It probably scales down on lower ranks/levels so you can't give a level 1 mage the equivalent of 50 spell damage. Weee speculation! :x

Edit: Beaten on previous page.

I imagine flat healing/damage will be bread and butter. The special effects will be your croissants.

Weeee speculation indeed. I figured they would just do what they did with enchants, requires level 35 or rank 3 spell or higher, whatever. Went looking around thottbot/wowhead, couldn't find anything else. Makes me sad, I kinda wanted to see how they would handle melee abilities too.

I'm going to be a little disappointed if all inscription boils down to is everyone getting the max +damage on their nukes for best min-maxing. I was really hoping for (and still am) more creative/fun stuff. I'd heard the idea of adding chance on spellcast - knockback effect to spells, and that could be really fun for pvp. Hopefully this little tidbit is just a tiny part of what inscription is going to be.

Even if we wind up with a bunch of generic... inscripts(?), hopefully there'll be some not insignificant bonus to using something other than max +damage everywhere for all dps classes. Maybe 3 inscription slots per spell, and a "socket bonus" for doing something like +damage, +range, and -mana cost. Or maybe a boss encounter designed so that you can be out of range of some-such AoE damage with a couple +range inscripts.

Of course, this is all just baseless speculation. I'm fairly confident in Blizzard coming up with something I'll be excited to use, even if it's not what I was thinking it would be.

I doubt they'll ever include a knockback on spells, given how they changed The Unstoppable Force. But who knows, maybe their stance has changed since then.

I was hoping that inscription would allow you to change the visual effects. I'd pay vast amounts to have a fireball that's blue, or an arcane missile that's green, or a frost nova that has a "chains" graphic. Unique characterisations are something we need more of in WoW.

This game needs D&D-style elemental substitution:

'Elemental Substitution (Ice) - Your Fireball spell now deals Frost damage, instead of Fire damage. Spells can have only one inscription.'

Would open up some interesting customization, at least for mages, and could be an interesting solution to immune-type bosses (Hello Hydross and Al'ar).

My guess, too. The choice of the words 'Fireball spells' instead of the singular seems to point to this being a blanket ability change. I.E. you wouldn't be able to have Max rank do more damage, and rank 1 have a stun proc (which would actually be pretty fun, but oh well).

That is really uncreative on Blizzard's part, assuming that is one of the proposed inscriptions. It will essentially become Enchanting 3.0 (whereas Jewelcrafting was 2.0). They need *unique* bonuses, not +dmg for spells; there are already two other profession which do this exact thing. For example, knockbacks (which is what they originally mentioned), temporary immunity to mana drain effects, dispel resistance to sheep, etc.

It is the first one we have seen and this isn't even the '3.0/expansion pre-load patch.' I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet. They're probably just testing the mechanics of it.

I'm pretty sure at blizzcon, there was mention that there would not be vanilla +dmg effects or anything like that, ie that all the effects would be 'utility' of some sort. Ideas may have changed since then, but I'm also guessing this is just testing the code.

Its unrealistic to think they could fill a whole profession with unique bonuses for lvling. Most likely you will see lots of generic stuff throughout that part, and when they mentioned unique inscriptions they though about end-game stuff primarily.

They probably put that inscription spell in there to be datamined, and people who had no idea might see it and decide to roll inscriptor(?) for WotLK.

It's a simple and obvious buff to fireball that anyone can see; rather than something purely cosmetic or situational, or a complex effect that would require a spreadsheet to figure out just how good that certain inscription is.

I'm wondering about the long-term viability of Inscription. It will be the only profession that produces something truly permanent - you inscribe your spell once, it stays forever after, that's it, you don't change your spells like you do your gear. And with 99% of death knights having the profession, I suspect its profitability will be close to zero.

What are you basing this information on? It's certainly not beyond the wit of man for Inscriptions to be consumable in some fashion, whether that's because they're time-limited, or have charges, or depend on other consumables.

[Rune of Charged Pew Pew] - Your next 1000 fireball spells deal 50 extra damage
[Rune of Timed Pew Pew] - For the next 24 hours, your frost bolts have 2% increased crit chance
[Rune that depends on other consumables] - Your Sinister Strike and Backstab abilities now have a 100% chance to apply poisons. Lasts until you re-apply poison to your weapons.

... etc.

I really hope thats not what happens. The last thing I want is another consumable. A perminante effect is probably already going to be a "Get Level 80, congrats, pay me 1000g to inscribe all your max rank spells" tax, as well as a "respec, loose all your spells from your spell book, pay to get them reinscribed" tax. Who knows, maybe Blizzard is thinking ahead and already planning an AQ20 style 10 man which drops new spell ranks once they release teir 8 content, in an attempt to nerf teir 7, or whatever.

I'd say it's not unlikely that Inscription will offer a mix of both temporary and permanent effects. Permanent effects would be the spell inscriptions, while it could offer temporary buffs through scrolls or something similar.

It's kinda funny you say that.

The only reason that is even close seems to be that he was involved in the invasion of the Temple of Karabor, and has a bit of history there. He was involved in the creation of Death Knights, and was pretty heavily involved in the Black Temple, but the Black Temple before Magtheridon was expelled by Illidan. So there are indeed questions as to why he's tolerated being there.

Quest line from SMW aside, because Shadowmoon clan (and some of shadow council probably) joined Illidan forces, and Teron is their leader?

Just did a quick search through, and though there is much about the Deathknight that people talk about, there is none (or very little) about their play style, more specifically the theory behind how they might pull off tanking, and what that means for the existing 3 tank classes.

We know that Blizzard intends for them to be a DPS viable class, as well as a tanking viable class.

This will bring the total number of class that can DPS to 11
The total number of classes that can tank to 4
And keep the total number of healing classes at 4.

Since they only mention 2 options, then I think we can safely assume that their 3 talent trees will include a Tanking tree, a DPS tree, and a support/PVP tree, rather than 3 completely different roles served by each of 3 trees. We know that they will be unable to use shields, and that their spells will use the new inscriptions, but be largely shadow based. Blizzard's renewed focus on allowing all 3 trees to be viable leads me to believe that each tree will indeed be viable, and that leads to some further interesting conclusions, mostly about the tanking perspective.

Their DPS will be fairly high as a tank, probably higher than the other 3 classes currently, but behind every other DPS spec, relying again on threat multipliers rather than sheer DPS, but relying more on DPS than the existing tanks.

Their tanking will most likely be with 2 handed weapons (Staves are least likely, swords, axes, maces are equally possible, perhaps even a new weapon class similar to Scythe?) Which leaves Dodge and Parry as the 2 mitigation/avoidance stats. Comparing them to existing tanks, they will have the drawbacks of a druid in that they will most likely be unable to achieve uncrushable, as well as most likely get more benefit out of their armor than warrior's or paladins, but this may be delivered as better resistance to spell effects, something none of the current tanks does exceptionally well.

Parry will also be most likely of more importance to them than dodge, and even the current poor rating-to-% ratio could easily be adjusted so that they get more benefit from parry rating. There will also most likely be deep protection talent(s) that would give increased parry % based on attack power or spell damage.
Overall, this would lead to fights where the boss facing matters more for a DK than a Druid, but less so for a DK than for a Warrior/Paladin.

Since there is also a fairly obvious push from Blizzard to make any 1 class a viable competitor with another class of the same type in a given role, we know that they will work so that for -most- bosses in WotLK, they will strive to make all 4 tanking classes equally viable options, with different benefits depending on which class is actually chosen.
This is already taking place with more and more bosses that don't crush, but also more and more bosses in which the risk of a parry-hasted swing is the threat of spike damage on the tank. Doing this, they have allowed Druids to be viable tanks where they wouldn't otherwise be, at the same time as introducing a method of spike damage that is risky to all tanks, regardless of class.

Just as Blizzard gave Shield Block and Holy Shield to Warriors/Paladins as the tools to aid them in avoiding the spike damage of crushing blows, Blizzard has been giving all tanks the Expertise needed to help aid them in avoiding the new method of spike damage. And I might note here that each class is getting it approximately how much they need it. Warriors get more than Druids, who get more than Paladins, as Warriors need it more than Druids, who need it more than Paladins.

Changing the method of spike damage and then adding the stats and gear to mitigate/avoid it levels the playing field between the tanking classes, and allows Deathknights to be viable for all non-crushing bosses as well, which I seriously doubt there will be many bosses in WotLK that will be able to crush, if there are any at all.

With 2 handed weapons, their threat will be prone to be spikey and less smooth than faster hitting warriors or spell casting paladins, which can lead to risky/scary starts as well as solid 'you can't catch me' threat leads. I would also expect that Blizzard will count on the Deathknight's own boosted Parry leading to their own parry-hasted swings frequently, to boost their threat overall, which again lends itself to be prone to spikey threat.

Their supplemental spell damage would also probably see an increase in threat generation, however not to the extent of Paladins, as they will have more white damage than Paladins. Their spells, being shadow based, will also not have the ease of bypassing resistances the way Paladin Holy spells do, so their spell-based threat will most likely will not be as steady either, and again, be fairly spikey in nature. Aggro-dropping bosses would be a prefered opponent for them for this reason, that with the proper gear, they could most likely achieve larger spikes in threat on demand (and cooldowns) than the other 3 classes.

This would also suggest that their Taunt options will be much more limited than Warriors and Druids, though still a debuff on the target rather than the Paladin's Buff on the Target's Target. Perhaps not even a "Face me" taunt, but a debuff on the target (or buff on the DK) that boosts the Deathknight's threat generation while the target isn't targeting the Deathknight. Or similar to that, the Target's Target's threat is added to the Deathknight's for the duration of the taunt. Something that isn't currently in use by another class and is unique, but totally in-line with the concept of the class.

Their synergy with Shadow Priests and Warlocks will be undeniable however, as adding a Shadow Priest and a Warlock to their group could easily make their spell threat a significant chunk of their threat overall. Still more single target based however, due to the nature of the Debuffs rather than Buffs.

I could see a limited AoE tanking viablility, allowing more than just Paladin to AoE tank, though I believe that they will leave the title of 'Best' to Paladin in that role, just making the Deathknight more viable of an option than Druids or Warriors.

This all would lead to their primary stats being Stamina, Strength, Attack Power, Dodge, Parry, Expertise, Defense, and Spell Damage to varying degrees, enabling them to get synergy and usability out of both Paladin and Warrior gear, though more of a hybrid between those 2 that will have a niche as well as general viability. This is also perhaps a motivation to start the Deathknights able to quest in Outlands, as they would not have to re-vamp prior gear, and let them start out getting gear that, while not perfect, isn't horrible either.

I can easily see ranged abilities as both spell and physical based, like a shadowbolt with a minor cooldown (to prevent Warlock spam), and throwing their 2 hander for ranged pulling. They will most likely not have an actual weapon in their 'Ranged' slot, but an Inscription based item specific to them.

Their DPS viability will also be fairly heavily melee based, though ranged is an option, albeit more limited. How each player would balance this would most likely be achieved with the 20 points in their support/pvp tree to supplement their primary DPS tree, and much like warriors, probably would not have much in the way of threat reduction, as a soft-cap to it.

All of this is speculation of course, and I expect that many here will have wildly different opinions and speculations, but looking at what we DO know, I believe that these are going to be fairly in-line with the end result. If these are totally off-target with the end result, then a fairly signifiant change of direction from what we do know would be required.

Polearms are already in game.

It's possible to speculate that there will be Melee DPS, Caster DPS, and Tanking trees for the Deathknights.

Imagine if DK tanking were based on how much +damage they had? For instance they might need to periodically raise a shield that would increase in damage (percent?) absorbed with their +damage, and they might hold aggro through spell damage, a la paladin tanking with SoV and Consecration. I'm just pointing out that they could do some very different tactics to achieve the same results, mitigating damage and holding aggro.

I'll hold off on further speculation though.

You touch on it briefly, but I wouldn't be surprised if crushing blow mechanics were changed drastically or removed. It seems that blizzard has recently tested the waters here by releasing many bosses who don't crush.