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Lichborne: A final look at the patch 5.4 patch notes 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. While we've certainly discussed the patch 5.4 changes for death knights in the past, this week is the big week when patch 5.4 finally comes out and we put it all in action. With that in mind, today will be devoted at look at the patch notes from a death knight point of view and making some quick pronouncements about what we can expect when the servers the come back up. The short version of the changes is this. All 3 specs are buffed overall, DPS more so than tanking. In PvE, blood is about the same, while unholy and frost specs are close enough together that you can either stick with your usual choice, or go with whatever you have the best weapons for. Unholy is slightly behind frost, but not so much that you'll suffer greatly. For a more in-depth look at what's changed, read on.
Lichborne: Patch 5.3 and the death of festerblight
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. In a recent update on the patch 5.3 PTR, Blizzard applied an update that applied some unexpected changes to the death knight unholy tree, most of them nerfs. Blizzard Death Knight Unholy Festering Strike now deals 175% weapon damage, down from 200%. Scourge Strike now deals 165% weapons damage, up from 135%. Unholy Might now increases the Death Knight's Strength by 10%, down from 15%. source This has, unsurprisingly, left many death knights at a loss. After patch 5.2 seemed to cure unholy's woes and allow it to at least be a viable and fun alternative to frost, these nerfs came as a surprise. Frost is so far still the more damaging death knight DPS spec in patch 5.2, so the idea that unholy is the one that got nerfs was somewhat discouraging. That said, it might not be as bad as you think. It's worth noting that in the long run, the Scourge Strike buff should cancel out the nerfs to Festering Strike and Unholy Might, at least in theory. This brings to mind one question as to what this shifting of damage toward Scourge Strike is actually meant to accomplish. Essentially, the main purpose here appears to be a nerf to festerblight.
Lichborne: New changes to your DPS choices in patch 4.2
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. Patch 4.2 has been a surprisingly tumultuous time for death knights. We've received a veritable avalanche of nerfs, some of which were just hotfixed right into game after a few days on the PTR. Even as we enter the last few weeks of patch 4.1, Blizzard's thrown a couple more changes our way, as well as an explanation for the reasoning behind all the class changes. Whether you agree with Blizzard's reasoning on them or not (and, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say I really don't), the death knight changes will definitely have impact on how you play and what you do as a DPS death knight in patch 4.2. Let's take a look at the latest changes and see what type of impact they may have on your play as a DPS death knight.
Lichborne: Further death knight nerfs hit the patch 4.2 PTR
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. While we've already talked a bit about some of the changes coming for death knights on the patch 4.2 PTR, it's been a few weeks, and we've seen more changes inbound. Not only that, some changes have slipped onto live servers a little bit early. A lot of these changes have some serious repercussions for PVP and PVE DPS death knights, so it's certainly worth it to take a look at these changes, not only for their immediate impact, but for what they say about the history and future of the class and Blizzard's attitudes toward the whole thing.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Death Knight patch notes and undocumented changes
Given the massive amounts of death knight changes in the last few patches, Patch 3.3 almost feels like a drought. Of course, that may be good news if you're a bit tired of adjusting your rotations and glyphs every patch. Then again, don't rest yet. Sure, there's only a few changes to Death Knights (so far), but they're big enough that they deserve some discussion. Let's look at them one by one.
Lichborne: One more round of Death Knight changes in 3.0.8
Welcome to Lichborne. Your host is inflicted with the space plague this week, but has done his best to write for you people anyway, so be grateful, you hear?We've covered 3.0.8 pretty extensively, between Mike Sacco's coverage of the initial round of changes and our week before last discussion, but the devs weren't done yet. With 3.0.8 likely to make it to live servers in the next week or two, this is probably a good time to discuss the Death Knight tweaks that have gone in the last few PTR updates.
