8926 DK changes, Blue Posts, and Site News
Here is the list of talent and spell changes via MMO-Champion:
8926 Death Knight Changes
General
Blood
- Pestilence damage reduced across all ranks.
- Blood Boil range increased to 30 yards.
- Bloody Vengeance removed from the talent tree.
Frost
- Icy Touch now reduces ranged attack speed as well.
- Path of Frost changed to – The Death Knight’s freezing aura creates ice beneath him or her feet, allowing him or her and him or her party or raid to walk on water for 10 min. Works while mounted. Any damage will cancel the effect.
- Acclimation (Tier 9) now affects the party and raid.
- Frost Strike (Tier 9) now deals 30% weapon damage and it’s bonus damage reduced.
- Blood of the North (Tier 8 ) now has a 33/66% chance to proc on Blood Strike. (Previously 30/60%)
- Howling Blast (Tier 7) damage reduced. (Check Talent list for details)
- Merciless Combat (Tier 6) now increases damage done by Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Obliterate and Frost Strike by 6/12% when the target is under 35%. (Previously 10/20%)
- Rime (Tier 6) is now 3 ranks and changed to – Increases the critical strike chance of your Icy Touch by 5/10/15% and casting Icy Touch has a 5/10/15% chance to cause your next Howling Blast to consume no runes.
- Frigid Dreadplate (Tier 5) now has a 33/66% chance to proc when you get hit by a melee strike. (Previously 30/60%)
- Killing Machine (Tier 4) – After landing a critical strike from an auto attack, there is a 10/20/30/40/50% chance your next Icy Touch, Howling Blast or Frost Strike will be a critical strike.
- Annihilation (Tier 3) now gives your Obliterate ability a 33/66% chance to not consume a disease. (Previously 30/60%)
- Improved Icy Touch (Tier 1) now affects ranged attacks as well.
Unholy
- Unholy Blight (Tier 11) damage reduced, the effect lasts 14 sec, and it now has a 1 minute cooldown. (Previously no cooldown, and effect lasted 20 sec)
- Desecration (Tier 7) now increases damage you cause, while standing on the desecrated ground, by 5%. The effect lasts 20 sec. (Previously 10%)
- Blood-Caked Blade (Tier 4) changed to – Your auto attacks have a 5/10/15% chance to cause a Blood-Caked Strike, which hits for 20% weapon damage plus 10% for each of your diseases on the target.
- Necrosis (Tier 3) makes your auto-attacks deal an additional 2/4/6/8/10% Shadow damage. (Previously 5/10/15/20/25%)
Boubouille also has a huge list of Naxx and other dungeon loot. Here is some of the DK stuff:
DPS PLATE:
TANK PLATE:
Sigils:
Weapons:
Ghostcrawler also posted today about class balance issue:
GhostcrawlerSorry we could not get this out ahead of time to give you a head’s up.
We have posted in many of the class forums already explaining why you saw so many changes to abilities and numbers this time around. The designers sat down and ran through every spell and talent in the game. We were looking for the following:
– Mechanics that we didn’t think we’d be able to get working right. They might feel off or buggy. For some of these, it was time to change them and move on.
– Talents that were confusing, trying to do too many things or just weird for some reason.
– Talents or abilites that gave too much of one class’ special abilities to another class. This is a tough one. Sometimes an ability feels so useful that we need to spread the love. Other times we fear the classes are just blending too much together if everyone does the same thing.
– Looking for talents or abilities that were under or over budget.
Let me explain that last part in a little more detail. We balance most of the game to a budget. We have an idea for example that a talent point should be worth around a 1% dps increase. For a variety of reasons, it doesn’t always work out that way and there are plenty of examples of talents that violate that goal — it’s not a hard and fast rule. But there were many talents that were doing too much for their cost. Talents that offer so much for their points quickly become mandatory. They may be fun in that you get a lot for your money, but they work against the design goal of being able to build a customized talent tree for your character. They also make spec parity or class balance a lot harder when there are these inflated numbers scattered throughout the talent trees. Some talents were under-budget and were buffed, but to be fair, most were over-budget, which is just the human nature of designers when we’re trying to come up with something cool and exciting.
What this patch was NOT was a comprehensive numbers pass. We didn’t nerf you because your healing, dps or mitigation was too good compared to other classes. We really don’t have enough data yet to make those conclusions (especially in PvP), but we’re getting more and over every day, both internally and from helpful beta testers.
What can you do? Get out there and try out the build. There are probably some cases where we nerfed an ability too far. These changes are not set in stone. The game isn’t done. Please try and be clear and concise in your feedback because that makes it a lot easier for the designers and community managers to quickly read your posts. If you lost an ability that you felt you desperately needed or were really excited about, that’s useful feedback.
We love all of the classes, and ultimately the best outcome from our point of view is for everyone to be excited to start leveling when Lich King goes live. That means giving you mechanics you’re excited about, but it also means not getting destroyed or totally outdone by other classes with talents or spells that are too good.
Hopefully the next patch or two will have more numbers changes to get everyone closer to parity. But I don’t need to remind you that this is a big, complex game, and it’s going to take some time.
Also introduced in this patch are “Bind to Account” or heirloom items here are some blue posts explaining how they work:
TigoleTigole:
You guys have discovered our Heirloom items. These (as you know) are Bound to account, which means you can mail them to any character on the same realm. They also scale with level. So you can mail these to a level one character and it will have appropriate stats (although slightly uber) for about 10 levels and then the item scales in power again, all the way up to how you’re seeing it now.
We’re also going to add some Bind on Account non-scaling items for higher level alts. in the future.
Verimonde:
It’s great to see such a positive reaction to the Heirloom items. Let me elaborate on how these work for everyone.
1) Heirloom items Bind to Account. This means you can mail them between other characters on your account of the same faction.
2) Heirloom items’ stats scale to the level of the person wearing them.
3) Heirlooms’ power is equivalent to a blue item of the characters level.
4) Heirloom armor pieces will transform based on the type of the gear the character is capable of wearing. That is to say Heirlooms that are Plate on a level 80 character will be mail when equipped by a level 1-39 character who can wear plate. Items that are Mail on a level 80 character, such as Herod’s Shoulders, will be equippable by people who can wear Mail armor at level 40.
We wanted to add something to the game for people interested in trying new classes or who just generally love playing alts, and what’s more fun than using an Arcanite Reaper on your level 1 Warrior ;)
We are intending to expand where we use the “Account Bound” flag over time but for now Heirlooms are the only items that work this way. We also intend to expand the types of ways that Heirlooms can be attained but for now they are only purchasable via Emblems of Heroism (the new BoJ) and Stone Keeper’s Shards, which are attained by killing any dungeon boss in Northrend while your faction controls Wintergrasp.
As for enchanting these items, they can only be the recipient of anything that you could put on a level one item.
—
Originally we wanted these to be transferable to any character on any account you own. Unfortunately we were unable to make this happen for Lich King. Ideally I would like to see these transferable to any same server same faction character on any account a player owns. If this becomes possible in the future it is certainly something we will look into. I own five accounts myself so I’m right there with you all.
—
Heirlooms do not cross any boundaries except those that you would expect them to. Plate items become mail pre-40, pail items become leather pre-40. A cloth Heirloom is still a cloth item. Currently the only Heirloom types available are weapons, shoulders, and trinkets, in time we will expand on this.
As far as how they are attained, your point is definitely something that we are aware of and after the system has had more time to solidify itself in game we will consider expanding the number of ways that they can be attained.
The new racial abilities also hit this patch, here are those changes via WotLKWiki:
- Mana Tap (Blood Elf) – Removed. (Now partially integrated into Arcane Torrent)
- Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf) – Now restores 6% of your Mana, 15 Runic Power, or 15 Energy in addition to AoE silence.
- Magic Resistance (Blood Elf) – Now reduces the chance you will be hit by spells by 2% instead of 5 resist to all.
- Hardiness (Orc) – Now reduces duration of Stun effects by 15%.
- The Voodoo Shuffle (Troll) – Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15%. Trolls be flippin’ out mon!
- Berserking (Troll) – Activation cost removed.
- Frost Resistance (Dwarf) – Reduces the chance you will be hit by Frost spells by 2%.
- Mace Specialization (Human and Dwarf) – Racial now added to Dwarves in addition to Humans.
- Quickness (Night Elf) – Now reduces the chance you will be hit by melee and ranged attacks instead of increasing chance to dodge.
- Nature Resistance (Night Elf and Tauren) – Now reduces the chance you will be hit by Nature Spells by 3% (2% for Tauren) instead of providing resistance.
- Perception (Human) – Now a passive ability.
- Human Supremancy (Human) – The dominance of Humanity is evidenced by having one more racial bonus than normal. Actually, make that two counting this one.
- The Human Spirit (Human) – Spirit bonus reduced to 5%.
- Will of the Forsaken (Undead) – 5 second immunity removed.
- Gift of the Naaru (Draenei) – Heals the target of 50 damage over 15 sec. The amount healed is increased based on the caster’s Spell Power or Attack Power, whichever is higher. This ability does not lose casting time from taking damage.
- Shadow Resistance (Undead and Draenei) – Now reduces the chance you will be hit by Shadow spells by 2% (1% for Undead) instead of providing resistance.
Vaneras also posted about some more changes that will be coming in the next build:
VanerasThe next build will feature three significant changes to racials.
The Fall of Humanity:
Removed
A new Human racial will be tested in its place.
Every Man for Himself:
Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character.
This effect shares a cooldown with other similar effects, such as the PvP trinket.
This essentially means that you gain flexibility regarding what to do with your second trinket slot.
Shadowmeld:
“Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect.”
It has a cooldown of 3 minutes, and it can be used in combat. In PvP it will force enemies targeting you to detarget you. It will cause any mobs currently on you to de-aggro, but it does not take you out of combat unless you are the last one on the hate list of any mobs that you were engaged with.
This effect is very similar to what was previously “The Fall of Humanity”.
It should be noted that the 5 extra points of passive stealth value is still there, however it isn’t written in the shadowmeld tooltip. It is now just its own passive effect called “Elusiveness”.
Dont forget, you still have time to win my Beta Key!
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Bloody Vengeance wasn’t actually removed. It was just changed to mirror the changes to Retribution Paladins’ talent.
WHAT!!! they are making shit out of Shadowmeld!!!
oh god….or may I say lets hope all teh NE get mad against blizzard and they will get to make it like it was….
It seems that since the last 3 patches they have continuously reduced the dmg of DK’s. I am not in the beta but the thrill of the new class is what is really keeping me to this game. Is our damage still comparable to warriors and rogues? I dont want to stick arround to level a character that will end up failing in end game. Can anyone in the beta plz describe the damage output since the nerfs. ty
Zinji, in short no.. our DPS on current beta is nowhere near the other dps classes/spec.
however we do apparently scale crazy good once we break 3K attack power (doesnt help my DK whos only 75 though.)
Since the last couple of patches I’ve got weaker and weaker, and currently my prot spec’d paladin kills mobs faster than my dps spec’d blood DK.
Whats really annoying is we dont do “few large hits” that you expect 2handers to do.. instead we do rapid strikes that hit for weak damage but come fast. not really the feel I wanted but im still enjoying the class.
But its beta, there will be balances before it goes live so worry not.. we’ll be fine personally.
i am not ind the beta ider. but i see the dmg redust as well for example i was comperning death and dacy wit blastwave and i must say “sigh” the dmg is no wher near the sam yet… even tho we see DK dmg redust this last 2 paches my gess is Blizz will do somfing about so it ballecs wit the other classes it when it coms out.
Keep ind mind this is beta.
oh yes removing Vengeace is a bad ider. yes it is the sam as paladins but if i am not mistaking arent Dk supose to be a fallen Paladin?!?
Vengeace was one of the main reson for me to play Blood Dk now it seams dum not to pick Unholy:S
WHAT DEH FUCHE?!?! perception as a passive ability makes rogues vs humans worthless. solo raiding for horde has gone strait to hell
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