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Patch 3.0.8: Analysis of Death Knight changes
Well, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm certainly having fun playing my death knight. I can solo a lot of the more difficult quests in the game; my Blood self-healing along with my glyphed Death Strike keeps me topped off and out of danger almost all the time; and I bring desirable buffs to parties and raids. I keep thinking to myself, "Something has to change! I can't have this much fun all the time!"Well, guess what, WoW community? You've gone and done it. You've gotten us buffed. Great. Just great.
Lichborne: A Death Knight statistics primer
Welcome to Lichborne, the weekly Death Knight column by professor Daniel Whitcomb, who totally has a PhD in Death-Knightology from Ebon Hold University. It's the truth, I swear. I've seen a lot of people asking these questions as we've been getting into the expansion: Now that I am trying to gear by Death Knights, what stats should I get? What's good for a Death Knight? Which armor should I take. We've started getting in that somewhat in the last few columns, with advice on reputation gear and starting zone gear, but I figured today we should delve a little bit more into the why of Death Knight stats. Today's column will double as a little bit of primer on how Death Knights get their power, and what stats you should be looking for on armor in general to make your Death Knight the best it can be. It's not completely in depth, but it should get you well on the road to understanding just how Death Knights get all that awesome power and sexiness. We'll have 3 sections today. The Good are stats that are excellent choices for DPS, Tanks, or both. The So-So are stats which still do us some good, but are pretty situational or conditional in their usefulness. The Outcasts are those stats that you should avoid -- Well, I'd say avoid like the plague, but we're Death Knights. We like the plague around here. So I'll just say you should avoid them.
Ebon Plague to get some multiple user loving, says Ghostcrawler
So there's a slight problem affecting Unholy Death Knights in groups and raids these days: When there's multiple Unholy Death Knights, only one can put Ebon Plague on a mob. This wouldn't seem to be an issue at first glance. After all, Multiple Curses of the Elements from multiple Warlocks don't stack, right? Here's the deal though. The Ebon Plague counts as a third disease for the purpose of Death Knight abilities that count diseases to deal damage, such as Scourge Strike and Blood Strike. When only one Death Knight can have Ebon Plague up, the other Unholy Knights are left out in the cold and have a part of their damage stripped away.
The Queue: Yes, this is what we call it now
Yep. Ask a Beta Tester is officially The Queue. It's kind of a joke, you get it? Get it? You know, queue, like you wait in line for an answer? An A to your Q? Q? Queue? Hahah! Get it? Get it!? Hahahah! Ugh. Queue queue.Anyway, The Queue is now our daily Q&A column, where the WoW Insider staff answers your questions about the game to the best of our ability. Previously limited to Wrath content, we'll now happily answer most anything about the game if we're able. Today is obviously no exception, so we're going to start with a question from Andostre... TBC saw a rise in the necessity of Hit Rating. Is Hit as important in Wrath? I ask because Hit isn't nearly as fun as Attack/Spell Power or Crit rating.
The Wrath of the Lich King Death Knight roundup
Good Thursday morning, everyone. I'm sure by now that many of you rushed home from your midnight openings, installed the game, and started up a new Death Knight. Many others may, like me, be expecting to do that tonight after work or school, while others are looking at rolling a Death Knight in a few weeks or months after the rush has died down or they get a main to 80. Whatever your plans, if you're playing a Death Knight anytime in the future, you'll want to read on. We have a nice selection of some of the best news, information, and analysis of the Death Knight class after the break, including a lot of information that the new Death Knight will find useful.
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: Unholy Blight, or I spent 51 points for this?
Welcome to this week's edition of Lichborne, where Daniel Whitcomb is totally bumming out that he won't be getting a sweet axe on his Death Knight. I know a few of you have been asking for some good solid builds for powerleveling your Death Knight through Outland and through to Northrend, and I'm hoping to deliver soon enough, but unfortunately, it's hard for me to recommend something when it could very well change another couple times before release. We're getting down to the wire, though, so it's likely the trees will solidify soon, and I'm hoping to have some recommendations on good Death Knight builds in the next week or two. For now, I've decided to take a look at one of the 51-point Death Knight talents to give you a taste of how things change in Beta. Specifically, I'm talking about Unholy Blight.
Skill Mastery: Mark of Blood
While Blood is not quite as as powerful as it once was, it remains, at the least, a solid DPS tree and one quite a few Death Knights will probably choose to level with. The wide array of self healing abilities means that a Blood Death Knight has a very hard time dying, and nothing interrupts a good grinding session quite like a death. In Skill Mastery today, we'll look at one of the Blood Death Knight's signature talent abilities, the 21-point talent Mark of Blood. Mark of Blood is placed on an enemy, and every time that enemy deals damage, their target is healed for 4% of their max health. It costs 1 Blood Rune. It lasts for 30 seconds, and has a cool down of 3 minutes. It's a straightforward skill to use. Throw it on your target and keep fighting. Using it effectively, however, may take a little bit of thought. Here's some tips to figuring out the best way and time to make your mark:
Tips for new Death Knights from a fellow tank, part 2
Dear corpsified bundles of beautifully-armored joy (but more particularly those who tank Azjol Nerub while wearing Expedition Bracers of the Bandit),We had a little bit of controversy in the first installment, so I'm just going to state this as baldly as possible; if you hated what I wrote last time, there's a good chance you'll walk away from this one thinking I eat babies. Delicious, delicious babies. While I never mean to offend people, I reserve the right to tell them the truth, or at the very least a highly entertaining and plausible lie.Truth, she be at times an ugly mistress. And she ain't gettin' any prettier as we move from DPS to tanking.Tanks have significantly more responsibility, both in groups and raids, and they face the competing directives of maximizing mitigation (to keep their healers happy) and maximizing threat production (to keep their DPS happy). I've healed dozens of Death Knight tanks at this point, and while the average pugged DK tank has gotten noticeably better, there are still a few trends you'd want to be aware of as a healer. The problems in beta right now are made worse by Blizzard unintentionally overselling the ease of tanking on a Death Knight in 5-man runs. Many people seem to have interpreted the statement that they should be able to tank well with Blood, Frost, or Unholy specs as being tantamount to saying they can tank well regardless of how their talent points are spent in those trees.Any experienced tank can tell you right now that this is not true, but people believing that it is is how you wind up with 11K-life Death Knights taking 7-8K enraged hits from Keristasza in the Nexus. If you've never tanked before but you're interested in tanking on a Death Knight -- or pragmatic enough to know you'll probably wind up tanking a certain number of 5-mans on your DPS Death Knight -- I hope this article helps you avoid what I went through in May 2007 when I started tanking and sucked at it.I came to the beta to slowly lose my mind trying to heal insane tank damage and gulp Extra Strength Tylenol. And I'm all out of Extra Strength Tylenol.
Ask a Beta Tester: Protection Warriors, Death Knight DPS, and more
Welcome back to Ask a Beta Tester, with even more passenger mount questions! Don't worry, though. It didn't devour our entire column today. We have plenty more for you! For example, Sorano's question...What I'd like to know his exactly how much protection warrior dps as changed. All the talents seem too good to be true.Protection Warriors seems like one of the class/spec combos that have changed the most in Wrath. Their tanking is incredible and a lot more versatile now (all tanks are, actually) but you're asking about DPS and not tanking! Their DPS is good. It's not as high as DPS classes/specs, but it's not abysmal like it used to be. You might actually be DPSing with your shield equipped for the huge Shield Slam crits rather than dual wielding, even when you're not the one being beat on.I don't have any concrete numbers or DPS charts for you, but I can say that what I've seen is really, really impressive. In yesterday's Ask a Beta Tester, reader Friday Knight gave you some more in depth information about the rotations of each spec, so I recommend reading that if you missed it. His information and what I've seen myself makes me want to gear up a Prot Warrior alongside my Prot Paladin instead of having just one tanking character.
Blizzard leaning toward AE Tanking for all
You may recall earlier yesterday that we reported on Thunder Clap losing its target limit, thus quite suddenly making Warriors have a very good chance of being viable AE tanks. One thing that you might have also noticed is that the Druid's Swipe is getting the same treatment (no word on whether it will also be getting the ability to go 360 degrees, but it seems likely, if it's going to be a Thunder Clap/Consecrate equivalent). In addition, Death and Decay, the Death Knight's AE mainstay, recently received a bump to threat gain. That means that all 4 tank classes, in theory, will have the ability to do some Protection Paladin style AE tanking should they want to. This all seems to be in line with the tanking philosophy Blizzard has been pushing for Wrath, one which Ghostcrawler recently reiterated: Blizzard wants to make sure that all tanks are as equal as possible. There should be no reason to take one class of tank over another, all things being equal, and no reason to sideline your tank because he or she is not the right class. Certainly, if this is to be realized completely, you do have to give every tank a good amount of AE capability, and this latest round of announced tank changes seems to be tailor made to do just that. As the former player of a Druid tank and the future (current beta) player of a Death Knight tank, I'm very pleased to see these changes. I know that there was nothing more fun that running through a dungeon like Shattered Halls as a DPS with a Paladin Tank leading the way, and the idea that every tank class might be able to do that to some extent in Wrath makes me incredibly excited. It also allows groups to be more flexible in what DPS they take, including DPSers that traditionally have had a hard time getting groups due to having poor CC abilities, such as Cat Druids and Retribution Paladins. If this change is handled right, it will go a long way toward solving the tank shortage for PuG groups, and, in fact, make the 5-man dungeon run fun again in general.
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:
Lichborne: Guys and Ghouls
Welcome to Lichborne, where we ask the tough questions: Will Death Knights be ready for launch? Will they really have 3 trees that can tank and DPS? And what kind of a ghoul name is Eyeslobber? Ghouls have been one of my most beloved features of the Death Knight for some now. I like having an undead squire by my side, and they can be pretty useful for some extra dps and even some lifesaving interference in a pinch. However, they also felt like one of the least firmed up aspects of a Death Knight for some time now, with abilities coming and going on a patchly basis, and bugs that kept the ghoul from being summoned or allowed to summon a massive army of ghouls in no time flat. Still, they have their uses, and despite still being incredibly flimsy healthwise, do offer a decent amount of extra damage when they're up. The drawback is that 50 silver is a lot for a pet that lasts less than 5 minutes, and without points in the Unholy tree, the Ghoul is completely uncontrollable, and may have a tendency to run into suicidal situations without listening to a word you say. As far as perfecting the Ghoul and deciding on its place in the class, there seems to be two schools of thought. The first, mostly made of Unholy specced Death Knights, sees the Ghoul as a fun and useful part of the class, and wants to see it tweaked to have good survivability, good dps, and generally be worth keeping out. The other class see Ghouls as mostly a novelty, a thing to be bought out occasionally, and such a pain to upkeep that they don't really want to have to deal with it as a pillar of the class. They'd rather be able to forget it exists when they want to. Both positions have their passionate supporters, but Blizzard seems to have found a rather ingenious way to give both sides what they want: Talents. Recent talent changes provide a lot of buffs, and if you collect them all, you should have a much easier time using your ghoul to your hearts content.
Lichborne: Death Knight glyphs
Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly weekend look at the first hero class, the Death Knight. Daniel Whitcomb is back after dealing with some light administrative work back at the Ebon Hold. Inscription seems to be coming on to the beta server in bits and pieces, especially when it comes to the much looked for glyphs. One or two classes seem to trickle in each build, and in the latest build, it is the Death Knight's turn. Today, we'll take a quick look at the new Death Knight glyphs, and figure out how useful they'll be to the various playstyles and specs of the Death Knight. As always, it's worth noting that these are beta numbers, so things could change by the time Inscription and Death Knights see the light of day on live servers.
Ask a Beta Tester: Scourge Strike, titles, and flying mounts
What you're seeing up above is a flaming quill in a well of frozen ink. Is it useful? No. It looks wicked awesome sitting in the Inscription trainers' shop, doesn't it? Heck yeah it does! We'll kick off today's Ask a Beta Tester with Askhill's question... Does Lake Wintergrasp seem dominated by only one class, or is it pretty even among the 80s? Unholy Death Knights are the current "overpowered spec of the day" (formerly the role of Ret Paladins) so there's tons of those rocking face right now. Beyond that it's pretty difficult to judge, since Blizzard hasn't balanced all of the numbers yet and few people are in Resilience gear. The only really memorable thing are the absolutely enormous Scourge Strike crits. By enormous I'm talking numbers anywhere from 10,000 to 16,000, and since it's Shadow damage, your armor isn't going to do a darn thing to help. Luckily, I was healbotting one of those Unholy Death Knights rather than being on the receiving end. Death Knights are bloody fantastic at keeping people off of Healers, by the way.yazah asked a couple of questions...Why does the Scarlet Crusade employ Death Knights in Northrend? Doesn't that seem unlikely since they were slaughtered by them back in Tyr's Hand?
Death Knight solos Onyxia
With how fascinated players are with using Onyxia as a benchmark, it was only a matter of time before our new legions of Death Knights tried their hand at it. Scarblade, a poster from the MMO-Champion forums, seems to hold the prize for world first solo Onyxia kill by a Death Knight. At least, as far as we know, and as of the latest beta patch. Will it count when Wrath goes retail? Who knows? We're a fickle bunch. Either way, I sincerely doubt many others attempted this as a Death Knight before Scarblade, because running around doing those attunement quests on the beta realms must be brutal even at level 80. You're just going to have to do it all over again!Still, Scarblade was a trooper and went through the whole ridiculous attunement process. He says he tried both Frost and Blood specs before ultimately settling on an Unholy build that won the day for him. Personally, I expected this kill to have been done using a deep Blood talent spec with how well they solo. I suppose Onyxia isn't the same as your random elite thug hanging out in the middle of a field somewhere, so it makes sense that what works there might not be best in Ony's Lair. Unholy does make sense though, controlling those whelps can make or break an Onyxia attempt no matter how many people you take with you. Unholy Blight is a beautiful thing.Yes, Scarblade did earn an Achievement for killing the ol' gal. Two, actually. One for just plain killing her, and one for killing her solo.[ via MMO-Champion ]
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.
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 tanking undergoing tweaks
The latest announced changes for Death Knights are out, and this time, they seem to be mostly concerned with tanking. There's two major philosophies that Blizzard seems to following for Death Knights: First, any tree should be able to excel at tanking at least to the 5-man level, and Death Knight tanking should be at least somewhat interactive. In that vein, they're introducing two revamped late tree tanking talents to the mix. In Frost, Unbreakable Armor will be a usable ability that costs 1 frost rune, but will only increase armor by 25% and Strength by 5%. In Blood, Vampiric Blood (previously mentioned in last week's Lichborne) will be a 1 blood rune ability that increases healing received from all sources by 50%. Both abilities will not trigger the GCD, will last 20 seconds, and will have a 2 minute cooldown. Blizzard aims to balance these 2 abilities with Bone Armor (which will have an internal cooldown of 3.5 seconds, like Shaman shields) to create 3 viable late tree tanking abilities.
