They'll probably need to rework durations/cooldowns, or just make them active abilities.
It seems to me as though they could keep the spirit of the "no X runes up" abilities and just make the new abilities clickables when that happens. Instead of using runes, one would need to ensure they had no runes-it seems to me (from a non-beta player perspective) it would give you a new facet of the rune system to consider as with BB, but more active on the players part. That way you could keep up BB and still be able to choose when to use your large bonus mitigation talent.
I agree that the Frost tree could do with more polishing but replacing the frozen mechanic with a new frost-based disease is a big step in the right direction. There was simply no reliable way (other than popping Hungering Cold and Howling Blast) to make good use of the old attempt at synergy.
Edit: I was mistaken on Frost Strike as pointed out by the poster below. Misread a buggy tree.
Last edited by Metrosexuelf : 08/02/08 at 3:03 PM.
I agree that the Frost tree could do with more polishing but replacing the frozen mechanic with a new frost-based disease is a big step in the right direction. There was simply no reliable way (other than popping Hungering Cold and Howling Blast) to make good use of the old attempt at synergy. The buff to Frost Strike was good and with the chances of your tank targets being diseased with Frost Fever a lot higher than being frozen you'll actually get a payoff from the double damage effect whereas before it was just a waste of runic power.
Frost Strike, according to the current (new, if buggy) talent calculator, does not receive any extra bonus for Frost Fever. It also used to cost 1 Frost, whereas this is the first time it's cost Runic Power.
I'm not sure where I read it, but I'm sure a Blue has made mention that they are currently working in a "free" respec type option. Were this to go forward, then it would make much more sense for them to make a "Tanking" tree. While the current changes to blood are interesting (and many of them quite good), the changes to Frost make me scratch my head. Is this a tank tree, or a PvP tree? or is it just meant to be a different type of DPS? I don't think the DK trees will be hammered out completely until Bilzz figures out what to do with respect to the "same spec, multiple uses" issue they are currently working on.
I was just going to say this. I'm very surprised no one mentioned
Frozen Rune Weapon
Rank 0/1
Requires 10 Points in Frost Talents.
Instant - 1 Frost
Imbue your rune weapon with frost, causing 29.9 to 92 additional frost damage, based on the speed of the weapon. Also has the chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Frost damage. Lasts 10 minutes.
I was very pleased when I saw this because it screams raid viability with frost spec mages. Before it was removed the talent could stack up to 3 times for a believe a grand total of 30% more frost damage.
I can't believe only one person caught that. That talent was a gem.
I believe you've misspelt the word "ridiculously overpowered" as "a gem". They basically took it out because 10% frost damage for a single point at 10 points deep is already too ridiculous on a raid boss.
I was just going to say this. I'm very surprised no one mentioned
Frozen Rune Weapon
Rank 0/1
Requires 10 Points in Frost Talents.
Instant - 1 Frost
Imbue your rune weapon with frost, causing 29.9 to 92 additional frost damage, based on the speed of the weapon. Also has the chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Frost damage. Lasts 10 minutes.
I was very pleased when I saw this because it screams raid viability with frost spec mages. Before it was removed the talent could stack up to 3 times for a believe a grand total of 30% more frost damage.
I can't believe only one person caught that. That talent was a gem.
It was a weapon buff ala poisons so it would have been overwritten by windfury anyways. It also didn't do what you have there. It was each time you hit it increases frost damage taken by 1%, stacked up to 10 times (in it's last incarnation).
Windfury in the new form is no longer a weapon buff; it's an AoE buff around the totem providing 10% physical haste (hunters, rogues, ferals, warriors) - those two buffs would have stacked.
It was a weapon buff ala poisons so it would have been overwritten by windfury anyways. It also didn't do what you have there. It was each time you hit it increases frost damage taken by 1%, stacked up to 10 times (in it's last incarnation).
Windfury Totem is no longer a weapon imbue. It is a flat melee/ranged attack haste totem. This was announced quite some time ago.
Don't know why they removed it, noticed it too, it was a decent buff. Could have moved it a bit lower in the tree, or rolled it into another talent. And while it wasn't stacking too fast with 2h, it'd still stack up eventually. I often stack it to 4stacks when tanking mobs in dungeons(they die in a few seconds compared to raid mobs too). I wouldn't get it but it's a prereqs to frigid dreadplate so well.
Not a huge loss either, at least for DKs, 10%dmg was good for mages though.
Anyway, hope we get the patch on monday, and not on next weekly maintenance. Lots of DK stuff to test again. I've hit cap now that they pretty much fixed server stability, and tanked up to halls of stone so not much to do anymore until next patch.
Ten percent damage for one talent was always a little hard to balance. Since Frost Fever became a disease that you can keep up relatively easy (and at range even), the Frost Fever runeforge isn't very useful so we plan on replacing it with the something like Frozen Rune Weapon. Windfury Totem, however, is a passive haste buff so it will stack with any enchantment. The DK runeforge enchants will not stack with enchants like Executioner, though they will stack with temporary buffs like sharpening stones.
Fire mages are more likely to be "the" raid pve dps spec come WOTLK. Anything to buff frost damage could help balance them and give them more spec options.
Fire mages are more likely to be "the" raid pve dps spec come WOTLK. Anything to buff frost damage could help balance them and give them more spec options.
This isn't the case at all with current beta talents.
Ah yeah didn't read all the blue posts in this thread, it's nice there's so much info, but makes it hard to read it all when it's distillated in different threads. Guess I should bookmark the search Ghostcrawler posts page or something ^^.
I like the philosophy they're going with changes though. Stuff like, if chillblains is really necessary, we'll make it a core skill instead of forcing people to spec it, and all. I do hope they add chillblains as a core skill or work a bit on the snares, chains of ice is extremly potent but it's also easily dispelled which makes DKs CC to stay in melee range not very good without specing frost(and rather deep frost too). I think maybe they should switch them, have chains of ice talented and chillblains as a core ability. Not too sure what would be good, against a team that can't dispel chains of ice, it's really good, against people who dispel it, you have pretty much nothing but a base 45secs ability to work with. Could simply make chains of ice undispellable(but by trinket/druid and other stuff like that obviously), so it's easier to balance around it.
Also one thing I seem to have noticed since this patch is, my ghoul is way more reactive than it used to be. The issue however is I kept doing weird shit with it. Like it'd leap on the mob I pulled, aggroing nearby packs, or it'd go disease something right away because I wasn't quick enough to change target and hit it. I haven't looked into making it passive through a macro/script, should probably check. The current fast reactions+autocast resetting when you resummon and leap on autocast makes it annoying to use.
I just only read through threads with Blue posts, skimming through them and only fully reading Blue stuff.
Chillblains should really be Core, a 30% snare isn't a lot and anyone can still outrun you if you are afflicted by any other snare (40-70%) so i don't think it will be too much to ask.
As for ghouls, i'm not in beta but it shouldn't be too much trouble to take leap off autocast and just micromanage that yourself when you want it i suppose?
As for ghouls, i'm not in beta but it shouldn't be too much trouble to take leap off autocast and just micromanage that yourself when you want it i suppose?
From Pyro's Post ((as I understand it)) Ghouls always come with it on auto cast and react like caffeine filled 12 year old boys
And, of course, if you don't have Master of Ghouls you can't turn it off. It's not too much of a hindrance though, sure it can be somewhat annoying out in the world but in instances they generally tend to be well behaved. If you haven't got Master of Ghouls you're probably only popping Raise Dead as a DPS cooldown in close proximity to a boss or pack anyway so it's passion for jumping around like a flea on speed won't affect you.
Last edited by Eishara : 08/03/08 at 12:48 AM.
Reason: Spelling error.
The proposed 'flexibility' in switching roles for the Death knight is ultimately flawed when one makes the choice between a pure mitigation talent and a pure dps talent. What you end up with is 9 different specs; 3 pvp specs, 3 pve dps specs, and 3 tanking specs, 1 in each tree. In practice, then, players will choose whichever of the 3 is the best for that role if they want to be seriously competitive, and you end up with 1 pvp spec, 1 dps spec, and 1 tanking spec, whichever happens to be the most viable at the time, bringing us back to square one in terms of flexibility.
(of course this excludes situations where the 'sub-par' spec finds a niche encounter to be effective in)
In fact, this specialization issue is rampart throughout the majority of new talent trees for all classes in Wrath, for example I severely doubt any serious raiding Combat rogues will be taking throwing specialization or stay of execution.
Ironically, i think that the only way to promote talent flexibility is to force players to take talents for roles they aren't attempting to specialize in, such as adding DPS to mitigation and pvp utility talents. There are some examples of this for Deathknight talents, such as Bone Armor adding 2% damage, but i think pure mitigation talents such as Blade Barrier and Toughness should be merged with dps/pvp utility talents if Death knights are going to maintain the flavor of one size fits all.
They don't want to do what you are talking about however. What you are talking about is what the Feral tree was like at the start of TBC and Blizzard has said they don't want that at all; they want specs to be good at one thing and passable at another, not great at both.
So yeah, I think they do want to see something like 9 or more viable specs, where the three best tanking specs might be close to each other even if one is better, where the three dps specs are close to each other, even if one is better, etc. The goal being then that people can spec x/y/z based not only effectivness but also on desire. And if specs are close enough to each other then it will be ok, it's only at the most anal level that someone would be forced to respec from blood to unholy for 3% better tanking ability.
Yeah well experiences were mixed with and without master of ghouls. With it, you can remove autocast from leap(if you think of doing it everytime you resummon). They still react much faster than before. Before I could like, icy chill a mob to pull, then target another and deathcoil it and my ghoul would stick on 2nd one. Now it sticks on first one. Not always problematic, but have had issues with my target assigns and my ghouls breaking sheeps repeatedly. I'd rather turn it to passive. It seems the biggest change is they added a new "mode" to it, that instead of being defensive/aggressive/passive, it's assist mode. It attacks anything you attack instantly(much like when you put /pet attack in your hunter's macros for people who played hunters). Another issue that happened only after they started reacting fast is, I'd pull, and they'll run right away onto the mob, and actually pull aggro from me before mob reached melee range. Then they'd start tanking main target away from me while the rest of the pull would come on me, forcing me to target change then death grip or run to first target with no initial aggro.
Without it, it still leaps, but randomly. Sometimes it won't leap for like 10pulls. Then all of a sudden it'll leap onto a mob and aggro random shit.
So in the end I've resorted to only summon them for bosses. It's too bad cause I was getting used to having a stun, another interupt and a free disease. It's mostly stupid stuff that happens with the ghoul, and frankly when I'm assigning targets, doing pulls and tanking without too much CC, I don't really want to babysit an AI that's acting up. I'd settle for a passive mode that "saves" between summons, and just bind my ghoul attack to plague strike.
The new Unbreakable Armor and Vampiric Blood seem to be pretty poorly thought out. In order to save them you have to sacrifice using those runes in your rotation, leading to less threat, and you can't keep Blade Barrier up, which means less mitigation. In addition, it could be difficult to use them reactively in some situations, as sometimes it would require two GCDs in order to proc the effect. Looks like they should either leave the abilities as they are, and cause them to proc when the Death Knight goes under 35% health (keeping the 90 second cool down intact), or perhaps make them into usable skills somehow (for instance, whenever both frost or blood runes are on cooldown, the Death Knight can activate the ability during the next five seconds - a mechanic similar to revenge or riposte).
08/02/08, 12:57 PM
Since Frost Fever became a disease that you can keep up relatively easy (and at range even), the Frost Fever runeforge isn't very useful so we plan on replacing it with the something like Frozen Rune Weapon. Windfury Totem, however, is a passive haste buff so it will stack with any enchantment. The DK runeforge enchants will not stack with enchants like Executioner, though they will stack with temporary buffs like sharpening stones.
but it shouldn't be too much trouble to take leap off autocast and just micromanage that yourself when you want it i suppose?
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