Death Knights on the Dawn of Patch 8.3

Bolvar is back! As of January 14th 2020 and assuming you have the Shadowlands expansion pre-ordered, any race can be a Death Knight and we get a new starting zone! Not to mention when we get into the expansion itself, there's a whole zone that supplies the power we draw on, Maldraxxus, the home of the Necrolords. 

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.

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.

Deme Does Crotch ... Watching

This weekend saw me take on tanking in a more concerted effort. On Friday night I realised I’d actually got a full tank set of gear. That was a bit of a shock! It means I’ve now got to enchant and gem the lot and get the stats sorted.

In an attempt to prevent other nooby tanks from making the same mistake I repeated on the weekend, here’s a little checklist to use before you start whacking anything.

Have I changed into tank gear?
Check 

Have I changed to Frost talents?
Check

Have I put on FROST presence?
No? Numpty.

I’d also add
- Chug a defence potion if you need it, which currently Deme does.

I got a great group to run me through my first HC as a tank, comprising of two droods, one a bear in off spec and one healing, another DK whose main spec is tank and A N Other. I’m sorry my dear guildie, I’ve forgotten, needless to say all these guys are well-geared and could romp through HCs in 15 minutes max. With this make up, we went for the random. Silent prayers for anything but the ICC 3 or HoS. FoS pops up. *eeek* goes my brain. Group tells me I’ll be fine. I mark up the first two mobs and off we go. Hmm, aggro isn’t great, but I hold them and they die. Then I remember. FROST presence. FFS. What a numpty.

I’ve watched one particular DK tank run HCs and unless the healer needs mana, he doesn’t stop. I wouldn’t say chain pulling per se, but certainly moving fast. I guess because I’ve seen him do this so often, it’s rubbed off on me. I’ve been spoilt too, the group I was running with know who to hit first so marking was a little pointless and I didn’t bother.

Gathering the groups up and holding aggro was fine. Crotch-watching is a suitable description of tanking and for my particular style, I like all the mobs in a group in a semi-circle in front of me. This means I DG those ranged casters in. Is that wrong? Erm, not sure, but it feels a lot more comfortable when I can see them all glaring at me and not have one off to the side.

We pass through a few mobs and get up to James Brown. I mean Bronjam. *phew* Take a deep breath. My first HC boss as a tank. Quick catch up with the group to make sure I understand what I have to do, turns out I do. Confidence rises a little. The encounter starts and all is well. Corrupted Soul goes up and I begin to move him, I honestly can’t say if he got the soul or not because I wasn’t watching his HP, I was too busy popping all my abilities to make sure he keep hitting me whilst I wandered round the outside of the room. The second phase, where we all give him a nice hug in the middle went off without a hitch. Hoorah!

I take a deep breath and pause to savour the moment.

Then we press on and get to the Devourer of Souls. Now, I'm sorry, but did Blizz get a bit camped up when they created the bosses in ICC? I mean this guy sounds like as camp as a row of tents, then there's Marrowgar's cry of "Boooone Stooooorrrrrm". I mean come on.

Anyway, Devourer of Souls. Yeah. Not gunna lie, I died. No idea how because it wasn't down to the healer. Let's not dwell on that though. We got through and I'd tanked it. Hoorah!

I finished off the weekend tanking 4 more HCs. My least favourite being Culling of Stratholme. As a nooby tank running backwards and forwards and running the undead gauntlet I found tough. I hit up ToC too, which isn't up my list of favourites, but hey we got through it. My two favourites to tank have been Azjol Nerub and Utgarde Keep. I love UK on normal to tank so I was chuffed when it popped up on the random. I also enjoy AN. Anooooob gets pwned. Me likely.

I guess now I've actually got the gear and had a bit of practice I'd better give you lot some kind of spec and stats post right? Ok, I'll do my best for the next post.

According to guildies I'll be tanking Naxx this weekend. pfft.

DK Tanking - Initial Thoughts

About a month ago (may be longer) I promised 2 friends on Twitter that I would do a post on DK tanking. It's been a while but I've started to make some progress.

You have to remember that I'm a tank noob. No, really, even though I played a warrior prior to Deme, I'm a tanking noob. Yes I feel your burning hate and I hang my head in shame.

Deme has 2 pieces of T9 tank gear now, to complement the mis-match of heroic, emblem and pieces of off-spec gear from raids where no one else wanted it, but I'm still working on the gems and enchants, as I mentioned somewhere else on the internetz. Her def rating has finally broken the 500 barrier though and is up to a whopping 512. Still some way to go, but when you have a healer to run with you who gives you 'god mode' I've got a bit of leeway. It also helps when they are sitting in the same room as you.

Last night I ran a couple of normal dungeons just to try out my tanking skills after a hiatus and I've got to say it's kinda fun so I'm hopng to have a bash at an 'easier' Heroic this weekend and see how I get on. Then I suppose it's off to farm for more emblems for more gear. Once I've got a better handle on it all, I'll post up some kind of advice/gear/stats rammel for those who want a guide. It's fair to say thought that so far I'm finding DK tanking fun, full of aggro and a fresh challenge to boot.

Deme the Dodger

Unholy DK DPS Stats, Gems and Enchants

Edit - Jan 2013 - This post dates back to Feb 2010 - That's almost 3 YEARS OLD. I'll do an up to date version soon but in the mean time go to Icy Veins. 

A few weeks back I wrote a DK DPS blog for the best unholy spec in 3.3. It seems logical to compliment this with a blog about which stats to stack, the best gems to drop in those pretty slots and the enchants to charm your gear into eeking out the best results for you. Now bare in mind this is just a guide, but it's serving me well in ICC 10 (occassionally in 25) so there's no reason it can't do the same for you. If you're lucky enough to be in the hard modes though this won't be for you. I'm not that great. Yet.



Stats
Let's start with the stats. As damage dealers, your key role is to hit stuff, if you ain't hitting it, it's not going down. For. A. Very. Long. Time. Hence, hit rating is one of the highest priorities. For DPS specced DKs, you want to look for 8% to reach your hit cap. That's about 262 rating. Right now, Deme is well over the hit cap and this is something I'll be looking to sort with some dungeon grinding to buy some gems with emblems.

I say that hit rating is one of the highest priorities because it's pretty much on a par with strength. Like warriors our attack power increases 2:1 per strength point and attack power comes in very handy on a fistful of our attacks. You can't over stack strength and we'll come on to how get more of it in the gemming section.

Now, recently, the next stat you decide to stack has slightly switched depending on the content you are running. Enjoying ICC? Stack ArP (that's Armour Penetration - I always forget what it stands for), if you're running older content, go for crit rating here. Then, which ever one you didn't stack first, you can stack next. Let's make that a little clearer.

Running TotC (or older) = Hit > Strength > Crit > ArP
Running ICC = Hit > Strength > ArP > Crit

Following those first 4 stats, it's equal placing for haste and expertise with agility last. Agility isn't a fabulous stat for DKs as a rule so don't worry about it, if you happen to have some, good for you.

GemsOk, confession time. At the time of writing, Deme's gems are pretty sucky. I'm saying this upfront because I've learnt whilst writing this post that I'd been playing around with stuff and I'd made a mess. I'm sorry mum, I promise to head off immediately and spend all those EoTs on new gems. Instead of that new tank set. Essentially I have the wrong meta, and a couple of Ametrine's of the wrong sort.

Basically, for DK DPS, go for Bold Cardinal Ruby or Inscribed Ametrine. These are both strength based gems and the only time you'd think of using another one is if you're not at hit cap. Check out the gems page on WoWWiki for a full listing of all the gems available by colour and stats. Very handy.

Now onto that shameful Meta gem. Now I've read the bits at Elitist Jerks and they recommend the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond or Relentless Earthsiege Diamond. Neither of which Deme is using. More to do with me not reading things on time than anything else. But! Ah ha! She does have the Nightmare Tear in place so that's one thing to tick off, but boy have I messed her up. Now EJ do a great job with all the maths and kudos to you if you can understand it all, but I'm too tired to take it all in so the above is the plan I'll be following with Deme. I'll let you know how I get on.

EnchantsWhat little pieces of magic are going to help you eek out a for more killer points on that vanity dial Recount? You remember grinding all that rep don't you? So you could get all the best enchants?? Well this was why.
Head - Arcanum of Torment - you'll need exalted with Knights of Ebon Hold in Icecrown. These are your brothers and sisters, you should know them! Go see Duchess Mynx in the Shadow Vault.Shoulders - Master's Inscription of the Axe - what's that? Not a Scribe? Oh well sorry you'll have to take Greater Inscription of the Axe then from those Sons of Hodir. Deme has yet to get exalted with them simply because she's never had to.Chest - Powerful Stats - find a friendly enchanter and get him/her to "buff" your chest. Accept no substitutes.Cloak - Greater Speed - remember your stats? Agility was last so grab some haste and make it snappy.Bracers - Greater Assault - 50 AP, simples.Gloves - I can haz more hit cap? Sure you can, whack yourself a Precision enchant if your still looking to hit that magic level. If not, get some Major Strength, another one Deme needs to sort out.Legs - flash those sexy legs at a leatherworker for some Icescale Leg Armour. It's your only option.Boots - Again you add some hit cap here with Icewalker or go for Greater Assault if you've already got your hit sorted.

Remember, every time you upgrade, you need to enchant and gem again. It helps to have a list of all the mats you need for your enchants handy.

Next time, I'll attempt a gear guide, not a BiS, but a "get from dinging 80 to raiding fast" kind of gear guide. Or maybe I won't. We'll see what WoW throws up as ideas.

Suffer Well!

Deme the Doofus.

Further Reading
Elitist Jerks - should be your go to spot, even if you can't understand 1/2 of it, if you get 1 new thing there each time you read, you'll grow as a player. For Unholy DPS, this page is especially great.

Help a Noob Day

I'm going back to the beginning this week. Well, if you believe the game begins at 80 that is. It's easy to become complacent when you've been 80 for a while, even if you're not at the cutting edge of end-game stuff, if you can run a HC in 15 minutes, your patience can on ocassion be a bit short with those who can't. Imagine bumping into a complete noob then. In your class and fannying around with a mix of gear including some very odd choices. How do you react? Are you tolerant? Do you offer some sage advice, do you say some derogatory comments about 'noobs' or do you just ignore it?



I was forced to ask this question myself this week when a newly dinged 80 whispered me at the Argent Tournament asking how he could get the aspirants seals. I was in a good mood, so I offered to help him. I talked him through how to get the seals and then what he would need to do next. He said he was after some gear for his DK and he knew about the T9 set. I asked if he'd been running heroics and he said he'd levelled entirely through questing. This knocked me back a bit. I'm not a huge dungeon runner myself, but I was shocked that he'd done none. Not. One. Nada. A closer inspection of his gear revealed this to be more apparent. I made a few recommendations of websites to read up on and suggested he ran some dungeons for experience before heading on my way. He thanked me and asked to add me to his friends list.

It took me all of 10 minutes to pass on some help and advice. Now I'm known for being a bit patronising so I do have to be careful when I dispense the 'advice', even so, most people I've encountered seem grateful as opposed to annoyed.

So I've decided to do this a little more often and try to remember those people who helped me out when I was just starting out. This saturday I'm hoping to take a bunch of guild noobs through Arachnid in Naxx, just to give them some experience and I'm wondering how the world of Azeroth would change if more people dropped the complacent attitude and helped a noob every once in a while.

Blog Roll Updates

I've been a quiet this week and missed posting at all, which is bad. But I've been otherwise engaged I'm afraid. Basically I've spent about 4 hours developing my lists on Twitter and beefing up the blogroll links. You should check them out, there's a heap of helpful stuff there, I promise.

I'll be back with more Death Knightedness soon.

Unite! For The Horde! For The Alliance!

Inspired by a conversation involving lovely Mortigan, and his blog post here, Deme has been wondering what would happen if the bosses did indeed attack Dalaran.

As an Alliance Death Knight, Deme is in an unusual position in that she maintains friendships with the Horde too. Due to this, she is very keen on the idea of X faction chat, and a big boss fight in Dalaran would surely be the ideal time to instigate something so awesome! Imagine all those orcs, trolls, gnomes and night elves fighting side by side to rid Dalaran of a greater evil and talking about tactics and so on whilst doing it. With Icecrown just round the corner, there will be a few more key players in Northrend soon and from a lore perspective it could see the Windrunner sisters re-united. Sylvanas and Vereesa fighting side by side to protect Dalaran from a big bad worse than The Lich King - side note - Deme can't talk about Arthas too much because she held a flame for him and doesn't understand why he got together with that dumb blonde.

Of course, you could also cast this X faction chat and united battle front onto the possibility of a world event for the arrival of Cataclysm and Deathwing swooping to smack down Alexstraza and the other dragon flights whilst the horde and alliance defend Dalaran against his new breed of dragon.

Deme thinks all these possibilities are wonderful. Hurry up Blizzard!