Anedris

Blizzard has stated in the past that death knights will be able to duel wield. Doesn't mean they can't change their minds of course, but that is where people are getting the idea.

King's Defender, Mallet of the Tides, the Unbreakable Will, the Brutalizer, and Dragonscale Encrusted Longblade are all one-handed. So yes, the current tank weapons are indeed one-handed.

 

uber

Heart Strike will be an excellent PvP ability. Simply use it when your team begins to focus fire a target, and you will probably have them dead by the time the duration runs out. And 20% (even if it is capped at 3000) is A LOT of hp to take off in one hit.

 

Noraj

Has there been any discussion as to what will be filling Deathknight's ranged / relic item slot? Are they ranged weapon capable, or will they have relics?

"The question is not how far we are going to take it... the question is, do you possess the constitution to go as far as needed?" - Il Duce

 

Shadowalker

The retribution paladin talent does not reduce health by 15%, it reduces stamina by 15%. It is a completely different effect.

 

uber

I believe that currently in Alpha they do have a ranged weapon slot, which in my mind at least makes very little sense given the rich lore behind the class and the general collective unassociation of Death Knights with bows and the like.

At this point, I am assuming the ranged slot is merely a placeholder until they implement a new type of relic. My money is on them being called "runes." Original, I know.

 

Alvira

Have a question. I read that deathknight spells will scale with AP, so no spellpower needed for items. But how about spell hit? How does that work for deathknights? Against instance bosses with +3 levels, spells have a 17% chance to miss.

So, against bosses, are deathknight going to have to get more spell hit? Its noticably absent on most warrior gear. and I doubt if anyone would want to gem for it. But given that deathknight does use a fair amount of spells like death coil, icy touch, I hope this doesn't get overlooked.

Have a lower crit because more DK melee gear won't come with spell crit is ok. But having a low hit may matter quite significantly. Theer's nothing more irritating than having your spells miss all the time.

 

uber

I have heard rumors that it is likely spell hit and melee hit will be merged into one stat. The same goes for the crit stats and haste, I believe.

This would fix the spell vs. melee hit problem for not only the Death Knight, but Pallys and Enhancement Shammys as well.

 

Lurker

Gear Itemization Concerns.

By no means is this a reputable source, but I'm pretty sure Haste / Spell haste was consolidated to one stat. Blizzard could be doing the same for the other stats. I guess my point in replying is to see if anyone else could confirm or has another source saying this. However, it doesn't make sense that talents still discriminate between spell/melee hit if the stats on gear don't.

 

Baern

If the 5% spell crit not showing up on the character sheet isn't just a bug, it could just be that Deathknights are working on their own mechanics whereby all abilities will scale with melee crit, but talents effect them individually.
Similarly with the spell hit talent (no idea if that shows up on the character sheet).

Then again, it could just be that it's a bug.

 

Lamaros

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

Talent calculator updated for the significant recent changes. I'll edit in some more interesting points here once I've fiddled with it. Lots of opportunity costs now, which is good.

I have one query though. Tanking talents seems scattered over all three trees, and in deep in parts. This gives rise to the question of what DK tanking is meant and able to do in the eyes of Blizzard. We have been told that insofar as Raids go tanking is going to be magic damage only, otherwise Warriors will get the nod. Why then have tanking talents all over the place? Sure, some of them double as PvP abilities, but if Blizzard is serious about the restriction on raid tankign then DKs will just find out which one works best and that is the only one that will be used, with only the PvP talents getting a go in other specs.

Or have things changed, where DKs can now spec for different types of tanking, all of which will have some application?

The Blood Tree is largely the same. The tanking abilities it had have been adjusted down, but they are still decent. Tanking specs that use it would stop about 33 talents in at VotTW.

The Frost tree changed a lot. This tree is much better now and has a good mix of tanking and DPS talents, with some good crossover talents that could apply to both. However tanking here looks to deal mostly with taking physical damage, not the spell damage as advertised, and you have to go a fair way in (unless frost strike isn't as good as it looks?). This is made worse by the fact that Frost seems to tie in best with the Unholy tree, for spell damage and disease debuffs, but that the decent Unholy tanking abilities (up to magic suppression and bone armor) are exclusive to picking up frost strike.

At the moment the best bet looks to be Frost/Blood, with Blood to Blade Barrier and Frost to Frost Strike. But there is no special combination there ability-wise, both Blood and Frost tie in well with Unholy (read Plague Strike and other diseases) and you cannot get all three, nor would I expect you'd want to spread your runes thin across the three trees.

Anyway, those are just some first impressions. It's looking lots better, but I think the tanking angle still needs a little work. If they were to broaden the DKs tanking potential then there would be some justification in giving all thee trees some special tanking talents, but as I currently understand it it is just a little too spread still.

DPS wise things look great, though deep Unholy doesn't have much going for it beyond Debuffs (very strong debuffs, though). The Frost/Unholy Spell DK looks very nifty.

 

uber

Sample tanking build.

This is what I am looking at right now. Blade Barrier looks like it would be a GODLY talent and when coupled with Unbreakable Armor, it's not unreasonable to suppose that you would have a parry chance of ~85-90%, which would put you well over the avoidance cap. This will render you unable to go 51 points into frost, but the 51 point talent doesn't look that good at the moment anyways.

Futhermore, if DK's are meant to be magic tanking bosses, Acclimation looks like it would be a required talent, so speccing at least 40 deep into frost is necessary. This leaves little room for Unholy, but there aren't that many critical tanking talents in there anyways (Bone armor would be nice though...)

 

Lamaros

That's basicly what I finished with, though I put some different stat allocation in places:

No Imp. Blood Strike and Full Conviction. Frostbite doesn't look that great, 15% chance is lowish. Icy Talons looks very handy though, 15% faster is nifty (If it works on bosses). I'm not sold on Chilling Focus as 75% on one spell (Icy Touch, the others will be situational I expect) isn't that great, a tank wont be blowing much runic power on anything but Icebound Fort (maybe DC) and should have enough generated w/o this. Likewise Deathchill seems a bit meh. Considering there is killing machine, and Deathchill lasts 6 seconds only and has a 1min CD, why would you get it?
The only other choice is between Chill of the Grave and Frost Aura, 25 resist and 5% health vs a little longer on Icebound Fort and some DPS.

Also, not sure which way tanking will go with the 1H 2H. I'm leaning towards 2H, with Dual 1H being better for a spell driven killing machine, so that would free up another few points. Leading to something like:

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

Wondering about a rotation, though. Frost strike is every 6, Icy Touch Every 5. Between them that's 6 Frost runes in 12. Even given a 7.5% chance on a 5sec rune CD with frost strike, and 3.75% (yes, that low - hence skipping frostbite) on Icy Touch, you'll hardly have anything spare, even with all 6 runes being frost.

With the exception of Blood Rune Mastrey the rune mastries still leave a little to be desired.

 

Baern

Frost Strike had it's cooldown removed. Icy Touch cooldown is 4 seconds.

The reason you take Deathchill is that it makes all your Frost abilities crit for 6 seconds (or more if it's affected by Runic Power Mastery), not just one abilitiy. Killing Machine, even in the most ideal circumstances, is going to be 5ish free crits per minute for 5 points, Deathchill could be 4 for 1, and is likely to be at least 2-3.

If you're using a 2h I really don't see the value in Killing Machine, you'll be getting 2-3 crits a minute at best. It's still better than Blood of Icewater, which now looks terribly pointless bless it, but I'm not sure it's worth 5 talent points. I'm not sold on Killing Machine on the whole, to be honest. I don't see it being that much of a threat increase unless you take Chill of the Grave too, and I'm not sold on Chill of the Grave either.
I also expect Blade Barrier to be nerfed again. It's still far too good.
The only other think I wonder about then, is Tundra Stalker. Does it affect only "abilities" as in spells, or abilities as in all attacks? I suspect the former, but it's still a nice threat boost either way.

Also, I don't understand not taking Frost Aura. As a MT or an OT in the tank group, you want Frost Aura.

Given I expect Blade Barrier to be nerfed again, probably given a length internal cooldown and stopped from stacking with Unbreakable Armor or something, I've been planning builds without it. With DW in mind, even though I'd really rather use a 2h.

On rotations, I haven't planned too much. I think tanking will probably be 3 frost, 2 blood, 1 unholy for regular grouping .Pestilence is a blood rune, that is the only reason for the second blood. It'll be really useful for getting mulitple targets for Blood boil.
I can see how 2 Unholy/1 Blood might be better though.
For bosses/Main tanking I think 4 Frost/1/1 or 3 Frost/2 Unholy/1 Blood. Not sure. You need a point in Epidemic for the 1/1 to be able to keep Degeneration up and ensure that you Blood strike only when Plague Strike and Degeneration are on the target, but that may turn out to be entirely unimportant depending on how many diseases a raid brings.

Finally (honest) on Blood rune mastery, the tooltip says "strike the target" so I very much doubt it will be a regular melee attack, rather only special attacks.

 

Lamaros

So it's just Frost Strike Spam then. Joy.

Deathchill: "critical strike chance with Frost spells by 100%". Point me to the Frost spells that are going to be so advantaged by this that 1) Aren't advantaged by Killing Machine, and 2) You are likely to want to crit.

Icy Touch and Howling Blast are the big ones as far as I can see, and that's about it. None are spammable, so the best you can squeeze in is two crits, unless you blow one on Mind Freeze which wouldn't make much sense as even criting I expect Frost Strike would do better damage.

2-3 melee crits in a miniute? What? What kind of crit rating do you think a DK will have? Surely it will be up around 25-30%. Considering you'll only really throw out the Icy Touches and Howling Blasts, you wont need to be getting that many crits to make full use from them.

I see you are under the impression that Frost Strike is a "spell" for these purposes. Is this an assumption or not? It would of course change things.

I expect it's just specials, not white damage. Still, it's a reasonable boost.

I could only fit 3/5, as Chill of the Grave looks ok. Depending on the usefulnes of each you can easiyl max out Frost Aura.

3F/2U/1B or 3F/2B/1U would be my guess also. I don't expect you will use Blood Strike at all while tanking, you have Frost Strike. All you'd be casting is Icy Touch, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, Death Grip or BB to Taunt, Anti-Magic, etc. Plus with 3/2/1 like that you can cast nearly everything, except for 2 Blood abilities. Remember you want to get all runes on CD as often as possible:

Blood Tap before combat:

Death Grip 1D
Plague Strike 1B 1U
Icy Touch 1F
Frost Strike 1F
Frost Strike 1F

Plague Strike 1B 1U
Frost Strike 1F
Frost Strike 1F
Frost Strike 1F (either of these three could be used for a Howling Blast if you get a crit or freeze the target)
Rune Tap 1B

Etc. 2B is handy because it gives you Blood Tap and Rune Tap if you need to blow runes or get flexible for other spells. Though Blood Tap might not be so handy in combat when tanking as it might cost too much.

Still makes it much better than the other two.

e: Fixed Error.

 

PSGarak

The usefuless of the extended duration of Deathchill mostly depends on whether it effects Frost Strike. A Deathchill->Howling Blast combo will be generally vicious, especially if the other frost talents let you charge up a Deathchill inside the duration of a Hungering Cold. But aside from that, frost abilities look mostly to be utility rather than damage, with the possible exception of Frost Strike.
Having Killing Machine work on Frost Strike would be a significant buff favoring Slow-Fast dual-wielding.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

uber

Indeed. Also, with the removal of the frost strike cooldown it now greatly favors a faster weapon, as it will become significantly more spammable.

Moving on to a slightly different topic, I predict that in the next alpha patch we will see a reduction in the cooldown of Howling Blast (maybe to 30 or 15 seconds), a notification that frost strike generates a "high amount of threat" and hopefully a talent that increases the threat caused by icy touch or some added effect (not a white damage increase, though that will be nice when dpsing as blood) to make it actually a useful spell as currently everything it does will be overridden by other members of the raid.

 

Feorthas

In tanking gear? Probably 10%-ish (7.5-12.5%). Maybe 15%, tops. I'm talking unbuffed, of course.

Remember, plate tends to skimp on agi/CritRating, if it's geared towards tanking, and stack +Defense; the only reason bears have good crit rates is because they purposefully try to stack agi for dodge and the crit, and additional threat that it generates, comes as a freebie (sort of). While DKs will pack more of a punch than prot warriors and paladins do now, I seriously doubt that they'll be tanking in DPS gear.

 

Lamaros

Icy Touch may well do decent damage, given all the bonuses it'll recieve (+15% against diseased, +10% damage, +10% frost spell damage, +10% more when cast over itself, +the chance the target will be vulnerable to frost damage from Frozen Runeblade). Frost Strike will most likely not get the +10% from spell damage, and will not get the basic 10%, so Icy touch will possibly do more damage and be worth it (given it wont be "on next hit" like frost strike?), without including the buff it gives when talented.

On another topic, here's a go at an Unholy tree. Disease Debuff Heavy:

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

Shadow of Death: Eh?
Dirge: Looks OK. 150% is a lot, but balanced by the fact two are longish CDs.
Unholy Rune Mastrey: Too weak. Long CDs and a DoT and only 10%?
Magic Suppression: Does 100% mean you'll also ignore non damage elements of the spells? Looks weak or gimmiky at the moment otherwise.
Unholy Presence: Looks ok, but I'm not sure that it's in the right place in the tree. I think heavy Unholy would be in Blood Presence due to the damage boost helping DoTs. A spec that relies more on white damage would benifit from being in Unholy more, but I can't see one in the tree. Otherwise it's just a PvP talent, or a situational Raid one that is going to be useless at times.

MORE OPTIONS NEEDED IN UNHOLY TREE LEVEL THREE.

Still too many talents in lower unholy tree. You are forced to pick up stuff you might not want. You need 15 from them and there are only 20 talents avaliable. There are 32 in Frost and 26 in Blood at the same level.

 

Lamaros

Icy Touch looks to be one of the only real single target DPS spells the DK has, making it do high threat would be a bad move. Frost Strike will do frost damage and thus ignore armor (right?), surely that will be enough to generate the threat needed. I expect a tanking DK will still do decent DPS, so with the Frost Presence threat modifier should be ok. Turning everything in the frost tree to tanking only is a lame way to go about things.

If Howling Blast has a lower CD then Frost will do very good damage. It looks very strong at the moment, a lower cooldown would make it borderline overpowered.

 

Alvira

Death Coil is another. It scales better with AP and has a higher base damage than icy. I think deathcoil is a significant spell for deathknight unless you are using some other ability for your runepower.

Frost based deathknights using icy every cooldown can accumulate more runic power and cast more deathcoils. I think it will be significant over the long term. Its why I am not so keen on deathchill in a pve context myself. I think deathchill is more for pvp. In pve raiding, spending that runic power on big deathcoils might be better DPS over the long term.

A frost death knight raider probably doesn't have anywhere else to spend his/her runic power anyway.

 

uber

The problem with Icy Touch right now is that it does mediocore damage at the cost of 2 frost runes, and applies no significant debuff in PvE that doesn't already exist in some better form. I just can't see that much incentive to use the spell when Frost Strike will be be a FAR better use of runes in terms of DPS and overall TPS.

If howling blast were moved a little lower into the tree in order to prevent PvP abuse, then perhaps we could lower the cooldown. Current DK tanking just looks sooooo boring, spamming frost strike and dumping RP into DC with the occasional Icy Fortitude. It needs something else, both to bring it more utility and make it actually worth playing.