Unpopolar opinion - Let's show Death Knights some sort of love

[Higgings 1824]

this topic has been inspired by an already existing topic, created by the member @Gladiator. His topic can be found here

 

As many know, Death Knights are the characters representing the Tank Class of the Forsaken's faction. Many discussed theories stroke this class, making it look like one of the best classes in the game, and in many aspects, this class is very strong and suitable for many scenarios, PvP and 1vs1 on top of that. In fact, on the recent balancement, we can state with no regrets that Death Knighs have received a very incredible buff. This, however, might have led this class to be neglected in other scenarios, where, if another tank is able to do one thing, most of dks, in order to do that same thing, must either be very high amped or at least have a very good party at their disposal (or tons of pots). The aim of this topic is to prove how Death Knights have been kinda neglected in terms of balancements, or more properly, how they are a step behind the other tanks.

 

In order to give a sort of... order...  to every idea, I will divide its skills in "Good", "Show Love" and "Why...?" Categories. I will just drop Basic skills, because I'm aware that these have indeed been taken into account in one of the recent updates, and many of them are supported by very good relics, which would make of me an Hypocrite, should I say the opposite.

 

Good

▪︎Death Call: Buffed in terms of damage, strikes many opponents at once, very high aggression given. Nothing to say about this skill

▪︎Secret Reserves: necessarily adjusted (and extremely overrated...). Very good for a HP regen build. Nothing to say about this skill

▪︎Aura of Hatred: the best skills this class has got: it is able to buff every aspect of the class and the only one which makes it really worth levelling it to max. Nothing to say about this skill.

▪︎Sharp Shadow: Good skill all in all but the combo with saturation is pretty useless for 2 reasons:

1. This skill is definitely not studied for PvE, while Saturation is not (or was not) studied for PvP

2. People rarely use Saturation and magic damage at all. Don't forget that we have got way more capable classes when it comes to deal magic damage, and they do it definitely better than how a Death Knight could ever do in its entire existence.

 

Show Love

▪︎ Steel Hurricane: For a long time, this skill has been neglected and actually nerfed in terms of hit-able targets. Pretty fine, but no Death Knight whose brain is not yet rotten would give it a single point, just to see this skill hit as much as your base damage (skill at 3/4). This skill needs a buff, and since the meta of this class mainly relies on Life Steal, a very intriguing attribute might be giving this skill a bonus of +20%* of hps restored through Life Steal, in case this skill is levelled at a minimum of 3. If not this, give this skill a reason to be actually studied

▪︎Blood Protection: Ok... ok, I know what you're thinking and I admit that I might sound really provocative here, but seriously, a tank can't act as a tank for 8 seconds only. In order to be decent, this skill must be necessarily maxed, and it's quite funny that a Shaman has got our same skill with the addition to be able to Cure every negative status of the character... Every other class has got an utility on even having one skill at 1/4; that's not the case of this skill and to every skill belonging to Death Knight in general, but this is another topic.

▪︎Blow of the silence: One character only it's not enough anymore... my apologies, but I must say that when a glitch occured, according to which dk was able to multi mute many targets at once, I was going to max this skill because it would have been extremely useful in many situations. We are on a timeline where if you mute one, the other backs up, but this is only when we speak of this class; other classes can be extremely dangerous vs many players at once. In my opinion, give this skill the possibility to mute more targets at once, should it hit more targets at once. The higher the lv, the more players it can mute. That being said, on 1vs1 though remains a very strong skill. 

 

 

Why...?

▪︎Knight's Curse: might I know why a Warlock's skill has been given to a Death Knight? I mean, seriously, why a tank class should make a target more suscettibile to attacks, instead of, maybe, debuffing it with a Sap alike skill or turning it to a totally new defensive skill? I would suggest one thing only though: if you want to make this class use more magic damage on its build, give it a skill which restores him health through the use of magic damage (it will change the meta of this character but this will make magic damage useful); this skill could be the case. It's easy to run away from it, as an enemy player, hence, give this skill a 2nd effect which allows the Death Knight to Heal itself while standing on the flames. Too high Cooldown for a unnecessary skill, otherwise.

▪︎Saturation: Too high HP price for a skill which lasts too short, not even enough to get your HP back from the cost spent. A Death Knight bases its whole existence on this skill, exactly like a healer on its healing abilities. Make this skill worth to be used, and Imma give a suggestion: Permanent activity (Energy expense on Time) and increases by a certain percentage your life steal parameter. Easy and useful. 

 

Conclusions

 

As showed, the 50% or so of its skills have been left alone for severals years, becoming undoubtedly outdated for the new contents that have already come in game. This class deserves love, and I'm hoping for more changes in this sense. I thank you for your time gifted to me, and I bid you a nice day.

 

 

 

 

*These numbers have been taken randomly, and the whole post itself has been written in a provocative way, but it was intended so that people could actually realize that this class is not that strong how it seems. I welcome people here and ask them to write their opinion, whether they are dks users or not - it doesn't really matter. Your opinion, if supported by ideas and basis in general, is more than welcome and appreciated. Thank you again for reading this. 

 

Edited September 16, 2020 by Higgings
Added and Removed some parts

[lore 318]

12 hours ago, Higgings said:

▪︎Saturation: Too high HP price for a skill which lasts too short, not even enough to get your HP back from the cost spent. A Death Knight bases its whole existence on this skill, exactly like a healer on its healing abilities. Make this skill worth to be used, and Imma give a suggestion: Permanent activity (Energy expense on Time) and increases by a certain percentage your life steal parameter. Easy and useful. 

true on all sides the skill is more just a self damage (espescialy at 1/4)

12 hours ago, Higgings said:

Blood Protection: Ok... ok, I know what you're thinking and I admit that I might sound really provocative here, but seriously, a tank can't act as a tank for 8 seconds only. In order to be decent, this skill must be necessarily maxed, and it's quite funny that a Shaman has got our same skill with the addition to be able to Cure every negative status of the character... Every other class has got an utility on even having one skill at 1/4; that's not the case of this skill and to every skill belonging to Death Knight in general, but this is another topic.

for me the duration of it should cover the 75/85% of the cooldown at its maximun developement (wich should be like 13/16 seconds), not just half that in way if u want cycle it 

12 hours ago, Higgings said:

Saturation: Too high HP price for a skill which lasts too short, not even enough to get your HP back from the cost spent. A Death Knight bases its whole existence on this skill, exactly like a healer on its healing abilities. Make this skill worth to be used, and Imma give a suggestion: Permanent activity (Energy expense on Time) and increases by a certain percentage your life steal parameter. Easy and useful. 

i would prefer it would be a health over time use but with a huge lifesteal gain in order that the deathknight can only use it when its making chaos and dont have it in some cases for dont make it too strong but i guess it might get too diffucult to handle since it can just kill the user if not used carefully

[Higgings 1824]

4 minutes ago, lore said:

I would prefer it would be a health over time use but with a huge lifesteal gain in order that the deathknight can only use it when its making chaos and dont have it in some cases for dont make it too strong but i guess it might get too diffucult to handle since it can just kill the user if not used carefully

 

You know... I don't dislike this idea at all. But if the price is... 2% of hps per second, it is still a lot xd. 

 

Such classes have got high hps usually, let's keep this in mind.

 

 

2% of hps every 4 secs, like the energy regen rate, I believe it could work. 

[Ogull 421]

to be honest my problem is with kiss of death, saturation and blood protection...

- kiss of death seems really out of place for a dk and that it wasn't meant for this class when it was first added.

- saturation 10% hp lose is really to much for a tank, you know i pride myself for taking low damage from monsters, taking little to no damage from mobs but then my own skill deal 800-1000 damage to me seems like a to me.

- blood protection reduce damage by 50% for 8 seconds with a 22 second cooldown, great!, until you see other tanks skills or even support classes have a better damage reduction skill. heck barbarian have 2 passive skills that reduce damage taken and a heal? not to mention paladin, blade dance and of course warden, that skill is really underwhelming and its more like "it has to be this one, ever other skill is worse".

[Higgings 1824]

@FakeUser you basically have understood the whole point of what I wrote. I believe this class deserves more in terms of balancement. Not that it is weak, more likely it is outdated. 

[Ogull 421]

12 minutes ago, lore said:

i would prefer it would be a health over time use but with a huge lifesteal gain in order that the deathknight can only use it when its making chaos and dont have it in some cases for dont make it too strong but i guess it might get too diffucult to handle since it can just kill the user if not used carefully

i would say that it take % of health just when its first casted like the old 4% then it take mana per second to stay active, as to how much ls it gives, im gonna be bold here and say that i am fine with 10% life steal IF! its stay actives with a mana consumption over time is enough for me

[Higgings 1824]

1 minute ago, FakeUser said:

As to how much ls it gives, im gonna be bold here and say that i am fine with 10% life steal IF! its stay actives with a mana consumption over time is enough for me

 

Quite low but understandable, many items do give Life Steal nowadays. I find Lore's idea intriguing due to the reasonment "No pain, no gain", and it would change the current reasonment according to which "No pain, No gain anyway"