Cataclysm Death Knight Changes - Page 2

blockanwo · 04/08/10, 10:29 PM

I am most excited about this snippet:

* We want to provide a 2-handed style for Frost since we recognize that pets are an acquired taste. We think we have the design space to do that now that we don’t need to support Frost tanking. We’re definitely committed to making Frost work as a dual-wield tree though -- that isn’t going away.

Looks like the Blood DPSers can breathe a little easier now. There was a lot of grumbling about us being forced to spec into Unholy. Hopefully they make it work and it appears we have the choice between Frost Melee DPS DW/2H and Unholy 2H DPS focused more on Diseases and Ghoul. I was half expecting to see a dedicated PVP tree being announced, perhaps we will see it turn out that way with the placement of some of these new abilities.

Torn · 04/09/10, 1:11 AM

This is indeed quite interesting. In the initial announcement, when they dropped the blood bomb, they said they were not sure about 2H Frost DPS'ing and DW Blood Tanking, yet (source). However, the class preview clearly points out that they want a 2H Frost DPS spec (source). No DW Blood Tanking is mentioned, however.

Consider · 04/09/10, 1:43 AM

For those confused about the new Rune system, this is basically how it plays out:

Runes start off as: 20/20 Blood, 20/20 Frost, 20/20 Unholy.

Time	Ability	Runes
0 sec	PS	20/20 B, 20/20 F, 10/20 U
1.5 sec	IT	20/20 B, 10/20 F, 11.5/20 U
3 sec	BS	10/20 B, 11.5/20 F, 13/20 U
4.5 sec	BS	1.5/20 B, 13/20 F, 14.5/20 U
6 sec	SS	3/20 B, 4.5/20 F, 6/20 U
7.5 sec	DC	4.5/20 B, 6/20 F, 7.5/20 U
9 sec	HoW	6/20 B, 7.5/20 F, 9/20 U
10.5 sec	Empty	7.5/20 B, 9/20 F, 10.5/20 U
11 sec	SS	9/20 B, 0.5/20 F, 2/20 U
12.5 sec	DC	10.5 B, 2/20 F, 3.5/20 U
14 sec	BS	2/20 B, 3.5/20 F, 5/20 U
15.5 sec	Empty	3.5/20 B, 5/20 F, 6.5/20 U
17 sec	Empty	5/20 B, 6.5/20 F, 8/20 U
19.5 sec	Empty	6.5/20 B, 8/20 F, 9.5/20 U
21 sec	PS	8/20 B, 9.5/20 F, 1/20 U
22.5 sec	IT	9.5/20 B, 1/20 F, 12.5/20 U
24 sec	BS	0.5/20 B, 2.5/20 F, 4/20 U

For the first 14 or so seconds, you don't notice a change, but after that, things shift radically. You basically do 3-4 abilities (PS IT BS DC or SS BS DC) and then have 3-4 empty GCDs, and then do 3-4 abilties (PS IT BS DC or SS BS DC) and then have the empty GCDs... so on and so forth.

Basically, runes won't refresh concurrently - only one rune of a pair can refresh at a time. Past our initial burning at the start of the fight, this means half as many rune abilities (and, subsequently, half as many runic power abilities). They've stated they plan to adjust the damage of abilities accordingly, so it's doubtful the numbers will change much, simply the playstyle of having almost as many free gcds as active one.

Of course, the effects of haste, mastery, Dark Simulacrum, and other such abilities could eat up many of these newly freed GCDs, but it's too early to say.

Neddie · 04/09/10, 1:49 AM

For people confused about how the new rune system is supposed to work, I believe I understand it and can explain it:

Imagine you have 3 rogue-like energy bars: one red, one blue, one green. Each of them starts at 100, and there's a line at 50. If you use an ability that uses that color, you drop that bar by 50, and it immediately starts refilling, taking 20s to go from 0 to 100, or 10s to go from 50 to 100 (before haste). "Do I have the rune available" becomes "Is that bar past halfway"

Practically, what this means is that you never waste a rune as long as you use it before that bar hits 100, giving you about 10s grace time per rune to use it (much less grace time on average though, since many abilities use more than 1 rune).

If you're tanking you could be waiting till the bars are almost full before using abilities, to make sure you have the runes available for emergency buttons. If you're about to enter a burn phase on a boss, you could slow down your rotation a bit, let the bars fill up, and then quickly empty them during the burn phase.

If you look at the current system in the same way, right now we have 6 bars that fill up and each of them goes to 65, with the first option to use the rune at 50. The extra 15 being the "grace period" where if we use the rune within 2s of it becoming active it's as if we used it immediately. If we don't use it within those 2s, that bonus 15 is taken away, and the bar sits at 50 until it is used.

Heh, looks like Consider posted his explanation while I was writing mine, but I'll leave this here in case an alternate explanation is useful to anyone.

Gort · 04/09/10, 1:58 AM

I apparently type far too slow.

Neddie · 04/09/10, 2:05 AM

Originally Posted by Consider

For the first 14 or so seconds, you don't notice a change, but after that, things shift radically. You basically do 3-4 abilities (PS IT BS DC or SS BS DC) and then have 3-4 empty GCDs, and then do 3-4 abilties (PS IT BS DC or SS BS DC) and then have the empty GCDs... so on and so forth.

One clarification: you don't *have* to use those 3-4 abilities right away anymore, because as long as you don't have 2 runes just sitting there, you're not wasting resources. Previously, if you didn't use a rune within 2s of it becoming available, you were wasting that resource, now since the two runes are linked or grouped, your second frost, second unholy or second blood rune only starts "charging" when the first one is available, and will continue charging whenever you use that first one. As a result, you could alter that rotation to do 3-4 abilities, have 6+ empty GCDs, then burst 6 abilities in a row and it shouldn't affect the overall number of abilities you get to use during the fight.

This means that if you happen to have a ton of runic power (say you just used AMS against something like Pungent Blight), you can dump that runic power instead of rushing to use your runes as soon as they become available. It also means that if you have to run away from the boss (Sindragosa), or run out of fire (Marrowgar) or, spread out, or any of the common things we have to do in raids, you'll miss some auto-attacks, but you shouldn't miss out on using any other abilities.

The "game" now becomes making sure none of your resources (runic power or runes) becomes topped off, rather than making sure to use runes as quickly as possible once they become available.

Consider · 04/09/10, 2:11 AM

Yes, you don't have to use Runes as soon as they come up any longer, but aside from cases of runic overcapping via AMS (which will certainly jump up in value), why wouldn't you? There might not be the urgency there is now to use a rune as soon as possible, but there's also nothing to gain by holding off on it. If you can do it, in the vast majority of situations, you're still going to use runes immediately once they come off cooldown, for lack of alternatives if nothing else.

Not capping your runes/runic won't really be a game in the sense that you can win or lose. You just can't mess it up, short of afking. A ten second grace period is that generous. That's not to say the class will be too easy to play or any such thing. Who knows. It's simply to say that whatever challenges the class presents, it won't be resource management.

There's no "game" to it, really.

Lanlaorn · 04/09/10, 2:29 AM

The "game" now becomes making sure none of your resources (runic power or runes) becomes topped off, rather than making sure to use runes as quickly as possible once they become available.

You still need to use the runes immediately when they come off CD (every 10 seconds) or have productive GCDs to fill another 10 seconds for the second set of runes to come off CD (at which point the 6 rune burst makes up for that 10 seconds of "slack"). Any time between a rune is not used in between 10 and 20 seconds is completely worthless. With current abilities this system just means that half our time is spent waiting for runes to refresh, literally doing nothing and in phases where we have to stop DPS for 10+ seconds are not as penalized for it.

Without further information on new abilities (non-rune non-RP abilities, specifically), we can't really make accurate judgments, but upon cursory inspection there are many mechanical problems with this resource system. What's the point of empty GCDs, isn't the goal of engaging gameplay exact opposite?

Gort · 04/09/10, 3:10 AM

Originally Posted by Consider

Yes, you don't have to use Runes as soon as they come up any longer, but aside from cases of runic overcapping via AMS (which will certainly jump up in value), why wouldn't you? There might not be the urgency there is now to use a rune as soon as possible, but there's also nothing to gain by holding off on it. If you can do it, in the vast majority of situations, you're still going to use runes immediately once they come off cooldown, for lack of alternatives if nothing else.

Not capping your runes/runic won't really be a game in the sense that you can win or lose. You just can't mess it up, short of afking. A ten second grace period is that generous. That's not to say the class will be too easy to play or any such thing. Who knows. It's simply to say that whatever challenges the class presents, it won't be resource management.

There's no "game" to it, really.

I think the simplest example is "Rime procs". Once your rune tanks are <100%, you are now free to use GCDs on procs, utility spells (Mark of Blood as a bad example, something like Outbreak or Raise Ally is better), any non-rune damage abilities you have (FS, DC, ghoul summon) all without wasting your resources. Currently, it can actually be a DPS loss to use the damaging spell proc on a talent you spent points in because of the potential wasted rune activity, which is frankly illogical.

Obviously, if we don't have anything else to do, we use our runes. Similarly, if a rogue CAN Mutilate/SS and doesn't need to do anything else, he will. However, this unchains us from needing to spend essentially every available GCD in a 20s period on nothing but our runes, which I'm honestly all about. It's less gaining by holding off on use than it is not losing by holding off on use.

I suspect this will allow far more flexible "rotations", looking a lot more like the Frost priority system than the Blood HS spam fest, with easily available open slots to dump procs, excess RP, or just get out of the fire without guilt.

Edit: Came across this lovely little graphic of the new rune recharge process. Just imagine we have three of those. As each one fills to full in 10s, (per GC's description) I don't think we're in for long, long periods of nothing to do, just a bit more room to move around in, so to speak.

0 frost runes:

F: [     |     ]



1 frost rune:

F: [=====|     ]



Waiting 2 seconds:

F: [=====|=    ]



Using another Frost rune:

F: [=    |     ]

Valtiel · 04/09/10, 6:20 AM

I wasn't expecting the complete reworking of the rune system.

Of course some caution will be needed, but the way the outlined it, it fundamentally seems like a radical hypersemplification of how the class works. I'm not really looking forward to seeing WoW become even easier that it is now, in all honesty, but in a way it's understandable that Blizzard may want to scale down the complexity of the class - while it's not particularly harder to master than other dps classes for "advanced players", it seems to be brutal on beginners, as any visit to VoA probably can show.

I'm absolutely underwhelmed by the direction of the 3 new abilities.

Outbreak is a mystery. It sounds completely useless as it's written. With a cooldown higher than 20 seconds, I don't see it impacting any pve dps or tanking rotation in any meaningful way. With a cooldown compatible with refreshing diseases, you would get a built in GoD mechanic, whose purpose would fundamentally be that of killing PS and IT forever.
So either it's a completely useless tool (outside of Pvping) or it's an attempt to rework the GoD mechanics into all DK dps rotations, and that would mean a massive change in the baseline abilities are balanced. On one hand tho, with the new Rune system taking disease application off the Rune chain could be part of the plan.

The other 2 abilities seem to be completely PVP based. This is my biggest perplexity - nothing of what was announced is actually PVE oriented. It may just mean that they plan to work the PVE abilities in the talent trees, but still it's puzzling

There is a chance that Dark Simulacrum's core functionality will actually have some PVE flexibility. Something like having OB hitting for 15k and Dark Sim for, say, 9k, but with a pretty wide list of pve abilities that you can copy. DarkSim doesn't need you to be the target of the ability, as worded. If the list of PVE-copiable abilities is long enough, it may actually become an interesting sub-2min cooldown strike that you fundamentally use every time the boss is gonna unleash some vicious spell to get a damage boost. Could actually be interesting.

I'm extremely perplexed about UH and Frost's masteries. UH being even more based around diseases will alienate me further from the specc - UH needs to be LESS passive and not more. Spell and melee crit damage does sound interesting for a specc that has some solid +crit talents (supposing they will surive the Cataclysm).
Frost being haste based could work well with the DW/2h project. The 2h variant will be certainly more strike-based than the DW one, so probably we could see differences in AEP of Mastery etc, leaving some theorycraft to be done.

And of course, even if I know it's just damage control and an emergency move, I'm stocked about seeing Frost 2h back.

dr_AllCOM3 · 04/09/10, 6:57 AM

The new rune system simplifies the rune usage extremely. Once you have all your runes on cooldown, the next rune will have an almost 10s window where it can be used. I wonder how that will play out.
This preview is more like a sneak peek. There will be a lot more changes, no skill will be the same.

Sphinxie · 04/09/10, 7:02 AM

This new way of the runemechanics working got me thinking a bit, and I would like to hear what your thoughts are regarding the thoughts I have. My thoughts comes down to maximizing your rune replenishment rate during a fight, and it can ofcourse not say how it will affect dps yet since we only know a bit of the story.

First of all only one rune at a time will be refreshing. That means if you for examble use two blood runes right after each other the second one will be sitting idle for 10-1,5secs=8,5 secs before it starts refreshing, making it a total of 10+8,5sec=18,5sec before it would be available again. I know the rune cd after the first goes down to 8 secs as one of the theorycraft threads have tested it to, just using the 10 seconds as an examble to keep it simple.

Now if you instead for examble use scourge strike between the two blood strikes, as it is in the rotation for reapingless blood atm, the first rune would be one gcd further into refreshing. Meaning it would start to refresh after 10-2*1,5sec=7 sec. This would make the second bloodrunes downtime a total of 10+7=17secs.

As I see it the same would go for the first blood rune if used this way. It seems to me that as it looks right now it might be possible to this way alternate between the types of runes you use to maximise your rune replenishment rate. This might also affect the value of deathrunes, but I am sure someone else here will be a lot better at juggling with that math. Further more it would mean more runic power generated per second, and this would have more value as they have stated.

How does these ideas sound to you all?

Amroo · 04/09/10, 7:38 AM

Originally Posted by Sphinxie

This new way of the runemechanics working got me thinking a bit, and I would like to hear what your thoughts are regarding the thoughts I have. My thoughts comes down to maximizing your rune replenishment rate during a fight, and it can ofcourse not say how it will affect dps yet since we only know a bit of the story.

First of all only one rune at a time will be refreshing. That means if you for examble use two blood runes right after each other the second one will be sitting idle for 10-1,5secs=8,5 secs before it starts refreshing, making it a total of 10+8,5sec=18,5sec before it would be available again. I know the rune cd after the first goes down to 8 secs as one of the theorycraft threads have tested it to, just using the 10 seconds as an examble to keep it simple.

Now if you instead for examble use scourge strike between the two blood strikes, as it is in the rotation for reapingless blood atm, the first rune would be one gcd further into refreshing. Meaning it would start to refresh after 10-2*1,5sec=7 sec. This would make the second bloodrunes downtime a total of 10+7=17secs.

As I see it the same would go for the first blood rune if used this way. It seems to me that as it looks right now it might be possible to this way alternate between the types of runes you use to maximise your rune replenishment rate. This might also affect the value of deathrunes, but I am sure someone else here will be a lot better at juggling with that math. Further more it would mean more runic power generated per second, and this would have more value as they have stated.

How does these ideas sound to you all?

In both cases you still get the same number of blood rune attacks in over a certain time, so there is effectively no gain. As long as you don't "cap" on a rune you don't lose damage. Otherwise, by your logic it would be optimal to use the second rune after 6 GCDs (or 9 seconds) to decrease its "downtime" to 11 seconds. But you don't actually gain anything that way. The important thing with this change in how the rune system works is that people have to stop thinking in individual downtimes for each rune of the same kind. It's better to think of it as one rune of each kind with a 10 second cooldown and a 10 second grace period (that's how it's going to work out after the initial burst after starting combat). That way it becomes obvious that it doesn't matter when during that 10 second grace period you use that rune.

As for death runes it will be interesting how they will work this out. At least for Frost and Unholy the current death rune mechanic slightly contradicts the new rune system as you would have to "cap" your blood/death runes for a split second to use them for a double rune strike. This is less problematic for Blood as they use one F and one U to turn them into death runes and use them as single rune strikes. So, there might be a change to death runes incoming.

passione · 04/09/10, 8:31 AM

I must say I like changes.

First rune system - don't bash me but all I can say is finally! For people with bad latency this is life saver.

As I see it - they will up dmg per rune abilities have - thus give us bigger start burst and also much better value for ERW.

What I don't like is that all 3 new abilities are PvP oriented although I see some nice pve potential there.

Start of fight, you just go with outbreak and your normal rotation - no need to apply PS/IT.
After you used all runes ERW and repeat - that is very nice start burst that could remind me of my rogue AR+BF moments.

More I don't know will Dark Simulacrum work on bosses (but I guess it will) - reflecting back Sindragosa 40k spell while you eat your own dmg with AMS doesn't look that bad, right?

Fyrestryke · 04/09/10, 9:14 AM

I think there may be quite a few people jumping into some conclusions based off dangerous/incorrect assumptions here. We don't have nearly enough info on some of the new mechanics to make any kind of judgement on most of this stuff. Haste's affect on GCDs and Runes for one is going to greatly effect how this plays out. I doubt very much that we'll end up with terribly much more in the way of empty GCDs than we currently have. A LITTLE more space to use proc based stuff wouldn't be amiss for some specs (i.e. frost), but I don't think they will put us in a situation where half our GCDs aren't filled. They're already looking for ways to push that playstyle out of the rogue class.