On Learning Lessons

I firmly believe that in every struggle or confrontation in life, there is a lesson to be learnt. Further to that, I believe that every lesson will keep repeating itself to you until you learn from it. I believe this to be true in every aspect of life, from work, personal, emotional, fiscal, whatever area you find you want to push away or you find confronts you, I bet there's a lesson for you. Until you learn the lesson that you need, to grow and move on, you will keep coming up against the same problem. 

Jumping the Whale Shark

I don't think I've posted on Patch notes much before now, if at all. But something in the patch notes for 4.1 couldn't fail to catch my eye.

• Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.

Erm, say what?? Deme will be able to B-rez her allies and instead of 'spamming 1' they can actually fight? First reaction, Yippee!! What a great update for a spell that isn't really made the most of currently. Then I thought about it some more. Death knights. The clue is in the name surely? D E A T H. We shouldn't be able to resurrect people, as Shizukera on Twitter said "They're harbingers of death, not bringers of life".

Rioriel said "HI! Want to play a class defined by unique abilities? TOUGH THEY'RE ALL THE SAME. In 5 years we'll just have one stat: Awesome." Which was kind of my 3rd thought. If I wanted to be able to 'rescue' players I'd be a healing class. I have a lowbie priest, specced in holy and disc. She's low level for a reason. I like smashing stuff in the face with a big sword in my hand.

Which brings me to Psynister's recent Rift review where, understandably, he compares it to WoW. It was the remarks about class balance which struck me most.

There’s a lot of simplifying going on in WoW right now where classes and roles are being standardized so that everyone can do the same things with every class, and that takes away some of the uniqueness that used to be really appealing in WoW. So right now Rift is at one extreme (lacking balance) and WoW is at the other (excessive balance)."

The emphasis there is mine, but it sums up how I feel about this change pretty well and it makes me wonder what else is about to happen in the name of balance and how much do I want to be a part of that? I'm starting to think WoW has jumped the Whale Shark.

Unholy DK Specs, Stats and Talents for Levelling

Playing an unholy death knight has always been fun. When I started messing around in unholy again after 4.0 dropped, I loved the Sudden Doom and Dark Transformation warnings that popped on my screen. I loved seeing my ghoul transform from a boney thing barely hung together to a brutal globbulus abomination. Since Anyah on Twitter needed some help getting to grips with her DK after a substantial break, I thought it might be about time to look at how unholy plays now in Cataclysm.

We'll take a brief look at spec and stats in this post, but I'll mainly be focusing on the talents we have, priorities on attacks and how we can use them both to help in the new Cataclysm dungeons and the flavour that Unholy now has in Cataclysm. There'll be a resource list at the end of the post too.

Spec
I've chosen to run with a basic cookie cutter spec which I got from the ever trusty Deathknightbuilds.net. I'm unlikely to raid in unholy spec so choosing something just to get me from 80-85 in dps gear is enough for now. I've also chucked a point in Runic Power Mastery, because, well, I like it. Stats and gear wise, as someone levelling in unholy, your quest rewards are pretty much dictated to you. You have to choose plate, you'll find some comes with Int and Spirit on it. Obviously these are useless for us, we're far to clever to need any more intellect thank you and spirit? Well, we have no soul any more so that's useless. Hence, grab all the gear loaded with Strength and Stam. Yes stamina is good for levelling, it keeps you alive.

At the moment, mastery isn't much of a boon for Unholy (unlike Blood) so reforge that off if you want to. Haste is a good stat to have now and as we approach 85 you'll want to consider the hit cap. According to those maths gurus at Elitist Jerks, it looks like the hit cap is still 8%. Top three stats at 85 work out like this - Strength - Hit Cap - Haste then it's Crit, Expertise to the cap, Mastery and lastly, Agility.

Talents and Attacks
Now, onto those talents and attacks. I was concerned that as a few people had suggested, Unholy was loosing it's flavour in 4.0. Bone shield was removed and put in the blood tree. On a Pale Horse was stuck over in Frost. Well, I'm happy to say that with such things as Dark Transformation I'm not worried that we've lost the flavour. We are still bad-ass disease-ridden killing machines and as such, our diseases are still the priority.

Icy Touch and Plague strike need to be on those mobs sharpish - don't forget about Festering Strike and Outbreak too, I'll cover those in a bit more depth later on. Scourge Strike is still the big hitter but working up the RP for those Death Coils is important. A Sudden Doom proc grants you a free Death Coil, use it. 5 Death Coils will give you your Dark Transformation and turn your ghoul into a DPS monster. Whilst levelling, if I've had a DT proc at the end of a trash pack, I've been holding off on popping it (there's 30 secs to use it) until we engage in the next pack. If it's on a boss fight, well pop it baby!

Keeping up Diseases
Icy Touch and Plague Strike have long been a part of the Unholy DKs rotation. And they are still the basis of our priorities. In 4.0 (and now in Cataclysm) we are ever more dependant on these diseases to pump out the damage. Add to this two new talents, Festering Strike and Outbreak and we can see where Blizzard is putting the emphasis for Unholy DKs.

A bit more on Festering Strike then. FeS works to extend the length of your blood plague, frost fever and chains of ice effects. Essentially then, rather than hitting IT and PS to refresh your diseases, you can just hit FeS whack the mob for some weapon damage and refresh the diseases at the same time. Sounds good to me!

Outbreak sticks both IT and PS on a mob and comes with a 1 minute cooldown. It won't replace IT and PS because of this longer cooldown, but it will be handy to have for additional mobs. EJ don't seem to mention it on their latest breakdown which I guess tells you quite a bit about it's importance. Or lack of it.

So, we don't have a set rotation any more. Keep your diseases up, use Pestilence to spread them around on groups of mobs, hit Scourge Strike and use those Death Coils!

Dungeons - Now with added CC!
I like Bubbles wrote up a little post this week on the talents that DKs have that can help in the new era of CC in dungeons. For all those Wrath Babies who haven't had to use CC, it means Crowd Control. This is anything that effectively removes a mob from a fight for a period of time. If you see a CC-ed mob, don't hit it. Death Knights do not have CC tools. However, as was pointed out by Ilikebubbles, we do have interrupts and some other tools to help tanks and healers and the whole group in general.

Mind freeze - an interrupt with a 10 second cooldown and 4 second duration on the target. I have this sitting on my toolbar in handy reach as I have found it invaluable in the past. The quick cooldown means you can use it on a couple of mobs if needed.

Strangulate - another interrupt, this time with a 2 minute cooldown - not as handy imho as Mind Freeze due to it's cooldown time, but a good utility for it's silence on non-player victims.

Death grip - when used properly, death grip can be invaluable. I always ask my tank 'Do you want me to DG that caster/range/whatever into the group?' DG causes the target to focus on you for 3 seconds, thus acting like a taunt. Your tank needs to know you're going to DG a mob so they can peel them back off you. Failure to tell them may result in cranky tank. DG also acts as an interrupt and is thus very handy to use on the pesky caster at the back. You interrupt them, and gather them into the group to feel more AoE.

Chains of Ice - have you missed that mob running off to get more friends? Stick him/her on ice until the tank can catch up and you can batter them. Side note - DG + Chains is fun in BGs XDYour ghoul - Your ghoul also has interrupt skills - namely Gnaw, it acts as a 3 second stun whilst your ghoul chews off your enemy's arm.

Using these abilities will help your group through the dungeons. Using this knowledge will help at 85 because you'll know your class a lot better. And one step at a time we can break the Death Knight reputation of being, shall we say, less than clever?!

I hope these little tips have helped in some way to help you find your way to 85 with your unholy death knight.

Resources

Elitist Jerks - you know it makes sense

Death Knight Builds - full listing of all builds, take your pick.

Pwn Wear - for DK tanks, but you might want to have a look :D

Erm .. here?!

If you've got any links and good resources, please leave me a comment and I'll update the list.

Suffer Well!

You've come a long way, Wrath Baby.

Twitter threw up an interesting topic this afternoon. #iblamecynwise. Are you a Wrathbaby and what does the term Wrathbaby actually mean? Cynwise and I use the term to refer to the fact that we starting playing WoW during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. However, some have said that the term 'Wrath Baby' is a pejorative and implies that all you want to do is faceroll through dungeons in tier gear which you bought with tokens (and thus haven't actually seen any raids) or roflstomp through raids which have been easy for way too long. I would call people who do that morons, thus I feel compelled to defend the Wrathbaby in me.

I don't know if my experience is limited to just me, but I'd be surprised if it was. As I mentioned in my tweets (and have mentioned numerous times before) I am a gamer noob. I have never played any other game for the duration or with the passion that I have played Warcraft. I have no frame of reference for raiding, for gearing a character, for MMOs, or RPGs, or Thotbot, wow.joystiq.com or Elitist Jerks. I KNEW NOTHING. I still carry this wide-eyed look with me because it enables me to look at things with an open mind and not scream (too loud) at people who clearly haven't been in a dungeon before, haven't tanked before or whatever it happens to be, they've not done it before. Patience is a virtue. I'm not saying I'm perfect or that I don't ever go 'effing hurry up you noob' but I don't say it to people I don't know. I do my damn best to be understanding and offer help.

Back to my Wrath experience. It took me a long time, I mean a L O N G time to get to level 80. I'd been playing 7 months before Deme hit the big 80. That's 7 months of playing almost every day. It then took me another 3 months to grind gear, rep for enchants, and whatever else to get her geared to raid NAXX. Not ToC, not Ulduar, Naxx. I ran heroic after heroic. Every Wednesday night was farming HCs night. I quested dailies and ground rep every minute I had. I spent 3 hours wiping on Loken in HoL. I paid attention to strats on bosses. It did not take 15 minutes to clear a dungeon. We were in there ALL night.

This is where I was naive. Whilst everyone else was running Ulduar and getting hyped about ToC coming, I was gearing for Naxx. Because that's what you did right? You geared for the entry level raid and then got the gear in there to go onto the next level. I did not think of badge vendors for gear and grinding HCs to get badges to buy gear to get me into Ulduar or ToC, I mean 80 badges for that seemed silly when I could get dungeon drops. The raid teams in our guild were a solid bunch but I did get taken along occasionally to help out and I held my own. My gear was better than I realised and despite people telling me this, I didn't progress the raid team I was leading into other content because I thought we needed to bond and work on basic raiding skills in Naxx. Naxx. FFS. I wasted so much time in there.

Anyway, the 1st raid team I was in eventually cleared Naxx and instead of heading to Ulduar or even ICC which was about to arrive (or had arrived?! Memory lapse) we decided to jump into ToC. Disaster. We were all a bunch of noobs. No one was geared properly, people were running round in PvP gear with the wrong enchants and gems. It appeared that as RL I needed to know every inch of every class just to lead a raid. HEAD ASPLODES. I quit. I already knew that I wanted to be in ICC and having run the whole of ToC with another more progressed raid team, I knew I was capable. I felt elitist, but at the end of the day I wasn't enjoying the game as I was playing it so I said my good byes and left to join another guild and another raid team. Thankfully by this time I'd figured out that I needed tier gear and had got 4xT9 for my DPS spec. I wasn't tanking yet.

As a raid team we didn't seem to be able to get a solid tank to go along side our warrior so I offered to swap and gear Deme to tank. Cue another round of grinding daily dungeons, weekly raids and so on for more badges. I did not know how to tank before I stepped into ICC. I have not tanked Ulduar. Or ToC or Naxx. Actually I might have tanked some of Naxx on a silly run now. Anyway, I was inexperienced to say the least. I am still one of the most inexperienced tanks in our guild. I think I'm the only DK tank who tanks as my main spec in a 10 man team within the guild, but I worked hard to know my class abilities, to spot where I could use this cooldown or that cooldown and to know when to do what with what mobs. I still want to learn and want to be as good as I can be. I do not take the skill in playing a tank for granted. It's a role I enjoy and respect.

Deadbeats, the raid team I am now a tank for, cleared ICC at the end of September. Due to RL complications and not being able to find a solid team it took us longer than we would have liked but we did it. And it was hard work all the way. I worked my arse off for that effing kill and I'm proud of it.

I don't see Cataclysm being any different. We are all having to work for gear, for rep, for levelling professions. May be my ineptitude before has stood me in good stead for this expansion. I know about gear lists now, I know what kind of stats I need, I know my raid team and I know where to look for boss strats when I get there. And you know what else? Unless you're in some Uber World Leading Raiding Guild, you're in exactly the same position as me. The only thing separating us is the time we have to play and how fast we can get to that first raid.

Morons will always be morons, but you've come a long way, Wrath Baby.

Death Knight Talents in Cataclysm

So ... the 31 point talents dropped. I'd been hoping to be in the Beta to look at these myself but I've not been able to get there yet. Anyway, lovely people like AmberianAnex have been blogging about it in the beta and the talents are now all over the web. Let's take a look at them shall we? Well you go over to MMO Champ and take a look and I'll wait here. Hurry back now!

Blood ....
Now the tanking tree of choice! Well kinda. Cos you got no choice. WTF I hear you cry?! Yes that's right in case you didn't know, Blizz have binned off the Great Death Knight Three Tree Tanking experiment. AND! Holy Smoke Batman, but there's no def rating any more! I know! I died in shock too. We are now all Drood Bears and get our defense from our talents. Bah! And I don't want to talk about blood worms. Yuk.

Unholy ....
Well we've lost bone shield. What next? Sticking our ghoul out there as a tameable hunter pet? Oh no wait, I know, give Army of the Undeath out to the Warlocks as a new minion. Will Unholy be the PvP tree of choice? I'm going to say yes. Woah! Look at that, no sitting on the fence for Deme today!

Frost ....
Hai Howling Blast as the top (ZOMGWTF?) talent. I see Frost languishing in the raids as a PvE DPS spec that never quite works out like you think it will. Hey! Maybe the Dual Wield thing will make it big, maybe they'll give us a Titan Grip equivalent.

Runic power. Well let's assume it works like rogue combat points. Fooking shite. If I'd wanted to play a damn squishy rogue I'd have rolled one Blizzard! Let's assume it works like a warriors rage. EVEN WORSE! C'mon man! Give me back my swirly coloured six runes.

Of course you must now spend 31 points in any tree to get the key abilities so where will you chuck the others? Arrh well wild speculation (look if you've not picked up by now that this is a silly speculation post you're not going to), let's say you're a tank. Then right now I have absolutely no idea what you want. And frankly, if you think anything is going to stay the way it is now, you're madder than a box of frogs.

I promise to post something more constructive. Maybe. Probably about 2 weeks before the launch when I eventually get on the beta. Damn you Blizz!

Suffer. You can't suffer well this post so you'll just have to make do with suffering.

Deme

*You must forgive me. I was on holiday last week and missed all the RealID blogging opportunities and I have lots to say on it. For another time though I feel. Anyway, it's left me feeling a bit bereft of topics. Stick with me though, I promise to make up for this lame effort.

Lunch Time Quickie

I go on holiday for a week and the innernetz asplodes with RealID, Beta information, Blood tanking pointers and general Warcraft junk.

Despite Blizzards climb down at the end of last week, I am still unsure about this whole RealID thing and I will be covering this and a few other related topics when I've got time to investigate it further.

In connection to the new Blood tanking tree, I'm hoping I'll be able to get in on the Beta. There's some discussions around blood boil too and how AoE tanking will work. Since I rely heavily on DnD and HB at the moment to grab aggro I'm concerned how this will affect my play style. That's really why I want in on the Beta, so I can get a foot up on it all. As a nooby tank I've not got much experience to fall back on when they mess stuff around. I really want to be ready to raid as soon as I can come Cata and this is a part of that. Expect a post on that in the future too.

Someone I know has been pimping out his PC. Go visit Verde and see his crazy-arse PC.

Other than that, it looks like Azeroth is still standing and we're all ready to go kill Internet Dragons.

Things to DIAF come Cata

I'm on me hols but I've been wanting to post on this since I saw the topic over on Blog Azeroth's boards.

So here's my pick of shut I'd like to see roitously fucked up come Cata.

In at number 1, STV. The whole pigging place. Hated levelling there. Hate it at level cap for Loremaster. Hate it hate it hate it. And I'm not even on a PvP server.

Number 2, Nesingwary. See above.

Number 3, Nesingwary. Yep. I hate him that much.

Those are my most hated things in Azeroth, but there's a few others I'd like to see wiped off the pixelated face of it too.

Grobbulus for one. Even now, being OP for this dude, I still cringe when people want to do a 'nostalgic run' through Naxxramus. So while we're talking about raid bosses to ditch, please take XT too. If I hear that whiney bitch once more my ears will bleed.

I'm sure there's more but I'm writing this on my iPhone and frankly it's hardwork. And I don't have my notes with me. #DumbDeme.

Leveling and hitting the raid tier in Cataclysm, some thoughts.

Having read Zal's blog post about levelling to the new cap and raiding in Cataclysm, I got to thinking.

How is my current guild going to handle this? As a guild it was formed quite late into Wrath from 2 teams who were disgruntled in their current raiding guild. I joined later having failed to get where I wanted to be in raiding with my old guild. I play on a server which appeared when Wrath did. For many this will be the first time we're levelling a "main" to a new cap to then start in on the first tier of raiding at the right time. Currently the guild focusses on 10 man and plays around in 25 man. I'd like to say we're more progressed with 25 man but frankly we've not pulled it together. I've grown to enjoy 25 man a lot and I'd love to continue with it in the Cataclysm. I expect the guild will raid 10 man till the first tier is clear and then start on 25 man on that tier once we can focus 10 man on the next content. So that's all the guild stuff, but then what about me and Deme, my main?

Bearing in mind that Deme is going to get shafted into blood spec whether I like it or not, it's raised a lot of questions for me. Do I level Deme like mad to catch that first wave of raiding that I missed by a country mile in Wrath or do I grab another char and make that my raiding main?

Let's say I stick with Deme, is our team destined to stay together, level and play together through the new content or will we disband and have to rebuild again once we're ready to raid? Frankly that would suck in my mind. I've played in two raid teams. The first one was not stable. At all. It was a ball ache to try and get people in the right place at the right time and to raid level specs. The second one, where I am now, is probably one of the best groups of people I've ever mucked about with. We have a great atmosphere and we get shit done, but we're still struggling to nail down a regular 3rd healer.

If I stick with Deme, then I'll likely be able to catch that first wave one way or another and thus coast on through the rest of the Ex pac with my gear up to date. Especially if I stick to tanking. I've NEVER levelled as a tank though so that would be interesting.

If I dump Deme, hmmm well what are my options? A level 65 warrior, a level 41 priest and a couple of lowbie alts. Anyone who knows me, knows I level slowly so I don't think that's going to help the team.

And then there's the worgen.

Opening Thoughts on Death Knight Changes in Cataclysm

Jumping on the Class Changes bandwagon I thought I'd kick about my thoughts on the class change for those of us of a Death Knight persuasion. This isn't too in depth, just because I've not thought about it that way yet. Skip to the end for links to a couple more in depth thinkers.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. In this preview, you'll get a glimpse at some of the new abilities, spells, and talents in store for the death knight class, along with an early look at some improvements we plan to make to the rune resource system.

New Death Knight Abilities

Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Unholy DPS rotation relies on diseases and it sounds like come the expac that's only going to be more so, giving us a quicker way to whack them on those mobs looks like a great plan. With the changes to the way runes work I'm pondering how many other attacks will drop the rune cost.


Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

Sweet PvP trick. I'd also like to see that 8000 outright damage stomping over mobs too, if this isn't restricted to a PvP build it could be handy in a PvE environment.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.

Ding Ding Ding! Hello! I really can't wait to play with this.

Rune System Changes

While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.

• In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.

• A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.

• Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.

• The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.

• As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.

Hmmm. I suspect this is the thing most likely to be tweaked, changed and nerfed/buffed and generally fiddled with in testing. Such a big mechanic change will take some getting used to, in the big scheme of things I've got faith in the dev team to get it right, but I do have some trepidation. I'm on the fence on this one.

Talent Changes

Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.

• One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.

• Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.

• Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.

BOooooooOOOOo!!! In my eyes, the defining class aspect to the death knights is the versatility of all 3 trees to tank/dps in. You can effectively tank or dps in any spec, yes yes I know suchandsuch a spec is best for this and suchandsuch a spec is best for that but unless you're running ICC, you can play the game in any of the specs to tank or dps. I'll have a quite moment later to mourn the loss of bone shield. I almost feel like the dev team have given up on balancing the three trees. Yes, we get a dedicated tank tree, just like the other 3 tank classes. Yes it'll make it easier to know the spec, talents and whatnot, but, we're Death Knights. We're the only hero class in the game. We're supposed to be different. Ok. QQ over.


Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Blood
Damage reduction
Vengeance
Healing Absorption

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.

Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.

You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.

MOAR Diseases .... Bring it! (I'm subtly ignoring the blood tanking bits for now).

So overall, I like the look of the changes and yes I like that Unholy is getting a stronger disease based flavour, despite the fact that it's at the cost of tanking in both frost and unholy. The lovely Moody comments about the warrior/rogue similarities and as someone who plays both those classes (albeit as lowbies) I can see the comparisons and sitting somewhere between those two classes in DPS terms works for me.

Stoppable Force has more detail and is a little bit more cynical than me, but he's also thought about it more so if you find my sweeping generalisations too, well general, head on over there.

And of course, I can't let this sort of thing go by without mentioning Skeleton Jack. Simply because he's got about 3 posts on the changes including one where he's just answering comments, some people have too much time. Also more skeptical, Skeleton Jack talks about Blizz rewriting the class as a whole. I can see his point, in the end though, so much of this is subject to change, I'm not going to cry about the sky-falling, well not just yet.

You can read the all the changes and further blue comments at the Blizz Cata Forums.