DK Changes Incoming

Kenzi September 17 2008 10:54 am 3 Comments

Ghostcrawler posted a massive list of Death Knight changes that will hit the next beta build. I’d like to think that Jayde’s awesome feedback has been a cornerstone for the dev’s insight on the changes needed. Here they are:

Ghostcrawler
DPS changes

– Death Coil, Frost Strike, Death and Decay damage increased.
– Strikes that scale with diseases changed so that the weapon damage, not just the flat damage, scales with the disease.
– Double rune abilities damage increased: Obliterate, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike, Death Strike.
– Unholy Blight no longer causes Blood Plague, but had its cooldown removed.
– Several attack power coefficients increased.
– Bloody Strikes and Scent of Blood swapped places.
– Bladed Armor now turns armor into Strength (which then is turned into Parry).
– Master of Ghouls’ Ghoul now lasts until killed or similarly dismissed.
– Ravenous Dead no longer affects Ghoul duration, but grants your rotting little buddy 60% more of your Str and Sta. (Stam goes from 30% of yours to ~50% of yours. Strength goes from 100% to 160%.)

Tanking changes

– Frost Presence now grants 10% total health in addition to its current bonuses.
– Blood Gorged, Rage of Rivendare and Tundra Stalker all grant 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.
– Veteran of the Third War increased to 6/6/6 Str / Sta / Exp to match warriors.
– Will of the Necropolis no longer grants expertise and now lowers Anti-Magic Shell cooldown.
– Pestilence has no target limit. (It still has a radius limit.) Pesilence glyph now increases area.
– Death and Decay no longer has a cower component, but a glyph can add that back.
– Frigid Dreadplate now has a 100% chance for 2/4/6% miss but only on the DK.

Rewards for the selfless buffer

– Abom’s Might now grants 2% Strength at all times.
– Improved Icy Talons now grants 2% haste at all times.
– Ebon Plaguebringer now grants 3% crit at all times.

Runeforge changes

– Lichbane now does 2% weapon damage as Fire, and double damage to undead.
– Swordbreaking and Swordshattering add disarm duration reduction.
– Spellbreaking and Spellshattering add silence duration reduction.
– Cinderglacier reduced to 2 charges.

No doubt many awesome small tweaks I am forgetting.

GC also posted about DK tanking:

Ghostcrawler
I don’t think the parry speed up should be a major factor in 5-player instances. It may come into play in some raid encounters, but without crushing blows you shouldn’t hit too many big number in a row even in those cases.

Now it is possible that DK mitigation is just too low. It isn’t our intent that you go put together an awesome tanking set while leveling up to do Nexus and Halls of Stone. We are tuning those instances so that you don’t need them, but also realize that a lot of people who are running them now are doing so in Sunwell gear and are basing their experiences on that.

We recently made some changes to improve DK tankining.

Thanks for the feedback.

Tanking weapons was also posted about, seems 2 Hand tanking is the status quo:

Ghostcrawler
Our intent is for you to tank with two-handed dps weapons.

There is a mentality that says tanks should ignore dps and threat and just focus on mitigation. But bosses do have enrage timers. You can find some really smart warrior theorycrafters out there who say you should go for threat on your weapon and mitigation on your armor.

We don’t to itemize DK two-handed tanking weapons for the reasons you mention. I have posted on the druid boards several times that I would love to get away from Feral Attack Power staves too.

Because we want dual-wielding to be viable for DKs, we aren’t going to specifically prohibit you from tanking with two tanking swords. You will have to stack expertise to make up for boss parry attacks, and hit of course, which might mean you lose enough stats right there. I don’t honestly know without doing the math.

Now if we find that all DKs dual-wield to tank, we’ll do something about it, such as make the parry rune enchants only work on two-handers to compensate for the lack of mitigation on two-handed weapons. That’s not meant to be a threat. We just don’t want every DK tank to DW (or every DK dps).

The idea to add training dummies was also mentioned and Valnoth seemed to like the idea (me too!):

Valnoth
That’s a good idea, Jory. I’ll add some tonight.

You’ll be able to get your “soloing Onyxia e-peen” on soon as it was announced that the attunement will be released:

Valnoth
The attunement requirements for Onyxia’s Lair have been lifted. The Alliance quests had to be removed due to King Wrynn’s return. As I said in the quest forum, we’ll try and come back to this one and adjust the questline to work with the current timeline. That won’t happen for launch.

Spread the DK: