Subtle but huge Unholy DK nerf?

[skavader 0]

So I came home last night at about 3 in the morning, pretty much completely hammered, and for whatever reason I decided to pop into LFR real quick with my DK. While I was raiding, I realized that whenever I was AOE'ing and using blood boil, any of the death runes I spent on blood boil that had previously been frost runes were refreshing as frost runes, rather than death runes as had been happening for the entire time I've played Unholy. I thought at first it was a UI error, and then I thought maybe I was just drunk and being a complete retard.

When I woke up this morning, though, it was still bugging me. So I went through some notes on recent hot fixes, and then I spotted this:

Death Knight
General
Fixed a situation where some runes were incorrectly eligible to be turned into Death Runes.

Now I'm starting to freak out, so I pop in the game again after grabbing some coffee to see if what I feared was indeed true. And yep, it's official: When you use blood boil, and it consumes a death rune that used to be a frost rune, it will now refresh as a frost rune instead of a death rune.

I looked through the IV and Wowhead forums to see if anyone had posted about this at all, and was surprised when I didn't really find anything. Mostly because this is a HUGE nerf to Unholy DK's AOE DPS. I'm not arguing that that shit was OP back at the beginning of 6.0, but they've already nerfed the damage on blood boil enough to balance everything out. This is TOTALLY going to fuck up the Unholy DK rotation.

That being said, how much do you guys think this is going to fuck up things for Unholy DKs, the previous AOE masters of Warlords? What the hell is the new rotation for AoE even going to be? Will it be better for people to spend those frost runes on icy touch or festering strike to get those death runes back?

EDIT: Okay, this is weird. For some reason when I use blood boil OUTSIDE of a raid/instance, blood boil will act the same way it has been in the past, but when I popped in to another LFR this morning, it was doing the same thing where previous frost runes would refresh as frost runes. WHAT THE SHIT IS HAPPENING?!

Edited March 14, 2015 by skavader

[Anfauglith 6]

There have been a couple of posts about this on both EU and US forums. This is the result of a recent hotfix (12 March) regarding Blood Death Knight Reaping, where using Blood Tap and Death Strike made permanent Death Runes. However, the fix has made a huge impact on Unholy.  

 

Here is a rather lengthy article on the subject by Skullflower, explaining why exactly this change is a huge nerf to UH AoE: http://hornofwinter.com/2015/03/wtf-what-the-frost-rune/

 

Celestalon posted on his Twitter account that this was intentional, however, after a lot of negative reactions he eventually said "We're discussing". 

 

I personally hope that this change gets removed, because I don't want any extra Frost Runes, thank you very much Blizzard.

Edited March 14, 2015 by Anfauglith

[skavader 0]

Thanks for linking that article, I was having a lot of trouble finding any discussions on this. I REALLY hope they fix this for Unholy DKs, I literally just switched from DW Frost because Unholy seemed to be preforming so much better. I'm guessing if this fix stays DW Frost will end up being better for cleave.

 

Seriously, wtf Blizz.