There's nothing necessarily wrong with BCB being better for DW than 2H. It's more than worth the talent points for 2H unholy, even with other available options. If dualwield is getting 15k more BCB damage than a 2H on Patchwerk, we're talking about maybe a 100 DPS difference. Like Ghostcrawler said it makes sense to hit up BCB if dualwield is too good, but it's not making DW overpowered by itself.

The most logical place to look for DW nerfs is Killing Machine. Every dualwielder in these parses is running close to 80% crit rate on IT and HB. Making some reasonable assumptions about their base spell crit rate, they're getting over 10% of their DPS from Killing Machine alone. That's on Patchwerk, where they're getting an inflated portion of their DPS from autoattack and gargoyle (short fight, high bloodlust/garg uptime). If you look at parses from fights closer to 5 minutes or 10 minutes, the extra crits on IT and HB are an even bigger percentage of their DPS. Even if DW isn't overpowered, it shouldn't be getting such a big chunk of damage from one lone talent.

2H frost doesn't get nearly this much out of Killing Machine, and is a weak DPS spec in general, so it's not that KM is just broken across the board. I can see three possible solutions:

(1) Normalize KM's proc rate, or increase the proc rate to 100% on white crit and slap a 10-second internal cooldown on it. Less overpowered for DW, still just as good for 2H at least at current gear levels.

(2) Make KM proc off yellow crits rather than white crits. 2H and dualwield would benefit equally from KM. This would make KM slightly better for 2H frost (which is probably a good thing) and much weaker for dualwield.

(3) Scrap the "proc on crit" idea entirely, make KM proc off disease ticks. Equal benefit for 2h and DW, with the added bonus of putting an end to 2H frost rotations that skip Plague Strike.



TLDR version: Killing Machine is a much bigger problem than BCB, and is a problem regardless of whether DW does more damage than 2H. Fix KM so it's not insanely good specifically for dualwield.

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Q u o t e:
There are talents that benefit DW more than 2H. We think that is more interesting than every talent always giving you the same benefit no matter what your gear choices. BCB, Killing Machine and Necrosis, among others, should benefit DW.

If DW is too strong now, as some players think, then these are talents we might change.

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You may want to consider the overall DW vs 2H mechanics as they apply to all classes?

As it stands, no one but fury warriors and DK tanks want to use 2hers for actually hitting things, and fury warriors want to dual wield them :P

Arms warriors, 2h DKs, 2h Enh Shaman etc are all clearly inferior, and some of them have been for quite some time.

Are the DW talents over budget?

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That means you're giving DW setups both a highly competitive single-target alternative to Obliterate (which is an absolute monster in any AoE situation on top of that), as well as a primary strike that hits harder than 2H's Heart Strike for the same rune cost, on top of applying the disease. When you consider on top of that Killing Machine giving both these moves 80-90% crit rates in a raid setting, it's not hard to see what is fueling the DW raid damage engine.

If you'll notice, every single DW build that is competitive for top DPS (6-6.8k PW parses) is at minimum 27 points in Unholy, purely for Impurity, Gargoyle and the perm-Ghoul...

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(Emphasis mine)

Just reread Junon's post more carefully and the point about Impurity makes a lot of sense. IT shouldn't hit this hard. The most obvious solution I see is to change Impurity to affect only shadow spells, or "diseases and shadow spells" (Frost Fever still gets the bonus, but HB and the IT direct hit don't). Besides dualwield the only spec affected would be 2H unholy, and between Epidemic and the Scourge Strike glyph we won't notice.

It's funny how we're seeing the same balance problems with with dualwield spec now that we saw with 2H builds in beta. IT and PS got nerfed in beta because they were outperforming abilities that didn't apply diseases, and people were building frost specs solely around IT spam. Black Ice got changed to not affect shadow damage because 2H unholy DKs were doing monstrous DPS by stacking Black Ice and Impurity. We're seeing the same issues now with IT-spam specs and stacked spell multipliers, only this time it's dualwield instead of 2H frost and unholy.

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(Emphasis mine)

Just reread Junon's post more carefully and the point about Impurity makes a lot of sense. IT shouldn't hit this hard. The most obvious solution I see is to change Impurity to affect only shadow spells, or "diseases and shadow spells" (Frost Fever still gets the bonus, but HB and the IT direct hit don't). Besides dualwield the only spec affected would be 2H unholy, and between Epidemic and the Scourge Strike glyph we won't notice.

It's funny how we're seeing the same balance problems with with dualwield spec now that we saw with 2H builds in beta. IT and PS got nerfed in beta because they were outperforming abilities that didn't apply diseases, and people were building frost specs solely around IT spam. Black Ice got changed to not affect shadow damage because 2H unholy DKs were doing monstrous DPS by stacking Black Ice and Impurity. We're seeing the same issues now with IT-spam specs and stacked spell multipliers, only this time it's dualwield instead of 2H frost and unholy.

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This is a reasonable point, but I don't think changing impurity to be shadow spells only is the best solution.

The reason? Currently there is almost no reason for a UH-DK to offspec into Frost. A lot of the reason is because Black Ice was made Frost only.

I *like* creative specs that use different combinations, so I think we should go for balance, not for limitations.

I don't have a magical solution - but I'd love to see black ice restored to shadow damage as well to give UH some options. I like the fact that you can build interesting DW builds. Sure it needs nerfing, but let's keep it as a viable build.

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Q u o t e:


Yeah, we agree with Sawney. A proc per minute on Killing Machine would nerf DW a little while making an expensive talent more attractive for 2H Frost.

We would also like to buff Necrosis a little since it just doesn't pay for itself right now, but that could end up buffing DW too.

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Buff it however you need, but make it mainhand only. As in has no effect on a weapon held in the offhand, so that it works on two handers and mainhand.

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Yeah, we agree with Sawney. A proc per minute on Killing Machine would nerf DW a little while making an expensive talent more attractive for 2H Frost.

We would also like to buff Necrosis a little since it just doesn't pay for itself right now, but that could end up buffing DW too.

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Well, 2 thoughts come to mind.

You could adjust the cost, % and even have necrosis apply to strikes to get the right amount and make it favor 2hers.

or

You could just gut DW in enough other places so it needs the buff.

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Ok just to clarify I am sure I am misunderstanding your post so I don't want to jump all over you because of it...

However woudln't 1 proc per minute for 5talent points make it complete worthless for both specs? Or was "A" a general term for a fixed amount of procs per minute that averaged out for both DW and 2hd users?

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Im sure he meant a ppm mechanic, not setting it to 1 ppm. My guess is it would probably be set fairly high..

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Q u o t e:


Yeah, we agree with Sawney. A proc per minute on Killing Machine would nerf DW a little while making an expensive talent more attractive for 2H Frost.

We would also like to buff Necrosis a little since it just doesn't pay for itself right now, but that could end up buffing DW too.

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You could turn necrosis into a PPM-mechanic based extra shadow hit? Or make it attack power based and give it an internal cooldown? Or make it proc off Plague Strike?

Lots of options, most of which are more interesting than just a little extra white damage.

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Well, 2 thoughts come to mind.

You could adjust the cost, % and even have necrosis apply to strikes to get the right amount and make it favor 2hers.

or

You could just gut DW in enough other places so it needs the buff.

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The problem with gutting DW in other places is that you make Necrosis a staple, forcing DWers into unholy.

While DW is seemingly and situationaly more potent in some situations than 2h - It isn't meant to be non-viable.

If anything, there should be some deeper DW favorable talents so that people don't need to do a tenious tri-spec to get all the bases covered - not to say that DW should be limited to a specific tree, but it would be nice to see some love in the lower tiers so that they can specialize. It may just be a matter of moving killing machine or necrosis further down (and maybe improving them accordingly) but i think that it would put DW a notch lower - but still make it an interesting and viable choice with good gear. (key words.)

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We would also like to buff Necrosis a little since it just doesn't pay for itself right now, but that could end up buffing DW too.

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Want to fix Necrosis and help normalize damage while keeping the true flavor of Unholy?

Necrosis
Rank (0/5)
Requires 10 points in Unholy Talents
Increases the chance for all Damage over Time spells to crit by 2%.

So 5 points in and you get 10% bonus chance on your DOT spells to crit on each tick.

There ya go, worthy talent that buffs AOE and disease damage in the AOE and disease tree. Then we only have BCB in the AOE and disease tree targetted specifically at the DW crowd that us 2 handed users trying to stick with the Blizzard vision of a 2 handed tanking/DPS class can skip.

With Gargoyle being neutered us true Unholy 2 handed specced DK's are going to need something. And the above would not make DW more out of wack at all.

Unholy doesn't need AoE buffs .. >.<

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The problem with gutting DW in other places is that you make Necrosis a staple, forcing DWers into unholy.

While DW is seemingly and situationaly more potent in some situations than 2h - It isn't meant to be non-viable.

If anything, there should be some deeper DW favorable talents so that people don't need to do a tenious tri-spec to get all the bases covered - not to say that DW should be limited to a specific tree, but it would be nice to see some love in the lower tiers so that they can specialize. It may just be a matter of moving killing machine or necrosis further down (and maybe improving them accordingly) but i think that it would put DW a notch lower - but still make it an interesting and viable choice with good gear. (key words.)

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This. Some talents near the end of the trees would add some flavor to the mix while keeping it viable. without making a confuzzling tri-spec Thaddius. You guys managed to pull it off with tanking talents, so it could be a simple add here :P

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You could turn necrosis into a PPM-mechanic based extra shadow hit? Or make it attack power based and give it an internal cooldown? Or make it proc off Plague Strike?

Lots of options, most of which are more interesting than just a little extra white damage.

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It is just a terribly boring talent as it is eh?

Change it up please GC.

I'm guessing it's 'cause faster offhands proc harder, slower MH strikes.

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The problem with gutting DW in other places is that you make Necrosis a staple, forcing DWers into unholy.

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Show me a viable DW build that doesn't have 15 in unholy already, since perma-ghoul is a major staple.

And 15 points for necrosis isnt exactly breaking the bank going into Unholy anyways.

The bigger objection I have is that option 2 basicly is going to gut 2h unholy builds as well, so you pretty much have to redesign how the whole tree works for 2hers as well. But they may have to do that anyways, since things like ghoul and gargoyle make up a large portion of the damage for DW anyways.

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Q u o t e:
Unholy doesn't need AoE buffs .. >.<

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Meh, it would help our single target DPS as well having the extra crit chances on disease ticks. The additional power to UB would be nice to make it a more clear single target winner over Death Coil for RP usage.

ATM a Unholy DK is good AOE DPS, but by no means OP, if a mage decides to drop lazy mode for a few seconds they can blow us out of the water on a multi mob pull. Then they blitz our dps on single target by a landslide.

Extra disease crit chances are just flat out better dps for a true deep unholy build that would bring up single target and multi target the same percentage. The aoe comment was simply due to the fact that pestilence is going to happen and then all the mobs have the diseases with the extra crit chances.