wow Death Knight Shadowlands Class Changes for September 9th

[Starym 3,801]

 

Here come this week's Death Knight class changes, focusing on Unholy and Blood specs, with some spells moved to baseline, talents moved around and more!

Class Changes (source)

We’ve continued to work from feedback that the Unholy opener can take too long to get going. Even with attempts to help alleviate this issue over the last few weeks, it’s still not where we would like it to be.

Unholy has quite a few iconic abilities and they aren’t easily removed. Thus, our goal with this week’s latest build is to reduce the number of cooldowns in the opener, help out Rune economy, and give access to a baseline AoE Runic Spender.

Unholy

• Summon Gargoyle is moved back as a level 50 talent.
• Unholy Pact moved to the level 45 talent tier.
• Epidemic is baseline.
• Dark Transformation has been removed, and its functionality has been added to Apocalypse.
  • Developers’ notes: Legendaries and Conduits that interact with your ghoul while they have Dark Transformation still function as they did prior to this change.
• Death Coil has updated to reduce the cooldown of Apocalypse by 1.5 seconds.
  • Developers’ notes: When you cast Apocalypse, your Dark Transformation is no longer delayed by a missile travel time.

Blood

We have a small update for Blood to address the feedback about the Ossuary talent feeling mandatory.

• Ossuary is now baseline and learned at level 58.
• Blood Tap is now moved to place Ossuary was in talents.

Thanks for the continued feedback! Please keep it coming once you’ve had a chance to test the new build.

More Shadowlands Class Changes

Death Knight	Mage	Rogue
Death Knight 9.0.1 Class Changes	Mage 9.0.1 Class Changes	Rogue 9.0.1 Class Changes
Demon Hunter	Monk	Shaman
Demon Hunter 9.0.1 Class Changes	Monk 9.0.1 Class Changes	Shaman 9.0.1 Class Changes
Druid	Paladin	Warlock
Druid 9.0.1 Class Changes	Paladin 9.0.1 Class Changes	Warlock 9.0.1 Class Changes
Hunter	Priest	Warrior
Hunter 9.0.1 Class Changes	Priest 9.0.1 Class Changes	Warrior 9.0.1 Class Changes

[Dejo93 1,023]

Huh. I wonder how this will affect the DK

[BobTheHuman 72]

Does Army of the Damned talent remain unchanged, making Death Coil reduce Apocalypse's cd by 2.5sec?

[Halock 156]

Man, I love this. I have always disliked Dark Transformation. Feels like just a button to smash every 45 seconds in PvE. Legion improved it a little, not a lot. Throwing it into Apocalypse and making apocalypse improvements baseline streamlines a couple of things at once. 

Feels like Apocalypse might be a more obvious burst moment though.

Gargoyle feels better as a talent too, personally. It still dictates how you play around it, even if not as much as it used to, and like they say it's another button to press. And Unholy is about pressing lots of buttons and seeing the damage spill, yes, but still. Nicer as talent, I think.

And Ossuary as baseline is long overdue. 

Edited September 10, 2020 by Halock

[kokodesuka 7]

I like what I am reading here, these are very good changes for blood spec IMO!

 

Unholy. Maybe unprune Gargoyle and Dark Transformation please.

Edited September 10, 2020 by kokodesuka

[Rag 16]

I do like the changes broadly to both, epidemic and ossuary being baseline feels like a clear winning call. Unholy pact did not feel like a meaningful enough choice for that level 50 row, and as another aoe choice on the 45 role it fits more cleanly. Taking gargoyle out is... ok? Like I was excited to have it back baseline in theory, but ngl, 3 minute cds are some of my least favorite to try and play around with in the game. While I like how gargoyle changes your play, I think this is, at first glance, reasonable. The unholy transformation change is odd though. While it's true that apoc and UT often times line up at the moment and are part of the same general CD cycle, the ability to spread them out during dungeons in particular can feel important. Now with festermight going away that may be less admittedly less impactful. Bobthehuman also raised a good point with how army of the damned interacts with the base lining of some CD reduction being added to apoc. If its an additional 2.5 seconds that could be pretty crazy; conversely if it now only improves it by 1 second over baseline it may necessitate maybe some tweaks to skeletal mage damage to compensate. So 2 pretty strong changes for Unholy and 2 changes that probably need to be played with to see how they feel.

Edited September 10, 2020 by Rag

[Vorguz 33]

I don't like the unholy changes. To make unholy competitive they need to buff dark transformation by 100% as it now has double the cooldown. Plus they removed decision making for dungeons. Before you could decide to use dt to do good aoe damage and apo to do decent boss damage or throw both at the mob pack/boss.
Baseline Epidemic is a good decision, as it was kinda baseline anyway.
Blizz, why do you take Gargoyle away again? I thought adding it back in was to bring some much needed flavour to the specc.... Make it hit like a wet noodle and bring back the Arbiter Talent to make it good......

Another idea, replace Ebon Fever or Unholy Frenzy with Necrotic Plague, as neither add anything to the specc anyway except another burst button for UF.

Blood received good changes. I like them.

 

Goddamn I hate the uh changes. If it goes live like this, I will need a new main ? (Tank is fun and all but....)
Anyone have some ideas?

Edited September 10, 2020 by Vorguz

[Seksi 208]

On 9/10/2020 at 5:40 PM, Vorguz said:

I don't like the unholy changes. To make unholy competitive they need to buff dark transformation by 100% as it now has double the cooldown. Plus they removed decision making for dungeons. Before you could decide to use dt to do good aoe damage and apo to do decent boss damage or throw both at the mob pack/boss.
Baseline Epidemic is a good decision, as it was kinda baseline anyway.
Blizz, why do you take Gargoyle away again? I thought adding it back in was to bring some much needed flavour to the specc.... Make it hit like a wet noodle and bring back the Arbiter Talent to make it good......

Another idea, replace Ebon Fever or Unholy Frenzy with Necrotic Plague, as neither add anything to the specc anyway except another burst button for UF.

Blood received good changes. I like them.

 

Goddamn I hate the uh changes. If it goes live like this, I will need a new main ? (Tank is fun and all but....)
Anyone have some ideas?

Fastest revert in history ?

[Vorguz 33]

@Seksi even faster than the Jailers shadow.

and im really glad they did that. ?

Edited September 14, 2020 by Vorguz