Elitist Jerks Close Thread on Unholy DK

#0 - Sept. 2, 2009, 5:30 p.m.

The famous resource for Unholy Death Knights that has been open since Wrath of the Lich King beta has been shut down. Titled "Unholy Gains Shadow of Death (Unholy DPS Discussion now with more 3.2!) (http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t53615-unholy_gains_shadow_death_unholy_dps_discussion_now_more_3_2_a/p54/), this has been *the* thread for source information in the rapidly changing Unholy tree. The World of Warcraft's premier site for theorycrafting has officially given up the ghost on Scourge Strike Unholy.

In its place, is a new thread, dealing with the new Obliterate Unholy spec. The very reasons for the EJ site lends itself to an ultimate pragmatism: Use what works, nothing else matters. They wouldn't, and unfortunately shouldn't, worry about things that simply do not work any more. Thus the closing of the old thread, and use of the new.

I still think there is something laughable about this, if only I didn't feel like someone kicked my puppy. Fifty four pages of condensed knowledge with its constant tweaks, changes, nerfs and buffs, are now, no more, and will soon drop off the page, only to be replaced by a thread detailing the exploits of a spec that by Blizzard's own definitions should be non-optimal.

Ghostcrawler

#41 - Sept. 2, 2009, 9:11 p.m.

1) One of the things I personally appreciate about the EJ forums is they tend to focus on what is, not in their opinions on what should be. That tends to lead to discussions based on facts and not opinions. Their Unholy DK threads focus on how to maximize dps as Unholy not on petitioning Blizzard to buff Scourge Strike.

2) Unholy is alive and well. The spec is just using Obliterate instead of Scourge Strike. But the two abilities are almost identical in the first place. You're not changing your game up that much to replace one FU ability with another. It's not ideal and we'll get it fixed but it's not as if the entire spec is dead or using a mostly Frost build or anything. At most you're not benefiting from some of the talents that focus on SS or Shadow damage.

3) I'm not sure this is really an armor pen issue (though I could be wrong here). Blood doing such high dps is probably an armor pen issue. Obliterate beating out Scourge Strike is likely not because of armor pen.

Ghostcrawler

#95 - Sept. 3, 2009, 1:25 a.m.

Q u o t e:
So those of us with the opinion that scourge strike needs to be buffed are not appreciated? The fact that scourge strike does less damage than obliterate should be a MASSIVE indication to you that scourge strike needs a buff.

Of course your opinion is appreciated. Does it warrant the multiple long threads on this forum? Probably not. If Unholy itself was non-viable, then it would be a much bigger issue. (And, no, you can't equate Unholy with Scourge Strike to try and define Unholy as non-viable.) If hitting Obliterate instead of Scourge Strike radically changed your playstyle or second to second decisions then it would be a big issue. As an example, if you just used Blood Strike and never a FU attack at all, we would consider that game-breaking. But as I say many times, these things are subjective and I can't expect the community to always place the same priority on things that we do.

I can appreciate that you might just like Scourge Strike. But given that we have limited bandwidth in which to solve class problems (and given that the Blizzard solution is never to just hire more inexperienced people to try and help us tackle more at once), we have to prioritize things.

"I wish I was hitting a different but very similar attack" is a valid concern, but there are many more pressing ones. We'll fix it. We're not going to hotfix it.

Ghostcrawler

#103 - Sept. 3, 2009, 1:53 a.m.

Q u o t e:
you guys really call them "FU attacks"?

We do, yes. It isn't my intention to offend (with this abbreviation anyway).

[Not tracked]

Ghostcrawler

#181 - Sept. 3, 2009, 6:49 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I think this deserves some clarification:

1. GC made a post a couple of weeks ago saying that the Shadowfrost build / rotation is "unintended" and will be "fixed"

2. In this thread we're currently in, GC says that Obliterate replacing Scourge Strike will probably be fixed as well, just not as highly prioritized as Shadowfrost or whatever other issues they might be working on.

Shadowfrost is considered a more dire problem because (as I explained above), it violates the basic principles of DK DPS.

Technically, Unholy-Obliterate does not, or at least, only violates half the principles. The basic rotation principle remains intact, even if the flavor-strikes-should-replace-basic-strikes rotation is broken. Shadowfrost breaks both.

===

As far as ignoring FU strikes, it both has and has not happened, as there are actually two Unholy builds going around:

1. The first is the Shadowfrost build. This completely ignores FU strikes, using neither Obliterate nor Scourge Strike. Instead, it uses Glyphed Icy Touch for maximum RP production while spamming heavily talented Death Coils.

2. The second is the Unholy-Obliterate. This one does not ignore FU strikes, as it still uses Obliterate. It just ignores Scourge Strike specifically.

Yeah, I think that is a good summary. Thanks, Prinsesa. I would add that PvP Unholy DKs will also still use Scourge Strike, because it wins over Obliterate when the target is not sundered. Your target better be sundered in PvE but often is not in PvP.

It's also fine if some players can be moderately successful with Shadowfrost (which I am defining here as a DK that largely ignores melee attacks). We just don't want a return to the world where that was the only way to play a DK.

The bottom line is still that we understand Unholy DKs want to use Scourge Strike and we want that too. In the meantime, using Obliterate gives you a pretty similar experience to using Scourge Strike. Going 51 Frost or using nothing but Icy Touch does not (and again it's subjective).