well everyone, we got nerfed :(

[demonardvark 556]

big nerf today as clawing shadows for unholy has been reduced by 25%. So, scourge strike now will do more damage and the best Tier 3 talent is likely now Castigator (potentially some tier 2 changes too) . Also, death's advance got very quietly removed so we have like 0 mobility. Let's pray unholy is otherwise left alone :( 

[Harmolulz 1]

Hey demonardvark, first of all awesome job on this dk forum, read a few topics last night seems like you're really invested in this :D.

What will be the direction of dps dk in legion in general after this nerf? Do you think Frost can have a better impact now that our main hitting spell has been nerfed?

About Unholy tho, what about Unholy Frenzy? Isn't attack speed basically haste? Or it doesn't affect at all our rune regeration?

Kind of new to DK, since i played dps warrior for all my life, so all answers will be welcome, thanks in advance :) 

[demonardvark 556]

1 hour ago, Harmolulz said:

Hey demonardvark, first of all awesome job on this dk forum, read a few topics last night seems like you're really invested in this :D.

What will be the direction of dps dk in legion in general after this nerf? Do you think Frost can have a better impact now that our main hitting spell has been nerfed?

About Unholy tho, what about Unholy Frenzy? Isn't attack speed basically haste? Or it doesn't affect at all our rune regeration?

Kind of new to DK, since i played dps warrior for all my life, so all answers will be welcome, thanks in advance :) 

For now in prepatch and further into legion unholy will still likely be better due to mechanical reasons. Our number one damage in pre patch comes from Dark arbiter + legendary ring synergy and going into legion apocalypse is still very strong. As unholy frenzy goes the dps bonus granted isn't competitive with Castigator. The additional boils burst sims higher.  The relationship with attack speed and haste is strange. Haste impacts attack speed but not the other way around. So i don't believe UF impacts our rune regen. Beyond that though haste is already unholys number one stat and eventually they are diminishing returns at higher gear levels so it doesn't behoove you to try and push it further :D

so tldr, unholy should still be stronger than frost and castigator does more dps than anything else tier 3 atm. 

also thank you, i try to do a good job :D

[Harmolulz 1]

Thanks for the fast answer bruh !  :)

I've a few more questions actually, what do you think about Bursting Sores talent now that we can burst wounds faster with castigator? Could it be a dps increase? I don't really see it happening tho as ebon fever is quite a solid talent ...

I've been playing recently with Soul Reaper on the beta, and i've been doing approx 20-30k more dps compared with dark arbiter. Has it been silently nerfed? Or is Soul Reapera better talent overall now?

And last one, what should be the target cap to take Epidemic over Pestilent Pustules? I'm loving the last one so much now that we use castigator, feeling like easier to manage runes :)

Looking forward to your answers :)

[demonardvark 556]

4 hours ago, Harmolulz said:

Thanks for the fast answer bruh !  :)

I've a few more questions actually, what do you think about Bursting Sores talent now that we can burst wounds faster with castigator? Could it be a dps increase? I don't really see it happening tho as ebon fever is quite a solid talent ...

I've been playing recently with Soul Reaper on the beta, and i've been doing approx 20-30k more dps compared with dark arbiter. Has it been silently nerfed? Or is Soul Reapera better talent overall now?

And last one, what should be the target cap to take Epidemic over Pestilent Pustules? I'm loving the last one so much now that we use castigator, feeling like easier to manage runes :)

Looking forward to your answers :)

some of the questions come down to what gear lvl you are at and what is your raid comp.

so if you are burning bosses in under a minute then bursting sores is taken along with blighted rune weapon and PP. If you aren't melting bosses Ebon fever is better because your disease does its damage faster, so same damage half the time, so for longer fights that adds up higher over time. 

What you are seeing on the beta is the lack of the legendary ring. Part of DA's power is the synergy with the legendary ring. Once legion drops soul reaper does become much more powerful because it pairs well with Apocalypse. As far as which one is better gear, artifact, and scaling will determine a lot. Short story, apocalypse gives a lot of Death Coil and RP support, so when fully upgraded we can juice up Dark arbiter a lot farther and faster. In addition a legendary item increases the power of Dark arbiter fuller. So, ungeared soul reaper will be superior, late heroic mythic gear, DA will likely pull ahead. For Pre patch DA is still better though. 

Epidemic is taken right now because sort of cheese mechanics with it. You can use Epidemic to pre gather a decent amount of RP to use Dark Arbiter sooner (aka immediately on pull when ring and lust is popped). They may very well nerf this. Also, with haste stacking there are eventually diminishing returns where you cannot spend runes fast enough, so PP eventually loses effectiveness.

The big thing we don't mention here enough I feel, is that the guides assume full mythic gear full best everything. At different gear lvls different talents and builds will fair better. I won't mention other sites, but one other in mind, isn't very accurate but they do display multiple builds depending on ilvl. 

[Bricktor 0]

So, if castigator is the better talent, does this mean Crit becomes our best stat?

[Harmolulz 1]

I effectively thought there would be a haste cap where Soul Reaper would come out behind DA, thanks for confirming :)

1 hour ago, Bricktor said:

So, if castigator is the better talent, does this mean Crit becomes our best stat?

Haste will most likely be our best stat, until you reach a certain cap where you will always have a rune available. Mastery comes in second as most of our damage are shadow and that's what it empowers. Castigator or not, i feel like the base damage of our spells and the availability will always be better than a supp wound bursted.

[demonardvark 556]

2 hours ago, Bricktor said:

So, if castigator is the better talent, does this mean Crit becomes our best stat?

 

21 minutes ago, Harmolulz said:

I effectively thought there would be a haste cap where Soul Reaper would come out behind DA, thanks for confirming :)

Haste will most likely be our best stat, until you reach a certain cap where you will always have a rune available. Mastery comes in second as most of our damage are shadow and that's what it empowers. Castigator or not, i feel like the base damage of our spells and the availability will always be better than a supp wound bursted.

Actually what's very interesting is right now it's still up in the air. With Castigator a lot of DK's are actually simming crit>haste>mastery now. So, to be honest, maybe. Some of the larger theorycrafter groups such as Archerus are seeing very interesting things atm. So, I'm not sure that entire answer is quite out there yet. As soon as I know I'll inform everyone. Our good buddy Tegu has a few better connections than me, so the guides may reflect something sooner. 

so tldr, stay tuned to find out XD

update, i was right, tegu beat me to the punch XD your answer lies in the guide comments.

[Shells 64]

Its a pity, was nice having a ranged attack to keep up dps while moving out of the aoe on the floor. Ah well, always good to see a change, keeps it interesting.

[CMDRGus 0]

I was talking with some DKs in my guild and in Stormwind, a lot of them don't mind the nerf. Some didn't notice a major change in their DPS. I was wondering if anyone else had the same impression that the nerf wasn't that major.

[demonardvark 556]

10 hours ago, CMDRGus said:

I was talking with some DKs in my guild and in Stormwind, a lot of them don't mind the nerf. Some didn't notice a major change in their DPS. I was wondering if anyone else had the same impression that the nerf wasn't that major.

I wrote like a 9 paragraph response to this but i deleted it, i feel it ended up being more ranting than anything :)

The short answer is the clawing shadows nerf was somewhat expected and we can recover from it. The mobility nerfs however, were really bad. We now lack anyway to get out of raid damage. Most fights boil down to "stand out of the fire" and we can't now. We're too slow. We have AMS but if its not magic damage that doesn't work, and Icebound has a long CD. For wraith walk to be usable we have to waste a talent on it, which costs us a very powerful defensive CD- corpse shield. Even then, wraith walk doesn't work if you do anything while using it. So, you have to stop dps in order to not die. This is really bad for our burst phases.

Right now, mythic raiders are burning down bosses in 30 seconds due to the nerf in HFC. They aren't worried about mechanics or raid damage right now. Come mythic + dungeons and Emerald dream in legion, then the problem will become apparent to them if it already hasn't. In addition, Unholy lost a lot of its toolkit as did frost. DPS wise there is now 0 reason to bring a DK to raid. We don't do impressive dps now, we have zero utility to offer, and now in the case of unholy, we are squishy and can't move out of damage or attack high priority adds away from boss. So, DPS wise, its very concerning. Competitive raid spots were already hard for DKS to get, most raids in WoD would have one dk to use gorefiends, maybe two. That was the literal only reason we got spots. Now, those spots aren't going to exist, and pugs, will be impossible. 

With the changes, if there is any job that needs doing, pretty much any class can do it better than a DK can now. At least as far as DPS goes. 

[Shells 64]

They might reverse some of the nerf but probably not enough of it to make an impact. 

[demonardvark 556]

Just now, Shells said:

They might reverse some of the nerf but probably not enough of it to make an impact. 

If they made it where we could attack during Wraith Walk, it might be a step towards salvaging it. 

might.

[Shells 64]

It would be OP if they did that. Maybe by reducing the cool-down on WW that might help a bit. 

Re corpse shield, if your minion does its damage reduction ability while your passing  your damage to it, it should survive? Then again in legion with more damage flying around due to larger health pools and the likes it might not work. 

Missed out on the beta so im not sure tbh, could be totally wrong.

[demonardvark 556]

25 minutes ago, Shells said:

It would be OP if they did that. Maybe by reducing the cool-down on WW that might help a bit. 

Re corpse shield, if your minion does its damage reduction ability while your passing  your damage to it, it should survive? Then again in legion with more damage flying around due to larger health pools and the likes it might not work. 

Missed out on the beta so im not sure tbh, could be totally wrong.

would it be op? What does ice flows do for mages? how about spirit walkers grace for shammies?

no you are correct about corpse shield, typically the proper usage of corpse shield is to have pet use a defensive CD and then cast it. This all but dictates a macro to use effectively. However, to make wraith walk work decently we have to give up corpse shield to take wraith walk. So, it's a weird problem. We have to lose a survival cooldown in order to make a different baseline one slightly viable. Or, we just accept wraith walk as garbage and take corpse shield, but then, if misused could be costly. So, that's basically what my previous point was. Losing DA was an initial bad problem, but then it leaves us, with questionable options. Certainly for raiders I think it'll end up take corpse shield and use a macro, but, for newer players or more inexperience players, there will be some hard learned lessons. 

In the end is just a lot of frustration. The are alienating a decent size of their player base. 

[Shells 64]

I see what you mean, sorry, i was ignoring the talent to make WW marginally better, if they made it reduce damage taken by 70% for 3 seconds that would be more useful in a raid environment but could be considered too tanky for a dps spec.  From the description it would actually be a better fit with the text. I wouldnt plan to go to the shadowlands to move faster *unless something there scares the crap out of me ofc * but rather to go to the shadowlands to avoid some damage mechanic. 

As for the macro, it will be pretty much mandatory for this to reduce clicking. 

 

[demonardvark 556]

3 minutes ago, Shells said:

I see what you mean, sorry, i was ignoring the talent to make WW marginally better, if they made it reduce damage taken by 70% for 3 seconds that would be more useful in a raid environment but could be considered too tanky for a dps spec.  From the description it would actually be a better fit with the text. I wouldnt plan to go to the shadowlands to move faster *unless something there scares the crap out of me ofc * but rather to go to the shadowlands to avoid some damage mechanic. 

As for the macro, it will be pretty much mandatory for this to reduce clicking. 

 

lol for blizzard atonement for their ways, i want the shadowlands to look real spooky when we go into them . But nothing serious, like a haunted house for 4 year olds, just like little cardboard ghosts everywhere XD

But yeah especially if Arbiter remains as strong as I believe it will, we will need to hammer out a lot buttons and a macro will prevent mistakes. I'm sure that'll end up in the official guide. I mean the class fantasy they are going for is fine, but, we need some mobility. We were already slow, now we can't move at all. I want death grip to pull us towards enemy like harpoon for survival hunter. That way, we can get to high priority adds, and could use adds as an escape measure. 

[Shells 64]

That would be good but I dont see them giving us something like that. 

 

Maybe an alternate version of GG, something that allows you to split the damage you take over x seconds with the adds around you, it would be a Dps increase and could be called something like "Share the pain" .  you wouldnt need as much mobility then. 

I still agree we need more mobility though but dont see them sharing the hunters harpoon trick so easily. Maybe step into the shadowlands to emerge 15yards away (a rip off of the mage teleport spell perhaps)

[demonardvark 556]

1 hour ago, Shells said:

That would be good but I dont see them giving us something like that. 

 

Maybe an alternate version of GG, something that allows you to split the damage you take over x seconds with the adds around you, it would be a Dps increase and could be called something like "Share the pain" .  you wouldnt need as much mobility then. 

I still agree we need more mobility though but dont see them sharing the hunters harpoon trick so easily. Maybe step into the shadowlands to emerge 15yards away (a rip off of the mage teleport spell perhaps)

yeah that would work well. also a play on displacer beast. anything to help us out XD

[Harmolulz 1]

So you mean that without any mobility buff DK's are a no-go for raids in Legion? :( Feels quite bad since i spent alot of time on beta to learn the class for the raid content and i kind of liked it ...

[TeamC 6]

On 8/3/2016 at 1:22 PM, demonardvark said:

The big thing we don't mention here enough I feel, is that the guides assume full mythic gear full best everything. At different gear lvls different talents and builds will fair better. I won't mention other sites, but one other in mind, isn't very accurate but they do display multiple builds depending on ilvl. 

I don't know if this is within your power to suggest or push, but it would seem like it'd be an excellent boiler plate thing to put on all the guides. A lot of what works at the top works well in the lower tiers as well, but not always. It'd be great if there was a little more delineation in the guides as to when ability X trumps ability Y based more on gear than situation.

[demonardvark 556]

Well we got stealth nerfed again. Granted this one impacted a lot of classes. Blizz has nerfed pre pooling resources before bosses. So for boomkins, shadow priests, unholy dks, who pre pooled a lot of resourced, it reset to around 20 before each fight now preventing the huge initial bursts we were doing :(

this in many ways kills dark arbiter going into legion, each fight now we'll have to wait 7-8 seconds which will pretty much mean all our on pull trink procs will be lost. GG blizz, you nerfed us to oblivion even before the game is launched XD

[demonardvark 556]

On 8/6/2016 at 7:08 AM, TeamC said:

I don't know if this is within your power to suggest or push, but it would seem like it'd be an excellent boiler plate thing to put on all the guides. A lot of what works at the top works well in the lower tiers as well, but not always. It'd be great if there was a little more delineation in the guides as to when ability X trumps ability Y based more on gear than situation.

YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER!!!!

yeah no it's been discussed. the mindset is that more casual players won't necessarily care about min maxing or pushing the limits of their abilities. only progression people will. this in general holds true. I forget the numbers but only X % of the player base even enters heroic with fewer attempting let alone clearing mythic. In general for lfr and even normal you can get away with doing whatever you want for the most part. 

This is also reflected in the talents now. If you look closely you can choose basically all passive talents. This was intentional on blizzards part. All passive talents can get you through lfr normal. for better performance you need help ie us :)

[Shells 64]

This might be a PITA but if the guides are aimed at LFR players, who are the majority, could there be a separate section in the guide aimed at higher difficulties. 

More work for who ever is writing the guide but if its clear its aimed at LFR with say a subsection aimed at harder modes it might be handy. 

5 man content seems like its going to be a focus in this expansion too, which is great. Talents and specs change slightly for that content as well. (Assuming your looking at min maxing a bit rather than having a 1 for all set up. )

[demonardvark 556]

On 8/11/2016 at 5:34 AM, Shells said:

This might be a PITA but if the guides are aimed at LFR players, who are the majority, could there be a separate section in the guide aimed at higher difficulties. 

More work for who ever is writing the guide but if its clear its aimed at LFR with say a subsection aimed at harder modes it might be handy. 

5 man content seems like its going to be a focus in this expansion too, which is great. Talents and specs change slightly for that content as well. (Assuming your looking at min maxing a bit rather than having a 1 for all set up. )

no you have it backwards, the guides are aimed at mythic players not the lower lvls, guides assume maximum everything.