The flat RR on Markovians advantage and Reaping Strike are nice but the weapon itself is still trash tier for its intended spec - Vitality Death Knight. Even with the best possible rolls imaginable, the highest phys to vitality conversion we can get is 83% with Blood Knight set amulet, Harbinger of Souls and 2x vitality weapon components.
Not only this but the weapon is a sword with useless armour piercing. Even with an amazing setup with near perfect rolls, dw vitality dk is still pathetic. In addition to this there is minimal aether to vitality conversion on the Blood Knight set, further gimping damage.
Suggested changes:
Change weapon to a dagger type with flat vitality
Add 100% of physical damage dealt as vitality to cadence
Add 100% aether damage dealt as vitality to cadence
Please consider these changes to bring this weapon up to a reasonable state.
I played a lot with Blood Knight DK. I like Vitality damage and especially melee type. Blood Knight set has very weak soldier side. This weapon is not bad in particular and yes it’s not ideal to have less than %100 conversion but sometimes this is the case. It’s not special to Blood Knight DK.
And your suggestions are a bit… extreme… Though yes set needs definitely more Aether>Vitality Conversion.
But I’ld like to see Bleeding support on this weapon. BK set has it, a lot of vitality items has it and most importantly Cadence has it. So why not add Bleeding damage to this weapon? And most see Counter Strike modifiers on the set is a joke but it can be utilized if you focus some bleed aswell and maybe better modifiers. Doubt it can be OP Vitality/Bleeding DK without proper RR.
There is already a weapon howl of the wendigo that hints you to a Bleeding Death Knight and as obvious choice use Blood Knight set. So why not expand this possibility into DW one? Blugrug’s Plague Edge also provides Bleeding damage but it has no mods so maybe it can have a Necrotic Edge/Zolhan’s Technique with Bleeding modifier.
Anyway who needs proof that if I know what I mean, here is my build.
I’ve played DW melee DK few patches ago with 2x weapons and it felt lacking on more aspects than one. I would say for Soldier auto attack weapon is bizarre to not have Cadence modifiers and more important you can’t even reach full conversion on it.
I don’t see how the suggestions are ‘extreme’ at all. Plenty of weapons have 100% conversions on them for default attack replacers. Even if you filled in the 64%+ aether to vitality conversion gap it wouldn’t make that much difference becuase there just isn’t that much flat aether any way and itemisation is pretty tight so you cant really use other pieces with flat aether.
There is no other weapon which works as well as this one does in terms of synergy for dw vitality DK and the fact that it is so underwhelming must bring some perspective to that matter.
Changing the weapon’s type and base damage is extreme.
And this part is seems okay when you compare other similar modifiers but imagine all these modifiers on a one-handed sword? RS+MA+Cadence modifiers, +1 Soldier skills, +2 HoS and +to WPS.
I would understand and support your statement if you said BK set should have this conversion as 4 piece bonus. And I already agree thie archetype needs more aether>vitality conversion. And I added that having more bleeding support would make it even better. Especially againts trash mobs.
Why? Blazeheart is a dagger with flat fire, is that extreme? Just adjust the base values accordingly. At the moment 98-121 phys, 20% of which is piercing is just laughably bad.
I don’t play bleeding builds but i know this set has been used many times for such builds and if you think it needs to support it more then i am not one to disagree.
No, it has always been a dagger. I also want all the weapons I have have pure damage types related to their purposes but it would be extreme. Today you ask Edge of Death become pure Vitality base damage, tomorrow Death Omen for it, another day someone else wants pure cold base damage deathmarked weapons and the next month we won’t have any one-handed swords/axes except physical/pierce ones lol.
Blazeheart used to be a sword, Zantai changed it to a dagger. Not sure if you are joking or trolling me, Zantai will decide these things as he has in the past when weapons have been changed to daggers.
No not trolling, I didn’t know that, but it won’t surprise me since I’m rather a 1,5 years old player so pre-FG is not my area. And ofc Z can change whatever he wants and obviously we are giving feedbacks to him but that doesn’t mean we can justifiy asking 5 modifiers on a single item on top of changing it’s type/base into another.
Anyway you can believe me I want more vitality melee support as much as you do and if they make it a dagger, it would be better. If not I prefer it to have bleeding support instead trauma. And I definitely agree that set needs more aether>vitality conversion.
Anyway this thread gaved me another idea but I should create it’s own thread to ask it.
Thing is the damage is so underpar at the moment, that a tiny improvement just won’t cut it. Even with a green double rare belt, almost perfect rolls. With all procs active, including dying god, deadly momentum, fighting spirit. My sheet dps only goes to 130k.
Perhaps this sounds mroe reasonable to you:
Remove flat vitality modifiers for reaping strike and markovians advantage
Changed to a dagger
Added 100% physical damage dealt as vitality to cadence.
To me this doesn’t seem good enough and i highly doubt it would be. Even with a bit more aether conversion. I think if we added everything i said originally AND global conversion it would be a bit over the top.
I’d say that BK itself needs sth better for soldier support rather than almost useless CS. Cadence would be OK, with some ranks/conversions.
Weapon needs improvements too, as it’s really underwhelming.
Also Decree of Malmouth looks far better despite lacking AS as it gives ele->vit conversion for SH and way more % damage.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. The counterstrike thing just doesnt work well.
Ive tested decree of malmouth, it doesnt work well regardless of how you build it, you need those soldier bonuses from the weapons. That is better with an oppressor build (edit: i mean’t ritualist)
Check my build. For the moment Blugrug’s Plagued Edge is the best Vitality Melee weapon but for the sake of WPS modifiers I used Edge of Death with that. You reach better dps and have %50 ele>vitality conversion.
But sure why not let’s make it a dagger with Cadence modifiers.
Interesting suggestions @Ymiraku and I think they are totally fine since Cadence mods only affect the third hit anyways, so the damage conversions would be fine in my opinion.
I do agree with @fordprefect that maybe it should have Bleeding Damage instead of Physical Damage as Vitality/Bleeding go together with sets and items very well. I think doing these changes would be good for Vit/Bleeding DK.
I had thought about Blug’rug’s Plagued Edge this past week and I came up with the idea to have it give some Bleeding Damage mods to Harbinger of Souls since it already gives ranks. That could help reinforce it’s Vit/Bleeding stats and make it work better for Bleeding DK.
Making it a Dagger could help as well so you don’t need to dump points into Cunning.
You’re forgetting that making it dagger with pure vit base make it absolute certainty you’ll have to use 2x of them because it won’t have any physical>vitality conversion anymore like other daggers.
But I’m okay with making it dagger with aether>vitality global conversion and physical>vitality Cadence/WPS modifiers.
