We DKs can again control multiple targets, with a hotfix allowing chains of ice to operate on more than one target. Should help in arenas, and the occasional PvE situation like Faction Champions.

This reverts an accidental nerf to chains which came in 3.3.

Deathknight.info has been the class’ premiere site since the announcement of our hero class. Kenzi registered the domain that night and started blogging.

To pick up some momentum on dk.info blogging, I’m looking for writers to contribute a post a month or more. Preferably people are regulars in our forums, or who already blog elsewhere on the class.

You saw Tiki’s first post and a few others have already stepped up.

We can have a death knight ‘community’ voice this way, and not just one voice.

Let me know if you’re interested. I’ve a forum thread on the topic here.

- Gravity.

3.3 is looking awesome. The new bosses we’ve seen on PTR are looking innovative and challenging (albeit, Blizzard have said they’re not trying to make Icecrown as daunting as Sunwell).

We’ll see Unholy DKs going back to a traditional deep spec, but necrosis has lost its value in that spec. Current EJ theory is seeing either Dark Death or Disease glyphs being top; I personally would prefer to use Disease, and for AOE it’s the winner. Runeforge Gossip wrote how to use disease glyph. He also likes the scourge strike change to having mix of shadow and physical damage.

The changes around levelling alts were a little surprising for me. Hodir enchants being bind on account, for example, and increases in how quickly you gain rep from other groups in Northrend. I suspect Blizzard just bundled some Cataclysm changes into 3.3, which as a whole will make it easier to level new character from L1 all the way to L85.

Racial changes are available now too. Being a new class, mostly I expect DKs to remain on their current races (not like we can really claim to be bored of it), although I have had a question on switching to Night Elf from Human just for tanking.

I’m levelling a new DK now, and picked a Tauren for their awesomeness of size.

The Emblem changes in 3.3 mean we can get some wonderful raid-quality loot from heroic 5-mans, and the new LFG system will make that even easier, and helps old guys like me gear up their new mains.

But do you miss using crowd control in there? 2fps talked about cc. I like having cc, since it creates a bit more complexity for the tank, but am glad it’s not as crazy as in the L60 days.

A new blogger is on the scene too, Hinen writes on dps and whilst a new blog, it’s very active and worth visiting. His post on the Bleeding Hearts addon is relevant if you want to roll the best diseases.

A few addons recently updated or have caught my eye, and some well-written reviews.

But first a quick personal update from me. I’ll be posting on dk.info less often for the remainder of the year, as I’m busy with a move back to Australia. Then to frustrate me, tonight pwnwear is up and down for maintenance whilst my hosting company upgrades my blog’s server, so I thought heck I’ll ramble on here instead.

Tanking:

• Tanktotals updated to 3.22 compatible (my view)
• TankPoints also to 3.22

Raiding:

• Find out which dork has used a train set in your raid, and fine them 50 DKP!
• Mouse-over tooltip showing the average iLevel of their gear, nice for PUG raid leaders

nostockui:

• handy review of the various rune timers for DKs. dk.info runes even gets a mention, woot Futhark
• plus a commentary on a tanking UI setup

Other important ones:

• mik’s scrolling combat text has been updated
• my new unit frame of choice is Shadowed. Customisable very easily, simplicity itself, yet not a weaksauce unit at all. Very powerful tools including debuff filtering so you only see your own on a target.

Addon- management:

• OptionHouse is a great tool to check memory or CPU usage and to disable addons whilst in-game.

A creative new forum signature is now available from wowraid.com. Not the common personal signature with your stamina and pwnage listed, but instead one that highlights your guild’s raid progress and achievements. Clever idea. Some examples.

Csulok, from wowraid, launched this new service just the other day. He’s open to feedback for improvement too, so you can get your guild-signature and then offer up how it could get even more awesome. The instructions to create one are there too. Easy.

This signature is generated when you put yourself onto wowraid’s recruitment site, which I have talked about before. I said then  ”Wowraid has changed guild recruitment like wowhead one-shotted thottbot; it’s a database-driven search.”

So two birds with one stone. Get yourself into what I think is the best guild recruitment tool out there, and give guildies a cool signature showing off what level of raid content you’re up to.

PTR 3.22 for DPS and Tanks bears some good news.

Tanks can now consider unholy and frost as proper equals to blood tanks. Unbreakable Armour being one minute and buffed to +armour again makes it mathematically similar to the damage reduction of bone shield. I expect UA duration to be put to 15s down from current PTR 20 seconds to balance it out, sine Bone Shield is now 3 charges (+1 from glyph) on PTR and Vampiric Blood is 10s (+5s from glyph).

I did some analysis on Unholy tank builds in 3.22 with a simulator to check its TPS, plus dual-wield tanking and more.

2FPS agrees.

DPS DKs can choose scourge strike deep unholy now. Unholy obliterate has been nerfed out of usefulness. The contender spec for unholy dps will look like this. The Elitist Jerks DPS thread for unholy has a great OP.

Otherwise, blood and frost dps aren’t much changed.

PvP: Blood’s loss of an overpowered cleave will possibly influence arena comps, as is having 1 min bone shield a boon for arena. Remember ghoul stun has been nerfed too. The rune strike buff will help frost DW too.

We’ve got a few discussions actively going on the tanking and dps changes in PTR 3.22. I think PvPers will like the bone shield cooldown being reduced to 1 min too. MMO-Champion has done a spell comparison with very promising results.

Ghostcrawler has commented now, read the discussion.

Death Knight
Blood

• Heart Strike now has its total damage increased by 10% for each of your diseases on the target to the primary target, and half that to the secondary target.
• Vampiric Blood now lasts 10 sec. (Down from 20 sec.)
• Subversion now also affects Scourge Strike.

Frost

• Frost Presence now reduces damage taken by 8%. (Up from 5%)
• Threat of Thassarian now also affects Rune Strike.
• Unbreakable Armor now increases your armor by 25% and increasing your Strength by 10% for 20 sec.

Unholy

• Bone Shield cooldown has been lowered from 2 min to 1 min.
• Dirge no longer affects Obliterate.

Tier 9

• Item – Death Knight T9 Tank 4P Bonus – Decreases the cooldown on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Bone Shield abilities by 10 sec. (Down from 20 sec)

Glyphs

• Glyph of Scourge Strike – Your Scourge Strike increases the duration of your Blood Plague and Frost Fever on the target by 3 sec, up to a maximum of 9 additional seconds. (Old – Your Scourge Strike has a 25% chance to cause Blood Plague and Frost Fever.)
• Glyph of Unbreakable Armor – Increases the armor granted by Unbreakable Armor by 20%. (Old – Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 20%.)
• Glyph of Vampiric Blood – Increases the duration of your Vampiric Blood by 5 sec. (Down from 10 sec)

Our very own Splug has gained acclaim for producing a hard-mode General Vezax kill video for TankSpot. Some readers of dk.info might not realise he’s the GM of a top 100 guild, Angry. Splug’s been an active poster at dk.info for a long time, and I’m always grateful for his contributions, and this video at TankSpot takes that to an even broader community. Others might know him from maintankadin and tankspot forums, but to my mind he’s a dk.info man! :)

One of the changes of Cataclysm which I’m most going to enjoy are about the guild system. Guilds themselves will have levels and a talent tree. wow.com posted a photo from Blizzcon which shows it’s a bigger talent tree than I’d have expected. Quite exciting for guild leaders.

Repair-cost reduction is shown in the photo. That will help with guild income/expense management.

Cold Comfort is writing a series on these changes with his overview and part one published already. He provided a link to the gallery of photos from this panel, and you can browse through them to find more clues to what’s coming. I liked the idea of guild achievements, guild heirlooms and finding crafters within your guild.

I think these changes will hugely improve the dynamics of guilds. For example, it will allow smaller, less raiding-oriented guilds to still have some special qualities (like a maxed-out talent tree).

To find a one-stop source of information on Cataclysm, these sites have so far produced mini ‘portals’ on the content. They organise the content sometimes by Blizzcon date, or by information type. Certainly convenient.

• world of raids
• wow.com
• wowraid.com coming soon.