New Death Knight Covenant Legendaries in Patch 9.1 PTR Build 38312 - Death Knight Guide Writers Review Effects

PTR Posted 2021/04/18 at 12:01 AM by Jaydaa

New Covenant-Specific Class Legendaries9.1 PTR build 38312

Our Guide Writers have given their thoughts on the new Covenant Specific Legendaries Soulbinds on the Patch 9.1 PTR for Build 38312. Check out their opinions below!

Death Knight Covenant Legendaries - Guide Writer ThoughtsMage Covenant Legendaries - Guide Writer Thoughts

Warrior Covenant Legendaries - Guide Writer ThoughtsDruid Covenant Legendaries - Guide Writer Thoughts

Death Knight Covenant Specific Legendaries in Patch 9.1

Kyrian: Final Sentence - When Shackle the Unworthy spreads, instantly gain a Rune and your damage is increased by 2%, stacking up to 10% for 10 sec.
Night Fae: Rampant Transference - The strength gained from Death's Due is increased by 1% and persists for 2 sec longer. While standing within your Death's Due your Runic Power generation is increased by 20%.
Necrolord: Abomination's Frenzy - Abomination Limb's duration is increased by 4 sec and the frequency it grants Bone Shield (Blood) / Rime (Frost) / Runic Corruption (Unholy) is increased by 2 sec. Additionally enemies pulled by Abomination Limb take 10% increased damage from you for 12 sec. (Unconfirmed)
Venthyr: Insatiable Hunger - When Swarming Mist ends it deals 1,346 Shadow damage to 5 nearby enemies, healing you for 25% of the damage dealt. The damage is increased by 2% for every 1 Runic Power spent while Swarming Mist is active.

Blood Death Knight Opinion & Feedback

Abomination's Frenzy

There's a lot to unpack on this legendary, so let's cover the effects, one by one:

This is a net 30% damage increase on Abomination Limb compared to not having the legendary. Nothing spectacular, 17 damage events vs. 13.
With it equipped, Bone Shield generation becomes... rather fast. Let's compare with live:

No legendary Abomination's Frenzy
Time since cast Bone shield charges Time since cast Bone shield charges
0s 3 0s 3
6s 3 3s 3
12s 3 7s 3
11s 3
15s 3

The first 1s off feels like a bug, and will likely be corrected, but the remaining are all 4s apart (as expected), and the ability lasts 16s (up from 12s), totalling 15 Bone Shield charges, up from 9. In theory, this sounds great. In practice, on single target, you will overcap charges provided by this, thus reducing the value it provides. In Mythic+, the moment you press Dancing Rune Weapon with this already up, you are guaranteed to cap charges no matter what you do due to the increased parry and Bone Shield's internal cooldown, making this also a case where you will cap and diminish the value of this legendary.
The damage component can only proc off enemies that it successfully grips. This is a recurring trend with this ability, where the previous incarnation of the ability was changed a few days before launch to grant Bone Shield charges independently of grips. Without it, this legendary might as well not have the damage component, as most non-trivial mobs cannot get moved, and if they can, you likely will not be able to grip them other than on pull (the grip has a minimum 8yd range).

As it stands right now, you'll waste the Bone Shield charges this legendary provides no matter what kind of content you do - or you'll be forced to desync Dancing Rune Weapon to avoid this, which is risky as Abomination Limb already offers no defensive value beyond the Bone Shield charges. This also means forsaking Crimson Rune Weapon, assuming we're still limited to one legendary.

And even if it wasn't the case, you can't even benefit from the increased damage taken aspect on most pulls. By the time all the mobs you pull are in melee, Abomination Limb has barely managed to tag two mobs unless you also commit Death and Decay to slow their approach in order to be able to tag more mobs (Abomination Limb can only grip once per second).

Improvement suggestions:

Make the damage bonus be on target hit by Abomination Limb, not relying on the grip effect. This is the same as the change for the original ability, and makes it consistent throughout.
Make it grant something other than Bone Shield for blood. I, for one, would love to see the legendary be changed to provide 4 times 3 Bone Shield, along with 2 seconds of Runic Corruption each time, for instance. As it stands right now, some of the Bone Shield get wasted no matter what you do (you can only lose a bone every 2.5s. You gain 15 over 16s, meaning that you need to not parry or dodge and be hit every 2.5s consistently to not cap charges with the current effect, while also starting on 0).

Verdict: Hard pass.

Final Sentence

Let's immediately cover one detail: this legendary is useless on single-target, and near-useless on 2 targets, as the entire item effect relies on you being able to spread it. As a result, this immediately rules out this legendary for most raid encounters and a few dungeons (Theater of Pain has very low mob density, for instance).

The conditions to gain the buff are as follows:

Due to how this legendary works, you need to actually spread Shackle the Unworthy to gain a stack of the buff. The buff lasts for 10 seconds and is refreshed when gaining a new stack.
Due to how Shackle the Unworthy works, this needs to be spread to a new target (the debuff does not overwrite itself). The usual spread conditions, and all the bugs associated to them, are applicable.

This legendary's effect is extremely target-dependent as a result. At it simplest, it rewards you by refunding the rune-spending attack you used to spread it, very often fully (as Heart Strike tends to be the main spreading tool due to sheer quantity of actions). This means that, at least in theory and assuming the bugs on 9.0.5 and PTR will be fixed, you'll be able to sometimes hit that 10% strength bonus and gain 10 free runes during the cast.

This is not the full story, however, as the conduit buffing Shackle the Unworthy (Proliferation) also bugs it. Variants of this bug have been in since 9.0.5 and also existed prior to Shadowlands launch, but were mostly fixed in 9.0.2. When Shackle the Unworthy spreads, it spreads with its duration modified to last an extra tick, making it possible (with enough targets) to potentially bounce Shackle the Unworthy forever, as it gains a GCD each time it jumps.

As a result, this could, in some situations, result in a permanent 10% strength bonus, which, while it is nothing to scoff at, is once again eclipsed both in situational use (since it is applicable everywhere) and in general throughput, both offensively and defensively, by current legendaries available. It needs a serious tuning pass to justify - even assuming that Proliferation is not bugged and you're able to get 10% strength, you'd be looking at, likely, a ramping 12s window + additional 10% 10s window, whereas Crimson Rune Weapon will offer you 33% for 11 seconds, no quibble, no bullshit, no target count.

Verdict: Hard pass. Useless on low target count, and extremely weak elsewhere.

Rampant Transference

Nothing much to say here, for once, the tooltip is accurate and complete: while you're in your Death's Due, you generate 20% more RP; the stacks on the buff from it are increased by 1% each, and last 2s longer, making it easier to refresh (or easier to refresh without spending a rune on a Death's Due hardcast). The only unclear/misleading part is that the buff lasts 2s longer. It does not modify the debuff, nor does it make Death's Due last 2 seconds longer on the floor.

Verdict: Hard pass. 4% strength is what, 40 odd armor? We make fun of Bladedancer's Armor Kit and it provides more armor than that and doesn't cost a legendary. Once again, Crimson Rune Weapon offers more runic power, more CD uptime on everything, and more damage.

This would make a great conduit to replace Withering Ground. Heck, it'd be a great conduit period - modify a spell slightly while giving it an additional effect. However, it is both too weak and too boring to be a legendary.

Insatiable Hunger

For our last contender, we have an AP heal and AP damage proc at the end of Swarming Mist, encouraging you to spend as much RP as fast as possible during it. This means, that to get the most out of it, you:

Go into Swarming Mist with a near-full bar of RP
Instantly pop Bonestorm
Hit Death Strike every 1-2 GCDs (since Swarming Mist gives you 15 RP per tick and you'll have a bit leftover after casting Bonestorm), weaving in Heart Strike and Blood Boil. You can hit Rune Tap for extra RP, too!

With all this, you can get to 280 RP spent in Swarming Mist as a maximum without going fully into degenerate territory, netting you a total of 460% extra damage. Sounds like a lot? The base damage is 1.6k in full 226 gear, so you're still looking at, effectively, peanuts without going full degen. That, and unlike its original spell, it is hardcapped to 5 targets.

It doesn't seem to be able to crit, but that may just be testing bad luck.

The heal is noticeable when you slap 5 targets for 10k each, but frankly, if you're after the heal, you likely should've saved the runic power and used your trusty friend Death Strike to gain even more bang for your buck.

Verdict: Hard pass if you're not just after raw damage. Sim it if you are, and embrace the idiocy of spending all your RP during Swarming Mist for a small bang at the end.

What do all these legendaries have in common that leaves them in the dust?

All those legendaries have a common flaw: they interact with no real part of the kit - the closest being Rampant Transference, but even then, it's just a boring old strength multipler and a bit of RP.

Give us legendaries that really modify our kit. This is what our most impactful legendary does, and it's also surprisingly competitive in terms of raw effect in addition to deeply modifying our kit. Don't just build boring old legendaries that nobody will craft.

That said, all these four legendaries would make amazing potency conduits. Man, imagine if we had decent potency conduits...
Frost Death Knight Opinion & Feedback
Final Sentence

The legendary attached to Kyrian is focused entirely on the spread mechanic of Shackle the Unworthy. Spreading the DoT is something Frost Death Knights do very easily. Howling Blast acts as a rune-spending ability that can spread from any target hit. Due to the high frequency of Rime procs, it's generally easy to achieve 5 spreads in AoE scenarios. As the ability spreads, the probability of spreading increases and you eventually have most targets (up to a reasonable number) with the DoT. The spread itself has an internal cooldown in a really weird way. If you get multiple procs, they simply all spread to the same target. This means you can actually get multiple procs, get multiple runes and multiple stacks of the buff. The runes given are a nice addition but not something that provides a huge amount of value. It can specifically help with Breath of Sindragosa builds to increase uptime, but otherwise the value is limited.

When it comes to the viability of this legendary, it's clear that it's focused on AoE scenarios. A 10% damage buff which effectively lasts more than 10 seconds (with the built-up and possible refreshes) is really strong in AoE. It could potentially help Kyrian which otherwise lacks quite heavily in AoE. It does lack completely in single target which is a major downfall. Even in Mythic +, you want a legendary that has a balanced value between AoE and single target!

I don't think this legendary is powerful enough for Frost Death Knights. The crucial aspect of 0 single target gain is pretty much enough to never run it I'd say. Consequently, I do not think anyone should swap to Kyrian just to run this legendary.

Rampant Transference

Night Fae brings an amped-up version of Death's Due. 3% strength per Obliterate (up from 2%) up to 12% maximum with a 14 seconds duration instead of 12 seconds. This is a very quick 12% strength buff in AoE as Obliterate cleaves two targets, only requiring two uses to reach 4 stacks. For single target, it's slightly more difficult to achieve 4 stacks but generally possible.

The runic power gain from the ability is interesting, especially when considering builds with Breath of Sindragosa. A reasonable assumption would be 4-5 uses of Obliterate in your Death's Due window (during Breath of Sindragosa). This would generate 80-100 runic power, giving you an extra 16-20 runic power. There's also runic power gain from other sources which might add a couple of points to this. Overall, this gives roughly one Obliterate's worth of runic power per use. As a comparison, Swarming Mist provides 27 runic power on single target and 135 in AoE. So roughly the same order of magnitude on single target but nowhere close in aoe.

To gauge the power, we need to understand how good Death's Due is without the legendary attached. Generally, it's quite a weak single target covenant ability, but really strong in cleave scenarios. The strength does come from the Obliterate cleave more so than the strength gain. Given that the 8% buff isn't great to start with, I don't think a 50% buff with a duration increase will be enough to make this legendary really powerful. The runic power gain is nice with Breath of Sindragosa builds but not too significant, specifically when compared to how much Swarming Mist can give.

Overall, I don't feel Rampant Transference will be a competitive legendary. It buffs Death's Due in areas that don't matter too much and generally doesn't provide too much power. I don't think I'd advise anyone to swap to Night Fae to use this legendary.

Abomination's Frenzy

A couple of automatic quality-of-life additions for this Necrolord legendary. 4 seconds extra duration results in 30% more overall damage, a nice buff. It also increases the frequency of Rime. This means 5 procs overall (up from 3 without the legendary), helping with damage in both AoE and Single Target. Finally, the 12% damage increase on any target gripped is a bit more difficult to get use of. The target has to be actually grippable, meaning you won't be able to leverage this on bosses. This is generally a good thing though as running out of range to apply the debuff wouldn't be too much fun.

When looking at the power of this legendary, I'd mostly consider the duration. The increased damage on gripped targets is nice but not that consistent, only applying to a few targets per overall pull (you can increase this by jumping around like a crazy person but losing some uptime). It also doesn't scale at all into boss single target damage. Two extra procs of Rime is nice, especially in AoE. Not too big of a deal though overall since you're likely to overlap these procs. Broadly, one can compare the legendary to an ilvl 226 Brutal Grasp potency conduit (24% damage increase to Abomination Limb. It will be stronger than this potency, but not by too much.

At this point, you might already know what I have to say here. I don't think Abomination's Frenzy brings enough power to warrant a covenant switch to Necrolord in order to equip it.

Insatiable Hunger

Possibly the simplest legendary comes from Venthyr. A big burst of damage after your Insatiable Hunger finishes, with an increase based on the Runic Power you spend. This fits somewhat nicely into the Frost Death Knight's kit. People that do run Venthyr also generally run Breath of Sindragosa. This fits nicely into this legendary as you automatically spend your runic power in AoE. With other builds however, runic power isn't really that valuable in AoE, reducing the effectiveness of this legendary as you spend less of it.

To understand exactly how good this is, let's put it into perspective. The raw explosion deals 180% AP over it's duration, meaning the explosion itself sits at 43% of Swarming Mist damage as default. With Breath of Sindragosa, you'll spend roughly 130 runic power during Swarming Mist, resulting in an explosion which is roughly 1.5 times as much as the default Swarming Mist damage. This is honestly really nice in AoE scenarios and significantly buffs your use of the ability. However, it's really only useful when paired with Breath of Sindragosa since you'd otherwise not spend that much runic power (making every other use much weaker). For single target, the gain is non-zero but small since Swarming Mist really doesn't do that much on one target.

Insatiable Hunger has a nice synergy when paired with Breath of Sindragosa in AoE, but otherwise falls quite flat. Half of the uses won't be great and it doesn't scale well into AoE. Overall, I don't think I'd swap to Venthyr for this legendary.

Unholy Death Knight Opinion & FeedbackFinal Sentence

The legendary attached to Kyrian is focused entirely on the spread mechanic of Shackle the Unworthy. Spreading the DoT is something the Unholy Death Knight can do relatively consistently. With Scourge Strike cleave in Death and Decay, the probability of spreading quickly increases towards 100% as more targets receive the DoT. The spread itself has an internal cooldown in a really weird way. If you get multiple procs, they simply all spread to the same target. This means you can actually get multiple procs, get multiple runes and multiple stacks of the buff. It's therefore viable to reach the 10% damage increase as long as there's a sufficient target count. Furthermore, the legendary empowers your cleave window with the runes generates. More DoTs means more runes meaning more cleave meaning more DoTs. You will generally have sufficient runes to fully leverage your cleave window anyway, diminishing the value of this part of the ability. It's currently unclear if this legendary works on single target (one might think an attempted spread could count).

When it comes to the viability of this legendary, it's clear that it's focused on AoE scenarios. A 10% damage buff which effectively lasts more than 10 seconds (with the built-up and possible refreshes) is really strong in AoE. It could potentially help Kyrian which otherwise lacks quite heavily in AoE. It also enables more consistent Death and Decay windows, something that isn't too much of an issue anyway. In terms of comparable power, it's relatively close to Frenzied Monstrosity in terms of type of power gain. Roughly 10% damage increase every minute or so. It does provide extra damage to all sources (Frenzied Monstrosity doesn't increase pet damage except from your main pet) which is a plus. However, it generally provides less % damage increase, less frequent damage increase windows, it doesn't provide the attack speed that Frenzied Monstrosity and it's reliant on target count. This makes me say quite definitely that this legendary won't be our new BiS in patch 9.1

I don't think this legendary will make Kyrian a more compelling choice for Unholy Death Knights. It's simply not strong enough to warrant a switch, since you'd just run another legendary anyway.

Rampant Transference

Night Fae brings an amped-up version of Death's Due. 3% strength per Scourge Strike (up from 2%) up to 12% maximum with a 14 seconds duration instead of 12 seconds. This is essantially an instant 12% strength buff in AoE as Scourge Strike cleaves with Death and Decay. The Unholy Death Knight is likely to be able to hit the maximum amount of stacks consistently, thus utilising this legendary efficiently.

When we now consider viability, it's important to understand the power of Death's Due without the legendary. It's generally considered to be the weakest covenant ability for Unholy, simply not providing the same amount of damage as the others. The increased strength and duration roughly translated to a 50% or so increase in effectiveness (slightly more). This isn't too compelling since a 50% increase on something small isn't likely to have much of an impact. We do also have the 20% increase in Runic Power generation. I do feel like this is slightly misplaced for the Unholy Death Knight. Runic Power isn't something you're after in your Death's Due window. You're looking for runes to spend on Scourge Strike! Because of this, I feel like this specific attribute of the legendary doesn't have too large of an effect and won't significantly increase its power.

Overall, I don't feel Rampant Transference will be a competitive legendary. It buffs a covenant ability that isn't that strong to start with. Because of this, I don't see a reason to swap to Night Fae because of the addition of this legendary.

Abomination's Frenzy

A couple of automatic quality-of-life additions for this Necrolord legendary. 4 seconds extra duration results in 30% more overall damage, a nice buff. It also increases the frequency of Runic Corruption. This means 5 procs overall (up from 3 without the legendary), helping with resources both in AoE and Single Target. Finally, the 12% damage increase on any target gripped is a bit more difficult to get use of. The target has to be actually grippable, meaning you won't be able to leverage this on bosses. This is generally a good thing though as running out of range to apply the debuff wouldn't be too much fun.

When looking at the power of this legendary, I'd mostly focus on the duration increased. The increased damage on gripped targets is nice but not always useful, only applying to a few targets per overall pull. You can play around this by continously moving away from the pack. However, this generally means you lose uptime, unless you play with Clawing Shadows. It also doesn't scale at all into boss single target damage, a major negative. Two extra procs of Runic Corruption is nice but not significant at all. Essentially one can compare the legendary to an ilvl 226 Brutal Grasp potency conduit (24% damage increase to Abomination Limb. It will be stronger than this potency in trash packs, but overall not by much.

At this point, you might already know what I have to say here. I don't think Abomination's Frenzy brings enough power to warrant a covenant switch to Necrolord in order to equip it.

Insatiable Hunger

Possibly the simplest legendary comes from Venthyr. A big burst of damage after your Insatiable Hunger finishes, with an increase based on the Runic Power you spend. This fits nicely into how Unholy uses this legendary, especially in AoE. Popping it at the start-isch of a pull and then spamming Epidemic. This will buff up the final burst quite nicely, giving you a significant boost to the damage that Swarming Mist does.

To understand exactly how good this is, let's put it into perspective. The raw explosion deals 180% AP over it's duration, meaning the explosion itself sits at 43% of Swarming Mist damage as default. It is reasonable to be spending between 90 and 120 Runic Power during Swarming Mist, resulting in an explosion which is roughly 1.5 times as much as the default Swarming Mist damage. This is honestly really nice in AoE scenarios and significantly buffs your use of the ability. For single target, the gain is non-zero but Swarming Mist doesn't really do that much on one target. Furthermore, you're likely to be spending less runic power, resulting in a smaller explosion.

I feel like Insatiable Hunger plays nicely into the Unholy playstyle in AoE. However, I don't think the increased damage is enough to make this legendary viable. Specifically because it doesn't add too much to our single target output. I don't think it'll be worth to swap to Venthyr in order to use this legendary.

Comment by OdrihmSo 4 new legendaries and not a single one is worth it, a bit underwhelming to say the least.Comment by LindsaeCan we get a PvP expert in on these? Whether or not these legendaries would be useful in PvP, couldn't say, but I'd like to see it at least examined. Hoping that's done with any further legendaries found as well.Comment by DreadfuryDKSo 4 new legendaries and not a single one is worth it, a bit underwhelming to say the least.Comment by RayGemA lot if work has gone in here. I appreciate the effort while reading. ThanksComment by NewermoreI think that these legendaries would be worth equipping only if you could equip them with your main legendary.Comment by ControladoThe covenants abilities are bad, the legendaries from covenants are bad, the conduits and soulbinds from covenants are bad.

But some people keep insisting that covenants are a good idea. lmaoComment by FudgsicleHonestly, what blizzard should do is just turn these legendaries into a new potency conduit, or at least allow it to be the only 2nd leggo we can wear. Be more interesting that way then instead of having to choose and lose the current leggo we've been wearing.Comment by Asaliahso far conduits and 90% of legendaries suck.

what an expansion lolComment by Gangmeevery time I saw changes in the covenant and conduit I said, you have to remove the covenants you have to remove the legendaries from the PvP, in PvP situation, you have to make only the talents of the classes with enchanted and socket remain, nothing else, the classes will become unbalanced again, coz there will be again covenant or legendary or something else too op for sure. Hydra said if at MW in PvP if they don't change the new changes of New talent will be the Unkillable best healer. we will see again ppl play only the op classes and we will always see the same classes join in the arena, i think ppl will start to get bored, and ppl will left the game again, but this time there will be no classic without arenas but TBC, I've read a lot of new Blizzard posts and AWC tournament comments that people said in 9.1 will be the same as always it means I'll stay on TBCComment by MynxessSo can you have this as well as you're current legendary or instead of?Comment by MandlAuthor reporting in, this got published just before I got up!

So can you have this as well as you're current legendary or instead of?oronlyThe covenants abilities are bad, the legendaries from covenants are bad, the conduits and soulbinds from covenants are bad.

But some people keep insisting that covenants are a good idea. lmaoComment by Hexelyionso far conduits and 90% of legendaries suck.

what an expansion lolComment by GorbaSounds like a fantastic waste of resources and dev time if you're asking me. Looking forwards to being able to equip 2 legendaries, so we can ignore these twice as much.Comment by Virgo4EverI really wish the only benefit from Covenants was the aesthetics, I chose Night Fae for my DK bc I checked a few guides that said it was the best for power. After 40 renown I regret/resent my choice but DO NOT want to pay the penalty for switching, though I probably will eventuallyComment by e123Why do we even have so many useless legendaries?

Enough with the burrowed power, we need classes to have interesting things in their kit.Comment by CyfaerasThis is exactly what I expected. I hope they didn't spend too long on coming up with these.Comment by THEBuzzardIf we are going for "fun" I would have liked to see abominations frenzy giving a stacking damage taken debuff on enemies that stay in it. Would play with the grip aspect on the ability since that means enemies will be stuck inside the effect while also not being useless for targets that can't be gripped.

Also, who thought covenant specific legendaries were a good idea? If you switch then on top of all other issues you now also have a dead item. At least make them all work with the same legendary slot so they can be "transformed" if you switch covenant. This just seem so obvious?Comment by Avanger411i have simple solution, make 2 elgendary each clas, 1 normal second only covent relatet skill for change/ugprade your skill.Comment by GasponeWhat a !@#$ing joke. Still same idiots behind the desk and no fix for a ^&*! class design.Comment by Shahaman95People who want 2 legendary are hilarious and have literally zero idea about class balances. Are you really, come on guys, use your head, 2 legendaries are going to ruin class balances dramatically both in PvE and PvP aspects immediately. And whats the point of second legendary that can be only covenant specific - it will just create situation where everyone will have to farm second and only legendary, because there will be only ONE-specific covenant legendary. Please examine what you are saying - sometimes I resist opening comment section because of your primitive and dumb ideas, honestly. Yet somehow you rush to blame devs. What a blind and toxic community we have. Well thanks to those who wrote this article.