Will 3.1 skew DKs to unholy?Follow

I don't think so. At least, it probably won't skew it any more than it already is.

[EDIT]

And when did they announce the Ebon Plague change? I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere.

Edited, Mar 29th 2009 1:11pm by idiggory

Can I just say AWESOME.

That is a big reason why I didn't go Unholy.

I'm the complete opposite of you I guess, Quor, after switching to Unholy for PvP.

I absolutely loathe Blood and Frost now; not being able to use my ghoul (which has become very natural) to stun and add burst makes me get really frustrated with the other DK specs.

It helps that Desecration is amazing and that every time I pop Garg I start giggling because of the damage it puts out.

Maybe they just suck? (Just saying it's a possibility, lol).

But, I suppose one part of it could be that Frost is less bound to melee range than Unholy? While the Ghoul will be on you a lot, they focus a lot more on PS and SS, where you focus on IT and HB, no? Plus, I believe Frost Strike hits harder than Death Coil. And you'd have better defenses.

But, this comes at the cost of utility. So, it may even out. Perhaps their teams just aren't well designed?

Duh, lol, I completely forgot about the Garg. How exactly is your kiting superior to Frost though?

lol, I definitely see your points...

From a bit of playing around as Unholy, similar spec to Theo's, AND having played as frost for quite a bit I can say this is all true.

Shadowfrost:

I'm still getting the hang of it but I can see how it completely turns into plate wearing ranged dps with huge kiting ability and very difficult to kite. Blood boil being a ranged snare that produces death runes for IT spam is definitely hax. You can just straight spam Bloodboil and Icy Touch and dump runic power into Death Coils and Gargs. Against ranged classes melee works better for KM procs. You just have to remember that you're not beating melee in melee range (certainly not in the way a Frost would), but the only melee with the ability to force you into melee range is a Frost dk, which seem to be rarer than hen's teeth in PvP, so in terms of probability you might win the lottery a few times before being pwnt by a Frost.

The spec will definitely suffer with the garg talent being moved, the change to reaping and the change to the blood boil glyph. You're going to have to blood strike for the death runes and plague strike / chains for the snare. So it's going to become melee bound, to be able to beat heavy meleers like Frosts, Bloods, Ferals and Paladins you might need to toss in some melee abilities to it. If you're going to be heavy melee you might as well go Blood instead.

Apparently 3.1 wants to completely end the possibility of DKs that don't need to melee. I have to admit it's fair considering how much snaring and closing power the DK has with death grip and icy chains.

Frost:

Frost is like improved warrior with improved survivability on top of that. The necessity for so much icy chains means that you don't get so much ITs unless you're fighting a class that isn't attempting to kite, much of the damage comes from Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes instead, which is in melee range. Frost strikes are an anti melee attack since it can't be dodge/parry/blocked, while I was also stacking blade barrier with unbreakable armor for the brutal anti-melee defense. 1v1 against unholy I consistently pwnd them in melee followed by smashing their ghoul form for added pwn and/or also surviving the ghoul explosion in the end. The net DPS is relatively low so there's little to no chance to bursting down someone that is being healed, in BG you can just DG the healer and get him a few miles away from his group and let your teammates do the rest, or DG your targets miles away from their healer. The only class that kited me successfully was mages.

I can see now that my frost build was a very specialized build, it was an anti-melee specialist which somehow combined with the ability to force everyone except mages to be in melee range. Pretty much you can say that, if you want to play a warrior, you might as well just play a frost DK instead. (So much for bliz saying "we're not making your class obsolete" eh?)

Blood I haven't tried yet, I guess it's another melee dependent spec, I guess it hits DPS through the roof but I'm not sure it can snare as much as Frost.



Edited, Apr 4th 2009 7:43pm by xorq

Edited, Apr 4th 2009 7:59pm by xorq

Maybe you play on a PvE server and your only PvP is arena? If that's the case I'll agree. There isn't even a reason to play arena with any spec, class or team at all other than unholy+healerdin or unholy+healerdin+surv. Anything else would be a waste of time and it doesn't require discussion, statistics suffice.

But what would you spec for PvP outside arena? The healerdin build that rocked 2v2 and 3v3 arenas fails elsewhere. DKs, I don't know.

Without properly supporting teammates (aka wintergrasp, bgs, worldpvp...) DKs generally play better than warriors because of the combination of Death Grip and Icy Chains. For a melee class warrior snares are weak, their ranged attacks are insignificant. I think they're one of the easiest classes to kite. Warriors don't get the stun immunity which helps a lot against rogues and paladins. If you lifted all stance restrictions they would probably be imba, but the stance system and the rage system completely complicates your abilities, warriors do have the advantage of anti-heal debuffs but I don't find them hard to beat. Arenas would be another story, but arena teams with warriors fail anyway.



Edited, Apr 4th 2009 10:18pm by xorq

No I didn't check your gear. And don't worry I'm not using Frost anymore. Thanks for the BB tip, that's hax.

In arenas dispelling may be a guarantee but outside arenas it's circumstantial and you can often use death grip to pull people outside of the range of their healer. You should try it, it's better antiheals than mortal strike. 1on1 the guys that can dispell are generally not going to kite you much.

Hamstring is melee range, which means that your one chance to apply it against a kiter is right after intercept (it doesn't always land you in the right location in PvP), it can be dodged, parried, vanished, trinketed, blinked, gnomed out of, etc but most importantly it can be kited. Something as simple as Death Coil followed by Curse of Exhaustion and you have to wait for your intercept cooldown for a second chance to hamstring. If you're very unlucky you can be kited at a range too short for intercept but too long for melee :D. With the DK you can still kill people even if you have a mob dazing you or something like that. I think hunters are going to get the ability to daze for 8 seconds out of every 10 (2 cooldowns with 4 sec daze each), it's going to be a little hard to hamstring them while intercept is on cooldown.

Warriors are still great in their way... prot spec warriors are great flag carriers at Warsong, and they can tank the AV warmasters for the Blitz achievement. They're also good for the black war bear achievement.

Edited, Apr 5th 2009 1:57am by xorq

across my 3 lvl 70 DK's iv gone Unholy on all of them. Questing si so easy, and the reduced CD on DnD makes jumping into tank grear a lot easier and than if they were Blood.


I may level one of them after 3.1