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Q u o t e:
Return of runic power, damage taken, or some kind of reduced healing penalty attached to the removal of our diseases would make cleansing a decision. Currently it is a no-brainer: mash the cleanse/abolish button.

We're in a predicament not unlike the druid getting all his hots removed with SS at the moment. How is this being addressed?

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I have posted threads with concerns to Druid Hot removal in the Healing role forums, as well as DK threads about disease removal.

Currently on my 3s team - 2100 rated, when we run against a shaman (or other dispeller but shamans are the worst), I spend my entire match re-applying diseases on my DK.

I am not kidding. They come off FASTER than I can reapply them. Runes have a cooldown. Cleansing totem + purge does not.

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Q u o t e:


I have posted threads with concerns to Druid Hot removal in the Healing role forums, as well as DK threads about disease removal.

Currently on my 3s team - 2100 rated, when we run against a shaman (or other dispeller but shamans are the worst), I spend my entire match re-applying diseases on my DK.

I am not kidding. They come off FASTER than I can reapply them. Runes have a cooldown. Cleansing totem + purge does not.

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Against good shaman teams this will happen. Between totem and cure toxin DKs are completely shut down against shaman teams unless they are running TSG.

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Q u o t e:
GC obviously has read our posts on disease management, and no doubt has thoughts on them. However, considering he has deliberately danced around the subject so far, it seems quite obvious that he is currently in a position where he is unable to comment on the subject, likely due either to being currently undecided of what action to take, or incomplete plans for addressing the issue.

In other words, there appears to be little point in begging GC for comment on the issue right now and is probably best to just sit tight. Although discussion on the subject and suggestions for helping it are probably still useful.

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Unfortunately, you are probably right.

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Q u o t e:



GC, your last statement is interesting....


The same thing can be said for disease cleanse spam. The cleanse system, from what we have heard, is getting a fix in 4.0, but currently it is devastating to DKs in its current form. Is there anything you and the devs are looking at as a temporary fix? Or is this an issue that we are going to have to wait on till 4.0?


Edit: GC, all of us in the DK community appreciate your feedback and communication with us through this SS process, it has been helpful. Now if only we can talk about disease cleanse spam.... :)

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Yea it is sad when your plan in arena is to try to OOM the other team by seeing just how often they cleanse your diseases lol. Just too bad it never works... they just cleanse all day and tank your damage while doing it.

Dispellers currently have it way to strong in the arena in the first place.

Druids rely on hots for swiftmend and to stay alive during CCs since they have no absorb shield effect.

Warlocks rely on dots to be up. Affliction is protected, Destruction however is not. One immolate dispel and the warlocks dps goes down the tubes.

Death Knights rely on diseases to be up to do damage or they are also crippled far worse than any other damaging class.

Rogues rely on POISONs however with the insane proc rate of mind/wound, it is NOT a problem vs dispellers as poisons are applied FASTER than the dispelers can usually get them off, UNLESS the rogue is CC'd which is how it should be for DKs.

Paladins also rely on corruption to be up for damage but it stacks into 5 and is hard to dispel. Also ALL the abilities aren't crippled because they don't revolve around one spell.

See the trend here?

Having classes RELY one or more debuffs on the target to do damage are completely countered by Dispellers IF and When they can not apply them faster than they are dispelled.

The dispel mechanic isn't to powerful itself. It is merely the design of the class that is at fault.

The disease apply rate should be equivalent to or > the dispel rate.

Dispels should be possible only if the APPLIER (DK in this case) is CC'd or not on the target.

Just like with Rogues. If you CC the rogue you have a chance to break away and abolish/cleanse poisons. If he is on you, forget about it.

The only way I can see that this would be changed easily would be give Death Knights, Druids, Locks, etc. more dispel resistance.

Personally I don't care how much mana the dispeller uses to get it off, it could be at ZERO cost. What I do care about as a DK is the simple fact that my entire game is ruined on the count of me having the CONSTANTLY reapply diseases vs. said dispellers.

It costs me Runes + Time + Cooldown on the Runes to apply the diseases, only to have a dispeller drop one totem or dispel with no cooldown and minimal cost.

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Q u o t e:


Against good shaman teams this will happen. Between totem and cure toxin DKs are completely shut down against shaman teams unless they are running TSG.

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God forbid if you play a priest/shaman/x team, with cleansing totem AND abolish disease up...

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Q u o t e:


God forbid if you play a priest/shaman/x team, with cleansing totem AND abolish disease up...

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Which is QUITE Common when you play against spell cleave teams.

Priest+Shaman+warlock/moonkin
Paladin+shaman+warlock/moonkin

In fact I have seen a steady rise in spell cleave since this arena season has hit.

Oh how about this suggestion GC...

If there are to be no more dispel protection for Death Knights at this time, why not change Scourge Strike a little by reversing the effects.

Make it do a BASE shadow damage and hit for more physical damage per diseases on the target.

Then we are left with a guaranteed amount of damage regardless of armor (which is the concern here in PVP) and PVEers get their buff as well because it will be exactly the same thing.

Dispellers also are countered somewhat because if the physical damage portion doesn't land it's not that huge of a deal anymore because it don't do that much damage anyways.

Surely there is a way to work this out.

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Q u o t e:
Oh how about this suggestion GC...

If there are to be no more dispel protection for Death Knights at this time, why not change Scourge Strike a little by reversing the effects.

Make it do a BASE shadow damage and hit for more physical damage per diseases on the target.

Then we are left with a guaranteed amount of damage regardless of armor (which is the concern here in PVP) and PVEers get their buff as well because it will be exactly the same thing.

Dispellers also are countered somewhat because if the physical damage portion doesn't land it's not that huge of a deal anymore because it don't do that much damage anyways.

Surely there is a way to work this out.

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Not to shoot down your idea necessarily, but no it is not the same. In the scenario, the ArmorPen would not increase the shadow damage, like it does currently. Also, I'd have to do the calculations, but off the top of my head it sounds like in that case the 'double-dipping' effect would be diminished, and not in our favor.

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Q u o t e:
Also, I'd have to do the calculations, but off the top of my head it sounds like in that case the 'double-dipping' effect would be diminished, and not in our favor.

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Correct. Flipping the two types of damage around would be a (large) PvE nerf, due to how it would interact with double dipping (and with ArP).

YES but are you guys willing to REGEM for ARP in PVP just to make scourge strike hit as hard as it does now?

Do you not realize how much converting from STR to ARP will hurt your other abilities?

Hopefully this is the last time in this expansion that DKs have to totally regear and regem. If so then yes, one more time on the merry-go-round.

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Q u o t e:
GC obviously has read our posts on disease management, and no doubt has thoughts on them. However, considering he has deliberately danced around the subject so far, it seems quite obvious that he is currently in a position where he is unable to comment on the subject, likely due either to being currently undecided of what action to take, or incomplete plans for addressing the issue.

In other words, there appears to be little point in begging GC for comment on the issue right now and is probably best to just sit tight. Although discussion on the subject and suggestions for helping it are probably still useful.

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Yar, and since disease management does not appear to be on the table, but SS does, I really think we need to focus on what will make SS viable for pvp. I think the two key factors here are

1) Less reliance on diseases. Currently diseases provide a 100% damage increase (or 50% reduction w/o depending if you are a glass full or glass empty kind of guy). That's a lot. Too much considering how trivial it is to have them removed.

2) Shadow portion of damage *double* blocked by shield. One again not a robust feature of this strike. A strike that is already very easily countered by 1).

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Q u o t e:


Yar, and since disease management does not appear to be on the table, but SS does, I really think we need to focus on what will make SS viable for pvp. I think the two key factors here are

1) Less reliance on diseases. Currently diseases provide a 100% damage increase (or 50% reduction w/o depending if you are a glass full or glass empty kind of guy). That's a lot. Too much considering how trivial it is to have them removed.

2) Shadow portion of damage *double* blocked by shield. One again not a robust feature of this strike. A strike that is already very easily countered by 1).

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And both the classes that typically use shields in PvP can also remove those diseases -.-

I personally do NOT know what the damage goal is for this ability, but no matter how you cut it, unless the disease dispel issue is fixed, having an ability rely on physical damage to do another portion in shadow damage is a bad design as the game currently stands.

Block, Armor, Etc. are going to simply destroy Scourge Strike and classes that are squishy will be more squishier, while classes with high armor (plate/shield wearers) will just receive a relative buff when fighting DKs and like the above poster said, will just AMPLIFY the disease dispel problem.

When they nerfed Ret paladins into the ground by making Divine Storm go from holy to physical damage everyone cried. But the ability did NOT directly rely on other abilities to hit hard and was OVERPOWERED by means of it's damage output.

Scourge Strike is FINE in pvp as of patch 3.2.2.

Something we are also looking at here is the fact that our ranged magical damage is being nerfed, so in a nutshell, unholy is becoming less magical and more physical.

That is just bad. We already have a physical damage tree called BLOOD.

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Q u o t e:
It looks like several players are still posting without reading the entire thread. Until SS is working correctly on the PTR, telling us it has double resists isn't so helpful. I don't want to hit that particular nail too hard because I would hate for players not to report any bugs because they assume we already know about them. But in this case it's not going to be effective -- yet -- to tell us about your SS hits on the PTR.

It's entirely possible we'll end up with e.g. a SS that hits for 80% weapon damage (like Obliterate) and does a lot less Shadow damage per disease. Unholy already ignores disease damage very much at its peril so it's probably okay if this one ability doesn't derive so much benefit from diseases. It will lose a little bit of its synergy with the other +Shadow parts of the tree though. It's just too soon for that decision. We need to see some legit numbers first.

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O M G Hugz!

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Q u o t e:
It looks like several players are still posting without reading the entire thread. Until SS is working correctly on the PTR, telling us it has double resists isn't so helpful. I don't want to hit that particular nail too hard because I would hate for players not to report any bugs because they assume we already know about them. But in this case it's not going to be effective -- yet -- to tell us about your SS hits on the PTR.

It's entirely possible we'll end up with e.g. a SS that hits for 80% weapon damage (like Obliterate) and does a lot less Shadow damage per disease. Unholy already ignores disease damage very much at its peril so it's probably okay if this one ability doesn't derive so much benefit from diseases. It will lose a little bit of its synergy with the other +Shadow parts of the tree though. It's just too soon for that decision. We need to see some legit numbers first.

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But it would definitely make SS work with ArP.