Lujaar

That rotation might very well end up better. For all we know the ideal blood rotation could end up as HS-HS-Oblit-Oblit-repeat, with no diseases at all. I'm operating under the assumption that we don't know how the different abilities will stack up against each other by the time beta ends, so no one really knows what the optimal rotation will end up being.

The thing that makes me leery of the cycle above is that you've got 7 seconds + latency with no diseases up. Besides the lost damage on the two blood strikes, you're losing potential Blood Caked Blade procs and the damage from the diseases themselves. That could be alright, but if Oblit ended up so good that you hit it even if you lost diseases for most of a rune set then Oblit would be seriously OP.

 

Zaroua

New build, new changes on mmo's talent calculator:

Killing Machine nerfed to 50% chance to proc on melee crits
Merciless Combat changed to 12% dmg on targets below 35% health
Rime increases Icy Touch crit chance by 15% and casting Icy Touch gives you 15% chance that your next Howling Blast will be rune free
Frost Strike nerfed to 30% weapon damage
Necrosis nerfed to 10% weapon dmg
Blood Caked Blade nerfed to 15% chance to hit for 20% weapon dmg, plus 10% per disease on the target
Scoure Strike changed to 65% weapon dmg + 197 and 98.5 per disease
Unholy Blight lasts 14 seconds, 1min cooldown


Edit: Bloody Vengeance down to 3 taloints points, still 3 stacks but for 9% dmg

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Mild Confusion

The thing I dislike most is the lack of synergy between most icy touch talents and endless winter. From a pvp perspective, I would use chains of ice as a complete replacement for icy touch. I think certain talents like the new rime should work in conjuntion with chains. But now it's another RNG talent. I though blizz was trying to get away from that kind of class design. They take away overall damage with talents like this because there is potential damage from a proc that the player cannot control nor influence in anyway and is even counter productive to certain types of play.

 

Darkrenown

Taken from the US DK forum:
I was really expecting a bit of a buff this patch, intead it's another round of nerfs.

 

Mild Confusion

I just noticed this also about the new rime, it now costs 3 talent points to fully spec into it vs the old rime which only had a max of 2 talent points.

About howling blast now. Does the tooltip change mean that the current damage HB has been doing is correct and they forgot to change the tooltip numbers? I just assumed that the damage was bugged because it didn't appear to be getting a damage bonus at all from AP. Even naked, my HB damage was the same as with all my equipment on.

 

bv728

Since the servers aren't back up yet, we don't know, but there's a decent chance that they nerfed base damage again, but adjusted AP co-efficents up.

Also a decent chance they just dropped all the number again.

Also a decent chance that they dropped another build 2 weeks behind their current internal numbers again.

 

PhoenixVynna

Currently, frost strike hits and crits for less than death coil if speced 14/50/7 with base-premade gear on a self-debuffed mob.

 

Scraps

I think my ghoul was out-DPSing me. I guess it's just about time to take a step back from the beta until the numbers polish up. Or go crazy.

 

Septus

Of all the changes listed there, I think the desecration one is the most disappointing. It seems like one of the most creative or fun talents, it's fairly hard to fit the points in, and it's fairly hard to use, for only a 5% damage return.

 

Eishara

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else so I'll say it here Rune Strike was nerfed to:

Rune Strike - 15RP 5second cooldown

Instantly strike a target for 60% weapon damage. Only usable after the Death Knight performs critical hit [sic] with an ability that causes a disease.

 

Hisstok

It should be changed to plague /or/ scourge strikes IMO, but you really don't need all 5 points in it, with it lasting 20 seconds and giving full benefit with 1 talent point, you just need to adjust the % to your rotation

 

Mild Confusion

Number nerfs don't really bother me, they can always be adjusted. But synergy nerfs and talent revamps can really be annoying. I hate procs on principal, especially those that the player cannot adjust or effect in any way.

Example; critical hits are a proc, you can adjust them by stacking more crit. Other procs like warrior sword and board can be influenced by spamming devastate over other abilites (not efficient, just an example).

Rime is a straight 15% proc that is very limited in use. I typically take at least 1 point in epidemic, almost always 2 points. Means I'll be hitting IT roughly once in 18 seconds. In pvp, I won't even use IT and save the extra frost rune for chains of ice to apply frost fever.

Beyond that, howling blast has a 6 second cooldown. On a 1 minute long fight, I would have at the most, 4 chances of proccing a free HB if I'm even using icy touch.

The biggest nerf to rime though is the talent cost increase. 3 points to get the most effect out of a low chance proc on abilites you cannot spam is very weak in my opinion. I'll be skipping this talent until it is better balanced for now.

 

Zurai

This is because the premade's relic more than doubles the damage of death coil (base damage at 80 is ~300, relic adds ~400).

 

• Darkside

Which means that it'll get used maybe once a minute on most fights, assuming you use your disease abilities once every 18 sec and use them in direct succession with a 33% crit rate. An almost useless skill now, to be sure.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot

 

Mild Confusion

Funny part is that it will still be attached to a macro and forgotten.

 

Zurai

In fact, it's even safer to do it now, since its total RP cost will be much lower.

I havn't tested it, but I wonder if Unholy Blight crits will trigger it. It won't change things much in single-target situations with UB being 14 seconds on a 60 second cd now, but it's still a thought.

 

Eishara

Pretty much, I only found out about the change because I noticed that I didn't get the <Rune Strike!> warning on my SCT when I crit a melee hit and checked it out on the spell pane. They're clearly trying to make it more of a reactive ability and not something you'll just macro to every ability... but it didn't work, as it still works the same as it ever does right down to being off the GCD.

One thing I'd like to test about it though would be if the datamined Scourge Strike Glyph would cause Rune Strike to proc when it applies the diseases and crits but I'd imagine that between the 25% chance to apply diseases on each SS and the lowish chance for that Strike to crit that it wouldn't add substantially add to the number of procs over the course of a fight.

 

Hearteater

I think there are about 100 more interesting things they could do with Rune Strike. I think nearly everyone agrees the proc design is just asking to be macro'd and forgotten. I would rather see something more interesting like any of the following:

Rune Strike (8 second CD, does not trigger GCD):

• Deals weapon damage +15% per active rune (20 RP)
• Deals weapon damage +10% per inactive rune (20 RP)
• Deals weapon damage and generates 5 RP per active rune (no cost)
• Deals weapon damage and generates 3 RP per inactive rune (no cost)
• Deals weapon damage and immediately activates your nearest [next to refresh] inactive rune (20 RP)
• Deals weapon damage plus 38 damage per Rune Power (all RP)
• Deals weapon damage and has an additional 1% chance to crit per Rune Power (all RP)
• Duplicates your last Blood, Heart, Plague, Scourge, Death or Frost Strike (30 RP, 20 sec CD, triggers GCD)

 

Buanna

Incidentally, Desecration has never boosted damage. It still does not. It was merely a change to a number on a tooltip that never applied.

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

Septus

Well, I'm not in the beta, so I'm not missing anything yet, but the design was there, and it was a good one. If an additional 5% damage from desecration equals X dps, then it would be better to tweak other talents down by that much, rather than this talent. It's just so much more interesting than the others.

BTW, has Army of the Dead been fixed yet? I think the taunting or threat of the ghouls was questionable before, and it was reducing mitigation on the DK, instead of boosting it.

 

bathoz

Blizzard has been going on and on about talent budgets (aka, how much benefit they can provide). And the bar that I've heard is 1% damage increase per point, which makes a 5% desecrate make perfect sense.

 

Squiggle

That looks about right. Seems they've just gone crazy and will go back over and rebalance afterwards, as although the talent says 5/10%, it seems obvious that there won't be 100% uptime on such abilities.

 

Mild Confusion

It's hard to determine which move is better, howling blast or obliterate. On one hand, HB is aoe, ranged, and ignores armor and produces double runic power. On the other hand, obliterate hits harder and crits for x2 being a melee move, and is easier to hit cap. It would seem that HB has the overall advantage, but the damage is so low it's hard to justify. In my mind, a 31 point talent should out perform a trainable skill.

It would also be nice if they completely changed runic power mastery. The talent is worthless as there is no reason to ever save up RP when frost has 2 exellent RP dumps in frost strike and hungering cold.

 

Darkrenown

I don't remember if it was here or on the beta boards, but someone suggested RPM should allow you to keep 10/20/30 RP when out of combat. I quite liked that idea.

 

• Darkside

I agree completely. I enjoyed the talent in its original incarnation, where it was a flat damage/duration boost. Currently, though, there is not reason you are ever going to need more than 100 RP, as you should be dumping it every time you run out of runes, which is for about 30% or so of an average fight,.

<XI|> if your dog barks do you debate the philosophical reason behind him barking
<XI|> no
<XI|> you say shut up idiot