Death-Knight
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Wrath of the Lich King rejected thus far by Chinese government
Continuing on in that upward ascension toward MMO godhood, Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft has proven to be popular with the Death Knight crowd in Western markets. "Popular" is an understatement, of course. Millions of MMO gamers have bought the expansion to date. Despite its success in Western markets, Wrath of the Lich King still hasn't been released in China, where the title has a significant playerbase. Why? Regulatory issues and censorship. China-based JLM Pacific Epoch reports: "The government has rejected two applications by the second expansion for The9's (Nasdaq: NCTY) licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft, "Wrath of the Lich King," [...] The applications were rejected due to content that didn't meet requirements, including a city raid and skeleton characters; the submitted version did not contain WLK's Death Knight first hero class..."
Shifting Perspectives: Tanks, "Wrath," and crushing blows
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the roots of the uproar over the proposed Heart of the Wild nerf, and also ask ourselves if it wouldn't just be easier to reroll a Death Knight and have done with it."Why would you title the column this way?" you ask, as you reach for your "Please fire _______ from WoW Insider" form letter. "Crushing blows are out of the game, dipwad." Well, yes. The crushing blow is technically out of the game, but another and worse mechanic has taken its place. In this article I'm going to try to explain the source of "shield tank" frustration over health pools -- and why they are correct to see it as a problem -- and the Druid tank's unhappiness over the nerfing of Heart of the Wild -- and why Druids are also correct to see it as a problem.Why the crushing blow was importantOne of the biggest differences between pre-Wrath and Wrath tanking is the absence of the crushing blow. If you're unfamiliar with the term, then as a very simple explanation: any given raid boss had a 15% chance per melee hit to perform a 150% damage attack, which was also known as the crushing blow. It was typically a big damage spike and could lead to a wipe on progression content, with healers struggling to compensate in the small window of time before the boss' next attack landed. Burst damage is very unwelcome as it's often the greatest contributing factor to tank death. This is why reaching crit immunity is still so important to all tanks, and why the ability to avoid or absorb crushing blows was a fundamental part of pre-Wrath tanking mechanics.
Ghostcrawler explains the DK aura changes
When the first set of 3.1 patch notes popped up, many Death Knights were surprised to see that their auras were being reworked into something that, well, just isn't an aura at all.Instead, the effects are being rolled into talents so that, if talented, the Death Knight herself still gains the benefit, but does not extend it to party or raid members. Although they will now be called, for example, Improved Blood Presence, the benefits will be applied regardless of the presence assumed by the character.I have to admit that my first reaction to the change was a negative one. It feels weird to me switching from a Holy Paladin to a character that simply does not have a comparable range of buffs and auras to offer. That's when my roomie and addict of WoW forums and websites, piped in with the why. Today, Ghostcrawler gives an official explanation. Unholy Aura, which grants a 15% movement speed increase, was slowly "becoming mandatory as a raid buff." The ability is not only handy for long corpse runs, as well as fights where movement speed and reaction time are critical, but it seriously impacts the overall damage done by the meleeing crowd. Melee characters spend an annoying amount of time backing out of range because of AoE or ground effects, running around the mobs to always stay behind them, following after a mobile tank, and the like. This disrupts their damage, and because this has always been the case, classes and encounters are balanced assuming that this is still going on.
Ghostcrawler defends Death Knight Howling Blast nerf
Ghostcrawler is on the forums today getting feedback on all of the patch 3.1 notes we saw yesterday, and the conversation has turned to the Death Knight's Howling Blast nerf, which some players are complaining has "dismantled" the DK's dual wield chances. Our own Daniel Whitcomb agrees -- he says that the 0/32/39 build will pretty much be out with 3.1 on the live realms.But Ghostcrawler responds with an insight that all classes might benefit from hearing: Players will find a way. First, he says that if Blizzard didn't want Death Knights to dual wield, they wouldn't be able to. He says that the damage needed to be nerfed, if only so other classes didn't think they were going to start being able to do that kind of DPS. And then had adds that just because one build is being quashed, it doesn't mean other builds won't eventually appear -- Blizzard predicts what players might do with their talents, but GC says they're almost always surprised by what players come up with, and that he expects Death Knights will come up with another way (some already known by Blizzard) to make two weapons more than viable.Which some players don't appreciate (they accuse GC of designing by breaking first and letting player fix later), but I kind of like that idea. As Ghostcrawler says in his followup, if there was just one way to play a class, everyone would play it that way. It's Blizzard's (and his team's) job to put the challenge not just in the dragons we fight, but in the tough choices in the talent trees. Everyone knew DKs were getting nerfed (and GC even says that players always say "but I didn't know they were getting nerfed that much!"), and it's interesting that Blizzard is already looking forward to Death Knight players re-finding their grooves, even with the nerfs.
WoW Patch 3.1 PTR: Death Knight glyphs and undocumented changes
When they said the 3.1 PTR patch notes were incomplete, they weren't kidding. The undocumented changes that have been discovered make the patch notes look like a sketch. But I'm not complaining; it's nice to have actual numbers to go with phrases like "damage increased" or "ranks reduced." So here I'm going to run through the undocumented changes we know about, as well as the new glyphs, and give some reactions. Everything in the official patch notes was covered by Daniel Whitcomb, so I won't be replicating his work here; go ahead and read that first.
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.
Several hotfixes now live
I caught this a bit late, but Bornakk wrote into the Service Status forums Wednesday night to provide a list of hotfixes concerning Jewelcrafting, Shamans, Rogues, and Death Knights that have been applied to the live realms: Icy Prisms are now unique; they cannot be mailed but can still be traded. The Rogue ability Mutilate now does its appropriate damage based on talents. Raise Dead now properly detects the presence of Corpse Dust in your inventory. The Glyph of Windfury Weapon will not apply additional attack power. A Grounding Totem is now properly destroyed even if the grounded spell did not do damage. Tremor Totem now properly pulses every 3 seconds. Crippling Poison now has a PvP duration of 10 seconds. Wound Poison now has a PvP duration of 10 seconds.
The Queue: The patoot edition
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Hey, everyone! How did you all hold up over the last week? A whole week with Adam? Did you miss your ray of sunshine? No? Oh... well, that's okay. I'm back anyway! If you don't read Ask a Lore Nerd, I was more or less out of the office the last week moving into my swank new apartment, so that's why I haven't been around. It's all good now though, so Adam and I are back on our rotating schedule.We also have a cool little guest appearance from our resident Death Knight Daniel Whitcomb, so that'll be a treat! Hopefully!Cholestria asked...Are there any titles I can achieve with my level 1 bank alt? She has an outfit from the Brewfest and usually participates in any of the holiday she can, but all the titles seem to require some leveling. Is there any title she could get without leveling?
One Shots: Just out for a ride
Sometimes, there's just nothing as relaxing as taking a ride around the countryside in your favorite game. Unless, of course, you're a Shaman or Death Knight in World of Warcraft, in which case you're not limited to just countryside! Today's One Shots is of Massively's very own Kyle Horner, who just loves to run around on water. He thinks it's fun to taunt Shamans with the fact that they're not alone in being able to do this for themselves now. (He'd better hope his guild doesn't have mainly Resto Shaman healers in it or he's going to be hurting for heals on raids.) If you're in the mood to take silly screenshots, we're in the mood to show them off! Just email them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name and the game the image is from. We'll post it out here and give you credit for sending it in. (We also may make up something completely untrue about the image, just for the hell of it - there again, we may not.) %Gallery-9798%
The Ten Commandments for DPS
As you might expect, I tend to be on the lookout for sites that talk about DPSing as a warrior. My blog overlord recently pointed out DPS Plate to me. It's a solid site that for now seems to be arms warrior focused and is even looking for paladin and DK contributors to help expand what they talk about. Since I'm all for a one stop shop for DPS discussion among the plate wearing set, I figured I would mention that. Go send Weryl an email if you're interested.The post that caught my attention first was this set of commandments for DPS. While it's clearly focused on melee, a lot of it can be useful for anyone just starting out in raids as a damage dealer. My personal favorites are: III. Do not overtax your healers by taking undue raid damage. In this spirit, do not stand in front of the Big Nasty, nor should you stand in any nastiness the Big Nasty has strewn on the floor VII. If you have a buff to share with melee, use it. This includes debuffs to the Big Nasty and anything that mitigates damage on the Tank. Though he is unintelligent and stands in front of the Big Nasty and probably smells a little funny, he is your melee brethren. As I have been (and still am) unintelligent enough to slap on a shield and stand in front of the big nasty from time to time, I laughed. All in all it's a good basic primer for anyone starting out as DPS, things you should know after a few raids but it won't hurt you to be reminded of them either.
The Queue: Engineering's BFG edition
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Alex is out loading up his backpacks with all his gear, hopping on his Traveler's Tundra Mammoth and walking across Azeroth for a couple days. So until he's back to us full time I'm going to take a few more days this week of "Da Queue." Be sure to leave us your questions as a comment, or if you want to remain anonymous (because really, besides "Why can't Paladins tank?" there is no such thing as a dumb question) you can send us a tip on our tip line. Enough talk! Let us Queue!Ava asked... "Any word on when they're going to make engineers not useless in 3.1..."
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?
The Queue: I'm not as strong of a mounter as I once was
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Mounts. Everyone is talking about them. Everyone has one. Everyone wants more. More! Moar!Me? I prefer to mount up and press the / key, walking around Azeroth at the slowest speed I can stand. The tells I get from people as I walk through Elwynn Forest on a lazy Sunday afternoon are priceless. "Zomg noob u knw u can g0 fastor? rit3?"Kill me now god... Kill me now...Redski asked..."Has there been any word on when mount-vehicles that prevent riders from taking falling damage will behave like regular mounts?"
Best. Bug. Ever.
We received the above video from tipster Jimmynorden (better quality video on Vimeo here) about an absolutely amazing bug with the Death Knight ability Death Grip. If you initiate a duel with a Death Knight who's aboard the ship in Booty Bay while you're standing on the dock, Death Grip will pull you -- not to the ship itself, but all the way across and through the world. Elizabeth Harper has just tried this on live servers ("You get PvP flagged from flying through the arena in Stranglethorn!") and her character finally landed on a random ship in what the map insists is the Alterac Mountains, southeast of where Dalaran used to be.Death Grip is described as harnessing the unholy energy that surrounds and binds all matter. They certainly got that part right. I don't have a Death Knight online in my guild right now and I'm really curious to see if this just works in Booty Bay, or if it works wherever there's a ship or zeppelin docked. I'm assuming it's the latter; from my admittedly limited understanding of the game's plumbing, once you're on a ship you're not actually where the map "thinks" you are but rather in some nebulous area without real coordinates before the ship transfers you between servers. UPDATE: A few guildies and I tried this; you'll find additional results and notes behind the cut.Elizabeth had time to take a few screenshots, which you'll see below: %Gallery-44142%
Sartharion sings the blues
Once you start throwing multiple drakes into the mix, I love the Sartharion encounter. It's very frantic, and takes everyone performing. What I don't love is how hard it is to see the shadow fissures that spawn in the encounter when there's a lot going on. Red on red is awful, and then when you throw a Death Knight's Death and Decay into the mix if you're using one? It's pretty much an orgy of red, and you can't really tell which red is from what source.I quite literally leapt for joy when Daelo, lead encounter designer, mentioned that they'll be turning blue in a future patch. It's a minor tweak to the encounter, but it will seriously help those moments when you have a void zone beneath a Death and Decay and you have a tank who is tanking loads of whelps and elementals which are already obscuring their vision. The hardest part of the fight isn't the movements, the hardest part is being able to see.This does make me wonder what they'll do with future, similar things. The terrain alone makes the void zones hard to see during Sartharion, but the largest issue (I think) is Death and Decay. It's big, fluffy, and extremely red. Will they simply not be able to use red ground effects anymore? My raid doesn't do it, but there are raids out there that forbid Death Knights from using Death and Decay for the specific reason that it hides AOEs beneath it, so I have to wonder if there's a better solution to the problem than changing colors without removing the 'cool factor' of the DnD particle effect.
Patch 3.1 class changes for Mages, Hunters, Death Knights, and Paladins
As expected, tonight we're getting a sampling of the class changes for Mages, Hunters, Death Knights, and Paladins. This comes after a day of more 3.1 class changes.Big changes from this release include: Consumable ammunition removed from the game! Hunter's will get additional trap talents via the Survival tree Mages will now have a mana replenishment spell Paladin's Blessing of Kings is now a base ability Paladin's Exorcism will now damage all enemy types Death Knight's Pestilence will now only spread diseases The headline for tomorrow will be the line "Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game." In fact, that'll be the the headline for the next few days.After the break are all the changes released thus far.
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.
Bug fixes for Hunters, Locks, and Death Knights tomorrow
Ghostcrawler has updated us on the status of three major bugs that have been present since patch 3.0.8 went live last Tuesday. The Hunter Aspect bug, in which aspects are on a global cooldown like mechanism. The Warlock Ritual of Summoning, which had a two minute cooldown implemented to prevent some sort of undisclosed exploit. Howling Blast, which showed to not have a cooldown, but in reality had a five second one. "Assuming nothing comes up at the last minute", Ghostcrawler says, "[these] will be fixed tomorrow."There is no word if these fixes will come in the form of a small patch to the client, or if they are going to be done server side. Since the Howling Blast is a bug that is linked to client data files, I would assume that fixing it necessitates rolling out a minor patch. However that's just an assumption based on the way things were done in the past, and Blizzard could have other technology present to circumvent the need for a full patch.Nonetheless, a couple more bugs will get fixed tomorrow. This is a good thing.
Ready Check: Guide to Naxxramas (Sapphiron)
Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. This week, we're heading to Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad to visit a few old friends, complete Naxxramas, and wonder to ourselves why everyone on the server has a Journey's End but us.Welcome back! With the Spider Quarter, Construct Quarter, Plague Quarter, and Death Knight Quarter out of your way, the teleport to Sapphiron's room (and from there, Kel'Thuzad) will become available. There's no trash to worry about, just two big, ugly bosses between you and the completion of Naxxramas. Tonight we'll deal with Sapphiron; tomorrow we'll head in to finish off the big lich himself.
WoW Moviewatch: REVENGE
Silverlined_Pro created REVENGE as a roleplay-based movie about his character Nixxiom. As the story goes, Nixxiom has "always had a hard life." The author doesn't spell out the details, but apparently he killed his own parents through some circumstance, his wife died, and then his daughter was violated and murdered by demons. As if that's not enough, he got turned into a Death Knight. Now, Nixxiom has broken free of the Lich King's control. He's amassed his own army of undead critters, and is marching on Arthas with the goal of deposing him and taking the title Lich King for himself. You only get that background and information from reading Silverlined_Pro's summary on Myndflame. The video itself, as a stand alone piece, doesn't really supply that story. I don't know what I would have thought if I were only viewing the movie. It contains mostly a series of undead characters staring at each other, and then the main character -- a Night Elf -- staring down Arthas. I think the basic jist that "these guys don't play nicely together" probably would have come across, but that's about it.For all that the story is vague, though, the video itself is fairly well done. The music is apropos (it's the Lich King theme), and the animation and screen capture is solid. My words of summary would be, "Nice first attempt, let's see what you do next." If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ..
