Why was Howling Blast gutted?!

#0 - March 1, 2009, 11:34 p.m.

I can understand why Blizzard solely didnt want dw builds to be the dominant dps spec for dks. But surely the garg and UB swap and the fact they made Howling Blast the frost 51 point talent was sufficient. Now i have to put up with an AOE threat nerf for a 51 pt talent is now purely a weakened trash tanking ability that outside of rime procs (which will happen less with only needing to refresh FF every 15 secs over every 10) because obliterate glyphed, sigiled, high crit chance with a decent 2 hander completely well obliterates it (pun intended).

Edit: either increase its threat modifier, keep its previous damage bonuses or change its rune cost.

Ghostcrawler

#42 - March 2, 2009, 5:35 p.m.

We don't have a problem with DW tanking or DW dps. Whenever I say something about DW tanking it is usually to say that we don't want DW tanking to dominate. Before the Stoneskin Gargoyle rune, having two tanking weapons was a big benefit to DW, and in a world with crushing blow, "parry instagibs" are much less scary now.

That said, the Howling Blast changes were much more about DW dps builds. Death knight dps was just too high across the board, especially with certain hybrid builds. If we're convinced we fixed the problem, then we might improve Howling Blast damage again (though we might imcrease its cooldown).

Ghostcrawler

#107 - March 3, 2009, 4:33 p.m.

Someone earlier in the thread said basically...

Q u o t e:
Ghostcrawler has said very bluntly in the past that they will nerf DW tanking and buff 2-hand tanking as necessary to insure that people do not do it.

I was clarifying that was not our intent. We are not trying to kill DW tanking at all. We are trying to kill DW dps from being vastly superior to 2H dps, which it was.