You make a fair point about Plague Leech and Runic Corruption though in this case you could just burn the Death Rune on Heart Strike/DnD (if the boss fight has adds)/Death Siphon/Soul Reaper for a mere 40 RP. All of these abilities outdamage Rune Strike after all and a guaranteed Death Rune is still better than 45% chance on the RC proc.
So "all" it does is give you extra damage as Blood which isn't exactly irrelevant - and this is with RC which already gives us the highest DPS to begin with, too.
Let's look at the Plague Leech/Glyph of Outbreak vs Runic Corruption/Unholy Blight combos in a 5 min fight:

RC/UB:
PL/GoO:
This one is a little easier because we know you apply diseases with IT/PS on the pull and then every 30 seconds from there you PL/Outbreak (I know the CD is 25 seconds on PL but going with 30 secs for now because that's what RC/UB did). You will have to use 9x40 RP with the glyphed Outbreak so the total is:

RC/UB uses 4 Runes, PL/GoO uses 360 RP and 2 Runes but gains back 9 single Death Runes. Damage wise, 9 D Runes still trump 12 Rune Strikes (especially once you get into Soul Reaper range and once you count in the 90 RP you gained from those, too) and let's not forget the 2 Runes you gained by only having to apply IT/PS once.

Now this is quite a lot of text for basically saying "Yeah, even if RC doesn't gain survival bonuses from PL/GoO it still does more damage with it." Fair enough, but do keep in mind that this is only looking at RC which is already the most unsuited Rune regen method for Plague Leech. And even for RC it's better than the alternatives.

The fact that it is more mandatory with BT/RE should be obvious because you can use desync'd Death Rune procs with PL to Death Strike. This is a survival boost.


So what is my issue? Didn't we ask for old BT back or some way to solve the issue of desync'd Runes with BT/RE? By god, we did. But not like this. I liked Unholy Blight and Roiling Blood, I really did. So why am I being handed an ability in tier 1 that increases my Death Strikes/min when that tier is all about flavorful ways to spread our diseases? It doesn't fit. Not only that, it bars me from picking anything but Plague Leech. If this ability is to stay it should be baseline for the same reason Vampiric Blood and Bone Shield got made baseline: You simply don't put talents like this in the trees and still pretend you give people a choice. If you don't want to make PL baseline, make it a bonus ability for speccing into RE/BT, that would work, too.
This is only made worse by Outbreak not being a 30 second CD for Blood. If it would be, we could atleast drop the glyph and... well, nothing. We'd still pick Plague Leech because nothing changed in that regard. PL would feel less punishing and a bit more like a less bad Blood Tap but we'd still pick it.
Again, if PL is to stay, it should be baseline and Outbreak should go back to a 30 sec innately so we can actually pick a talent in tier 1 just like we can in the other tiers.

That said, PL is still much, much inferior to our Blood Tap in terms of how it helps us deal with unsync'd Runes. I feel even with PL, people will pick RC for this reason. But it is something.

When I played DotA on wc3 first time for three years this autumn via Abaddon, I was not even expecting that the only DK's progress will be 1 more execute phace hit and taking ideas from Icefrog.
Let's take a look.
Abaddon's DC-heals nor hits. In Pandaria we're unable3 to heal allies via coil(we're not healing class and haven't got healing spells), but glyphed coil may stack absorption, which may be considered as a heal.
Abaddon's BoneShield, which blows up and hits everybody around-I was complaining about that in my twitter. It may be amazing for nooby tanks as an AoE taunting of spellcaster mobs in instances. And it really may be placed via glyph-everytime your BoneShield charges finishes, they deal damage equal to %number% shared on enemies in 15 yards, as for example. It may be a good way to refresh shields not by cooldown, but a little bit tricky.
Frostmourne-well, it won't be placed in WoW by evident reasons. At least we have lots of slow-impairing frost effects.
Purgatory which was maintained in the latest patch is working with the core idea from Abaddon's Ultimate spell-getting a mortal hit, you're not dying for couple of seconds.
Other suggestions?
Thank you Tyvi, glad to see such a good blog.

I don't think it'll be off the gcd for long, because just like in Wrath we'll have:

Rotational abilites off the gcd don't work well because of macros. It's fine for Warriors / Bears, because hs and maul aren't their primary rage uses. For Blood, rune strike is the primary use of our runic power. You could easily macro it into death strike, assume macro'd ability costs 30 runic power, and forget rune strike exists.

I heard the main goal behind "off the gcd rune strike"was to empty some gcds for death strike timing, but there will probably be another change to accomplish it.

As far as Purgatory, it's definitely not as impressive as some have made it out to be. After all, it's in the same tier as Anti-Magic Zone.

• AMZ reduces magic damage taken by 75%, ingoring the cap if the attack is a single hit.
• Tank killling abilties tend to be magical.
• AMZ can be cast on the tank next to you, the ranged dps 30 yards away, or the entire raid when stacked up.
• AMZ has a 2 mintue cooldown, Purgatory has a 3 minute cooldown.

Purgatory is definitely a nice abiltiy to have vs heavy physcial fights, but it's not really changing the dk game. Since it doesn't actually stop any damage, it's practicaly a 3 second last stand with "infinite" health. The draw back being death, if you can't out heal your overkill damage in 3 seconds.

(It's also great to freak out your healers if they have no clue how Purgatory works and stuff like this is always a good bonus. And while we are it, this talent should get a more DK-y name. Even "Where-Ghouls-Go-To-Die" works better than "Purgatory". )

I personaly liked the idea of a death knight enduring purgatory to come back to life. Makes me think of Dante's Inferno I guess?

Conversion's main use as a tank would be periodic auras / dots, and aoe tanking adds. True its not as competitive as death pact vs singular boss melee, but a runic power hot is a good option to have avaliable.

Conversion's new restriction also prevents the double runic power from frost pesence and the auto attack runic power from MotFW. However, ams still generates runic power during conversion. Direct fix for 2h-frost being able to keep conversion up, and a good move.

Regarding Rune Strike macro:

I have seen that argument before but I am not sure this will happen.
DRW, Lichborne, Conversion, Glyph of Outbreak (ugh) and RP dumping once your Runes are prepared for RE all require you to save RP and use it a specific time (the macro does however proc Death Runes like this but I am actually capping RP because I generate it faster than I could Death Strike and once I am hitting the DS macro when it's on CD just for the RS component to proc RE, does it really count?). Once you have full Blood Tap charges you also want to hold off using Rune Strike as long as you do not cap or you waste charges (and ideally you will want to have as much RP as possible to go back from 0/2 to 10 again as quickly as possible). And at this point, are people going to have two keybinds for Death Strike - one with the macro and one without - to swap between them when they need use the aforementioned abilities? Isn't it smarter to go without macro then?

Sure, you will definitely find people who will macro it into their abilities but I really don't think this is ideal. I didn't macro Rune Strike in Wrath either because I liked the off-GCD Rune Strike and it was fun. The latter is possibly the weakest argument in terms of theorycrafting, but I don't care. :P Fun should matter as well, after all - and for me it is fun right now.
(You could also say it's a good thing that people can macro it for, say, 80% effectiveness whereas people who manage it themselves will get 100%. Reminds me a little of Blade Barrier and how you could have different uptime values across different people so stuff like this is good.)

Also, what else would they do to reduce non-DS GCDs for us? 1 sec global GCD for DKs and actually put all our survival CDs off the GCD (this really needs to happen regardless)? Would be fun to try out as well.


Regarding AMZ:

AMZ doesn't actually reduce damage by 75% (anymore?). You can still have it absorb to the cap for everyone standing in it though, so it is still powerful but just not as much.
That said, I don't disagree that AMZ will likely be superior in magic heavy fights because chances are AMZ will still absorb more than Purgatory will absorb on magic burst but Purgatory still is great to convert our heals into short-term EH. And there are still the physical damage burst scenarios where AMZ will do nothing.

I also didn't catch Purgatory being on a 2 min CD. Was this changed recently? Or maybe I am just confusing it because every other CD in the tier is also on a 2 min CD so Purgatory will possibly end up being a 2 min CD as well since numbers are still in flux. It would certainly be nice to have DP up for every Purgatory if you need to pull this off on CD atleast.


Regarding Conversion:

This is still rather encounter specific. Are there many bosses with (weakish) auras where it wouldn't be better to just pick DSi or DP instead? In the end of the day, Conversion still costs precious resources and not only damage but it also eats your extra Death Strikes from lost RE/RS/BT procs. That said, I definitely see the allure of having to micromanage a skill like Conversion because it has no CD but even in scenarios where you could combo it up with AMS, would that really matter? Unless it's a physical damage boss only, chances are AMS alone is already going to be enough to prevent you from dying without Conversion. And unless adds are stun/snare immune we might not even hit those for too long if we spec RB/Chilblains (thinking something like Maloriak adds here; if it's just your run-of-the-mill weak hitting adds, ignore this.)
That said, I haven't given up on it yet, I just can't think of many scenarios in raids where it is useful but maybe that's because I lack imagination so we'll see once the raids hit. :P


Another undocumated change: Blood Tap actually gains charges from DCs used during Lichborne and on other people with Glyph of Death Coil slotted. This is pretty amazing and I hope an intended change. Allows you to keep BT charges even if you cannot hit the boss for a few seconds. I also hope this gets extended to RC/RE because for them this currently does not work.
I really don't see a reason why it shouldn't work for them because the reason they removed non-damaging DCs from proccing RE was because of the Death's Embrace glyph in early Cata that allowed us effectively use 20 RP DCs on ourselves. The glyph has been nerfed for nearly a year now but we didn't actually get the RE/self-DC change reverted that went along with it.

(Also: using PL with BT feels weird to say the least. I don't want to say the infamous c-word but yeah, it's close to that. <_<)

And just throwing this out here: Why does Rune Tap cost a Blood Rune but yet does not generate 10 RP? I can't think of anyother Rune ability that doesn't give you RP; even Bone Shield on live gives you 10 RP and it's also a survival ability.

EDIT:
Just thought of this but what do people think of Crimson Scourge coming back now that we have Rune Strike off the GCD? Would make sense, wouldn't it (just the proc, not the extra BB damage, that should still be baseline)? It may also be feasible to let CS procs allow you to choose between Heart Strike OR Blood Boil so you can do whichever suits the situation best.

The new Death's Advance is cool. I'd been vying for DA getting a movement speed buff added for a while now, and the sprint / movement immunity on click was a great twist. The Level 45 Tier of talents is in great shape from the PvE side.

The way the new Death's Advance works is:

(Maxiumum passive movement speed) * 110% = (DA passive movement)
(Maxiumum passive movement speed) * 130% = (DA active movement)

The Passive and Acitve DA do not stack with each other. Activating DA replaces a 10% movement increase with 30% for the duration. Not sure how it works with darkflight and stampeding roar, but even Aspect of the Pack and Dominion Over Acherus are improved by DA. Should be safe to assume all passive movement effects will be increased.



The 1 second global Rune Strike feels much better for using runic power, but raises the question of why DKs don't have a 1 second global baseline. All other energy based classes have a 1 second global cooldown, so that their limit is their resources rather than the global cooldown. With the current rune system, Death Knights are essentially a class with 3 rune energy bars on their screen.

DPS DKs on live, are already forced into Unholy Presence for the 1 second global, just so that they can unload all of their hasted resources. With the new SoB, Blood is also heading in the direction of being limited by the global cooldown rather than their avaliable resources. This seems like the perfect time to move Death Knights as a class on to the 1 second global cooldown. This would also free Frost from being locked into Unholy Presence, at high levels of haste / runic power generation.



The other issue would be the Level 15 Talents, the Disease Tier. Plague Leech being there just doesn't fit. The class as a whole should have a Cata Blood Tap equivalent baseline, and having it in the tier related to disease application (and removing diseases) just doesn't make sense.

If would be great if we could get to a situation where:

• Roiling Blood: Blood Boil applies both diseases.
• Glyph of Outbreak replaces Plague Leech, but with no runic cost.
• Unholy Blight's cooldown is reduced to 30 seconds, and duration to 5 seconds.

This way all of the talents are about applying diseases, and the only advantage one has over the other is situatonal. It also gives all specializations interest in every talent.

Let's talk AoE threat for a moment!


The problem:

Blood sacrifices survival for AoE tanking if we are forced to use a Blood Rune more than once every ~7 seconds. This is because all of our resources except said Blood Rune can and will be used for survival on non-trivial encounters (i.e. anything that hits hard enough for us not to use HS/BB over DS if we can help it).

Does Scent of Blood help with this? Wasn't SoB supposed to help mitigate our survival loss if we cut out DS once in a while?
Unfortunately, no SoB does not help. While at first glance you might think that a fully stacked SoB Death Strike is equivalent to two non-SoB Death Strikes so that skipping a DS for an additional 2 BBs should work, there are two things that do not hold up under closer review: The first is that comparing a fully stacked SoB Death Strike with a zero stacked SoB is wrong; you will always generate ~2 stacks of SoB inbetween the 7-8 secs it takes for your Runes to cool down on their own so you end up comparing one +100% SoB DS with vs two +40% SoB DSes and the latter is simply superior. The second, more pressing matter, is that you cannot drop a Death Strike for 10 or more seconds if the adds hit hard to begin with (remember, we are looking at scenarios where tank deaths are a serious threat, not tanking 10 mobs that hit for 5k each).

The underlying problem is that compared to the other tanks Blood has nothing offensive that we can use that is free (not even Outbreak is free anymore) and that all Runes that are not Blood are used for Death Strike. And the same applies for our RP with the BT/RE/RC feedback. The moment you pull Runes/RP from DS, you sacrifice mitigation to do what other classes can do without sacrificing their survival.

Let's take a quick look at the other classes to show what I mean:

Druid:
- Thrash, 6 sec CD, no rage cost, applies Weakened Blows debuff
- Swipe, 3 sec CD, no rage cost


Warrior:
- Thunder Clap, 6 sec CD, no rage cost, applies Weakened Blows debuff
- Heroic Leap, 45 sec CD (30 sec glyphed), no rage cost
- Talent: Either Shockwave, Bladestorm or Dragon's Roar, no rage cost, varied CDs
- Cleave, 30 rage cost, 3 target limit (4 if glyphed), (using this seems like an incredibly stupid idea the way things are)


Monk:
- Keg Smash, 8 sec CD, generates 2 Chi for 40 energy (their primary Chi generator is Jab which converts 40 Energy into 1 Chi so KS gives 1 Chi as bonus), 4 target limit, applies Weakened Blows debuff
- Dizzying Haze, 20 Energy cost (no damage but increased threat)
- Spinning Crane Kick, 40 Energy cost (why this doesn't generate Chi is baffling since it is an ideal HotR counterpart with Jab being the CS counterpart)
- Breath of Fire, 2 Chi cost (from what I can tell this is not required to hold threat but a good way to convert survival into more damage)


Paladin:
- Hammer of the Righteous, 4.5 sec CD, generates 1 HP, applies Weakened Blows debuff
- Consecration, 9 sec CD with 9 sec duration, no HP cost (better AP scaling than DnD currently, can be targeted like DnD if glyphed)
- Avenger's Shield, 15 sec CD, no HP cost, 3 target limit,
- Talent: Light's Hammer, 60 sec CD and 16 sec duration, no HP cost
(- Seal of Righteousness, aura, no HP cost, deals 5% weapon damage to everything within 8 yards of targeted mob)


Death Knight:
- Heart Strike, shared ~7 sec CD with Blood Boil and Pestilence, free if not used more often than once every ~7 secs - otherwise it costs half a Death Strike, 3 target limit
- Blood Boil, shared ~7 sec CD with Heart Strike and Pestilence, free if not used more often than once every ~7 secs - otherwise it costs half a Death Strike
- Spreading Diseases, no CD, costs 40 RP (glyphed), no Rune cost to spread if not used more often than once every ~7 secs - otherwise spreading costs half a Death Strike, applies Weakened Blows
- Death and Decay, 30 sec CD, costs half a Death Strike
(- 2 Patches ago: Talent: Either Desecrated Ground, Gorefiend's Grasp or Remorseless Winter, no cost, varied CDs)

Just to be clear, this post is not about getting the other tanks nerfed but it was necessary to compare them because we had to establish Blizzard's intent in terms of what tanks were supposed to do on AoE. There were two options:

1) All tanks lose survival on AoE tanking so everyone is equally "punished" and we do not have to fear that a given tank will be worse than the others there (because if all tanks lost mitigation for AoE, the encounter design dudes would not make them hit as hard as a boss that is designed to threaten tanks while they do their optimal survival rotation)-
2) No tank loses survival on AoE tanking. Hard hitting AoE mobs will be possible to design because the design dudes don't have to care about lost tank survival at all. This is potentially troublesome if not all tanks can AoE without losing mitigation.

If you look at the list above again, I think it's obvious to see that 2) is much more likely. Which is a problem for DKs because we are heavily punished for AoE tanking (Monks come close on 4+ targets but they atleast have an excuse of being the new class).
The problem is once again that our single Blood Rune is trying to do too much at once. It's used for either HS or BB depending on the amount of mobs or spreading diseases (because Blizz figured it would be a great idea to introduce Plague Leech as a talent which locks us out of Roiling Blood which combined Pestilence and Blood Boil). Whenever new adds spawn you will want to debuff them as well and DKs are still the only tank that loses mitigation to apply Weakened Blows which on top of things is unlinked from the AoE rotation until you can use Pestilence.
You will also at the very least want to get some threat on them so you are going to follow up with a BB or HS after spreading diseases to debuff which is already 2 Runes in 2 GCDs (because diseases do not tick instantly but only after 3 seconds so mobs will run past you if you do not follow up with anything). If DPS is also attacking said mobs, then 1 BB and the pitiful disease ticks are not going to be enough so you have to cut further into your Death Runes (and god help you if DnD is on CD when the fresh mobs spawned/added).


The solution:

Give us more ways to switch to an AoE rotation that does not punish us for doing so. There is one little change that could already fix this for us:

Give us an AoE RP ability (Unholy will also be happy about this) that deals damage, applies diseases and (this is important!) can proc BT/RE/RC. Redesigning glyphed Outbreak to do this should work nicely; having a 40 RP AoE ability would make sense just as long as it can proc BT/RE/RC, deal instant damage and apply Weakened Blows and our diseases so we can actually follow up with a Blood Boil that doesn't hit for ~3k.
That way we would have a choice between Rune Strike for single target and redesigned Outbreak for AoE (similar to how Paladins swap from CS to HotR if there is AoE to be done).


If we cannot get this, then we will need a couple different tweaks:

- Let diseases tick instantly just like Rend does for Warriors on live when spread (though to be fair, this really should happen regardless).
- Bring back Tier 7 talents that deal damage. They would have been a great help here.
- Let DnD be free in Blood Presence/for Blood spec, possibly with a reduced CD even.
- Get rid of Plague Leech and give us a proper way to emulate our old Blood Tap (so we can compensate for DnD costing a Rune) OR make Roiling Blood baseline to cut down the amount of Blood Runes we need to set up our AoE (the BB that procs Pestilence would also have to have it's damage calculated post-disease spread)


PS: Why is Blood Boil not back to applying Weakened Blows for us? Every other tank gets their debuff applied with no survival cost and all of them are AoE. It just doesn't make sense for it not to be on BB (and make it look pretty again like in the Cata beta!). :x
PPS: I am actually starting to like Glyph of Outbreak. It even helps for kiting purposes if you can drop the 40 RP you get from 4 BBs to infect a new target and so on. Plague Leech still needs to die a horrible death, though. There is no place for such an unfun and unwieldy ability, let alone one that makes a mockery of the whole tier 1 talents.

Hi, new poster, but old lurker. Have been away from progression since WotlK; stopped playing my warrior over the bloodthirst tanking spec changes and switched to a DK, but still love theorycrafting. Anyway, here are the pertinent changes from the new build, 15699:

SPELL CHANGES:

Death Coil: Runic power cost increased from 35 to 40.
Sudden Doom: Additional effect. Permanently reduces Death Coil's cost by 20% (from 40 to 32)

GLYPH CHANGES:

(OLD) Glyph of Rune Strike: Increases the critical strike chance of your Rune Strike by 10%.
(NEW) Glyph of Army of the Dead: The ghouls summoned by your Army of the Dead no longer taunt their target.

(OLD) Glyph of Death Strike: Increases your Death Strike's damage by 2% for every 5 Runic Power you currently have (up to a maximum of 40%).
(NEW) Glyph of Corpse Explosion: Teaches you the ability Corpse Explosion.

(OLD) Glyph of Bone Shield: Increases movement speed by 15% while Bone Shield is active. Does not stack with other movement-speed increasing effects.
(NEW) Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Reduces the cooldown of your Icebound Fortitude by 50%, but also reduces its duration by 75%.

(OLD) Glyph of Heart Strike: Increases the damage of your Heart Strike ability by 30%.
(NEW) Glyph of Unholy Frenzy: Causes your Unholy Frenzy to no longer deal damage to the affected target.

(OLD) Glyph of Scourge Strike: Increases the Shadow damage portion of your Scourge Strike by 30%.
(NEW) Glyph of Foul Menagerie: Causes your Army of the Dead spell to summon an assortment of undead minions.

They slashed Blood's damage this patch, and for silly replacements. The Icebound Fortitude one seems the most relatively useless to me; it reduces its cooldown from 3 minutes to 1.5 and its duration from 12 to 3 seconds. I'd rather keep the Bone Shield's increased speed.

Also, has anyone had the dodge chance fixed? I haven't leveled so I can compare the changes, they eliminated the 5% default chance and the diminishing returns gap between dodge and parry is now down to zero and takes into account buffs (kings, wild, items, rating food and consumables). On live, it's a 150 rating difference (point where DR between these two stop) and ignores all buffs.

The glyph of IBF is interesting ... most of the time it would be worthless, but on fights like Madness of Deathwing where you only use it to soak a single hit, it would be nice.

I'm glad they're getting rid of all the stupid glyphs that raise main threat skill's damage by x%. These are boring and stupid ... the skill should just do the damage it should do. It looks like glyphs are becoming more situational, and we'll be swapping them around depending on the fight. I think this is a great change. Adds more flavor and customization to the game.

Won't show up in any Beta notes, but Dancing Rune Weapon and Bone Shield are off the global cooldown with today's build. Tyvi rejoice?

Sounds like we'll be seeing Unholy's 1 second global class wide soon. With this, 2h-Frost won't be forced into Unholy Presence, and Blood will be able to make full use of it's runic power generation.

That's great news indeed. Now all they need to do is take Raise Ally and Strangulate off the GCD and we'd have parity with the other classes. (Death Pact is off the GCD now as well. o/)

I'd also really love it if they go through with the class wide 1.0 sec GCD. There are some non-trivial survival benefits for doing so, but it's mostly because I enjoy playing with a faster GCD to be honest.

It seems we got the 1 sec GCD for every presence: Heart Strike - Blood - Specialization - Death Knight - Class Abilities - Spells - WOWDB. Some huge presence, MotFW and Obliterate changes:

This means the basic difference between 2H and DW will be where the Killing Machines are spent, 2H will favor haste heavily to use more Obliterates and DW will favor mastery for heavier Frost Strikes. Both frost specs will obviously play in frost presence. However, it seems only logical that DW frost will be miles away in PVE damage compared to 2H, we will probably see some hotfixes about that on live. Additionally, Unholy downtime will be alot less severe than it is right now. Overall, these are welcome changes.

Something that will come up is weapon swapping, it will be determined if wasting a GCD to swap to either one handers for a Frost Strike or a 2 hander for an Obliterate is worth it to gain 50% extra strike damage.