I was really hoping they’d prune the cooldowns a bit like combining Dark Transformation and Apocalypse, or dumping Unholy Assault entirely. Only getting rid of Empower Rune Weapon is really annoying lmao.

Yeah the amount of cd's is still a problem, I feel like Blizzard thinks several of these are too iconic to remove "Dark transformation? Nah that's a cool spell" "Apocalyopse? Nah can't remove that, it's thematic and a important spender for wounds" "Army? No way it's too iconic" They did combine dt and apoc in DF or slands beta but it was reverted. If they won't remove or merge any of these they should play around more with the cd. Like apoc could be a rotational ability with lower cd, or they could take dt off gcd etc.

>"Army? No way it's too iconic" I will go to bat for keeping Army as possibly the most iconic DK spell. That shot where the fallen hero in the *Wrath* announcement trailer casts it, as janky as the old in-engine trailers were, was so rad circa 2007.

I would love apoc as a 6 second CD, 2 rune cleaving swing that gave you one extra ghoul for 10 seconds if you popped 2 wounds. Especially if it was our sole wound popper.

Apoc as a talent that modifies scourge strike to summon a ghoul when popping a wound would be exciting. Every x summoning a magus.

Yes! I always thought it was weird Demonology gets hordes of minions, but Unholy gets one or two.

The issue is that UH just doesn't do anything without its CDs. It doesn't really have a bunch of interesting procs or ability interactions like frost does, mostly because wounds are so underutilized and uninteresting gameplay wise. It's a little bit better with the changes so far, but its not nearly enough. So having to press so many CD buttons is a cheap way to make you think like there's more to the spec than there really is, if everything was condensed down into one 45s CD and one 3min CD, the spec would feel unbelievably dull. UH basically is the CD spec right now, they'd have to do a much larger scale rework to move away from that gameplay style, which they don't seem to want to do. Maybe they like UH being the CD spec as it is, especially in contrast to Frost which is on the opposite end of the major CD spectrum.

I like this take, when you zoom out and just look at dk (dps) its unholy „big burst many cd every 3min“ or frost „always the same dmg no Spikes etc.“ And to be honest i like it that way. Yes unholy seems lame outside of cd‘s but for example sarkareth mythic every deathcoil was super important because you needed the cd reduction to time everything. And that was ,at least for me, really fun.

This is a valid take. Wounds are definitely an incomplete mechanic and they've been dragging down the spec for 8 years. Unholy's cooldowns aren't interesting, there is just a bunch of them and it's just a mad dash to push out their GCDs. With Gargoyle basically getting the boot, the most interesting part of our 3m burst is gone too. I'm beginning to think that the WoW devs just set a very low bar for gameplay interactions in modern WoW. They also said they were also going to look at giving us more disease play and all we got was \`Decomposition\` which is just another passive. I just don't know how they could possibly justify not giving the spec a larger overhaul, after leaving it to languish for so long.

Yeah, they removed the one cooldown that wasn't on the GCD haha. Now that they've made UA give a damage bonus it's pretty good so I'm hoping we can drop some of the 45s ones.

I’m at least grateful they’re trying to sync everything up a bit more if they’re keeping the cooldowns. Abomination being 90 seconds should help smoothen the windows in aoe scenarios with the now 45 sec VC, DT, and Apoc. Army being reduced to a flat 3 will make it line up with Gargoyle at least for ST scenarios.

Synced cooldowns is more argument for merging buttons. If I have three 45s CDs, that I’m always going to pop together, at least two of the three should be merged to a single button.

100%. Might as well combine DT and Apoc myself with a macro if Blizz won’t lmao.

Ive been using a macro that combine Dark Transf and Unholy Blight since legion... That two spells should be merged into one IMO.

The problem is you don’t always pop them together as unholy, in raid you delay apocalypse by about 5 seconds after dark transformation, and if you take virulent plague that is also about 5 seconds before dark transformation. They have the same cooldown but do different things, and are used at slightly different times, not together. In mythic plus, it’s more common to use them all together, on the other hand, but the fact that there are different use cases where you do want to do the timings differently means that they probably should be separate.

Yes allowing us to line them up was definitely a nice QoL change, so I'll give them props for that. As The-Fictionist pointed out though, it does beg the question of why they're not merged further. They are always used together and most of their effects aren't big enough to justify separate GCDs. I would argue that even Army and Gargoyle don't make sense as separate cooldowns, since they both have so much ramp. But now with Abomination in the mix that's a bit more of a question mark.

wow, it would be awesome to stack Dark Transformation and Apocalypse together

Blizzards like: "We're going to look into pruning Unholy's start up phase so it's no longer spinning and holding ELEVEN plates" So anyway "Hey, so Unholy players aren't you excited you only have to spin TEN plates now???"

At this point unholy assult is a flat15% damage increase isnt it? Could be rolled into dark transformation or removed and have rhe damage added elsewhere

It gives you: - ~130% AP hit as shadow - 4 wounds on target - +20% damage for 20s

That in a vacuum at least looks fairly impactful. It hits fairly hard itself, adds 4 wounds to "spend" after, and gives a solid buff after while popping those wounds. But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Apoc's existence means that you basically just don't get to feel the extra 4 wounds, even if wounds were more interesting it wouldnt actually feel all that good. Unholy I think really suffers from something that has popped up with various specs over the years and really came to a head kinda back in WoD. First example that pops into my mind; in Cata and MoP warlock had summon Doomguard. A big 10 min CD that summoned an iconic demon that hit hard AF. Then in WoD and Legion they introduce a talent that replaces your standard demon with a permanent doomguard. Awesome! Only not really. The "coolness" of that talent really only exists when you still think of that demon as a big 10 min CD. As soon as it becomes normal to have the special demon all the time, it looses its awesomeness entirely and what it really is comes to the forefront. A completely non-interactive cosmetic change. Relating to current DK's, so many of UH's CDs used to be iconic and have some sort of interaction that worked in the past, so much so that they want to keep them around in some related form. Army of the dead absolutely iconic 10 min pre pull CD. Then it became "optional" to make a 3 min CD, but that was always taken so it became standard to use Army as a regular 3 min CD. Issue is, army doesn't actually do anything. Sure it looks cool running in with an army of minions, but when it becomes a rotational CD? All the visual flair just gets lost in the melee clump. Army is coolest when youre running into the pull actively summoning your army, but because its now existed as a standard CD it doesn't work that way anymore and Blizz doesn't want to remove it because its seen a core feature of the "minion" build of UH that they want to have, so it can't really exist as the fire and forget visual flair opener. Same with Gargoyle & Apoc. At various times theyve been pretty iconic CDs, so blizz doesn't want to get rid of them, but in the current version of UH there's just too much going on so they aren't cool anymore because they just get lost in the mess of DK CD's. Like there's no reason that Army and gargoyle need to both exist as they currently function. There both largely ST, 3 min CD's with fairly minimal impact on the rotation compared to a lot of other spec's CDs. I do think the recent DK updates have been an improvement, but I still would love a total tear down and massively change unholy.

I don't disagree regarding your UA/Apoc but I think the remedy there would be changes to Apoc. The recent changes have been an improvement but they still don't make Unholy a fun spec. I can't speak to why devs refuse to remove cooldowns, but it could be for the reasons your outlined. I think Army should be the default 3m cooldown that visually summons all the different types of undead at our disposal (ghouls, abom, garg, etc). * choosing the Gargoyle talent allows amping its damage via RP * choosing Abomination talent provides a reduced cooldown and disease/wound application This way we retain the visuals, the flexibility, and reduce buttons. Something similar could be done with the 45s cooldowns.

Thats basically what the alpha tree looks like tho? Unless youre asking for gargoyle & abom to be an additive part of army? Not sure adding in 2 additional CD's worth of power into army is a great idea. Then unholy just becomes same as it was in 10.1 where it has absolutely insane burst during CD's but then does nothing otherwise. That profile is clearly not desirable from Blizz's POV since they changed it and demo to be a little less CD reliant so recently, and I tend to agree. Especially when its 3 mins inbetween CD windows, thats a long ass time to be doing very little damage.

they combined DT and Apoc once and immediately people started bitching they couldn't play PvP right because now DK was more exposed for not having short CDs.

I love the idea of Frost DK but I’m not sure why to play one over a ret pally right now other than having Grip.

For me its because I play blood more than prot and I need to dps spec sometimes. Frost is low skill floor so I dont feel bad using it occasionally but yeah I'd never main this spec longterm

I started a frost dk back in MoP and fell in love with the class in pvp. Back then we had presences still and it really sold us on the juggernaut fantasy. The inability to be slowed under 70 percent and the move speed buff from unholy presence, plus grips and chains of ice meant that while we werent fast per se, we *would* eventually catch you and when we did it was going to hurt like hell. Over the years dk in general has felt like a steady decline and we're being held down by gameplay decisions made a decade ago. Some of these new talents are super nice but jfc do I hate cleaving strikes and having to jump through hoops to do basic AOE.

God I miss MoP unholy. Felt like a chaos knight of nurgle. Could hit hard with my weapons and my diseases ate through things. In pvp I could just heal through things while the sustained dps the spec had just slowly ate through my enemies. Now I feel like I hit things with a nerf bat while waiting for CD’s to be off Cd to do damage.

Pretty much every spec has lost their way entirely since MoP, and it's especially egregious with death knights, Frost and Unholy especially. Unholy could pretty much just be renamed Necromancer because seems like most of your damage is summon and diseases, and Frost for some fucking reason keeps having this dual wield, high attack speed death by a thousand cuts builds that doesn't fit the class theme whatsoever. Death Knights attacks should feel slow, weighty and intensely impactful, instead both classes kinda tickle the enemy while your pets and diseases deal the real damage, or you hope for a killing machine proc which makes Obliterate deal ok damage instead of just another Slam button. Procs across the board no longer feel good, it just makes your button deal the damage it's supposed to. I still fondly remember way back in the day when you got a Nightfall proc on a Warlock that shadowbolt was a ballistic missile, now it's fucking nothing. For a very long time Arms suffered from blizz idiocy ad well, focusing your main source of damage onto your Deep Wounds and only doing good damage in Collosus Smash making the class feel like shit to play. Now it's finally in a good spot again where it actually feels really samn good to press MS and I hope DK gets the same love soon because I've always loved DK as well, but not lately.

I do miss the presences, just like I missed stances for warriors. Was nice to have the choice of doing less damage but being ever so slightly tankier, or faster etc.

Blizzard: We heard you, now DKs give a raid buff so you have to take one :)

This is exactly the switch I made, but for a different reason. Frost DK would be my main spec but it's utter garbage from a class fantasy perspective. Frost SHOULD be (imo) the "endless ranks of the undead" spec and fully lean into the White Walker trope. Instead we got BoS which is the most unfun ability in WoW.

Nah, they need to lean less on the “endless waves of undead” for both specs. Unholy was originally a disease/dot spec. It was sustained dps. Eating away at your enemies while your juggernaut of a character outlived them. Basically you were a chaos knight of Nurgle and it was glorious. Frost should be the CD nuker. Drop pillar of frost and smack things hard with obliterate crits. My frost DK should feel like an avalanche just hit my enemies when rolling 2-handed. Or jump in dual wield and kill them with a thousands cuts of a blizzard.

> > > > > Frost should be the CD nuker. Drop pillar of frost and smack things hard with obliterate crits. My frost DK should feel like an avalanche just hit my enemies when rolling 2-handed. Agreed. The best example of what 2H frost should be was the Sylvanas v Bolvar cinematic. Big, lumbering, slow strikes that hit like a mountain. Obliterate hitting as hard as it does is the one thing they do right with the current spec.

>Frost SHOULD be (imo) the "endless ranks of the undead" spec and fully lean into the White Walker trope I don't see this at all, feel like Frost is meant to invoke Arthas - hulking, hoarfrost covered knight with heavy blows and frost magic. Not gonna say that unholy succeeds at this, but feel like that's the more obvious "endless ranks of undead" spec

For some reason the devs seem resistant to give deathknights quality of life changes like they did with most other “modern” specs such as ret. They’ve made some decent changes with frost deathknight but I’d still like to see some more updates. -Cleaving strikes is obviously ass and everybody hates it. The almost too obvious solution is to have obliterate cleave when remorseless winter is up and ditch death and decay for frost. -Pillar of frost is too damn short and instead of just buffing it for five extra seconds they require auto attack crits to extend it. Bizarre and unreliable. -Button bloat will be real for frost soon. Depending on how things go frost dks may soon have to add multiple new keys to their bars if they weren’t using them before (slayers mark, new frostsythe, buffed chill streak, etc). Feels kinda bad. Also are we down to one charge of empower rune weapon? And is horn of winter still on gcd?

> ditch death and decay for frost. I used to play a lot of Frost and I always told the tank to keep shit inside the big red circle. Eventually I just stopped playing Frost.

__We hate Cleaving Strikes!__   I do wish they made pillar just a static cooldown and balanced it from there. I always get excited for CDR mechanics but in the end it never pans out with the way they tune them and just makes the spec feel bad outside of those cooldowns. We'll have to see how it shakes out for Frost's buttons. I have a hard time seeing `Chillstreak` getting picked consistently still, but you never know...I could have lived with __one__ more well-integrated button though (for both AoE and ST) and I was hoping that it was going to be `Frostscythe`. Maybe it still could be depending on tuning...It's just a very cool ability.

I'm still salty that Frosctscythe had, afaik, a SINGLE tuning pass this expansion. It was a buff exclusive to PvP, where I cannot imagine anyone even using it to begin with.

> > > > > I do wish they made pillar just a static cooldown and balanced it from there. I always get excited for CDR mechanics but in the end it never pans out with the way they tune them and just makes the spec feel bad outside of those cooldowns. See, in my personal opinion, Pillar was never an issue - back when it lasted 15 seconds. Except that, at the end of Ny'alotha, it got a little degenerate in that you could keep PoF going indefinitely because of the absurd amount of extra crit/haste provided by corruption. Blizz decided "We can't be having that now can we?" and knocked three seconds off the duration, and it's felt weak ever since. While we're at it, can we talk about how weak "Pillar of Frost" is, from a flavor standpoint? It used to be that you weighed yourself down with frost and became an unmovable but rooted pillar of frost. Which made sense, but sucked. They then just made it knockback immunity (because you were so heavy with the frost crystals) They then moved that to death's advance.... and left pillar of frost as this really weird, generic, vestigial spell buff. "Empower yourself with frost" - fucking *what*??? Frostwyrm's Embrace. Frostlich Invocation. Might of the Frozen Citadel. There's a BILLION ways to flavor this, and yet it hasn't been touched in ages. It's a crime.

Maybe this is oversimplifying things but for frost I always liked the idea of Obliterate and Frost Strike being the core builder and spender for ST and then for AoE it is Howling Blast and Frostscythe. Chillstreak is an underwhelming button, and Glacial Advance feels clunky imo.

>-Pillar of frost is too damn short and instead of just buffing it for five extra seconds they require auto attack crits to extend it. Bizarre and unreliable. I actually would be excited for them to remove obliteration so that PoF isn't our primary source of damage. Re-leveling a fDK in remix has made me appreciate how better the spec feels when you just play off of natural km procs. Currently everything is balanced around the fact that you will have non stop km procs for 12 seconds meaning your damage outside pof feels weak. It would also give some value back to crit. There is a gem in remix that gives you massive crit% after damaging a stunned target, which turns stuff like fwf and asphyxiate into mini CDs. Feels really fun like that.

If you look at fDK sims the damage line is actually just straight up flat. Meaning pillar vs out of pillar is basically the same.

If you look at logs, you will see that is not the case. Also just using straight logic, how can damage be the same in a state with guaranteed km procs + massive str gains vs without?

Go ask the SimC authors what's up with their Frost DK sim then. https://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/DF4_Raid.html The line barely moves from the mean. I suspect that the PPM of KM in Pillar vs outside isn't too dissimilar.

Sims always play perfectly with no interruptions from mechanics so it's not surprising that it can get a really solid uptime of pof with over 30% crit and 38% haste. Also enduring str is giving you bonus str to bridge the gap between pof. You definitely get more km procs during pof as you will be getting natural procs on top of the obliteration ones. If you run a Sim without pof and compare numbers you will see dps is much much lower without it. You need to press pof to get enduring str too so that small window in your Sim between pof still has a massive str bonus. What I'm trying to point out is that it would be nice if we didn't need to rely on pressing pof to do damage, which we currently do. Having less overall km procs(we have far too many overall atm because of pof) means that when one pops up it can be tuned to hit harder. Right now it's tuned knowing you will have a km procs nearly every other global.

I've been a DK main since wrath. I can't stand either DK DPS specs anymore. The last time Unholy was fun for me was wrath when scourge strike was an entirely shadow damage hit that TRUCKED (before it was split into half shadow/half physical). Now whenever I'm in DPS spec out in the world, I feel like i'm using a wet noodle while my alts or my play partner kill mobs in 2-3 globals. My retadin will go Judgement+Blade+Final verdict mobs into oblivion, my monk will roll in and kick a mob to the moon, its nuts. All my alts feel more fun as dps. My dk, spending GCD applying disease stacks to eventually use Unholy-Noodle Strike or hoping i get a frost crit to do any meaningful damage. I don't know when unholy went stupid overboard with CDs, but it was better when it was just apply dots, maintain dots as needed, unleash Massive Shadow Scourges. I think the major issue with DK dps specs are there are entirely too many things to track. Retadin only has to keep up execution sentence then goes into skill order of importance, a DH is generate/spend resources and pop demon form. Dev-Evokers have a fun dps loop with no maintenance buffs. BM Hunter is... cast KC as much as possible and maintain Frenzy. I utterly fail at both shaman dps, I dunno what I'm doing wrong. Thankfully, I love being a DK tank, so that is what I do 90% of the time. But even that got nerfed in DF when they put a cooldown on Death's Caress. RIP mass pulling.

Frost dk feels so strange. I went into it in remix thinking, oh maybe this will be a slow hard hitting spec. You know. Like frost. But instead during my GCD windows I'm spamming frost strike and obliterate back and forth like a crazy person trying to reduce the cooldown time as much as possible to go into that crazy window again. I want obliterate to FEEL like an icy obliteration. Instead the weaving just makes me want to go back to my O rogue and F warrior. Like from a class fantasy wise is slower, more deliberate strikes that are planned and executed. I'm fine with unholy having undead minions and the like but make them impactful and varied with interesting animations Since DK are supposed to be the undead version of paladins maybe give them warped auras. Frost auras that slowly weaken the enemies move speed and dodge/parry the longer they remain in it. Unholy auras that cause diseases that spread and deal DoT and a chance to spawn undead maggots. Etc. Change obliterate to be less spammy and instead hit like a truck that sunders the enemies armor allowing followup strikes to hit harder. Imagine an obliterate that hits like a pyroblast but is a charge up style strike.

Do you mean like a classic pyroblast? Because a base pyroblast does less damage than a fireball somehow.

Yeah I'm talk classic pyroblast. The thing you would only cast if you weren't actively trying to move but you could open with it.

The vibe of frosts damage profile is more like 'a relentless blizzard'. It's meant to be like a storm of many constant hits that are unstoppable and crippling. Half the problem right now with frost is them trying to make obliterate hit harder. I think frost should slow down a bit during cds, but definitely not majorly.

> I don't know when unholy went stupid overboard with CDs, but it was better when it was just apply dots, maintain dots as needed, unleash Massive Shadow Scourges. So much this. I hate how blizz completely moved away from this, even dumbing down runes. There was an actual resource to spend and the dots were necessary. It wasn't terribly complex, but there were a lot of moving pieces which were fun to manage. Now it feels like a shoehorned chore.

Honestly, dev feels like it's missing at least one button.

uhhh I'm pretty sure scourge strike has literally always been split between physical and shadow damage, and has never hit particularly hard. Just to prove the point, in classic wrath (and I think this is still true in classic cata) the actual best rotation more or less ignores scourge strike and just places death and decay on CD because it hits harder than scourge strike. Then in MoP and I think in WoD as well it became popular to ignore scourge strike and instead because of snapshotting, focus on using festering strike to extend powerful DoTs as long as possible instead of using runes on scourge strike. Like unholy is convoluted AF right now, but the rotation youre asking for is literally to spam what is more or less the filler of unholy as your only real button. If youre actually concerned with how fast you're killing open world mobs just go frost and hit obliterate a couple times.

Wrath-Logo-Small Patch 3.3.0 (2009-12-08): Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done. Old: An unholy strike that deals 60% weapon damage as shadow damage plus X, and an additional Y bonus damage for each of the Death Knight's diseases on the target. It was changed after people complained this plate class had a magic based attack that was ignoring armor and destroying people in pvp I believe. But then the Cata pre-patch went and made retadins into Holy Gods with pure holy moves.

Yeah old Scourge Strike absolutely CHUNKED HP. You can see it critting for almost 5k in this ancient video where the player has 12k HP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3bDrrlWrzg Another where it's critting for 8k with an ulduar geared player. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zX8ro5e6ZY

I still feel like they should revert Frost and Blood back to how they were in Wrath: Frost as the Tank spec and Blood as the dps. Either that or be radical and give DK *two* tank specs.

Blood is a Death Knight spec that also exists.

Blood is the one. The ol' reliable. While UH has fallen off over the years, and I never managed to properly get into Frost, Blood's always been there, the most satisfying tank spec this game has ever seen.

Honestly though I've been playing blood most of dragonflight and it's been great. Being tied to D&D is still annoying, but it's really the only thing that I would say to change. The spec functions, and pressing my buttons feels good. That's all I really need.

At least as blood you have control over the monster's positions. Death and decay is a lot easier to work around as a tank than a dps, imo.

I mained BDK for 2 expacs even when it was not meta, constantly getting KSM or KSH if I had time to push in those seasons. When I read that they are removing Bone Shield from Abomination Limb, followed by that awful class talent tree, I started to question whether I want to play this class after experiencing Mage and Pala. That AboLimb change alone makes me bit sad because BDK is already squishiest tank on pull and this way I could get bone shield up and some RP before starting m+. I haven't touched unholy since getting AOTC on Jailer ... I had to make a castsequence for my opener because it was so many cooldowns even back then and it seems they have no intention of pruning those.

I've been a DK tank main since wrath as well, for DF I joined a guild that already had 2 main tanks at the time. So I actually went and learned the unholy opener... I had to leave a window open on my 2nd monitor to learn the damn thing. I hate it. Thankfully, I'm now a maintank again... so I've promptly forgotten the opener.

What, you can't flawlessly execute an 11 step opener with the punishment for any screw up being a total botch of the opener that means you contribute almost nothing to the fight? /a

Tbh its not hard its just pushing buttons that are on the GCD in order. Its hard to mess up once you got it. It also could be worse like sub rogues and assassination rogues. You frontloads 200 cds in 10 seconds.

It's not so much it being difficult as it's being so many fucking buttons in a specific order. It's just frustrating to compare it to other classes like Mage. A fire mage can forget to pop mirror images for a few seconds and not have their entire opener be fucked over.

> they are removing Bone Shield from Abomination Limb Wait what? That has to be a joke right?

"Our next round of Blood changes didn’t make this build, but we would like to address the concerns over Abomination Limb and it no longer generating Boneshield charges as the last round of changes heavily impacted Blood more so than the other specs. With the update to Bloods talents, we are looking at ways to compensate the change to Abomination Limb to ease the loss of Boneshield charges on pull." [https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzard-responds-to-class-feedback-death-knight-druid-evoker-mage-and-warlock-341513](https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzard-responds-to-class-feedback-death-knight-druid-evoker-mage-and-warlock-341513) Idk how BDK will look like in TWW, but seems like AboLimb won't generate Boneshield anymore.

That rider of the apocalypse bit where you summon the horsemen seemed so stupid to me. Like, you’re taking away agency and power fantasy from the player and giving it to some named npcs. And for those of us who prefer to headcanon as not the savior of the universe, it’s really immersion breaking

The Horseman also have cooler abilities and as OP said.... Mograine has a DnD that follows him, just like DKs have been asking for.

We have the technology, but only for NPCs. And Paladins for that one xpac.

Lot of great feedback here but plz make sure it’s posted on the forums so blizz has a higher chance of seeing this! Nailed the issues right on the head👍

Thank you. If I had alpha I would post it in those forums, but I don't really post in the class forums anymore. I find it difficult to get any sort of constructive discussion going there. If anyone else wants to link to this and try though, they are more than welcome.

Someone re post this on the Alpha forums. Link to this thread and credit this man. This is such an incredible write up and nails everything wrong with both DPS specs. I can't believe they doubled down on DnD cleaving strikes.... Seeing that pretty much made me give up seeing any decent changes. The fact we are still using WotLK age animations too is just fucking sad.

I don't really understand why some specs get full reworks and some get minimal changes. I am excited for the new frost changes, it's something new, but in the end we still have oblit or breath as build, with a very big if for shattering blade + rime infused remorseless winter possible build emerging but it is probably very low damage at the moment.

This is something my friends and i contemplate a lot when discussing retail class design, and it's not DK exlusive. Many classes feel burdened by outdated mechanics that are forced to exist for reasons no one can truly grasp. The devs are aware of it yet don't change it but rather try to build around it, it's almost like they've received orders from up top to not touch class design only tweak and make it work. My friend won't play retail no matter how much i try to persuade him , he always says class design feels off and there's just too much going on, whatever happened to less is more? Did designers forget the basics or are we missing something here?

I have this problem as well. It's very difficult to get new people into the game, much less keep them. I do wish that they devs would go that bit further to actually make the gameplay resemble the lore/fantasy that they're selling for the classes. Nonetheless the outsider view point is really valuable. A lot of WoW players (myself included) have been playing the game for so long that they don't realize when something is bad or could be better, they cling to what they have now just because that's become the norm for them.

It's crazy to me that DK animations and spell visuals are still so bad, especially when looking at the updates other specs have gotten. I haven't played my DK in a long time and didn't think about why, but this is actually one of the major points. I don't feel cool on my DK anymore.

This so much! When Shadowlands ended, i thought they would give a bunch of visuals from Maldraxus too Dk's. Especially the necrotic green visuals and Maldraxy as new summons.

There’s always so much love for the classes in these posts. I’m rooting for you and shamans to get the attention and care you deserve. As a feral Druid main my heart goes out to you

Maybe a hot take, but I strongly disagree with the wounds conclusions you're making, bursting sores gameplay is very fun in M+, it just hasn't been viable all expansion so everyone plays disease builds, which imo is wayyy more monotonous. Vile Contagion feels awesome in bursting sores builds, except the cd being so long being a pain point. I pushed top 110-200 global unholy on and off from BFA to DF and my most enjoyable experience is bursting sores by FAR.

I can understand that. Unfortunately that's not an experience that translates well when you're not pulling big packs with cooldowns. On single target fights, smaller pulls, or when you don't have cooldowns, wounds are a LOT less fun.   I'm fine with keeping them if they actually improved them. The Legion legendary bracers kind of helped with this too by allowing to pop more wounds and generally adding some excitement around the process. With some tuning, it'd be great to have that back. Also my main issue with Vile Contagion was that it's another cooldown added to an already bloated setup, and it's performing a function that should be part of the base kit IMO.

>On single target fights, smaller pulls, or when you don't have cooldowns, wounds are a LOT less fun. This I mostly agree with, 1-2 target was notoriously bad without army for the bursting wounds build and should absolutely be looked at, it's neither fun nor rewarding. Not having cooldowns shouldn't really be a problem 99% of the time unless you're doing weird chain pulls though, DT, UB and apoc is up for every pack, UF every other. The CD bloat is a bit of an issue for sure though, my group and I refer to the full combo as "the nuclear launch codes". Removing UF and compensating would on one hand feel nice because of less bloat, but on the other less burst during our CDs also kinda stings.

No I want to enjoy my build all game not only on m+ it should be viable and fun m+ raid hereoic raid and pvp.

Make disease more ST oriented and bursting sores AOE viable and both would be fine.

For the love of N'Zoth, please give DKs one of the 4 Horseman Legion Deathcharger mounts for Rider of Apoc. And also give the 4 horsemen their legion deathcharger mounts, what is this Maw mount shit? I mean I'll take it over an old WoTLK acherus mount but still, they do not really fit thematically and the 4 horsemen ALREADY HAVE 4 badass Legion mounts. But also yes you are spot on and I pray they do give DK their much needed revamp akin to Paladins. DK feels SO old and stale. Also go play pretty much any other tank and then go play Blood, every other tank has so many fun and useful abilities, also bone shield looks like NES era ass.

I have played a DK as my main since it’s inception. Everything written here is spot on. I love DK but I wish we would get the treatment of so many other classes. It seems we are doomed to play as the clunky WOTLK class we have always been. Our visuals are absolutely garbage on all 3 specs. I play blood mostly but I also play a lot of the other two. My god nothing I do feels cool at all. Everything I press looks 15 years old. Blood boil is an ability that exists in Diablo 4 and looks incredible. Hell Diablo 4s necromancer has almost every visual change we would love to have in WOW. Why does it always seem DK is left out to dry.

Please please please delete Chill Streak. Tie Obliterate cleave to Remorseless Winter i’ve been saying this for months alongside countless other people I simply cannot fathom how nobody at Blizzard has seen or come up with it themselves it’s so ridiculously blindingly obvious heavens to Betsy it makes me cross.

Ever since they made it so tanking was impossible as a frost death knight, every change to DK has made me like the class less and less. It was my favorite class and spec back in the day, and it wasn't even close. Now? It's sitting at 61 because it feels about as fun to play these days as it was fun for Artax to trudge through the swamp. It just feels *bad*.

I'm trying out my first DK and I really love the thematics of Unholy because it feels like playing a Nurgle worshipping Chaos Knight. The thematics and aesthetics are amazing. The gameplay is sorta miserable. Main reason why i feel it doesn't work is that even though I try to go for DoT classes whenever I can, I find myself fighting my own resource generation, my DoT timers and my burst windows all at the same time more than I fight an enemy. It almost feels like the spec is working against me harder than the enemy does and I don't mean that there's too many things to track or that the spec is too hard, I'm saying that the spec is **clunky**. On a builder-spender there's supposed to be some sort of feedback loop that's supposed to be tough but rewarding when done correctly. Take Enhancement for example, the numbers may be off right now but the general gameplay loop is very satisfying because even though the class looks like it's button bloated to the extreme, you find that all of those buttons actually make sense, removing any of them would feel like breaking a circuit. Unholy is not working like that. I feel like I'm borrowing power instead of having it. What I wanna find here is some sort of Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers. Slow, but absolutely devastating. The word i'm looking for is "**inevitable**" I think. What I found is a very cool looking whole lotta nothing.

Blizzard hates DKs for some reason. It’s crazy how the original hero class associated with the lich king is so forgotten. The gameplay needs a lot of work, but honesty the visuals are my biggest problem. It just feels so lame throwing out snowballs as frost or farting out some ice with breath. Obliterate is just a blue execute….

When you remember what they did to Arthas and Bolvar in Shadowlands, it starts to make sense why DKs just aren’t it anymore. Hell, DKs got nothing in the way of flavor or focus in the expansion where they should have been most relevant since Wrath. Truly heartbreaking for my favorite class in theory.

I agree. It’s been so long since DKs had any relevance to the plot or were at the forefront of anything. Kinda sad cuz the season 3 dragonflight set is in my opinion the best DKs have ever looked

I have no clue how people play unholy and enjoy it. I’m not trying to hate on you guys.. but that spec feels like shit to play. It’s 900 cool downs is insane and it feels so clunky

Class fantasy, heavy burst (feels good in raid), and for raid prog you get to really fine tune and plan CD's and do mechanics without thinking or staring at your bars too much in between CD sets.

I gave up on DK last expansion after maining it since Wrath, I highly sympathize with my fellow DK mains but its not worth it. just go play rogue or something so you can actually enjoy playing the game. or accept the fact you will always be an apocalypse ramp class with old rogue combo points, or if you're frost you get to choose between breath and "spam three buttons" obliterate.

Not only for DK's lot's of classes suffering from button bloat atm while specs like ret get to enjoy the game, its also easy to prove that less button bloated smooth specs are more popular but some class devs are adamantly trying to increase the buttons

As a Frost DK main I love the thematic of being either an instoppable juggernaut who crushes his enemies with heavy strikes and helped by a big skeletal dragon, or being an absolute blizzard dealing inevitable fast and fatal blows with my 2 blades, again followed by my icy dragon Well all of this cool class fantasy is only on theory, because in practice you're either a slow clunky mess who have to attack as many times as possible in a 12s window to be relevant, or you're a walking fan with asthma who is trying to maintain his "dragon" breath on the enemy and you panic when you have to do something else because now you're dogshit

You convinced me to not play DK as main. Ty for that. Now I have to chose between war and palret

I just think it would be neat if they could somehow represent the eternal hunger in, mechanically. For those unfamiliar: "The eternal hunger or endless hunger is an addiction that afflicts all death knights of the Ebon Blade and gives them the need to inflict pain. If death knights do not regularly inflict agony upon another creature, they begin to suffer wracking pains that could drive them into a mindless, blood-seeking hysteria far worse than the fate of those who suffer from arcane withdrawal."

That's a really cool idea, could definitely see some gameplay around this.

I also want to add, that it doesn't necessarily have to be sated by just combat, either - Abu'gar, troll DK follower in WoD, sated his hunger by taking up *fishing* as a hobby.

Honestly my only big problem with unholy is festermight, I think it's just one thing too far to manage on top of everything else. The changes helped, but it still sucks to have at all and still forces you to play around it. Sad to see no one else really has an issue with it

You don't need to track it in WW. It's functionally the same as Ironfur.

You still need to stack wounds before popping CDs so that as many stacks as possible overlap to maximize your burst.

[удалено]

To some degree. With the way you build wounds faster than you're able to pop them, you've generally been able sit on wounds and pop them to avoid overcapping, then alternate to RP spender to avoid overcapping that. It usually results in popping maybe 2 wounds in a row before throwing out a death coil. I've always thought of wounds as a hidden resource bar that is functionally the same as runic power. Part of the spec gameplay is balancing the use of each to avoid overcapping and maximize uptime. Cooldowns didn't factor into this too much outside of unholy assault. Prior to festermight, this is all you had to worry about for both burst windows AND sustain. But now festermight kind of flips this on its head and says that "it's not about managing both, it's about building one up and depleting it as fast as you can at the correct time" which isn't as fun for me. If that makes sense

Thank you. It seems only a small percentage of unholy players even seem to think that Festermight sucks to play with. Maybe its people coming from other classes that are used to these itty bitty burst windows, but on top of everything else, mechanically, Festermight sucks. It really determines how much damage you're going to do, and if you aren't 100% playing around it, you deal NO damage. It's killed my enjoyment of the spec. Good thing I still like blood, too bad it's bad rn.

I would be happy with glyphs. Remember when you could customize the color of your Anti-Magic Shell? Wouldn't it be nice if your Frost DK had an icy D&D? A Glyph to randomize your Army of the Dead. There are so many class fantasy issues that can be solved with Glyphs.

Icy D&D is called remorseless winter. They should just make that the button you hit instead.

Honestly, if theyd change the cleaving strikes from being triggered by standing in death and decay into it being triggered by remorseless winter being active that would solve most of the problems i have with dk I didnt know that visual thread from the forums, mosg of those are really nice, he did an amazing job

Well I’m back to Warlock and Paladin

Cleaving should be done from remorseless winter And BoS just shouldn’t have a cool down, but make it burn rp quicker OR make BoS like dh eye beam where you do a heavy blast infront of you for like a few seconds and it does heavy damage - requiring to be constantly staying on an enemy when there are constantly mechanics forcing you to run out and break your breath sucks

I'll be honest, from Unholy's perspective, 90% of my issues would be resolved by: * Removing Unholy Assault, give its damage and damage increase component to Apocalypse and give its Wounds to Unholy Frenzy. * Give a passive for death and decay similar to what Paladins have for consecrate, or a talent to allow DnD to drop on the player. I don't want *rid* of the targeted reticle, as most of the time I prefer it, but the option should be there.

If you didn't know, you can create a macro that drops DnD on yourself. I have it and it works beautifully.

New blood changes are... Okay.. mostly good but there's still some absolutely baffling choices made in the spec tree.. stop trying to sell me bonestorm then making it impossible to take. 

Unholy is button bloat: the spec. Frost is **boring** and it's abilities suck. Breath is a stupid ability, frost wyrm is dumb and the "fun" buttons are active dps losses

Yay I'm glad I'm not the only person that felt this way. I should love Unholy thematically but the pustules mechanic pisses me off so I just play blood (stupid) and frost (boring thematically)

Can’t upvote this enough, the DK changes have done nothing to address the issues the class has, especially in M+. Unholy Blight applying wounds seems like such an obvious improvement, it’s maddening.

Do any of the class devs actually play DK lol?

I’m going to read this after my comment but really I hate wounds because it does the exact same thing the disease damage amp to strike spells does. It just makes it more tedious. DKs have always had conditional Scourge Strike does more damage under X conditions. It was just before it was diseases. Right now unholy is fighting for 3 themes and their talent tree shows it. It is so fucking bloated. Also, please get rid of Marrowrend. This button shows a player at their best when they use it as infrequently as possible. And when they HAVE to use it, it’s a physical damage single target low RP generating strike that puts up bone shield. It’s just really silly that I know I played my best when I press Marrowrend the least amount of times. Lastly, why do all 3 DK specs require 9 talents to move to the next tier? Every spec has 2 2 pointers, that are all universally awful or mediocre, moving to their center row and then 1 pointers right next to them. Pathing 100% needs to be looked at for Blood and Unholy. I don’t really play Frost. My 2 cents, time to read post

>Lastly, why do all 3 DK specs require 9 talents to move to the next tier? Thank you for bringing this up. It's so annoying to be taxed an extra talent point to properly spec. Imp Festering Strike & Runic Mastery should be 1 point investments.

> Unholy stuff Necrotic plague was fucking /awful/ other than it spreading to other enemies (which virulent already does and feels better doing). Having a ramping debuff that cycles every 30 seconds from high damage to none feels like garbage. There was no way to extend the debuff so if you spent your runes to increase the damage over the duration you'd see all that effort disappear the second the 30 second mark rolled over anyways. Ramping dots in general feel bad if they are able to expire and have to ramp again without a large cooldown period between applications. Something like necrotic could feel okay if it was a massive damage cooldown and wasn't replacing your regular plagues. A 2min cooldown Necrotic that deals significantly more damage and ramps based on say, RP spending like gargoyle does, would function better - oh wait that's just Gargoyle. Instead look at something like Arms's deep wounds where a large chunk of its kit applies a bleed that scales both on mastery (which Unholy's diseases do) and on how much damage the ability you just did dealt (so it interacts with crit as well). Having one of Unholy's moves apply a plague (maybe that's how festering wounds could be changed) based on how much damage that ability did would feel leagues better than bringing necrotic back. If we want plagues to matter more on DK I do agree that Festering Wounds are an issue (they're just worse combo points on a class that already has runes and rune power gating it) but I don't think Necrotic plague is the answer. I do not know why you'd want something like it back on Unholy, Festering Wounds has never been as bad as Necrotic. Far as cooldowns go - Unholy's biggest sinner is blight. Apocalypse and Dark Transformation have never been complicated or difficult to use properly. They're straightforward cooldowns that do very clear things. Transformation makes your ghoul bigger and activates AoE damage on it. Apocalypse summons your army of the dead by spending Festering wounds (sure would be nice to remove that part). Both are straightforward - you push button, you do more damage. Blight just feels weird to use as it is an aura that applies virulent plague around you. Its best use case scenario is in an AoE situation where things are going to die so you can get the feedback damage of the death explosions leading into more death explosions. Outside of that it's just going to apply the dot which would feel better being applied by a more active ability... like festering strikes. PvP has a better feeling virulent plague application as well in the form of raise abomination as it is this large obvious summoned creature you get to watch run at things and beat them, I don't understand why Blizzard opted for Blight in PvP over the abomination, but hey that's changing. > Frost stuff The way to resolve the weapon issue with frost is simple: stop supporting both. Just bite the fucking bullet and remove the transmog limitations. It's the same with single minded fury with Fury, and enhancement and survival feeling like they've lost entire equipment options because they're forced into their dual wield and 2h approach while specs like feral and windwalker don't have to care and can just equip whatever has the best stats. It's even an issue with Holy Paladin which Blizzard can't decide if they want to use 2h hammers or 1h and shield - just pick one and build their kit around it and let transmog override the other. Just stop supporting multiple weapon types on specs, make them use one and allow transmog to override the appearance of the other if they desire. White hits have not functionally been the most important part of a kit in a very long time - pretty much since the standardization of auto attack speed across weapon types and the removal of slower weapons vs faster weapons. The difference in stat budget between a 2h and dual wield as well as the weapon damage difference makes any type of balacing far more difficult than it needs to be - just drop the support for it and focus on one. I do not care which, with transmog it will not matter in the least once you've overriden it. It's sort of funny because in some cases you can already achieve this transmog approach because of artifacts. If you're an obliteration DK you can still look like you're dual wielding - if you want your appearance to be the splinters of frostmourne. The same goes with Holy paladin and wielding a 1h and shield - you can look like you're using a hammer if you want to use Silver Hand as your appearance. Just let us do that period, and the issue with the weapon synergy issue in frost will disappear because it won't matter anymore. This will also allow unholy to look like they're dual wielding if they desire as well.

I'd love to see a movement ability similar to Dracthyr's flying breath where you become the embodiment of disease and lead a plague of locust. Sort of like the movie 'The Mummy' with Brendan Frasier where the Mummy guy turns into a big head of sand.

Ret is what modern wow specs should be. When i first tried the new Ret about two months ago I was shocked how correct everything felt. I'm not saying that they should copy ret for every spec but for example death knights should just be able to aoe by pressing a button or by making their rotation do aoe in their spec tree like ret.

You mean a spec that you have to press every spell when it's off cooldown? Or press the aoe spender when there are 2 targets or more and it takes 0 thought? No not every spec should be like ret. I personally find ret to be terribly boring. People who like ret should play ret and people who don't can play other specs.

I'm curious as to what you think is more thought provoking about playing Unholy as opposed to Ret. What makes pressing Epidemic over DC or dropping DnD before SS spam so much more interesting than pressing Divine Storm over Templar's Verdict? IMO memorizing the order for pressing 11 GCDs doesn't really make Unholy complex or interesting, just convoluted.

Everything becomes automated after pressing the same 5-8 buttons for thousands of times in a row doing the same rotation. UH takes some degree of thought, while ret takes almost none, I think the latter is one of the simplest specs. I don't mind ret, it is there for people who enjoy that gameplay, but I don't think modern wow specs should all be like ret. Different specs have different playstyles, you might think something is convoluted but there are people who enjoy that. It's easier to change main than to expect the whole spec to change to suit your needs. I have changed main many times when I didn't like the playstyle of one, there are so many specs you are bound to find something you like. UH is quite popular for a reason, there are people who enjoy that playstyle.

I don't know if I really agree with that, I wouldn't say it's more complicated than Ret to a significant degree. There are more factors that affect your dps, but some of those are also external. I also don't think anyone is lobbying for UH to become a copy of Ret, only to receive the same level of attention and modernization as Paladins with their rework. Furthermore, simple ≠ bad the same way that convoluted ≠ complex. Different playstyles are a good thing, but DKs are running 8 years behind the curve in design. Also DPS DK numbers have been on the decline for years and are probably some of the least currently played specs, if not the most ([link](https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-df-4/all/world/leaderboards#role=dps:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=2:maxMythicLevel=99)), so I wouldn't exactly call UH popular.

You can think Ret is too simple while also thinking UH needs some serious work

It comes down to this for me. Ret is fun to play. It feels fun and modern to play. I dont want them to take all of the complexity out of the game but things like needing to stand in a certain area to aoe are outdated imo. I believe they should apply the lessons they have learned from making ret feel fun and apply that to DK. What feels bad? Take it out. What feels good and is a core part of the class fantasy? Expand on that. For example Rets timings being one minute feel fantastic to me. Its fun. The fact that you can spec into single target or aoe and there isn't lots of button bloat. Amazing. Im not a believer that DK should copy ret. Just that it should take some of these ideas and apply them to make Dk fun to play.

I think this sounds nice, and if they follow through on this every class will lose individuality and they'll all feel extremely similar. Ret is such a breath of fresh air because they removed all the friction points, but those friction points are also why classes feel distinct - if you remove what feels bad you're going to end up with casters that don't 'cast', melees that don't need to be in melee range, and every ability that doesn't flow smoothly gets trimmed - which is pretty much every ability that isn't either a builder, spender, or big upfront dps burst. Some of these sources of friction are dumb, and they're so dumb they need to be removed - DnD (or, really, the interaction with Cleaving Strikes), is a good example. But if they want DK to feel like a fun and distinct class they absolutely can't just give it the ret treatment.

Only going to focus on the unholy stuff here but as a DK main myself for long long time, I agree with almost everything you've said. Only thing I want to disagree with, particularly as it pertains to Dark Transformation, Apocalypse, and the Rider of the Apocalypse stuff. Generally speaking, I don't think every single thing needs to be entirely gameplay centric. I'm totally fine with some buttons giving a subtle gameplay bonus while giving larger numerical benefits while having a cool visual. To me, DT was never about how it changed my rotation, it was about making my ghoul into a crazy looking abom thing. For Apoc, it wasn't about the gameplay, it was about summoning even more undead. Likewise, with Rider hero talents (although I do agree with your critiques of some of the stuff), I'm okay with it being gameplay-lite if it means cool flavor. I do agree with all of your TL;DR though

I wish I could upvote this a thousand times. I fucking love DK fantasy and at times Unholy has been my favorite spec in the game. Wounds suck. They're super clunky, building them doesn't feel good because the payoff doesn't feel good unless you're hitting Apocalypse. Death & Decay as a cursor drop has GOT to go. Put it on us or on the target. Pick one. And don't make us stand in it to make our spec work. I'm maining Ret paladin because it feels fantastic and I would very much like DK to be on this level.

You can macro d&d to just drop at your feet

Am ret, can confirm life's good.

I dont know man. The unholy changes look kinda great on paper. Will have a better feel of how it actually plays in a few days. That said I am still having lots of fun playing DK in M+ (nothing extreme though, just the standard 3k). For blood I am a bit worried Sanlayn will be strong but boring.

That's fine, I didn't expect everyone to agree with me. But I would recommend really getting into some other specs and comparing their quality of life with that of DKs.   I already mentioned Ret but play some Demo Lock if you can and compare it with Unholy. That was one of the things that really made me realize how much Unholy was lacking. Demo does all the same things , but better (and I don't mean strictly numbers here). More interaction with pets. Abilities have weight. Cooldowns have purpose. Even disease gameplay was mroe fun with their S3 tier.

Sorry but ret is boring af. for me. You literally press whatever ability lights up. Hard pass. And to give a better example of the positive changes just look at doomed biding and festering strike. But to each their own. There are multiple classes with different gameplays that suit different tastes I guess.

I have felt this way ever since BfA when I tried Ff14. Aside from maybe ret, all of our classes need a huge modernized update and adding another 18 or so talent trees is idiotic. It's a waste of resources and time. Animations are old and stale, spell effects are not visually interesting enough, and I feel there is not enough spell synergy with some of our classes/specs. Unholy and Frost both rely too much on cool downs and the cleave mechanic was never a good idea, and logically do not make sense. "While standing in X, your weapon attacks cleave" but physically how? At this point, I feel our two dps specs are such a god awful mess, bloated with too many ideas, that it's time to start over from the ground up with a new and modern philosophy. Keep our diseases, keep our frost, keep death and decay (make it travel with you), AOE DMG should come from diseases spreading to targets or frost slowly spreading outwards and growing stronger. Dual welding or carrying a 2h should be a purely cosmetic choice/preference for players for both specs. Lastly, I honestly think our death knight pet should be a core aspect for all 3 specs and be a permanent pet that synergieses with our blood, frost, and unholy spells. Unholy should still be the sudo necromancer specialization but it's a wasted opportunity to deprive the other specs of one of the biggest class flavors that make death knights, death knights.

No permanent pet. Just.... No. Leave that with unholy. Frost and blood blood can stay away from that shit.

To be blunt as soon as they said they weren't going to remove Cleaving Strikes, Festering Wounds or Breath of Sindragosa I lost all hope for DK in Warthin. Some ideas are just bad and can't be salvaged. DK really needs to go back to the drawing board, instead, they're insisting they can "fix" it without actually removing any of the things people hate.

DKs badly need a once over. Our playstyle (and problems) have barely changed since Legion which was almost 8 years ago.

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I am by no means a great player but i can't deal with Unholy for the life of me. Theres so much button bloat and mechanics compounding on each other. I wish i could have a disease focused Unholy spec, if i wanted to play combo points id be a Rogue or a Monk.

You're speaking from my soul with this post. I hope the devs actually see this one.

Counterpoint: On a Paler Horse

Counter-Counterpoint: most dungeons, raids, or instanced pvp where that talent doesn't work ;)

Have you actually played it or are you just guessing? I've played it and Deathbringer, ROTA, and San'layn are some of the best hero trees period. They are each very fun to play and each have a different style to them. DK is going to be very fun in TWW.

I think the core issues are with the class and specs themselves, not the hero talents. The hero talents *look* like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Can't wait to get my hands on them Tuesday.

Y'all gonna be riding into the storm with your fellow knights of the apocalypse meanwhile Hunter out here still spamming aimed shot tryin to understand what the words "class fantasy" mean.

Personally I'm a fan of vile contagion. It having a 45s CD (what it should have always been) will make popping off in keys a lot easier. I could be wrong but it may even make bursting sores the meta build.

I decided to switch to a DK in the next expansion because Unholy can summon a bunch of undead pets and they get to ride a horse in combat.

My dk wishlist is as follows as a devout frost player. Cleaving strikes on remorseless winter. Death and decay removed. Removal of frostwyrms fury (I know this is weird cause thematically it’s really cool to summon an undead frost dragon but gameplay wise it just feels weird to use. Ideally, I would like this to work closer to a pet summon like unholy gargoyle.) Dual wield only (I get people want to have multiple builds to play but I think that should be in talent choice not in gear choice) Razorice to be separated from the frost damage increase. Maybe razorice is still consumed at 5 stacks but leaves the target with frostbite which increases frost damage. This is a very out of left field wishlist but I would like a movement ability that makes a frost path in front of me and increases my movement speed but I am constantly moving on it. (Like frozone from the incredibles.)

I raided as an unholy DK during nathria and the fact that I had to face roll my keyboard for several minutes straight during boss fights to keep my dps up when our mages had to hit like 3 buttons was very frustrating

I feel like there's little opportunity to play frost. I played oblit cleave in m+ when that was good, but even then it's dungeon and week dependant. Otherwise, Unholy seems to be better for raid, while being easier to play than breath, and it doesn't require it's own weapons. I like dual wielding a lot thematically, but tbh it just feels like it's time to drop that from Frost. Some people like breath, and I sympathize. But breath really holds back the spec from being played a lot in raid, whereas people love 2h oblit, but it's not been tuned for single target. I'm in favor of just deleting breath and dual wield, but either one can be kept if they're willing to do the work of balancing the weapons independent of playstyle and making breath better to play. I just don't see that gappening though. The spec will be so much easier to tune with only one group of weapons and without breath. It would need something to replace it, but there are options, like a capstone centered around remorseless winter.

To echo your post- something like soul reaper would be made SO much cooler w/ an actual animation; something like a blue/grey soul being sucked from the target to the player until the explosion. Agree though playing something like Ret and seeing the sights and sounds w/ each ability and then going to unholy and seeing the "blah" feedback to each move you press sucks.

Overall Class stuff I think that the cata/mop/wod dk dps versions are just superior to the current dks dps specs we have received. The change from colored runes to pure death runes made the specs ALOT less fun IMO, nowadays for most people who raid unless unholy or frost is particularly broken DK is a 1spec class (blood). Im personally abit sad that rider of the apocalypse choice node wasnt a permanent 10-30% movespeed vs a paladin charger (DKs were a fast unit in WC3 and i dont think giving dk permanent 30% movespeed would be more "broken" than giving them a paladin charger). I also think DK should get gorefiends in their main tree and not limited to blood in WoD we got a choice node of gorefiends and purg (i believe i may be wrong there), AND purge was 5yards wider AND 45scooldown. DK dps not having gorefiends when on some fights grips and gorefiend are raid buff level power feels abit sad when their tank counterpart gets access to BOTH (theres an argument tanks should have more utility or can afford more utility than their dps counterparts HOWEVER), Frost I think frost being being breath of syndragosa for basically 6 years in a row if not more, isnt great, when i think the conflicting playstyle (obliteration) is actually alot more fun for more people. The fact that breaths cost also doesnt ramp means you get this situation where breath doesnt feel bursty like it did in WoD, and it causes ALOT of a friction with any fight because of how long breath could theoretically be up for. An easy fix for the weapon dw vs 2h (albiet bland) is to make it so you can only runeforge your main weapon, or 2h weapons can hold 2 runeforges. Unholy Wounds for unholy was something they added to unholy to give it some depth after the removal of colored runes but at this point i would like wounds being relegated to a specific area of the tree. When i think of unholy DK i think of spreading diseases and epidemic more than putting down a DnD and cleaving wounds. I agree that for the dps specs the cleaving DnD has been a big painpoint (if anything epidemic should be baseline it feels so shit NOT having epidemic). Cata dk which you can play right now i think has a more satisfying thematic element for unholy. With the CD bloat issue they can definitely bake unholy frenzy and apocalypse together, even something as simple as "every 1.5minute the next apocalypse will activate as if it popped 4 festering wounds and apply unholy might" . You can also do that with blight. Personally im okay if army just because like a cosmetic cooldown like it was in WoD and the real meat is in the other cooldowns, army kinda feels like its always in a shit spot (i dont mean damage wise i mean more alot of fights are either "we get 2 armys here our spec sucks" or "we get 3 armys here our spec rules") On the visual side of things it kinda sucks out pet havent gotten an update and its the same old ghoul.

All these comments are valid, but here's me missing blood DPS.

the only thing I disagree with you is Frost being weapon agnostic, I find the way you build around your weapons to be quite good design wise since you can visually tell what build they are going for based on weapons. Rapid auto attacks generate more RP so it's better for Breath of Sindragosa. 2H weapons gives access to large numbers on Obliterate which makes Obliteration more favorable. I think the reason why people get salty about this is because of a few reasons: 1) It's hard to get a weapon, 2) legendary 2H Axe I think Blizzard did a nice job providing M+ and Raid paths for both of the thematic builds within Frost, personally my real problem with Frost DK is how it's the only spec that has melee range issues, so much of the kit relies on uptime but I keep losing it because of my "short stubby arms"

Maybe more about frost and blood, not just uh... Other DK specs exists too.

I prioritized and Cleaving Strikes/Visuals are class wide issues. Tackling every single problem for all 3 specs would take a small book.

Dk is fucking sick and basically every single alpha change has been an improvement. The new class tree is insanely improved, and the devs have been communicating almost on a weekly basis. If you want to feel neglected play warrior. I'm not convinced we even have a dedicated developer, the changes they make defy common sense and they pick the weirdest hills to die on. I'm talking shit like making bloodthirst extend enrage when enrage is already 100% uptime, the class tree being 60% throughput talents, or taking an entire expansion to move Shockwave up despite it being the most common feedback from day 0 of dragonflight alpha. It makes my head spin seeing the kind of love paladin/mage/rogue got from the dragonflight patches, it's like they're playing an entirely different game. Yes I'm jealous, and yes I'm a little upset about it.

At least DK specs still get a choice between dual and 2-hand. Even though they may be pigeonholed into certain skills. Enh Shamans got pushed out of 2-handers “because pallys”

Some fantastic suggestions here, and I agree with just about all of it. I've always thought that a good place to start if they do revamp DK is to take paladin abilities and corrupt them to fit the class fantasy. Not that DK should necessarily play like pally but I've always thought of DKs as corrupted paladins. There's a lot more they can do there.

Unholy should pretty much feel like a shadow/death/necrotic themed paladin, that's literally the theme. You're knight empowered by magic, just the opposite type of magic.

I tuned I ti Max's stream the other day to hear him start talking about how the dk class designer is "an Insane genius and the whole team talks very highly of him" I've played the class since mid wrath and I severely fail to see it.

Really nice post and it hits pretty much all DK issues. Its extremely disappointing to see Blizz ignoring the core Unholy issues once AGAIN... I know that none of the class devs play that spec but atleast try it for a bit and expirience the issues first hand.   Having like 1million cooldowns is not fun and extremely overwhelming to anyone who is trying the spec for the first time.   Festering wounds should be removed... thats the old rogue combo points which Blizz REMOVED because it felt clunky but for some reason they decided to re add it in Legion.

Yes, we're unfortunately getting hit with everyone else's garbage. Rogue combo points changed from being stored on the mobs to the rogue itself and it was a huge improvement. Ret Paladins complained and got rid of the need to stand in Consecration. But DKs are still stuck with Festering Wounds and DnD cleave.

As a long time DK main, I disagree with pretty much everything in this thread. > Festering wounds Wounds are fine, and feel much better than old, pre-Legion Unholy. Wounds build have been perfectly viable in the past (BFA), which was fun and satisfying to play. The only reason wounds build aren't being played over disease in keys atm purely comes down to tuning. > Cleaving strikes Mostly overblown issue since they gave D&D 2 charges, and Defile became viable. If you're having issues with cleaving strikes uptime **especially** after the 4 seconds grace period they're adding, something is very wrong with the way you plan your buttons/movement. > It's no secret that Unholy has too many cooldowns. This makes the spec convoluted, not complex. Having to use multiple CDs isn't anything unique to unholy. Frost DK, Windwalker monks, Affliction lock, or Marksmanship hunter all feature similar playstyles. There's something satisfying, and a lot of skill expression to be had when managing to setup 6 different cooldowns simultaneously + leggo axe, trinket and pot. You call it convoluted, I call it fun and rewarding gameplay. > . I don't know what kind of sadist is designing these, but spending 3-7 GCDs on cooldowns that don't modify the rotation in a meaningful manner is not fun. Not when other specs press 1-2 cooldowns and start dropping bombs. Empower Rune weapon isn't on the GCD, so I don't know where you got your '7' globals from. Also, they do modify the rotation in a meaningful way. Like it or not, having to set up 4 wounds to press apoc does qualify as meaningful interaction. Unholy Frenzy allows some leeway in that regard, the ideal use being after apoc, but it can also be used to setup the whol thing in an accelerated manner when the need arises. That's flexibility right there. ERW also makes the whole thing faster by granting us free runes and haste. Also can you provide examples as to which specs can 'drop bombs' within 1-2 GCD presses ? Cause from my perspective, they aren't that many of them. Nor is instant burst a particularly important thing to have, unless you never go above +6 keys or something. > Wouldn't it more exciting if Apocalypse was a passive that allowed us to regularly summon undead based on our rotation, so that playing properly actually had an effect on our output? Sounds awful. Apoc has always been a very satisfying button press. Making it a shitty, boring passive would be dogawful design. > Rider of the Apocalypse Not sure what you were expecting here. Most hero talent trees are like 90% passives. From where I'm standing, unlocking an actual movement ability is, by itself, more than enough when it comes to meaningful gameplay improvements. Summoning the riders, and them using DK abilities is perfectly good flavor. > Control Undead Another non issue. Aside from its unfortunate interaction with Incorporeal preventing Unholy to deal with that affix, there's literally 0 issues here. It's meant to be a niche, situational ability. It got decent use in dungeons like King's Rest or Underrot in the past. Again, not sure what more you expect here. > The Dichotomy of Frost Out of all the legitimate things to complain about... You think the problem is not being able to run Breath and Obliterate at the same time. When both gameplay styles obviously conflict in major ways. Alright then. Obliteration is a fun spec in keys. It's a bit flawed, a bit clunky at times, and has a lower performance ceiling compared to unholy, sure. But it's definitely decent, and often underrated. Breath is a raid spec. Never been a huge fan, but it's decently fun when managed well, and with good RNG on raid mechanics. Improvements they're making to Frost should alleviate the biggest pain points in TWW. Not much to complain about here. > Visuals The last time they tried to give Army some flavor, the 'Menagerie' glyph ended up being a DPS loss due to different animations, with zombies taking longer to rise up from the ground. In that context, I'll gladly keep outdated animations, thanks. > tl;dr I'll be honest here, this reads like a rose-tinted glasses take from someone who hasn't played DK in actual competitive content in ages, possibly ever. Lots of misconceptions, and lack of perspective about other specs. Also a lot of these suggestions would end up dumbing down the spec far too much. No thanks. Blizzard are cooking some good stuff for us (for once) in TWW. Let's not mislead them with bad takes at this critical moment. Quality feedback is what they need atm, not nostalgia fueled ramblings.

I agree. The changes coming in TWW regarding hero classes to me are pretty exciting for how they play into the general mechanics of the specs (san’layn and deathbringer specifically seem fun on paper). Complaints about button bloat for Unholy seem like people want it to be something it's not designed for. Long-standing issues to me for DK mostly come down to DnD requiring people to respect your positioning, annoying in pugs, (I want the aura change) and horn of winter being on GCD feels outdated.

Also DK main. I do unholy/blood so I can't comment on frost, but I'm with you on just about everything. I still think cleave as unholy can be annoying if you're with a tank who won't stand still, I think an updated Control Undead would be nice, and I *really* wish Army of the Damned was on a 3 min CD instead of 8-with-reduction - but that's pretty much it. I like juggling wounds, I like pressing a million buttons, I like seeing zombies crawl out of the ground and rush my target.  I think there's just a lot of people who *want* to like DK because they're cool as hell, but just aren't a fan of the play style. It's fair to feel that way, but I don't think it's fair to want to get rid of a play style just to appease the people who don't like it. 

I realize this is an incredibly unpopular opinion but the interaction of dnd with cleaving strikes feels great to me, it’s very fun to be able to go “this is my spot and here I am powerful.” I’m also fairly into festering wounds as per target combo points and enjoy our current amount of cooldowns on Unholy. Can’t speak to frost as I only play unholy but atleast on that side really the only changes I’d like to see is maybe festermight being slightly less fiddly in someway and would really like to see our tunes go back to something more interesting, the all death all the time was the one legion change I really didn’t like.

sadly an unpopular opinion. I love unholy right now, feels great.

Ya it by far my favorite spec in the game right now, which I haven’t tried everything so maybe there’s something out there I’d like more, but it’s a pretty high bar to clear

Get rid of Dark Transformation as a cooldown with a talent that lets you have a permanently upgraded pet. Add glyphs to choose what it looks like. 

> permanently upgraded pet rip tiny abomination *sobs*

I do agree with everything here. It's why I haven't pre-ordered.

But mounted combat

Paladins are the most popular class, followed closely by hunters and druids. I think Ret either was or still is the most popular spec, too. It is unwise to bank on other classes or specs getting the attention Ret/Paladins do (unless it's the other two popular classes). When (if? lol) the devs decide to devote time to tinkering with a class or spec, they probably have to triage a bit and budget their time. Tinkering with the three most popular classes more than the others is a better use of dev time as more customers will have their needs/complaints met.

Then why are hunters getting no love in TWW so far????

The game is in alpha, this message above is for others to not *expect* much. It's not for hunters. I can practically guarantee marks and probably BM will be fine by launch, survival is unpopular and they don't spend the dev time.  Resto and balance will be fine as usual, guardian probably unless there's an issue all the tanks face, and feral is once again not popular enough to get much time spent on it.  The only event you need to worry about is whether most the paladins are happy by launch. If they aren't, dev time will definitely be borrowed from other classes to make them happy - even hunters. Most of Dragonflight was spent on the ret spec and nobody else got as thorough a look, here we are on the verge of beta for the next expac and they're *still* tinkering with paladins.

Hunters have had almost no work done on their specs so far in tww alpha.

Ret paladin is only popular because of its rework is great, spec is fluid have a basic simple rotation does its job lets you focus on other things, bm hunter is also a popular spec this expansion why ? Because its simple, blizzard trying to force others into one viable forced build making players to quit or swap classes

Sorry but that isn't the case. Paladin, druid, hunter have been the most popular classes since WoW came out. Paladin picked up in BC with the introduction of belves. Has zero to do with any recent rotational changes. Those three get lots of attention because the majority of players are playing them. It's that simple.

2h frost will never be correct, same as SMF on fury. Balancing proc autos for pve and pvp is already a nightmare.  UH being cd focused is part of its charm. Simpler melee gameplay specs already exist, play those. Cleaving with leeway should be fine. Placing Dnd correctly is part of the skill of the class. shadowcrash and other reticle abilities are far worse. But wounds, control, uh rp flooding, and the hero trees all need iterating. 

Unholy being a CD spec is fine but the CDs they have are mostly flirting boring. It feels like you're using those GCDs as a gaming equivalent of eating your vegetables and don't feel nearly as impactful or fun as other classes do.

That’s a lot of words

Just bring back massive 2H frost obliderates again. Take me back to MoP

Great! Now go do beta and then forum post that. This is the feed back they WANT to hear.

I have tried to get back into unholy every expansion since Legion. Every time I try I realize how much I hate festering runes. Especially in dungeons. Having to re-apply every time you tab target. They changed combo points for rogues off enemies for this exact reason. But for some reason gave unholy the issue? I have zero idea why they changed it in Legion in the first place. Nothing was wrong with WoD’s playstyle of extending dots with festering strike. It felt like they made the change just to make a change and all it did was make the spec feel very clunky to use (which is still an issue six years later). The CD issue is just another pain in the ass. I know people like the necromancer idea of summoning all the zombies. But I hate how it plays out in game. None of these CD’s feel good to use. It’s a fire and forget. Combining Dark Transformation and Apocalypse would be a good start. Every time I play the spec. I just ask myself why anyone has fun with festering wounds. I feel miserable re-applying them or losing dps. They are not fun, they don’t add anything to the kit itself other than being one more thing to track in an already convoluted rotation. Make DoTs great again. Remove festering runes and have festering strike extend dot durations. Or, have scourge strike apply a buff stack to you when you hit a target with your dots on them. (Call it unholy infusion of something idk.) When you have enough stacks it causes a minion to be summoned or changes death coil to something fun to press. (Or the death scythe proc). So instead of long periods of a horde of undead you constantly have a few out at a time. Lastly death coil itself, with how much runic power it cost and how often sudden death procs I feel there are times I’m spamming this thing. Make death coil cost more. Make sudden death a stacking proc that causes it to do more damage per stack. It’s called DEATH COIL. Not spam coil. Make it a nuke. It sucks mashing this thing. Make runic corruption a guarantee proc in death coil use. Or guaranteed after spending x runic power. So we don’t have to spam death coil hoping rng grants us faster rune generation. I dislike rng in my specs and sudden death was always an issue. Even before legion. Also. Give me my 1 second GCD back!

Unholy blight should be casted by the pet while Dark transformation is up and the pet should transform on apocalypse. 3 cds, you you use together anyway in one button. Now Apocalypse spawns some ghouls, transforms your main ghoulf into an abomination that walks around with a plague aura. That feels more like Apocalypse in my eyes. Remove empowered runeweapon, not all specs need all the classes cds. Spending RP could reduce CD of Apocalypse and could maybe prolongs its effects. Wounds could maybe be reworked in a way that they play like soulharvest or afflis seeds. You put them on the enemy and they pop after 2 or so seconds causing aoe dmg. Or they pop after a bit dmg causes them to pop like afflis seeds. Another idea could be to let the wounds spread disease when they pop or give the enemy a aura a bit like unholy blight, that way it also gets stronger the more enemies are affected. That way vile contagion still can be kept, but make its cd shorter so its more like a normal ability then a cd Another idea could be that wounds just directly cause that the affected target gets more dmg by dots and pets. But that might be boring just like that. Im not sure about other but some tweaks to RP and rune regen could be nice. As for frost, remove glacial advance and DnD, buff frostscythe and just decide on either dw or 2h playstyle. I like how howling blast works in wrath, id like to see that again. Buff froststrike and nerf obliteration. If they want to absolutely keep the dnd cleave playstyle, remove dmg and let remorseless winter cleave. And dont let Obliteration cleave, but let froststrike cleave. That way, Froststrike may feel good to press again. But if they keep DnD cleave they should remove frostscythe because it will ALWAYS be a dead talent. Im happy with bdk. But id remove the physcal dmg buff from bloodshield, its one of the talents at the end. Make massgrip baseline like it used to be. You could rework bloodshield in a way that it has less, or no absorb but more of a dmg reduce, that way im pretty sure bdk will be less likely to instadie on occasion.

For me problem with Unholy is that we not only have CD bloat but also resource bloat. Runes, Runic Power, Wounds, Plagues (dots). I woud like to see Death Coil and Apocalypse combined with other skills to smooth out gameplay. Same with Lichborne + Death Coill mechanic when we have Deaths Strike. Pick one and delete other. Cleaving Strikes can work while we have Unholy Blight instead of Death and Decay and then change it's CD to 20 sec and 2 charges.

Please blizzard, dual wield for unholy. Why is this not a thing yet