Quote:
Looking at the changes for Feral druids I noticed Blizzard's solution to two specs being in one tree. Certain mastery bonuses come into play depending on what form the druid is in. If they are in bear form they get the tank bonuses and if they are in cat form they get the DPS bonuses.
Why not apply this to all three DK specs?
If you are in Frost presence your mastery and certain skills behave a certain way. If you are in Unholy or Blood presence your skills will operate a different way.
This could be taken a step further and turned into an interesting class mechanic. Beyond the current bland situational usage of the presences, you could make some talents work in different ways when in a different presence.
Examples (exaggerated and maybe not suggestions, but to give an idea of what I'm suggesting).
Blood Boil:
Frost Presence - When blood boil is used in Frost Presence and targets are suffering from a disease blood boil causes high threat and slows the attack speed of your attackers by X% amount for 6 seconds.
Blood Presence - When blood boil is used in Blood Presence the armor of all diseased targets hit by Blood Boil is reduced by X% amount for 6 seconds.
Unholy Presence - When blood boil is used in Unholy Presence against all targets suffering from a disease damage from diseases is increased by X%.
This could apply to many talents and skills in all of the trees. Not only would this add some flavor and thought to the use of presences, but would also allow each spec to retain their current tank and DPS specs. Say you want to buff damage for the Death Knight in tank but feel in DPS gear the buff would be too severe? Simply allow the ability to work differently depending on a presence.
This kind of functionality already exists in the feral trees today. One talent buffs bears while the other buffs cats.
This would allow us Frost and Unholy tanks to retain our tanking specs and give Blizzard more flexibility in the trees than they have today. I think this is a reasonable compromise for all of us who have invested massive amounts of time into our Blood DPS/Frost Tank/Unholy Tank characters and don't wish to have our tanking/dps functionality removed in Cataclysm.
Why not apply this to all three DK specs?
If you are in Frost presence your mastery and certain skills behave a certain way. If you are in Unholy or Blood presence your skills will operate a different way.
This could be taken a step further and turned into an interesting class mechanic. Beyond the current bland situational usage of the presences, you could make some talents work in different ways when in a different presence.
Examples (exaggerated and maybe not suggestions, but to give an idea of what I'm suggesting).
Blood Boil:
Frost Presence - When blood boil is used in Frost Presence and targets are suffering from a disease blood boil causes high threat and slows the attack speed of your attackers by X% amount for 6 seconds.
Blood Presence - When blood boil is used in Blood Presence the armor of all diseased targets hit by Blood Boil is reduced by X% amount for 6 seconds.
Unholy Presence - When blood boil is used in Unholy Presence against all targets suffering from a disease damage from diseases is increased by X%.
This could apply to many talents and skills in all of the trees. Not only would this add some flavor and thought to the use of presences, but would also allow each spec to retain their current tank and DPS specs. Say you want to buff damage for the Death Knight in tank but feel in DPS gear the buff would be too severe? Simply allow the ability to work differently depending on a presence.
This kind of functionality already exists in the feral trees today. One talent buffs bears while the other buffs cats.
This would allow us Frost and Unholy tanks to retain our tanking specs and give Blizzard more flexibility in the trees than they have today. I think this is a reasonable compromise for all of us who have invested massive amounts of time into our Blood DPS/Frost Tank/Unholy Tank characters and don't wish to have our tanking/dps functionality removed in Cataclysm.
My overall thought process was to save the other tanking specs while giving presences a grander role in the DK specs. Taking them from bland passive bonuses to more useful abilities. For example, one DK may intentionally use Unholy Presence for the Unholy Presence benefits their talents get on a certain boss fight. Not just for PvP or high movement fights.
At the same time frost presence, at least as far as PvE is concerned, would not be viable for DPS since it'd create too much threat. Thus frost presence bonuses would strictly be for tanks of any spec. You could take this system further and give a "presence mastery" similar in idea to the current ones in each tree. For example a blood DK tank could maintain threat and stamina bonus of Frost Presence in Blood Presence. Or a dual wielding frost DK could pickup a talent that would remove the threat and giving them the damage buff of Blood PResence while in Frost Presence allowing them to take advantage of certain frost presence bonuses.
If you're interested in my original post on the official suggestion forum:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24261057260&postId=242588844604&sid=1#0