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Lichborne: Tier 15 set bonuses and other death knight changes 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. In the weeks since the patch 5.2 PTR has been up, death knight changes have held pretty steady. The announced unholy changes have stayed in place, and so far seem to be working out much as expected, making the spec a little easier to handle and overall promising to put unholy in a better place once patch 5.2 comes out. That said, there have been a few other tweaks added, as well as the revealing of the tier 15 raid gear set bonuses. Today, we'll dig into these changes and see how they're stacking up. Tier 15 death knight DPS bonuses Death Knight T15 DPS 2P Bonus Your attacks have a chance to raise the spirit of a fallen Zandalari as your Death Knight minion for 15 sec. Death Knight T15 DPS 4P Bonus Your Soul Reaper ability now deals additional Shadow Damage to targets below 45% instead of below 35%. Additionally, Killing Machine now also increases the critical strike chance of Soul Reaper. I'm going to be honest, I'm a little bit in love with the current 2 piece DPS bonus, if only for the flavor. A few columns back, I mentioned that one of my wildest dream updates for death knights would be a Wild Imps style ghoul summoning, and the 2 piece tier 15 bonus is sort of probably the closest we'll come to that. We'll need more solid parses to see if stacks up damage bonus wise, but in flavor, I'm pretty excited for it. The biggest issue here may be if the summoned pets end up dying prematurely to mobs before they can do their damage.
Lichborne: Death knight rookie tips and tricks
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. Daniel Whitcomb, our death knight extraordinaire, is out on vacation and unable to fulfill his undeathly duties this week. In his absence, we're going to try something a little different. We're going to learn together, you and I. Veteran death knight players be warned, today's edition of Lichborne is aimed at the rookie death knight, though you may still learn something ... or teach us something, perhaps? My main is not a death knight, but I do have a level 85 death knight alt. If I'm allowed to say so myself, I think that one of my strengths as a player is my ability to pick up little tricks of a class just by observing those around me. Just by watching my guildmates in heroics or my raidmates in ... well, raids, I can pick up an alt of a class I've never played and do a pretty good job with it. Not great right away, but pretty good. Death knights were a fascinating class to try this with, because while they're easy to pick up and go, they're not a particularly straightforward class. You can push A button to achieve X result, but you're much better off pushing A and combining it with B (and possibly C) to achieve Y. The combinations aren't always obvious, especially to brand new players. I've picked up some of these tricks and polled our Twitter audience for more. Let's dig into them, shall we?
Lichborne: Patch 4.0.1 death knight mailbag
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. Since we're all winding down from BlizzCon, I figured this week would be a good time to sit back, take it a little easier and just sort out some questions I've been seeing about some the subtle nuances of the new milieu bought to use by patch 4.0.1. So today, I'll be answering various comments and questions sent via email and the comments of the last few Lichborne columns. Let's get to it.
Are Death Knights autowin in PvP?
Here's a question I'm sure a lot of players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during the first week or so of Patch 3.0. He posits that Death Knights are such a powerful PvP class that they tend to turn the tide of a battle. To a degree, it's actually true. The very first Arena Master was a Death Knight. The blog post plays out several scenarios where Death Knights make a difference but doesn't get into too much detail. But the point he makes is clear, and some of you might have actually felt it whenever you played some Battlegrounds -- whichever side has the most Death Knights wins. I've never actually stopped to figure out the ratio of Death Knights in all my Battlegrounds games, but there's no question a Death Knight is a force to be reckoned with in PvP. But are they unbeatable?
Lichborne: On Blood leveling and Beta
Welcome to Lichborne, where every week Daniel Whitcomb makes sense of the amazing, ever-changing betatastic Death Knight class So here's yet another example of how mutable Death Knights are at the moment: This week, I decided to spec Blood all week and make a genuine effort to learn all the ins and outs I could so that I could bring you a good solid overview of Blood for this weekend's column. Then build 8820 came along, and Blood, while having the same basic mechanics, got a rather big hit to its health regeneration and DPS abilities, and I'm left trying to figure out the extent of the damages. In the end, I don't think Blood was horribly nerfed in this build, but it might have been slightly overnerfed.
Death Knight Gameplay Movies: Unholy and Blood trees
Jadefury, also known as Leiah, writer of the World of Feedback blog, has fast become one of the most recognizable names in Deathknighting of those following the Wrath Beta. Among his contributions have been 2 videos that showcase the leveling playstyle of Unholy and Blood trees. They're definitely worth a watch for anyone who's seriously thinking of playing a Death Knight in Wrath of the Lich King. The Unholy video, shown above, uses this spec. It actually relies quite heavily on two Blood talents: Butchery and Vendetta. Those 2 talents provide the Death Knight with health and runic power after every mob death, which helps power Corpse Explosions and allows the Death Knight to stand up to lots of monsters at once. Jadefury also shows the power of Death and Decay, Lichborne, and Bone Armor, and even throws in an exploding Ghoul or two, following it all up with a showcase of the awesome Death Gate animation. I have to admit that I have some concern that this style of AE farming won't be viable for Death Knights everywhere, since in this video, he relied extensively on getting Runic Power via Vendetta due to quick kills on the low HP slimes in the Pools of Aggonar. On the other hand, it looks like a lot of fun, and solidifies my personal resolve to try an Unholy build first. After the break, we'll watch the Blood video.
