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Lichborne: Frost tanking 101
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's weekly death knight column. This week on Lichborne, we're looking at yet another endangered death knight play style: frost tanking. Frost tanking is one of those strangely misunderstood specs in that many players consider it to be the only tanking spec, or at least the only viable one. This is based on the old pre-beta outline of the death knight class that dedicated frost as the tank tree. Blizzard decided to allow all three trees to tank well before even the alpha was over, but the myth of frost tanking supremacy persisted. Now, there really will be only one tank tree, but instead of frost, it's going to be blood. That means that if you want to experience the original death knight tanking tree, you only have a few more months max to do it. That's why we have this guide. This a 101 guide, so the usual disclaimers apply. This is meant to get people well on their way to being a viable frost tank, but it's not a be all, end all guide, so there are additional tricks and talenting tweaks experienced tanks will know and pick up. These are just the basics.
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.
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: The Rise of Blood in 3.1
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly Death Knight news and analysis fix.The Blood tree often gets a bad rap among those not in the know. It's a decent leveling tree, but it's generally considered not to have the tanking power or AoE DPS Potential of Unholy or Frost. By all indications, that has changed in 3.1, especially in the latest patch. Not only have many key Blood talents and skills received key buffs or changes, but the very nature of Armor Penetration has changed, with the 25% benefit buff making Blood's mostly physical damage dealing style well suited to take advantage of the change. This is quite a shift from just before 3.1, when many were afraid disease-less Blood would be wiped out and leave the tree with no viable hassle-free DPS specs.
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?
Lichborne: Talents for catching up
Welcome to Lichborne, where Daniel Whitcomb is doing some last minute agonizing over what face to give his Death Knight on Thursday.So there are quite a few of us, I imagine, who are still on track to switch to a Death Knight, or at least play one quite extensively, immediately when Wrath of the Lich King hits the live servers. But the fact remains that you'll be 15 levels behind everyone to start, and if you have friends to catch up to, you're going to want to get up there pretty quickly, most likely. Even if you plan to take it slow, you'll still want a good effective leveling build, most likely. So today, we'll look at three solid solo DPS builds from each tree, and discuss how to use them most effectively for grinding and leveling.
Lichborne: Of Cabbages and Kings
Welcome to Lichborne, where each weekend, Daniel Whitcomb helps you keep pace with the ever-changing Death Knight class. This week, While Death Knight tweaks continue, there's no big piece of news that really stands out. We got a nice bump in damage to our base weapon strikes, Death Coil, and the abilities that mimic them in the talent trees in the latest build. Unfortunately, poor Plague Strike still sits at a sort of dismal 30% weapon damage, meaning it still doesn't feel like it scales as well as it should. But preliminary reports are still that it's a noticeable DPS increase. At the same time, our PvP utility and survivability was nerfed, but not in completely unexpected ways. Chains of Ice is dispellable again, as the devs felt that between it and Death Grip, it was far too hard to get away from a Death Knight. Again, this nerf is somewhat expected, if not needed, although some argue the nerf is unfair in the face of other classes that have similar abilities to ensnare and entrap opponents. I have to admit that I'm hoping we see, at the least, Chains of Ice getting put on Virulence. If nothing else, that Glyph of Blood Boil is looking a lot nicer. Still, none of the news really jumps out and grabs me, and with the beta patches coming fast and furious, it's hard to write with any authority on something that may be changed next week. With that in mind, I've decided this week to post on a potpourri of odds and ends from around the World of Warcraft as they relate to Death Knights, both stuff that refers back to previous columns and new observations. Read on:
Skill Mastery: Army of the Dead
Ever since we first heard about the spell, I have been without a doubt drooling over Army of the Dead. This level 80 Death Knight spell allows you to summon an army to your beck and call. In specific, it's a 6 second channel spell that summons several weak undead to taunt and fight your enemies. In addition, you take less damage equal to your dodge plus parry chance. It costs one of each basic rune type, and has a 10 minute 20 minute cooldown (You see how swiftly things change in the Beta?). You can see the spell in action above (video found on Deathknight.info). You may notice some problems. For example, some the ghouls stand around and do nothing. In addition, the damage reduction on channeling does not seem to be working. Still, it's pretty cool seeing all those ghouls decend on the enemy, even if they are lowbie scarlets.
Lichborne: PvP, grinding, the Unholy tree, and you
Every weekend in Lichborne, Daniel Whitcomb will take you through the ever-changing (Beta) world of World of Warcraft's first hero class, the Death Knight. With a new Beta Build on the test servers, Death Knights have received a massive amount of talent changes. Many of them have been hinted at on the test servers for eons, and I've covered much of them in last week's Lichborne. The new disease changes are in, as is the changing of Chains of Ice's Snare component to an undispellable physical effect. You can check out the full list of changes here. Among the new changes is a very extensive revamp of the Unholy tree, which features quite a bit of talent consolidation and quite a few new and interesting mechanics and abilities. In fact, I'd have to say that the current build may very well mark the rise of the Unholy Tree, with the changes making it an amazing tree for grinding and PvP. As a disclaimer, there's still lot of bugs in this build. Many abilities don't seem to be working quite right, especially Blood Caked Blade (which only hits for 1-4 damage based on the number of diseases instead of 60% weapon damage per disease), Raise Dead, and Night of the Dead. Because of that, it's often hard to say how or if an ability would be better or worse if it actually worked. Therefore, I'll be discussing the abilities based on if they actually did work, backed with some feel for them from Death Knight play on the Beta Servers.
Death Knights gain new rune set, new cosmetic changes
It's been said that Death Knights are supposed to be a specifically recognizable class, part of their heroic bearing coming in that distinctness. We've already seen some of it with the inclusion of glowing eyes, and now there's more implemented with these beta builds. All Death Knight Races have the option of taking on a selection of darker skins and gaunt, undead, or angry looking faces. In addition, the Death Knight's glowing eyes now look more more integrated and natural on almost every race, in my opinion. The changes look better on some races. Humans, especially, look very much changed, to the point where Human females can look a lot like Forsaken females without the hunchback or protuding bones. You can see some of the new looks in the Gallery below, courtesy of tipster Damir. %Gallery-29326% Death Knights also got another small cosmetic change in the form of new runes. The new runes are a bit bigger and more distinct, and I personally find them easier to keep track of. I'm glad to see the change. You can see the runes here (thanks to tipster chaud and wotlkwiki for that picture). EDIT: There are no Forsaken pictures in the gallery because there do not seem to be any new looks for Forsaken Death Knights. This is understandable -- They're already dead, after all. You can check our older Death Knight gallery for Forsaken shots, if you wish.
Death Knight Frost tree changes in latest Wrath Beta build
Between Blood's lack of downtime and Unholy's AE abilities and Ghoul control, Frost is starting to feel a bit like the unwanted orphan of the Death Knight trees. While it's heavy on the tanking talents and has some burst potential, we've been there done that, perhaps, already have Frost Mage alts, and so on and so forth. Luckily, Blizzard recently made some changes to the tree on Beta which look like they may be nudging the tree in the right direction toward equality with the other two trees. Here's a concise list of the changes via MMO-Champion: Improved Icy Touch now increase the damage of your Icy Touch by 10/20/30/40/50% and its damage against Frozen Targets by 20/40/60/80/100% (Old version : Reduces the cooldown of your Icy Touch spell by 1/2/3/4/5 sec and increases its critical strike damage bonus by 10/20/30/40/50%) Nerves of Cold Steel has been moved from Tier 3 to Tier 2. Annihilation has been moved from Tier 6 to Tier 3. Aneurysm has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 7. Merciless Combat has been moved from Tier 8 to Tier 6. New Talent - Blood of the North - Tier 8 (5 Points) - Whenever you use a Blood Strike there is a 20/40/60/80/100% chance that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates Frost Aura increases your Frost Resistance by 32/65 instead of 22/45. Frost Strike prerequisites have been removed. (Merciless Combat was required before)
Hands-on with the WWI '08 Death Knight demo
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Hands_on_with_the_WoW_Death_Knight_class_at_the_WWI_in_Paris'; One of the most anticipated features of the Worldwide Invitational for us here at WoW Insider was the promise of playable WoTLK demos, so you know our team was all over that as soon as they hit the convention floor. We got a chance to sit down at a Death Knight demo station for a while, and we're bringing you all the information we got from the experience on how WoW's new class is shaping up. Follow the links of a look at the gameplay, skills, and talents of the Death Knight: General gameplay impressions Blood spells and talents Unholy spells and talents Frost spells and talents If you missed the Worldwide Invitational in Paris, WoW Insider has you covered. Check out our complete roundup for articles covering every angle of all the new WoTLK news from the WWI, and check back with us for more features and analysis later today!
WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: General Impressions
We learned at the Q&A panel on Saturday that Death Knights will be starting at a new area just off Eastern Plaguelands called Ebon Hold, but for now, it remains unimplemented. Thus, these demo Death Knights start at Tirion Fordring's house in the west of Eastern Plaguelands.On Death Knight Gear and Gear Mechanics: They start with a complete outlay of green gear with DPS Warrior type stats: strength, agility, critical strike rating, and stamina. Their sword itself is blue quality 2 hander named the Massacre Sword. It does 127-191 damage at at a speed of 3.1 seconds, giving it 51.3 DPS. It also provides 22 strength and 23 hit rating. It should be noted that the gear did not have spellpower, and it doesn't look like Death Knights will need it at all. Almost every spell that did magic damage specifically stated that the damage was modified by attack power. This is perfectly in line with Blizzard's recent trend to simplify and consolidate gear, which they discussed in relation to Retribution Paladins at Saturday's class panel. Perhaps we'll even see this mechanic show up on other magical melee hybrids in the future. The Death Knight came loaded with 6 runes on their rune weapon bar: 2 Blood Runes, 2 Unholy Runes, and 2 Frost Runes. Talents points were unavailable with this demo, although we could see the talent descriptions themselves. Death Knight Starting Spells and Playstyle: The Death Knights started with a few basic skills: 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.Icy Touch:Requires level 55Costs 1 Frost Rune Instant cast, 6 second cooldown20 yard rangeDescription: Deals 217 to 235 Frost damage modified by attack power and reduces the target's ranged, melee attack, and casting speed by 15% for 20 seconds.Death Coil Requires Level 55Requires Runic PowerInstant cast 30 yard rangeDescription:Unleashes all available runic power, causing up to 460 shadow damage modified by attack power to an enemy target or healing up to 460 damage from a friendly undead target.Death GateRequires Level 55Costs 1 Unholy Rune10 second cast, 15 minute cooldownDescription: Returns you to Ebon Hold (Note: Since Ebon Hold is not yet implemented, in the demo it returned you to Tirion Fordring). Death GripRequires level 55Costs 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast, 35 second cooldown.30 yard rangeDescription: Harness the unholy energy that surrounds and binds all matter, drawing the target toward the Death Knight and forcing the enemy to attack the Death Knight for 3 seconds.Plague Strike Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood Rune and 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast Melee rangeDescription: A vicious strike that deals weapon damage plus 37 and plagues the target, dealing 350 shadow damage over 12 seconds. Casting these spells uses up the listed runes, which have a cooldown of 10 seconds. Our (lucky) play tester reported that the system felt a bit like having 3 seperate mana pools with their own spells, but that the pacing seemed to work well, and that she was now interested in actually trying one out in when beta rolls around where she hadn't been before. Introducing the Knights of the Ebon Hand After roaming about a bit and killing stuff, Elizabeth stumbled upon Light's Hope Chapel. This venerated base of the Argent Dawn had some new guests known as the Knights of the Ebon Hand, lead by a night elf named Siouxsie the Banshee, a Death Knight trainer. It's likely, of course, that these NPCs will be gone and moved to Ebon Hold once it's implemented, but for now, they gave us a sneak peek at the new Death Knight faction and some of the spells Death Knights will get post-55.
WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: Frost spells and talents
The Frost tree was originally designated the tanking tree, and the Frost Presence will likely still be the presence of choice for tanking Death Knights. Interestingly enough, very few of the other spells and talents in the Frost tree -- with the exception of Icebound Fortitude -- really scream "tanking." However, some of them do scream "crowd control," which may amount to the same thing in the end -- just freeze, slow, or silence extra mobs until you have a chance to focus on tanking them. The "frozen" bonuses in some of the talents also suggest that Frost Death Knights may have a lot of good synergy with Frost Mages as well, assuming their frozen status afflictions are identical to each other. Below is a listing of some of the Frost spells and talents shown in the WWI Death Knight demo: Frost Spells: Icy Touch:Requires level 55Costs 1 Frost Rune Instant cast, 6 second cooldown20 yard rangeDescription: Deals 217 to 235 Frost damage modified by attack power and reduces the target's ranged, melee attack, and casting speed by 15% for 20 seconds.Chains of IceRequires level 56Costs 2 Frost RunesInstant cast, 16 second cooldown20 yard rangeDescription: Freezes the target in place for 3 seconds. the target regains 10% of their movement speed each second after breaking free of the chainFrost Presence Requires level 57Instant castDescription: The death knight takes on the presence of frost, increasing armor by 45% and threat generated by 25%.Mind FreezeRequires level 57 Requires Runic Power10 second cooldownDescription: Strike the target's mind with cold, dealing 100 frost damage modified by attack power and interrupting spellcasting while also preventing any spell in that school from being cast up to a maximum of 4 seconds. Obliterate Requires Level 61 Costs 1 Blood Rune, 1 Frost RuneDescription: A brutal instant attack that deals 100% of weapon damage plus 330 and 122 additional damage for each of your diseases on the target, but consumes the diseasesEmpower Rune WeaponRequires level 68 3 Minute cooldownInstant castDescription: Empower your rune weapon, immediately activating one of each rune typeIcebound Fortitude Requires level 72Requires Runic Power1 minute coooldownDescription: Consumes all available runic power, causing the Death Knight to become immune to stun effects and increasing armor by 50% for up to 12 seconds. Does not remove existing stun effects.Frost Talents:Frozen Rune WeaponRequires 10 talent pointsCosts 1 Frost RuneRequires melee weaponInstant castDescription: Imbue your rune weapon with frost, causing 29.9 to 92 additional frost damage, based on the speed of your weapon. Also has a chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to frost damage. Lasts 10 minutes.DeathchillRequires 20 talent points2 minute cooldownInstant castDescription: When activated, increases your critical strike chance with frost spells and abilities by 100% for the next 6 seconds. Howling BlastRequires 30 talent pointsCosts 1 Frost Rune30 second cooldownInstant cast20 yard rangeDescription: Blast the target with a frigid wind, dealing 278 to 302 frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Deals triple damage to frozen targetsMerciless CombatRequires 35 talent pointsCosts up to 3 talent pointsDescription: Your frost spells and abilities do an additional 20% damage per talent point when striking targets with less than 20% health.Frost StrikeRequires 40 talent points, Merciless CombatCosts 1 Frost RuneRequires melee weaponNext MeleeDescription: A strong attack that deals weapon damage as frost damage. Has a 10% chance to freeze the target.Hungering ColdRequires 50 talent pointsRequires runic power1 minute cooldownInstant castDescription: Unleashes all available runic power to eradicate all heat from around the Death Knight, freezing enemies within 10 yards and preventing them from performing any action for 2s per 10 runic power. Enemies are considered frozen, but any damage will break the ice.
WWI '08 Death Knight Demo: Unholy spells and talents
Unholy was originally touted as the PvP DPS tree. What it appears to do rather well, though, are diseases and minions. If your vision of a Death Knight is close to a Diablo 2 Necromancer type, leading an army of undead minions and spreading plague and exploding corpses across the land, Unholy is probably going to be the tree for you. Of course, your crowd control is probably going to be a little peeved at you with all those DoTs, but that's what AE spells like Death and Decay and Unholy Blight are for, right? Unholy also seems to include quite a bit of utility, including the ability to resist lots of spells and status effects, and some debilitating debuffs, so it could be called a utility tree of sorts as well. Here's a list of some of the Unholy spells and talents available in the WWI Demo: Unholy Spells: Death GateRequires level 55Costs 1 Unholy Rune10 second cast, 15 minute cooldownDescription: Returns you to Ebon Hold (Note: Since Ebon Hold is not yet implemented, in the demo it returned you to Tirion Fordring). Death GripRequires level 55Costs 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast, 35 second cooldown.30 yard rangeDescription: Harness the unholy energy that surrounds and binds all matter, drawing the target toward the Death Knight and forcing the enemy to attack the Death Knight for 3 seconds.Plague Strike Requires level 55Costs 1 Blood Rune and 1 Unholy RuneInstant cast Melee rangeDescription: A vicious strike that deals weapon damage plus 37 and plagues the target, dealing 350 shadow damage over 12 seconds. Raise Dead Requires level 56 Costs 2 Unholy RunesInstant cast30 yard rangeDescription: Raises a ghoul from a corpse to fight by your side. if the target corpse is not humanoid, Corpse Dust must be supplied to complete the spell.Death Strike Requires level 58Costs 1 Unholy RuneDescription: A deadly attack that deals 60% weapon damage. if the target dies within 6 sec and yields exp or honor, Death Strike heals the Death Knight for 406 damage.Death and DecayRequires level 60Costs 1 Unholy Rune, 1 Blood Rune, 1 Frost Rune.30 second cooldown30 yard rangeDescription: 100 shadow damage modified by Attack Power is inflicted every 2 seconds to all targets in the affected area for 10 seconds. Has a chance to cause affected targets to cower in fearDegenerationRequires level 62 Costs 1 Unholy RuneDescription: Instantly attack the target, dealing 60% weapon damage and inflicting a disease dealing 91 damage over 21 seconds. Any existing heal over time spells on the target become corrupted, dramatically increasing the damage done by the disease and removing the healing effect. Stacks up to 3 times.Unholy PresenceRequires level 70 Description: Imbues the Death Knight with unholy fury, increasing attack speed by 15% and reducing the global cooldown on all Death Knight abilities by 0.5 seconds.Anti-Magic Shell Requires level 75Costs 1 Unholy Rune20 second cooldownDescription: Surrounds the Death Knight in an anti-magic shell, absorbing 75% of the damage dealt by the next harmful spell. Damage absorbed by anti-magic shell energizes the Death Knight with additional runic power. Lasts 5 seconds.Army of the DeadRequires level 80 Costs 2 Unholy Runes10 minute cooldownDescription: Summons an entire legion of your best ghouls to fight by your side.
