I'm not sure if requiring every dps dk to spec into Unholy Blight is a good thing or not, I do agree that disease scaling needs help, however, putting the extra disease into UB would only serve to force ever dk to take that talent which isn't what Blizzard wants. Blizzard is placing it there so that tanks can get it easier and use Frost or Blood trees to tank with.
I think the better solution would be to take the third disease away, however, make morbidity increase the amount of scaling unholy gets per disease to a point where it would be equal to having the third disease. Honestly, having the disease on a non stackable buff has always been poor design which limits the amount of unholy dk's in a raid to 1. I know Blizzard has said they want to fix it, but maybe the proper way to fix it is to shift that damage to a different talent. I just don't like the idea of putting the third disease on Unholy Blight, since then you have to give up DRW if you want to play as Blood or go unholy sub-spec if you want to play as frost.
I'd like to point out something which I haven't seen mentioned here yet.
The warrior talent Blood Frenzy is being upped from a 1/2% buff to a 3/4% buff. This will no doubt benefit specs and rotations that use Obliterate/swings etc quite a bit more than IT or disease ticks for their dps and could factor into those HB vs OB and IT spam vs OB debates.
I'm not sure however if having UB act as a disease in place of EP will properly fix the problem. As you stated in your post, the problem is that Obliterate by its base nature scales very well with weapon damage. As the grade of weapons increases, a smaller and smaller portion of the overall Obliterate strike will be attributed to the diseases, given that the disease damage is fixed (at +97 per disease).
I think your other solution wherein diseases increase the damage done by strikes (Oblit, SS, HS, etc) by a percentage is much better. This would actually place a larger penalty on players for not using diseases as weapons continue to scale. In fact, Blizzard could reduce the base damage done by each of the strikes, and then state that diseases will increase strike damage by X%. The X would be a plug that would maintain current damage levels as long as all diseases were up.
I do however hope that PS and IT get buffed (especially the DoT component) because I would hate to reach a point where the disease are just thrown up for the sake of increased oblit/ss/hs damage. If Blizzard wants this to be a disease based class, then diseases need to be worthwhile.
I'm not sure however if having UB act as a disease in place of EP will properly fix the problem. As you stated in your post, the problem is that Obliterate by its base nature scales very well with weapon damage. As the grade of weapons increases, a smaller and smaller portion of the overall Obliterate strike will be attributed to the diseases, given that the disease damage is fixed (at +97 per disease).
I think your other solution wherein diseases increase the damage done by strikes (Oblit, SS, HS, etc) by a percentage is much better. This would actually place a larger penalty on players for not using diseases as weapons continue to scale. In fact, Blizzard could reduce the base damage done by each of the strikes, and then state that diseases will increase strike damage by X%. The X would be a plug that would maintain current damage levels as long as all diseases were up.
I do however hope that PS and IT get buffed (especially the DoT component) because I would hate to reach a point where the disease are just thrown up for the sake of increased oblit/ss/hs damage. If Blizzard wants this to be a disease based class, then diseases need to be worthwhile.
I agree with this, basically making diseases a % of the total strike damage will almost force players to use them which seems to be what were supposed to do anyway. Also forcing people into UB is a horrible idea because it pretty much foces people into Unholy.
An easy solution to the Unholy 3 disease problem is to make Crupt Fever and Ebon Plaguebringer magic effects rather than diseases and have Scourge Strike proc a third disease that does some trivial amount of damage.
Having the disease scaling modifiers be percentages is obviously necessary as well.
An easy solution to the Unholy 3 disease problem is to make Crupt Fever and Ebon Plaguebringer magic effects rather than diseases and have Scourge Strike proc a third disease that does some trivial amount of damage.
Having the disease scaling modifiers be percentages is obviously necessary as well.
I wouldn't necessarily make scourge strike proc a third disease. I don't see the problem with unholy getting a third disease from ebon and crypt. I agree that putting diseases on a scaling mods is one of the best ways to help the scaling. For blood I think making obliterate not remove diseases would go along way in helping to alleviate blood going diseasless. Even though you can achieve that by taking annihilation, for blood you get better damage from 51/0/20 as it scales better. I think it could also benefit frost as well.
With pestilence not doing any damage whatsoever, I'm not sure there is a reason for it to have a rune cost. I could easily see it either having no cost, or possibly 10rp or something equally minor.
Yes, this is what I was thinking. Right now there just aren't available runes to use Blood Boil regularly -- with a D&D - IT - PS - Pestilence to start with, you can't use Blood Boil right away unless Blood Tap is off cooldown. Removing the rune cost for Pestilence would fix this and make a lot of sense.
What i want to see are the numbers around unholy blight with out the unholy damage modifiers ? How hard will UB hit when your full frost or blood. Or rather how much did UB get from impurity, ebon plague and Rage of Rivendare. There are many spec's that don't take tundra stalker or blood gorged which would be the only talents to increase it outside unholy. (correct me if I'm wrong).
*note* I'm not sure if crypt fever ever affected UB's damage but if it did then add it on as well.
I don't necessarily want blood boil to do damage with no diseases on mobs. It has a 30 yard radius, in all directions! It would instantly be banned from all group or raid content.
It would make more sense to combine the two abilities. Just streamline pestilence to spread diseases and cause damage based upon the number of diseases on the mob. Functionally this would have the same effect, if you think about it for a second.
I don't necessarily want blood boil to do damage with no diseases on mobs. It has a 30 yard radius, in all directions! It would instantly be banned from all group or raid content.
It would make more sense to combine the two abilities. Just streamline pestilence to spread diseases and cause damage based upon the number of diseases on the mob. Functionally this would have the same effect, if you think about it for a second.
Good point about CC pestilence has a 15 yard range where BB has a 30 yard range, i could see complications, but fixed with watching your positioning.
Is there something I'm missing that would make you all jump to assume that Blood Boil is going to hit everything in 30 yards? I read that as allowing you to cast it on something without a disease, with the rest of the functionality being essentially unchanged. Specifically, I'm taking it to mean Blood Boil will always hit the primary target, as well as damaging any diseased targets within 30 yards of the target. Seems like pure speculation either way, but my version isn't retarded.
This thread is like a lich except his phylactery is the mind-numbing idiocy of every imbecile that walks the earth. -Slake
Is there something I'm missing that would make you all jump to assume that Blood Boil is going to hit everything in 30 yards? I read that as allowing you to cast it on something without a disease, with the rest of the functionality being essentially unchanged. Specifically, I'm taking it to mean Blood Boil will always hit the primary target, as well as damaging any diseased targets within 30 yards of the target. Seems like pure speculation either way, but my version isn't retarded.
If BB isn't an AoE, it'll be completely worthless. 30 yards might be a bit much, especially with the snare glyph, but even 15 yards would be an awesome buff.
First off, to the person who said 'even a broken clock is right twice a day' may I counter by saying that mob mentality mixed with reasonable intellect also has it's payoffs?
On that note, I'm sure this has been said before, but an EASY way to make Blood and Frost want to use Frost Fever and Blood Plague is simple. Change Ob to a % based thing. rather then increase the damage done by a static number, have it increase the damage done by say 10-15% per disease or so. Would definitely make people use diseases more. Same thing for Heart/Blood Strike.
The days of static damage being okay have gone the way of the dodo. Scaling is all the rage these days. Thats why diseaseless rotations work so well for blood. And why Frost 2h builds don't use PS. The only build that I know uses all diseases is 17-0-51, (for 2h weapons, most DW specs use both) because it does a)more damage with diseases, and b) diseases also apply ebon plague/Crypt fever.
If blizzard can't do that, then an increase in either disease damage done or disease effect could have an effect too. If Blood Plague provided a raidwide +X% Crit, i could see people using it. If FF increased frost damage taken or something, I could see people using it. But not as they are now.
If BB isn't an AoE, it'll be completely worthless. 30 yards might be a bit much, especially with the snare glyph, but even 15 yards would be an awesome buff.
Might want to check what I typed again, as what I suggested has identical aoe functionality to the current live version of BB. The only difference I'm assuming is that you can target a BB on an undiseased target, rather than requiring a diseased primary target.
This thread is like a lich except his phylactery is the mind-numbing idiocy of every imbecile that walks the earth. -Slake
I liked what other people were mentioning regarding the disease scaling. IMO, that could work, but possibly scale a bit too high. Another idea that I thought of would be to have the static portion scale with AP.
ie - OB -> 120% weapon damage + 700 + 10% of AP per disease
Not really sure what they will do, but either of these seem viable and reasonable.
Another thing I might suggest is would anything change with FS? Could HC go to a 41 pt talent, FS to 31, and HB to 51? FS isn't game breaking for DW unless you have GoG as well.
Also, I have not tried 17/0/54 in a long time, but I did ~500 dps less as 0/32/39 compared to 51/0/20 and 21/50/0. I may try it, but I have not seen any DK's in my raids that have done incredibly well with it. Honestly, I hope that KM is put at the end of the frost tree to kill most DW specs.
He specifically mentioned that PvP talents are going higher in the tree. There is no reason to believe that Hungering Cold isn't a PvP talent and somehow immune to that. I imagine a nerfed version will go higher in the tree and since the only single slot talents are Lichborne, Deathchill, and Howling Blast, it's safe to say that Howling Blast will be the new 51 pt frost talent. Given the power of Howling Blast, it's easy to see Blizzard justifying that.
We won't be able to plan for the future until Blizzard gives us more information. Shuffling the frost tree could be a lot of changes. It may even include a new talent as right now, there is a dearth of PvE talents in the Frost tree. As of right now, the saved two points from Blood of the North likely just end up in utility talents like Lichborne.
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Also, I have not tried 17/0/54 in a long time, but I did ~500 dps less as 0/32/39 compared to 51/0/20 and 21/50/0. I may try it, but I have not seen any DK's in my raids that have done incredibly well with it. Honestly, I hope that KM is put at the end of the frost tree to kill most DW specs.
Why would you want to kill off DW speccs? - I mean, there are already so many classes that make use of 2hdrs, and rogues mostly, afaik, specc mutilate, so they go for daggers. Shamans can't use swords. I mean, what use will all the 1hd DPS weapons be then? No reason to "kill" off DW speccs, make them just as viable as 2hdrs to spread the loot around.
Personally I DO NOT want to have to specc 2hd, we got 3 DK's in every raid, more or less, and 2 of them are already 2hd specc (one tanks). We have 2 fury warriors, and 1 retribution Paladin.
That is like 8 or 9 2hd drops to get ppl equipped with the highest ilvl weapon for their specc at the min. That is a bit silly, don't you think?
That is like 8 or 9 2hd drops to get ppl equipped with the highest ilvl weapon for their spec at the min. That is a bit silly, don't you think?
Amen to this, our guild has only had one Betrayer of Humanity drop so far and that was a Fury Warrior who transferred, if I wanted to switch to 2H now I would have to wait for months for the max 2H. I definitely don't think there aim is to kill off DW spec just to keep it on par with Blood / Unholy.
I'm not sure if they want to keep DW secondary because of the loot drops. I think its more because of the style. Only class that currently utilizes two-handed style for PvE DPS is paladin. Everyone else (of melee classes) utilize dual-wielding style for (max.) PvE DPS. Death Knight is currently somewhere in between but it seems Blizzard wants DKs to be in 2h camp with Paladins.
Personally I just do not enjoy playing a DW spec. I've seen so many people doing 5.5-6k dps with several DW and specs, and I keep trying it over and over, hoping it will be different every time. However, it never works out, and it's even harder for me to get last laugh to even come close due to the fact that we've never had one drop and still have 3 prot warriors that need it.
Also, the play style for DW is just kind annoying for me. Lots of white damage to sit back and do nothing to accomplish, and spamming IT to pray for rime procs. I never really enjoyed it enough.
Personally I just do not enjoy playing a DW spec. I've seen so many people doing 5.5-6k dps with several DW and specs, and I keep trying it over and over, hoping it will be different every time. However, it never works out, and it's even harder for me to get last laugh to even come close due to the fact that we've never had one drop and still have 3 prot warriors that need it.
Also, the play style for DW is just kind annoying for me. Lots of white damage to sit back and do nothing to accomplish, and spamming IT to pray for rime procs. I never really enjoyed it enough.
You don't giggle like a schoolgirl when you howling blast crit everything and it's grandma for 10k? Freak...
I wonder if Blood will be more viable and fun to play now, depending on how they change armor pen. I didn't like it before because it felt like if I didn't hit keys as fast as possible the whole way through I was losing DPS. With DW I got very small breaks spread throughout my rotation that stopped my wrist from snapping off.
What I definitely do not want to see is them reducing the damage of Obliterate, and then tacking on the disease damage modifiers to bring it back up to where it already was. The already relatively under-performing specs (Blood, Frost) are pretty reliant on Obliterate, (which also happens to be inflated by our set bonuses), and could use the damage buff.
Personally, I am wanting to see a Scourge Strike Glyph type talent in deep Blood that would apply your diseases and keep them up. From what I've seen, the Blood rotations are very complex, and everyone really likes the diseaseless rotations because of how much simpler they are to use.
I can't imagine doing the Sunwell version of the new content and trying to keep up with a rotation like that.
Anyway, the disease modifiers/damage definitely must change or we'll just be trying to wiggle around them for the rest of our lives.
Personally, I am wanting to see a Scourge Strike Glyph type talent in deep Blood that would apply your diseases and keep them up. From what I've seen, the Blood rotations are very complex, and everyone really likes the diseaseless rotations because of how much simpler they are to use.
I've not found blood to be a hard rotation at all. Diseases->Spam HS->OB with DC when runes are all down.
Also, about earlier with my single target stuff (FS/OB) hitting for 10k, I was implying HB was included too, but I apologize if it wasn't completely clear. And yes, the raids I am in just AoE everything and HB is the best way to get burst in before everything dies. =D
02/06/09, 6:18 PM
