WotLK Death Knight Changes - Build 9038

Lots of solid changes in all 3 trees for death knights in this most recent build. I really like the way the class is headed for both its DPS and tanking roles. One of the most talked about issues with the class has been its inability to function at the same level as other tanks. At this point it’s hard to really tell if the class will reach that point, but it’s looking promising.

The frost presence armor increase is a great start. Based on these most recent changes in addition to several videos and sources I’ve seen of death knight tanks in action it’s looking like the class will be fine. Threat wise there don’t appear to be any major issues left, the largest complication will be finding the gray area of ideal avoidance, damage mitigation, and DPS.

This past week has been packed with loads of changes, especially for tanks. It’s a clear priority for Blizzard and one I’m confident will end in a solution which meets the needs of all 4 tanking classes.

Death Knight

Blood

• Blade Barrier - Changed to when you have no Blood runes. (Old No runes)
• Heart Strike - Damage increased. (Now Rank 6 60% weapon damage plus 220.8, and an additional 110.4 bonus damage per disease.) (Old Rank 6 50% weapon damage plus 184.0, and an additional 92.0 bonus damage per disease. )
• Dark Command - Range increased to 20yds (Old 5yds)

Frost

• Frost Presence - Armor contribution from items increased to 65%. (Old 45%)
• Frost Strike - Now cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried.
• Black Ice - Frost damage doubled (Now 6/12/18/24/30) (Old 3/6/9/12/15). It no longer affects Shadow damage.
• Tundra Stalker - Passive Icy Touch damage lowered by 25%, expertise increase doubled. (Now 5/10/15/20/25% increase to icy touch damage, and 2/4/6/8/10 expertise) (Old 20/40/60/80/100% increase to icy touch damage, and 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.)
• Rune Strike - Runic Power cost lowered to 10, and damage increased, now only useable after an attack is dodged or parried. Can’t be dodged, blocked or parried. (Damage Now - 200% weapon damage plus [200.0 * AP * 10.0 / 10000.0].) (Old 65% weapon damage, and only usable after a critical hit with an ability that causes a disease)

Unholy

• Blood-Caked Blade - Chance to proc doubled. (Now 10/20/30%) (Old 5/10/15%)
• Scourge Strike - Damage lowered. (Now Rank 4 60% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus ogx 190.5, and an additional 95.25 bonus damage per disease.) (Old Rank 4 60% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 226.8, and an additional 113.4 bonus damage per disease.)

More Death Knight FAQs

Korrath from the WoW forums made a great informational post regarding more FAQs for the Death Knight class. Lots of great info here, particularly regarding individual skills and spells (some still receiving lots of changes on the beta) and how they can be most effectively used.

Also, make sure to check out part 1 for more Death Knight FAQs.

Q: Why doesn’t Bladed Armor work with Frost Presence?

A: Frost Presence has a 30-second pulse that it uses to periodically check armor changes. Wait a little bit and it will kick in.

Q: Why does Summon Gargoyle suck?

A: It doesn’t, but it isn’t very useful when soloing and questing. The gargoyle has a fairly short cast time for its gargoyle strike; the spell hits about as hard as Death Coil, and happens every couple of seconds. It’s terrific for extended DPS in instances and groups since you have a steady influx of runic power and don’t have much down time. While you are questing, half the time is spent killing and the other half is spent running, which makes the gargoyle less useful.

Q: What’s a death rune?

A: A death rune is a rune that can be used as either unholy, frost or blood. It has lower priority than your other runes, meaning that if you have a Frost rune and a Death Rune available and cast Icy Touch, it will choose your Frost Rune first.

Q: Why does Corpse Explosion suck?

A: It needs love, and will hopefully get it soon. Currently, it isn’t worth using unless there are 6 or more targets in the area to explode.

Q: How is Dual Wielding?

A: Works for some builds, it probably won’t get much better than it currently is due to how attack power scales with white damage and yellow damage. There are a lot of divided thoughts on this. Do what you like.

Q: What’s the best spec for (tanking/DPS/PvP)?

A: Play the game, try things out, discuss. This is beta and this is a brand new class, there isn’t four years of back theorycraft and empirical testing for this class. There isn’t four seasons of previous arena history to base conjecture off of. There are a multitude of specs for blood, frost and unholy tanks, DPS and PvP, and the talent trees change every single patch.

Get out there and try it. That’s what the beta is for.

Q: I don’t know what to do, I just copied a premade DK and I’m all confused!

A: Try creating a new death knight, and do all of the starting quests. It’s an excellent method of trying things out, without all the skills overwhelming you.

Q: I’m still all confused!

A: Read more, post less. (like part 1 of my Death Knight FAQ!)

Q: Why did Blizzard make _______ suck?

A: Blizzard’s designers have budgets for everything. Sometimes they need to rein in the power in order to make things fit into the budget. It’s a sort of behind-the-scenes method of homogenizing all of the classes, in order to ensure that some semblance of balance exists.

Q: Balance? HA! This class sucks, this game sucks, the designers suck, yadda yadda

A: Yet you still give them money each month… Read more, post less.

Q: I just made a Death Knight and I don’t have any talent points! Where are they?

A: You initially start out with 0 talent points and as you complete quests in the starting area you are awarded them along with money/items. By the time you finish the Scarlet Enclave you will have the correct amount of talent points for your level.

Q: Necrosis is only doing 1 damage, is it bugged?

A: Nothing is wrong! Don’t panic, it’s just how necrosis works. Necrosis is based on the damage you do with your weapon. So if you hit a target dummy (it only has 1 hp) necrosis considers that a 1 damage attack and only hits for 1 damage as a result.

Q: Hey, I need mods, what are good ones?

A: Jaime keeps a thread with DK-Centric mods here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10529923372&sid=2000&pageNo=1
Q: I am STUCK on a HORSE! How do I turn it in?

A: Press 1.

Q: Aren’t we supposed to be overpowered? We are a hero class!

A: Death Knight as a “hero” class is in reference to the player and not the character. As far as game mechanics go, the Death Knight is just any other class in the game, albeit a new one. The “hero” qualification means that the class is more complex (not more powerful) than “standard” and you are beginning play later in the leveling curve. You have 25 levels to learn the inner workings of your class to play on a competitive level, every other class has already had 70 levels to learn. This requires a player comfortable with such a handicap placed upon them.

Q: Some guy totally made his ghoul explode, but my ghoul pet bar doesn’t have explode, what gives?

A: In order to make your ghoul explode, you need both the Master of Ghouls talent and Corpse Explosion. That will enable you to make your poor, innocent ghoul who implicitly trusts and loves you unconditionally, explode.

Q: Corpse dust sucks!!! It is too expensive and I hate it, will it ever go away?

A: No. Deal with it.

FAQ credits: Sunny, Ratri, Rabinahau

General Information:

Special Melee Attack hit cap: 9% (Strikes)
Two-hander melee hit cap vs. a boss: 9%
Dual wield melee hit cap vs. a boss: 28%
Spell hit cap vs. a boss: 17%

Hit rating for 1%:
Melee: 32.79
Spell: 26.23

This means that if you get 9% hit to ensure all of your melee attacks land you will still need 5.75% more hit or 151 more hit rating to reach the spell hit cap. If you are 2H capped and have Virulence, and a 3% hit debuff on the boss (Such as Misery or Imp. Faerie Fire) you will be spell hit capped as well.

Our melee attacks and spells have a critical damage bonus of 100%.

Hit rating does NOT increase the amount of critical strikes you will have on a target. It reduces the number of times that you will miss the boss.

It takes 45.91 critical strike rating to generate 1% melee or spell critical strike. The reason that hit is such a good stat until capped is because it is so much cheaper to hit 1% hit rating wise than 1% crit. Once you hit the two hander hit cap hit is no longer worth gemming or enchanting.

Haste rating does not reduce our GCD. Our GCD is only affected by Unholy Presence.

Our abilities scale with AP. Spell damage does nothing for us.

Death Knight FAQs

What is the Death Knight?

Death Knights are the first hero class to be introduced in World of Warcraft. While they are a hero class, they are still on the same playing field as normal characters.

What type of a class is the Death Knight?

Death Knight’s are a hybrid melee DPS / tank class. While the class is primarily centered around it’s melee attacks, death knight’s also have a variety of spells designed to be augment melee abilities and function as direct nuke / debuff / buffs spells.

How do I make a Death Knight?

You must have a current level 55+ character on your account. This will unlock your accounts ability to create a death knight class.  You may only create one death knight per server.

Where do I begin begin?

Death Knight’s start at level 55 in The Ebon Hold. This is a floating city above Eastern Plaguelands (just like Naxxaramas).

What about Death Knight starting gear?

Death Knights start with a full set of uncommon quality armor and a rare quality sword. In addition to the starting armor and weapons you also will get a 100% epic mount for free. Just complete the short quest chain to unlock the epic mount.

• Acherus Knight’s Hood
• Choker of Damnation
• Acherus Knight’s Pauldrons
• Acherus Knight’s Shroud
• Acherus Knight’s Tunic
• Acherus Knight’s Wristguard
• Acherus Knight’s Gauntlets
• Acherus Knight’s Gridle
• Acherus Knight’s Cover
• Acherus Knight’s Greaves
• Plague Band
• Corrupted Band
• Runed Soulblade (requires completion of early quest)

What types of weapons can Death Knights use?

Death Knights can use any of the following weapons.

• polearms
• one-handed swords
• two-handed swords
• one-handed maces
• two-handed maces
• one-handed axes
• two-handed axes
• relics

What about the Death Knight Rune System?

Unlike other classes that use mana, rage or energy, Death Knights use a completly new “rune system” for their power.

• There are 6 runes, 2 blood runes, 2 frost runes, and 2 unholy runes
• When a rune is used it takes 10 seconds to be recovered
• When a rune is used you also power up another bar called your “runic power”. This runic power can then be used for other abilities.

Death Knight Blue Post Updates

Some interesting death knight news straight from the Blizzard forums. Both of these tid bits are courtesy of Blizzard staff member Ghostcrawler. These posts clear up a good bit of information regarding both death knight rotations and death knight tanking.

Death Knight Rotations

We’re almost ready to show the updated death knight talent tree. It was quite an overhaul but we’re pretty excited about it. In case the talent trees go out before a new data push, I wanted to explain what we’re trying to do here.

We revamped the DK to have a standard rotation that used all the runes intelligently. Then we tweaked a lot of other abilities to be able to swap out one for another with similar rune costs. Some talented abilities can be used situationally for this purpose, while others just flat out replace one of the core abilities. I don’t want to give the impression that “standard rotation” means the DK loses all its depth (or that the game forces you to use this rotation at all). On the contrary it feels like you are making an intelligent decision about what to do next instead of just randomly pounding abilities when they light up.

1) Icy Touch — 1 Frost — Pull a mob and get a Frost Fever disease on it.
2) Plague Strike — 1 Unholy — Get a Blood Plague disease on the enemy.
3) Blood Strike — 1 Blood — Do extra damage for getting both diseases up.
4) Blood Strike — 1 Blood — Do extra damage for getting both diseases up.
5) Obliterate — 1 Frost, 1 Unholy — Your diseases are going to expire soon, so time for a big hit.
6) Death Coil — Runic Power — You probably have enough Runic Power by now.

Those are the basics, but you can swap out those moves as you see fit. If you’re wounded, instead of Obliterate for Step 5, you can Death Strike instead for the same cost. Or you can Chains of Ice. Or Howling Blast. If you are deep Blood, you can Heart Strike instead of Blood Strike for bigger damage and an all new debuff. If you are deep Frost, you can use Blood of the North to earn 2 Death Runes and then get 2 Obliterates next time around. Or you can Frost Strike instead of Death Coil, especially if the target is really wounded and you also have Merciless Combat.

We are trying to fix the Unholy Rune demand in a few ways:

– Degeneration is now an upgrade to Plague Strike. It was such a situational ability (but a very good one in that situation) that we thought it was a good opportunity to merge it with something else. The risk is that serious PvP players will feel like it’s mandatory to only go Unholy. If this happens, we’ll try something else, like making it core again. The runeforge idea is also intriguing.
– We’re going to try Chains of Ice as 1 Frost. Certainly not too many people seem to be complaining that the DK has too much CC. :)
– Raise Dead doesn’t cost any runes. The cost was irrelevant outside of combat and hard to work into a rotation once in awhile.
– Empower Rune Weapon activates all your runes and provides some runic power. Its cooldown is probably long enough to handle this.
– This isn’t a recent change, but remember that with Annihilation more available you can sometimes save a Plague Strike when you Annihilate. Likewise, with the Icy Touch change, you can still get a disease out without spending an Unholy.

It probably feels like we are focusing predominantly on the DK’s PvE options for now, which is probably true. But PvP will start to get a lot more testing as some of the new features (arenas, Wintergrasp) come online.

Death Knight Tanking Changes

When you see the new talent trees, there will be several significant tanking changes that I wanted to explain. Don’t worry — they’re all good.

1) Forceful Deflection is gone. Why? It is now a core ability all death knights get!
2) The top of each tree has a really desirable tanking talent. We figure it’s not painful to spend points in tier 1 of any tree. You can, and probably should, get all of these.
3) Near the bottom of each tree is another really desirable tanking talent. You will still be able to grab this talent and sub-spec into other trees, but you won’t be able to get the gold medal in more than one tree.
4) These talents are more predictable and more under your control. For example, we changed Unbreakable Armor to have a 30 / 60 / 100% chance of boosting your armor by 25% whenever both Frost runes are inactive. To balance this, there is a 90 sec internal cooldown (which we will show in a debuff aura). So you can choose when you want the armor buff. Hold that second Frost Rune until just before the enrage or whenever. Stack it with Icebound Fortitude or Anti-Magic Shell (or both) for truly amazing mitigation.
5) I am not trying to imply there are only 2 tanking talents per tree. The point is that there are some talents we can assume all DK tanks will have, and some others that will be more variable (but ideally equal in utility).
6) No, Blade Barrier is not the ultimate tanking talent in Blood. :)
7) With the disease changes, getting diseases on multiple enemies is much easier than before. We’re also positioning Pestilence to be better at multi-target tanking. A much improved Death and Decay will be nice for pulling, but it’s not Consecrate.
Forceful Deflection is bonus Parry Rating equal to 25% of your Strength. There is one “rank” and you start with it at level 55.

The concern about saving your Runes for the bonus mitigation is totally valid and we’re just going to have to try it out. We didn’t want the bonus to be up for a very short period of time, and we didn’t want the bonus to be trivial but up nearly all the time. We think it’s okay to have to surrender a little bit of dps (in the form of saving a rune you might have used for Obliterate) in order to boost your survivability periodically — to some extent that is what tanking is all about. You also have core abilities like IBF that you can use if you get caught with the ability on cooldown.

Part of the DK tanking style is that you have high enough dps to generate sufficient threat. Still we recognize that you can get into a situation where say the ret paladin is catching up to your threat level too fast and you need to do [something] to really pour on the threat. If we find that a few DK abilities need to generate extra threat, we can go that route.

Death Knight Runeforging

Earlier today a new ability was uncovered for the Death Knight, runeforging. Being some of the very first beta testers, the guys over at worldofraids.com were of the first to test out all the new changes to the beta client. Including this intesting change that allows the Death Knight to exchange the runes in his weapon, so long as he’s within Ebon Hold.

Runeforging Mechanic

• Rune of Lichbane - Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to strike undead for extra Fire damage and stun them for 5 sec. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
• Rune of the Fallen Crusader - Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase total Strength by 30% for 15 sec. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
• Rune of Spellbreaking - Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that deflects 5% of all spell damage. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
• Rune of Frostfever - Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to inflict a disease that causes Frost damage and lowers attack power by 10% for 20 sec. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
• Rune of Cinderglacier - Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to increase your Frost and Shadow spell damage by 10% for 15 sec. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
• Rune of Swordbreaking - Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 3%. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.