Unholy DK 7.2.5 thread - Blue Tracker

#1 - March 31, 2017, 4:09 a.m.

This is a preliminary thread just to start throwing ideas down. Ill update this post with solid ideas (and even change my own if ppl think theyre bad) if this thread proves at all popular.

Spec issues:

Runic Corruption
It just feels bad to fire off numerous Death Coils and not get a proc. It goes off so infrequently. This issue is largely tied to Death Coil.

Suggestion:
Unnerf it and change Death Coil.

Death Coil
STILL doesnt feel good to use. Having a chance to apply a wound with 4pc t19 makes it OK. But the damage of the ability just isnt good enough. We dont want to cast a lot of Death Coils. We just want our Death Coils to matter.

Suggestions:
-Increase the cost 50%, increase the damage 50%.
-Buff Necrosis to compensate for less Death Coils and maybe allow it to stack to 2. And increase the buff duration to 10 seconds.

Dark Transformation
The nerf to this feels unwarranted @40%. It requires 67% mastery to become DPS neutral. That seems fairly high...

This also ties into Shadow Infusion. Shadow Infusion wont ever be a choice if Dark Transformation is so weak baseline.

Suggestion:
Reduce the nerf to 25-30%.

Festering Wounds
This is a big one.

Their damage simply does not matter outside of PURE single target (even with Lash of Shadows). Unfortunately, the problem is that they have numerous talents dedicated to them. If wounds continue to get buffed then we simply lose talent diversity.

But real talk...the only reason wounds even matter atm is due to the legendary bracers. Thats really it.

Suggestions:
-Make the cleave portion of Bursting Sores baseline. Nerf it if you have to, but make it baseline.
-Make popping wounds matter. Maybe popping a wound puts a stacking 3-5% buff on our next Death Coil (similar to Necrosis)? Reduces the CD of Army by 1 second? Has a chance to summon an Army of the Dead ghoul?

Im sure these suggestions are terrible but you get the idea...wounds are just damage. They need to do more.

Talent: All Will Serve
So...why do we summon a new minion? The entire first row of talents (Bursting Sores and Ebon Fever) are simply damage increases with some added functionality. Bursting Sores lets wounds cleave...Ebon Fever makes virulent plague tick faster (which leads to more virulent eruptions during a fight).

Then All Will Serve comes along and adds a really bad minion that gains nothing from mastery. Why?

Suggestion:
-Make this the ghoul talent. Increases ghoul damage 50-100% and increases Dark Transformation from 200% to 300%.

Class Legendaries:
Outside of the legendary bracers, our class specific legendaries just arent very good. The second best legendary for Unholy is Kiljaeden's Burning Wish.

Suggestion:
-I mean, this is pretty simple: better tune our class legendaries.
-Make Uvanimor increase ghoul damage 10-20%
-Buff Draugr to 50% chance
-Shoulders...buff them to 40%. Make it at least worth more than a Death Coil for Arbiter...

Im sure there will be more suggestions. But these were the main ones I could think of off the top of my head for now.

#18 - March 31, 2017, 11:08 p.m.

We are increasing the cost and damage of Death Coil in 7.2.5. Even with no other changes, that change is likely a pure buff (even though it looks neutral), since the resource it's draining is one that was being wasted anyway.

It's not yet clear whether we'll open up further changes in 7.2.5, since the core rotation is generally working well. Having 3 main buttons (Festering Wound, Scourge Strike, Death Coil) that all have no cooldowns, but instead juggle 3 resources (Runes, Runic Power, Festering Wounds), is a relatively unusual melee rotation that we think has turned out pretty interesting. The biggest thing it needs is space to breathe on the resources, as has been discussed a lot. We'll see how it looks with the Death Coil change in addition to the earlier Runic Corruption change, as well as the loss of T19 set bonuses, and see if there's still a problem.

If we need to make further changes, the goal would likely be to focus on talents that cause a very large swing in resource generation or GCD usage. Because the rotation needs to not be flooded for max-level players with endgame bonuses, but also not too slow for leveling players, as was pointed out. This is an issue we're starting to pay more attention to across all specs (especially melee specs). As we have more rotation-affecting talents in the game than ever before, and we buffed a lot of of them in 7.1.5, many talents (or legendaries or similar bonuses) are trying to effect large DPS increases solely through giving more of a resource or proc. It's becoming a more common problem that specs which initially had good pacing get flooded in certain setups, and we want to start correcting those where we can.