0. Upcoming Death Knight Changes 12/10/2008 09:51:15 AM PST
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.
1) Rune Strike -- damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
2) All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
3) Anti-Magic Shell -- cooldown lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
4) The healing of Blood Aura, Blood Presence and Death Pact has been doubled.
5) Bone Shield -- mitigation reduced from 40% to 20%.
6) Icebound Fortitude – 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.
7) 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.
8) Corpse Explosion -- damage increased substantially, added 5 sec cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
9) Heart Strike – 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.
10) Horn of Winter -- now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
11) Night of the Dead -- now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
12) Outbreak – this talent no longer receive bonus damage from Pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
13) Bloody Strikes – the bonus damage from Pestilence has been moved here to help Blood AE slightly.
14) Pestilence -- no longer has a 10 sec cooldown.
15) 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).
16) New runeforge rune -- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
17) Shadow of Death -- duration reduced from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
18) Unholy Blight, Dancing Rune Weapon and Hungering Cold – cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
19) Vampiric Blood -- in addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
20) 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,
21) Many death knight glyphs have been changed. In many cases the negative consequences were removed.
22) New death knight sigils are now available, primarily from vendors, including a tanking-oriented sigil.
8. Re: Upcoming Death Knight Changes 12/10/2008 10:00:33 AM PST
Q u o t e: 80% armor bonus?!
Overshot it a little, I think. DKs very well might scale too well.
I thought that at at first too, but they're halving the reduction of Bone Shield (I'm unholy, so I care:) ) by half (20% vs 40%). I like this change; I'm less dependent on blowing a rune for Bone Shield now.
EDIT: Used wrong instance of the word "too". /facepalm
10. Re: Upcoming Death Knight Changes 12/10/2008 10:10:26 AM PST
Q u o t e: 80% armor bonus?!
Overshot it a little, I think. DKs very well might scale too well.
Armor is also subject to Diminishing Returns. That alone will keep the scaling in line.
And I want the new Runeforge *now*. Trying to find pugs that aren't complete train-wrecks, for Pinacle/Occulus/HoL for my last bit of Wyrmrest rep, so I can start tanking Heroics is horrific.
[ Post edited by Syrishu ]
Sorry babe, your lockpicking isn't nearly good enough to get into my box. >_<
Rogues do it from behind. Hunters do it from thirty yards away................With animals. O.o
12. Re: Upcoming Death Knight Changes 12/10/2008 10:12:13 AM PST
Can we get some word on the scaling of defense with Icebound Fortitude. Going from 20% at 400 defense to 35% at 540 makes it ~46 defense rating to gain 1%. Also what is the cap?
Also can we get some changes to the tanking set bonuses to reflect these changes?
I think you've made frost presence too powerful, but I also think you made bone shield too weak so guess that's the trade off.
18. Re: Upcoming Death Knight Changes 12/10/2008 10:16:34 AM PST
Good news for the newest amongst us in the tanking brotherhood. I'm assuming that it's 25 defense rating for the Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle and not 25 defense, but can we get that confirmed? 25 defense would make gearing for defense trivial, which from what I'd been reading wasn't supposed to be the case for plate-garbed tanks.
So I get a Cleave, a Shield Slam, AND a Thunderclap in the Expansion? AND Seal of Vengeance? Niiiiice.