Unholy made a giant leap in the rankings this week (second last to first) after a targeted set of buffs went live. What might've seen like relatively straight-forward buffs at a quick glance actually unlocked significant potential in our
Summon Gargoyle cooldown, causing the effective buff to be really quite significant (~8% overall). Let's break down exactly what happened. Here were the buffs as quoted by Blizzard:
DEATH KNIGHT
Unholy
Developers’ notes: At high haste levels it was possible for Summon Gargoyle to lose casts of Gargoyle Strike. To help remedy that we are reducing the cast speed of Gargoyle Strike to 2.5 seconds (up from 2 seconds) while increasing the damage done to compensate for the slower cast time. We are also making some targeted tuning adjustments to Unholy to increase their damage outside of their 3-minute cooldowns.
Raise Dead damage increased by 10%.
Army of the Dead damage increased by 10%.
Scourge Strike damage increased by 20%.
Clawing Shadows damage increased by 20%.
Death Coil damage increased by 10%. This does not affect PvP combat.
Soul Reaper damage increased by 15% Unholy specialization only.
Gargoyle Strike cast speed increased to 2.5 seconds, up from 2.0 seconds and Gargoyle Strike damage increased by 25%.
