New Scourge Strike

Scourge Strike doesn't work like Necrosis. There is no need to draw inferences from one to the other. If Scourge Strike benefits from EP and Black Ice on live, then the Shadow portion of it will in 3.3.

All we did was change part of the attack to physical damage, which lets us increase the amount that it hits for overall. This means it should do more damage against lightly armored or fully sundered targets but less damage against heavily armored targets (assuming no armor pen). Magic attacks (even melee weapon swings) typically hit for less since they ignore armor. Switching some of the damage to physical let us inflate the number.

Our goals were to make armor pen slightly more valuable to Unholy DKs and just make Scourge Strike and Reaping valuable to Unholy DKs. I understand many of you just wanted us to boost the numbers because you wanted for it to hit more, but under the way we balance it isn't fair for a magical attack to hit for as much as a physical attack.

The nerf to Unholy Blight was in part because we think SS will be contributing to more damage overall.

Q u o t e:
In most cases when a change is made and there is not a massive outcry early on, chances are the change will go live.

Once a change does go live, getting it reverted or changed again becomes much more difficult.

No.

I hate to see anyone trying to support a strategy of "yell loud, yell often and we can get them to make a change."

We're always going to pay more attention to intelligent discussion than caterwauling. We're always going to make the changes we think are right for the game, even if the community doesn't give us the stamp of approval. Sorry. That doesn't mean we don't want feedback.

Most everyone reading these forums knows a good post when they see it. If you're having trouble I would look for "makes a persuasive argument" and not "agrees with me."

Q u o t e:
I don't mean to be rude, but if the bolded sentence is the case, why do u respond to that one QQ post instead of all the constructive material in this thread?

I said we pay more attention to intelligent discussion. "Pay more attention" means discuss in design meetings, which is really what you want most of the time. Responding to a forum post in hopes of discouraging a ton of bumping and QQ posts is just me trying to make my life easier. Remember, the blue posts is not ultimately what you want. The game change is.

Let's not derail this discussion though. I made my point.

Q u o t e:
Is the shadow portion based on DAMAGE DONE or is it based PRE-MITIGATED weapon damage?

The Shadow damage will be less if the physical part strikes for less. We took that into consideration when coming up with the numbers. On the other hand, the Shadow damage will strike for more if you have all of the talents that prop up Shadow damage, and that part can crit separately.

From many reports it appears that the Scourge Strike on the PTR isn't working correctly, so most of what we are getting back right now are theorycrafted numbers, and some of those are wildly off. Let's get the ability working correctly and then the community can have another go at it. We're totally open to shifting some more damage from Shadow to physical. We're not open to titanic Scourge strike crits again, given that Unholy DKs already do so much damage from diseases and magic.

The goal is for it to beat out two Blood Strikes or Obliterate.