Howling Blast cooldown not needed

#0 - Jan. 15, 2009, 8:16 p.m.

In the latest PTR build, Howling Blast's cooldown was reimplemented at it's original 6 seconds. However, the cooldown is unnecessary for any reason besides a nerf to dual wield, which admitedly has gotten out of hand.

For 2H specs, Howling Blast is inferior to Obliterate at all gear levels. My only use for it going into the next patch was against about half the cast of characters(mail+) and guaranteed crits with deathchill since it hits harder than Frost Strike. I enjoyed the challenge of knowing when to switch between Obliterate and Howling Blast in PvP, but unfortunately this change will put it back on the sidelines.

As a tank, Howling Blast off cooldown would help match up with Unholy's aoe tanking prowess with Wandering Plague and Unholy Blight.

Moving Howling blast out of the reach of dual wield spec, or nerfing unholy's autoattack procs are both options instead of reinstating the cooldown.

*Edited the title- Nethaera

Ghostcrawler

#7 - Jan. 15, 2009, 8:42 p.m.

I believe the cooldown is 5 seconds now, so at least it should mesh a little better with 10 second rune cooldown.

We knew there was a risk in taking the Howling Blast cooldown off. Unfortunately, we saw dual-wield DK numbers as high as ever even with the Killing Machine and Gargoyle nerfs. It typically only happened when the DK was fighting multiple targets, which suggests Howling Blast is the right thing to change.

We still agree that a cooldown makes rotations more awkward, and we will continue to look for an implementation that lets Howling Blast be off a cooldown without all death knights feel like they need to DW Frost or go home.

(And no, we can't buff other DK specs and other classes to 7000 dps or whatever to compensate.)

Ghostcrawler

#243 - Jan. 27, 2009, 10:02 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Also just my two cents last I checked blizzard was not the one playing the game us the subscribers were and if we want to dual wield tank or dps that is our choice.

You realize that you are essentially arguing that we should let the players design the game and structure things to let them play however they want. :)