So, we finally get to raise the death and suck the lifeforce from the legion of enemies we fight against BUT…
Don’t play a Deathknight unless you want a borked experience trying to duct tape 2 masteries that seriously do not mesh well together. One of coolest sounding masteries is also one of the worst in the game, not only does it hurt your brain trying to build a DK but there’s literally no endgame gear support to support it. Yes, there is Edge of Death but that’s not even that great, Vitality? Really? So you have to have this weapon for DK’s to even work, somewhat? While itemization is a huge problem there’s more too it then just that
The 2 WPS skills in the necro tree do not go well together with soldier nor does it smooth out with all the soldiers WPS, but honestly none of the skills in the soldier mastery mesh with necro, like at all.
So, what can we do to fix it? Well first of all
1: More skill synergy between the 2 masteries
2: More gear support
3: Maybe give soldier some sort of conversion transmutor that would favor necro damage or the other way around. I know this stuff requires work but if there’s conversion tech in the game, let’s place it in the actual masteries themselves and not the items. You have one mastery that’s Phys/Int.Trm/Bleed/Pierce and then you have the other Vit/Aether/Cold/Poison, these 2 couldn’t be anymore farther apart then they already are
4: Early game, let’s not just have a set that finally gets DK to work together at lvl 100. What about 1-99?
It’s hard to wrap my head around what could fix it, im sure the devs know better then me but ive completely docked my DK because i just can’t build anything around it to be endgame viable, i don’t care to solo Mog or Ravager but it’s a broken mastery and it needs help.
Please feel free to add onto this, i’m sure i’m not the only person that feels this way. One of the coolest named masteries in the game are literally one of the worst, let’s change that! I remember back in early access when i went and pleaded for more ranged love, to let 2 handers have primal strike also and that was finally done. Not sure if posting something about it every week helped but i was very loud about that and so now i will put my attention into bringing DK’s to the forefront and to get some dev eyes on them. I wanna be unholy knight spewing death and decay whilst wielding a sword and shield. Come on Zan! This is just a awesome fantasy class that could be so much cooler if it worked. I know you wanna make it work, let’s do it.
Gear with + to Soldier and Necro skills would help, certainly. And as you said, not only a lvl 94 legendary set, but items spread out across all levels.
More melee weapons with aether/vitality damage, but primary aether damage (because vitality damage will always favor Ritualists).
Crucially, there should be a transmuter in one of the masteries, that converts a significant amount of physical damage to aether. Maybe best in Necro, on Spectral Binding. It could have 3 available skill points, like Consecrated Blade in Occultist mastery. Also some devotion support, so that you can achieve close to 50% of physical to aether even without the lvl 94 Death Knight set, if they even make it.
Krell, that was one of my ideas that i actually forgot to put in and thanks for reminding me.
Something that converted phys to aether in the soldier tree would be a nice fix for the soldier/necro pairing, like i said earlier…conversions are in the game already, how hard is it to throw something in that soldier tree that helped necro and heck, other masteries would benefit with such a change and open up even a few more build options.
You want soldier to do elemental? You pick up Discord transmutor! You don’t need items for that skill line to work, so it brings me back to…while items would be great, the problems has to be fixed through the mastery trees.
This has been a major disappointment for me. The lack of itemized gear for anything vitality that accentuates a physical build has made me start looking for another class to roll. This feels like a pretty significant oversight considering just about every other build combo got represented in mastery combos and gear sets.
One thing that annoys me in this combo is Gladiator’s Distinction. It has 2H weapon bonus, so clearly it’s intended to be used with twohander. But there’s nothing that actually fits this belt! Edge of Death (why this had to be a sword, piercing conversion hurts phys hybrid even more) actually has phys bonus, but it has pierce and 100% conversion on WPS skills. All other options offer nothing to phys side of DK. Wrathblade has Occultist bonus and pierce again. Wendigo Decapitator and Wildblood Crusher sort of work, but that’s Vit Warder. There are some good items, but no good weapon for an autoattacking build is a big minus. There’s spectral warmaul (and Bargoll’s core, but just like Guardian of Death Gates its usefulness is reduced by pet bonuses), but MI should be a possible upgrade, not a requirement. Granted, I’m talking about the end-game part. I heard Bone Harvest is pretty good for early game.
what i cant figure out is WHY it has 25% Vitality to Physical Conversion! it completely ruins the item for Death Knight making only good for some kind of Shaman. i mean really who pick Death Knight to convert your vit to phys damage.
its stupid because it has nice stats otherwise. i like when multiple builds are supported on items, but not when you just kill one of the builds outright with that kind of conversion. some of this itemization for the Expansion leaves me shaking my head.
Is there no reason why a mix damage type build wont work?
With a universal - flat rr like Manticores, Assassin’s devotion, and your inherent inherent kit, shred shouldn’t be a problem. And there are a number of devotions that proc or give flat boni (aehter/vita). Couple of decent gear pieces that increases your vita/aether damage, while simultaneously upping your physical damage. +900-1200% on 2/3 should be attainable, yes?
Why force a conversion build if the option isn’t there? A Hybrid might be more fitting just to make the class viable.
It’s not a necessity to be a glad crucible clearer or a 6 sec Mad Queen killer just for your build to be considered viable.
Everyone’s so obsessed with efficiency and optimized numbers in this game that they pass off serviceable results as failures.
I don’t get what people’s issues with death knights are, my death knight is breezing through the campaign and crucible. Never had such an easy time. Physical to aether conversion is in Harbinger of Souls by the way.
If you mean by MEHKnights that they aren’t grossly OP like Witchblades, Tacticians and with the recent changes to shaman warders, then yes.
Deathknight vit/aehter and even physical melee builds are still far more powerful then PRM, AAR builds and even ABB builds.
Consider that the soldier already has the most legendary sets and the best item support.
There are 47 level 94 item sets, ten* of them have support for builds with a soldiers mastery with two(where most only get 1) of them aimed at purely at soldiers.
Before they give soldier even more gear support they should first look at the less supported masteries such as arcanist and warlock. For example a gun wielding mage hunter set.
*Fore those interest here is a list of all the sets (I only counted those that gave bonuses to skills from the soldier mastery):
Belgothian’s Slaughter
Bloodrager’s Endless Frenzy
Dawnseeker’s Light
Justicar Guard
Krieg’s Armament
Markovian’s Bastion
Nature’s Avenger
The Spellscourge
Valdun’s Betrayal
Warborn Bastion
Harbinger of Souls has physical to vitality and not to aether. Reckless Power is the one with physical to Aether.
While i agree that Death Knight has really poor itemization (Zantai did said he plans to make a DK legendary set), i honestly think it can easily be made Ultimate and Gladiator Crucible viable. For some people nowadays everything has to be super fast, like 15 minutes Gladiator or 15 seconds Mad Queen and i think that’s a little too narrow of a vision.
Meanwhile Arcanist has 9 sets, with 2 sets with just Arcanist bonuses.
Occultist with 8 sets, with 2 sets with just Occultist…
8 is the lowest. Nightblade even has 3 Nightblade-only sets. But screw Soldiers! :eek:
Yeah this kinda pisses me off as well. While I enjoy fast builds as much as the next guy. But I still prefer to look for possibilities for an out-of-the box build
And while DK lacks itemization, it is currently the best choice for Aether Melee.
Yes you are right about this, I overreacted a bit…
Still I would not call a difference of 2 sets or potentially 3 all that small.
But when I saw all the complaining about how bad the death knight is I got a bit pissed off. Sure the dps is not that great as other soldier builds and lacks some synergy in the damage type but it still has good DPS(aether/vit does at least) and has tons of survivability due a large health pool, soldier passives + skills and a ton of ADCH.
I feel like it seems to be expected that you should be able to kill just as fast in a high defense build as a low defense build. If that where to be true why would even play a low defense build?
i think what people are really complaining about is this class’s lack of identity. when played in a general manner with aims to do Ultimate + Gladiator, this will most likely be a Soldier (70-80%) with a bit of Necro Support. Which I think is perfectly fine. “Death Knight” right?? sounds reasonable to me
Most builds have synergy, the game is balanced around builds that make sense. A build that doesn’t make much sense will be behind. I know a lot of people can complete the game with pretty much anything because of sheer experience and stockpiled goods. For someone who has neither it’ll be pretty bad. Heck, even lacking some of the prepaired stuff will be a major turn off even to me.
Ofcourse I can play good old phys cadence, the question is why DK instead of witchblade, commando or even warder or tactician. A build needs to have some good points when compared to other similar builds. E.g. Elementalist is most common example of Ultos build but I for one like Warder and can argue about it being viable.
On 2H Aether:
No doubt it’ll work (and even work fairly well), either as Temporal Arcblade or something else. Like I often say, 2H non-phys is generally lackluster because it’s always a mix of phys and something else. So when there are items that give +%phys and +%converted damage type it makes build stand out. In that regard 2H aether DK somewhat reminds of Ultos Elementalist. But just like Ultos Elementalist it’s not a build that would shine w/o proper gear.
On possible alternative, synergetic, non-gear dependant ways to play DK:
2H bone harvest build might be ok. Bone harvest is a 3-damage type skill, which makes it hard to optimize. But soldier has quite a bit of +%all damage. Worth a try, but for now I’d rather be on the sceptic side.
Another possibility is tanky caster. Since DE doesn’t require offhand one could use a shield, which somewhat justifies Soldier. This also somewhat worth a try.
Both look more fun to me than mere “just go phys cadence, duh”.
