death knight death and decay

If you’ve read the PTR patch notes for patch 3.2, you would have seen the change to Unholy Blight turning it from an AoE effect to a single target effect wherein every time you use death coil the target gets a 10 second DoT worth 30% of the Death Coil damage. This is one move they made so that Death Knights don’t have a huge advantage over the other melee classes at doing AoE damage.

The dual wielding issue was somewhat addressed by adding a talent in the Frost Tree called Threat of Thassarian for patch 3.2 which allows your strikes and Obliterate to also deal damage with the off hand weapon. Ghostcrawler mentioned that they might have to limit dual wielding as a viable option to just the Frost tree, because making all specs viable for PvP and Tanking doesn’t leave much room to work with if you add dual wielding to the equation for all trees.

Issues with Dancing Rune Weapon and Summon Gargoyle were addressed by making them cost a flat amount of runic power and will be out for a set amount of time rather than it relying on the amount of runic power the death knight has. There are also no plans to make two different sets of runeforge enchants available when switching specs through dual spec. They cite that ret pallies and prot pallies have to use two different weapons for the two roles and gems and enchants aren’t saved either. I guess this is a pretty unique problem for death knights since they can tank with a 2 hander but they just have to deal with it bby having to reforge the rune every time.

Ghostcrawler also mentioned something cool for the future involving bringing back the ghoul voices of the game. they had to take them out because they were using vendor voices and that seemed awkward. Hopefully when they bring the voices back it will come back much cooler than before.

So pretty much everything that they touched on that really mattered they already at least started to address in patch 3.2 and not much about plans for the more distant future. I guess depending on how you look at it, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

MAGE

# Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
# We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.
# We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
# We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.

PALADIN

# Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
# Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
# Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
# Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
# Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
# Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

HUNTER

# Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.
# A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
# Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
# Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
# Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
# We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.

DEATH KNIGHT

# Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
# Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
# Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
# The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
# Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
# Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
# Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
source

Probably the most surprising change of all is removal of consumable ammo, because while this affects hunters the most, this also affects rogues and warriors since they use ranged weapons too, but especially warriors since they use ranged weapons to pull. I have a warrior friend who uses a throwing weapon since he didn’t like carrying ammo. In the next patch, he won’t need to worry about it. The removal of consumable ammo and the fact that they’re preserving the haste bonus quivers and ammo bags will give means that they’ll finally have space for another bag. This makes locks the only class that still won’t be able to have all their bags assuming they use a shard bag.

Paladins also get some surprising good news with the change to blessing of kings finally being made a baseline spell. There’s still no word about what talent will replace it but I’m quite confident it’s going to be something cool even if it might not be something as amazing. I’m thinking it’s going to be like when they replaced the mage iceblock with icy veins. Another surprising but needed change is the one to Exorcism (I wonder if it’s the same for the AoE version, Holy Wrath). Making this spell affect all enemy types with a special 100% crit chance to demons and undead is something that’s really going to make grinding easier and will help their dps.

we saw destruction locks will be a replenishment spec in the next patch and now frost mages will too. I think that they’ve really defended their stance stance that replenishment is mandatory quite well now. instead of just getting a replenishment like effect while the water elemental is up, now they get it even while it’s not up. It looks like death knights are going to get quite a mess of talent shuffling but it seems like it’s all for the best. The changes seems to be all buffs and will allow for more versatility in spec building.

There it is! Your chnages for the next patch have been unveiled and we now have a lot of reason to be happy in anticipation. This should make your game time a bit more pleasant while waiting for the patch to come.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

As someone who found the joys of healing (something I thought I’d never do if you asked me in vanilla-WoW) while playing a holy paladin in TBC and currently plays a restoration druid, I would really love to see the same brand of innovation and appeal applied to a healing class. Shortly after Blizzard announced the death knight as a hero class, I always wondered about the possibility of a healing hero class. Later on after learning about the death knight rune system, I actually expanded that thought to the possibility of a healing class that doesn’t use mana at all but something different just like the rune system. Apparently these thoughts I’ve been having are shared by Blizzard’s Ghostcrawler himself as shown in his forum post below.

I could totally see several ways to design a new healing class that used mana in a different way or didn’t use mana at all. You are right that it might not appeal to players who hate healing, but it might appeal to players who just haven’t found a class that heals in a way that is fun for them. source

The most obvious problem with designing a healing class that doesn’t use mana is that mana is center of what healing is currently about. Intellect, spirit, and mp5 all have something to do with mana and they are important to healers. The corollary to this problem is itemization since healing gear across all armor types use these stats. the only way I see this problem being solved is to design a system that translates these stats to affect the new resource system

Ghostcrawler mentioned something about healing in a different way than the current healing classes do. If they did implement a new healing hero class, it would certainly have its own style and niche and that’s something I’m really excited to see in the future.I know that we’re all supposed to be focused on the current expansion but Ghostcrawler’s thoughts are already getting me excited and hoping that this idea gains some steam.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Perhaps the most glaring example that I have seen (at least in my experience) is the Protection Paladin. In TBC, they were very popular for their EZ-Mode tanking ability because of their mastery at AoE tanking. If you ran dungeons often, especially with a PuGs, then you would definitely have run into a Prot Pally back in the day. But with the introduction of Death Knights in the expansion and the recent rise of Retribution Paladins, it seems like Protection Paladins are a very rare sight nowadays. Holy paladins, in my experience, are also quite rarer than they used to for some reason.

In TBC, feral druids were also very popular because of their sudden viability as tanks, especially as off-tanks. Because of Death Knights and the improvements to the balance and resto tree and the not so impressive changes to the feral tree, it seems like ferals have also pretty much suffered losses to their numbers. In fact I have a friend who played a feral druid for all of TBC but suddenly decided to be a tree for this expansion.

The shadow priest is another example of a spec I haven’t seen much of. In TBC, they were very useful as mana batteries – a niche that gave them some importance in raids. Perhaps because of their mediocre dps compared to other dps classes and the fact that the mana battery role has been made available to others like Ret pallies, the shadow priest isn’t as popular as they used to be. In fact, I’ve only encountered a shadow priest in a dungeon run just today!

It’s amazing how much things can change in just a small amount of time. I’m sure these vary from server to server but I’m sure at least some of these observations are true for some of you. What kind of changes to the class spec landscape have you experienced so far?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Being a new class, it still has some issues that need to be addressed. Ghostcrawler floated around some ideas about Death Knight tanking in a post he made in the official forums. He mentions that they are not prepared to announce specific changes yet so don’t be disappointed if some of the thoughts don’t get implemented. His thoughts are summarized below. Click here to see the actual post.

1. Boost frost presence mitigation, lower mitigation of other abilities. DK’s tank well with cooldowns and don’t do as well without them.

2. Icebound fortitude could see mitigation scale based on defense.

3. Expect buffs for Blood tree tanking talents

4. Rune strike might get decreased damage and increased threat

5. Death and Decay is not supposed to be a tool used to gain runic power out of combat.

6. Horn of Winter and Unholy blight could get decreased runic power costs.

7. The Shadow of Death talent isn’t intended to be used for escaping durability damage or resurrecting by zoning into an instance.

8. A new spell might be added to let you raise fallen allies (wait… they’re getting a battle rez? 0.o) so you don’t have to choose between bringing back a player or your ghoul.

Although I’m not really very familiar with Death Knights much less Death Knight tanking since I don’t play mine much yet, it seems like the ideas being floated around look interesting. Being a new class, it’s acceptable that Death Knights still have some issues but it’s good to see an effort to make things better.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

It’s obvious that Death Knights belong in Northrend because that’s when they finally begin to feel like they are part of the story, which is something they did not get since doing their starter quests. A friend of mine asked me this question earlier “how far in the story do Death Knights start out in?” Strangely enough he has the expansion but hasn’t finished the Death Knight starter area quests nor has he started questing in Northrend. He seems to like doing all the quests he’s missed so he’s still in Shadowmoon Valley. Anyway, he asked me the question because I told him that as a Death Knight, you get to deliver a message to High General Abbendis as her Scarlet Onlsaught prepare to leave on a boat to Northrend. If you look at all those people around her they are people you eventually encounter and kill in New Hearthglen in Dragonblight. Pushing the subject, other people you encounter in that DK starting area come back in Northrend like Prince Valanar as part of the quest Breaking Through in Borean Tundra. Prince Keleseth is the first boss in Utgarde Keep. Thassarian is an Alliance npc in the Borean Tundra.

With all that I mentioned above, I think my friend’s question is at least worth giving some thought. If these guys existed in the DK starting area then how far back in the story are Death Knights in when they do the starting area quests? Considering how fast the Alliance and Horde set up their forces in Northrend, it’s not at all unthinkable that these guys went to Northrend right after the incident in the starting area, putting these events just slightly before the Wrath story. But since Death Knights have to go through the Outlands and the Burning Crusade story, perhaps it happened way before the Wrath story giving all these guys a lot of time to set up in Northrend.

You might be asking why I even bother thinking about it. Well it’s an interesting topic and it’s something worth resolving.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

I only got my copy of the expansion a few hours ago so I’ve had a lot of time to mess around in the Outlands for quite a bit on my characters. I’d usually go herbing to supply my druid’s inscription and do some dailies and not much else. Out of boredom from not having the expansion the past few days, I’d just end up logging out early. But in my travels the past few days, I noticed one thing which will end up becoming the trend for quite some time – a ton of Death Knights going around the Outlands! For now, it’s the Hellfire Peninsula but I imagine the swarm could follow all the way Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley.

Everywhere I went on my druid, I saw a Death Knight whether Alliance or Horde there was at least one. But it’s usually swarms! General chat was full of them and the stories are quite funny. A priest in my server who was leveling in Hellfire Peninsula was talking about a 5 man group he was in where there were 4 Death Knights and he was healing. My guild mate who plays a Death Knight was remarking that he didn’t notice unless much later in the fight that he was actually fighting an elite because his health never went below 90%.

Another thing I was noticing was the choices on Death Knight races. As I said, I saw tons of them running around Hellfire Peninsula and I was keeping a rough score in my head. For the Alliance in my server, it seems like I only saw Humans and Night Elves and nothing else. I thought Gnome was going to be quite popular? I know that if my DK was Alliance, I’d be Gnome. I noticed that for the Horde in my server, Blood Elves were the most popular but I also saw a lot of Taurens and Undead and slightly less but still plenty Orcs. In my journeys, I only saw one Troll and it was a female.

This brings me to my Death Knight. I decided a long time ago that my Death Knight was going to be either Troll or Orc. I have an Undead Mage, Blood Elf Paladin, Tauren Druid and a Blood Elf Warlock I’m still working on. That left Orc and Troll as the only horde races I didn’t have yet. All the guild mates I asked said I should go Troll and i seemed to agree since I liked Berserk and the new Voodoo Shuffle as racials. Seeing that Trolls didn’t seem to be a popular choice also made me feel a bit unique or at least give me a sense of cheering the underdog or going against the norm. Of course it might be a while until I seriously get to play my Death Knight if ever i even decide to play it seriously at all.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

For those people who don’t exactly like flying around in a pile of bones, then this isn’t for you but at least the option is there for those who consider this bad ass. This is also going to help those role playing Death Knights look the part.

See some pictures here and here.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Our friendly neighborhood WoW database Wowhead has been providing players with pretty much everything a player needs from quest information, loot information, maps, addon update info and even talent tree calculators and their very own forum. The latest Wowhead has for us are the talent calculators for each class (except hunters and paladins for now) from the Wrath of the Lich King Alpha.

Word about such talents especially the Death Knight ones have been circulating for some time now and finally we can see what Blizzard has in mind for the classes for the expansion. But since this came from the WoTLK alpha, I’m not so sure Blizzard wants this information out at this point. Anyway, while the information is still around this is your chance to see the cool talents! Click the link below to check them out.

My quick comments on seeing the new talents:

The new warlock talents seem to make an already overpowered (at least this is how the general public sees them) class even more so. If there’s something I can say about the final talents of eack tree, they look like they really deserve to be such and probably will be the subject of nerf threads in the future.

The new mage talents look kinda strange to me especially the last talent in the fire tree. it makes me wonder exactly how I might make great use of it in a raid other than in AoE encounters. The last talent in the frost tree looks like it’s not worthy of being such. At least at first glance, it’s not very impressive.

The new druid talents made me want to level my druid faster. All trees seem to have gotten some really cool talents but most especially Restoration. I just might be tempted to play a Tree druid along with my holy pally when the expansion comes out. *Still drooling at the druid talents*

The shaman, warrior and rogue talents also look great but I don’t really have much to say, since they really didn’t make me go “zomg!” or “eww”. The warrior protection talent Sword and Board made me laugh though.

Of course the Death Knight talents look so interesting not only because they are for a new class but also because they really do seem to make the DK a potentially fun class to play.

Those are all the comments I have for you!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

I’ve heard that the talent trees were lurking around the internet a few days ago but I never really went out to look for them. but after I read a few interesting things about the trees, finally I decided to look. After some looking, I decided that the most complete and best presented on can be found here at Warpirate, which is a web site you can use to make your own talent trees. Someone made one for the DK talents that was going around. So for those looking for the talent trees, finally you found them!

What’s very clear to me based on the talent trees is that no matter what spec you are, it’s always important to keep your targets diseased because each tree has something to increase your Death Knight’s effectiveness against diseased targets.

Based on the talents as they are now (since we know that we’ll defiantly see a lot of tweaking from now until release), I can say that the Death Knight will be a fun and interesting class not play!

Just in case the link above from Warpirate disappears for any reason, the blood, frost and unholy talents of the death knight class can be seen at Blizplanet, although some of the slots are not filled up.

Post from: WOW Obsessed