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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.
Blizzard changes the description of the Death Knight talent trees
Curse has noticed a very intriguing change to the Death Knight information page. The descriptions of each of the talent trees has been changed. Here are the old descriptions: Blood: Talents in this tree focus on damage dealing abilities. Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage. Frost: Talents in this tree focus on tanking abilities. Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage. Unholy: Talents in this tree have a variety of functions including summons, diseases, and PvP-focused abilities. Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities. And now, the new descriptions: Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, and strikes. Frost: Talents in this tree focus on control, counters, and combos. Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, and diseases. This is quite a drastic change, but what could it mean? Let's look at the possibilities after the break.
Frost Mages and Frost Death Knights
Over on the forums, Scorp brings up a Death Knight concern that I haven't heard before: as we all have known since last BlizzCon, the Death Knight's three talent trees are "Blood," "Unholy," and "Frost," and the one that Scorp has a problem with is the last one. Should Blizzard change the "Frost" tree on the Death Knight class so people don't confuse it with Mages?If you're asking me: no. "Restoration," "Holy," and "Protection" are all reused in a few different talent trees, and for both of those, while the talents are different, the intent is the same. "Frost," for both Mages and Death Knights, will have the same aim as well, as far as we've been told so far -- both classes will aim for DPS in those trees, with extra consideration given to crowd control and slow debuffs. In fact, depending on exactly how the Death Knight's talents work, the "Frost" title might help newer players understand the tree a little better anyway, especially if they've played with a Frost Mage before.Not that people don't have ideas -- "Ice" (yes, Ice, baby), "Chill" and "Really, really cold stuff" are all names being thrown around on the forums. But Blizzard will probably stick with "Frost" -- no reason to change it up, especially if the abilities line up with the Mage tree as much as we expect them to.
The Death Knight class revealed
Via Gamespy and Worldofwar.net, we finally have a good idea of what rolling a Death Knight will be like. A lot of the rumors seem to have panned out, but others have not. All I know is that at this point, I am full speed ahead to make a Death Knight my new main come WoTLK. There's a lot of meaty info to dig into, so let's get to it after the break.
Build Shop: Mage 17/0/44
Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players.Today's build has been sent in by a number of people now, so this week I'm taking a look at one of the more popular Arena Frost Mage builds -- 17/0/44. There are a number of variations of deep Frost builds, but this one goes far enough in the Arcane tree to grab the very useful and powerful Improved Counterspell. The Frost tree has been synonymous with survivability for a long time, so it's no wonder that it is so often seen in the Arena. As with other builds of this nature, it picks up talents that increase your damage output as well as those that boost your ability to stay alive. Frost allows you to kite your opponents, or hit them with reliable burst damage utilizing Shatter.As usual, there is some wiggle room with the talent spread, so you may want to shift points around depending on your personal taste, or even the Arena bracket you spend most of your time in.
Arcane Brilliance: A squishy year in review
With so much to look forward to in patch 2.4 and WotLK, Arcane Brilliance would like to take one last look back at the road behind, mostly to see if there's a Rogue back there waiting to stab us. It's a little late, perhaps, but here's a look at the year that was, from a Mage's perspective. 2007 was a splendid year. Someday, when our children's children are grown, we will bore them with stories of 2007, and perhaps refer to it as "back in the day," or "the year I dinged 70," or "the year I learned never to mix chili with microwavable burritos in the hopes that their powers will combine to form 'Chilitos,' the perfect food." Here at Arcane Brilliance, we like to think of it as the "Year of the Mage." We also like to think of 2006 as the "Year of the Mage," and frankly we think of 1902 the same way, so take that in whatever way you wish. Basically we like Mages here, and 2007 was a fun year for those well-versed in wizardry. Not everything was magelicious, though. The highlights--and lowlights--after the jump.
Mage buffs on the horizon
Here's some more good news today for mages. On top of Hypothermia going back from 45s to 30s, Kalgan has stopped by the mage forums to promise some additional buffs in person. These probably won't make it into 2.3, but he says they'll go in "in the near future." My guess is that translates to 2.3.X or 2.4. It looks like Blizz is basically in a "buff" swing recently, which fits in with their general design philosophy -- start underpowered, and then build the classes up as necessary. Buffs make far fewer people angry than nerfs do.What are these buffs, you ask? Trainable Ice Block, and "to-be-finalized improvements to mana issues in longer fights" (source). We've been seeing more and more skills moved to trainable as the game has matured, from Evocate to Holy Fire to Improved Sap. Ice Block mades good sense to add to that list. Kalgan's reasoning is that IB is something they want to be able to design PvE encounters around all mages having, and that it helps open up the range of viable specs for PvP. As far as the "mana issues" improvements, it's hard to comment too much on that without any details, but efficiency is good. Any speculation on what they're going to do there?Oh, and in a later post, Kalgan lets slip that mana gems are also slated to be buffed. Let that be a sort of after-dinner mint of buffage.
Forum Post of the Day: Frost magi in Northrend
Nayami over on Area 52 makes a good point in a recent thread on the official Mage forums about how magi must usually respec depending on which raid they're running:"So I was talking with a few random raiders on my server, and I was informed that SSC and TK has a large amount of frost immunities? I mean, I can accept the fact that fire does more damage than frost overall. That is the way it is and ever shall be. But I liked Frost because of the pvp viability and utility it brough [sic] outside of raid bosses and still managed to hold its own in terms of DPS. You weren't going to top any meters but you didnt suck. But Immunities? I dread to see how many things will be frost immune in Northrend."Magi switching their spec depending on what they're raiding is nothing new -- back in the old days of Molten Core, you had to spec into Frost or Arcane. Other raid instances such as BWL, ZG and Naxx did allow Fire spec magi to raid, but it seems like raid mobs having immunity to certain schools of magic is a step in the wrong direction.Nayami (and others in that thread) also point out something I hadn't thought about before -- what will Frost spec magi do when they get to Northrend? There are bound to be many mobs immune to Frost spells in the icy roof of the world. Is it fair to make a certain class respec this often in order to DPS efficiently? And when was the last time anyone saw a mob that was immune to Shadow spells? Warlocks and shadow priests certainly haven't found any, as far as I can tell.Previously on Forum Post of the Day...
More WotLK info from Games for Windows
World of Raids has more info up from the Games for Windows spread about Wrath of the Lich King. Eliah posted the zone list yesterday, and while we've heard some of this stuff before, there are a few juicy new tidbits. On the Sunwell, it seems the Burning Legion is using the Mana Forges in Netherstorm to power the Sunwell and summon Kil'Jaeden. The instance will have 6-8 bosses, and Kil'Jaeden will not be fully summoned when you fight him (which is supposed to explain how 25 level 70s can drop him). Dalaran will have one or two instanced dungeons in it (!), and will not have Auction Houses. It will have portals, including maybe one to Shattrath. There's some good Death Knight info, including a new AoE spell called Death and Decay. Blood runes will be damage oriented, Unholy runes will be utility and DoTs, and Frost runes will be CC-ish abilities. Finally, Inscription will give players the ability to sell scrolls (is it just me, or did the developers clearly say at BlizzCon that inscribers wouldn't sell scrolls?), and they will only be able to update "core spells"-- Priest's Mind Control no, Hunter Freeze Traps yes. Get ready for a round of QQing about what "core spells" are. Don't get too excited-- the expansion is still a long way away (and Zul'Aman is coming much sooner than Arthas will). But it is good news, especially the idea of dungeons inside Dalaran. Creatively implemented dungeons seeped in lore are always a good thing.Update: Changed Mind Control back to Mind Vision. And apparently it was just me who thought devs said no scrolls at BlizzCon.Thanks, Meth!
Breakfast Topic: Spec for yourself, or for the guild?
This question actually came from Guild Chat in <It came from the Blog>. A few evenings ago, there was some question about the best spec to level a Druid with, and while many people returned Feral, just for ease of soloing, it actually brought up another point. You see, our little Insider guild on Zangarmarsh is very much focused on being completely laid back. This means we have no intent of running endgame raids, or anything of that nature. Obviously, this means you can level as hybrid or off-spec as you like -- points in all three, or points in none if you're out to try something completely off the wall! But this got me to thinking about a guild I had been in. Once upon a time my main was a Mage, who I took to endgame on a combination Arcane/Fire spec that I had an absolute blast playing. Once I got to endgame, I specced her Frost as all Mages at endgame were then expected to spec for raiding. After raiding for a while, I got incredibly bored with her. I wound up switching full-time to my Rogue when the chance came. Now that Burning Crusade is out (and my Rogue is comfortably at 70 with my Druid catching up) I've finally taken my Mage off the mothballs. After speccing her back to Arcane/Fire, I'm having a lot of fun tearing around and burninating the countryside with her again. For those of you who have ever switched a spec for a guild/group/battleground, how did you feel about it later on down the road? Did you miss being able to tinker with your build? Did you resent having to do it? Did you get bored with it? And for those of you who say that you would never spec for a guild's progression, would anything ever induce you to reconsider? Have you ever switched back, progression be damned -- or even left a guild over being required to keep a certain spec?
Frostbite's shared diminishing returns are a bug
There's been a lot of hemming and hawing on the mage forums about the upcoming changes to Frostbite-- the latest test notes revealed that the talent, which gives a chance to freeze anyone hit by a "chill effect" (that's Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Ice and Frost Armor, and Improved Blizzard), will now be subject to diminishing returns in PvP.Which even mages agree is doable-- but their problem is that those diminishing returns are shared by other, controllable, freezing effects-- Frost Nova and the Water Elemental's Freeze. Basically, an accidental Frostbite proc, which can't be controlled by the player, could make the opponent immune to controlled freezes. And considering that Frostbite, when talented out, procs a lot, that puts a damper on regular frost mage abilities.The good news, however, for mages is that the problem is being addressed. Tseric says that Frostbite's diminishing returns are meant to only affect itself, not other Freezing spells. They're working, he says, on fixing it.Which is great (well, not so much for people fighting mages, but for mages it is). But this is the second big mage "change" we've seen on the PTR that turned out to be a bug. What's going on over there at Blizzard in the mage department?
Build Shop: Mage 40/0/21
Hello once again, Build Shop readers. Today I think we will do a Mage build. I've noticed an increasing number of Mages running around with a lot of points in Arcane, and I've been wondering why. So let's see if I can dissect Xykon's build and see what makes it tick. Xykon hails from H-Gorgonnash-US, and had quite a bit to say about his talent choices, which I always appreciate. Mage is one of the classes I've played the least (I think my highest is 20-something), so I'm not going to have as much to say about this as I have in the past. This means I'm relying on you, friendly commenters, for some of the deep analysis.Xykon's goals with this build: a strong DPS for World PvE and Raiding, with secondary goals of overcoming resistances and survivability. Although the majority of his points are in Arcane, he describes this build as a Frost build and says I primarily only use frost spells, with an occasional instant cast from the other two schools (fireblast and arcane explosion). Broadly speaking, this build goes down Arcane, grabbing all the stuff that would help damage and a little bit of survivability along the way, and goes for all the nice Frost stuff that boosts crits and crit chance and freezing and all that nice stuff.
Frost Resistance in Patch 1.11
Translations from the Chinese site show new craftable items available with Argent Dawn and Hydraxian Waterlords reputation - all featuring high frost resist. This further confirms the rumor that upcoming dungeon Naxxramas will require frost resistances. Another day, another resistance-based dungeon - I suppose I'll be adding a full frost resist set to sit with my fire, nature, and shadow resist sets. Ah, but the days when I had bank space...!
