Eradorn

In regards to runes, I think it is far more likely that you do indeed change in towns, but that it is Main Hand Weapon specific, with probably some mechanic that prevents you from swapping weapons and immediately using new runes.

For one, they specifically say that you put runes on your weapons. Doesn't seem to make sense that you would do this and somehow have a universal set of runes. Also, it allows for your runes to swap for the job you are doing the same as gear swapping since you will be changing up your gear anyway. You have to make the decisions on your weaps before you enter the instance, but still have the flexibility to change between those weapons while you are in the instance.

Going back to town is too close to respeccing, and changing anytime you want out of combat is definitely further to "changing by encounter" that Blizz seems to want to avoid.

 

Amnesiac

For frost, it seems like that talents are all about boosting Runic Power Generation in order to keep Icebound Fortitude up.

Icy touch generates Runic Power and can be talented to a 1 sec CD that generates 75% more RP as well as the talent being a prereq for a threat/dps talent? Seems like it would be good with Frost Rune Mastery too. Combined with Runic Power Mastery you only need 70% of the Runic power to get 100% effect, and with the Guile of Gorefiend talent Icebound Fortitude also lasts 18 seconds.

So with:

Improved Icy Touch
Runic Power Mastery
Chill of the Grave
Guile of Gorefiend
Frost Strike

You get:

Icy Touch on 1 sec CD.
Icy Touch and Frost Strike generating 75% more Runic Power (Chains also)
Only needing 70% of the Runic Power to activate a full power Icebound Fortitude
And Icebound Fortitude lasts 18 seconds (instead of 12)

Seems pretty cool.

 

Rhaegal

That would actually work well, I think. I'm not sure if they'd actually prevent you entirely from switching weapons in combat, but they may put in some penalty for doing so. Say, any time you equip a weapon, it takes 30 seconds (more?) for the runes to charge up, then the normal duration after that. It wouldn't add any real down-time to an instance when the DK might need to change roles between fights, but it would be a serious deterrent from swapping mid-fight. 30-60 seconds of not being able to use any abilities would seriously hinder whatever role they were attempting to transition into.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Tulavan

For one, you do need more then 70 RP to make it behave like 100 - simply cause 30% of 70 RP is not 30 RP, its less.
For the other - why on Earth would you ever not have 100 RP and make it behave like 130? Making Icebound Fortitude 22 seconds instead of 18?

 

Lamaros

Letting you have different runes on different weapons is an interesting option, however it has many flaws. The number of weapons you'd need to have would be one, the number of decent weapons that would probably be unique would be another, the way it relates to DWing would be a third. I don't think it's the way they will, or should, go.

@Amnesiac: Please read the thread so that we're not repeating discussions. The usefulness of Icy Talons plays into the discussion we had on DWing for DPS, in which there was general agreement that white damage is going to be a small part (<30%) of the DKs DPS. Icy Talons therefore is going to show a greater return with something like Frost Strike, Killing Machine, Disease Procs, etc.

An Icebound Fort as you describe will last for 16seconds with 70%, 23 with 100%.

Also, while there is lots of stuff that will be 'cool' about the DK, it helps that the discussion here serves some purpose beyond just sharing what we find cool. How such a talent combonation might be used would be something you might want to discuss next time, so that the discussion moves somewhere or people consider something that they haven't before.

 

Rhaegal

I don't think I understand your point here. What's wrong with having to have several different weapons? Other classes do, notably warriors who will carry a weapon for their mitigation set, a different one (with a different enchant) for their threat set, and (if they're not the MT) other weapons for when they're not being called upon to tank. I can't imagine DKs needing more than 3-4 weapons (probably not more than 2), which there's already precedent for.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

PSGarak

I really doubt the runes are actually going to be tied to the equipped weapon. Describing runes as scribed into your weapons is mostly a lore thing, and I'm wouldn't be surprised if they change runes to be tatoos instead of weapon glyphs, rather than tie them to the currently-equiped weapon. The biggest arguement I can see in favor of it is that you put a tank rune setup on a tank weapon and ditto for DPS, but I really do think that tank setups are going to be more varied than that depending on what sort of utility/snares/interrupts you might want.

EDIT: I'd also like to not need a different tank sword for each gimmick boss in naxxramus. Especially if DW-tanking is buffed and I actually need two swords per boss.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Eradorn

I agree with Rhae insofar as there is already a precident for numerous weapons, especially with tanks. Threat weapon, DPS, Mit. Many of these are unique, but as they are for different circumstances, likely your runes will coincide.

DW is the reason I said MainHand weapons. Obviously you would only use one set of runes if you were DW and the best way I can see to do that is to have the runes be "engraved" on the MH only.

As for the lore aspect, from the interviews, they have said several times that they will be on your weapons. It may not be the way I envisioned it, this may mean you engrave it and it applies to all your weapons or something like has been mentioned before, but it isn't going to even pretend to be something like a tatoo.

 

Lamaros

As PSGarak said, it's not a matter of different weapons for DPS/threat/mitigation, it's different weapons for different runes. Different runes might be "this boss is frost immune", or "this boss takes more damage from physical", or "need to use more dots here" on top of the other requirements.

Why would runes coincide? Sure, you'll have your default tanking runes but they're just default, not fixed. Different fights will require different things, so you'll need a different tanking weapon for each different fight, a different DPS weapon for each different fight, a different mitigation weapon for each different fight. How hard is to understand that the problem is not one of DK playstyle (Tank/DPS/etc) but of encounter demands?

Example to draw this point out so it cannot be confused (These are abstract. In reality each different spec will likely have a different optimisation.):

Default Rune Combos:

Tank: 4F/1B/1U
DPS: 3F/2U/1B
AOE: 3U/2F/1B

A Frost resist boss:

Tank: 1F/3B/2U
DPS: 3B/3U
AOE: 4U/2B

A heavy movement fight:

Tank: 3F/2U/1B
DPS: 3U/2F/1B
AOE: 4U/1F/1B

A taunt gimmick boss:

Tank: 2B/3F/1U

Et cetera.

So we have a DK that needs 10+ weapons depending on what they are going to do and what fight they are going to do it on.

DKs have magic, we can magically carve runes on a blade while sleeping if Blizzard wants to allow it. I wouldn't worry myself over lore.

 

Alvira

We will know more as more details come out. For now, I rarely go for builds with the idea of a super skewed rune setup in mind because I am not sure how easy it would be to switch runes and I would rather err on the safe side. The only builds which are slightly more flexible about rune setup are those with blood runes because you can change a blood rune to a death rune at will at the cost of just health.

 

Zzbzq

So I was thinking about Frost Strike and what a horribly dissonant ability it is in the frost tree. Frost Strike is clearly in need of a revamp at this point. It just doesn't do as much damage as Icy Touch. It will scale better but it will probably never catch up, especially since frost is encouraged to dual wield. And then even if FS eventually scales to be the more damaging attack, it just means all the DW and IcyT talents in frost are devalued. Any way you spin it, FS and IT are wastefully redundant.

They need to make FS 1) work well with dual wield 2) coexist with Icy Touch without so much redundancy.

For the former, they simply need to make it an instant strike that works either like either a) bloodthirst or b) mutilate/stormstrike/whirlwind. Sorry, but if you want to add a magic "on next attack" strike talent to DKs, it belongs in unholy where 2h is consistently a good idea.

As for coexisting with icy touch, the solution should be simple. FS should be the more damaging attack because it is melee-range and doesn't have the cool debuffs that IcyT does. (Duh.) However, the problem with this is you now have all kinds of talents that effect IT which are now useless for the vast majority of your casts. Not the worst problem as long as the end spec is balanced, but still very inelegant. To make the frost DPS cycle a bit more exciting and make the Icy talents less useless, they should put the FS freeze rate back up at around 1/4 - 1/3 and give Icy a talent (or innate trait) that makes it more damaging than FS versus frozen targets. This way you use FS for primary damage but Icy still gets plenty of time in rotation for the slow, haste, chillblains, and damage after freeze procs. This sort of FS -> IT proc-based rotation is pretty consistent with what they're attempting to do with certain classes' new talents as seen in moonkin and destruction. Except it would probably work better.

 

Feorthas

They seem to mesh fairly well for tanking in my opinion; Frost Strike is the Death Knight Heroic Strike analog--albeit 100% frost--and Icy Touch is a solid mitigation/threat/damage tool when talented.

With regards to the DW thing, the +Hit talent is low enough in frost that practically anyone who wants/needs it can get it so nobody is quite certain whether Frost is the 'DW Tree' or not but dual wielding would definitely reduce the raw threat produced by Frost Strike.

 

Druitt

It's no different from a Feral Druid, who might carry a tanking staff, a DPS staff, and a healing staff. I'd also say it's very similar to a (Druid) tank who might choose maximal mitigation for some encounters, but gear down to give/receive more damage to help with rage generation if the encounter allows.

It's rare that one (unique) weapon would be both the best DPS choice and the best tank choice, so I don't think you'd be stuck re-runing that one, singular drop you got two runs ago.

In terms of DW, they could simply say that runes in an OH weapon are disabled. (For a long time, Shaman could only buff their MH weapon, I think.)

 

PSGarak

Having two or three different weapons for different jobs is normal. Needing multiple copies of each one for runes would be silly for many reasons, not the least of which is unique weapons forcing you to choose which fight you have to be optimal for and which you want to use a downgrade for. And shamans have been able to buff their OH weapons for as long as they've been able to have OH weapons at all, which was patch 2.0.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Zzbzq

FS is most absolutely not an analogue to HS. The only thing they have in common is being Next Melee. HS is a rage-sink ability. It is what you do with your excess rage when you don't have enough global/cooldowns to burn all your rage. Death knights have a static amount of rune resources. There is no such thing as having so many runes you have to dump them into an inferior move.

Also, Frozen Runeblade and killing machine are DW talents.

So when you switch over to FS as your main attack, the following talents are significantly or completely devalued

x5 Improved Icy Touch (effectively mandatory)
x3 Frostbite
x5 Black Ice (not sure)
x1 Frozen Runeblade
x5 Killing Machine
x3 Chilblains
x3 Endless Winter
x1 Aneurysm

That's up to 26 points.

Anyway, if you want to tell me there's nothing worth fixing, that's one thing, but you can't tell me they "mesh fairly well". They are totally redundant and whichever one is better is basically frost's 1-move-wonder.

 

PSGarak

The two abilities actually mesh well on the assumption that either Icy Touch does more threat but has a cooldown, or that it does less threat regardless of whether it has a cooldown or not. If it does more damage but has a cooldown than you spam it on cooldown and use Frost Strike as your filler. If it does less damage you still use it to keep the debuff up. The rest of your post relies on the assumption that Frost Strike benefits more from using a two-hander than dual-wielding, which I suspect will be pushed more towards parity as the class development progresses. They're not even that far off now, aside from a few talents: Frost Strike gives your weapon swing 19% hit chance, which on average is similar damage to the armor mitigation on the excess damage a two-hander has over a one-hander.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Lurker

On a Frost Strike build, provided you want to Frost Strike every auto-attack, Dual Wield should produce a little higher DPS, at the expense of 4 to 5 runes per 10s rotation. 2H will be much more economical in that damage (and therefore threat) dealt per rune, will be higher, most often using 3 runes per rotation (uses 4 every 4th rotation or so). Individual threat values and later implemented cooldowns will determine when/what stuff gets used. I don't feel confident Icy Touch will keep it's 1s talented cooldown, but it won't be anything extremely long for sure.

I also don't see how Frozen Runeblade is devalued by using Frost Strike, provided it adds damage on specials.

 

Lamaros

Druitt: Please read the whole thread before hitting the reply button. Repeating things isn't fun for anyone.

There are a whole heap of points in the frost tree. You don't have to get them all. Just because Frost Strike is in the frost tree and there are some DW talents in there doesn't mean any frost spec has to use DW. In an earlier post I outlined why DW seems to me to work best with Frost/Unholy.


Anyway, you're still a bit off.

Not devalued:

Black Ice is 10% damage? What? How is that devalued at all?
Frozen Runeblade depends if it is a PPM or not, can't say either way.
Endless winter is more useful for builds that are not spamming Icy Touch (the slowing effect is the default one, not the chill bonus added by Chilblains as Chilblains is not a pre-req).

A little devalued:
Improved Icy Touch is still a 25% damage bonus, even if you don't spam it.

Devalued, maybe:
Killing Machine.
Chillblains.
Aneurysm.
Frostbite.

However you may wish to ignore Icy Touch and just use Frost Strike and Mind Freeze (I am unsure how it is changed, but I assume it is a runic power spell now). In which case the use of Mind Freeze does not conflict with Frost Strike and revaules all those abilities with the exception of Imp. Icy Touch.

Even if we give them both the miss we can get to frost strike using only 5 of the talent points that are devalued, those being in Imp. Icy Touch. None of the others need be taken. If we go with Frost Strike/Mind Freeze then we have even more options. The other option you have for runic power damage is Death Coil, which might not be as effective when you're that far into frost (I would have to work it out, lots of modifiers).

Lurker: It's not a matter of DW FS vs 2H FS. It's a matter of DW dps using FS and DW dps using IT with killing machine, and then whicher of them is better vs 2H FS.

 

Feorthas

Firstly, just about every Frost tank will have Frozen Rune Weapon as it's a prereq for Frigid Dreadplate not to mention, it can proc Frost Vulnerability, increasing your threat output. Additionally, while it might be better bang for your buck while dual wielding, this is very debatable as the large damage range indicates that it probably scales with weapon speed just as many pally seals do.

Secondly, as long as Frost Strike counts as a melee attack (unknown), scales with both straight up AP and +Frost Talents (possible), and works with Deathchill there's no straight up reason to not use it unless Icy Touch is just _better_ (and spammable). Heck, if it turns out that Icy Touch is just straight up better, Frost Strike may still be worth the point because it's an extra threat dump that won't interrupt Icy Touch spam; if you somehow have an extra rune, hit Frost Strike and continue Icy Touch spam uninterrupted.

 

Zzbzq

And two frozen runeblades will keep the proc vulnerability up ~twice as much!

 

Druitt

You're somehow making an additional assumption here in sentence two. Please elaborate on what type of role would require the exact same weapon with two different sets of runs in relatively quick succession. I just don't see it.

I used the Druid example specifically because I see an actual role change requiring a new weapon regardless of runes. (And I personally dislike the idea of "uber-weapon, one-size fits all (roles)".) And it seems you agree in that case.

So you must be imagining a situation where a single role requires the same weapon, but different runes. Again, I used the Druid tank example because I still see within-role changes requiring gear swaps. Like a tank choosing armor for one fight, resist for another fight, dodge for another fight, etc. Gear changes.

Perhaps you're envisioning a DK tank wanting to have 0/6/0 runes for one fight, then go 6/0/0 for another fight, on the same weapon for... what reason? If the fights are that different, I'd think it would also make sense for other changes, as in the previous paragraph. It almost sounds like you're really wanting to cheese the rune system, while Blizzard wants to force you to make at least minimal tradeoffs and choices.

To me, it just makes sense that, on the whole, each role would have an appropriate weapon that you use, and a talent/gear/gem/enchant setup that would support a particular style for that role. Runes, as far as I can see, fit into that way of operating. It feels to me that you must have a modus operandi that I can't see that would require some kind of quick-change runes, so please expand...

 

Lamaros

How is this discussion served by you bringing up stuff people have already raised, and other have responded to, again? If you don't understand how weapon itemization doesn't dictate anywhere near as many different combinations as rune setups then please go and educate yourself.

This topic has been done to death in this thread and I don't see why we should keep going over it, especially considering how far the discussion has gone from what we know to be in the game; it has become far too abstract and potentially irrelevant.

 

Tulavan

passive 15% haste is worth any amount of talent points.
in this case - 10
x5 Improved Icy Touch
x5 Icy Talons

 

• Bluefish

Icy Talons should also have near-100% uptime since the buff lasts 20 seconds after the application of an Icy Touch.

I'm curious about the amount of hit rating Death Knights will be able to take advantage of for raiding. If abilities such as Icy Touch and Death Coil use spell hit % to determine whether they land (the presence of Virulence in the Unholy tree argues towards this) and if bosses still resist at a 17% rate (unknown), then hit may be a strong component of DK DPS/aggro. Past 9%, the DK wielding a two-hander is only getting spell hit from his hit rating, whereas the dual-wielding DK is still getting white hits from it.

 

PSGarak

I'm mostly imagining gimmick fights that require you to use some special class-specific ability. Like if your normal physical-mitigation setup is 4F2B, but there's a fight that requires physical mitigation but also 2 unholy runes for Death Grip spam for whatever reason. Or a magic-damage fight that requires two more unholy runes for death grip than the two you already have for anti-magic shield, and you flat-out don't have any 4U setups as a frost/blood spec. Basically, it's theoretically possible (albeit not guaranteed) that the combination of tying your abilities to weapons, and hard-requiring certain abilities, will create some ass-backwards situations. Especially if every spec is expected to be able to tank.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png