Dread Knights a Defunct Class?

[Meldryn]

There are some very glaring issues with out class that I've already posted in the thread of the top issues for our class. I felt, however, that the sheer number of things frustrating me about this class merited their own post in addition to that. For instance, I'm to believe that warriors being able to heal themselves is balanced somehow? If I recall correctly, their justification of why they should have higher dps and better stances was that they didn't have the added survivability of lifetaps. There seems to be a breakdown in logic here somewhere.

Now thanks to almighty Venge, taunt strength is now based on str. Every DK that rolled a race that has racial int bonuses expecting to be rewarded for your stat diversity, I'm afraid that the game has been changed in a fundamental and ridiculous way to make life a little bit easier on one of the three tanking classes. Warriors, unlike Paladins and DK's, now have no reason whatsoever to spec anything but str, dex, and con. Nice to see we've waved goodbye to varied and meaningful stat choices. What few spells the DK has left aren't even worth putting points into int for anymore. We're literally fighters with a few parlor tricks. Parlor tricks on very, very long cooldowns.

Yes, I'm slightly irritated by the fact that Venge seems to get results when his class is whining on the boards, while we continually get shifted to the back burner. Should we blanket the defensive fighter forums with whine threads like warriors in order to get our class looked at?

The one thing our class has that is unique and useful (DC) buffs everyone, and does not make us any more desireable as a tank in a raid than a Warrior or Paladin. Show me something tangible that should make me glad to be a DK, and I'll stand corrected, but at the moment I really don't see a reason we exist other than one on each raid to be a DC whore. Not exactly what I was hoping for when I created my character.

[Warhead]

For a short answer.. Yes we need to blanket the forums with whine posts. Its the only way to fix stuff. Why would you not want to play a healing DPS Warrior dual wielding food grinder?

[velzevul]

Originally Posted by Warhead

For a short answer.. Yes we need to blanket the forums with whine posts. Its the only way to fix stuff. Why would you not want to play a healing DPS Warrior dual wielding food grinder?

I see where you coming from guys... but I had the moment recently that Meldrin is speakingof, where i was happy to be a drk, and where noone else could have pulled off what I did.

It was a God King fight in Nisube, level 50+ 6dot boss. Our 1st try. He spawns a dozen small adds, than few bigger adds, than few bigger adds yet.

4 out of 6 ppl down, save for me and a necro. Looks like a wipe. Well, not quite. I was fighting for 5 straight minutes without heals. kiting, SoDing, shadowstepping from mob to mob leeching life, stunning occasional heavier hitting mobs, culling, using every trick in the book. Basically i pulled the time till necro got successful FD off, got up rezzed healers and the group and we won.

No1 could believe I stayed alive in that meat grinder with 5-6 mobs for that long.

No other class could have done it. No room for real kiting, no healer for tanking... Neither Pal nor War have the means to pull it off. I did.

That night I was VERY glad I picked DRK.

The problem is that those moments are 1 in a 1000 fights.

[DrK]

While I agree that DK's need an overhaul and have some major issues and I agree with your frustrations about some of the ways in which the warrior tuning is happening (giving warriors self healing is a bad, bad, bad idea and it's going to overpower them) I vehemently disagree with the idea that anyone who didn't roll a large race drk is somehow sub-par.


First of all, as you get up into the higher levels you will realize that racial stats so don't matter. I'm sitting on about 16 stat points right now that I've never even bothered to put anywhere.

Secondly, that INT definitely is just as potent as it ever was. Abilities like Cull, Word of Doom and Black Wind ARE important and worthy of investing in, especially Cull.


The change to the way hate was being decided by what stat only HELPED DrK's regardless of what race you play.

Before the change Incite/Inflame was using INT for it's hate modifier, does that make any sense to any of you? If you'll bother to look at your tooltip the chain is a million times better now that it's using Str and is actually a very useful chain now.



Having said all that though, yea we need to have a lot of things fixed. We have a ton of bugs, DC does not work right and doesn't seem to be debuffing mobs, many of our skill lines do not scale with game content, we need a force-crit ability badly, we need more snap agro, etc.


We're not broken at all, we still kick ass in the right situations, but at this point DrK's are in need of the most help out of the defensive fighters.

[Venge]

If you believe I am catering to "whining" then you are greatly mistaken. The warrior had issues that were in great need of help and we got it. Changes were made given of neccesary feedback (a lot of weeding) and good deal of deliberation on what we should and should not recieve. I've stated before, whining post/requests I do not address and more than likely ignore when compiling my reports...I need useful feedback. Now, on to the direct cut:

- The changes to STR effecting taunts was coming for a while now. I was the one to shed light on it, not motivate it just because I am a warrior.

- Self-heal? No way did I propose this. Infact I am 100% against it. A warrior directly healing himself is wrong. What I stated was an increased health regeneration over time. Nothing to the potential of a paladin heal or a DK lifetap but something that could assist in the mist of combat.

- Reason why I get results? It's either A: the number of reports I have created and submitted (15 to be exact). B: the detailed feedback I compile to pin-point problems and solutions. or C: I am everywhere . or maybe D: it was the warrior's turn in the revamp circle.

- And almighty Venge? Is that a 6 dot lvl 55 raid mob? Kill it!

[Meldryn]

Originally Posted by Venge

Changes were made given of neccesary feedback (a lot of weeding) and good deal of deliberation on what we should and should not recieve. I've stated before, whining post/requests I do not address and more than likely ignore when compiling my reports...I need useful feedback.

Here is some useful feedback. A warrior in my guild is able to deal out close to 20k with his offensive chain. This is a "tank" class. The kind that wears plate. Nothing DK's have can even come close to touching that. Even using my 2 hour cooldown Hatred Incarnate, I'd have to be insanely lucky to break 10k with my chain. And that is IF if I get lucky and crit to open the chain in that 30 second window. Warriors can crit at will. I have yet to play an offensive fighter to 50 yet, so I have no direct comparison, but my Psi as an offensive caster isn't even close.

His 3 second cast nukes hit for roughly 2k, and Thought Pulse, which is on a 4 second cooldown and hurts him more with each successive cast, starts at around 2k and ramps up from there. So basically at this point, warriors are capable of out-dps'ing offensive casters while having roughly 4 times their survivability due to the mit penalties being removed from offensive. Show me the balance. I'm not seeing it.

You can argue that dps doesn't matter from a tanking perspective, and honestly I agree. I could care less if warriors out-dps my DK, as long as I can tank just as well. The problem is that warriors have stances that do not start out every fight completely underpowered and abilities like withdraw that I have no answer to. If a Sorc is chaining Chaos Volley and I have no taunts up, he dies. A Warrior in that situation simply pops Withdraw and goes on his merry way. I seem to recall warriors screaming on the boards that their utility was sub-par to DK's and Paladins and therefore they needed higher dps to compensate. It seems to me that they have the best of all worlds now; dps, mitigation, and utility. If I'm wrong, by all means enlighten me. I simply fail to see how the three tanks are balanced in any way, shape, or form at the moment.

[DrK]

Originally Posted by Venge

- The changes to STR effecting taunts was coming for a while now. I was the one to shed light on it, not motivate it just because I am a warrior.

Ironically, the DK taunt (provoke) is still INT based. I wish they would go ahead and change it over to str like they did the other def fighters abilities so it would work better.

Originally Posted by Venge

- Self-heal? No way did I propose this. Infact I am 100% against it. A warrior directly healing himself is wrong. What I stated was an increased health regeneration over time. Nothing to the potential of a paladin heal or a DK lifetap but something that could assist in the mist of combat.

I would like to strongly caution against giving warriors any type of self healing whatsoever at this point, regen or no. Warriors are edging dangerously into overpowered-ness land. Their DPS was overdone a bit and they now can literally out DPS the DPS classes. Giving them access to any type of innate self healing ability whatsoever will be too much. I've watched guild warriors dish out around 20K dmg in a SINGLE attack chain. That's insane.


According to all of the high level warriors in my guild they can now solo pretty much anything they want (within reason), and they are obviously awesome in groups. I don't understand how you can take them any further and even remotely call it balanced.

[Venge]

Originally Posted by Meldryn

Here is some useful feedback. A warrior in my guild is able to deal out close to 20k with his offensive chain. This is a "tank" class. The kind that wears plate. Nothing DK's have can even come close to touching that. Even using my 2 hour cooldown Hatred Incarnate, I'd have to be insanely lucky to break 10k with my chain. And that is IF if I get lucky and crit to open the chain in that 30 second window. Warriors can crit at will. I have yet to play an offensive fighter to 50 yet, so I have no direct comparison, but my Psi as an offensive caster isn't even close.

His 3 second cast nukes hit for roughly 2k, and Thought Pulse, which is on a 4 second cooldown and hurts him more with each successive cast, starts at around 2k and ramps up from there. So basically at this point, warriors are capable of out-dps'ing offensive casters while having roughly 4 times their survivability due to the mit penalties being removed from offensive. Show me the balance. I'm not seeing it.

You can argue that dps doesn't matter from a tanking perspective, and honestly I agree. I could care less if warriors out-dps my DK, as long as I can tank just as well. The problem is that warriors have stances that do not start out every fight completely underpowered and abilities like withdraw that I have no answer to. If a Sorc is chaining Chaos Volley and I have no taunts up, he dies. A Warrior in that situation simply pops Withdraw and goes on his merry way. I seem to recall warriors screaming on the boards that their utility was sub-par to DK's and Paladins and therefore they needed higher dps to compensate. It seems to me that they have the best of all worlds now; dps, mitigation, and utility. If I'm wrong, by all means enlighten me. I simply fail to see how the three tanks are balanced in any way, shape, or form at the moment.

20k damage in one attack chain eh? Can we get some specifics going because I am interested. What level was he? Was the mob's mitigation debuffed? Was he using Power Attack? Were they critical/legendary/epic hits? What weapon was he using? Was he across the board full buffed/the mob being debuffed?

[Venge]

You also hear warrior's screaming for the command revamp. Do you see it coming?

[Meldryn]

He dual wields a pair of Longsword of the Divided Fronts. He is level 50, I can only assume he was using Power Attack because if you want to deal damage there is no reason not to. I'll get the specifics as to what debuffs/buffs he was using, but the impression I got was that this was a consistent number.

As to command revamps.... warriors will scream for anything. At least they have commands. DK's have.... I can't think of anything remotely comparable, so I'll leave it at that. DC is probably the closest thing, so we have a slow-scaling debuff that rarely reaches full strength compared to Warrior's commands, which are some of the best short duration buffs in the game. My heart bleeds for them.