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Lichborne: New mastery ideas for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. One of the more intriguing general class changes on the 5.4 PTR has been the complete redesign of frost mage mastery. Frost mages currently get Frostburn, which deals extra damage on specifically frozen targets and adds extra damage from their water elemental. With most bosses being immune from freeze mechanics, you can imagine this mastery doesn't do much good for PvE mages. Thus, the redesign on patch 5.4 grants frost mages Icicles, which allows them to do more mastery-based damage in all situations. Death knight masteries aren't in quite as dire straits as the frost mage mastery was. Blood Shield, in fact, is downright solid. Our DPS masteries, on the other hand, are rather bland, being straight elemental damage buffs. They also come with some compatibility problems which causes the mastery stat to turn out low value for non dual wielders. With that in mind, this week we'll speculate on what Blizzard could do in the upcoming expansion to make mastery a little more enticing for death knights, especially for DPS.
Lichborne: DPS stats for tanking death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. So Rossi bought this up in his last column, and I feel like it is a valid question. If haste is a valid gearing strategy for Paladins, why shouldn't it be for the other tanks? The idea of haste and critical strike as being valid, even desirable stats for a tank seems almost anathema, but as of Mists, especially, it's worth a look. Paladins even have a gearing strategy built around haste. Are they the only ones? Should death knights be considering haste and critical strike rating? Should Blizzard be looking at ways to make haste and critical strike rating more desirable for tanks? We'll consider those questions this week.
Lichborne: Switching death knight specs for patch 5.2
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. When a new patch comes, especially one with some major class changes like patch 5.2, it becomes a good time to reflect on your play style and priorities. Does your spec serve those priorities? With a new patch coming, it's a good time to experiment with new stuff. You can do it pretty easily on the PTR, and when the patch goes live, the game's got some fresh new content, so it's as good excuse as any to jump into a new spec and get used to it while killing trolls for all these new quests. You'll also be getting new gear, so changing up gearing priorities becomes easier. Today, we'll take a quick look at all the death knight specs, with some of their pros and cons, so you can make a solid judgment call as to whether to switch and try something new, or stick with the familiar. This isn't meant to a complete guide to playing each spec, just a quick overview so you can decide if the play style and responsibilities of the spec are right for you.
Lichborne: What do I do at level 90? And 2 other burning death knight questions
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Reading a guide is all well and good, but sometimes, even after you read, you still have questions or need clarification. This week, I've taken 3 questions I see death knights ask a lot at various places around the web, and provide some advice and clarification. Why don't tanks need so much hit and expertise? If you've been reading the column, you've probably noticed that I have de-emphasized hit and expertise when discussing blood death knight tank gear and strategy. This is for a very good reason. Certainly, active tanking is the rule of the day in Mists, which means in theory that tanks should want hit and expertise so their abilities land. In theory, if your Death Strike doesn't land, you don't get the healing or the blood shield, right?
Lichborne: Preliminary patch 4.3 impressions for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. With the patch 4.3 PTR up for a week now, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about its effect on death knights. It helps that I have been playing a decent amount of PTR over the last week, so I have a lot to talk about. Of course, the first thing we'll want to take about is the centerpiece of the patch, the ultimate and greatest feature of WoW to date, transmogrification. After much trial, error, and agonizing, I've come to conclusion that Acherus Knight's Gear, the original green starting stuff we get upon creation, is truly the best look. For my personal set, I swapped in my Greaves of the Slaughter just because I didn't like the barefoot look, but other than that, it's pretty amazing. If you didn't save your own set, you may be out of luck, but I am hearing rumors that Darkmoon Faire could give us a chance to get the set again. Unfortunately, the Faire's not up for testing yet, so I can't confirm that at the moment. Of course, you can only play pretty dress-up for so long before you need to go back to slaying monsters (and I say this as someone who absolutely adores playing pretty dress-up on my WoW characters), so moving on, we'll take a look at the rest of this thing.
Lichborne: Analyzing the proposed patch 4.3 death knight tanking changes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. This week's header image comes to us from everyone's favorite WoW Insider commenter, Orkchop. So recently, Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street posted a new Dev Watercooler discussing the ins and outs of the new active mitigation tank philosophy. Since he dedicated a whole section to proposed death knight changes in patch 4.3, I figured it would be a good idea to take a look at the stuff and see what it does. My preliminary verdict would be pretty simple: It's a pretty big help. It fixes or mitigates a lot of our quality of life issues, it makes a little less squishy, and it nullifies rune tetris nicely. I can't really disagree with the individual changes or the rationale behind them. That said, it doesn't completely solve our problems, and there are probably one or two more little things to be done before stuff looks really good. Let's take a look at the specifics.
Lichborne: What the patch 4.3 tank changes may mean for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. So by now, I'm sure everyone is aware of the huge tanking changes recently announced by Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. Of course, there are the immediate threat increases, but the really interesting part regards their plans for patch 4.3. They're planning to put all four tanks on active mitigation models, similar to what death knights have currently with Death Strike, which is primarily the focus of today's column. There's been an uproar from many corners with this announcement, with many tanks declaring that if they wanted to tank like a death knight, they would have rolled one. Funnily enough, many death knights who rolled the class to tank back when they could do it as frost or unholy, or back before Death Strike spam, might protest that they never wanted to tank this way either -- but that's not the point. The point to make here is that active mitigation won't put the other three tanks in the same dire straits as we are, per se. While there are arguments to be made for and against active mitigation in general, active mitigation isn't our only problem, if it's a problem at all. Our problem, among other things, is that we're reactively mitigating.
Lichborne: Why the death knight blood tree needs tweaks
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. Patch 4.2 will likely be on live servers by the time you read this, but I figure we've talked enough about the patch 4.2 in past columns. If you read those, you probably have a good idea of where everything is for death knights. This week, I've decided it would be a good idea to take a break and talk about something that didn't get much attention in patch 4.2: the plight of the death knight tank. It's been sort of an undercurrent in the death knight community since the beginning of Cataclysm. The death knight blood tanking tree is just sort of gummed up. It's not that we're underpowered, per se. No, a well played death knight tank is pretty dominant in heroic dungeons and even normal raiding. You only start really falling behind in heroic raids, where the problem becomes really evident: You're doing twice as much work for the same results, more or less. Most of the issues are centered around Death Strike and how it interacts with our resource system. The quirks of said resource system are so demanding that you end up staring at your rune bar more than the battle in front of you, trying to game the system just right to squeeze out one last Death Strike.
Lichborne: You can tank your way to level 70 as a death knight
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. I've actually seen more than a few questions lately about tanking as a lowbie death knight. People want to know if it's possible, how to gear, and if there's any special tips or tricks you should watch out for. Combine this with Alison Robert's resurrection of her lowbie tank project, and I have to admit, lowbie tanking has been on my mind. There's no denying that tanking at level 60 is an entirely different beast than tanking at level 85, but there are enough similarities that practicing at 60 can help you develop a lot of the tools you'll need to soldier through those level 85 heroic PuGs on the way to those Satchels of Exotic Mysteries. This week, we'll take a look at the average level 58 death knight (58 being the level your average death knight is upon leaving the starting experience), and figure what you can do to get in gear and get yourself tanking all the way through to level 70.
Lichborne: Blood Death Knight Tanking 101
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. A lot has changed since the last we did a Blood Tanking 101 article. There's only one tanking tree for death knights now; you don't need to worry about defense rating; and parry haste is a thing of the past. While we have talked about various aspects of Cataclysm blood tanking in past columns, this column is meant to be your one-stop shop for all things blood tanking, to give you a general idea of what you'll need to do to start seriously tanking at the heroic dungeon and raid level as a death knight.
Lichborne: Major patch 4.0.6 changes for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. Join World of Warcraft's first hero class as we head into a new expansion and shed the new kid on the block label. Patch 4.0.6 was surprisingly busy for death knights. While we did cover some of the specifics back when the first patch notes came out, how it's all played out is a little different, especially with some additional hotfixed nerfs that dropped for death knights. That said, despite the nerfs, we're really not in that bad a place, and for certain death knights, there's even good news. This week, we'll take a look at some of the most important changes that came with patch 4.0.6 and how they affect your playstyle and gearing decisions.
Lichborne: The great death knight Cataclysm tanking stat weight debate
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. Join World of Warcraft's first hero class as we head into a new expansion and shed the new kid on the block label. So here's the thing about figuring out your tank stat weights as you go into raiding: They're all subjective and likely to stay that way for a while. Between Blizzard's redesign of the way stats work, the way boss fights work and the newness of expansion, we're still trying to get the data we need to figure out the best exact way to min-max our gear. Right now, there are a few specific schools of thought on how to gear yourself for raid tanking, and right now, they all seem to be working for specific raid groups. Today, we'll take a look at the major tank survival stats and discuss the new quirks, benefits, and drawbacks of each of them as you start gearing up in earnest for the raid game.
Lichborne: The lowdown on diseaseless blood tanking
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. With everyone getting used to blood being the sole tanking tree, combined with all the new tanking style changes already here in patch 4.0.1 (and more to come in Cataclysm), we've been working at crunching numbers and figuring out strategies to deal with it all. One of the most interesting new paradigms to come out of this is actually a pretty old one: diseaseless blood. Diseaseless blood DPS did rear its head every once in a while back in the Wrath era, and now it's back for tanking. At both the heroic dungeon and raid levels, death knight tanks all over WoW are reporting diseaseless tanking as a superior playstyle in ease of use, survivability and threat generation.
Lichborne: Death knight masteries and other Cataclysm beta tweaks
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly source for news, guides, tips and opinions on the death knight class. With the latest build having just hit the Cataclysm beta test servers, this seems like a pretty good time to take a quick inventory of the changes, maybe say a few things about the direction that the class is heading thus far in beta. I can tell you right now that some of the latest changes are either confusing or just plain silly, and while some things are looking cool enough, we really are long overdue for another major change patch. However, before we get too hardcore into that discussion, let's look at the latest changes.
