Patch 3.0.8 Build 9438 Death Knight Changes
A new PTR build was pushed last night and and one of the biggest changes was the removal of the Blacksmithed tanking weapons.
GhostcrawlerThe two-handed Blacksmithing tanking weapons are not going to be implemented.
Indeed, we did not want to stick DKs with these weapons forever, nor did we want to start itemizing 2H tanking weapons forever. DKs were designed to tank with 2H dps weapons.
The new sigil and runeforge enchant should help players with low defense.
I’m actually relieved to know that the temptation to pigeon hole myself into a 186 dps weapon just for the added defense or parry is gone. Getting well above the defense cap will still be easy enough. Here are the other DK changes via MMOC:
9438 Death Knight Changes
General
- Gnaw cooldown has been increased from 20 to 30 seconds.
- The Death Knight PvP sets gauntlets have been changed once again, the new bonus is: Whenever you cast Chains of Ice, there is a chance that your Frost Rune will immediately refresh.
Blood
- Will of the Necropolis has been changed – Damage that would take you below 35% health is reduced by 5/10/15%.
Frost
- Killing Machine now gives Your melee attacks a chance to make your next Icy Touch, Howling Blast or Frost Strike a critical strike. (Old – 10/20/30/40/50% from critical strike)
Unholy
- Virulence now reduces the chance that your damage over time diseases can be cured by 10/20/30%. (Old – Affected all spells)
- Necrosis now give your auto attacks an additional 4/8/12/16/20% shadow damage. (Up from 2/4/6/8/10%)
- Summon Gargoyle now persists up to 30 seconds (Down from 1 minute). Damage from Gargoyles has been reduced from 64-86 to 51-69.
- Anti-Magic Zone now lasts up to 10 seconds. (Down from 30 seconds)
 DK Glyph Changes |
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You can see the full patch notes here.
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anybody know what the chance for crit is now on killing machine?
Well i know killing machine is based on a ppm system now.. something like 5ppm
so the tanking weopons… i’m taking it as meaning weopons like the titansteel destroyer??? i just got this a few days ago, what is going to happen, i’ll be able to keep it but nobody else will have one or is this weopon not affected… i’m really not sure….
You know, I just can’t understand you and others releif over not having the “temptation to pigeon hole[ed]” into using a 2-handed tanking weapon.
Horray for fewer options! I’m too stupid to decide for myself so I’m going to let Blizzard do it for me! /sacasm
You know some of us are only a few skill points shy of the defense cap, and the +25 defense rune just seems like overkill at this point. Sure, it will give IBF a little boost, but I think I end up loosing more by droping the 4% parry rune. And don’t even get me started on that damn tanking sigil. It gives less defense rating than the trinket that drops from Loken AND I have to waste emblems to buy it. And you only get the defense on a proc, WTF is the logic behind that mechaninc? Yes, I know, it has a 100% proc and should be easy to keep it up all the time. But if it’s that easy why not just give us the flat increase? And I’m sure going to love pointing out that I have this to every boob who looks me up on the armory and says, “U suck, ur not even def capped!” No that won’t get old really quick. Kind of like noobs who think my armor is low they’re looking at my armory profile which doesn’t show what it is with Frost Presence up.
Bah, I’m bummed about losing the chance to get these weapons.
First, 90 defense would have been nice, on a weapon.
Second, I admit I wanted them for their graphics. I picked the axe at the start, and would have loved to get the sword for its graphic.
The tanking weapon are not a real lost imo, getting def cap for a dk is quite easy even if you dont have a tanking weapon/shield like the other classes.
“Horray for fewer options! I’m too stupid to decide for myself so I’m going to let Blizzard do it for me! /sacasm ”
I don’t follow the sarcasm. If blizzard had implimented these weapons then there would be no option, every tanking DK would have to use them. So yeah, if you’re unhappy with this then I guess you are too stupid and want blizzard to do it for you.
The BS weapons would not have been options, they would have been requirements.
Or you are like some of us that actually enjoyed the thought of not having to swing a marital aid around as our only real option for a pre raid weapon.
Myself I dual wield tank just fine, also I am well above def cap, currently 547, so the 2h tanking weapons arent really that great. Sure, there are alot of people who think dw tanking sucks, but I main tank 25 man naxx, and 10 man naxx just fine. I suppose blizz wants us to use 2h dps weapons for tanking but my dps is higher, as is my threat with a slow main hand tanking weapon and a fast off hand tanking weapon, its also more tanking stats which is a plus.
Anyways before you find yourself suckered into 2h tanking as a dk and struggling to reach cap, do some research on dw tanking with two one hand tanking weapons as unholy. As I said above reaching cap was much easier and threat and dps is much higher.
Hi all
I hope that someone at blizzard is actually gonna read this.
THANK you for not implementing theese weapons. however, in the entire world of warcraft there has always been a supreme spec for every class out there. and a certain way to set that spec up.
I understand that you want to make tanking able in all specs for deathknight`s so ppl are free to choose. but the fact is, that u arent atm.
Make the strikes from death knights based from our weaponS, and not only the weapon in our main hand. and maybe buff the agro up abit in frost pressence. or even make some spells have a “high amount” of threat like all other classes that can tank, have. the fact that we do our threat throu our dmg is great, but then u need us to have the same dmg in dual wielding, or 2hand tanking. atm its impossible to get hit / expertise capped, when u also need to have defense and aviodance. suggestin that u will need around 400 expertise, and 800 hit rating to knock of any misses or parry`s is just outloud impossible as tank. no matter what gear u got acces to.
u have already done some nice improvement of removing CD`s on HB and Pestilence, but DW`s still need more threat. in a realistic manor. having a 1h slow tanking weapon drop in naxx 25 man isnt good enough. make one avialble before4horsemen in naxx 25 man.
Of course you don’t flow Errant, because you believe that somehow if they implemented these weapons Blizzard would hold a gun to your head and force you to use them. Give me break. I came up with some logical reasons as to why I thought this was a poor decision, the lease you could do is come up with something better than, “OMGWTFBBQ! I must switch to BS so I can make these weapons and I will never use anything else ever again because someone on the internets said it was a requirement!” Please, if would actually take these over some of the 200+ DPS 2H weapons in the game just fucking reroll now.
I appreciate the majority of the changes that Blizz is doing for us but in the end why not give us as Death Knights the option as to whether or not we want to “pigeon hole” ourselves into using a weapon of our choice that we would like to tank with? It’s going to take a lot of juggling defense and avoidance to get where we need to be when a lot of us have been gathering the mats for these items ahead of time. I am defense capped but mainly because of gems and enchants… I can’t use gems to get my avoidance up more because of the lack of def on upper level gear after you have all your tanking rep gear. Sure I can use the sigil and the new tanking rune, but I am not going to practically allow myself to be below the def cap on purpose and rely on a sigil to proc my defense before mobs start wailing on me (what if I get stunned and can’t get proc spells up in time?). Neither do I really care to change out every gem that I have implemented in my current gear to put the rune of the stoneskin gargoyle when I am already def capped. The avoidance that the “Swordshattering” rune gives is too good to give up for 2h tanks. Plus, the “Swordshattering” is a sure fire percentage of parry, and relying on gems that cost a ton of gold which I have to swap out to juggle defense and avoidance is not. I understand the viability of dw tanking, but guess what, that’s just not my playstyle. If we are being given so many options of what spec to tank in, Unholy, Frost, Blood, 2h, dw, then why have an option taken away for these new tanking weapons?
Blizzard, please don’t flash us with something that looks awesome that a lot of us would really like to use, such as the “Titansteel Defender,” and then say, “Nope, not for you, we don’t want anyone to get offended”! Bull pucky! I’m offended!
Thanks for dangling these weapons in front of us and then smacking us down and saying, “never mind, this is what’s best for you.”
Better luck next time on the next patch… and please don’t forget to make them BOE… be consistent for crying out loud (e.g. “titansteel destroyer.”
You must be ignorant of high level tanking, Rob Roy. As it stands my death knight pushes 80% avoidance when fully raid buffed. I am completely unhittable when Lichborne is up. Adding another 90 defense on my weapon in addition to the new libram is just plain overkill, unbalanced and broken. And I would be an idiot to not use a 90 defense weapon… there is nothing, no matter the DPS, which can compare. DPS on a weapon just doesn’t matter because threat is trivial at this time. The only upgrade would be a higher defense weapon.
There is no option in this, unless deliberately gimping yourself is an option to you.
Oh, and I already am a blacksmith. So I don’t care about the profession requirement. Just the fact that that weapon would surpass every single weapon in the game currently, and any added until they added one with even more defense. If you think going from 186 to 200 dps on a weapon is game changing, you’re wrong. As I said, threat is trivial atm.
It really isn’t that hard to hit the defense cap without a tanking weapon. Also, Rune of Swordshattering grants more than enough avoidance to warrant gemming for Defense primarily.
Keep in mind that if you DO pick up Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, you may drop 4% parry, but you trade it off for about 1% Dodge/Parry/Miss (3% total).
Any tank will tell you that Miss is fantastic (since it works while you are CCed or not facing an enemy), not to mention that you can gain much more Dodge before you start feeling diminishing returns.
Plus the stamina? What a nice little addition that is! With 30k life, that’s 660hp in Frost Presence from a Runeforge weapon enchant, and that’s before you take into account talents.
I was just as skeptical as you guys… but crunch the numbers and see for yourself! With the way it will rebuff Icebound Fortitude to 40%+ mitigation, it might be worthwhile to slap on without changing any gems.
They fucked death knight pvp spec
Wow Errant, the way you contradict yourself is impressive. In one sentence you call the 90 defense overkill and in the next you say you would be an idiot not to use it. Oh and if threat is trivial for DK tanking why is Blizzard raising the amount of threat Rune Strike generates? While I admit I haven’t had much troube with threat I do hear a whole lot of complaining from my friends when they PUG with a DK tank outside of our guild. So I would hardly say threat is trivial for everyone. And what’s this new libram you’re talking about? Ohhhh…. I get it now! You’re not even playing a death knight, you think you’re still playing a paladin. Sorry man, this is DEATHKNIGHT.info, not PALADIN.info. LOL!
Rob Roy, I do want to correct you on one point: Rune Strike.
The buff to Rune Strike threat is to compensate for the nerf to Rune Strike damage. That’s all.
Killing Machine, it’s tool-tip says the same thing for 1-5.. What’s the benefit per rank? I assume higher percent chance? At what % rate?
Its overkill in that its excessive. We do not need it to tank. However, we would be stupid not to use it. Kind of like you, “LOL!”
And yeah, I played a prot pally before WLK. Sigil, Libram, what ever. You know what I was talking about, you just wanted to look like an idiot I guess.
So ad hominems aside Errant, please explain to me how 2H tanking weapons are OP and excessive and Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle isn’t. I just feel that everyone seems to have this all backwards in that the Rune is OP and adding 2H tanking weapons with moderate tanking stats would be more ideal. Blizzard says they don’t want to itemize for DK tanks, this just smacks of laziness to me. It’s almost the same kind of situation Druids are going through right now, the only difference seems to be is that the Druid community is aware of Blizzard’s watered down “one size fits all” gear strategy and the DK community is not.
Errant, link your DK, I want to see this 80% avoidance.
Glad you can recognize ad hominem when its directed at you. I just thought I’d return the favor.
Threat is trivial to any good tank. Your guild mates are probably grouping with bad tanks. It happens a lot. The official forums are full of QQ about them. A 2H’er with 200+ dps isn’t going to save them if they couldn’t hold aggro before.
The rune is a net loss of 1% avoidance compared to swordshattering. The weapon is a net gain of avoidance from any other weapon in the entire game. The next best thing would be Inevitable Defeat, which has about 1% less avoidance and less stamina.
Your job as a tank is to mitigate as much damage as possible while holding threat. Holding threat is a non issue atm. So every single tank with half a brain, from the fresh level 80s to the full 25man geared tanks, would use that weapon. Even a Betrayer of Humanity, the highest level weapon in the game atm, would be passed up for the titansteel defender. -That- is why it is OP.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightbringer&n=Errant
Check it later tonight when I’m tank spec’d and in tank gear.
I picked up Inevitable Defeat last night and I love it. I got 7200 howling blast crits:) Talk about huge tps!
Boy, it sure is easy to get you wound up. The official forums must make you literally explode in a fit rage and anger. I guess I need to be more clear about my argument because you’re not quite grasping it. Fuck the Titansteel Destroyer and Defender, I could care less about the specific stats on those. Hell, they could have made something with half or even a quarter as much defense and parry, there are certainly one handed swords that have those kinds of stats on them. The point being is that Blizzard will now NEVER make 2H swords with tanking stats on them at all, because by their own admission it’s too much work and they don’t feel like it. I call bullshit on this because if they don’t want to itemize 2H tanking weapons then they should just remove every 1H sword in the game with tanking stats on it.
No matter how much people want to deny it, there is some difficulty in getting to 540 defense when you hit 80. I had this problem when I hit 80 and I was a blacksmith who made all of the blue tanking gear I could in addition to the extra gem slots with +16 defense gems. I didn’t quite make it there until I hit revered with Argent Crusade, Wyrmrest Accord and honored with the Sons of Hodir. The only way I was able to quickly power through those factions was by running heroics, WHICH I COULD NOT TANK. So this of course required that I make another DPS set of armor and put off my tanking talent spec for awhile. Mind you that this entire time I didn’t need a whole lot defense to bridge the gap, but I was always coming up just a little short. And I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one having this problem. One solution would have been to for me to use two of the 1H tanking swords I picked up along the way, but for whatever reason my DPS tanked with those weapons and threat was a problem. And that’s nothing to say of the whole parry gib issue with DW tanking.
Now I give credit to Blizzard for recognizing the problem and deciding they needed to do something about it, but I disagree with their solution. They have put a very big band aid on a small problem. The +25 defense skill is way overkill, and what we’re going to end up with are a bunch of newly 80 DKs wearing greens and trying to tank heroics. This isn’t going to help the bad image DK tanking has right now. A more elegant solution would have been to add some 2H tanking weapons with a moderate amount of defense on them; not a shit ton like the Defender, but something with an equivalent amount of defense that you would find on a 1H tanking sword of the same level. Or if they really wanted to go down the whole rune forging route of fixing the problem they could have added a small amount of defense to the Swordshattering rune and leave out the + stamina. I have as much stamina as our equally geared prot warrior and I really don’t think another 2% was necessary either. I don’t really care for that option as much, but it’s better than having another tanking rune all together. But Blizzard decided to take the lazy route and I have a feeling that things are going to get worse before they get better.
In my guild, DK’s don’t have a bad name for tanking, but I have seen it in other guilds. Maybe they just don’t have competent people who know how to manage CD’s. As a matter of fact, I’m always spammed for running Heroics and running raids.
You must have not planned out your DK well for tanking if you had trouble hitting the 540 raid cap, or 535 for heroics. That was never an issue for me with the proper enchants I accidently hit it before I planned to. The biggest goal to shoot for first was Wyrmrest accord since they give you 3 pieces. I personally ran normal raids first and got most of the blues I was after, got capped, and switched to heroics. I was always told I was easy to heal and I ran lots of heroics because of that fact. I never once had to DPS a run.
With that being said, the hard part has been staying capped since a lot of the epics are defense down grades.
You can call it not planning, I call it working with what I had at the time. I did plan on having revered with Wyrmrest by the time I hit 80, but those levels blow by much faster than the rep grind.
But I agree about it being difficult to maintain 540 defense. All of my epic Naxx drops, including T7 pieces, have all been defense downgrades. Right now I’m at 539 defense and there’s no way in hell that I would want to put that damn rune on my weapon and drop the 4% parry I have now when I’m only short 1 skill point.
In my case, I’m sitting at a mix of 200 and 213 item level gear and have 7 16 defense gems, 1 8 defense:12 stam gem, and I’m at 542 defense. Chest/back enchanted with defense.
Hey Rob,
The overall avodiance drop from stonegarg ruenforge is about 1 combined % since the 25 def will give you roughly 1.5 dogde and 1.5 parry, you also get the 2% stam buff which is roughly 600 hp if you have 28k . Stack the sigil and get dodge trinket or hp trinkets you can push almost 50 avoidance unbuffed or 30k hp. Im not sure but somebody also said Ice Bound fort mitigates with more then 35 % with more +def
Yes, it is true that IBF scales with your defense. But is more active mitigation worth sacrificing 1% passive mitigation? I think the answer to that question is situational, but I have a feeling Blizzard would say it isn’t given the fact that they’re nerfing our active mitigation talents (IBF & BS) if favor of raising our passive mitigation through frost presence.
I like the stoneskin rune because I gain some health, and can equip some of my gear with better avoidance that lacks defense. Also, I’ll be able to take out at least some of my +def gems and put avoidance gems there. Gotta love the jc only +27 dodge rating gems, too bad i can only use 3.
My hope is that other dk tanks don’t use this rune to make up for having crap gear, but use it to boost them a bit if they’re only a bit short and stack some extra avoidance more before doing heroics. I do think there are going to be some dk tanks doing heroics in a mix of green and blue gear cause of this rune, which is gonna suck a little giving other dk even more of a bad name. People who know me on my server know i’m a good tank, but other people you have probably a 50/50 shot on whether they want a dk tank or not just cause there are a lot of idiot dk that think they can tank just cause they’re wearing plate.
Also, I don’t think its that hard to get defense capped even using a 2h. Just run regular instances for a bit at 80 and get your wyrmrest rep up. By the time my Seal of the Pantheon dropped I was revered with both wyrmrest and argent crusade and was hitting the mid 540’s for defense (It took like 15 runs for that trinket to drop from Loken).
In case you didn’t understand what I meant (I didn’t say it as clearly as i could have) it was the trinket from loken that put me into the mid 540’s, before that i was just below the defense cap for heroics.
I agree with you Rob ,i like passive mitigation more and there are many instance in the 25 man where ive seen my DK tank just get wrecked by a boss going down to 10% within 5 seconds. However, you can get more passive mitigation with the stonegarg run since it will free up more defense 25 = 125 raiting you could get rid of the seal and equip the 84 dodge trinket and also have the ability to ungem 2-3 +16 defense gems for 3 dodge gems. and you would be back at the same defense per run but you have effectivly increased your passive mitgation by 2 % and gotten 600hp out of it
Yeah Dralgor, everyone who has Seal of the Pantheon says getting their defense up to 540 is easy. I’ve run that instance over a dozen times and it still hasn’t droped for me. I just have really shitty luck I guess.
You know what, that’s actually a really good idea Boreden. I think I’m going to start collecting dodge gems in preperation for the patch.
If you want to stack avoidance, I’d probably go with the 8 dodge, 12 stam gems. It provides a happy medium. Your choice though:).
Forgot to mention it’s 123 defense rating for 25 defense skill.
Rob
I had crap luck too on the seal, I just got my brother (he’s already epicced, i’m jealous, but made it easy to 4man it when we couldn’t find a 3rd dps) to dps and my priest friend to heal and we’d just grab anyone else we could and i farmed it til it dropped. Like i said above, it took about 15 runs. Getting the helm from regular oculus however only took 5 or so runs.
Boreden
I forgot about the dodge trinket, thanks for reminding me about that.
“However, you can get more passive mitigation with the stonegarg run since it will free up more defense 25 = 125 raiting you could get rid of the seal and equip the 84 dodge trinket and also have the ability to ungem 2-3 +16 defense gems for 3 dodge gems. and you would be back at the same defense per run but you have effectivly increased your passive mitgation by 2 % and gotten 600hp out of it”
The trinket is 84 dodge. 3 dodge gems add another 3*14=42. 126 dodge rating gives (before DR I think) about 3.2% dodge. Now that’s a bit less then the 4% that Swordshatter gives. If you want to give up 0.8% avoidance for 2% HP and the use on that trinket though, then go right ahead. I think I personally will (the use gives a decent boost).
your also forgetting the sigil its an additonal 25 defense
correction its only 55 rating which is still very good
I’m not forgetting the sigil, I don’t count anything that i have to rely on to proc (even if it is a 100% proc chance).
It lasts 30 seconds and the ability has a resuse time of 8 seconds im pretty sure nobody will miss 8 ice touches in a row
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