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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.
Patch 4.1 PTR: Trinkets of tier 12
Blizzard seems to be putting a lot of thought into trinkets this expansion. In Wrath of the Lich King, it was a struggle to get your hands on a pair of good, strong trinkets. In Cataclysm, while perhaps not every trinket is strong for every class (I'm looking at you, Fury of Angerforge), there does seem to be a whole lot more of them. The data for a whole slew of new trinkets in patch 4.1 is already in the game, with the heroic versions clocking in at ilevel 391. The full list of trinkets is behind the break below (and it's quite a list), but I wanted to highlight a couple of them, as they have some fairly unique mechanics. Note that the numbers I cite below are from the heroic versions of the trinkets. Stay of Execution In addition to an impressive amount of dodge, this trinket has an on-use effect. "Absorbs up to 29125 damage for 30 sec, but once the absorb expires, you take 20% of the damage absorbed every 3 sec for 12 sec." Assuming you use the entire absorption bubble, that's 5,825 damage every 3 seconds. In most situations, that certainly makes that damage spike much more manageable. Of course, use it at the wrong time and you end up with a DoT ticking away as soon as a boss's enrage kicks in. Hungerer In addition to a glob of agility, "When using an ability causes your Energy or Focus to fall below 20% of your maximum, you will gain 1730 haste rating for 15 sec. This cannot occur more often than once per minute." Except in situations where you're pooling Energy or Focus to apply a debuff or interrupt a spell, all classes that can use this trinket bottom out their resources rather frequently. The cooldown will determine the trinket's power and not the actual mechanic of the trinket's proc, but on the surface it seems much more interesting. Time (and theorycrafting) will tell if it actually proves useful, though. There are, of course, a lot of your typical procs and stacking stat trinkets (which many people prefer) mixed in with this batch, but it's nice to see cool new mechanics as well. Once again, the full list of new trinkets is behind the cut below.
