Blizz released their DK preview for Cataclysm yesterday and there are some pretty interesting changes. It’s still far to early to make any conclusions about the class and reactions have been both good and bad. We already know they are making blood the “tank” tree, but they gave some properties of the frost and unholy trees that will be pretty interesting.

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

They also released the plans behind the new rune system. Personally I liked the “always busy” and “tight” rotations of DK’s, but I obviously haven’t tried the new rune system yet so the jury is still out. It should make playability easier and be more forgiving. For players already well skilled in the current rune system, the good news for you is this means on movement fights when you aren’t in range, it will take longer before you are wasting your rune time. So that should be a small cheer.

They also plan to bring back 2h frost which will make some players very excited, I can think of a couple DKi members that are probably doing back flips! So there should be 3 distinctly different playstyles available for dps: 2H Frost, DW Frost, and Unholy. They haven’t mentioned anything about a DW Unholy so we’ll keep an eye out for any hints in the possibility.

They’ve also added 2 new strikes and an “Outbreak” ability. The outbreak ability should help us out a great deal on trash, when stuff dies to quick to put up diseases. It should also help on boss fights where diseases drop off, either due to movement or air phases or however. Our ramp time should be diminished, allowing us to dig right into the damage.

To read the full Blizzard release and discuss the DK future with more members, please head to this post.