3.1 PTR Patch Notes
The 3.1 PTR has finally dropped and below is a current list of DK changes and then further below that will be the rest of the patch notes. You can see all of the class changes over at MMOC.
Here are some of the random highlights:
- Dual spec to cost 1,000 gold.
- You can now queue to battlegrounds from any location. (no more ghetto ports?)
Death Knight Changes
General
- Blood Boil’s damage increased to make up for Pestilence no longer doing damage.
- Blood Boil now does some damage to undiseased targets and extra damage to diseased targets. Its radius has been decreased.
- Blood Plague: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
- Death Pact: This heal cannot be a critical.
- Frost Fever: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
- Pestilence does no damage and has only one rank.
- Plague Strike and Blood Plague no longer remove hots. Plague Strike’s damage increased quite a bit to compensate.
- Raise Ally has a 15 min cooldown to keep it out of Arena.
- Raise Dead: Duration lowered to 60 sec. and cooldown lowered to 3 min. The cooldown on this ability now begins when the pet dies rather than when it is summoned.
- Rune of Cinderglacier now procs per minute instead of a 5% chance.
- Rune of Razorfrost now affects Frost damage done by the DK only, but stacks up to 10%.
Strangulate no longer does damage and has been reduced to 1 rank.
Blood
- Blood Aura: Replaced with Improved Blood Presence. This allows the deathknight to keep the healing from damage done bonus of Blood Presence in any presence, and increases healing received while in Blood Presence.
- Blood-Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
- Bloody Strikes now increases Blood Boil damage instead of Pestilence.
- Bloodworms now heal more.
- Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.
- Scent of Blood will now proc on a dodge, parry or taking damage, and internal cooldown lowered to 10 from 20 sec.
- Sudden Doom now procs a free Death Coil instead of requiring you to push the button. Ranks reduced from 5 to 3.
Frost
- The following talents have moved in the Frost tree: Runic Power Mastery, Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Chilblains, and Endless Winter.
- Black Ice now grants 2/4/6/8/10% Shadow damage in addition to the Frost damage.
- Black Ice: Frost Damage bonus lowered to 4/8/12/16/20%
- Blood of the North is 3 ranks instead of 5 for the same effect.
- Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff (up from 30%). Moved to position currently occupied by Glacier Rot.
- Endless Winter: Moved to position currently occupied by Chillblains.
- Frost Aura: Replaced with Improved Frost Presence. Allows the deathknight to keep the health bonus of Frost Presence in any presence, and decreases magic damage taken while in Frost Presence.
- Glacier Rot: Third rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20. Moved to position currently occupied by Endless Winter.
- Howling Blast: Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree (HB is now at 51, and HC is now at 31). In addition, the damage bonus for targets with Frost Fever is now only 20%.
- Icy Talons – This talent how has a new icon.
- Runic Power Mastery down to 2 ranks.
Unholy
- Blood-caked Blade: Now has a 3 second cooldown on the effect.
- Desecration: This talent now has a 100% chance to be triggered. Additional points in the talent increase the damage bonus and snare magnitude instead of increasing the chance.
- Epidemic: Epidemic now has 3 ranks (adding an additional 3 sec of disease duration).
- Magic Suppression is 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction.
- Master of Ghouls: Now also reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 60 sec.
- Necrosis: Can now only be triggered by main hand attacks.
- New talent: Improved Death Strike. Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20.
- Night of the Dead: Redesigned to grant a flat reduction on cooldown to Raise Dead and Army of the Dead instead of a reduction from using abilities.
- Outbreak bonus for Scourge Strike lowered to 10/20/30%.
- Scourge Strike: Damage increased.
- Unholy Aura: Replaced with Improved Unholy Presence. Allows the Deathknight to keep the movement speed bonus of Unholy Presence in any presence, and increases rune regeneration rate while in Unholy Presence.
- Unholy Blight and Gargoyle have swapped places in the Unholy tree. Gargoyle is the new Unholy 51 talent.
PatchNotesGeneral
- All Ground Mounts may now swim without dismounting the rider. Flying Mounts still may NOT, and will dismount the rider upon entering water.
- Ulduar is now available for limited testing. Please visit the Public Test Realms for more details.
- Players at maximum level will now be able to visit their trainer to pay a one-time fee and access the dual talent specialization feature.
- A new Gear Manager feature has been added. Players will now be able to save gear sets for easy gear switching.
PvP
- Battlegrounds
- Players will now be able to queue for battlegrounds from any location.
- Seaforium Barrels can now be looted while mounted, seen from anywhere in the zone, and found at the Central Graveyard.
- Teleporters can now be used while mounted and be seen from anywhere in the zone
Classes: General
- Hysteria, Tricks of the Trade, Enrage, Wrecking Crew, Death Wish, Arcane Power, Owlkin Frenzy, Beast Within, and Avenging Wrath damage bonuses no longer stack together.
Professions
- Alchemy
- Blackmouth Oil and Fire Oil no longer require a vial.
- Increased the health granted by the Flask of Stoneblood.
- The Mercurial Stone is no longer required as a tool for alchemists. It is instead a green quality bind-on-equip trinket.
- Blacksmithing
- Most of the recipes in the 1-300 skill range of blacksmithing have had their stats updated to be more useful.
- Added a new recipe for the Titansteel Spellblade.
- Titanium Plating now reduces the duration of disarm effects by 50% as well as increasing your block value.
- Cooking
- Grub now sells the Dig Rat Stew recipe to players who completed the quest.
- Prospector Khazgorm, found in Bael Modan in southern Barrens, now sells the recipe for Dig Rat Stew to the Alliance.
- Enchanting
- Added a recipe for enchanting staves with spell power.
- Several recipes in the 250-300 skill range have been rebalanced.
- Jewelcrafting
- Added a new recipe to cut black diamonds.
- Leatherworking
- Shadowskin Gloves and Dusky Boots no longer require Shadowcat Hide to create, but instead require an equal quantity of Shadow Silk. Shadowcat Hides can no longer be obtained from skinning.
Quests
- The fight event for the “Grim(oire) Business” quest at Vim’gol’s Circle in the Blade’s Edge Mountains now only requires one character to stand within a fire circle in order to summon Vim’gol the Vile. However, it still takes five characters, one in each of the fire circles, in order to interrupt Vim’gol the Vile’s Unholy Growth cast.
Dungeons and Raids
- Eye of Eternity
- Malygos will now properly delay before breathing after a Vortex on Heroic difficulty.
- Naxxramas
- The Chains of Kel’Thuzad will no longer reset the raid’s threat.The Portal of Shadows created by Shade of Naxxramas will only persist for a maximum of one minute.
- Players with pets who attempt to use the Obedience Crystals in Naxxramas will have their pets dismissed automatically so they may possess an Understudy.
Related Posts
No related posts.
Wow ouch, there goes dual wield howling blast/IT builds for pvp? Frost viability got the nerf bat. And I thought they wanted more people to spec outta unholy, but it looks like a nice strong burst hitter now, more so than before. Personally I am going blood again as it’s tweaks and synergy, self heal looks to have gone off the charts!
Mhm… seems like dks are getting less usefull in raids, no more auras. Also Frost got nerf like hell, HB 51 points? iew. I also dont understand Master of Ghoul change, its no longer a pet but 60sec less cd, or its still a pet but they added that cd reducer thing too?
Other than that, seems like ill stick with blood tank, frost now seems a bit weaker cause i wont got for howling, 51point in frost is a waste.
DK you say 51 points in frost is a waste – It is with HC at the 51 point but to say its a waste when HB is at that point its not is it?
Your talking shit.
And really who specs the auras anyway? they are all crap for 2 points worth and in their new guise they still look like a waste of 2 points IMHO.
I am pretty unhappy about a lot of these changes. DW spec is going to need some major work. With HB moving all the way to 51 point talent and Gargoyle moving all the way to 51 talent as well. Not to mention BCB/Necrosis changes… All of those are a nerf to dw spec.
so… is BotN -/3 or -/5 cause last i looked on mmo they had it back to -/5 and a 15% increase to frost strike added?
ill prob go a 0/53/18 DW spec… unless BotN is -/3 in that case 0/51/20 DW
DW for PVP is a thing of the past now with this.
I really like the look of the new frost tree though, it will give DKs some serious advantages to speccing up to improved frost presence. To be able to stay in blood presence or unholy presence with the hp active from frost presence? booya, that’s an extra 2.2k hp for me. And along the way, I get an AOE CC, and a talent that increases both my unholy and ice damage? icy touch still being a nice little nuke (pwn!), plague strike with added damage to help out with burst damage (PWN!), and blood boil doing more damage hopefully with BB glyph working the same.
Now the loss of Gargoyle with a shadowfrost spec will hurt, but I have to say it was a little Overpowered. I’d wait until a healer started getting pressured, and that Gargoyle would throw it over the top. I can still decimate healers without it, it would just make it that much easier.
But I think I would gladly trade that with Hungering Cold. HC is just too viable for PVP, and face it guys, DW dks were just doing too much damage. It’s about time they got nerfed.
And you can still spec out of unholy for PVP viability. There are 2k+ rated arena teams with blood DKs now.
I think this will be awesome. I love how unholy presence increases rune regen now. Should be able to pump out some nice burst. I’ll probably be PVPing with improved frost presence and with unholy presence active, but I believe you can have enough points to even get both improved presences, then you can hang out in blood presence for more damage! I don’t have access to any talent calculators on this computer, but I think it’s possible.
Great nerfs !!!!11111
swap hb for hc is just a great way for blizzard to show us that if they design a decent class , they’ll find a way to fuck it up in the first 2 patches.
Black ice changes are ok imho , %damage stays the same but turning 10% into shadow damage is rather nice
Question – runic power mastery going to 2 points means that it’ll only give out +20 more runic power OR 15 per rank ( total of 30 as the 3 rank version ) ?
ALSO i specd to frost aura and i have to say it’s rather nice to have a +80 protection to any magic school , makes me feel warm and fuzzy while tanking .
ALSO #2
RETARDED Pestilence nerf is retarded . WHY ?
I must admit ,i think i’ve used blood boil 2-3 times before i got D&D but hey ,that’s me … i think that (pestilence nerf) along with the hb nerf will really mess up aoe tanking at the start of the fights .
Anyway that’s just my 2c
/rant off
Learn to adapt.
Let’s talk about some of your arguments and questions.
First, I’m pretty sure that 2 pts will give you a total of 30 runic power.
Second, it looks like you’ll still enjoy taking less magic damage. Improved Frost Presence gives you even less magic damage while in Frost Presence.
Third, you might just have to use BB instead of Pestilence for aoe tanking now, especially with BB being buffed. AoE tanking was NEVER an issue for DKs though, we have the best AoE tanking methods. DnD causes plenty of threat, so that if you just use your blood runes for BB on your main dps target, you’ll never lose threat.
Howling Blast as well was never moved to the 51pt talent to make it harder to tank. Tanks should always spec to Frost Strike, since it’s the best way to unload runic power without the threat of the damage being avoided. The new Howling Blast is only 6 points away from this.
The reason Howling Blast was moved was to prevent certain specs from being able to output horrendous amounts of AOE and single target damage. A DK could (and still can until 3.1) spec to Howling Blast in the Frost Tree, then go Unholy the rest of the way, and be able to have a permanent pet with stun abilities and half decent dps, a gargoyle with great dps, howling blasts and icy touches that crit for 4k surprisingly often. Moving gargoyle and HB apart prevents people from getting both, now they have to choose between the two. From a tanking perspective, it changes nothing, the problem with DK tanks has always been single target threat, not aoe threat.
I still think Blizzard did well here. The old spec was just too strong in terms of DPS.
eh good arguments , and i see your point here , still don’t like the pestilence nerf but then again ,i don’t know how much bb got buffed ,
right now the 400 damage it does is crap imho
We’ll see soon enough
Thanks for the creative feedback
WAH WAH WAH, is bitching all people do? i mean seriously blizzard cant appease everyone 100% of the time, stop whining and just adapt to various changes if your a skilled player and know your class then no worries for you if not well QQ more and stop playing WoW
Leave your response!
Recent Blue News
From the DK Wall
Sponsors
Most Commented