YAY! More DK nerfs!!

The DK changes were trying to fix two issues: buffing tanks a little and getting Unholy to use Scourge Strike again, which a great many Unholy DKs asked us to fix.

I don't have time to compare what you've data-mined to the actual patch notes, but you might want to wait for the official notes before jumping too to many conclusions.

Q u o t e:
actually, what I read into it was: since I don't know what it is that you are complaining about, I won't give you a specific response.

The OP linked mmo-champion's website and didn't actually say anything about which line of text on the website was the one that upset him...

I bet GC was also hoping people would give a specific reason so he could comment on it later. :)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



That's an extremely liberal and positive interpretation. I might be willing to say that mine is overly harsh. But then again you do have to go back to the other thread he's specifically called out data-mining today. I think those add up. How about we meet in the middle?

Lissanna is right.

All I ask is that if you don't get the official word from us, take it with a grain of salt. I don't fault players for being excited and wanting to see the changes ASAP, but we've sort of had a history of players not interpreting changes correctly and making dare I say "knee jerk" responses like our dear OP here.

We weren't trying to buff or nerf Unholy per se. We just wanted to get the spec back to using Scourge Strike, which these changes should do, and as I said, was something many DKs requested.

Q u o t e:
Once again, your seemingly complete lack of any understanding of what high level players want and/or are complaining about shocks and amazes me.

Buff SS Damage, you overnerfed it. It doesn't have to be returned to it's previous coefficients,but it does need to be buffed slightly.

Problem fixed, DKs will use SS again.

What I read: "High level players want their characters to do more damage." I think we understand that pretty well.

Q u o t e:
Scourge strike is weaker than ob, so we stop using it.
you nerf parts of UH to make OB less desireable.. you know what im referring to
you buff SS glyph to make SS more attractable... it didnt work.
SS shouldnt need a glyph to be chosen over a baseline strike.

we're saying you overnerfed SS and didnt compensate with anytihng but making OB stronger(relative to your nerfs)
dks are asking you to buff their strike again so its useable, buff its damage, dont add a crappy gimmick, thats what we want. not to be OP, but to actually WANT to use the strike as out FU, not to add some disease gimmick.

I think calling it a baseline strike is just a technicality. If it was 1 point Frost talent, Unholy still would have taken it. Base Obliterate and SS might have been pretty close, but Oblit benefitted from so many more things than SS. The SS glyph was a wash at best (and annoying at worst), while the Obliterate glyph was a big dps increase. Obliterate got much more crit than SS. Obliterate benefitted from a lot of rp gain, including very questionable talents like Dirge. (Why does a deep Unholy talent need to benefit a strike that Unholy isn't really supposed to use anyway?)

Unholy dps was appropriate, but it was just using the "wrong" (but a very similar) FU attack. The last thing the DK class needs is yet another buff or debuff tied to an attack and I'm not sure the class really even needs another mechanic to have to watch or track tied to Scourge Strike. Doing Shadow damage is a fine niche, and in a world without armor penetration doing spell damage wouldn't be a liability.

Q u o t e:
SS is being skipped is the issue. that glyph isnt going to change that.

I think you guys are too premature on your math. Let some players chew on it for a bit. The Dirge change could very well be a couple hundred dps loss for using Obliterate as Unholy, while the Subversion and SS glyph change could be a couple hundred dps gain for SS. SS and Obliterate were not off by 2000 dps before. They might be off by more in Icecrown, but that depends a lot on what the gear looks like... and we haven't finished it yet.

If SS isn't quite there yet, we still have time to make additional changes, but I am loathe to actually say that for fear players will hear "GC says if we keep disparaging SS they might buff us some more!"

Q u o t e:
I don't think they did it "because we said so".

Usually, when developer trends follow player suggestions, its not by "demand". Its usually by a large collection of players all stating one problem, which probably raises a red flag on some developers desk. He goes around and asks the other developers about it, maybe finds a few players in the the PR office who play that class and talks to them. Then he heads down to his QA realm and gives it a go.

When he sees how its working, he puts in for a change.

I doubt there is any "commanding", rather, I think players act more like bobbers, we just kind of signify when something is going down.

Well said.

Q u o t e:
TO CLARIFY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM: these changes do nothing for scourge strike in pvp. NOTHING. Undo the 3.2 nerf to scourge strike and if you're concerned about dks critting too big remove or redesign cinderglacier, it was the culprit behind every single frost strike / scourge strike was too big and killed my puppy QQ thread of 3.1/s6.

You didn't really CLARIFY much. You stated as fact several things which other, apparently knowledgeable DKs disagree with. Talk to them before you come and yell at us.

Too many of these posts just read as "I want Scourge Strike to hit harder because I like big numbers." Unholy's damage is fine. Death knights of all specs risk losing a lot of damage if their diseases are dispelled, but that is not an Obliterate vs. Scourge Strike issue.

Scourge Strike does appropriate damage given that it ignores all armor. The problem with Obliterate, we believe, was because so many talents and glyphs propped it up more than Scourge Strike. In a PvP scenario it's pretty unlikely your target will be sundered at all, in which case Scourge Strike will generally beat Obliterate anyway.

We aren't likely to bring back the gigantic DK strikes of older patches. We had huge problems with DKs being overpowered back then. The DK is supposed to have to set up those attacks and use them essentially as finishers. Yet DKs are also doing a lot of damage with their diseases and runic power attacks in addition to the two-handed strikes. All of that ignores the fact that DKs have enormous survivability and crowd control.

When you aren't facing a shaman or another pro dispeller, Unholy does fine damage with Scourge Strike. We've just seen a big rise in shaman lately in Arenas. That's ultimately a good thing, but I understand that it can feel a little like the whole Plague Strike removing hots deal in reverse. The answer is not to make Scourge Strike hit so hard that the diseases don't matter or that nothing really matters but getting really big Scourge Strike crits.

Q u o t e:
That's a silly statement to make. Who wouldn't want to do more damage, regardless of their current standing?

In terms of PvP, what GC is trying to say (or what I interpret him as trying to say, anyways) is that it's not a matter of SS hitting too soft or too hard. That isn't what's hurting DK representation (if, indeed, it is actually hurting). It's other factors - such as Disease Cleansing Totem - which are the culprits, and although those other factors may be issues, they can't be remedied by simply buffing SS up, as some people seem to be wanting. They need their own solutions, otherwise new problems are going to develop when they do finally fix said issues.

Sense makes sense.

Sorry, had to go there.

Q u o t e:

We're not asking for it to be buffed, we're asking for them to undo the most recent nerf, and take a long hard look at dispelling for the expansion cause god knows they wont make a systems change that big until a major expansion.

And it would be lovely if cleansing totem were given a short cooldown (6-10 seconds) and did not remove diseases on the initial drop.

The damage of Scourge Strike is appropriate given that it ignores armor. We aren't going to un-nerf the damage. All of the 3.2.2 changes were just to get Unholy DKs to put down the Obliterate button, which as I've said several times now, was a pretty big deal on these forums for a few weeks. (Which is not to say you should make a really big deal of anything you want to change.)

Wait for the actual patch notes. We always have a little bit of chaos when players are getting half the story, but it's not appropriate for me just to list them all here.

I'm sorry, but I've said a lot on this topic today when I think there are others that are probably just as worthy of attention. I'll keep reading the thread, but I may not post as much on this issue.

Q u o t e:
I hate to be a jerk here and call you out GC but what crowd control? A 3 second talented stun you just nerfed or the 10 second cc of our frost spec you just nerfed via UA and frost strike last patch?

That is an interesting point of view. Players are *still* complaining about the effectiveness of Chains of Ice, Death Grip, Gnaw, Hungering Cold and the various snares. You’re welcome to disagree with those players, but I frankly find it a little baffling to suggest that this is the first you’ve heard of DK control.

Q u o t e:
With 3 diseases on the target Scourge Strike is only hitting for 2300 damage. This is terrible, and still isn't worth investing so many talent points for it.

So you want Scourge Strike to hit for more damage. I get that. We balance around the class damage over time. The diseases count for damage. Death Coil and Blood Strike count for damage. If you're going to argue that DK damage is just low across the board, I'm going to have to disagree. If you want a class that can just spam one melee attack and get big numbers, I would not look at the DK. Increasingly, we are trying to get all the classes away from being able to use one attack (and no, mages don’t use one button).

Q u o t e:
u know it doesnt matter the pve dk is of no importance.

it is time u guys grow to understand this and move on.

Sorry, but I have to LOL at this one. I think most other classes would argue DKs have been lavished with attention compared to them. That doesn’t mean you can’t point out any concerns you have about the class, but comments like this feel pretty out of touch with the history of Wrath of the Lich King. DKs were the best tank and arguably the top dps for much of the expansion. You still can find situations where you can out damage pure dps classes. This is QQ.

Q u o t e:
It's on the ptr brosef, not live. And I'll state again for people who don't understand the dps target of scourge strike unholy.

The target is the dps that oblit unholy is putting out right now on live. They removed obliterate from dirge(common sense change since unholy was never meant to use obliterate). They added 9% crit to scourge strike. The glyph is a dps increase, but there are other competitive glyphs(unholy blight) that might be better. These changes will prop up the damage done by a scourge strike build to be at the level oblit unholy is right now. The changes also accomplish reducing the damage done by the oblit unholy build by a few hundred dps. The spec is not gone, it just swapped places with scourge strike.

Any dk who thought that they would just buff unholy so that a scourge strike spec will do MORE dps than current live unholy oblit is just plain not listening to GC. He stated multiple times that the damage of unholy is fine, it is just using the wrong attack. They fixed it, just like we WHINED for for a long time. That is a good thing. I for one am happy they are bringing scourge strike back.

Now don't get me wrong, there is still work to be done on the cleansing issue, but it is obvious to see from GC's posts that he recognizes the issue. The changes help in pvp, but there are still some changes that could be made to fire and forget cleansing mechanics like abolish and totems, which I am sure GC and co are actively looking into and testing internally, even if we don't see it on the ptr this instant.

Please read this before you post anything else.

I’m not sure I can contribute any more to this conversation. We’re approaching post 400 now, and it’s clear a lot of players are still responding to the earliest posts in the thread without reading everything. In other words, the conversation is just going around and around now. We don’t need yet another post on how disease dispelling is hard on DKs. We acknowledged pages ago that it was a problem, but the answer is not to make SS hit so freaking hard that all a DK does in PvP is walk around and hit that one button.

The goal was to give Unholy DKs motivation to use Scourge Strike over Obliterate. I think these changes accomplish that. If you think you're still going to use Oblit, feel free to argue that, but you're going to have to address the math of those players who disagree.

Q u o t e:
One quick question, you mentioned cleansing, but were a little vague, do you feel it is overpowered in it's current state especially as it relates to DK's or do you not?

It's overpowered. Long-term we need some kind of overhaul to the dispel system so that you can free allies who get debuffed or CC'd but you aren't constantly losing important class abilities because of cheap, fast and sometimes pulsing dispels.

I'm being vague because we haven't announced any 3.2.2 or 3.3 changes yet. Those won't be the overhaul I described, but we hope to do something.