blood can't use...
* None. Nothing costs 2B.
0 Unholy can't use...
* Army of the Dead - Unknown PvE use
* Death and Decay - 1.5 second cast, 8-second duration AoE.
* Plague Strike - 100% weapon damage plus XX and plagues the target, dealing XXX shadow damage over 12 sec.
* Unholy Presence - No PvE use if you have access to Blood Presence, unless you really need faster GCD?
* Death Strike - 60% weapon damage. Kill your target, get hp. 25-second cooldown.
* Death Pact - Sac a ghoul, get hp.
* Anti-Magic Shell - Absorb 75% of the damage of the next spell on you, converting damage to Runic Power.
* Degeneration - 60% weapon damage and diseases the target, dealing XXX shadow damage over 12 sec and eating one of their HoTs.
* Raise Dead - Ghetto battle rez or 100% uptime little-buddy with early Unholy talents.
* Death Grip - Reverse Charge + Taunt.
* Mark of Blood (Blood Talent) - Steal heals from an enemy.
* Hysteria (Blood Talent) - Uber melee buff.
* Lichborne (Unholy Talent) - Immunity to Charm, Sleep, Fear, 25% chance for attacks to miss you.
* Bone Armor (Unholy Talent) - -40% damage to the next 4 attacks or spells against you.
* Anti-Magic Zone (Unholy Talent) - Magic shield for yourself and party members.
1 Unholy can't use...
* Army of the Dead - Unknown PvE use
* Raise Dead - Ghetto battle rez or 100% uptime little-buddy with early Unholy talents.
0 Frost can't use...
* Icy Touch - Reduces ranged, melee, and casting speed by 15%.
* Chains of Ice - Root followed by snare.
* Bone Armor (Unholy Talent) - -40% damage to the next 4 attacks or spells against you.
* Frozen Rune Weapon (Frost Talent) - Frost damage on weapon attack and procs to debuff mob with CoE for Frost.
* Howling Blast (Frost Talent) - Melee AoE Ice Lance.
* Frost Strike (Frost Talent) - 100% weapon damage as Frost.
* Obliterate - 100% of weapon damage plus XX and YY for each disease on the target, but consumes diseases
1 Frost can't use...
* Chains of Ice - Root followed by snare.
My personal opinion: Assuming an OT/DPS role and not a pure DPS role, a raiding DK will rarely feel the need to dip below 1B/1U/1F. 1B lets you into Blood Presence and gives you Blood Strike (probably a core attack for non-Frost builds?) and Plague Strike. 1U is Death Grip, Anti-Magic Shell, Hysteria (for deep Blood DPS builds), and Plague Strike. 1F lets you into Frost Presence and gives you access to Icy Touch. I could see a pure DPS DK (if such things prove viable; a pure DPS Warrior or Paladin is, a pure DPS Feral Druid is not) using 0F, but 0U or 0B for any build seems unlikely.
I think the assumption that a DK that can always alter his rune setup to fit the situation will be 'overpowered' is completely baseless. It assumes that a DK is balanced against an unoptimal setup and optimizing the setup is an unfair advantage. The way I see it, if re-runing is sufficiently fluid, the DK will be balanced such that he will basically be required to selectively deny himself utility abilities in order to peak his threat or DPS, and the mark of "knowing your class" as a DK will be your ability to choose your optimal abilities before the fight instead of during. And I think that as an advanced class, it would be better served by having a resource system that requires more tactical forethought like that, so I would prefer the DK be able and expected to re-rune more frequently.
Maybe I'm not clear on the issue here. If a Death Knight wants to off tank he would equip his tanking weapon with his tanking rune setup. After his add dies he would switch to his dps weapon with his dps rune setup. This is no different than any other off tank. I assume there will be a few 'tanking' two handers for this type of situation (or at least weapons with stam and expertise).
Maybe I'm not clear on the issue here. If a Death Knight wants to off tank he would equip his tanking weapon with his tanking rune setup. After his add dies he would switch to his dps weapon with his dps rune setup. This is no different than any other off tank. I assume there will be a few 'tanking' two handers for this type of situation (or at least weapons with stam and expertise).
You're making a very big assumption here that the runes are linked to the weapon not just lorewise but game mechanically as well. I'd say it's actually extremely unlikely the two will be linked when it comes to game mechanics. Why store extra data on each weapon with which runes it has on it if you can just store it once for the character itself?
buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
You're making a very big assumption here that the runes are linked to the weapon not just lorewise but game mechanically as well. I'd say it's actually extremely unlikely the two will be linked when it comes to game mechanics. Why store extra data on each weapon with which runes it has on it if you can just store it once for the character itself?
Precisely so that you can have different rune setups for different weapons.
06/20/08, 2:37 PM
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