01/06/2023 at 10:00 a.m. by Karsten Scholz – Unheilig death knights have so far been among the top performers in WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Classic when it comes to damage done in boss fights. Especially the burst phases with an active Gargoyle are pure DpS gold. Shortly before the start of phase 2, however, Blizzard wants to clip the wings of the fluttering demon …
Whether you’re running any simulations or looking at the uploaded stats on Warcraft logs, the Unholy Death Knight is the crème de la crème of DpS specialists in WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Classic, with a damage potential that most others styles of play can only dream of. The fact that the unholy slingshot dominates almost every fight is mainly due to the summonable Gargoyle, which scales incredibly well with speed effects. The result is a 30-second burst phase that allows the master to hopelessly outrun everyone else.
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Strong nerf just before Ulduar
In the first WotLK Classic phase, unholy death knights benefited enormously from the fact that the fights in Naxxramas and Co. are often very short – explosive burst phases, which are only possible every few minutes, have a particularly strong effect in short fights . So strong that speedrun guilds take a whole battery of Unholy Death Knights into the raid instances. Current leader none of the above’s record run used about eight Unheilig DKs plus a Frost Death Knight. But “normal” guilds also take a relatively large number of death knights with them, which causes other classes to suffer.
Based on recent simulations and PTR testing, the top guilds expected Unholy death knights to be a force in Ulduar as well, despite some fights having a reputation for being melee-unfriendly. However, it is now clear that previous calculations are outdated. The Blizzard developers want to noticeably weaken the unholy death knight shortly before the start of phase 2.
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These changes await death knights
In the official WoW forums, game producer Aggrend took a lot of time to explain the thoughts behind the decision to nerf and the exact details. After all, class balancing adjustments in the Classic area only happen in exceptional cases. Here is what the developer says:
The nerf will first land on the PTR so that it can be tested before it wreaks havoc on the live servers. The Gargoyle is so strong right now because it scales with the speed and attack power that the Death Knight currently has throughout its entire fight duration of the summoning. Some Death Knights take advantage of this by briefly building up 370 to 400 percent haste, causing the summoned Gargoyle to cast its attacks every 0.35 seconds instead of every 2 seconds. Blizzard is now changing exactly this snapshot effect. On the PTR, the Gargoyle will scale with each attack exactly with the haste values the death knight possesses at the moment of the attack. So if all the nice speed effects run out on the death knight, then the gargoyle will attack more slowly again. However, the attack power scaling should work unchanged. According to Blizzard’s calculations, unholy death knights will still achieve peak DpS values after the nerf. However, the lead is no longer that big, and the Unholy Death Knight will no longer scale so well with the increasing equipment in the further course of WotLK Classic – without the nerf, the current situation in the raids would only change in the coming phases tighten. No other class changes are planned for the upcoming patch.
