WotLK Discussion - Talents and abilities. - Page 3

Lamaros · 05/30/08, 4:09 AM

Originally Posted by Lurker

Spells like Dancing Runeblade will probably drain 100% of your Runic Power like Death Coil and last for the duration depending on what you have at cast, rather than continually draining 10 RP every second. Summon Gargoyle, however, does have this behavior on the tooltip, but I don't think there's been any testing on that; not that I've seen. This could be one reason for the supposed large amount of RP gained from strikes. Chillbanes and Dance of the Dead don't affect Death/Blood Strike, so those would remain at 10 RP. If we assume everything has a base of 10 RP, 3/3 Chillbanes or Dance of the Dead would end up giving either 25 or 15, depending if it was +150% or 10*1.5 (could be a tooltip / functionality difference). Crazy may have been referring to talented Plague Strike/Degen only, since Blood/Death Strike have no talents that boost their RP generation.

Either way, since Death Coil is the ability that's likely going to drain RP the most often, there's currently no real difference in damage dealt firing off 50RP Death Coils (298 damage) twice as fast as 100RP Death Coils (595 damage). Hopefully they add some advantages to waiting for 100RP.

I've pretty much gone back to my lawnchair because a lot of conclusions are being held back by a lack of information, so it's just wait-and-see mode--mostly just due to lack of "eyes wide open" testers. Using Heart Strike in a rotation, for instance, since we only have Rank 1 of that skill so far. It could potentially outdo Blood Strike and Death Strike combined in a rotation, meaning 4B/2U would be the prime choice for DPS. (Off the record, another poster quoted a 200 bonus damage per disease, giving you Weapon Damage + 300 + 400 for two diseases. Ouch, but that's not confirmed).

25 is flat out overpowered. With 60 runic power per 10 seconds you'd keep a garg (that uses 10 RP per sec) up for less than 30 seconds (60 after 10, 20 after 20, ~25 seconds it runs out.) With a boost to about 70 (just from plague and degen) then you're above 30. With 80, from frost too, you're looking at 50 seconds. With 100 you could keep it up for a whole fight or longer. Dancing runeblade would be up 100% of the time as would Unholy Blight (except for the fact they have 1min CDs, so they wouldn't), while you could throw down a corpse explosion every 10 sec.

Why would death coil be likely to drain RP most often it would entirely depend on your build? And there is a difference between two small DCs and one large, one GCD. Given some of the squeeze we've already postulated in the 10sec rune CD period it's unlikely you'll waste one unless it's 100% or free.

Heart Strike is a useful move if it consumes your diseases only. Or if you're tanking, perhaps. Or for solo/PvP. Hard to say much about it at this point. However given the cost (2 blood!) and the effect the indications are that it's a burst DPS/finishing move, which indicates the later.

e: Corrected my mistake as pointed out below.

Baern · 05/30/08, 8:28 AM

Originally Posted by Lamaros

All the screenshots I've seen says 50%, which is *1.5.

It's a 3 point talent for 50/100/150%.
25 runic power per ability may well be overpowered, but that's what testing is for.

Lamaros · 05/30/08, 8:58 AM

Originally Posted by Baern

It's a 3 point talent for 50/100/150%.
25 runic power per ability may well be overpowered, but that's what testing is for.

I just looked over stuff and have relaised that I am entirely incorrect and was imagining things. Shows me up for posting at work.

I guess the question now is runic power 10 per ability, rune, or what? Degeneration is the only one of the spells affected by a 150% talent that costs 1 rune and has no cooldown that I can see. So it could be spammed for 150 RP every rotation if it's 10 per ability and +150% of that. More if you have Unholy Rune Mastery.

Lurker · 05/30/08, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by Lamaros

25 is flat out overpowered. With 60 runic power per 10 seconds you'd keep a garg (that uses 10 RP per sec) up for less than 30 seconds (60 after 10, 20 after 20, ~25 seconds it runs out.) With a boost to about 70 (just from plague and degen) then you're above 30. With 80, from frost too, you're looking at 50 seconds. With 100 you could keep it up for a whole fight or longer. Dancing runeblade would be up 100% of the time as would Unholy Blight (except for the fact they have 1min CDs, so they wouldn't), while you could throw down a corpse explosion every 10 sec.

Why would death coil be likely to drain RP most often it would entirely depend on your build? And there is a difference between two small DCs and one large, one GCD. Given some of the squeeze we've already postulated in the 10sec rune CD period it's unlikely you'll waste one unless it's 100% or free.

Heart Strike is a useful move if it consumes your diseases only. Or if you're tanking, perhaps. Or for solo/PvP. Hard to say much about it at this point. However given the cost (2 blood!) and the effect the indications are that it's a burst DPS/finishing move, which indicates the later.

e: Corrected my mistake as pointed out below.

Admittedly, I haven't looked much at Unholy, but what I meant was that when Dancing Runeblade drains 100% of your runic power, that buff duration can't change once you spend the power on it. So 100RP will be 10 seconds, and you can never have a Runeblade last for longer than 10 seconds (the very short cooldown probably an indicator of this). Unholy Blight and Hungering Cold look to be the same way in their wording, with Hungering Cold having a 2 minute cooldown and Blight having 1 minute cooldowns. The Gargoyle has "remains until the summoner runs out of runic power" and has a 5 minute cooldown. Here's a Gargoyle thread: Summon Gargoyle (Screenshot)
It actually drains 10 RP per 2 seconds and someone threw out a ballpark estimate of about 100 DPS at level 55. Since the Drain is > the buff duration, that leads me to believe your Gargoyle can desummon before the 60 second mark, but 60 seconds might be the maximum it can be kept up.

But look at it this way: You're throwing all of your RP to the Gargoyle, which may or may not out-do Deathcoil (100 RP DC at level 55 is around 800 damage, and every 10 seconds puts it at 80 dps), but it's also a deep Unholy talent, which I hope is supposed to out-do a trainable ability you can spam after every RP attack. I'm guessing if you don't have 10 when the buff checks, the Gargoyle is desummoned. It will be tough to pull off, but you can fit a Death Coil and swing the next attack in the time the buff checks for your Runic Power, but if it's not timed perfectly (0.5s error margin), you might lose your Gargoyle.

You are correct about DC taking two GCDs though :P But usually every rotation will have one or two GCD slots (except 6x Death Strike :X ) where they don't do anything because of Runes recharging. Death Coil is pretty much a default action, since even if it's not effective Runic power per GCD, what else are you going to put there on a regular basis? Sudden Death looks like it'll increase the damage of your next Death Coil (after SD is used) by making that one free and giving you more for the next one. I think it has about a 34% chance to proc every rotation (2 Blood strikes), so that'll happen really often, barring internal cooldowns. If the 25 RP per strike pans out (I'm not holding on to it dearly), that'll make Sudden Death a bit redundant, though, save for when you Death Coil and want to burn RP on something else. In the video with the two Tauren Death Knights, you can see the party member's RP move, and it doesn't consistently move 1/4 of the bar's length every strike.

Talgog · 05/30/08, 2:13 PM

I'm trying to figure out who they are intending the Death Knight to be "weak" to, in PvP.

Hunters/kiting rogues: Death Grip.
Melee: Lichborne, Frost Presence w/DPS gear, Bone Armor.
Warriors: Diseases and magic damage, plus the above anti-melee.
Rogues: Above anti-melee, plus Icebound Fortitude (tank armor and immune to stun for 12 seconds).
Druids: Death Grip, Degeneration, Diseases.
Mages/Warlocks: Anti-magic shell, Mind Freeze, Strangulate, Death Grip, Diseases, pets.

So, priests and paladins for fighting the unholy monster, or run away? It looks like Death Knights have something to fight everyone with, and some brutally hard counters for many classes - druids, hunters, rogues, mages (at least warlocks are more difficult to shut down).

Baern · 05/30/08, 4:43 PM

A snared DK would have a hard time keeping in melee range with anyone outside of the initial Death Grip(35 second talented cooldown)/Chains of Ice combo, I think. That said, they do have a number of ranged abilities to compensate.

The rune cooldown will be a limiting factor too. Having a load of abilities is great, but if for example you have 2 Frost Runes available, you will effectively be placing a 10 second cooldown on a number of abilities by using others (Icy Touch and Chains of Ice are 2 Frost Runes, Mind Freeze is 1(?), Bone Armor is one frost one unholy). Add in extra Frost runes and you'll limit your dps. It's going to be a balancing act, I think the complexities of the class are what a lot of people are finding appealing.

A couple of bad choices and it seems you could be coming back as a ghoul pretty quick. That said, someone know knows the class inside out could potentially be very powerful. It certainly looks like not sucking will be very important.

osmigos · 05/30/08, 5:07 PM

You have to remember that every other class will be getting new abilities also with WotLK. I haven't looked much into it, but I have seen that Warlocks are going to be able to spec to do Chaos damage which, as far as I understand, is totally unpreventable and will get through spells like Anti-magic shield easily. I'm sure there's going to be a lot more also.
I have to agree that it does seem they will be mostly vulnerable to the holy classes though. Poping lichborne with a paladin on the oposing team will open the DK up to being feared and taking large insta-cast damage. The DK's diseases are also highly vulnerable to cleanse, since no other class really uses them, so it would be very easy to remove for a paladin.

ge-off · 05/30/08, 6:37 PM

Originally Posted by osmigos

Poping lichborne with a paladin on the oposing team will open the DK up to being feared and taking large insta-cast damage. The DK's diseases are also highly vulnerable to cleanse, since no other class really uses them, so it would be very easy to remove for a paladin.

This is assuming, of course, that the actual DK class becomes an undead/demon version of whatever race being played. Not sure if I missed this somewhere in the DK notes...anyone know for sure?

osmigos · 05/30/08, 9:09 PM

Originally Posted by ge-off

This is assuming, of course, that the actual DK class becomes an undead/demon version of whatever race being played. Not sure if I missed this somewhere in the DK notes...anyone know for sure?

The tooltip for lichborne says 'Draw upon unholy energy to become undead for 30 seconds...'. I can only assume, but it really sounds like that's what will happen.

Apaine · 05/30/08, 11:14 PM

To answer the people saying about the gear itemization, it looks like blood will be using same gear as dps warriors / ret pallies, as for frost and unholy, they will probably be using pally tanking gear for tanking as it has +spell damage and +def on it.

Couple of abilities of DK worry me:

1. There is no spell damage plate that isn't for pallies prot tree specifically (large +spell damage w/o +def). It may hurt frost/unholy trees in pvp.

2. certain spells break completely entire classes in pvp. For example talent:

# Improved Icebound Fortitude - "Increases the duration of your Icebound Fortitude. In addition your Icebound Fortitude will dispel any damage over time effects and replace them with heal over time effects."

Basically turns DK immune to all dots (worse - those dots heal him). So an affliction lock spending good 6-8 seconds dotting him up for upwards of 8000 damage over 20 seconds will find all that damage turned into healing.

And:

# Degeneration (Rank 3, Level 76) - Instantly attack the target, dealing 60% weapon damage and inflicting a disease dealing 91/154/182 damage over 15 sec. This disease will corrupt an existing heal over time spell, removing it and dramatically increasing the damage dealt. While afflicted by this disease, other heal over time effects on the target will have no effect.

Can I think of dead resto druids here? Yeah - no hots for 15 seconds on target and what is a druid supposed to do? Cast healing touch with a DK meleeing him? And before you say "druids are getting buffs as well", I have to counter, yeah, resto druids are getting MORE hots, get the problem? We are going to have situation similar to a warlock meeting an arms warrior. Nothing he can really do but tank him and die. Well here we'll see situation like DK meeting affliction warlock and laughing in his face as all those talented for dots are useless....

Lamaros · 05/30/08, 11:22 PM

Originally Posted by Apaine

To answer the people saying about the gear itemization, it looks like blood will be using same gear as dps warriors / ret pallies, as for frost and unholy, they will probably be using pally tanking gear for tanking as it has +spell damage and +def on it.

DKs get AP->Spell Damage. We wont be using any +Spell Damage gear.

Couple of abilities of DK worry me:

1. There is no spell damage plate that isn't for pallies prot tree specifically (large +spell damage w/o +def). It may hurt frost/unholy trees in pvp.

2. certain spells break completely entire classes in pvp. For example talent:

# Improved Icebound Fortitude - "Increases the duration of your Icebound Fortitude. In addition your Icebound Fortitude will dispel any damage over time effects and replace them with heal over time effects."

Basically turns DK immune to all dots (worse - those dots heal him). So an affliction lock spending good 6-8 seconds dotting him up for upwards of 8000 damage over 20 seconds will find all that damage turned into healing.

1 is not an issue.
2# is not an ability that exists as far as anyone knows. It's a dodgy combo of Ice Fort and Degeneration.

And:

# Degeneration (Rank 3, Level 76) - Instantly attack the target, dealing 60% weapon damage and inflicting a disease dealing 91/154/182 damage over 15 sec. This disease will corrupt an existing heal over time spell, removing it and dramatically increasing the damage dealt. While afflicted by this disease, other heal over time effects on the target will have no effect.

Can I think of dead resto druids here? Yeah - no hots for 15 seconds on target and what is a druid supposed to do? Cast healing touch with a DK meleeing him? And before you say "druids are getting buffs as well", I have to counter, yeah, resto druids are getting MORE hots, get the problem? We are going to have situation similar to a warlock meeting an arms warrior. Nothing he can really do but tank him and die. Well here we'll see situation like DK meeting affliction warlock and laughing in his face as all those talented for dots are useless....

Likely the degen disease will be able to be cleansed, then you can HoT.

Apaine · 05/30/08, 11:58 PM

Druids can't cleanse diseases :P Only pallies / priests and shamans do, and out of the three, only priests have one HoT.

Yeah :P this won't be an issue in PvE.. but PvP druids won't be viable healers in 2s with this (unless with a shammy dps :P)

But it's alpha.. who knows what else they change....

Feorthas · 05/31/08, 12:16 AM

Originally Posted by Apaine

Druids can't cleanse diseases :P Only pallies / priests and shamans do, and out of the three, only priests have one HoT.

Yep. At the very least, Death Knights are the fix for Druid Arena healing 'dominance'; Druids are completely denied the ability to heal at least one of their teammates, reducing their team's effective healer count by one for the duration. This will be very, very big for 2v2, hit and miss for 3v3 (still good though), and not so horrible for 5v5.

As far DK counters go, my bets would vary widely depending on what tree ends up being the most pvp viable but I'm going to pick 'classes with spell interrupts' for 500, Alex (reason being that they probably wont be able to CATCH someone if they can't taunt-pull them or slow them. Warriors & Pallies can either intercept/intervene out of or cleanse most snares); melee teams will probably have a harder time though. Here's hoping to see some things change up in arenas with WotLK!

PSGarak · 05/31/08, 12:44 AM

I think the bloom effect on Lifebloom would still heal through the no-hots-disease.

These abilities, even more so than the talent trees for the other classes, are most absolutely rough drafts. I would expect that they'll eventually put a limit on the number of DoT/HoTs effected by either of those abilities, as well as allowing dispel resistance to provide a bypass. Plus, like, cooldowns and huge rune costs.

The general trend I'm seeing is that other classes will have to handle a DK with care, because of the amount of strange bass-ackwards counter-abilities going on. This doesn't necessarily mean that the DK has an advantage at the high-end, just that his class alone changes the playstyle of his opponent more than most other classes.

osmigos · 05/31/08, 1:50 AM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

The general trend I'm seeing is that other classes will have to handle a DK with care, because of the amount of strange bass-ackwards counter-abilities going on. This doesn't necessarily mean that the DK has an advantage at the high-end, just that his class alone changes the playstyle of his opponent more than most other classes.

I think more than anything, the death knight will be a tougher opponent at first simply because no one knows how to fight them, while there have been 4+ years already to learn to deal with other classes.

It's also really WAY too early to start calling anything OP, as the development cycle is still in Alpha which is FAR from finished. Way back in original wow beta we had all sorts of fun things like an in-combat charge with no cooldown, or MS for +300% damage and no cooldown.

uber · 05/31/08, 4:30 AM

Originally Posted by Baern

A snared DK would have a hard time keeping in melee range with anyone outside of the initial Death Grip(35 second talented cooldown)/Chains of Ice combo, I think. That said, they do have a number of ranged abilities to compensate.

Unless Blizz reveals new DK abilities, it would seem (to me at least) that the major weakness of DK's will be snares/roots. Like you mentioned, apart from Deathgrip, they will have little to give themselves any advantage over a more mobile class. And while they do have several ranged abilities, they are almost all utility spells (Mind Freeze, etc.) and/or require large amounts of runic power to make them effective (Death Coil etc.)

Incision · 05/31/08, 7:16 AM

Lots of interesting and insightful conversation going on in here.. just had a few questions. Why is it that no one seems to support Blood as being the main DPS tree? Early on in the thread, it sounded as if a Frost/Unholy mix was the best. I'm a little boggled as to why Blood has been avoided. It has a lot of +str% talents, group buffs, and fairly obvious DPS traits (minus threat % in Blood presence, for example). Personally, I did a little mix of Blood and Unholy for my DPS build:

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

I'm reading as I go so to speak, so that spec is just what seems to be the best mix of the two trees for which I feel benefit a purely melee based DPS spec. I'd love to hear some comments and some ideas on why or why not Blood is a DPS tree.

osmigos · 05/31/08, 7:59 AM

Originally Posted by Incision

Lots of interesting and insightful conversation going on in here.. just had a few questions. Why is it that no one seems to support Blood as being the main DPS tree? Early on in the thread, it sounded as if a Frost/Unholy mix was the best. I'm a little boggled as to why Blood has been avoided. It has a lot of +str% talents, group buffs, and fairly obvious DPS traits (minus threat % in Blood presence, for example). Personally, I did a little mix of Blood and Unholy for my DPS build:

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

I'm reading as I go so to speak, so that spec is just what seems to be the best mix of the two trees for which I feel benefit a purely melee based DPS spec. I'd love to hear some comments and some ideas on why or why not Blood is a DPS tree.

I really don't see any way you could match the dps from blood spec with any other tree tbh. Abilities like Hysteria, Sudden Death and Dancing Runeblade are likely to be core for any spec that wants to do maximum dps.

Also about your spec. Unless the hit mechanics change in WotLK, or hit becomes a LOT more reasonable to obtain on dps gear, you're likely going to want to sink 15 points into frost to get ahold of Nerves of Cold Steel. The damage increase from hit is just huge compared to any other stats (up to 9%).
War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight
That's what I'd do with it. Eliminate a lot of the non-dps talents and move from unholy into frost for NoCS.

Baern · 05/31/08, 9:21 AM

Originally Posted by Apaine

To answer the people saying about the gear itemization, it looks like blood will be using same gear as dps warriors / ret pallies, as for frost and unholy, they will probably be using pally tanking gear for tanking as it has +spell damage and +def on it.

Couple of abilities of DK worry me:

1. There is no spell damage plate that isn't for pallies prot tree specifically (large +spell damage w/o +def). It may hurt frost/unholy trees in pvp.

DKs don't use spell damage. The damage of all abilities (bar the DoTs attatched to Strikes, but then the strikes themselves will scale anyway) scales with AP. Death Coil, Death and Decay, Icy Touch. All AP scaling.

Impurity adds 0 spell damage. It multiplies your effective AP by 1.2 when calculating damage on abilities.
Icy Touch, for example, adds 20% of your AP to it's damage. With Impurity it adds 20% of 120% of your AP.

Unholy looks like it sacrifices single target DPS for more AOE. While it doesn't look like 10% of extra damage (Rage of Rivendare) can compete with 30% extra physical (full stack of Vengence and over 75% hp), it's currently difficult to know exactly how much dps will be coming from spells. Just due to the flavor of the tree, I think it would be cool of Rage of Rivendare benefitted ghouls too.

Unholy looks like it could work with either Blood or Frost, but as the threat reduction talent is in Blood it will probably be forced that way.

rhea · 05/31/08, 10:58 AM

Blood
- Bladed Armor: Moved to tier 0.
- Deflection: Replaced by Forceful Deflection.
- (NEW) Forceful Deflection: Increases your Parry chance by 1/2/3/4/5% as your attack power increases.
- Subversion: Moved to tier 1.
- Spell Deflection: Now requires Forceful Deflection, new effect: You have a chance equal to your Parry chance of taking 10/20/30% less damage from a direct damage spell.
- Vendetta: Healing effect reduced to 3/6% from 5/10%.
- Blade Barrier: Reduced duration to 8 sec from 15 sec.
- Blood Rune Mastery: Moved to tier 5, now has a 10/20/30% chance to activate. (Same conditions.)
- (NEW) Infested Corpse: Tier 6, effect: When an enemy that grants experience or honor dies while suffering from one of your diseases, its corpse has a 10/20/30% chance of producing 1 Blood Worm. Blood Worms attack your enemies, healing you for the amount of damage they deal for 15 sec or until killed.
- Blood Aura: Moved to tier 7.
- Will of the Necropolis: Now increases total by 10/20/30% up from 5/10/15%.
- Vicious Strikes: Now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of Obliterate ability but no longer increases critical damage bonus from Heart Strike.
- Heart
Strike: Changed to "Next melee attack", now lower the target's total health by 20%, up to 3000, for 30 sec.
- Blood Gorged: Reduced damage bonus to 2/4/6/8/10% from 3/6/9/12/15%.

Unholy
- Unholy Command: Reduce the cooldown of the Blood Boil ability by 2/4 sec from 1/2 sec.
- Lichborne: Reduced cooldown to 5 min, was 15 min.
- On a Pale Horse: Additionnal rank, now reduce the duration of all Stun and Fear effects used on the Death Knight by 10/20% and increase mounted speed by 10/20%. (Any mounts.)
- Ferocious Dead: Now also cause Death Pact to grant a heal over time effect for 15 sec equal to 50/100/150% of the amount healed.
- Dirge: Moved to tier 3, new effect: Your Plague Strike, Degeneration, Raise Dead and Summon Gargoyle generate 50/100/150% more additional runic power.
- Shadow of Death: Moved to tier 3, no longer require Ferocious Dead as a prerequiste.
- Improved Corpse Explosion: Moved to tier 4.
- Unholy Rune Mastery: Moved to tier 4.
- Bone Armor: Moved to tier 5.
- Magic Domination: Removed and replaced by Anti-Magic Zone.
- (NEW) Anti-Magic Zone: Cost 1 Unholy, 20 yd range, instant, 2 min cooldown, effect: Places a large, static Anti-Magic Zone which can protect any party members inside it. The Anti_Magic Zone absorbs 75% of the damage dealt by the next harmful spell. Absorbs up to 10000 damage.
- Crypt Fever: Effect reduced to 1/2/3% per disease from 2/4/6%.
- Unholy Aura: Moved to tier 7.
- (NEW) Ebon Plaguebringer: Tier 8, effect: Whenever an enemy is infected by a stack of 3 of your diseases, they also become infected by Ebon Plague, which increases their vulnerability to magic damage by 3/6/9/12/15% for 15 sec.

Frost
- Improved Icy Touch: New effect: Increases the damage done by your Icy Touch spell by 5/10%.
- Glacier Rot: Moved to tier 0, no longer increases damage done by Hungering Cold.
- Black Ice: Effect increased to 2/4/6/8/10%.
- (NEW) Icy Talons: Tier 2, requires Improved Icy Touch, effect: You leech heat from targets of your Icy Touch, so that when their melee, ranged and casting speed are reduced, yours speed up by 3/6/9/12/15% for the next 20 sec.
- (NEW) Blood of Icewater: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
- Nerves of Cold Steel: New effect: Increases your chance to hit with one-handed melee weapons by 1/2/3%.
- Chromatic Rune Mastery: Renamed to Death Rune Mastery. Effect last until the Death Rune is used.
- Chillbanes: Renamed to Chilling Focus. Runic power generated reduced to 25/50/75% from 50/100/150%.
- (NEW) Killing Machine: Tier 3, effect: After landing a melee critical strike, there is a 20/40/60/80/100% chance your next Icy Touch, Mind Freeze or Howling Blast spell will be a critical strike.
- Deathchill: New effect: When activated, increases your critical strike chance with Frost spells by 100% for the next 6 sec.
- Permafrost: Renamed to Chilblains.
- Frigid Dreadplate: Moved to tier 5. New effect: Enemies who hit you in melee have 5/10/15% chance to become unsettled, decreasing their attack speed by 50% for the next 3 swings.
- Frost Rune Mastery: Moved to tier 5, listed % chance is now 25%.
- Howling Blast: Reduced cost to 1 Frost rune, 1 min cooldown, new effect: Blast the target with a frigid wind dealing 719 to 781 Frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Deals triple damage to frozen targets.
- Midnight Sun: Removed, replaced by Unbreakable Armor.
- (NEW) Unbreakable Armor: Tier 6, effect: Whenever you use a Frost Rune, you have a 5/10/15% chance of increasing your armor by 30% and your Parry chance by 30% for 10 sec.
- Merciless Combat: New effect: Your Frost attacks do an additionnal 20/40/60% damage when striking targets with less than 20% health.
- Frost Aura: Moved to tier 7.
- Frost Strike: Chance to freeze target is 30%.
- Chill of the Grave: Now increases critical strike damage bonus of the Obliterate abilities by 10/20/30/40/50% but no longer affect Icy Touch.
- Tundra Stalker: No longer increases damage done if the target is afflicted by Howling Blast.
- Hungering Cold: 1 min cooldown, no longer act as a cone-shaped area, instead it cause damage all around the Death Knight within 10 yards. Preventing them from performing any action for 2 sec per 10 runic power. Enemies are considered frozen, but any damage will break the ice.

I wonder how much if at all DKs will rely on tanking gear. It seems to me that they might very well do it in the same gear as dps. Defense is the only stat that you need to stack somewhat.

gorsameth · 05/31/08, 11:12 AM

Because tanking gear has as you said defence, but also because dps gear has less sta. no parry and no dodge. it might be a little more viable to offtank in your dps gear then a paladin or warrior but by no means will it not matter.

What caught my eye was this tho

(NEW) Unbreakable Armor: Tier 6, effect: Whenever you use a Frost Rune, you have a 5/10/15% chance of increasing your armor by 30% and your Parry chance by 30% for 10 sec.

a high use of frost runes so you can have this buff as of