3.3 Scourge Strike was a failure.

#0 - March 1, 2010, 2:10 p.m.

I'm going to list all the reasons of the top of my head as to why Scourge Strike should be a purely shadow strike again. It looks like a failure in what was trying to be accomplished with the change.

1: Armor Penetration.

The whole reason Scourge Strike changed was so that Unholy could use it instead of Obliterate and benefit from ArP. If ArP is being completely redone in Cataclysm, why should our strike be broken on heavy armor targets because of something that's not going to be around in it's current game-changing incarnation for long?

Besides, Unholy using Obliterate isn't too bad considering that it is a purely physical attack that benefits very well from Armor Penetration!

2: Reaping being dropped again.

When 3.3.3 hits, yet again Unholy DKs will be dropping Reaping from our talents. This surely can't be intended, it would not follow suite with the other DK trees. (See: Death Rune Mastery/Blood of the North) If one of the goals of the 3.3 change was to have us want to take Reaping for more Scourge Strikes, it was a failure.

3: PvP damage is horrid.

Scourge Strike is completely lackluster in terms of most PvP targets. Yes yes, we can hit Mages as hard as other melee(and the other really light armor classes too) but for the majority of targets (See: Paladins Shamans Warriors etc) it is almost a joke. Unless we've come to a consensus that 3.2 DK comps were OP it's simply not fair to say that 3.3 TSG or PHDK will become OP if DKs damage with Scourge Strike is ramped up a bit.

4: A physical Scourge Strike does not fit with the Unholy theme at all.

A physical Scourge Strike is also an Obliterate clone. The Unholy tree is strongly themed towards pets and shadow damage, why is our 41 point talented strike an Obliterate that does less damage and puts Desecration on the ground?

Ghostcrawler

#6 - March 1, 2010, 2:46 p.m.

We don't like melee strikes hitting for straight magical damage. We went through a lot of similar balance issues when Ret hit for so much Holy damage and to a lesser extent with Frost DKs.

I agree we have some confusing tooltips, but I don't agree that Scourge Strike is one of them. It's a weapon attack that hits for physical damage. If there are diseases on the target, it adds some Shadow damage too. Doesn't seem that complicated.

Ghostcrawler

#48 - March 1, 2010, 4:15 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I dont think we read the same posts, it isnt about how complicated it is. It's about how another ability (obliterate) does the same thing, better.

I was reading the posts in this thread. Two of them above said essentially "it's not as cool when it doesn't hit for Shadow damage" and "the tooltip is complicated." I was responding to those points.

To respond to some of the others:

We're happy with how much damage DKs can do in PvP. They were too susceptible to dispels, and we have now implemented a fix to help with that.

Class abilities are different. Envenom is not Scourge Strike. Rogues still do a lot of physical damage. Frost Strike still hits for 100% magic damage, but it's a more controlled ability. The DK in PvP hitting for huge Scourge Strikes over and over again is not something we're going to go back to. It may have been fun, but I assert it was fun because it was overpowered not because Shadow damage is somehow more entertaining.

Players using armor pen to hit for physical damage do not hit for magical damage. The closest argument could make is that bleeds act similar to magic damage.

Obliterate is a different ability. Unholy has talents that play off of both Scourge Strike and Shadow damage. If we see Unholy DKs literally going to Obliterate and skipping those relevant talents (which some PvE DKs were doing before), then we would make changes, but they don't seem to be doing that now. We're certainly not going to make Scourge Strike HIT REAL HARD in order to distinguish it, so make sure you're asking for what you really want and not try to sneakily ask for a damage buff.

In general, I find arguments to be generally weak that say "This class does X so I should be able to as well." If you have specific problems in PvP, mention those. If you think your damage is too low to exert pressure, that's a fine conversation to have. I would try to do it without the "But X ability hits hard, so mine should too" talking points.

Finally, this dead horse feels a little dead to me. You might want to check out some of our (numerous) comments on the intent for Scourge Strike before you hit that Post button again.