life-drain

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  • WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: Blood spells and talents

    by 
    Daniel Whitcomb
    Daniel Whitcomb
    06.30.2008

    The Blood tree was originally designated as the primary DPS tree, and a lot of the talents still reflect that, such as Dark Conviction, the ever-present critical strike talent, and Dancing Rune Weapon, the 51 point talent. However, it's also worth noting that the Blood tree provides quite a few healing skills and talents which may end up making it a useful type of tanking tree via allowing the Death Knight to keep himself healed and keep a bit of grief off his healers: for example, Death Pact will be useful for finishing off a ghoul who's about to die anyway and getting a bit of health back. Below is a selection of some of the spells and talents available to Death Knights in the WWI demo. Blood Spells: Blood Presence:Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood RuneInstant cast, 1 second cooldownDescription: Strengthens the Death Knight with the presence of blood, increasing damage done by 15% and healing the Death Knight by 4% of damage dealt. Only one presence may be active at a time. Blood Strike:Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood RuneInstant cast, 1 second cooldownMelee rangeDescription: Instantly strike the enemy, causing 60% weapon damage plus 55 for each disease effect on the target.Blood Tap:Requires level 64Description: Immediately activates a blood rune and temporarily converts it into a death rune. this rune counts as a blood, unholy, or frost rune. lasts 10 seconds.Death Pact: Requires level 66. Description: Sacrifice an undead minion, healing the Death knight for 1200 healthBlood Talents:Rune TapRequires 10 talent pointsInstant cast, 1 minute cooldown.Description: Converts 1 Blood Rune into 10% of your maximum health.Dark ConvictionRequires 10 talent pointsCosts up to 5 talent pointsDescription: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 1% per talent point.Improved Rune TapRequires 15 talent points, Rune TapCosts up to 3 talent pointsDescription: Improves Rune Tap's health gain by 15% per talent pointVendetta Requires 15 talent pointsCosts up to 2 talent pointsDescription: Heals you for 3% of your total health per talent point whenever you kill a target that yields experience or honorScent of Blood Requires 20 talent pointsCosts up to 3 talent points Description: After being struck by a ranged or melee critical hit, you gain the Scent of Blood effect, causing your next 2 melee hits to steal life from the enemy. lasts for 12s. this effect can not occur more often than once every 12 seconds (Note: the effect of putting more than one talent point in this skill is not yet listed in the description). Blade Barrier Requires 20 talent pointsCosts up to 3 talent points Description: Whenever you have no runes active, your parry chance increases by 5% per talent point for the next 8 seconds.Mark of Blood Requires 20 talent pointsCosts 1 Blood Rune, 1 Unholy Rune Instant cast30 yard rangeDescription: Place a mark of blood on an enemy. whenever the marked target is healed, all party members receive 5% of that healing (up to a maximum of 5% of the Death Knight's health). if a marked target that grants experience or honor is killed, all party members are healed for 10% of their total health. Lasts 3 minutes.Hysteria Requires 30 talent pointsCosts 1 Blood Rune, 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast, 2 minute cooldown30 yard RangeDescription: Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30s, increasing their physical damage by 20% but causing them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their total health every second.Heart StrikeRequires 40 Talent Points Costs 1 Blood Rune Requires melee weaponNext MeleeDescription: A debilitating attack that lowers the target's total health by up to 20% for 30 seconds.Dancing Rune WeaponRequires 50 talent pointsRequires Runic PowerRequires melee weaponInstant, 1 minute cooldownDescription: Unleashes all available runic power to summon a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 1s per 5 runic power, doing the same attacks that you do.

  • Are Line of Sight spells an unfair advantage?

    by 
    Dan O'Halloran
    Dan O'Halloran
    09.09.2007

    Player Amithral of the Magtheridon server has a complaint about LoS (Line of Sight) spells. These are channeled spells like Mindflay, Drain Mana, Drain Life, etc. Pretty much anything where you see a particle animation of a continuous beam from the caster to the target.His complaint is that if the target breaks LoS, the ray spell continues. Hunters are plagued by LoS issues, but Priests and Warlocks seem to get a free pass as long as they have LoS when they first cast their spells. Community Manager Tharfor responds that the ray-like spells are considered to be a "working feature and there are currently no plans to change it." However, he also went on state this game mechanic may need to be reevaluated and he will bring it up to the dev team to see if they want to address it.What do you think? Is the lack of a LoS check after casting an unfair advantage (especially in PvP) or should it be considered an advantage of the classes that have it?