Bring back the old Death Strike please
Quote:
Originally, this ability was something you would use only situationally to heal yourself at a cost of damage. Since then we have redesigned the death knight class sufficiently to where Death Strike was a major rotational ability for Blood. Given how much the attack is hitting for, we think the amount of healing it provided was too much.
Some numbers:
Prior to 3.1, Death Strike healed as follows:
0 diseases : 0 healing
1 disease : 150% of damage dealt
2 diseases : 200% of damage dealt
3 diseases : 250% of damage dealt
Now with 3.1 Blizz has decided to give Blood DKs the option of speccing for harder-hitting Death Strikes but has nerfed the healing ratio to keep things balanced. Now Death Strike heals as follows:
0 diseases : 0 healing
1 disease : 20% of damage dealt
2 diseases : 40% of damage dealt
3 diseases : 40% of damage dealt (probably bugged and intended to be 60%)
Ultimately, Death Strike went from being a low-hitting melee attack used for decent self-healing to hitting almost as hard as Obliterate but with anemic healing utility.
The problem with that change is not so much that DK self-healing gets nerfed, but rather is a more fundamental mistake in class design. Death Strike is now so close to being the same as Obliterate that it pretty much lost its reason for existing in the first place. You don't give the player two buttons that do almost the same thing. There needs to be a reason for an ability to exist, or at least a different enough mechanic behind it that gives the player reason to decide to use one ability instead of another. Death Knights used to have a reason to choose to hit Death Strike instead of Obliterate or Scourge Strike. Right now that choice is pretty much non-existent. Blood DKs have no reason to hit Obliterate because it longer provides significant damage over Death Strike, and Frost and Unholy DKs have no reason to hit Death Strike because it no longer heals for any kind of useful amount.
On top of that, I wouldn't be surprised to see Blood DPS becoming the new overpowered spec before long. Armor Penetration just got a buff, and the Heart Strike spam provided by Death Rune Mastery was previously kept in check either by how speccing Annihilation kept the good Unholy talents out of reach or by how having to hit Death Strike to generate Death runes was a DPS loss. No longer the case now.
Anyway, the old situational-use Death Strike was just more fun I think. I wonder what made Blizz think that the change was necessary.
Total Comments 6
Comments
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PVP. 5K heals were overpowered.
That was easy.Posted 04-18-2009 at 04:59 PM by Zarko 
- I remember people complaining about how impossible it was to kill a Death Knight in PvP not all that long ago. now with various nerfs (mainly Lichborne and Death Strike) they are slightly more grounded.
Posted 04-18-2009 at 08:13 PM by Durandro -
One of the things that erks me the most is PVP. Everyone things everything should be balanced around PVP. I hardly ever PVP and would prefer that PVP be part of a completely sperate server (meaning if you wanted to PVP, PVP was ONLY available on PVP servers). Im tired of seeing PVE get the shaft because of QQing about PVP this.Posted 04-18-2009 at 10:33 PM by Blueduck3285 - Oh, I totally agree. They should have completely different scales while in Battlegrounds, etc. But Blizzard doesn't seem to think that way, and only seems to do demishing returns in PvP with crowd control.
Posted 04-19-2009 at 01:12 PM by Durandro -
Well, leveling DK's who are not blood are gona have a lot more downtime. Instances and raids are mostly covered for heals, but how long you can go without healing dedicates your leveling speed.Posted 04-19-2009 at 06:39 PM by orcstar - Actually thats entierly not true. I leveled my DK frost and beat most the general population to 80. 70-80 was the only rough patch but was made easier by grouping with guildies.
Posted 04-19-2009 at 10:22 PM by Blueduck3285
