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10.2.7
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I don't like the Unholy changes
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Post by
189325
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Post by
visas
I'm upset that they're trying to make it into some sort of tank spec that can also DPS.
It isnt just unholy, it's all three trees. They are ALL meant to both tank and dps (and pvp) effectively, so I really dont see why you're singling out unholy here.
The first thing I see that makes me think "Uh oh..." is anticipation. I was slightly upset when they changed the warrior version of this. On a more related note, it only slightly helps enhancement shamans in PVP. Now they're adding it to another DPS spec for another class, and I'm wondering why.
If you look closely, they added tanking talents to the first tier of all three talent trees, so as to allow any spec to tank effectively in 5 mans/raids. Unholy has anticipation, blood has blade barrier, frost has toughness. It isnt meant to be a pvp-specific talent.
Next, I reach about the third row, and I find myself not able to go further in the tree because I've run out of talents I'd find useful. Ferocious Dead is already a bad talent, but Master of Ghouls later on makes the HoT effect the only useful part, making me wonder if it should just be exchanged for a talent that gives the HoT to Death Pact.
You're not in the beta, so i'll go easy on you here... the ghoul is -huge- for unholy Death knights. It is one of the few things that allows us to match up to blood in damage output.
Right now my ghoul does more white-dps (barring talents) than I do. Without him, It takes me a fairly long time to kill mobs when soloing - but with him summoned I can rip through things like there's no tomorrow.
Part of the unholy tree is that it -is- focused on the use of pets, both the damage and utility that they bring. The ghoul is extremely valuable for us, and the talents effect it more than you're realizing.
On a Pale Horse is largely a levelling talent, as I see it. Sure, the shorter amount of fear/stun time is nice, but it's only 20%
have you done any battlegrounds? 20% extra speed while mounted is insane. It effectively bumps you to almost 400% movement speed whe you're on an epic flying mount as well.
I've played a paladin to 70 - their crusader aura has the same effect as on a pale horse (the 20% movement speed bonus). Trust me, after you have it and have used it for a while, you will never want to go back to any other class, because everything will feel like it's in slow motion.
20% stun and fear duration reduction is extremely useful for both pvp and pve. In pve, it's a tanking ability, allowing you to break fear/stun and regain aggro before everyone else in the raid. In pvp, 20% duration off stuns prevents a rogue from stunlocking you.
Right now, we have this nifty little skill called icebound fortitude - it makes you immune to stuns for 12 seconds. However, it cannot be activated -while- stunned. On a pale horse allows you to create a gap in a rogue's stunlock combo in order to activate icebound fortitude and get away from him before he rips you a new one.
Not to mention, I'm probably one of the few people who doesn't like Corpse Explosion. It'll be nice in PVP and on AOE pulls, but during a boss fight, there are so many ways for several classes to res or be ressed that I wouldn't waste their corpses on an ability that, for the most part, probably won't hit the boss anyway.
Corpse explosion is another one of those abilities that is shaping up to be incredibly awesome in any situation where corpses are available. Right now at level 64, my corpse explosion does around 400 damage to all nearby targets non crit.
In a raid, feel free to use corpse explosion on allies that die. They can still be ressurected (and even re-animated as ghouls) even if their corpses are blown up. There's no penalty to blowing up someone's corpse at the moment.
I get to the fifth row of talents, and find a gold mine of good stuff. I really like the change to Gargoyle, especially. It's far more useful than it has been in the past. Not to mention, Impurity and Dirge are huge DPS boosters. However, I'm at an impass again.
I still assume you're not in beta, correct me if I'm wrong. The gargoyle is not all that useful - he's decent for those "oh &*!@!" situations where you find yourself going up against an elite and need to DPS it down quick, but the runic power drain is severe and prevents you from using a lot of your other abilities - most notably unholy blight.
The next row is filled with talents I wouldn't want as a DPS'er, and more semi-tank option compromises. From what it looks like, Unholy Rune Mastery is the worst rune mastery talent for DKs. Then Magic Supression, the one that leads to the terrible Anti-Magic Zone. My main spec is prot warrior. I'm the main tank of my guild. I've been hit for 30,000 damage in one shot at later growths of Gruul. 10,000 damage will be gone fast. That zone will never last the 30 seconds, especially if it needs to be used to cover up a raid from an area of effect boss ability. Each person will be taking damage, and the zone will be gone instantly because 10,000 damage among 25 people will be absorbed like that. All because people want Unholy to tank casters. Unholy Aura is an unfortunate talent, too. A little bit of shadow resistance with a little bit of movement speed.
Ok, big quote here -
Unholy rune mastery, actually, is the best of the three rune mastery talents at the moment. It's a 10% chance -whenever you
damage
a diseased target to refresh your unholy runes over 5 seconds. That damage can come from autoattacks, strikes, and spells - even reactive damage (like thorns) can proc it.
Your targets as an unholy DK will (or should) always be afflicted by at least two diseases (frost fever and blood plague), and if you've got either of those on as heavy unholy you'll have crypt fever/ebon plague on as well. Unholy blight counts as a fourth disease.
The real key here is that this is effected by AoE. Unholy blight diseases every enemy around you, and does damage to all enemies around you every 1 second. Stack that with death and decay, which does damage to all enemies in the area every 2 seconds. Throw in wandering plague, which gives your diseases a 30% chance to damage everything nearby... basically it's all stacking bonuses. AoE'ing as unholy will refresh your unholy runes -very- quickly, you'll almost always have the unholy rune mastery talent active.
Now on to the next part, anti-magic shell and anti-magic zone:
-Anti-Magic Shell lasts 5 seconds and absorbs (with talents) 100% of all spell damage directed at you for the duration. If you're going to take that big 30k spike while tanking gruul, anti magic shell stops every last bit of it.
-Anti-Magic Zone is intended to stop lesser aoe damage on allies. I dont imagine that it will ever be up for the full duration, but think of how useful it would be when going after shade of aran - you drop it and it protects everyone in melee range for a good 3-4 spellcasts, which is almost (or more than) 30 seconds when your melee are interrupting a good 30-60% of his casts.
Post by
visas
(continued)
And finally, unholy aura - it gives 64 shadow resistance with 2/2 (dont trust the calculator). That resistance bonus applies no matter what presence you're using. Frost presence gives +1 magic resistance per level (so a max of 80 resistance to all schools of magic at level 80). With unholy aura and frost presence both active, you have +144 shadow resistance, which should be more than enough to resist a good 50% of a warlock's fears cast at you, or his dots for that matter.
It will also allow you to much more effectively stack resistance for fights like leotheras the blind - you can use an unholy DK tank there (or will be able to, rather) instead of having to gear up a resistance warlock to tank him in demon form.
There are only two talents in the later tree that I don't like: Morbidity and Wandering Plague. Morbidity isn't going to be helping anyone too much, since Death Coil seems more like an all out DPS and emergency heal button and, in general, abilities like Death and Decay never need their cooldowns reduced. Wandering Plague, to me, is going to end in "Oh crap, accidental AOE aggro, I'm dead." When levelling, it'll be nice, but as an end game DPS talent, there's no real use for it.
Ok, first off you need to refresh your talent calculator - morbidity is now on tier 2 unholy.
Anyways, addressing morbidity - it is one of the best talents i've used out of unholy thus far in beta testing. It reduces the cooldown on death and decay by 15 seconds (to 15 seconds), which allows you to aoe tank -much- more effectively, in conjunction with the new unholy blight, corpse explosion, and wandering plague. Once you update your talent calculator you'll see the changes.
Wandering plague is now 30% chance per disease tick to do damage to all nearby targets, including the target it procced from (so the target that procced the wandering plague damage takes double damage from that disease tick).
All in all, my problem is they're just filling the tree with useless talents that don't help DPS at all, which sucks for a DPS spec. No class in the game has two tanking specs, and it would be depressing to play a class that did. Levelling warriors and feral druids know what I mean when it sucks to level as a DPS spec and you are expected to tank anyway. Imagine playing a class with two tank specs and being neither.
Well get ready, because you're about to play a class that has -three- tanking specs. However, all three of them are very much capable of very high levels of damage output as well.
With a deathknight, most specs are able to tank as well as a protection warrior (for 5 mans at least, raid tanking is altogether different) - but area also able to level at least as fast as an arms warrior. My DK at 64 is killing most mobs faster than my rogue could at this level.
Post by
169285
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Post by
138927
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
visas
How ever did you break through that wall of text!
I haz teh skillz
Post by
138927
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Post by
173494
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Post by
111433
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Post by
173494
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
visas
Blood would be better at single target tanking and single target dps. Frost I really don't know Visas could probably tell you.
Blood is really the 'average' tanking tree, it doesnt excel at anything and is probably the worst tree to spec into for tanking purposes. You do get the nifty side-effect of massive self-healing though, which could let you tank 5 mans just fine but not much raid content.
I would list frost as the physical single-target tanking tree, though it has a lot of aoe threat abilities as well.
So...
Blood = best single target threat
Frost = decent single target threat, decent aoe threat
Unholy = best aoe threat
Blood = average mitigation
Frost = best physical mitigation
Unholy = best magic mitigation
Post by
111433
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Post by
visas
pretty much.
A death knight with no talent points invested could tank a 5 man. They're designed with tanking in mind, as long as they have the appropriate gear and know what they're doing.
Resto druids could tank a 5 man with appropriate gear and dire bear form, but probably not as effectively.
Each of the DK trees has bonuses to tanking which make it much easier (whether they modify threat or mitigation or both) - but they arent necessary for low-end tanking jobs.
Post by
194827
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Post by
visas
such as Death Coil
You cannot use death coil to heal other players.
Death coil only heals two 'units' right now:
-Your ghouls summoned with raise dead or army of the dead
-Death knights who are under the effects of "lichborne" - a frost talent which turns the DK into an undead for a short amount of time.
Post by
194827
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
visas
4% of whatever damage you deal heals the group. It's about equivalent to a shadowpriest with vampiric embrace.
Currently, as far as I'm aware, death strike is not healing the group via blood aura, and neither are bloodworms.
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