Given that they have: (1) made Runic Power Mastery a Tier 1 talent, giving 30 additional runic power for 2 points; (2) added the additional bonus dmg to Death Strike based on amount of runic power [40% extra dmg at 100 RP, 52% extra dmg if 2/2 RPM at 130 RP]; and (3) added "*New Talent* Improved Death Strike, Tier 8, 2 talent points - Increases the damage of your Death Strike by 15/30%," it looks like they are giving Blood DKs the option to use Death Strike as a damage strike instead of Obliterate, in order to trigger Death Rune Mastery. Now if they would only allow DS to trigger Abom's might, DS might be a viable replacement to Obliterate and you wouldn't have to spec further into Frost to get 3/3 Annihilation, or just hope that all the HS spam will trigger Abom's might. Should be interesting to see how much dmg/healing DS can put out now.
* Glyph of Howling Blast *new* -- Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.
So, together with Chilblains that's a ranged AoE application of a 50% slow for 15 seconds. Throw in Hungering Cold for safety and there's some potential hilarity with kiting to be had!
I rather like the new ghoul system without a cooldown for unholys, though i dislike putting Raise Ally on a 15min cd, nerfing it to death. can't they just disable it for arena and give it a 5min cd? 15min is way too long.
anyone on the PTR yet and able to check if EP of 2 DKs still won't stack?
Should be interesting to see how much dmg/healing DS can put out now.
Indeed it may be seem that they want to make HS+DS viable. Problem is that if DS will hit for too much it will be really powerful in PvP. Of course they could just cut healing some.
IT - PS - PS - IT - FS - FS
HB - PS - PS - FS - IT - HB - IT - FS - FS
Guile on both HB and FS should compensate (a bit) for the HB nerf.
Manual time Unbreakable and Death chill and probably cancelaura Rime to to keep the rotation flowing.
Looks like this will favor slow/fast over fast/fast due to rune dump (FS) being based on weapon damage.
Not sure about that though. So bring on the Patchwork parses!
Glyph of Pestilence *new* -- Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.
SHOULD be removed... it's too good for to be truth. Or plague-bringer abilityes should be comparable with primary DPS strikes. Anyway, in result blizzard add some new spec for DK by adding only one glyph...
Indeed it may be seem that they want to make HS+DS viable. Problem is that if DS will hit for too much it will be really powerful in PvP. Of course they could just cut healing some.
If you are actually using diseases in PvP - like a 1v1 long fight with a tank, paladin or another DK - Death Strike is already an extremely powerful mechanic. Plate DPS class that can heal itself forever is going to be effective. This isn't the biggest PvP issue with DK's by a longshot, though. Most advice in the DK PvP thread is ignore diseases entirely (save Frost runes for Chains of Ice/Oblits, don't bother with weak Plague Strike unless fighting druid) and just nuke.
Any mechanic that lets you take down 5-man elites in a sustained brawl is going to be very effective in endurance PvP. Its just that diseaseless strike spam with Unholy's 1 second global cooldown and Garg/DRW is more than enough to kill almost anything that walks without any need for fineness or endurance.
That HB glyph may be the one thing that saves the HB nerf from being a real blow to Frost AoE tanking. The reason I always hated Frost AoE tanking was that using DnD causes a real problem with runes. After DnD is up, you have to choose between either using HB (and having it do crap damage), or using IT->Pest and having to wait for the DnD runes to come off of CD before you can hit HB.
With that glyph, Frost tanks will be able to DnD->HB->Blood Boil for some nice AoE threat right off the bat. I still don't get why its damage had to be nerfed so hard (was it really an issue of choosing HB or Oblit?), I would hope at least that the CD finally gets removed. As it stands, HB as a 51-point talent is extremely weak without that new glyph. Really, they should just roll the glyph's effect into the base spell.
Too many changes that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense. They buff PS hugely, and then introduce a glyph that makes using it more than once per fight pointless. Desecration seemed cool now to put 1 point in to use with the Blood Strike glyph, but you have to use PS to get Desecration, which won't happen if you've got the Pestilence glyph. And they seem to be trying to make Death Strike a replacement for Obliterate for Blood tanks, but with a huge buff to DS's damage, that's going to make the healing from it WAY overpowered. That's gotta have a nerf incoming to its healing effect.
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon - Increases the duration of Dancing Rune Weapon by 10 sec.
Worth it or not this is the question... For itself it sounds very strong, but compared to the other Glyphs it might be inferior (because of the short duration and long cooldown, while other glyphs are up 100% of the fight).
My english isn't perfect, but i hope you can understand it.
The removal of Presences and replacement with improved auras just doesn't make much sense to me. I don't really remember anyone complaining much about the various Presences, and they let us bring a tiny bit of group buffing. Beyond that, the new improved auras don't seem to have had much thought put into them. Blood's went from a small, passive raid buff to a tanking-only talent, while unholy lost our only really significant raid wide buff.
I've got to agree with Tharvos 100%. Blizzard totally went back asswards in convincing people to not spec Unholy. Blood got beat up pretty bad, overall damage nerfs, while they increased damage to Unholy. Just doesn't seem right, and I'm really hoping for more Blood changes to come down the pipeline. What is Blizzard smoking over there to think things changes were needed? Maybe they're working on giving Blood less burst damage and more sustained damage?
Unless my math is totally wrong, the Glyph of Plague Strike really throws a monkey wrench into scaling:
Plague Strike is 50% weapon damage baseline. With Outbreak for 45% more damage and Glyph of Plague Strike for 60% more damage, this is increased to 50 * (1.3 * 1.6) or 116% weapon damage
Scourge Strike is 55% weapon damage baseline, with another 27% from 3 diseases. With Outbreak, this is increased to 82 * 1.3 or 106.6% weapon damage.
Heart Strike is 50% weapon damage baseline, with another 20% from 2 diseases. With Bloody Strikes, this is increased to 70 * 1.45 or 101.5% weapon damage.
Blood Strike is 40% weapon damage baseline, with another 25% from 2 diseases. With Bloody Strikes, this is increased to 65 * 1.45 or 94.25% weapon damage.
Of course, this disregards the base damage of these abilities, as well as Scourge Strike being shadow damage, but seeing PS so high up there is weird.
I've got to agree with Tharvos 100%. Blizzard totally went back asswards in convincing people to not spec Unholy. Blood got beat up pretty bad, overall damage nerfs, while they increased damage to Unholy. Just doesn't seem right, and I'm really hoping for more Blood changes to come down the pipeline. What is Blizzard smoking over there to think things changes were needed? Maybe they're working on giving Blood less burst damage and more sustained damage?
The crazy thing is... I don't think anyone felt that DKs needed *that* many changes. Frost tree needed some restructuring, and a little polish in blood, but otherwise we weren't too far off the mark. These changes are sweeping enough to practically take us back to square 1 in terms of spec theory.
*Blood Strike now instantly strikes the enemy, causing 40% weapon damage plus 305.6, increased by 12.5% per disease on the target at rank 6. (Previously caused 50% weapon damage plus 191, and an additional 95.5 bonus damage per disease)
*Heart Strike now
instantly strikes the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 368, increased by 10% per disease on the target at rank 6. (Previously caused 60% weapon damage plus 220.8, and an additional 110.4 bonus damage per disease)
*Scourge Strike (Tier 9) now deals 55% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 185.63, increased 9% per each of your diseases on the target. (Previously dealt 60% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 81, and an additional 40.5 bonus damage per disease.)
I'm a little confused how the % modifiers work here. At first glance I thought it meant total damage was increased by x% per disease but that seems really imba. My assumption is that it simply means that the base modifier is increased by x% depending on how many diseases. So for instance with 2 diseases BS would do weapon damage + (305.6*2).
List of old glyphs updated and some pretty new one.
* Glyph of Strangulate -- Reduces the cooldown of your Strangulate by 60 sec. (Old: Inceases the range of your Strangulate by 20 yards.)
* Glyph of Icebound Fortitude -- Your Icebound Fortitude now always grants at least 30% damage reduction, regardless of your defense skill. (Old: Your Icebound Fortitude costs no runic power)
* Glyph of Unbreakable Armor -- Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 1%. (Old: Unbreakable Armor grants an additional 15% armor)
* Glyph of Plague Strike -- Your Plague Strike does 60% additional damage. (Old: 20% additional damage if a disease was on the target)
* Glyph of Death Strike -- Increases your Death Strike's damage by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have. The runic power is not consumed by this effect. (Old: 2% regardless of runic power)
* Glyph of Hungering Cold *new* -- Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power.
* Glyph of Unholy Blight *new* -- Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.
* Glyph of Death Coil *new* -- Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power.
* Glyph of Pestilence *new* -- Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.
* Glyph of Howling Blast *new* -- Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.
After looking over the talent tree again, I understand why everyone is saying that unholy tree would be superior, but in reality, it seems like the superior spec would be a blood build like 51/0/20 that uses plague strike in the rotation. This is because in an unholy build, plague strike takes away an unholy rune so you have one less scourge strike. However, in a blood build, plague strike is dealing more damage AND adding to the damage done by several heart strikes.
I'm a little confused how the % modifiers work here.
SS without diseases = 55% weapon damage + 185.
SS with 1 disease = 64% weapon damage + 185.
SS with 2 diseases = 73% weapon damage + 185.
SS with 3 diseases = 82% weapon damage + 185.
EP bug better be fixed or rage will occur.
Anyhow this all seems to be strange, SS hitting for 82% weapon damage then getting 30% from Outbreak (not even counting other talents)?
P.S. To make things look even nicer for DW, IT sigil got nerfed from 203 to 111 additional damage.
That seems a bit ridiculous, and another shot at DW. Now our BS damage is even lower compared to 2h, and even if we wanted to use BB they moved the extra BB damage from outbreak to bloody strikes.
If Oblit stays at 80% wpn dmg with 12.5% per disease, why won't unholy DKs just use Oblit with the Oblit glyph for a weapon attack that does 141% wpn damage? Seems kind of silly. Ability seemed good enough when it was 120% wpn damage. With diseases lasting 24 seconds and PS hitting harder than nearly every other strike, what motivation is there not to use a normal rotation of IT PS OB BS BS - OB OB OB, which by the way comes out to being like, ~835% wpn damage, that is if you take OB glyph, PS glyph, and whatever glyph you want, BS glyph would increase that even further. Would be easy enough to swing 3/13/55. Obviously not all of these changes will go in... obviously.
And Ghoul Frenzy costs a rune AND is 'channeled'? 25% pet haste will in no way be a dps gain if you have to stop attacking for even a second.
Yeah, it's not so good at the moment for any purpose, I wouldn't even bother taking it. I'm hoping they'll just change the talent to instant before it goes live. Perhaps someone will remind them how much Mend Pet sucked when it was channeled, which is why it was changed to instant.
I think the point was to kill DW down to the level that the only people playing it were enthusiats and those that aren't bothered by their raid performance. Or rather, who dont' need to min-max their raid performance.
So they'll still be able to rough ball-park dps, but not top dps. (Or at least, not better than the 2h figures).
That's harsh for all the DW fanatics, but they have been making "we don't want DW to be the only choice" messages.
02/24/09, 10:52 AM
