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Except the balance of SS is based on COUNTING the talents to boost damage--why else do you think the Subversion change happened (which is proof that they balance SS scaling using other talents)? Why does GC explicitly mention Black Ice in scaling with SS? The balancing of abilities doesn't happen in a vacuum of other abilities, not sure why you think that's the case.



Except the point of it being on PTR is that it's not final, and is subject to change. It's not implemented yet, hence it's in PTR.

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Yeah, now you're just trolling. I'll stop.

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Yeah, now you're just trolling. I'll stop.

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Trolling, or you're not grasping the obvious--like what a PTR is for.

I think a lot of players are concerned about the large gap between a "full" SS and an "empty" SS, especially against plate. In some situations they'll see very large Scourge Strikes and in other situations they'll almost be better off trying to use Icy Touch instead.

The large gap is multiplied when you realize that one of the plate wearers is able to cause SS to go to "empty" mode. I'm speaking of Paladins and Cleanse, of course.

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DKs are not a class about mashing one button to see huge numbers. There are thankfully few of those left at all on any class now. DKs do a lot of damage from spells and diseases. Regrettably, there are still a few DKs left who equate fun with "I hit that guy with SS and he died." I don't honestly think there are many of them posting in this thread, but those are the folks I am mostly speaking to when I say not to look for Scourge Strikes that regularly crit for half of someone's bar or whatever.

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I agree with the fact that SS shouldn't crit for half of someones life, but could we possibly be given some more utility for killing healers since we're not all about damage?

Such as: Death Grip silences for 2-3 seconds so we can use it as an interrupt on heals like Warriors do with Charge and Intercept.

GC if you are still following this thread, what is your opinion on the new scourge strikes damage when fighting a holy paladin. As it is due to them spamming cleanse our scourge strike hits very weak, and once this change goes through, it will be even worse.

Are there any plans to improve dispel resistance?

Are you guys considering making the Shadow Portion based on the physical damage done before instead of after armor mitigation?

If a paladin has Blessing of Protection up, since there is no physical damage done scourge strike will not work then on the paladin or its target correct?

Thanks for the replys thus far in the thread, we all greatly appreciate it.

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PvP. I don't want to name a number because then players will assume that that number - 1 is the new legal limit for Scourge Strike. If you do get all your diseases lined up in PvP, it will hit pretty hard. If you don't have them all up, which is totally a common situation in Arenas, then it will hit for less.

DKs are not a class about mashing one button to see huge numbers. There are thankfully few of those left at all on any class now. DKs do a lot of damage from spells and diseases. Regrettably, there are still a few DKs left who equate fun with "I hit that guy with SS and he died." I don't honestly think there are many of them posting in this thread, but those are the folks I am mostly speaking to when I say not to look for Scourge Strikes that regularly crit for half of someone's bar or whatever.

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We are (for the most part) trying to be as constructive as possible, you are simply not responding to some of the important issues. The first being that regardless of how much this helps or hurts pve, it dramatically hurts pvp. You said "If you do get all your diseases lined up in PvP, it will hit pretty hard." This simply isn't the case. Maybe it will hit a rogue or warlock hard. But we really needed no help in killing low armor non-healing targets. There has been extensive testing (one person showed data just a few posts before your 2nd to last post actually) showing quite conclusively how terribly this hits against our 2 biggest problems: resto/elemental shamans and holy paladins. A large portion of 3s teams and essentially every 5s team will have a shield wearing shaman or paladin.

Scourge Strike's entire damage is mitigated by armor like virtually every other melee strike in the game. This alone would be fine. But the damage is then FURTHER mitigated (and far more severely) by a lack of diseases. Conveniently, the 2 highest armor targets we face in arena are 2 of the 3 classes capable of removing our diseases. In short, against something like a warlock this Scourge Strike might double crit for 7-8k. Against a holy paladin who keeps our diseases off it will not crit for 2k. This is a gigantic problem, GC. A GIGANTIC problem.

I have asked several times and am now begging you to answer, what steps are you taking to not make all of our damage be so cripplingly reliant on diseases? You need to either let us control our strike scaling and not let it be forcibly removed or we need talents and/or baseline passives that either hurt the cleanser or help us to not make cleansing such a no-brainer. A no-brainer we have no control over.

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PvP. I don't want to name a number because then players will assume that that number - 1 is the new legal limit for Scourge Strike. If you do get all your diseases lined up in PvP, it will hit pretty hard. If you don't have them all up, which is totally a common situation in Arenas, then it will hit for less.

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I think the concern here is the disparity between the numbers. I'm not a theory crafter, so i try not to put too much weight into theoretical numbers thrown around, but from reading all of this it seems very concerning that anyone with an armor value above leather will take off far too much of the damage (even after the 'double dip' mitigation is removed).

Once you factor in disease removal, the outlook seems even bleaker. Two of the three removal skills are very 'fire and forget' types, and with the rune cooldowns it seems completely impractical to assume you can ever get a SS off with diseases up, let alone all three.

This of course means that it would be ludicrous to use SS in any situation where diseases could be cleared. Obliterate will hit for about 65% more damage (that's just me eyeballing the numbers on the tooltips) with no diseases up, and that's before factoring in the Obliterate glyph. I can see many PvP Unholy DKs forgoing getting SS at all and just using Obliterate. Is that really the ideal design that you want for them?

Bottom line, I and many others are really just wondering what your intended design for keeping diseases up in PvP is. Because as it stands currently, disease removal appears to strip the class of far too much damage.

Virulence's 30% resist is simply not enough protection for a debuff so vital to the class. It's as if every tick of Abolish Disease and etc. were to remove 2-3 combo points from the target.

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Scourge Strike's entire damage is mitigated by armor like virtually every other melee strike in the game. This alone would be fine. But the damage is then FURTHER mitigated (and far more severely) by a lack of diseases. Conveniently, the 2 highest armor targets we face in arena are 2 of the 3 classes capable of removing our diseases. In short, against something like a warlock this Scourge Strike might double crit for 7-8k. Against a holy paladin who keeps our diseases off it will not crit for 2k. This is a gigantic problem, GC. A GIGANTIC problem.

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This would be the problem. It's even further compounding the problem that DKs aren't doing very well in PvP.

It's like a death spiral. Is that the right word? When a plane starts spiraling and it's ok but hits a point where it can't stop and it just gets worse and worse?

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DKs are not a class about mashing one button to see huge numbers. There are thankfully few of those left at all on any class now. DKs do a lot of damage from spells and diseases. Regrettably, there are still a few DKs left who equate fun with "I hit that guy with SS and he died."

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The thing is, most Unholy PvP DKs aren't asking for moar damage. They're simply asking to be able to actually set up SS without all the diseases disappearing from dispels. The damage that it does for PvP is fine when the diseases are up. Damage concerns more pertain to PvE because PvE itemization has a lot of ArPen gear. PvP itemization has none/little Arpen, so top-end damage-scaling with gearing has never been a PvP concern.

I don't mind setting up to use SS. Problem is, against a priest, I'm spending more time trying to get SS up than to actually use the ability. Practically the whole match I'm reapplying IT/PS. To make things worse Virulence doesn't affect abilities like Abolish Disease.

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PvP. I don't want to name a number because then players will assume that that number - 1 is the new legal limit for Scourge Strike. If you do get all your diseases lined up in PvP, it will hit pretty hard. If you don't have them all up, which is totally a common situation in Arenas, then it will hit for less.

DKs are not a class about mashing one button to see huge numbers. There are thankfully few of those left at all on any class now. DKs do a lot of damage from spells and diseases. Regrettably, there are still a few DKs left who equate fun with "I hit that guy with SS and he died." I don't honestly think there are many of them posting in this thread, but those are the folks I am mostly speaking to when I say not to look for Scourge Strikes that regularly crit for half of someone's bar or whatever.

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I can totally understand that. Coming from a PVP standpoint, however, why would you bring a DK over a warrior. I regularly get crit for well over 5k mortal strikes in the arena + they put an MS on me. My SS will never hit that hard on plate in its current PTR form. I understand that you want it to take advantage of Armor Pen for PVE, but for PVP we will have no Armor Pen. So please understand that this is a rather large nerf for PVP.

Regarding your opinion on that death knights shouldn't just mash one button for best results.
Your current death knight model reflects the opposite in my opinion.
Blood strike does poor damage, both plague strike and icy touch are poor damage and disease ticks dont involve the dk at all beyond applying them.
So as a pvper I am pretty much just waiting to scourge strike and throw a death coil or two.

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I am mostly speaking to when I say not to look for Scourge Strikes that regularly crit for half of someone's bar or whatever.

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Honestly it doesn't seem like many DKs are asking for this. The big concern, that hasn't been answered at all, is that disease removal is crippling to DKs. Virulence doesn't do enough to keep diseases up and we just can't burst properly with any dispeller present. The new scourge strike design takes an even larger percentage of its damage from diseases than the old one. Hence the concern with the new design.

My personal opinion is that the new scourge strike is fine. I say this as someone who no longer PvPs on his death knight (or, quite honestly, in WoW as I find Aion's PvP far better). Those who do PvP on their DKs at this point are probably looking in the wrong spot for a fix to the dispel issue. Unfortunately this is the venue that is given attention and the place that these arguments are given voice based off the new strike design.

A simple series of questions then. Is anything going to be done to alleviate the dispel problem? Does the dev staff feel the disease dispel against DKs is a problem or simply a viable strategy?

If you can reassure people that the disease dispel issue will either be handled or is not considered an issue then likely these arguments about the new Scourge Strike would die out. The strike is fine. Death Knight PvP is general (in my opinion and the stated opinion of others here) is suffering due to "dispel imbalances."

Dear GC,

As a PVE'r and a PVP'r i am concerned with the direction you development team is taking Scourge Strike and Death Knights as a class.

Death Knights have already 2 extremely viable pve specs that scale very well with raids and armor penetration for that matter(blood and frost). With the spell damage and control of unholy it seemed that the developers were taking Unholy to be the main "PvP" spec of Death Knights just like Arms is to warriors and Frost is to mages and so on.... With this change to Scourge Strike i am greatly confused. Death Knights have enough stats to stack in pvp as Unholy. Adding armor pen in to the mix reminds me of when ret pallies had to use 5+ different stats back way when.

You stated during blizzcon that armor penetration as a stat would be removed from the game in Cata.
Yet you are to trying to balance Scourge Strike around armor penetration. Is it me or is others confused by this new direction? After armor penetration is out the door what will that do to Scourge Strike in the long run?

I am sure much of the Death Knight Community rather you leave scourge strike the way it is and try to fix disease cleansing/reliance instead. I would really like just a very brief explanation on what direction you and your dev team want to take the death knight class because it seems what it was before(direction) is totally different now.

Very glad for the feedback.

I cannot comment on anything about Scourge Strike on the PTR from an experience point of view, but looking from a numbers PoV I have a few concerns.

1. I am concerned that ScS may become too powerful in PVE. Though this may have been offset by the change to UB...so we'll see.

2. In PVP, it is looking like it is close to where it needs to be. Like others have said, i am very concerned about how ScS is going to function against a high armor target. Maybe I missed/misunderstood something that will ease my mind on this though. Note: I of course think it reasonable that ScS be weaker on a high armor target, the question is "What qualifies as too weak?"

Just some random musings from a random DK's random forum alt.

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Honestly it doesn't seem like many DKs are asking for this. The big concern, that hasn't been answered at all, is that disease removal is crippling to DKs. Virulence doesn't do enough to keep diseases up and we just can't burst properly with any dispeller present. The new scourge strike design takes an even larger percentage of its damage from diseases than the old one. Hence the concern with the new design.

My personal opinion is that the new scourge strike is fine. I say this as someone who no longer PvPs on his death knight (or, quite honestly, in WoW as I find Aion's PvP far better). Those who do PvP on their DKs at this point are probably looking in the wrong spot for a fix to the dispel issue. Unfortunately this is the venue that is given attention and the place that these arguments are given voice based off the new strike design.

A simple series of questions then. Is anything going to be done to alleviate the dispel problem? Does the dev staff feel the disease dispel against DKs is a problem or simply a viable strategy?

If you can reassure people that the disease dispel issue will either be handled or is not considered an issue then likely these arguments about the new Scourge Strike would die out. The strike is fine. Death Knight PvP is general (in my opinion and the stated opinion of others here) is suffering due to "dispel imbalances."

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From his post it appears they are not ready to do anything about disease removal yet. I am guessing it is probably because when SS burst was high disease removal while annoying didn't destroy the classes representation.

So since when the strike is actually fixed and not bugged and it does impressive burst damage they are going to see if that fixes the pvp issues and send the class back to the season 6 middle of the pack representation.

They are probably afraid that increasing burst and adding a serious counter to disease dispel might push the class back to OP levels, or might be "too good".

If this SS doesn't prove to help and delivers crap damage in pvp then we are probably gonna see some changes.

I just hope we get some type of disease help sooner rather then later.

In PvP we could really use Strangulate on a 60 second cooldown now :S

Thank you addressing SS in regards to PVP

It is reassuring to hear that SS is intended to hit hard in PVP with all the diseases up, as that is how it should be. However, with no disease protection, the question still remains of often we're going to get an opportunity to use SS to its full effect against a team that has dispel on their side.

Dispelling should be a viable option, but not a hard counter where the repeated mashing of a button nullify the combination required to set up a successful SS.
With ghoul stun on a 1min cd, strangulate on 2, and abolish disease, cleanse, and cleansing totem all being instant casts, some of them with residual effect, the window to set up a successful burst to land a kill is pretty small currently.

With some kind of disease protection SS could hit hard without being overpowered against teams with no dispel protection.

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From his post it appears they are not ready to do anything about disease removal yet. I am guessing it is probably because when SS burst was high disease removal while annoying didn't destroy the classes representation.

So since when the strike is actually fixed and not bugged and it does impressive burst damage they are going to see if that fixes the pvp issues and send the class back to the season 6 middle of the pack representation.

They are probably afraid that increasing burst and adding a serious counter to disease dispel might push the class back to OP levels, or might be "too good".

If this SS doesn't prove to help and delivers crap damage in pvp then we are probably gonna see some changes.

I just hope we get some type of disease help sooner rather then later.

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^This.

Also, I remember GC saying way back that they know that Cleansing Totem and Abolish Disease are overpowered against DKs. I also believe he said that they shouldn't be totally bypassing Virulence, but I don't know if that's the case anymore. We've already seen a (very) small fix to this issue in the fix to the Totem--Cleansing Totem will no longer pulse instantly when it's dropped, but will wait 1.5 sec for the first pulse.