Lamaros

I am in the process of converting this first post into a small FAQ about the DKs so this thread becomes less cluttered with repeated questions. If there is a question you think should be included here please PM it to me and I will include it if the answer is known. I am not going to include the really well known stuff like "DKs start at level 55" unless we have a spate of people asking things like that:

Frequently Asked DK questions.

Q: Will Death Knights use +SpellPower on their equipment.

A: There are currently no indications that DKs will use any SP on their equipment. The equipment provided to them in their starting quests includes Strength, Stamina, Agliity, Hit Rating, Crit Rating, and Parry Rating and it stands to reason that similar itemisation will continue for the DKs from then on. The DK has a conversion from AP to SP for all its spells and so AP will be the primary scaling stat for the DK. The DK, like Warriors and Paladins, recieved 2AP per STR and will likely share DPS itemisation with these two classes.

Q: Can you change the runes on your blade? Why not?

A: Because the ability to do so would be too hard to balance, and less intuitive for the player. As explained by Ghostcrawler, Blizzard poster:

Q: What about the runeforged Enchants? How will they work?

A: They are a permenant weapon enchante like the existing Enchanting recipies for weapons. Ghostcrawler again:

 

Baern

I don't think it is massively worthwhile talking about specs at the moment, the trees are likely to change dramatically between now and launch. I concede that it is interesting though, and I have spent a while working on trees myself...

Things I have found interesting...
Death Grip appears to have a minimum range and a relatively long cooldwon.
Blood Boil, however, has it's cooldown reduced significantly by less with the Unholy Command talent than Death Grip, so perhaps this is the more "regular" taunt, despite it only affected diseased targets. We still don't know how many are likely to be diseases, but it would seem in a group at least diseasing liberally would be useful.
Interestingly, neither is a normal taunt (like taunt, or druid growl, or RD) rather they are like challenging shout in that they both force the target to attack you for x seconds. If DKs don't get a regular taunt of some kind this would put them at a big disadvantage in some situations, not least grouping.

Other things - checking the spell data, it would appear at least Death and Decay, Icy Touch and Mind Freeze scale with AP, so it's likely that DKs will be using AP for their threat scaling, not spell damage. I couldn't think of any other abilities to check off the top of my head. The talented spells don't appear to, but this could be an oversight, or I could be looking at the data wrong. Impurity seems to suggest there will be some spell damage benefit, but how much remains to be seen. Blood wouldn't seem to benefit a great deal, though, nor Frost, so perhaps the Impurity talent is simply a way of allowing spell damage scaling without requiring spell damage gear for unholy.

Bone armor - has a 30 second cooldown from the info I have seen, which could potentially be huge. It could simply be designed as an "I'm getting hit and I shouldn't be" talent, but I can certainly see benefits.
Also, Lichborne currently lasts 30 seconds. Immunity to fear and 25% extra misses against you for 30 seconds is huge.
Those 2 abilities combined with Icebound Fortitude seem to offer a good amount of extra survivability.

 

Talgog

Cooldown on Death Grip is 20 seconds. Minimum range looks like 8 yards.

Unholy Aura

There's a video circulating of a Death Knight in action. It also looks like they use strictly warrior gear.

 

Draele

For sure. I, for one, hope they clean the trees up a good bit. Two things in particular I noticed:

1) Too many tanking talents in Blood. Isn't Frost the tanking tree? I was under the assumption that Blood=DPS, Frost=Tank, Unholy=PvP. If not and the trees are more "styles"

2) Unholy looks nearly useless for PvE. It's cool to have talent trees lean one way or the other, but this tree looks entirely too corpse dependent to be of much use in raids- especially boss encounters.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

Lamaros

I agree that it's not massively useful to talk about specs, per se, but I think that if it is a spec discussion that talks mostly about the talents that the spec allows then at least the discussion of the talents will be useful, even if some are moved/changed later on.

I thought I saw something somewhere official, perhaps in an interview, that said the DK's spells all scale with AP, and that DKs will not be going for +spelldamage gear.

I havn't seen the specifics on Death Grip at the moment, but I suspect that it is not intended to be a taunt anyway, it seems more of a pulling ability (or a "hey you, stop chasing that healer and get here" ability). Blood boil also seems to be more of an "oh shit!" or AOE ability. You wouldn't want to be using it unless you have to as the diseases will be doing more damage than it's worth. (Interesting synergy with Atrocity?) DK tanking will have to require maintaining threat, and the DK seems most likely to do this through damage.

Bone Armor looks huge indeed. I suspect it will be moved or changed. a 30sec cooldown is very low. Lichborne is also very good, if it stays where it is most people will get it. I wonder, can it be dispelled, and what is the cooldown?

It doesn't seem that DKs will tank much cutting edge stuff unless it happens to allow for their strengths, so I don't expect that DKs will have an out-and-out tanking build. The commitment would probably be to a tank/ot/dps build, and in that there will possibly be flexibility as to how far into each of the trees you go. Nothing "must have" seems to be placed very high in each of them at this point, and they look to do more DPS in such a build than some other tanking classes will be able.

 

Sahdruin

There's a thread over on the wotlk.wikidot.com Forums that has a bit of theorycrafting into a DPS build using what we currently know about Death Knights.

Can be found here: General: DK Talent build

 

Zapf

Why would you have another DK in the raid keeping up icy touch? If you're the tank, then he/she would most likely be a dps specced DK, which would not be likely to have frost runes to even cast that. There is also the possibility that they will make it a high-threat move, as its aoe counterpart specifically mentions that, and would make sense from a frost = tanking perspective. And I don't think you can really say blood strike would be a better attack than frost strike threat/damage wise - we don't really know how its affected by spell damage, or the frozen runeblade effect, etc. You also need to look at all the abilities you would use with each spec, not just a single one.

10/50/11
War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

I assumed with this that bosses can't get frozen, but can get chill type effects (from what I can recall about icy chill (enchant) changes a couple of months back, and specific mentioning of it affecting bosses)

Threatwise, you get:

• 5% frost/shadow spell damage (whether this means 5% more damage done by frost and shadow spells, or just 5% more spell damage in those schools isn't clear, especially frost spells not having a lot of info known on spell/ap scaling)
• 5% spell crit
• 5% melee hit (good for frost strike and frozen runeblade most likely)
• 15% damage increase to your frost abilities when afflicted by a disease
• 50% crit damage increase for your frost abilities

It's possible that tundra stalker might end up being a better damage / threat increase than the crit talent, but again that is out of the range of my tinkering. You also get a crapload of runic power from this (150% increased generation, and another 30% increased effect on your runic power using moves).

Mitigation-wise, you get:

• 5% parry
• +5 seconds on icebound fortitude (our oh-shit button?)
• 6% frost and shadow damage reduction (which will probably be a large amount of the magic damage happening in wotlk)
• A stacking spell resistance proc
• A chill effect melee damage proc (though the chance for it to go off does seem a little low)
• A temporary 25% miss chance with lichbourne

Things you miss out on:
Bone Armor - biggest loss, in my opinion. The rune cost really implies that it was intended for a frost/unholy (ie a tanking build) or some sort of jack of all trades build, so they might bring it higher up into the unholy tree as time goes on.
Spell deflection
Blade Barrier - how often will you have all 6 of your runes on cooldown?
Veteran of the third war - 3% stamina is nice, but not nearly as must-have as the stam boosts in other classes tanking trees.
Will of the necropolis - already talked about this in the OP quote.

I figure a 4 frost and 2 unholy rune layout, with Icy Touch, frost strike and the frozen runeblade damage on autoattack, along with death chill and death and decay used in aoe situations, and some other unholy move to maintain at least one disease on the mob (I've not looked into the unholy moves enough to make any real guesses for that). I probably should look more at death coil usefulness and how the first tier point allocations should be for blood and unholy in the future - this hypothesiscraft is fun.

 

Lamaros

I'm going to post a little about some potential options with some of the talents as they are currently in the Alpha:

Blood Tree:

General: There are a whole lot of talents in the blood tree that seem to point to a Blood/Unholy spec where the main abilities are Blood Strike, Plague Strike and the odd Death Coil.

Imp. Blood Strike: 15% boost is pretty big, especialy considering the number of diseases around. It obviously wont stay like it is if it applies to all diseases in a raid. Perhaps it will only apply to unique diseases. Lots of possibilities when conbined with some Unholy skills and talents.

Rune Tap & Imp. Rune Tap: Depending on the ranks of Rune Tap this could be uselss or ok.

Spell Deflection: This is an intersting spell, especially when you consider the Blade Barrier talent. Given an ability to trigger blade barrier at will you have a good chance of having this kick in.

Blade Barrier: This is an interesting ability due to the fact that using all your runes up is not a random chance. You can most probably deliberatly spam abilities to get this to kick in. Given the combinations (keeping one rune handy, and rune taping whenever you want this to kick in - triggering this and then hopefully spell deflection) it could be a very useful talent.

Mark of Blood: As interesting as Blade Barrier. I'm unsure if the maximum healing applies per heal, or as an overall total. If it is per heal then it's ok, if it's an overall total then it's hardly useful. Could be applicable in Raids as well as PvP depending how it works.


Frost Tree:

General: Looks to be the Tanking, AoE damage, and ranged DPS tree.

Chromatic Rune Mastery: This looks pretty meh to me at the moment. Low chance, low length abilities like this seem useles. No one is going to hope that they get a proc at just the right time in order to make use of this, they will just put the right runes on their blade to begin with. Increasing either the chance of it happening or the length the rune lasts for would make it much more useful.

Deathchill: Looks to be the only really relaible AoE threat spell DKs have.

Glacier Rot: 15% damage increase for all forst abilites in many situations (another way in which Atrocity might help DKs tank groups of mobs?)

Runic Power Mastrey: This is huge. 30% damage or length increase for any ability that uses runic power. AoE tanking/DPS gets a big boost from this.

Tundra Stalker: 10% damage boost, pretty much.


Unholy Tree:

General: Looks to be a tree that has abilities that work well with both other trees. A few general abilities that will get skipped, but some very strong combinations. I expect this tree will be used in most specs, while either blood or frost gets skipped.

Corpse Explosion + Imp: AoE damage and the way in which to get Diseases up on a group in order to use Blood Boil or Glacier Rotted Deathchills.

Magic Suppression + Magic Domination: With the Spell Deflection from the blood tree this looks to give you some good magic damage reduction. Unsure if the 2% from magic domination will apply to the DK also, but if it does that's a possible 22% spell damage reduction whenever you parry.

Blood Caked Blade: One of the rare talents that would benefit dual wielding more than using a 2H?

Crypt Fever: Considering the possible diseases you can cause (9?!? I think) this could be a big (54%) deal.

Wandering Plague: 15% on each disease tick from up to 9 different diseases? I wonder if the damage causes threat.

 

Grizzly

Since they mentioned DK's will be allowed to dual wield in addition to 2H ive been curious as to what roles people will be expected to use DW/2H in.

21pt Blood, Scent of Blood gives your next X attacks a lifesteal effect after being the victim of a critical hit, lasts Y sec.
If X is high enough this would favor dual wield spec, if is low enough to have the charges easilly used up by a 2H then it is about equally good for 2H/DW. Unless your getting crit often enough that the effect is refreshing before the buff wears out or your target is going to die soon.

21pt Blood, Blade Barrier: Whenever you have no runes active your parry is increased by X% for Y sec.
A very high parry rate resetting swing cooldowns would favor a slow 2H weapon significantly.

26pt Blood, Bloody Vengeance: Gives X% bonus to physical and shadow dmg for Y sec after a melee or spell crit, Stacks up to 3 times.
If Y is low enough this talent could favor dual wielding. Current reports saying Y at 30 secs however would give very little benefit to dual wield.

41pt Blood, Heart Strike: An instant attack, weapon damage + X, has a Y sec cooldown.
This would heavilly suggest using a 2H weapon. Using Bloodstrike in combination with Hysteria, Bloody Vengeance and Dancing Runeblade would also appear to make the latter talents scale better with a 2H?

41pt Frost, Frost Strike: On next attack do weapon damage + X, Chance to freeze target.
At first glance this makes it look like a Heroic Strike effect that would benefit a fast weapon. However unlike Heroic Strike, FS uses runes thus is not the spammable rage dump HS is. With the inability to spam, this talent looks laclustre beyond the chance to freeze your target.

31pt Unholy, Blood Caked Blade: X% chance per melee attack to apply a dot for Y sec .
This would appear to favor dual wield. However if the disease can be refreshed at any point, doesnt stack and is a long duration then a slow 2H may well be able to keep the dot on the target almost as much as a DW'er can.

From the looks of things i cant really see any situation where dual wielding would be a significant advantage in any given role. However the blood tree does seem to favor the use of a 2H weapon. Frost and Unholy seem to be equally viable with a 2H or DW.

 

Baern

Death Strike, Blood Strike, Plague Strike and Degeneration are based off weapon damage, all non-talents as far as I am aware, so I don't see a DK using DW in any DPS roll.
Also, Frost Strike has a 6 second cool down.

As it stands I can see no benefit at all of DW over 2h, that of course could change. I wouldn't even be suprised if DWing Deathknights was a mistake and they'll be 2h only.

 

Prinsesa

Doesn't the raw scaling of AP for a dual-wielder provide reason enough to do it? As far as I know, the only reason we even have two-handed DPS at this point is because all the Arms talents leading up to Blood Frenzy support two-handers and Paladin abilities/talents don't support/allow dual-wielding.

Another thing to consider is that Sinister Strike, Backstab, Hemorrhage, Ambush and Ghostly Strike all use weapon damage.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Maax

A tanking build, but not frost focused, gets the important passive talents, uses blood strike & plague strike. Frost just gets imp frost aura, armor, and +melee hit. Blood up through Blade Barrier. Unholy up to Bone Armor/Magic Domination.

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

Devs: Our nerfs will block out the sun!
Druids: Then we will tank in the shade.

 

Baern

There's a screenshot with all the DK spells with cooldowns/rune costs going around now.

I found it interesting at least to look at which Strikes are spammable. Death Strike looks like the best bet, although it's not effected by any of the +damage or crit talents like Plague Strike. Neither of those currently has a cool down but Plague Strike costs 1 blood, 1 unholy, Death Strike just 1 unholy.
Perhaps we'll end up using Plague and possibly Degeneration to refresh diseases, Blood Strike on cool down (5 seconds) and Heart Strike when diseases are about to expire, or potentially not at all. Certainly with multiple diseases being placed on Bosses, Heart Strike looks like it would probably end up reducing dps.
I'm not nearly clever enough to work it all out. Of course the whole runic power thing comes into this as well. There simply might not be enough cooldowns to really spam anything.

Also, Death Grip cooldown is 45 seconds (35 talented) with an 8 yard minimum range, and Blood Boil is 10 (8) and all diseased targets within 30 yards, so I still believe Blood Boil will be the primary taunt used. Whether there will be a faster way of diseasing multiple targets than tab/degeneration I don't know, as most AE's seem to be Consecration type, rather than actually diseasing anything.

Does anyone have any information on the Ghouls? It's a 5 minute cooldown at the moment, and the random ghoul for exp/honor kills is only a 4% chance, with 2 maximum, so I'm curious as to how often a DK will actually have a ghoul, and if the ghoul is affected by the orc pet damage racial.

 

urotas

I'm a little confused about the working of the rune-system. I was wondering if anyone could clarify. From what I've read, the rune system works one of two ways:

1. Each rune has a separate cooldown, not dependent on the other runes. In this scenario, you would always want to have all your runes on cooldown to do as much damage as possible, so as not to waste any cooldown recharging time on any of the runes. If you save 1 rune for a spell interrupt, you're effectively using 5 runes every x seconds. If you're not saving anything, you can use 6 runes every x seconds, but can't use any runes for stuff like interrupting spells or stunning.

In pvp you of course want to keep some runes in store for spell interrupts etc, but you need to trade reduced damage for it, even if you don't end up using the interrupting ability. Rogues and warriors don't need to make this tradeoff (except maybe for global cooldown for pummel?), since energy and rage aren't wasted until you go over 100. A rogue can always hemo at 80-90 energy, and still have enough left for a kick.

2. The entire runebar has one cooldown, which restores one rune every x seconds like a rogues energy bar. If this is the correct case, how does it determine what rune refreshes first? In this scenario, it would be good to keep some runes to spare, to be able to respond to surprises, and you also wouldn't be losing any damage by doing this.

 

Wander

Indications are that 1) is the correct way to describe the function of Runes.

But you have to recall that Runes aren't interchangeable; they're divided by type, and each skill uses a different type of rune. Additionally, skills consume "Runic Power" usually as part of the effect, meaning that simply using up a Rune as soon as it comes off cooldown isn't necessarily the best effect; you want to use skills that primarily build Runic power before you use skills that consume it. It's analogous to the Combo Point system in that manner.

This means three things:

1) Spell Interrupts and Utility skills appear to be on different Runes than the primary damage strikes; this means that you can inscribe, let's say, two Frost Runes, Three Blood Runes and One Unholy Rune; while you're constantly using up the CD of your Blood Runes and Unholy Runes, your Frost Runes are always open for your Freezing Mind spell interrupt, for example.

2) Building on the above Scenario, your best DPS may not be from spamming your runes constantly, but rather building up Runic power using a combination of strike; some of your Runes will be off cooldown for longer, but that's because you're using other Runes. It's not directly analogous to the Energy system in that regard, where you want to avoid building Enegy above 100/leaving a Rune off CD; some of the Runes you inscribe are not going to be for your spammable strikes, but rather for your Runic-Power consuming strikes.

3) 1 and 2 may interact in that your "Finishers" and "Interrupts" are on the same Runes (and so available readily), but you have to pick between the two when in combat moment-to-moment.

 

Lurker

Yay, a Death Knight thread. I got the screenshot of the costs/cooldowns, so I figured I'd try to get a rudimentary DPS rotation going.

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight
Edit: Moved a point to Heart Strike instead of the Improved Mount.

Here's the build I'm looking at. It gets all the obvious DPS talents in Blood and the synergy talents in Unholy. Heart Strike is actually just filler. I don't think it's going to get used much in a raid (except for frequent phase fights) because it cleans the diseases, which are damage themselves (as well as what applies them), as well as increasing Blood Strike's damage. You can do this rotation using 3 Blood Runes and 2 Unholy runes, and it will be completely sustainable. That last rune is pretty rough to nail down, between Frost and Unholy. Another Blood rune would probably be a bit redundant, unless Mark of Blood comes into play (fight specific. A DK on the Healing meters? D: ).

Frost: Mind Freeze (which might be important, but we have Rogues and others for this), Frost Blast (knockback, which may be important for some fights. I think its damage will be negligible).

Unholy: Anti-Magic Shell (Survivability, especially at every 20s), Death Grip (Very, very unlikely to be of use to a DPS DK), Death Strike (More DPS), Hysteria (proc reliant if used while keeping normal rotation). If Degen misses (and doesn't refresh the Dot), this extra Unholy rune would give you a bit of a cushion, too. You can skip a Plague / Degen for a Raise Dead, too.

Another Blood is a bit redundant, except instead of being proc reliant, you have to drop a Plague Strike or Degeneration in favor of Hysteria. Switching presences mid-fight might also become a strategy, since Blood Presence's healing may be beneficial (Blood Tap, less Rune Tapping, less healing). The extra 5% strength there may blow Unholy's Haste + GCD out of the water (especially since DKs get a massive 16% extra Strength in talents).

Example DPS rotation - 3 Blood(1,2,3) & 2 Unholy(5,6) & 1 floating. - {# Runetype(Slot#,Slot#,etc.)}
This assumes Runes have a 10s cooldown. It's hard to eye it on the videos that are out, but that's my guess.

Blood Presence - 15% damage and healing 4% of damage done
Unholy Presence - 15% Haste and -0.5s GCD.

Plague Strike - 1 Blood, 1 Unholy, no cooldown
Degeneration - 1 Unholy, no cooldown
Blood Strike - 1 Blood *5s Cooldown

Note: There is the possibility with the existance of the 'refresh DoT' talents, that Blizzard will change the fact that dot tics reset when the debuff is applied (thus you have a constant interval of three seconds). This rotation assumes that will be true (or else these talents will never likely never be used).

General theory:
Blood(1) and Unholy(5) are used by Plague Strike.
Unholy (6) is used by Degeneration.
Blood(2,3) are used by Blood Strike.
Rune(4) is spare.

Unholy Presence
mm:ss
00:00 Plague Strike - 1 Blood(1)/Unholy(5) restored at 00:10. Disease falls at 0:21. 2 Blood(2,3)/1 Unholy(6) available.
00:01 Degeneration - 1 Unholy(6) restored at 0:11. Disease falls at 0:31. 2 Blood(2,3)/0 Unholy available.
00:02 Blood Strike (up at 00:07) - 1 Blood(2) restored at 0:12. 1 Blood(3)/0 Unholy available
00:03 Plague Dot Tic
00:04 Degen Dot Tic
00:05
00:06 Plague Dot Tic
00:07 Blood Strike (up at 00:12) - 1B(3) restored at 00:17. 0B/0U available. Degen Dot Tic
00:08
00:09 Plague Dot Tic. Probably have a lot of Runic Power at this point, so best to dump it here if possible. (use the floating Rune)
00:10 Gain 1B(1)/1U(5). Plague Strike. 1B/1U restored at 0:20. 0B/0U available. Degen Dot Tic
00:11 Gain 1U(6). Degeneration. 1U restored at 0:21. 0B/0U available.
00:12 Gain 1B(2). Blood Strike (up at 00:17). 1B(2) restored at 0:22. 0B/0U available. Plague Dot Tic
00:13 Degen Dot Tic
00:14
00:15 Plague Dot Tic
00:16 Degen Dot Tic
00:17 Gain 1B(3). Blood Strike (up at 00:22). 1B(3) restored at 0:27.
00:18 Plague Dot Tic
00:19 Degen Dot Tic
00:20 Gain 1B(1)/1U(5). Plague Strike. 1B/1U restored at 0:30.
00:21 Gain 1U(6). Degeneration. 1U restored at 00:31. Plague Dot Tic
00:22 Gain 1B(2). Blood Strike (up at 0:27). Degen Dot Tic.
00:23
00:24 Plague Dot Tic
00:25 Degen Dot Tic
00:26
00:27 Gain 1B(3). Blood Strike (up at 0:32). 1B(3) restored at 0:37. Plague Dot Tic
00:28 Degen Dot Tic
00:29
00:30 Gain 1B(1)/1U(5). Plague Strike. 1B/1U restored at 0:40. Plague Dot Tic

Blood Presence
00:00.0 Plague Strike - 1B(1)/1U(5) restored at 0:10.0, 2B(2,3)/1U(6) available.
00:01.5 Degen - 1U(6) restored at 0:11.5, 2B(2,3)/0U available.
00:03.0 Blood Strike (up at 00:08.0) - 1B(2) restored at 0:13.0, 1B(3)/0U available. Plague tic
00:04.5 Degen tic
00:06.0
00:07.5
00:08.0 Blood Strike (up at 00:13.0) - 1B(3) restored at 0:18.0, 0B/0U available.
00:09.0
00:10.0 Gain 1B(1)/1U(5). Plague Strike - 1B/1U restored at 00:20.0
00:10.5
00:11.5 Gain 1U(6). Degen - 1U(6) restored at 21.5, 0B/0U available.
00:12.0
00:13.0 Gain 1B(2). Blood Strike (up at 00:18.0) - 1B(2) restored at 00:23.0, 0B/0U available.
00:13.5
00:15.0
00:16.5
00:18.0 Gain 1B(3). Blood Strike (up at 00:23.0) - 1B(3) restored at 00:28.0.
00:19.5
00:20.0 Gain 1B(1)/1U(5). Plague Strike - 1B/1U restored at 00:30.0
00:21.0
00:21.5 Gain 1U(6). Degen - 1U(6) restored at 31.5.
00:22.5
00:23.0 Gain 1B(2). Blood strike (up at 00:28.0) - 1B(2) restored at 00:33.0)
Etc.

This doesn't assume any Blood Rune Mastery procs, which I think encourages "Rune Dumping" within the time of the proc (5 seconds). In all likelyhood, BRM will only reduce the cooldowns of runes used within that buff's duration, too. BRM procs will be a good time for things like Hysteria and Rune Tap if you're running 3B/3U. From this, I think 3B/3U will be the most versatile DPS spec, allowing you to do various things according to the procs, or even waiting on a Plague Strike / Degen and using them. Along with Rune Dumping, Dancing Runeblade may prove exceptional here, if it's a straight 100% damage increase like I think it is. It's got a short cooldown, but it's hard to theorycraft because I haven't seen a maximum Runic Power amount yet and that goes for everything else related to Runic Power.

I was also considering a 6U rune, Death Strike spam with occasional Degens.

Edit: Dur, Summon Gargoyle is a talent not in my build. D;

Edit: Frost Strike is also a talent. Durr again.

 

rhea

Before you can fix it... Summon Cargoyle is a 41 point unholy talent.

 

Lurker

Last edited by Lurker : Today at 6:47 PM.

Hah!

/victory

 

Lamaros

Corpse Explosion has a 100% chance to give enemies a disease that lasts 9 (12) seconds.

I was my understanding that abilities either used runes or runic power, but not both. Spells that use runes build runic power, spells that consume runic power cost only the runic power and do damage (or last longer) depending on the amount of runic power you have, up to a maximum of 100 (+30% talented).

The exception seems Blood Tap, which costs health.

There are interrupts in Frost and Blood. Strangulate uses runic power though, not runes. You can also use Blood Tap to give yourself a chromatic rune if needed, or Empower runeblade to renew some runes on demand.

As abilities that consume runic power don't use runes to cast this will not be the case. The runic power spells that do damage are mostly AoEs though. Only Death Coil & Dancing Runeblade are DPS runic power abilites, that I can tell.

Heart Strike I am also iffy about, but as you say it's a bit of filler.
I would probably get Mark of Blood over Imp. Rune Tap, too, because it seems like it might have more possible use in a raid.

My bould would probably go for:

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

With the remianing point in Heart Stike or On a Pale Horse.

Abilities Used: Blood Strike (5, 1B), Plague Strike (1U, 1B), Degeneration (1U), Death Coil, Mind Freeze (and/or Icy Touch, Frost Blast)
Runes on Blade: 3B, 2U, 1F

General theory:
Blood(1) and Unholy(4) are used by Plague Strike.
Unholy (5) is used by Degeneration.
Blood(2,3) are used by Blood Strike.
Rune(6) is for mind Freeze.

Unholy Presence
mm:ss
00:00 Plague Strike - 1 Blood(1)/Unholy(4) restored at 00:10. Disease falls at 0:21.
00:01 Degeneration - 1 Unholy(5) restored at 0:11. Disease falls at 0:31.
00:02 Blood Strike - 1 Blood(2) restored at 0:12. Reusable at 00.07.
00:03
00:04
00:05 Mind Freeze - 1 Frost (6) restored at 00.15. Reusable at 00.13.
00:06 Cast Death Coil if Sudden Death Procced.
00:07 Blood Strike - 1Blood(3) restored at 00:17. Reusable at 00.12.
00:08 Cast Death Coil if Sudden Death Procced.
00:09 Plague Dot Tic. If Runic Power is 80 or higher cast DancingRuneblade here.
00:10 Repeat.

Blood Presence
00:00.0 Plague Strike
00:01.5 Blood Strike
00:03.0 Degen
00:05.0 DC if procced/Mind Freeze if not.
00:06.5 Blood Strike
00:08.0 DC if procced/Mind Freeze if not, and not on CD.
00:08.0 Dancing Runeblade if Runic Power is 80 and no DC proc.
00:09.5 Dancing Runeblade if Runic Power is 80 and DC proc.
00.10.0 Repeat if possible.
00.11.0 Repeat if possible.

As you can see, with Sudden Death procs, the runic power vairable, et cetera, it's all a bit unknown at the moment. The chances are you will also have to consider Hysteria and maybe Mark of Blood in a raid, or might need to interrupt with Mind Freeze or Strangulate, or slow with Icy Touch.

I think 3/2/1 is a good combo, because you can then blood tap if you need to cast a 2 frost spell, but still have enough for your other abilities.

 

Lurker

Yeah, I have no idea if it scales with Dmg/Healing/AP or if it gets new ranks/scales with level/whatnotelse. If it's 435 (talented and the screenshot I saw) at level 80, it's not worth jack, especially on a 1 minute timer, so I kinda assumed it was going to scale. I figured if there was a nasty boss tuned around having the Mark, DK would respec for it. And actually, now that I think about it, Degenerate would probably interfere with party healing if there were HoTs involved. Direct healing would be up to the Mark. There's a lot of conditional stuff for DKs, and that's exciting, but a bit daunting to take all of it into account.

Also, I'm betting burning any Runic Power when you have GCDs available (between 1st and 2nd Blood Strike, between 2nd Blood Strike and next Plague Strike) will prevent you from capping it out (and not utilizing excess Runic Power generated, ignoring procs) since Plague, Degen and Blood should all generate Runic Power. The preview videos I watch had party frames up, and the Runic Power bar (gray bar) was very volatile, like Rage, so it should be fluctuating a lot and probably be plentiful in a raid.

Mind Freeze is a good option if you need a ranged spell / spell damage on a rune, but Death Strike is an instant strike for weapon damage, and that's likely going to outdamage the 200 Base Frost damage my screenshot of Mind freeze has, but that's subject to scaling like Rune Tap (I imagine Blood/Unholy DKs will not gear so much towards spell damage, and towards Str/Hit/Haste since some spells benefit and scale from AP, but that's a bit much to speculate on). Death Strike will be tied to the same Rune slot, so it'll hit every 10 seconds. That takes up one GCD after the Plague/Degen/Blood combo, leaving you two free for Runic Power dumps, the only one not tied to runes currently being Death Coil (which, I have a feeling will get a cooldown or cost an Unholy rune).

Gah, sorry for the large amount of parentheses.

 

Lamaros

As regards Mark: I expect it will be useful often if it is useful at all. You just put it on the raid tank, or the boss if the boss has a big heal at certain points. It can always be up given it lasts 1min and has a CD of 1min, so it would just be a matter of working it into the rotation if it was useful.

I expect runic power will be enough in an extended fight, the point is just to work out what the maximum dps return is considering the relationship between sudden death death coils (which benifit most from it always being at the cap) and dancing runeblade, which will benifit most from lasting a length that contains all your heavy hitting spells, but will reset the power to (if dancing runeblade mirrors abilities and not just white damage).

I beleieve that DKs will probably only have two gear sets, tanking and DPS, with spelldamage gear being the same as melee gear due to AP->Spelldamage. I expect they will do something similar in recgards to Haste->Spell Haste (or all all DK spells instantcast?) The real difference in spelldamage will come in spec.

That said I put the forst rune and Mind Freeze in there because of the fact it's an interrupt, does a little bit of damage, and opens up the ability to throw an Icy Touch into the rotation if you use blood tap. For outright DPS it may well be that a Death Strike is better.

I see no reason that deathcoil would get a rune cost, unless they made all runic power abilities cost runes. It is unlikely to get a CD also, given that you can only cast it effectivly with runic power and that it consumes runic power. Sudden death gives you 'free' ones, but it is a 20% chance every 5 seconds, so there is a certain variable 'cooldown' inherent in that.

 

Lamaros

Another topic that hasn't got much discussion is that of the DKs tanking capabilities. This is an interesting one given that the DK has been talked up as a viable dungeon tank and also as a raid spellcasting boss tank.

Tanking generally:

As far as tanking goes generally the DK has a few skills and abilities.

Frost Presence: Costs 1 Frost rune. The Death Knight takes on the presence of frost, increasing armor by 45% and threat generated by 25%.

The DK has two tauntlike abilities:

Blood Boil: 0 Rune cost? 10 sec CD. Causes all disease effects on targets within 30 yards to painfully errupt, dealing 104 damage and forcing the target to attack the DK for 3 seconds.

Death Grip: 1 Unholy. 45 sec CD. 8-30 range. Draws the target toward the Death Knight and forces the enemy to attack the DK for 4 sec.

And two damage reduction talents:

Icebound Fortitude: Consumes all runic power. 1min CD. Casuses the DK to become immune to stun (does not break stun) and increases his armor by 50% for up to 12 seconds.

Anti-Magic Shell: 1 Unholy. 20 sec CD. Absorbs 75% of the damage delt by the next harmful spell. Damage absorbed generates runic power. Lasts 5sec.

Blood Boil is obviously servicable as a taunt, should the DK need one, while Death Grip has a variety of possible applications. Compared to other tanking classes it seems DKs will be able to taunt with a similar effectiveness. (I am unsure about the way Blood Boil works exactly, perhaps it does damage per disease, in which case it works even better as a taunt, especially as an AOE taunt when combined with some of the skills in the Unholy tree as it may be a good threat generator).

The damage reduction abilities that the DK has are less exciting. Anti-Magic Shell looks very nifty, but when we compare it to the Warrior's spell reflection, well, what exactly is so great about it? The Warrior's ability has a lower CD, lasts for the same length, and reflects the spell.

Icebound Fortitude is also a little underwhelming. We will probably have similar or lower armor than the Warrior and the Paladin, and much lower than a Druid. The only thing all that special about this ability is that we become stun immune.

Nothing here indicates a specific uniqueness in DK tanking. Looking elsewhere...

Tanking Talents:

Deflection: Parry increased 5%.
Spell Deflection: Spell damage decreased by 15% whenever you parry, lasts 10 seconds.
Blade Barrier: Parry increased by 30% when you have no runes active, lasts 15 seconds.
Will of the Necropolis: Armor increased by 15% when below 35% health.

Frost Aura: 5% more health for party. +25 Frost Resist.
Toughness: 10% more armor from items.
Deathchill: AOE Icy Touch, causes increased threat.
Runic Power Mastery: Abilities and spells act as if you have 30% more runic power.
Midnight Sun: 6% less damage from Ice and Shadow.
Aclimation: 15% chance on spell hit to boost resistsnce by 15sec, stacks up to 3 times.
Chill of the Grave: Icebound Fortitude lasts 5 sec longer.

Unholy Command: Lowers Blood Boil and Death Grip CDs.
Lichborne: Immune Charm, Fear, Sleep, 25% chance to miss, for 30sec.
Magic Suppression + Imp.: 7% less damage from magic. Anti-Magic shell covers whole party and stops 100%.
Bone Armor: 4 bones that reduce damage by 40%.

In the blood tree the combination of Deflection, Spell Deflection and Blade Barrier has a very good chance of granting the DK 15% spell damage reduction for most of the time and +35% parry. The cost of these talents is 23 talents. Who knows what Will of the Necropolis is doing up there.

The frost tree gives some boost to health and armor, notably in allowing Icebound Fort to last 22 seconds, but the more unique abilities here are the bonuses to resistance (especially Frost resist), and the magic damage protection from frost and shadow. Midnight sun will cost you 33 talents. Aclimation will cost you 43.

The unholy tree provides some more immunities to go with stun from Icebound Fort, though on a much longer CD, and gives some magic damage protection. Bone armor and Imp magic supression will cost you 32 talent points.

If the DK is going to tank with some uniqueness it seems to me that it should go for magic damage, as we're told, but the abilites that contribute to that are scattered over all three trees. Between all the trees you could get up to 28% magic damage reduction for frost and shadow whenever you parry, but that would cost you 98 talent points and is impossible.

What is possible is 23/15/33, where you pick up up to blade barrier, up to Nerves of cold steel, and up to Bone Armor. Giving you 22% magic reduction whenever you parry, bone armor, 100% reduction from anti-magic shell for you and your party, and the ability to go stun, charm, fear and sleep immune. But you don't get a whole lot else and it seems a bit of an effort to go in order to give yourself something unique to lay your hat on. On top of that, the tree you skip the most is Frost, the one we associated mostly with tanking. But why go heavy frost when all you get is some improved resitances and armor?

 

udalan

I would imagine the Anti-magic shell has it's usefullness over warrior spell reflect, because warrior spell reflect does not reflect a large number of spells, and magic-type abilities.

Eg the anti-magic shell would be very usefull against any kind of splash/aoe damage that spell reflect doesn't counter (Eg Illidans frontal aoe ability, leotharas, tidewalker etc) Also spell reflect doesn't actually reflect alot of spells from normal mobs, let alone boss-types. (Spell reflect doesn't work on the shades in karazhan going upto shade/illhoof).

 

Feorthas

Here's a thought: Looking at Acclimation, it sounds like we may be looking at some more 'stacking debuff' type boss fights. If so, Death Knights with Acclimation will suddenly become the Premiere tanks for those fights simply because not only would the minimum acceptable level of resist be lower for them (in a more casual, or at least 'newbie raid', environment) but they'd also be able to basically guarantee that any debuffs will stack more slowly on them.

So, assuming that Acclimation may just be the "Must Have" in the Frost tree, you are now required to have 43 points in the tree in order to max it out. Going from there, if Frost strike is worthwhile you might as well pick it up along with Chill of the Grave, Tundra Stalker, and Hungering Cold. At this point, we're at 0/55/0 and have 16 talent points remaining, leaving it impossible to both get Lichborne from the Unholy tree and the Parry bonuses from Blood. Right now, I'd err on the side of passive talents and pick up the 5% Parry, along with 3/3 Epidemic from Unholy, and either put the final three points in Dark Conviction or Subversion (probably Dark Conviction since 'DPSing' in tank gear probably wont exactly require additional threat reduction.

 

Lurker

If I had a choice in the matter, I'd make these changes, since Deflection/Spell Deflection/Blade Barrier don't fit well in the Blood tree.

- Black Ice to Unholy (same tier), Replaced with Deflection
- Nerves of Cold Steel to Blood (replacing Spell Deflection, so a Tier higher)
- Chromatic rune mastery or Blood of Ice Water to Blood (for Blade Barrier). Blood of Ice Water probably wouldn't fit too well in Blood, being spell crit.
- Merciless Combat doesn't really fit Frost's tanking flavor either, so if we had to be fair, that could be knocked over to Blood too, switched with Veteran of the Third War or Will of the Necropolis.

This might bloat the Frost tree for some people, but that's okay, since the Protection trees are pretty much in the same boat when speccing for tanking. With a build I'm looking at right now, that'd be 59 points in Frost, leaving you with 12, which would let you take Epidemic, Virulence, Imp. Death Coil (will probably help threat), Unholy Command and Lichborne. This is what you'd roughly end up with:

War Pirate :: Talent tree Deathknight

I skipped out on the snare/freezing talents, since raid bosses still won't likely be freezable/snare-able. Those seem like they'd better serve an Unholy/Frost PvP build. I was actually felt strongly about taking Howling Blast instead of Frozen Dread plate, as knockbacks will probably work as interrupts on mobs too (if not, oh well. Still handy world ability). Firstly, the proc is really low--5%--and is a simple 10% snare and Attack speed reduction. Imp. Thunderclap probably won't be going anywhere, so if that stacks with Icy Touch, you'll likely have all the attack speed reduction you'd need. In addition, it only lasts 5 seconds, which is two to three boss auto attacks. I doubt it will stack, but that'd also mean Frozen Dreadplate would be just as worthless against bosses. Everything else is focused on Threat generation and Mitigation. Pretty easy choices here. If bosses are freezable, and that ends up being a key part of strategies, than naturally some things will need to shift around.

Typical tanking will probably resemble 3F/3U or 4F/2U. Although DK is touted as a Magic tank, they'll probably be able to tank melee too, obviously. A general strategy will be to Degenerate targets and Icy Touch/(Frost Strike/Frost Strike or 2nd Icy Touch), which is ye olde mitigation versus threat, and spare Unholy runes used for Death Grip/Anti-Magic Shell. Runic Power dumps would be Death Coil, Blood Boil, Strangulate and Death Chill. If you're single target, you could probably weave two Death Strikes in for extra threat with 3U.

Tundra Stalker/Glacial Rot will come into play here, as it's a pretty hefty (1.25 Frost presence * 1.15 Diseased target * 1.10 Tundra stalker) 58% bonus threat. If Icy Touch is 1:1 damage:threat, it'll be 636 threat before AP is factored in with Presence, which is around 127 TPS. After Glacial Rot, that should be about 727 threat, 146 TPS. Chill of the Grave (50% crit damage bonus) will be good for spike threat, and boosting IBFort to an average of +14% passive increased armor, though it'll likely be our "Oh shit button on a nice 1 minute cooldown", so it won't get used every time it's up, save for mitigating mini-enrages.

Also, anyone else notice Frost Blast gets very little talent support?

Unrelated to Frost tanking:
I can't take credit for it, but someone put the question out on a leak site regarding whether or not we'd be able to heal ourselves with Death Coil under the effects of Lichbourne. I think that'd be a pretty neat mechanic, especially with Lichbourne's 15 minute cooldown.

A note for my earlier post: Mark of Blood became lightyears ahead of Rune Tap when I read more closely and found out it can go on Allies. Think a friendly Vampiric Embrace. Originally I thought it was only enemies, and since not all mobs heal, was less useful in that regard. It's an interesting little ability in that light, to say the least. Casting it on allies will probably be the usual strategy, because allies won't resist spells, causing your mark to be down for a minute. Give me a break though; I was busy with RoS while writing this stuff.

Also, I'm going 6U on release and spamming Death Strike just because. :p