Ghostcrawler on death knights

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Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by Ringo Flinthammer » 02 Dec 2008 09:23 pm

Thoughts on death knights
Ghostcrawler wrote: We’ve had a lot of questions about death knights recently. This is a new class, and while we’re thrilled overall with how it's been received, we always expected to have to make more changes to death knights than the classes that have had their talents under the microscope for many years.

We’re not prepared to announce specific changes to DKs yet, but here are some general areas we are tinkering with. Most of these changes apply predominantly to tanking death knights, so I avoided cross-posting this thread, but there are probably items of interest to dps specs as well.

1) Death knights seem to tank well when they have cooldowns available and take too much damage otherwise. The change here seems obvious – boost Frost presence’s mitigation while reducing the mitigation of some other abilities, especially Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield.

2) One idea we have for Icebound Fortitude is to scale the mitigation based on defense skill. This lets the ability be less of a paladin bubble in PvP for dps knights, while still letting it act more like Shield Wall for tanks. It also has the side effect of making defense slightly more attractive to death knights. (Let me add before it’s asked that yes we understand Ferals have this problem too and we are working on it.)

3) Unholy is a very popular tanking spec, largely on the strength of Bone Shield. Expect to see some buffs to tanking talents in the Blood tree especially.

4) Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat.

5) We don’t like the behavior where DKs feel like they are supposed to drop Death and Decay to generate runic power before a pull. It just looks goofy. We will probably lower the runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter, which seem to be the primary reasons to generate RP. Horn of Winter will probably be something like no cost, 30 sec cooldown, generates 10 rp.

EDIT: I am refering to using DnD outside of combat just for the runic power (kind of like Bloodrage for warriors). It's totally legit and intended to use it to start a fight to gain threat and hurt the bad guys.

6) There are some odd situations caused by Shadow of Death that we would like to fix. The talent isn’t designed to let you escape durability damage or rez by zoning into an instance.

7) There are some annoying parts of the non-pet ghoul. We want to lower the aggro range (for less accidental pulls) and spawn the ghoul in quicker when dismounting. The ghoul, at least Unholy’s version, could also use some AE avoidance like other pets.

8) We are probably going to add a new spell to let you raise fallen allies so that you don't have to make the decision between bringing back another player (which was just supposed to be a fun bonus) and bringing back your ghoul, which can be pretty crticial for some specs.

This isn't everything we're talking about of course, just a little preview.

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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by ukator » 03 Dec 2008 06:57 am

Looks good. We can be a bit squishy if dodge/parry don't happen and our cool downs are out. Also stated elsewhere that Blood will get some AE help.
Some more here.....

Sigils
We are aware that DKs may be struggling more to get defense. They lack tanking weapons, shields and guns, all of which can provide defense to warriors. It's something we're working on.

AoE as Blood
We're also working on Blood AE.

Horn of Winter Glyph
We would change the Horn of Winter glyph (to something like duration).

Tanking oriented 2H Weapons
I would not expect full itemization for two-handed tanking weapons. We wanted DKs to tank with dps two-handers (and have their mitigation benefit somewhat from the dps stats). We might add a craftable weapon or something down the road, but only if that felt like an option for the DK, not a mandatory piece of gear. You can also dual-wield tanking weapons if you want, but again, it isn't the intent that is the only way to play. (Please don't turn the rest of this thread into a discussion of whether or not DKs should be able to dual-wield.)

Rune Strike
Rune Strike is a tanking ability. It was designed to let DKs make up for the fact that their threat suffers so much from hits that fail to land. It does suffer from a confusing tooltip (which we have since fixed) but it is the DK who must avoid the attack to get Rune Strike to light up.

Active abilities usage
We still like DKs as the "active abilities" tank. We just think it might be a little too extreme right now. Icebound Fortitude was intended to be something you use when a big, predictable damage spike is coming, but DK tanks seem to want to keep them up 100% of the time for fear that they will die without them.

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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by kronosx » 03 Dec 2008 08:15 am

Good stuff. I've only tanked a couple of group quests and it can be a bit scary when all is going along swimmingly then you get a Deathstrike miss or the healer isn't quite paying attention.
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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by Piko » 03 Dec 2008 10:28 am

1) Death knights seem to tank well when they have cooldowns available and take too much damage otherwise. The change here seems obvious – boost Frost presence’s mitigation while reducing the mitigation of some other abilities, especially Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield.
I've only tanked a couple of leveling dungeons, so this hadn't bothered me yet, but I can imagine this change needs to be made.
2) One idea we have for Icebound Fortitude is to scale the mitigation based on defense skill. This lets the ability be less of a paladin bubble in PvP for dps knights, while still letting it act more like Shield Wall for tanks. It also has the side effect of making defense slightly more attractive to death knights. (Let me add before it’s asked that yes we understand Ferals have this problem too and we are working on it.)
That's a good plan.
4) Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat.
I'm going to miss the wtfpwned! 6K crits, but the change makes sense.
5) We don’t like the behavior where DKs feel like they are supposed to drop Death and Decay to generate runic power before a pull. It just looks goofy. We will probably lower the runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter, which seem to be the primary reasons to generate RP. Horn of Winter will probably be something like no cost, 30 sec cooldown, generates 10 rp.
I didn't know about the tactic until I saw Gnoire do it in a dungeon we ran together. I agree it's cheesy, and I'm glad they're changing Horn to be a downtime buff. I hate casting it mid-fight both because of the RP cost, but mostly because it eats a GCD, and DKs are tied to the GCD possibly more than any other class.
7) There are some annoying parts of the non-pet ghoul. We want to lower the aggro range (for less accidental pulls) and spawn the ghoul in quicker when dismounting. The ghoul, at least Unholy’s version, could also use some AE avoidance like other pets.
I can't wait for this one. While soloing, the mob is generally half dead or more before my ghoul even starts swinging.
8) We are probably going to add a new spell to let you raise fallen allies so that you don't have to make the decision between bringing back another player (which was just supposed to be a fun bonus) and bringing back your ghoul, which can be pretty crticial for some specs.
Good. I wasn't going to give up my pet to make a dead groupmate into a ghoul anyway! :)
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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by ukator » 03 Dec 2008 10:47 am

Gnoir no more blood dking?

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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by Piko » 03 Dec 2008 11:06 am

ukator wrote:Gnoir no more blood dking?
Nope. It was my plan basically all along to switch to Unholy when I got to 80. Blood was just for leveling for me.
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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by ukator » 03 Dec 2008 11:09 am

Cool!

See I'm frost I can say that!

ok bad I know

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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by kronosx » 03 Dec 2008 11:38 am

I'm loving unholy. Although my spec is a bit hodgepodge at the moment. I've only found a couple of group quests that I couldn't solo. And I've only been in a couple of dungeons so far, and as dps at that.
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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by Eremius » 04 Dec 2008 05:49 am

Piko wrote:
ukator wrote:Gnoir no more blood dking?
Nope. It was my plan basically all along to switch to Unholy when I got to 80. Blood was just for leveling for me.
Odd. That's about exactly opposite of other DK's I've talked to. They have/are using Unholy to AE to 80 and then switching to blood for tanking.

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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by ukator » 04 Dec 2008 09:02 am

More from GC on DKs
Ebon Plaguebringer not properly stacking with multiple Unholy DKs
There are a few cases where classes or specs with the same debuff don't provide equal benefit to everyone. While we don't want the actual debuff to stack, we also don't want to penalize players for not having the benefit or get into a race for who can get the debuff up first. Unfortunately it's not a trivial problem to resolve or we already would have done so, but it is something we want to get fixed.

In the meantime, if your dps is suffering beyond what you can endure, you do have the option of going Blood or Frost. (Source)
This will be good when it gets changed.
Rune Strike
I'll try this once again. I used "rogue killer" as shorthand, but so many players have such blind hatred for rogues that they only noticed those couple of words and missed the actual intent of the change.

We made Rune Strike a tanking tool. Really. We even made the decision in my office, and I think it was just after dinner one night. DK threat turned out to be a lot lower than we expected, largely because if an early hit in the rotation fails to land (miss, dodge or parry) then the DKs runes and rotations are all messed up. We needed an ability that you couldn't just spam, so we made it only light up when the tank dodges or parries. But Rune Strike was packing such a punch (and it needed to) that we didn't want to let it miss or we weren't really solving the threat problem.

The problem is this makes it a very good PvP tool vs. melee classes, because they are attacking the DK (who dodges or parries) and they often rely on their own avoidance to escape melee damage.

It's dangerous from a design perspective to have an ability really overbound like that. If DK threat was too low, we couldn't buff Rune Strike because that ends up being a big PvP buff. If DKs needed to do more PvP damage to melee classes we couldn't buff Rune Strike, because that makes them better tanks.

Our intent was not that the DK is all about Rune Strike the way the Arms warrior is all about Mortal Strike. Rune Strike isn't even that interesting an ability -- it doesn't use runes and isn't tied to diseases which are actually the core mechanics we want the DK to be concerned with in PvE and PvP.

It's not that we love rogues (or that we hate them). We just didn't want the PvP Death Knight to be a Rune Strike slinging fiend. Use Blood Strike, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike or your other abilities. If those aren't enough to let you stand up to melee, we'll make adjustments, but almost certainly not through Rune Strike.

If it can't help but distract you, forget the "rogue killer" part. We didn't want Rune Strike to be this ungodly PvP tool which it just happened to be. (Source)

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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by Piko » 04 Dec 2008 09:06 am

Eremius wrote: Odd. That's about exactly opposite of other DK's I've talked to. They have/are using Unholy to AE to 80 and then switching to blood for tanking.
Blood for leveling because you finish every fight at full health. No downtime of any sort ever. Possibly not as fast as AEing, but it didn't seem to slow me down enough to matter.

Unholy for the best possible DPS spec. I added around 400 single target DPS just by respeccing. Once I get my rotation sorted out better (I know what it's supposed to be, but my fingers tend toward what they've been doing for 25 levels) it should be even better.

And blood isn't the best tanking tree right now, anyway. Frost > Unholy > Blood for tanking.
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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by ukator » 04 Dec 2008 09:11 am

Yeah I've thought about going back to blood or unholy to level the last few, but I have too much fun with Frost and like tanking when possible. I would say dks right now are something like this....

Tanking-frost, unholy, blood
soloability-blood, unholy, frost
mitigation-frost, unholy, blood
AE-unholy, frost, blood
single target dps-blood, frost/unholy

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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by Piko » 04 Dec 2008 09:48 am

ukator wrote: single target dps-blood, frost/unholy
The numbers I'm seeing in my research are putting unholy above blood on single targets, assuming equally DPS-minded specs.

Blood is really the survivability tree. Not to say it can't do pretty darn good DPS, but if you want a pure DPS spec unholy seems to be king right now.
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Re: Ghostcrawler on death knights

Post by ukator » 10 Dec 2008 11:43 am

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)
We have talked about making some of these changes and wanted to provide more details. You should be able to try these out yourselves on the PTR before they go live.

Our reason for most of these changes should be obvious, but some common themes are:
Making tanking still rely on cooldowns, but rely on them a little less.
Make Blood a more attractive spec, and particularly for tanking.
Chill out some of the defensive capabilities all DKs have in PvP.
Avoid having to use Death and Decay as an out-of-combat runic power generator.

General
All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
New runeforge rune -- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
Many death knight glyphs have been changed. In many cases the negative consequences were removed.
New death knight sigils are now available, primarily from vendors, including a tanking-oriented sigil.

Blood
Rune Strike -- damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
The healing of Blood Aura, Blood Presence and Death Pact has been doubled.
Heart Strike – we overhauled this ability. It no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets like a cleave. It still hits for more than Blood Strike, but you can still use Blood Strike if e.g. you don’t want to break CC.
Bloody Strikes – the bonus damage from Pestilence has been moved here to help Blood AE slightly.
Vampiric Blood -- in addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
Will of the Necropolis -- now reduces the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded,
Dancing Rune Weapon – cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.

Frost
Icebound Fortitude – now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but it can go higher). The stun immunity is intended to be its primary role in PvP.
Frost Presence -- bonus armor increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%. We wanted to reduce the effectiveness of cooldowns but bring up base mitigation to reduce damage spikiness.
Horn of Winter -- now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
Hungering Cold – cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.

Unholy
Anti-Magic Shell -- cooldown lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
Bone Shield -- mitigation reduced from 40% to 20%.
Corpse Explosion -- damage increased substantially, added 5 sec cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
Night of the Dead -- now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
Outbreak – this talent no longer receive bonus damage from Pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
Pestilence -- no longer has a 10 sec cooldown.
Raise Dead -- now split into two spells: Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member (at no reagent cost).
Shadow of Death -- duration reduced from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
Unholy Blight – cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.

Really nice changes for Blood tanking. Added sigils is awesome, as well as new tanking chant.

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