Are Unholy Perma Pets Not Meant For PvP?
I’m not one to cry over class nerf…er…balancing. I can typically take what is given to me and make the best of it. I do, however, like to see things that are broken fixed or addressed. So what is broken? You can see by the title that Unholy pets are lacking in several categories, PvP being the main one.
So, simple question: Are unholy perma pets not meant for PvP?
Lets look at the skills
Base skill Raise Dead all Death Knights get this. As Unholy, you can talent the skill with Master of Ghouls so that once raised your pet becomes “permanent”. You can also get a talent called Ravenous Dead that will increase the amount strength and stamina your pet receivesfrom you. So, to get a full permanent pet and get the talents to make him stronger you need the following:
- Shadow of Death (required for MoG) 1 talent point
- Master of Ghouls 1 talent point
- Ravenous Dead 3 talent points to max
That list doesn’t include: Night of the Dead which to max out would be another 2 talent points, which in my opinion is a complete waste of talents considering the amount of work it would take to get 10 strikes in to get its full potential. We’ll talk about it more later in the rant though.
I would also like to mention that to summon your pet without a corpse nearby costs 50 silver (which is the cost of 1 corpse dust, the reagent used for summoning).
Here comes the problem.
Lets say I make my pet and que up for…lets use Warsong Gulch for the example. 3 minutes into the match I die chasing the flag carrier. No problem, rez up and head back into battle…but wait, my pet didn’t rez with me so I need to resummon. Well, okay I can’t cause Raise Dead still has nearly 2 minutes left on it’s cooldown. Gah!. 2 Minutes later I resummon my pet and their was no corpses around so I used a corpse dust. Shortly after getting my pet all ready to go I die again while running my flag. No problem, rez up and head back into battle…but wait, my pet didn’t rez with me so I need to resummon. Damn, I cant Raise Dead still has 3 min left on it’s cooldown… There is a huge pattern developing here. Battlegrounds become a huge expense or you are forced to do one without a major slice of your talent tree.
Arenas?
Even worse, I haven’t tested this on live so please forgive me if I’m wrong. Very late into beta if you entered an arena with a summoned pet it was desummoned zoning in and you had to resummon at the cost of a corpse dust. If that has changed, awesome!, if not do any serious arena Death Knights see a huge expense in summoning a 40-50 silver pet everytime you have a match?
PvE?
Lets say you are learning a new boss strategy, be it a 5 man or raid, and you wipe. You recover, resummon and wipe again. Do you pray that your recovery takes longer than 5 minutes or hope your raid or group will wait on the cooldown or just do without a pet? Is there a problem here?
Here is my point.
If I am going to spend 5-7talent points in a tree I fully expect for those talents to be available to me 100% of the time (or close to it). It’s like telling a priest they can’t use their wells in battlegrounds or telling a mage they can’t summon a water pet in battlegrounds. How much crying would that cause?
Is there a solution?
There are a several.
- Let Master of Ghouls remove the cooldown on Raise Dead.
- Lower the cost of corpse dust or just flat out remove the need for a reagent or corpse.
- Let your pet stay summoned while entering an arena.
- Night of the Dead - It’s worthless. I just can’t justify having to go out and work to get back what I spent 7 talent points on.
I guess the first step though isdetermining if there is a problem. Does anyone else feel limited by the use of their Unholy pet? Vote below, but don’t vote as a Blood or Frost Death Knight. Don’t vote as a former or current Warlock or Hunter (we don’t care). Vote as if one day you may be a Unholy Death Knight.
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I experienced this last night as I ran blood Furnace (or was run through rather) by a 70 Drood. We had a bad pull and wiped – my ghoul died, and when I got back in, I summoned him, stepped outside the instance by mistake, came back in and lost my ghoul – and gained a 3 minute cool down. They could remedy this, and I would encourage them to do so.
I completely agree. I don’t do much PvP so the raising the ghoul thing is mostly just an inconvenience to me, but it does seem odd that that of all things has such weird limits on it.
Don’t forget you can do an easy heal on the ghoul with deathcoil, though, which can mitigate some of the irritation.
While we’re complaining about unholy talents, I wonder why bone shield has a cool down on it. Shammies don’t have to deal with cool downs on their spinning shield things. (Do they?)
Why does everyone spell queue as que?
I mean ¿que? ;).
Oh well, nice review.
I think the main reason the cool down is there is to help balance some other skills relating to the ghoul. Like Dark Pact. I think it has a 2 minute cool down built in but all they would have to do is change the cool down to 5 minutes for Dark Pact and that would solve that problem. I don’t PvP, ever. So for me this has not been an issue heh but I can see where this would be very frustrating. I would however say that you should probably not worry about the 50 silver cost. I mean I don’t know about you but at 80 just doing a couple hours worth of quests in Icecrown or Storm Peaks easily nets me like 500+ gold. Oh and I will totally agree that Night of the Dead is a waste of talent points heh. Anyways interesting read thanks for the info on what I have to look forward to if I do end up setting foot in PvP :) .
I haven’t PvP’d much with my DK but I can totally follow what your saying and hope on board with things. I’m realizing that I hardly ever actually “command” my ghoul to do anything other then “not attack” sometimes. So in that respect the only reason I can see for having full list of talents would be for special situations…ones that could popup in PvE but are most likely in PvP. So I do think blizzard intended the pet to be a PvP tool but you are right…it needs adjustment.
I plan on PvP’ing with my Unholy DK and I can definitely see a problem here. They should consider the talented ghoul a “pet” and let it stay with you through BG death and zoning. Remove the cool down and while were at it, it should get Avoidance like warlock pets.
This is enough of a pain for me that I have been seriously considering moving those points to something else.
Just a though dosen’t the buff that the beginning of arenas/BG’s remove the need of regents to cast spells? as if that dosen’t include ghouls you’d think thats something blizzard could do with fixing
DK’s are pretty powerful in pvp, so I really don’t think they need a ghoul. I see ghoul pets as leveling aids, and farming gold, doing dailies, etc. If you are tanking, would you really need a pet? If you are raid/instance dps, the pet won’t make or break your dps either.
I pvp a lot. It’s what I mostly do, and I’ve tried both unholy and blood (I vastly prefer blood for pvp and pve) and I’ve come out at the top on killing blows, damage done, healing done(!), and least deaths. So as I mentioned, if you like having the ghoul pet, keep in mind its more for dailies, leveling, and grinding rep. That said, I do think the amount of talent points it requires is high, and the only reason why I had the ghoul pet when I was unholy was that I couldn’t go deeper into the tree without it.
I see Warlock pets setting the president for how Blizzard should be handling our pets. With a Warlock they do not have a cooldown on there pet summoning though they do have a cast time. If Blizzard took the same approach for DK pets it would be fair. What would not be fair is allowing for an instant cast pet summons with no cooldown. As far as the reagent cost I think that this is fair, though like mages casting this spell in the staging area should not cost any reagents, but during battle it is still viable cost.
I see an incredible amount of QQ in this topic. There is nothing wrong with the mechanic at all BUT there’s 2 things they need to fix:
1. Ressing in BG’s ressurects your ghoul
2. zoning in/out doesn’t lose your ghoul (though this doesn’t always happen)
for the pve comment, if you’re wiping and recovering in under 5 minutes, you have other concerns to deal with before you worry about ghoul dps.
This is a huge issue to me and is stopping me from being able to PvP properly at the moment.
Spending the majority of the time in a battleground without my pet because the enemy team are just zerging it as soon as it’s summoned just to annoy me is not fun.
An Unholy Deathknight without Gnaw and Corpse Explosion, not to mention the added dps the pet brings anyway, is just gimped.
The way to fix this problem is to give Unholy a second pet summon, one that is a 10 second cast but has no cooldown and no reagent cost. This way Raise Dead would be comparable to a Warlock’s Fel Domination.
Night of the Dead is worth the points. The added bonus is it lowers the cooldown of Raise Dead, where it shines is the lowering Army of the Dead which I have tested and is one of the best 5-man and maybe 10-man moves in the game unless your tank needs to be hit to get aggro. Army of the Dead tanks for the tank so the healer is not wasteing mana on heals and can save up and the tank is not taking hits so he can build up. Army of the Dead doesn’t cause that much aggro at all but it tanks for the tank for like 30secs which can save sucky parties from dieing. Also, with Night of the Dead, you can summon it every boss fight.
It is a move that lets you get the boss to 70% before the tank has to tank and also can be an “Oh shit” button if the tank dies because the DPS can live another 30secs. My point is if you are a Unholy DPS spec you can getting it anyway.
Though, the ghoul should resummon in BGs like other pets. That is just stupid and should have no cost in arenas. So I agree with you mainly.
Night of the Dead is an amazing talent; I don’t know where you get the idea that it’s bad. I actually raid as Unholy DPS (I broke 5k DPS on 25m Patchwerk yesterday), and 2/2 Night of the Dead is well worth the point expenditure because it means you can freely explode your pet on trash for more damage or resummon it 3-4 times in a boss fight with lots of AoE damage.
If you’re PvPing as Unholy, NotD is quite essential and increases ghoul uptime by an insane amount.
Main problem with the Ghoul in PvP:
It’s the only permanent pet without Avoidance(Reduced damage from AoE), and is the squishiest (aside from Imp). AoE rips the guy to shreds.
Also, any time I’ve tried to use an opposing faction member’s corpse to make a Ghoul, it blew the cooldown but didn’t produce anything.
To be honest, I haven’t bothered keeping him out for PvP at this point. Blowing through multiple stacks of Corpse Dust for an hour or two of PvP isn’t worth occasionally having a stun.
i agree with every thing i have read but look on the bright side of things cause if u mount up your ghoul gets all of his life back.
so if u dont want to resummon ur ghoul cause its almost dead just mount up then unmount and presto your ghoul has full life.
I gave up on pets during the leveling process. due to the fact that I can do as much DPS as Blood/unholy with no pet out as a pure unholy can with pet out (well atleast between me and my friend I play with) I find myself liking blood better for the fact of not having to deal with the messed up pet system on DKs, don’t get me wrong, my main DK will eventualy have a pet, but not till like 72 or 73, till then I only pop out a pet if I am farming humaniods or happen to have a humanoid corpse next to me right before an instance boss, other then that I don’t bother using one during normal questing since its more of a pain then it is a benefit right not… but at the same time it probably isn’t as much of a pain as it feels like… theres a reason why hunters don’t get pets till level 10, its so they can learn their own skills before having to learn how to manage between their skills and their pets.
Another “downside” to the ghouls is the way they don’t seem to be able to keep up when you’re questing in water. I was doing the murloc quests in BT last night and my ghoul disappeared 3 times, twice when I was swimming under the water and once when I had Frost Path active and was running around on the top. There were plenty of himanoids around so that wasn’t a problem but the 5 minute cooldown was, and it was especially irritating as the ghoul hadn’t died, it just didn’t seem to like the water!
I am Blood/Unholy specced DK and i go down to the pet because it has very good PVP viability.
A combination of leap + stun adds extra CC to the DK that is in my opinion vital. It also adds some sustained DPS. The talent before it, that allows you to turn into a ghoul is quite imba also, and very fun in world pvp (does it work in the arena too?).
These changes are required, until its done it makes specced unholy hybrid useless… and the ghoul useless for Unholy.
True the instance issue the last poster mentioned is bullshit. But actually i dont really know wheter our pet is considered for PvP.
I can only comment from the PvE side of things. I’ve been raiding for almost 2 years as hunter, so I am used to manage a pet in the raid, but:
- ghoul has no avoidance/resistance.
- there is no way to effectivelly heal the ghoul (and no, DC is not enough, nor is it effective).
- you can’t call of your pet to “safe distance”, since unlike hunters and warlocks you are at melee your self. And the class just asks for soaking up the AoE dmg instead running out (anti magic shell, anti magic zone, huge HP pool with ability to self heal).
- since the complexity of the class requires you to pay a lot of attention to your CD’s, disease timings, rotations, runic power etc. watching over the pet is even harder.
Result: pet gets insta gibbed in most raid encounters and there is no point to have the permanent version since it almost never lasts as long to justify the talent point. And I figured I rather safe my raise death to ress a dead raid member if needed.
The permanent pet of the DK is not to be taken lightly. It is VERY goo for pvp, not just for stun, not just for dps, or because of leap, but because of a (in my opinion) tactic that can realy hit you in the nutsac.
U might want to just skim through this, i went off somewhere for a bit, and its a little long.
Lets spec Frost/Unholy for a sec. The specific tallent orientation is this http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jZGMhtGod0GohZfMhhbrogbq0zo. Go check that out and come back…. back, good. This is a spec i have come to see as a extreamly sad spec for a 1v1 DK. The ghoul being a critical part of this. DK ghouls, even on the beta have been seen as being very powerful. When Jayde said unholy is bad, Im guessing he is comfortable with seeing big crit numbers, seeing small 1k-1.5ks wasnt his style. Dk’s dont hit normaly for much, but they hit often, the biggest numbers you are going to see are from Oblderate and Scourge strike. This build dosnt have Scourge strike. This build is a kiting build. So many times i have seen people using this build to wipe away any hope of a melee guy geting within range to even hit him, and even if they did 40% less damage, and 1 more disease on them (scourge strike) which procs ANOTHER slowing effect throwing them back even FARTHER away from them. Chains of ice can be up constantly, and frost fever (witch in this talent spec reduces by another 30%) dealing damage, and your ghoul stuning+dpsing into the ground, you can down anything. Just kill the ghoul, the easy solution, but with all that ranged dps that DK is pumping into you, half of them being of no rune cost to him (see talent build), he has generated SOOO much runic power(see build for increased runic power gains), that he can either Deathcoil you, or his ghoul. Your ranged/melee attack speed drasticaly reduced, you are helpless. O w8 castors can get out of this right? NO mindfreeze and then a strangulate for the tough times. Not to mention the DK magic bubble… This may sound like QQ to you, and it kinda is. I personaly have no casters, my main is a NE druid, i just shift and charge to kill them, not to mention I have my own slowing ability, so I am mostly exempt from this. (pallys are too, but that is a diffrent story) I have seen many of my friends get totaly raped from this.
Ok enough of that tangent and on to the real topic. The Ghoul in this situation will pump out 60% of the damage, without the ghould Deathknights are significantly gimped when it comes to dps. This can be proven by numbers I have accumulated dpsing dummies lvl 55 with the same starter gear on 10 diffrent talent specs. I Found that pure unholy did the most damage infact it did almost 1k a sec when the ghoul was factored in. Blood was about 20% less then that, but the factored heals were very substantial. Frost was obviously the worst dealing 38% less then Unholy (although I think that would have changed at higher lvls as Frost strike cannot be parried, therefore would do more damage in the long run. But the point id like to make is, The ghoul added 20% more damage. A very high amount, and the fact that this ghoul can stay up constantly makes it even worse. I dont think Ghouls should be permanent at all, i like the idea of increasing them to extreme levels but not permanent. I played Diablo 2 long ago, Necros summoned a small army of undead to fight for him. They wernt permanent, but could deal significant damage if talented right(the stronger the individual one was the less you could have) I do not believe Dk’s should have to resummon them when zoning in instances. But i do think in pvp they need to be resummoned. Druid Trees arnt permanent, and they do quite a bit of damage, they have a cooldown, if we had a way of making them permanent, do you think you would want us to have them up constantly? Hell no they would anihilate everyone. The only way for Deathknight to be ballenced then is to make the ghoul either do less damage, or not be out all the time. Unfortunately neither of these are very prevalent except in the Battlegrounds, where cooldown are always being watched.
Here are my suggestions:
Master of Ghouls: Removes cooldown as suggested in the article.
Night of the Dead (1 point): Instead of removing cooldown, removes the need for a reagent.
Ghoul summoning: Make it work like warlock pet summoning in terms of whether or not it disappears and respawns.
Add a 1 point talent at the same tier as Night of the Dead that lets you heal your ghoul. Make an improved version for 5 more points (same tier) that increases healing and hit points of your ghoul slightly.
All combat pets in the game: give them resilience.
Blizzard didn’t listen in beta though, so what makes you think they will listen now?
no cooldown would be silly, cause it doesnt cost anything. if you want no cooldown, then they have to make it cost one of each rune or something, so you cant spam ghoul, in combat
To me master of ghouls is good for leveling, thats about it, or to sacrifice him for 20% health in end game, they arint that useful.
The only problem I have with the ghoul is the reagent cost, since it is almost impossible to get a free raise in PvP. Everything other than the cost screams “expendible”, corpse explosion usable on it, death pact, instant summon, and even though the reagent cost isn’t much, it still makes me a bit wary of killing off my ghoul. Night of the Dead is an awesome talent, if you had it you almost certainly would have been able to resummon your ghoul after you died, I mean come on, you can’t be telling me that you, as unholy, did not use plague strike and/or scourge strike at least four times while you were alive, that would have been enough to bring him back. No extra work needed, just watch as your normal rotations cut away your cooldown!
Ive been experimenting with all 3 specs since wotlk’s release and I started as unholy because I loved the idea of playing a pet class, although, it just seemed not worth it in the end as DK is not an easily played class like a hunter where they can fire off their rotation macro then control their pet, or like a warlock where they are more like an extension of the character themself, DKs must watch their timers and have about 2.5-3.5 secs of auto-attacks and its just too much effort to keep them going, besides the regent cost, cooldown etc.
Besides the fact as blood and frost I was higher on the dps meters for less work plus the survivability of blood or the insane aoe crits of frost.
I am currently Blood and am enjoying It a lot more than unholy as I can play my character to the best of its potential while still summoning my ghoul every now and then as a dps boost.
P.S. soz for how long this was (END RANT)
Well, I’m an unholy dps build and I’ve been trying out Night of the Dead for the fact that it makes Army of the Dead castable every 10m. Currently, every instance I’ve gone into, the bosses rape my army of the dead ghouls before they can do any significant damage.
Also, Ravenous Dead doesn’t seem to increase my ghoul’s HP enough to make dumping 3 points worth it unless I just want the 3% str increase for myself since I assume the str bonus is just as negligible.
I currently average about 1600-1700dps in most instances I’ve run, and out of my 2,000,000+ damage for the entire run, my permanent ghoul will have contributed about 300-600k. This is the one thing that makes me keep him…but the pain in keeping him around is high.
Some runs I think I’ve had to resummon his wussy behind about 10+ times unless we have shammy totems healing everyone and then he’s fine. Any kind of AoE and he’s toast.
I also think we should be able to put the stun on an auto-cast with a decent cd. I’m too busy activating my own skills to toss that out most of the time.
yeah man I totally agree with you…
I leveled as blood then I decided to spec unholy to see how it was on PvP: first time I didnt get night of the dead so I faced exactly the problem you described, second time I got night of the dead and things got a lot better but still I need to kep burning corpse dust as if I had too much money to spend
Ok, so I have been reading all of this…
Apparently people are having problems with their pets??
Firstly, unless I am questing or doing an instance/raid or PvP battle, I don’t have my pet summoned (unless it is still summoned from the previous event). A few thigns to realize:
1) If you’re dying, or even your pet is dying in less than 5 minutes…there is a problem with either the way you play, the way you control the pet, or your party period…there is no other issue and no other reason to be dead in that short of a time frame..
2) In PvP battles, Damage is key, but Survivability is just as precious. I’d rather have a Blood Spec’ed DK on my team than an unholy for the sole reason that they 1) do good dps, not as good as unholy, but still good, and 2) they have the best survivability rating out of the other builds, which is key to winning in PvP. So there shouldn’t be any complaining for a pet dying a lot in PvP, that would be your own mistake for even bringing it out and specing that way (its called taking advantage of a weakness people, they are gonng kill it weither you like it or not)
3) As for the regents…50 silver is nothing! And as for humanoid bodies, they are pleantiful. So even if you end up needing to use 3 regents (which you never should need to use more than 1 in an instnace run anyways) thats ok to use the 1g 5 silver. You’ll get that money back from a few dead bodies laying around! Big whoop!
4) As for Unholy spec, who ever things that the pet is not a vital part of it is full of crap! The Ghoul in itself adds a good 150-250 DPS! I’d rather be seing myself doing 1025 DPS than doing 875 DPS…If you’re ghoul is not giving you an extra 150-250 DPS or more, then you are doing something completely wrong (concider rerolling to another spec, another class or even just try working WITH your pet!)
5) As for Night of the Dead, its a great ability to have 2 talent points toward if you plan on NOT making a pera pet and plan on using Army of the Dead a lot! Otherwise, don’t worry bout it, you can put those 2 points somewhere else. Oh, another good point to have this is if you have a squishy party member, and they constantly keep dying, well there you go, you can raise them as a ghoul for a short period of time, but by the time they fall, you would have hit the mob enough times to proc it all, and you’ll have a ghoul in no time flat!
The ghouls are perfectly fine just the way they are. If I was to change ANYTHING at all, It would have to be to make the ghoul recieve a bit more stamina and strength bonus from its owner (maybe by .5 more per each bonus point). But, knowingly, that would make it too strong as a pet anyways, seeing as how its alrady a nice powerhouse addition to an Unholy spec. Oh, and why would you ever whant to make it a perma or buff it if you are main specing in Blood or Frost? You’d be better off without the Ghoul for those spec’s!
So like I said, if you zone and it unsummons you should be able to resummon it, but then again it shouldn’t be summoned out of an instnace anyways. That’s why there is a starting area in the instance where you summon/buff/etc before you go head on. If you’re not getting 150-250 DPS or more from your ghoul alone (meaning that by lvl 71 you’re not doing at least 1000 combined DPS, and this is with just quest/dropped gear, not with bought or instanced/raid/pvp gear, and no enchants, no outside buffs), you might want to concider rerolling or relearning how to use a ghoul, maybe even your class. And if you can’t make at least 1.5-2 gold before you reach the first boss in a 5 man…you have issues, or your party has issues. And if you are dying within 5 minutes, heck, within 30 minutes of starting a 5 man or any raid…get a new party, or reroll please. As for PvP’s, please concider a more viable spec build (Like Vampire build on the wiki). Its just that simple.
Too much QQing on all the ’sites these days lol. Just test things out, if they aren’t up to par, try something else. Keep going till you find something you can enjoy and not complain about. Don’t be like the White Mages and the Ninjas on FFXI, lol.
[...] lot of issues that have been mentioned here and the official forums got touched on today. While no definite changes where announced, GC did hit [...]
Wait…I dont understand. You are all crying about Night of the Dead being useless but are also complaining about the 5 minute cooldown? Specifically in your post you are talking about rezzing, summoning your ghoul, then thee minutes later dieing and not being able to summon your ghoul because there are 2 minutes left on the cooldown. In the three minutes you were alive, I can guarantee you would have used the four SS’s or PS’s necessary to not have any cooldown remaining. See the benefit of this talent? I personally think this is in a fine state.
The issue I can agree with is the 50s cost. In BGs this can add up to a huge amount as there are simply no corpses around. People die then automatically release…no corpse. Not sure if this is a bug or not, but it essentially means you are blowing 1-2g per BG (on average, it can sometimes be a lot more or a lot less). And this is before people realize that taking out a ghoul is a relatively smart thing to do..then the cost is increased even more. So if you want to spend a few hours pvping you are looking at a substantial cost that other classes do not incur. Not only that, but PvPing does not give you a viable way to make money back. At least when you are PvEing you are looting, etc. Not too mention you are probably killing humanoids to use as corspes. The reagent needs to be removed as part of the MoG talent imo…It isn’t fair to expect us to pay so much so frequently for a core ability
[...] lot of issues that have been mentioned here and the official forums got touched on today. While no definite changes where announced, GC did hit [...]
[...] lot of issues that have been mentioned here and the official forums got touched on today. While no definite changes where announced, GC did hit [...]
Yeah, at the very least I think we should get an equivalent to the hunter call pet ability for when we (the DK) die but not the ghoul, cause the resummons are really not cutting it atm, the little PvP I’ve been doing on my DK was pain due to this, I mean if I spend points and possibly even glyph slots to get my dead friend as buffed up as possible I really expect him to stick about for a while longer if he’s not being…well, killed again so to speak.
Night of the living dead, couldn’t agree more, what a lousy talent, 50% of it goes into a weak, lackluster ability (Army of the dead) and the other half goes into shortening the cooldown on the skill we’ve talented to NOT have to re-cast in the first place. Brilliant! just brilliant.
I feel like coldhands.
They should treat it like they treat warlock pets.
We should be able to res in a bg with the pet unless the pet gets killed
“…In PvP battles, Damage is key, but Survivability is just as precious. I’d rather have a Blood Spec’ed DK on my team than an unholy for the sole reason that they 1) do good dps, not as good as unholy, but still good, and 2) they have the best survivability rating out of the other builds, which is key to winning in PvP…”
rofl, dude, I eat blood dks on breakfast with my unholy build. blood r completely useless when they start receiving massive damage, you’re so full of crap!
I took my time to read everything you said but I didn’t worry about the entire rest after reading that “blood dks have the best survivability” ROFL
you’re probably one of those theoricrafters cuz you talk like someone who never played some real PvP with your DK bro
I was just blacksmithing in Shattrath and my ghoul disappeared. This has happened before. I don’t understand why.
Yes I really do feel that being an unholy death knight, I mean its practically the pet spec of the death knights, is far too inconvenient to even be a pet class. I can however see some problems with simply eliminating the cooldown. Corpse explosion: if used while selecting your own ghoul, it explodes for 2k-3k damage so rapid ghoul summoning would just be a flow of 2 to 3k hits, arguably OP by other classes because “my pet can’t do that, water elemental can’t do that, etc ” Put a 15s cooldown on corpse explosions if you want to make ghouls cost no regent/no cd.
Some changes I would like to see..For warlocks all they need is a soul stone, which is free from killing stuff. How about you make a new skill “Cremate” which can be used upon any corpse of a humanoid undead or beast to turn it into corpse dust. That way its not a “free” ghoul but if you go out and farm a couple 80 mobs in icecrown you will have enough corpse dust for a full day of arenas.
suggestion 2: hunter pets have no cd, warlock pets have no cd, mage pets have a much smaller cd. So death knights have a 5m cd? I completely agree with one of the above comments to simply put cooldowns on the skills (death pact, corpse explosion) which would made the instant CD of pets op, but atleast let us have the pet instead of making keeping it up expensive and inconvenient. suppose hunters had to pay 50s every time their pet died and they need to rez it, can you see how many mad hunters there would be?
I have a level 80 tarenn (mispelled–My mistake—-)Death Knight and i have a messed up schedual so i pvp alot and i have done so much skirmishes and every time I enter a skirmish with my partner i have to summon another ghoul. The cost is out rage us(also misspelled)50 silver is way to much for one ghoul that can be killed way to fast and not do the most damage. i have blown about 200 gold on it so far and im getting irretated either increase the damage on it to make it worth it or just remove the reagent cause that is stupid and its not worth it might as well jsut save to cool down for when your partner dies and rez him cause when you turn into a ghoul you crit for about 4K on clothies. but it is unreliable you dont know if you will die or your partner. also they have a cool down on bone shield cause it not only decreases the dmg you take by 40% but it also increases the dmg you do. but only by 2% seems fair but not enough for a full 1 min cool down either reduse the cool down by 30 secs or increase to about 10 charges cause if you get hit 4 times by a rogue your shield is gone and that dmg is absorbed so fast. I have found unholy to be the best pvp spec i have tried everything else but the other ones dont have much to offer only because they or mostly physicle we also need somthing like mortal strike i am sick of chasing after healers for an hour before the bore them selves to death its way to OP. Death knights can survive for alittle but it dose them know good when they are stun locked even if they take like no dmg for 5 secs they are still stuned for mabey up to 15 thats 10 secs for the opposing team to do as much damage as they want to us. We need somthing that makes us immune to stuns that dosnt take 14 talent points (in frost tree) because it crosses out several other survival tactics. I play on live realm and I can take out almost any class some more than others but there are a couple that realy bug me. Mages most of all mages have way to much kiting capabilitys nerf them pls the other one is Ret paladins I can own them if i have all my cool downs but if i dont i am screwd even when they have all there cool downs. rogues are annoying but if you get ahold of them they are screwd with a 9K rune strike up their @$$.;]
My name is Hadeez,Tarren Death Knight on the realm Whisperwind. pls respond to this I have also another question i am debating on what class is best for 2v2 unholy with a death knight my 2v2 partner right now is a boomkin/Demon warlock and we rape but i was wondering if any other set ups would also be good.
Thank you for taking your time and reading this I have spent alot of time researching this site and i must say that you guys rock TY for making this site and making it easier for death knights to understand there specs and classes better ;]
Any news from blues on this topic? While I find the pet useful in pve this situation makes me wonder if I should spend that point elsewhere.. i basically got used to fight on my own with no pet. :sad:
I definately think the 5 minute cooldown on a permanent pet is an issue. However, it’s hard for me to really complain about this knowing how overpowered so many DK abilities are. I have a DK, and I am playing him to cap, but don’t doubt that I believe he needs to get throttled back some. Especially in PVP…
“I was wondering if any other set ups would also be good.” Another DK.
Well arena is out and i have gotten a team to 1800 already but that is going to change when they nerf Unhold Death Knights.Bone sheild will now only reduce damage by 20% down from 40% and Icebound Fortitude will be reduced also to 20% down from 50% so say good buy to industractabilaty. Blood death knights seem to be getting a burst though seems that their Heart Strike will now be a cleave and Blood Pressence healing is increased from 2% to 4%.
Frost death knights dont seem to be getting anything new but unholy deathknights are suposed to be hard to kill seeing as they can either do alot of damage or stay alive now they are being forced to just do alot of damage. i think they will die way to fast and not be as good as they were. One thing I would like to see is somthing like a Mortal Strike or a Disarm. My pet is still doing minamal damage and Honor is easy to get. One thing that is bugging me is all the damn tanks doing arena. especally Druids. I think that the healing on there ferocious reguvination should be reduced cause when they have 40K armor and 45K health they are way to hard. Me and my partner nearly get solod by this class and they need a huge nerf. Pallys need to have shorter Boubles and less healing power their 10K flash of lights. are getting annoying.
I would like to know if their are any other 2v2 builds for a unholy Death Knight cause my partner dies too fast—–Boomkin.
Another issue i am going to bring up is the gear that you get it is way to easy to get gear and they need to make it harder i am almost 4/6 off set deadly gear and getting the rest of the set today. The next arena season dosnt even start for a couple mounths at least and i would like to slow down but i need to have a good team or in other words good gear. i would like to see it made harder to get gear cause it is way to easy.Getting it in 3 days is crazy.They also need to make arenas and battle grounds more intresting now its just go in get as much honor as you can and get out. All of their gear dosnt not take any battle ground marks just honor so the purpose of AV marks is down the drain some of the other marks can still be used for bonus honor but only the SOTA,AB,WSG,EOTS marks are used av marks surve no purpose and it will soon go dead seeing as how the alliance and horde are bent on doing nothing but turtles. I am getting borde at doing just random Battle grounds and its not as rewarding when you get a new peice of gear.
This is Hadeez i am a tarren Death Knight on the Whisperwind server Please reply to my thread
I really like the Unholy spec, but I find myself wanting to respec because of the issues with the pet. I only use the pet for questing because in PVP or dungeons they are more trouble than help. Corpse Dust is way to expensive to use as needed and with a cooldown it’s almost as if Blizzard doesn’t want you to use the pet at all. Everyone knows if you want to turn someone off of something: hit their wallet.
I have allready seen some solutions to these problems in the new patch notes.
Night of the Dead also Also reduces the damage your pet takes from area of effect attacks by 40/70%.
Glyph of the Ghoul – Your Ghoul receives an additional 40% of your Strength and 40% of your Stamina. (Old – Your Ghoul receives an additional 20% of your Strength.) Major
Glyph of Raise Dead – Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent. (Old – You generate 20 runic power whenever you summon a ghoul.) Minor
So let’s see how it goes after these changes come. shall we?
I completely agree. I just started my dk and i am unholy/blood/ and even as a hybrid the cooldow is a right pain in the butt. i dont mind the need of a reagent as much though
1- Ghouls do cost Corpse Dust in Arenas at the moment.
2- The issue with Ghouls disappearing entering zones (apart from Arenas) has disappeared. However, actions such as using remote controls cars despawns them.
3- Microing your Ghoul to stun is amazing for PvP, even if it is situational. The cooldown is also low enough to justify Gnaw in a tanking build, and the Ghoul is 300DPS for free in blue tank gear, and I assure you, much more in epic quality gear.
4- They are buffing Glyph of the Ghoul and adding Glyph of Raise Dead. Your Ghoul will have 100% of your Strength and Stamina, effectively making your Ghoul have more base Strength than you… which is kind of a strange feeling.
5- Night of the Dead is going to grant Avoidance.
6- Night of the Dead is amazing for downing new content, as you can effectively raise an unholy army of friendly players as they die and still keep your ghoul.
I’m currently sitting at 2035 in 2s on Rampage US, I play 21/0/50 in arenas and I actually respec’d to shift points around to get 2/2 Night of the Dead.
Ignoring the fact that next patch NotD will give avoidance, I cannot possibly see how you can’t see this talent as worthwhile. Its hard to get 10 Plague/Scourge Strikes off? Are you kidding? Are you hoping your opponent will die of boredom? What’re you doing?
At the very least my Ghoul gets focus’d right at the start of the match casuing
Errr, accidently hit the “Submit” button.
At the very least my Ghoul gets focus’d right at the start of the match causing them to waste precious time on something that won’t win them the fight. However, if they don’t my Ghoul puts out a decent amount of damage, I can use Gnaw to stop someone from kiting or interrupt a heal.
I can’t honestly see how you think the pet is worthless or not “meant for PVP”.
Two words, Corpse Explosion.
If there was no CD on raise dead, what’s stopping an Unholy DK from summoning a pet, running it into a group of opposing players and blowing it up… then just summon new pet and start all over again.
No risk of of fighting head on, as pet does all the work and you can stay back. Only limits on you are how fast you can summon it and get it over to your targets. A strong range nuke, especially after the upcoming patch, for a plate wearing melee class. Somehow this doesn’t seem to fit.
Live with it, or go back to playing your lock.
i agree this needs some tweaking, currently a 73 unholy dk and i find this extremely annoying during almost everything i do.
completely agree!!
Ever tried jumping down the hole in azjol-nerub while having your ghoul active…?
Result => land in the water and re-summon your ghoul… using corpse dust!! (no humanoids around to kill and no freaking “whistle to blow” to get your ghoul back).
If i compare with my hunter i can name 2 things.
1) my hunter pet is easy to summon / re-summon
2) my hunter pet dies a lot less!
That said… blizzard do something about it!
These are just my observations, based on skimming the posts above and a lot of PvE experience with my hybrid Unholy/Frost DK. (I have yet to do much PvP with him, in the world OR in an arena/BG setting.)
The combination of the reagent cost and needing a HUMANOID corpse is the most annoying thing about the ghoul. In some areas/instances, humanoids are plentiful, and in others nonexistent. It is very annoying to have to hunt down a humanoid body that gave xp/honor or otherwise blow reagents over and over just to retain what is a vital part of the entire Unholy-spec experience. The single easiest way to remedy this would be another glyph: one that removes the reagent cost AND humanoid corpse requirements for raising Ghouls. (After all, if you’re a “master of ghouls”, do you really need to find a “humanoid” body to make one? It would seem logical to say NO…) It’s also distressing to have to wait out a CD on Raise Dead, simply because there is no way to “call Ghoul” (much the same way a Hunter would “call Pet”) or even “cast to summon” such as “summon Voidwalker” for Warlocks.
So, my solution:
[1] Glyph-based removal of reagent and humanoid corpse requirements for Raise Dead <-they’ve done similar things with other abilities in removing reagent needs, why not with Raise Dead too..? It could be done all in one glyph…
[2] Give DKs an ability to “beckon Ghoul / call Ghoul” when one simply manages to ‘get lost’ and/or hasn’t been killed.
There is a glyph that removes all reagent needs. It’s great for PVP. Not only that, but the last patch auto-rezzes a ghoul when you ressurect in a battleground for no cost, even if you don’t have the glyph. I’m not sure if the free ghoul rez still happens if you don’t have master of ghouls, but I suspect not.
If you PVP alot, get Night of the Dead, and Master of Ghouls, bind your ghoul stun to a key so you can use it at will, it’s great to slow down someone who is running away, attacking someone a little more squishy than you, or casting something you don’t want them to.
As far as I’m concerned, Blizzard has now fixed any problems with pets in PVP. They are now by far worth the points: An extra 400 dps, a short CC, an way to cause more spell knockback, and the ability to leap to an enemy in range. It’s a talent that is hard to give up.
just get the ghoul glyph that removes the reagent requirement, 30g or less and its one of the best dk minor glyphs
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