FEEDBACK: Death Knight Class Changes

#1 - April 14, 2020, 1:33 a.m.

Updated 19 August

In the latest Beta build, Unholy and Frost have received a few updates to address some common concerns.

Frost

• Might of the Frozen Wastes
  • Rank 1: While Dual-Wielding your Obliterate and Frost Strike will also strike with your off hand and you can engrave each weapon with a Runeforge Enchant
  • Rank 2: Increases your Obliterate damage by 25% and Killing Machine Proc chance when using a two-hand
• Runic Attenuation
  • The proc rate has been adjusted to bring Dual Wield and Two-Handed closer together and the Runic Power gain has been increased to 5 from 3.

Developers’ notes: Our goal here is to bridge the gap of the proc discrepancy between DW and 2H, as well as giving 2-Handed Frost its own passive ability to make up the difference of not having two runeforge enchants.

Unholy

• Soul Reaper
  • Has been reworked and once again has execute functionality.
  • 1 Rune, 8 second Cooldown
    • Strike an enemy for Shadow damage and afflict the enemy with Soul Reaper. After 5 seconds, if the target is below 35% health this effect will explode dealing additional Shadow damage to the target. If an enemy dies while afflicted gain Runic Corruption.
• Unholy Frenzy
  • Reworked and renamed Unholy Strike.
  • Strike your target with an unholy blow dealing Shadow damage, infecting the target with 4 Festering Wounds, and sending you into a killing frenzy, increasing haste by 15% for 12 seconds.
• Army of the Dead
  • Rune cost reduced to 1 (was 3).

Developers’ notes: These Unholy changes are targeted at helping reduce the start sequence time when paired with specific talents. We hope this will help the overall flow of the spec, without altering too heavily how the spec plays. An additional update (coming soon, that didn’t make it into this build) will also have the Ardenweald ability Death’s Due work with Defile functionality.

June 10

Blood

• Rune Tap global cooldown removed.
  • Developers’ notes: Rune Tap was made baseline in Shadowlands, but also had a GCD added, which was not present in Battle for Azeroth. We’re reverting this change to bring it back to its current functionality.

Unholy

• Outbreak duration of Virulent Plague increased to 28 seconds (was 21 seconds).
• Outbreak AoE range increased to 10 (was 8).
  • Developers’ notes: We changed how Virulent Plague functions in Shadowlands. To compensate for the loss of uptime of Virulent Plague, we’ve increased its duration and increased the initial AoE application, so it doesn’t require such tight grouping to maximize the targets hit.

In this thread, we’re discussing Death Knight class changes coming in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.

Read more about initial class changes in the World of Warcraft blog.

This initial post will be updated periodically throughout the Shadowlands test. Please check back here for information about further updates to this class as they are made.

Thank you for your testing and feedback!

#14 - Aug. 20, 2020, 8:48 p.m.

In the latest Beta build, Unholy and Frost have received a few updates to address some common concerns.

Frost

• Might of the Frozen Wastes
  • Rank 1: While Dual-Wielding your Obliterate and Frost Strike will also strike with your off hand and you can engrave each weapon with a Runeforge Enchant
  • Rank 2: Increases your Obliterate damage by 25% and Killing Machine Proc chance when using a two-hand
• Runic Attenuation
  • The proc rate has been adjusted to bring Dual Wield and Two-Handed closer together and the Runic Power gain has been increased to 5 from 3.

Developers’ notes: Our goal here is to bridge the gap of the proc discrepancy between DW and 2H, as well as giving 2-Handed Frost its own passive ability to make up the difference of not having two runeforge enchants.

Unholy

• Soul Reaper
  • Has been reworked and once again has execute functionality.
  • 1 Rune, 8 second Cooldown
    • Strike an enemy for Shadow damage and afflict the enemy with Soul Reaper. After 5 seconds, if the target is below 35% health this effect will explode dealing additional Shadow damage to the target. If an enemy dies while afflicted gain Runic Corruption.
• Unholy Frenzy
  • Reworked and renamed Unholy Strike.
  • Strike your target with an unholy blow dealing Shadow damage, infecting the target with 4 Festering Wounds, and sending you into a killing frenzy, increasing haste by 15% for 12 seconds.
• Army of the Dead
  • Rune cost reduced to 1 (was 3).

Developers’ notes: These Unholy changes are targeted at helping reduce the start sequence time when paired with specific talents. We hope this will help the overall flow of the spec, without altering too heavily how the spec plays. An additional update (coming soon, that didn’t make it into this build) will also have the Ardenweald ability Death’s Due work with Defile functionality.

#27 - Sept. 9, 2020, 10:23 p.m.

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.

#49 - Sept. 23, 2020, 6:31 p.m.

In this week’s Shadowlands build, Death’s Due has been updated and its buff and debuffs are no longer applied each time it deals damage.

Now your Heart Strike, Scourge Strike, and Obliterate apply Death’s Due to the target, reducing the damage they deal to you and increasing your Strength by the same amount. The duration of the buff/debuff has also been reduced and the maximum amount of stacks has been reduced to 8.

In addition to these changes, Death’s Due has a unique bonus for Frost that allows their Obliterate to hit 1 additional target while they stay within Death’s Due.

These changes to Death’s Due are aimed at making it a little more rotation-impactful, rather than just a passive bonus when casting it, while making it more balanced against the other Covenant choices.

#73 - Sept. 30, 2020, 11:40 p.m.

In this week’s new build of the Shadowlands Beta, we’ve updated two covenant abilities, Abomination Limb and Shackle the Unworthy.

Abomination Limb has been target capped at 5, and its damage has increased by 15%. The grip has also been updated so it may only pull the same target every 4 seconds. This change was made to prevent it from encouraging the Death Knight to repeatedly walk out of range and then pull the same target.

We’ve also added a new functionality to the ability that grants Bone Shield charges, Rime, or Runic Corruption (based on spec) the first time the Limb pulls an enemy (this only occurs once). We hope this change will broaden the usage of the ability outside of PvP.

Shackle the Unworthy has had its damage increased by 15%, but no longer has its cooldown reduced when spending runes. Instead of the cooldown reduction, it now works as follows: “While Shackle the Unworthy is active on an enemy, your direct-damage attacks that spend runes have a 50% chance to spread Shackle the Unworthy to a nearby enemy”.

We hope this change gives the ability a more active playstyle and creates more situations where it might be more useful than its previous iteration.

Thanks for the continued feedback, and we look forward to your thoughts on these recent changes.

#104 - Nov. 23, 2020, 5:22 p.m.

Hello. I’d like to highlight some recent changes that should be testable in the Shadowlands Beta, and will be in place for the live game later today.

We’ve updated Abomination Limb to address the gameplay of having to move out of melee if there are no ranged enemies, to gain 3 Bone Shield charges, Rime, or Runic Corruption.

• Abomination Limb now grants the buff on cast and again every 6 seconds for a total of 3 buffs (was 1).
• Given the increase to the consistency and amount of the effect, Abomination Limb damage is reduced by 8%.

The Venthyr ability Swarming Mist has also been updated.

• Swarming Mist deals reduced damage when damaging more than 5 targets.

Having Swarming Mist deal reduced damage beyond 5 targets should bring its power more inline with the other Death Knight Covenant abilities.