unholy
Latest
Lichborne: Unholy issues in Patch 3.2
If there's one thing that researching the Death Knight class changes for patch 3.2 has done for me, it's reconfirmed my hatred of all these extra annoying little combat stats. You know expertise, armor penetration, haste, all those little things they added to the game for seemingly no other reason than to make determining best in slot gear a master's thesis level task or to make quest rewards suck worse than they first appear. Really, I long for the days when your choices were hit rating, AP, and spell power, heal power and spell or physical critical strike rating.I mean, I guess if I sat down and thought about it, I can deal, especially since the system tweakage has also bought us more awesome stuff like consolidated spell power and critical rating. Still, times like this, I really long for the old days. In particular, I'm talking about the Unholy tree.
Lichborne: The Future of Death Runes in Patch 3.2
Welcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight class column, with your host, Daniel Whitcomb, who's still wearing mourning black for AE Unholy Blight. And also because black looks awesome.I admit to being a bit underwhelmed by the Death Knight Q&A. To be fair, this is primarily because most of the things covered were already in the 3.2 patch notes, and the rest was pretty common sense stuff. However, one little comment by Ghostcrawler did catch my attention: His praise of Death Runes. This caught me more than a bit by surprise, since, if anything, the Death Knight changes in Patch 3.2 seem tailor made to discourage the use of Death Runes, at least for Frost and Unholy.Between the damage buff to Blood Strike and diseases, and the nerf to Scourge Strike, we have a pretty good chance of seeing people move away from using Death Runes. The major reason to use Blood Strike in both trees right now is to create Death Runes so you can use higher damage abilities on your next refresh cycle. If Blood Strike becomes the higher damage ability, it's not worth it to use the Death Runes on something else. There's a off-chance, I suppose, that you might want the Death Runes handy for an emergency use of Ghoul Frenzy, in theory, but that chance is so slim that no-one's going to want to waste the talent points in Reaping, at the very least.
Patch 3.2 Death Knight changes
Death Knights are among the most-changed classes in the first PTR version of patch 3.2, which is not terribly surprising for such a young class. Because of such significant changes, all DKs will receive a free respec. Blood Strike will scale more from disease (up to 50% per disease), while Frost Strike is receiving significant nerfs: it can now be dodged/blocked/parried, and only gets a 55% bonus from weapon damage, instead of 60%. On the tanking front, one of our major cooldowns was nerfed, although DKs are still probably the king of tanking CDs (disgustingly powerful new Ardent Defender aside). Icebound Fortitude's CD was doubled to 2 minutes. Veteran of the Third War's Stamina bonus was cut in half, and Toughness was cut by a third.
Lichborne: PvP pointers for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, Your weekly peek into the world of the Death Knight.Death Knights have it pretty good in PvP. Thanks to big whomping two-handers and magic damage strikes and spells, we can do massive burst damage and tear through armor defenses pretty easily. On the control front, we have Strangulate, Mind Freeze, Chains of Ice, and, depending on spec, maybe even a few other ways to silence, slow, or shut down an enemy player. Finally, our plate armor and defense cooldowns assure that should we the unlucky target of the burst train, we can hold out a lot longer than many. Still, it's not just being a Death Knight alone that gets you PvP fame and godhood. It does help to have the right talents, gear, and strategy. So we're going to talk about that a bit, focusing mostly on the talents. Here's two popular PvP Talent builds.
Lichborne: Leveling through Outland (Levels 58-68)
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly look at the mechanics, issues, and zen of the Death Knight class. With 3.1 sort of leveling out for now, It's probably a good time to switch our views to leveling. It's a good a time as any to welcome any new Death Knights into the fold and give them a few tips for getting through that silly old Outland content and into Northrend.
Lichborne: A Patch 3.1 talent build cookie platter for Death Knights
Welcome to Lichborne, your (usually) weekly (I swear) source for Death Knight news and tips.So now that Patch 3.1 is underway, the basic cookie cutter tank and DPS builds have begun emerging. The Patch 3.1 nerfs really haven't slowed us down in any major way, and with dual specs in, we're doing better than ever on the whole versatility front. In recognition of this, let's give you some straight information, no chaser. Here's a handful of cookie cutter DPS and Tank builds for each tree to get you on the right path to DPS or tanking dominance in Patch 3.1, or both if you've dropped that 1000 gold. All of these builds also included recommended glyphs at the link as well.
Top 3.1 specs so far from 3D Armory
Not to be outdone by TalentChic, the folks at 3D Armory also sent us their lists of what the most popular builds are in the game after patch 3.1, and since everybody seems to be build-hungry lately (and why not -- we each get two!), here they all are.Warrior: Fury 18/53/0.Paladin: 0/0/0, which means you need to log in, Paladins! Also 51/5/15 for Holy.Hunter: 0/0/0 wins here, too, but Survival (6/14/51) comes in next.Rogue: Combat 15/51/5.Priest: 14/57/0 for Holy.Death Knight: 17/0/54 Unholy.Shaman: Elemental 57/14/0.Mage: 0/53/18 Fire.Warlock: 0/41/30 Destruction.Druid: 14/0/57 Restoration, which surprised me.Keep in mind that these are from only a small sample of the game, so they're not the most popular specs in the game, just the most popular among those surveyed by the 3D Armory. And unfortunately, unlike TalentChic, it doesn't look like there's any way to see where the points are going, just the distribution of points among the trees (though that reminds us that Blizzard probably has some amazing point-by-point stats on how popular talents are).
Dedicated dual wield tree for Death Knights a possibility
A few days ago, Bornakk responded to yet another thread regarding dual wielding for Death Knights. I read it, shrugged, moved on with life, but I found myself digging up the thread again because I started to warm up to the idea Bornakk put forth: They're considering (that's the key word here) "something like making the frost tree the dual-wield tree" and letting the strikes hit with both weapons like Mutilate and Stormstrike.Bornakk says balancing both Dual Wielding and 2Handers in each talent tree has been exceptionally challenging, and I think we've seen that firsthand. Talents aimed for one build make their way into another, and things quickly get out of hand. Turning one of the trees specifically into the Dual Wielding tree (whether it be Frost or Unholy or whatever) is something I can get behind, even if it runs counter to what they've been trying to do with the talent trees since the Wrath beta.
Lichborne: More emergent builds on the 3.1 PTR
The builds and changes and tweaks seem to be coming faster and more furious, but at the same time seem to have settled down to changing things in a very final and deliberate way, if that makes sense. Whether we're a week or a month from 3.1 going live though, things are likely to change a little bit. Still, my gut tells me that most of the major tree shifts and mechanics changes are probably out there, and it's just a matter of tweaking numbers. So it may be a good chance to take a look at what newish builds are getting some buzz in the Death Knight community for being the new hotness in 3.1. In specific, let's look at a Blood Build that reacts to some of the latest changes for that tree, and a stacked Unholy build.
Death Knight changes in WoW Patch 3.1 PTR build 9733
Although this wasn't the biggest PTR patch in the world (they're coming smaller and faster now, perhaps suggesting that 3.1 is near), there were still some notable changes for my new favorite melee class. The changes for Death Knights are as follows: Frost Howling Blast cooldown has been reduced from 10 sec to 8 sec. Rime now resets the cooldown on Howling Blast when it procs, in addition to its previous effects. These Frost changes are a clear buff to deep Frost DPS builds. Which was needed, because nobody plays Frost 2h.
Death Knight class and item changes changes in patch 3.1 PTR build 9684
A New build went up on the PTR this afternoon, and as expected, there were another handful of Death Knight adjustments. Overall, not as many of them are nerfs as you might think, and some of them seem more adjustments in philosophy rather than straight up buffs or nerfs. We also got a handful of Glyph changes and even a sneak peak at our tier bonuses. Let's look at the changes after the break, courtesy of MMO-Champion:
Lichborne: Dual Wielding and Tanking on the 3.1 PTR
Welcome to Lichborne, where Daniel Whitcomb is ready to help you roll with the punches (and Death Knight changes) coming from the PTR.We had a new build hit the PTR this week, and with a week gone by, now's a good time to take a deep, focused look at the changes and see how they're shaking down. They're mostly pretty solid nerfs, and a lot of Death Knights aren't too happy about them. Still, beyond people concern about the fact that they are nerfs, the question remains: Were they merited, and where do they leave us? Let's discuss.
Lichborne: It's been one week (of 3.1)
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column. This week, Daniel Whitcomb continues to make sense of just what the heck they're doing to us on the PTR.So we have one week down in the PTR. We've had a chance to get more familiar with the Death Knight changes, both the documented and undocumented, and to see how they'll affect the way we play once 3.1 goes live. Of course, by the time 3.1 goes live, they could be changed pretty extensively, but for now, it's a good idea to check out where they are right now, and not only predict where they might go, but let the developers know by our feedback, based on testing, where we think the class should go. With that in mind, let's take a look at the current state of the class on the PTR, where we're going and where we want to be heading.
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Death Knight changes
Good Morning Death Knights! As expected, we got a pretty long list of changes for Death Knights. The frost tree has received some extensive and actually somewhat shocking reshuffling, and there's a few other unexpected but interesting changes. It's good to be mindful that these changes are still in flux. We'll probably see more changes and perhaps some reversion of these changes depending on what happens. It's worth noting that MMO Champion currently has undocumented changes and a completely different 3.1 DK Talent tree up that doesn't even match the one suggested in the patch notes, so we can't say for sure if the patch notes are already outdated. But for now, we're going to focus on the patch changes for the most part. So, let's dive right in.
Lichborne: Top Death Knight DPS builds and patch 3.1
Welcome to Lichborne, where we've pretty much gone insane waiting for the PTR, and are thus stuck in the Death Knight starting zone pretending to be a pretty pretty princess on our very own pony. The problem with writing a Death Knight column at the moment is that there's so much that's changing in 3.1 - So much that will change, on the test servers at least, sometime in the next few days. With a promise that Unholy, especially, will probably be nerfed significantly, almost any advice I give right now could be outdated in very short order. That said, after some thought, I figured I might as well take a look at nerfs. Namely, I'd like to take a look at a few popular Death Knight builds, how we already know they'll change, and what other changes may be coming to them.
Lichborne: On Dual Specs for Death Knights
Welcome to this week's installment of Lichborne, where we're preparing to head further down the rabbit hole that is patch 3.1. With the details about dual speccing becoming clearer, it's probably about time to start thinking about how it will affect Death Knights. We're probably a little luckier than many classes in that all of our trees are pretty solid for either tanking or DPS, but at the same time, some trees are better than others for certain roles, and you're definitely going to want to switch out some talent points for optimal performance in either role. Some Death Knights have actually been experimenting with "hybrid" DPS/Tank builds up until now, but with dual specs, it'll be a lot easier to just dedicate your time to one or another and go from there.Essentially, There's 3 major ways I see most people going with dual specs: Tank/PvE DPS, Tank/PvP DPS, and PvE DPS/PvP DPS, depending on their interests. The complications will probably come in deciding which combination is right for you and your raid, and which trees to focus on.
Death Knight class change analysis for patch 3.1
The next round of class changes for 3.1 has gone up, and Death Knights, of course, got a blurb of their own. The changes are probably slightly less sweeping than some other classes, but interesting all the same. Ghostcrawler's word on Death Knights lately has been that they're probably a bit high on DPS, and that they want to encourage more people to spec Blood and Frost over the overwhelmingly popular Unholy. I'm not sure these changes in particular did that, but one thing they did do is give a couple of nice potential buffs to Death Knight tanks. Let's look at them one by one.
Blizz wants more Frost and Blood, working on EP fix
This is a slightly esoteric Death Knight issue, so those of you not yet converted might want to just move along. It is also an issue close to my own heart, as I am pretty enamored of my Unholy DPS DK. What am I talking about? Ebon Plague stacking, of course. The other two main DK diseases, Blood Plague and Frost Fever, stack just fine, but if you've got two UH DKs with the talent in your raid, only one of them at a time gets to have EP applied to the target. This lowers the DPS of any DKs that don't have it applied, since so many of our skills do damage based on the number of diseases we have applied to the target. Most sources estimate the DPS loss as not very high, but it's still annoying as heck. Ghostcrawler has finally addressed this problem, and says they plan on fixing it by making EP count as a third disease for everyone that's talented for it, regardless of who cast it (if I'm reading correctly). But he does note that this fix is not top-priority, saying "our priority right now is making sure more DKs spec Frost or Blood, not how to reward groups that bring multiple Unholy DKs," going on to say that they nevertheless will fix this bug. According to Armory Musings (thanks to the Scarlet Mathematician for pointing me to that site), Unholy does account for almost half of all Death Knights, so it makes sense that Blizz would be trying to up the market share of the other specs some. Still, I love the Unholy play style, so I hope they fix EP sooner rather than later.
Lichborne: The 2008 Death Knight year in review
Welcome to first 2009 installment of Lichborne, the WoW Insider Death Knight column.Welcome to 2009, which I am, completely arbitrarily, declaring the year of the Death Knight. Sure, Death Knights were first announced back in 2007, but 2008 was when they took shape and showed up in playable form, and 2009 will be the first full year that they've been on the live servers. Let's look back then, at 2008, and see some of the milestones in the creation of my favorite new class and yours.
Lichborne: Howling Blast and other patch 3.0.8 follies
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW Insider's weekly Death Knight column.Yeah, I definitely have to put out a mea culpa here. Alas, Lichborne is a little bit late again. I have a valid excuse, I swear. It involved a flaming plum pudding, a flailing geist, and a sudden snowstorm at the Shadow Vault over in Icecrown. But after an emergency eye transplant by a Forsaken Death Knight who used to be a member of the RAS, I'm back in the saddle and this week's column is only a few days late. Anyhow, this week I thought I'd take a look at the deeper implications and meanings behind some of the Death Knight changes coming our way in 3.0.8. Our newest Mike has summarized and analysed quite a few of them, but I have just a few more things I want to say, especially about a new change that was added in a recent PTR update.
