Death Knight Changes Coming (Posted 12/02)

[Air]

Main reason why blood spec tanks will never MT is the fact that you cant rely on self heals.  From what ive seen so far tanking as a death knight, is that I don't take alot of damage.  But when I do, its sudden, and im down to half hp.  Blood is good at single target threat but horrible at aoe threat.  Unholy is much better at aoe threat. While, frost is decent at aoe threat, but not great.

Frost is better at tanking because of some of the talents that decrease amount of damage being done to you.  It also allows poorly geared tanks to tank harder stuff much easier.  Unholy becomes better when the dk's gear gets much better.  Fully naxx 10 geared is where it really pulls out i guess.

[Trismus]

I wouldn't expect blood to rely on self-heals to tank, however it can certainly increase efficiency.


I guess I am confused, because the originally stated purpose (last I checked, months ago) seemed to be that Blood would be PvP, Frost PvE tank, and Unholy PvE DPS.


I also feel that there is a significant amount of fine-tuning to be done, mainly due to the fact that Frost and Unholy are far, far better for PvP then Blood is, and blood doesn't seem to have a purpose in PvE either. As such, I feel that blizz will change this. Perhaps I'm wrong.



-Tris

[Donnelly]

I'd like to just give my two cents on the whole death knight/tanking issue...
As Trismus said, Blizz originally had stated each tree would have a defined role. Blizz dropped this idea 6-8 months ago and has spent many many posts on the beta/regular forums trying to take those statements back. They're intention is for all 3 trees to be viable tanks/dps/pvp. Of course in the world of min/max, 1 tree will always be slightly better but they'd like to keep that "slightly" as slight as possible.
I know I'm only level 74 (almost 75!!) with my death knight but I have tanked every northrend instance from uthgarde keep to drak'tharon as blood spec. I have tanking gear but no tanking talent points. To say that blood is "horrible" at aoe tanking isn't fair. I've yet to use a single form of crowd control in any of those instances and never had a problem holding threat on all targets at the same time. I leveled from 55-70 as unholy and was pretty much 100% unholy in beta and yes, unholy AoE threat is better than blood, but blood is more than adequate in AoE threat.
As far as dps goes, my single target dps is pretty decent but AoE dps is lacking. It sounds like Blizz is looking into fixing that though, which would be wonderful.
In my oppinion, all 3 trees are great fun to play and can handle any role you throw at them. Hopefully these tweaks blizzard has in mind will put the trees on even more even footing.

[Rocknlock]

  Frost should really be the only tank spec. The talents for increased armor, parry rating, hit chance and to reduce a mobs chance to hit seem perfect for tanking and making it much easier on the healers. I tried blood spec the other day dps-wise on target dummies. I may not have gotten a good rotation down or something, but it was horrible. Dancing rune weapon is the only thing that made it appealing to me and to get the most out of it, you need a full rp bar. With unholy I can have blight going a 60 rp and it lasts a good while, and theres no cd on it like DRW so I can refresh it whenever I want.  Also I can have the gargoyle going at the same time, which I think scales with attack power. Right now for me I think he hits for avg 1700 per hit and has crit for over 3k. Only problem is when the 10 secs are up and he starts to feed off your rp to keep going, it can screw up your rotation a little if you're needing a filler ability like death coil or something.  

[fiere redfern]

My DK's been blood spec since she walked out of the Plaguelands (though I recently respec'd frost to try out tanking), and though she's only 60, I feel I've been able to get a good rotation down. I've two main rotations, one for multiple mobs and one for single mobs:

Multiple: Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike (though that's been replaced with Heart Strike since I spec'd for it), Pestilence, then Death Strike and Death Coil until the BS/HS rune is up and I can either Blood Boil or hit it again. IT and PS again when their cds are up (generally happens as the DoT is ticking down to 1, anyway), and then repeat the rotation as needed.

Single: Same as above, without Pest. I also try to be a little more attentive to silencing the mob, if needed, with either Strangulate or Mind Freeze.

Granted this may change in the future as I level and gain new abilities, but that's about the gist of it now. Gets me ~400-500 dps at 60.

[Air]

For blood you would do a 2/4 rotation.  IT>PS>2x HS (heart strike) > obliterate > death coil until RP is gone.  IT>PS>4x HS > obliterate > death coil until RP is gone.  Reason for this rotation, is your converting frost and unholy runes to death runes, to use for more heart strikes.  Death rune mastery is needed to pull this off for blood.

You can aoe tank with blood spec, but when comparing to the other two specs, they are better at it than blood.  Unholy has talents make it the better one at aoe.  Talents like Morbidity, Desecration, Wandering Plague, and Unholy blight.

All three specs are capable of tanking/dps, but each one has there strengths and weaknesses.  Blood has talents that make it better at single target mobs, making it better at killing bosses.  While Unholy would be good on trash mobs, and good on bosses.  Unholy is beneficial on bosses because of Ebon Plaguebringer.  I kinda think frost is in the middle of both, decent at single and aoe targets, but not superior.  And rotation plays a big part in maintaining decent dps.

[Trismus]

With frost I've actually be managing about 500 dps on a single target... at level 61. Plus, the added bonus of the 51-point talent and all the AoE abilities allow me to do fairly well in pvp- at least for now while people are still sorting out what specs to use.

According to omen, my threat/second is about 25% higher with frost then any other spec, and I have better mitigation. However, if this changes with gear I might consider unholy. I just wish blizz had defined the roles better.



-Tris

[Arcdelad]

If it applies at all to threat, I know that there is only one person in the game right now that makes me struggle with holding aggro, and thats Rock's DK with his frost aura on...i know exactly when he leaves it on accidentally becuase its a battle to stay above him on threat...

[Rocknlock]

 

yeah frost presence increases threat, armor and health heh. I have talented reduced threat  while in blood or unholy presence though which helps very much.

[Air]

[blizzard]We have talked about making some of these changes and wanted to provide more details. You should be able to try these out yourselves on the PTR before they go live.

Our reason for most of these changes should be obvious, but some common themes are:

    * Making tanking still rely on cooldowns, but rely on them a little less.
    * Make Blood a more attractive spec, and particularly for tanking.
    * Chill out some of the defensive capabilities all DKs have in PvP.
    * Avoid having to use Death and Decay as an out-of-combat runic power generator.


General

    * All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
    * New runeforge rune -- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
    * Many death knight glyphs have been changed. In many cases the negative consequences were removed.
    * New death knight sigils are now available, primarily from vendors, including a tanking-oriented sigil.


Blood

    * Rune Strike -- damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
    * The healing of Blood Aura, Blood Presence and Death Pact has been doubled.
    * Heart Strike â€" we overhauled this ability. It no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets like a cleave. It still hits for more than Blood Strike, but you can still use Blood Strike if e.g. you don’t want to break CC.
    * Bloody Strikes â€" the bonus damage from Pestilence has been moved here to help Blood AE slightly.
    * Vampiric Blood -- in addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
    * Will of the Necropolis -- now reduces the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded,
    * Dancing Rune Weapon â€" cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.


Frost

    * Icebound Fortitude â€" now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but it can go higher). The stun immunity is intended to be its primary role in PvP.
    * Frost Presence -- bonus armor increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%. We wanted to reduce the effectiveness of cooldowns but bring up base mitigation to reduce damage spikiness.
    * Horn of Winter -- now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
    * Hungering Cold â€" cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.


Unholy

    * Anti-Magic Shell -- cooldown lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
    * Bone Shield -- mitigation reduced from 40% to 20%.
    * Corpse Explosion -- damage increased substantially, added 5 sec cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
    * Night of the Dead -- now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
    * Outbreak â€" this talent no longer receive bonus damage from Pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
    * Pestilence -- no longer has a 10 sec cooldown.
    * Raise Dead -- now split into two spells: Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member (at no reagent cost).
    * Shadow of Death -- duration reduced from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
    * Unholy Blight â€" cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.

[/blizzard]

This is pretty big for DK tanks.  Helps with our base mitigation but does nerf IBF and bone shield. 

The new rune enchant...WOW.  That's 25 defense, not defense rating.  That equals about 122.75 defense rating and almost 3% dodge/parry and 2% stamina.  This pretty much makes it so I don't have to gem or enchant for defense at all anymore.  Instead gem for dodge/parry and stamina.  Agility gems may even be useful since armor gonna play an even bigger role for us now.