Simply stated, the side that has the highest concentration of Death Knights will inevitably be the victor.
Arathi Basin. Horde has two Death Knights. Alliance has five. The Alliance will win.
Warsong Gulch. Alliance has one DK. Horde has three. Horde wins.
Eye of the Storm. Alliance has seven Death Knights. Horde has one. Alliance wins.
And on and on and on…
The only possible exception to this may be Alterac Valley, I don’t know; with queue times measured in hours it’s difficult to test.
Nonetheless, it seems to hold true for everything else.
It seems to be restricted to Unholy Death Knights, however. Frost and Blood don’t seem to count towards this theory.
Played an AB with each side possessing three DK’s. One of the alliance Knights was Blood specced. Alliance lost. All of the Horde ones, of course, were Unholy.
Death Knights aren’t particularly invincible, just very difficult to fight. They possess a very high number of powerful cooldowns, and exhibit zero hesitation in using them. As such, the only response is to use your own cooldowns, and if multiple Death Knight’s are present, it’s only a matter of time…
It’s a war of attrition. A war the Death Knight’s always win.
They wear plate, hence physical DPS is restricted against them. A substantial amount of their damage comes from Magic damage, rendering heavily armoured targets largely moot against them. The number of tools they have to mess up casters and healers is greater than any other class.
On top of that, they need to be killed twice and have a permanent pet in roughly the same boat as a hunter’s, and can even summon a second one, or a whole bunch of them every twenty minutes.
Speaking of which, being on the receiving end of six simultaneous “Army of the Dead” is a lesson in true terror. WTB Ret Pally.
The issue with multiple Death Knight is that they don’t even have to be organised to be incredibly dangerous. A group of, say, three Death Knights can throw themselves into a group of enemies, mash random keys while pressing tab and deal unmatched catastrophic damage.
Consider a group of people defending Lumber Mill. Some Death Knights attack.
The mage gets Death Gripped, blinks away, and is immediately snared. The priest can’t help, as he was just silenced. The mage attempts to kite the DK, only for the DK to render himself immune to all magic.
A rogue attempts to assist, but is broken out of stealth early by a DoT of some sort. Don’t ask which one, there’s, like, seventy billion DoTs flying around whenever DK’s are involved.
The priest just got Death Gripped. A Warrior wades in, only to sadly watch his health bar drop faster than the opposing DK. The mage just got hit with Mind Freeze. The rogue can’t Vanish, too many DoTs.
The mage can’t DPS, the DK tossed up an anti-magic zone. And then got silenced again. The rogue attempts to flee, blowing Sprint to try and get some distance. Chains of Ice.
Eventually, they kill one of the Death Knights, who promptly resurrects himself as a zombie and continues to attack.
As time drags on, the opponents of multiple Death Knights get run down. It takes an inordinate amount of effort to kill a single Unholy Death Knight, and when dealing with large numbers of them, it just takes far too much time to bring them down.
Slowly but surely, they inevitably win.
Think about it this way. Even one DK can cause a lot of damage, simply by harassing a healer. Snares to prevent the healer from fleeing, thus forcing them to heal themselves, or attempting to dispel themselves. They can be silenced, Death Grip interrupts spells, and when they finally get the opportunity to cast a spell, they’re hit with Mind Freeze.
For this entire time, the healer isn’t healing. All the other teammates are still taking damage, it’s just now there’s effectively no one to get their health bars back up.
The healer, then, is restricted to instant cast spells and HoTs. Slowly but surely, they fall behind. Meanwhile, disease is on sale and everything must go!
Picture a zombie horror movie. Any will do. The hero’s have plenty of guns, food and water. No problem.
Except… there exists a limit to the ammunition. If a guy has a rifle and five thousand bullets, that means he can kill five thousand zombies if he never misses and always gets a perfect headshot.
If he’s fighting six thousand zombies… well, I’m sure we can all guess how that ends.
As of yet, the only viable counter I’ve found so far is to have a powerful offense at the beginning of the battle to quickly establish a strong defense.
For instance, if Horde can move strongly enough to establish LM/BS/Farm very early in the game, then it doesn’t matter how many Death Knights are rolling around. If any of those are only barely held, or otherwise in a tenuous position, it becomes much, much more difficult to wrest back control of them.
Eye of the Storm is similar. Attempting to take three towers from the start has, so far, always ended in failure. Trying to take three at once (and the flag, too, sometimes) gives the enemy DK’s the perfect environment to simply drag fights out as long as possible.
They may not be consciously doing this, but that’s how the class seems to function in large scale PvP.
A heavy offensive in Eye results with little. Within a minute or two, players are spread out between three or four different points, embroiled in pointless fights with Death Knights, solidly holding nothing.
Sure, you currently own Mage Tower, but if even one more enemy shows up, it’ll be gone.
It’s a very fragile position. Basically, your side has overextended, and DeathKnights are the perfect class to capitalise on it.
After fighting off a few of them, the result is your team is, essentially, exhausted. Many cooldowns have been blown, your resources are slim, and even more Death Knights are riding in, ready to force you to use cooldowns you no longer have.
And this is why I hate DKs. They’ve ruined PvP.
Here’s the thing about unholy, their pets count as 2/3 of a death knight. So let’s say you have a WSG with 2 Ally death knights and 3 horde death knights, but both allies are unholy, while the hordeside has 2 blood and 1 frost. You can count on the alliance winning, since they have the equivalent of 2 + 4/3 = 3 1/3 death knights versus the horde’s 3.
DKs arent as OP as they’re made out to be. Their cooldowns have been nerfed into the ground with the release of 3.08. Its mostly a complete lack of understanding of how the class functions that leads people to believe them unstoppable.
The first thing to understand is the rune based combat system, basic spells/abilities, and and how different specs function. Runes have a 10 second cooldown, know what hits you, and which of their options are temporarily eliminated by the choices that they make. Go to any of the sites that list DK abilities, or go roll one and mash buttons to get a feel for how the class plays, then come up with ways (that fit your playstyle/spec) to counter it.
DKs do not have a snare/root break, and can be kited. Be aware that the range on Chains of Ice is 20 yard. Stay outside of that, and a DK cant slow you (unless they’re Frost speced). Death Grip (the dreaded pull) has a 35 second cooldown, so waiting to Blink after the DK grips and immediately chains is the best option.
As a mage, the best way to deal with DKs is to pay attention. Burst them down before they have you targeted and/or know where you are. If you wait until they’re sitting in your lap, ready to pop all cooldowns, you will lose, the same as with any other melee class.
Another school of thought would be to CC/harass the semi intelligent DKs that actually see your healers, because you know that an alive healer greatly increases the chances that you will a crucial heal when needed.
ok not OP… they have:
– Desecration: Mobile frost trap EVERYTIME they hit you with scourge strike / plaguestrike
-Reduced durations of stuns + fear by 20%
-Icebound fort to make themselves immune to stun and gives them 20% dmg reduction on a 1 min cooldown
-Lichborne which is basically another WotF that lasts 15 seconds
-Incredible self-heals for a plate wearing dps class not like a dinky flash of light or an enraged regeneration.
-Boneshield to reduce incoming dmg by 20%. 1 min cooldown not like a shieldwall which reduces dmg significantly but you can’t DPS for the life of you with a sword and shield (unless prot)
-2 Pets, Ghoul for stuns and Gargoyle for brainless dps that deals 2000 dmg/hit. Locks + Hunters don’t have 2 pets that they can bring to the field simultaneously
-2 silencing effects
And about not being able to break snare or roots… they have Deathgrip and Chains the only 2 classes I can see effectively beating a DK is a Ret Pally or a Frost mage
the dk you are talking about probably has like 200 talent points 😀
if the have gargoyle for example, they have like no self healing, because: gargoyle is 51 points in unholy, and 20 remaining points are not enough in blood to have an efficient self-healing, moreover if they have lichborne as you mentioned, next to gargoyle, its even less points in self healing.
and the thing with icebound fortitude: it makes them immune to stun, but it CANT be use to REMOVE stun. this goes for the rest of CC abilities, okay-okay they can become immune, but they cant remove them if got it already. also the spell lichborne has a serious fault that not many people realize: the death knight becomes UNDEAD. so, priests can use shackle, and i assume paladins can use terrify undead (or what the heck is it) on them. or mages can silence them so they dont do so much aoe diseases, or shamans can remove their buffs with purge (e.g. icebound fortitude, unholy blight, lichborne and others)
all in all dks have flaws, and have holes on their so dreaded defense and CDs, and if you are witty enough and creative enough (read: not hitting only the nuke button, but using your other abilities too) you can defeat them. just L2P your class
Yep PvP against DK’s is the same as any other class. -Learn how they function-
What spells and abilities are availible to them and what the cooldown on them are.
The more you understand the mechanics of the class your up against the better chance you have at winning.
They really arn’t that OP if you know your class well and understand their class as well.
Happy Hunting.
DKs are based around cooldowns. In BGs, this is perfect. How often are you in combat? Often enough that a rogue’s cooldowns aren’t up, so they can’t us vanish and sprint every fight, nor can a mage ice block or a paladin bubble himself or others all the time. DK cooldowns tend to come up after around a minute or two. This is fairly close to the frequency of combat in a BG.
Essentially DKs are ‘balanced’ but BGs have a burst PvP style where you blow cooldowns and then you’re gone for 30-60 seconds, and in that time only DKs fully recover.
[…] amusing (dry and sarcastic is humorous, but only if done right, and we all know QQ delivers) post from Euripedes over at Critical QQ about Death Knights in battlegrounds. Hooray for Death Grip! Personally, […]
The bit about a the effect of a DK on a healer is strikingly similar to the way a rogue effects a healer. Both are difficult to get rid off. Both have a diverse toolset to stop casting. The only difference is that a DK can spread his diseases amongst the rest of your team while the rogue can’t do so with his poisons.
well actually…. he can use FoK and spread his poisons…
Doug basicaly hit the nail on the head, learn how DK’s play. It’s funny that everyone QQ’s about how OP DK’s are when they don’t even come close to topping the DPS charts compaired to several other classes in the same compairable gear.
The “OP” talents are easy to get around if you know how to play your own toon, maybe you should look at yourself and see if you’re doing something wrong. All the best cd’s DK’s have are on longer then normal cooldowns compaired to other classes (exception maybe being Death Grip if glyphed).
Mayhaps instead of contributing to the problem you should respec to something a little more PVP viable like the DKs did….just a thought.
I’ve been griping about this since DK’s hit BG’s.
Strangulate, Death Grip, Mind Freeze, and the ghoul’s stun all interrupt—properly staggered they make any spell with a cast time practically impossible (the fact that 80% of the DK’s I fight are Tauren or Belfs adds yet another). Anti-magic Zone renders a mage useless … it’d be fine if you could just run away from it, but since the DK can pull you into the damn thing, then snare and silence you … And AMS is, of course, another layer of protection, easy to throw up during a spell cast. Fire and Frost specs really have no chance, since the majority of their meaty spells require casting.
Most cooldowns are on the order of minutes—Sprint, Divine Shield, Invisibility, Ice Block, Medallion, etc etc. Death Knights are typically looking at 1 minute or less for all their most devastating abilities. I’ve found that this translates to essentially “I can use it once per fight” whereas most other classes can only blow cooldowns once every three or four fights. If I’m fighting a DK, I’m going to have to deal with AMS, Death Grip, Strangulate, Mind Freeze, and Chains of Ice at least once. Blink’s on a 15 sec CD … I’m going to have to burn SOMETHING to stay alive—Ice Block or POM or Invisibility (usually more than one). While a Rogue going burn-down or a Retadin dropping both DS and LoH will force the same, at least they can’t do it every time they see me.
And even if you snare or poly the DK, you have to deal with the Ghoul … and even if you kill the DK, you’ll have to kill him again. Not as bad since Shadow of Death got a cooldown, but at the wrong time it can ruin a cap.
Fighting a DK is certainly not impossible, but in order to win I’ll have to expend far more resources—cooldowns, pots, trinkets, attention from healers—than he will. Also, he doesn’t have a mana bar that needs refilling …
Yes, OTOH, yuir right. You can tell how OP a class is by the number of complete idiots playing it.
Complete Idiots (Or S.N.A.R.F.S. for short) tend to gravitate to the easiest pvp classes… locks (back in the day), ret pallies and DKs.
I was doin the kidnap Wolvar pups daily with Maj. I land my geared 80 mage next to a 73 NE DK fighting one of the den mothers… and I start grabbin pups.
Evidently the Nelf took offense at my opportunism and started a chain of events that led to me murdering her.
So… while a skilled DK might be a formidable opponent… the bulk of them are mindless arcane barrage fodder.
I find healers much more OP in BG then DK, not even talking about holy paladins that can live for ages against stupid players (ie 70% of the population in BG). People still don’t focus healers, worse they don’t focus at all…
DK are indeed very good in an environment like Arathi basin in defense as they can prevent a cap for quite a long time (a little bit less now with the rez in ghoul being nerfed).
There self heal and resilience cooldown (eg Icebound Fortitude, Rune tap) are also quite good in an environment without dedicated healers (which can also happen in BG)
I think your theory can also be proved right with healers, even more so with Holy paladins.
fearing a death knight that just death gripped me in PVP is on my “Fun things to do in Pvp” list.
Realistically the DKs powers can be countered by most other classes, and they are no different from any other burst based class. Remember when Pallys and Shaman were added to the opposite faction battlegrounds? The nerf and qq was like wildfire.
And then consider that a regular excuse for why MC was easier on Horde was the presence of Shamans. But then a lot of folks managed to clear it every week.
I feel your pain about getting face smashed in BGs by a class, but I can tell you that I’ve played Warlocks, Pallys and DKs, and somebody is always attacking me too.
[…] players hit asked themselves when visaged against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting place in his blog theorizing that the lateral with the most sort of Death Knights module win. Think Ret Paladin […]
[…] players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during […]
[…] players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during […]
Bound to happen with a new class.
It’s just like DotA really…
I totally agree with you on this one. DKs take forever to take down, while they can rip you to shreds in just a few seconds. I play a hunter, so at least i can SOMETIMES disengage from the death grip and get a few shots off, but i still have to kite the guy for at least 10-20 seconds to have a shot at bringing him down. Totally unbalanced for PvP! great post!
I didn’t read all the posts, seemed as if they were a couple of thoughts repeated. BUT, what I see, at least from the people defending DKs, is that your forgeting this blog is about Death Knights in PVP. Their survivability and how they affect the game(BGs). Which does seem to be much of a higher rate than any other class (in general).
I mean, throw an average person into every class for some BG PVP. What will you see? They will preform the best as a DK. It doesn’t take much, just some button mashing.
I know that a SKILLED player in any class has the ability to kill/out play any other class. But again, not what this blog is about.
I completely agree with the number of Unholy DKs determining who wins a BG, save SotA.
last thing…quote from a blue post on official forums…..
“…some classes just do too much damage in PvP right now.”
[…] players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during […]
[…] players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during […]
[…] some bloggers’ thoughts on how DKs are overpowered for PvP, particularly Euripedes’ Death Knight Theory, I was actually looking forward to jumping in and seeing how I would do. I had already been to AB […]
[…] players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during […]
[…] players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during […]
Pallys where no where near as OP as DK’s in patch 3
expect a big huge nerf bat in 3.1 to your death knights nerds
Blizzard lured you in and got your money,
Now your about to get balanced
Ok I play a DK. So I can tell you DK is not OP, what make DKs appear to OP is the Holly Pally. When you look at the top 2s Arena Team all of them are DK/Pally. Holly pally is the one need to be nerf. Give DK a break…haters!
OP? Holy Paladins and Explosive shot. By the time all the QQ’ers are done Blizzard will have nerf-beat dks into the ground so bad they’ll have to fix em.
Things to note for casters:
-With the introduction of death grip, the scene of bg’s were SUPPOSED to change. (Sorry you cant sit there and cast on us like we were a Naxx boss.)
-And if all we did was “button mash” how did we manage to get that interrupt / stun / Obliterate on you? ; )
Here’s a little story about how to kill deathknights
http://warrior-guides.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-kill-deathknight-warriors.html
Aside from this one time for the most part a good DK can kill just about anything.
When you get right to it they have MANY of the best abilities all over classes have except mortal strike and bubbles.
they can silence from a distance
They can stun lock
they have massive AoE
They wear plate
They can kite
They can close distance gaps
They can poision
They have a pet(s)
They do magic damage
They can NOT take magic damage
They can outheal a good chunk of dps (and they aren’t a healing class)
They got burst damage and some of it is ranged.
One of their biggest cool downs equates to a 2 mob heroic pull(AoD)
Essentially they are stupid easy to play, they can be beaten, but easily the simplest PVP class to use right now because of their never ending bag of tricks.