The ostensible neccessity of keeping our diseases up is one of the layers of complexity that has made the class fun to play for me, and I doubt I'm the only one. I don't think diseaseless rotations are an intended mechanic, which that blue post supports, and I have faith that Blizzard will do something about that eventually.

Eh, I'm thinking it's goign to be a buff, depending on what else they do, I always found myself with way too much expertise as blood anyways.

One of the key reasons why I enjoy playing my alt DK as 2-hand frost is that it feels like Icy Touch is actually a worthwhile button to push in its own right. Plague Strike, in its current form, feels much more of a burden: you press it because you have to, not because you want to (icy touch also felt like this for the brief period of time I was specced blood). To be fair, other classes have similar mechanics (Scorch and HfB are the ones that come immediately to mind), so it would be understandable for Blizzard to try and encourage us to use both diseases despite them not being fun buttons to push.

I think, overall, there should be viability in putting up both diseases as any spec (it should not be a flat out dps loss to put up the second disease like it is now, for example), but I think it should be an interesting decision, not an automatic "I *must* put up both diseases in every situation as every spec".

I agree on the Icy Touch thoughts..It does actually feel useful. However, compared to blood, we do get Blood Strike, which becomes an additional "painful" button to press, to me atleast. If not for diseases, just for the rune conversions. After all, blood strike's damage is pretty lackluster aswell. If not for the death runes, I wouldn't bother.

So, all in all, frost just trades in one for another

The problem with diseases has never been the diseases themselves or the bonus damage they grant to other abilities. The damage that diseases do in a raid-buffed situation, if they're allowed to tick a full 18 seconds with Epidemic, is fairly significant. The problem is that

1) The abilities that apply them are way too weak, especially Plague Strike. There was a time in beta when IT hit about the same as PS, and most Blood-specced DKs ended up going diseaseless because neither ability was worth using. This is coming back again at the highest current levels of gear because an average raid-buffed HS is getting pretty close to a single disease's damage over its duration-- it comes down to which is the more efficient use of runes. PS really needs a significant buff.

2) Obliterate makes getting the full benefit of diseases awkward for some specs and rotations. You either need Annihilation, which requires an inferior point investment thanks to the recent Necrosis buff, or you're forced to use Obliterate more judiciously to work around it, which becomes more complicated than simply not using diseases at all. Either Obliterate should not remove diseases, or, more likely, the Blood tree should get some form of Annihilation rolled into a deep talent. (If Obliterate were to leave diseases up while untalented, it might end up being more desirable than Scourge Strike for Unholy too, which would be counter-intuitive).

I like the tone of the changes listed so far-- they make sense and it seems they're pretty in tune with what current issues are.

Doesn't the planned pestilence and BB change seem to promote diseaseless gameplay even more? Especially for tanks who are losing a nice chunk of initial threat.

You beat me to editing in a question about that-- I don't think that change is entirely fleshed out in their notes. The obvious reason for the change is that as soon as they removed the cooldown on Pestilence in 3.0.8, Blood Boil became effectively useless. Pestilence hits harder in most specs, is spammable like BB, and refreshes your diseases on all nearby targets. Removing the damage from Pestilence forces people to use Blood Boil again, which makes sense from the design standpoint that you don't want completely obsolete abilities. For tanking, DnD is way more initial threat anyway, and more specs will have access to UB as well. The fact that applying diseases initially is weak for threat is already a problem, and a buff to PS would help that as well.

The odd thing, though, is that part of the 3.0.8 changes to buff Blood AOE capability was removing the Pestilence cooldown and adding a damage bonus in to Bloody Strikes. What I'm wonder is if they'll stay consistent with this-- will Bloody Strikes offer bonus damage to Blood Boil?

No. (This is my opinion). The only reason Pestilence is better than Blood Boil is that Pestilence's damage isn't just the ability damage. Its the damage (as well as threat) that you can gain from your diseases doing damage to every target that is hit. If they change Pestilence (remove the rune cost and add the cooldown back) and make the damage bonus from Blood Boil more significant, you'll still want your diseases up for tanking and DPS on AE situations.

One possible AE rotation is (assuming Pestilence is free):

DnD->PS->IT->Pest->Blood Boil

With regards to diseaseless rotations: This was a known problem in beta and Ghostcrawler acknowledged that it would be a problem when Strike damage outscaled diseases damage. I suspect that it happened way before they thought it would.

I found the blue post on the subject from beta.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - [Question] per-disease-bonus and scaling

The Pestilence / BB desirability depends on exactly how much damage / threat BB causes when affected by disease or not. Unless they change the balance completely, it's hard to imagine that a non-disease BB will do more damage than a Pestilence through the bonus damage of future BB as well as the raw disease damage.

I think it's a good change; the only spec where BB was remotely useful was Unholy, and even then replacing it with another Pestilence made things more convenient for negligible loss.

It makes snap aggro a bit more awkward for Frost, but I really don't think it's a big deal.

The fact that it consumes diseases untalented is the only thing that makes Obliterate an interesting ability. If it didn't consume diseases, it would just be a high-powered Blood Strike with a fancy rune cost. In its current state, DKs have to build their spec and rotation around it bearing in mind the penalty associated with it and play properly in order to minimize the impact of that penalty on their damage output. To my mind, this is a GOOD thing. It's another part of the class that helps keep the "skill cap" high and create a wider margin between the good players and the bad ones.

That penalty is only worrisome if it makes the ability completely worthless to cast at all, and Obliterate is far from that. To quote the phrase GC loves to use so much, it's one of the "interesting decisions" associated with the class.

Your argument would be perfectly fine if not almost every DK Spec would either completly skip OB for another spell without the penalty (Howling Blast, Scourge Strike, Single Rune Abilities) or would spec Annihilation, effectively removing the penalty for 13 points in Frost. There is only one spec in the current game that actually has to watch out for this and build their rotations around it, and that's 51/0/20 Blood. Even those DKs are now using a rotation without actually using diseases since spamming OB with the Sigil and good Gear outdamages playing "skillfully".

The problem is not "OB is worthless to cast because of it's damage", it's "It's not worth to use diseases when you have an untalented OB".

Point taken, but I still believe that diseaseless rotations are a broken/unintended mechanic, with the blue post already mentioned elsewhere on this page supporting that. All I'm really getting at is that I don't think the answer to this particular issue is to remove Obliterate's disease penalty.

edit: working AROUND Obliterate is what I meant by DKs "building their spec" around the penalty. Arguably, there are other tradeoffs that those DKs make in terms of brain time/ease of play.

Although the discussion has already shifted away from the topic, making CF/EP a magic effect would be quite the retarded change. I would much rather they keep it as it is, even with the DPS loss, than lose the ability to aoe CoE. EP should most definiteley stay a disease.

On the topic of diseasless rotations, as it has already been said it's absurd that such a thing is even viable, and should be prevented from happening. Diseaseless rotations shouldn't ever be more DPS as it is now. It's a core mechanic of the class, and being able to just ignore, doesn't make any sense.

Seeing how changing EP to a magic debuff would not affect it's ability to be spread as an aoe since Ebon plague is not necessarily spread by pestilence but is caused when a target is afflicted with blood plague or frost fever(pest spreads diseases, target is afflicted with blood plague/frost fever and therefore EP as well) I think making it a magic debuff and tweaking up DK damage to compensate is worth looking into and probably out best bet to getting the problem addressed quickly and easily.

Plague strike is still going to be a pain to use for some specs like 17/54 blood/frost where you are using icy touch only and using the converted death runes for obliterates constantly. Unless they add a seventh rune, which would be really unlikely. Anyone else wonder how this effects the current 2h frost builds?

Obviously all we can do is speculate at this point, but my guess is that they are going to make plague strike hit hard enough to make a rotation like #1 below to beat #2 (the current 2h frost rotation):

#1 (look familiar?)

PS-IT-BS-BS-OB
OB-OB-OB

#2

IT-BS-OB-OB
IT-OB-BS-OB

Looking purely at abilities used, this would mean that plague strike + blood boil damage would have to beat an IT, while also keeping the damage difference significant enough that it would warrant epidemic (which the new rotation would require). I think we need to wait and see what they change exactly. Perhaps if they buff PS enough, the PS glyph/outbreak will actually be good?

Blizz already said they know how to fix the EP stacking issue, and said how they are going to do it. It's just a very low priority for them right now, so there is no ETA.

Just FYI, the fix is to apply it on the target the same way as it is right now, but if you have the talent then even if it's not "your" disease your strikes will still use it.

Are we sure that is not happening right now?

I mean, for Howling Blast I have noticed that you do not need to have frost fever up, yourself, to get the double damage bonus... This is not COMPLETELY tested, just noticed during raids, that even if my Frost Fever ran out, Howling Blast did not lose any damage.

I wish they would just change Blood of the north to affect plague strike instead. Then we could just switch our rotation to:

Bloodtap->
IT->PS->FS->OB->FS->OB->DMP

And problem solved...(for frost anyways)

Edit:

I have noticed this too. Also, other DKs have been spreading / refreshing my IT as well. Not sure if this is intended but I'm definitely not complaining.

Discussing/speculating on 3.1 changes in the 3.1 thread. My mistake. :P

Correct, while I was 2h frost, I often did AE packs with D&D, HB, BB (hoping the MT had Pest his IT around all the mobs).

I don't see why everyone is so vehement about FORCING us to use diseases. There's already perks to using specs that are disease heavy that other specs can't do. Have you seen the AoE ability (or lack of) of the 51/0/20 diseaseless spec? It's a big trade off for a spec that does single target dps as well as 2h unholy and DW. It's like saying that warlocks and mages should have to use every spell they have that applies a dot, regardless of how good it is.

Diseases are a core mechanic of the class; it's not an unreasonable expectation that they be some part of optimal play.

It's like saying (and I don't think this is controversial) that DoTs are a core mechanic of Warlocks, and that late-TBC SB spam was poor design. Diseaseless Blood (especially of the HS-HS-OB-OB variety), while it posts good numbers, is every bit as faceroll as using one of those bobbing birds to tap your SB key every global, and is equally poor design if it's allowed to be a competitive "playstyle".

We're not vehement about "FORCING" you to use diseases, we're vehement that your choice to roll a DK was a choice to play a disease-based class.