They explained why Heart Strike is not instant though, so you can apply it first thing on a mob by queuing it before getting into melee range, and not wasting damage that will then be "deleted" by the -20%hps. Makes sense to me, and if you have a spare blood rune, Blood Strike does more damage than Heart Strike with like one disease up. If there's no disease up, you should probably not waste a blood rune on heart strike anyway and wait for diseases. As for refreshing it for raid bosses, I doubt it'll work, or be capped enough that the effect will become useless before the duration is done considering the raid damage.

So yeah not a big issue. Now frost runes and Frost Strike, another story, in the current state the only thing you can do is icy chill(and howling blast if it's off cd). I know it's getting boosted, but it's still a low boost. Instant Frost Strike though, that's a lot of damage, should make frost a very viable DPS option.

I hope they patch soon, lots of good changes and probably lots of stuff not yet known.

This isn't correct. If you spam any DOT in reapplication before a tick, that DOT never does any damage.

That's how it works on live anyway. Considering the number of ways they've added to refresh DOTs with spam attacks, I hope they'd fix that in WotLK.

It depends on HoT/DoT in question actually. Some of them will never tick, others will keep on ticking at the same rate regardless of when you refreshed them. The typical difference lies in between stacking versus non-stacking HoTs/DoTs. Lifebloom and Deadly Poison both continue ticking at the timer as determined by their first application. Non-stacking HoTs/DoTs like Renew or Corruption never tick if you constantly refresh them.

It should probably be extended so any proc-based over time effects keep ticking at the same rate when refreshed, as it's a bit silly to get less effect from a HoT/DoT simply because you're proccing it too often.

Hmmmm. I never noticed that with Serpent Sting.

Of course, I don't exactly spam Serpent Sting, either.

Sorry, my mistake. I'll check and see if BCB works that way the next time I spec deep unholy.

There's another blue post later in that thread too:
Also in that thread, someone mentioned Frost strike is still affected by armour. Can anyone confirm that? I thought the point of FS was all the damage was Frost thereby bypassing armour. Still, even if armour affects it I suppose CoE will help it and whatever debuffs frost mages put up.

Not to mention Frostfever and Ebon Plague.

I can confirm Obliterate is getting the bonus from improved blood strike talent, thats what´s making it ridiculously good atm then .

Still, even without it, my preferred rotation for soloing remains degeneration - obliterate - repeat. Full use of all runes, minimal clicking, great damage.

Edit: makes me wonder, blood strike feels so weak, maybe its not getting any bonus from imp blood strike talent? I´ll test that after raiding.

I havn't been able to determine this, yet. I plan to go to blackfathom and beat on gamoo-rah a bit with dual wielded weapons and see if I can get it to multi-proc consistently.

I did confirm that all the shadow-damage bonuses increase damage on BCB and Necrosis, though. With a non-optimized build, my Necrosis damage was 34-37% of my white damage and my BCB ticks were going to over 350 damage (200 base).

Also, Wandering Plague double-dips damage bonuses. It takes the initial damage of the disease (modified by bonuses), then deals that damage modified by bonuses to everything within 8 yards. I had a BCB wandering plague tick for 500+ damage.

EDIT: Just noticed that BCB is 250 damage at level 70, so that explains a little of the "Wow, where did all that extra damage come from". It's absolutely double-dipping bonuses, though.

To add to this confusion, Shadow Word: Pain will be overwritten if you cast it on the same target twice (and restart the ticks) however, if you use the new talent Pain and Suffering - Spell - World of Warcraft and refresh SWP using MF, it will continue ticking at the normal rate.

I don't think there is any pattern or rhyme or reason really, some DoTs just get refreshed while others get overwritten, and in the case of SWP it's both.

Already did these tests: WoW Forums -> [BUG] Obliterate is ridiculous

Obliterate does more damage because it's normalized, counts stacks as individual diseases and gains bonus from Imp Blood Strike.

Hey there guys. I'm Didymus on the beta (Northrend) one of the few level capped Death Knights right now. Figured I'd show my face in a productive forum and see if I can answer any questions/help with any testing etc. that people are interested in having done. So... if you have anything I can do or answer to help things along, don't hesitate!

He's level capped at 77, Army is a lvl 80 spell.

He's right. level 80 spell. As for what can be silenced, CS'd etc. It's not too many effects. I'd go and check if the beta wasn't down to be sure before spouting off with information I'm only "pretty sure" about.

Icy Touch (20 yard range slow for casting/melee/ranged) can be silenced. Death Coil can be silenced. I don't think any of the strikes can be silenced, I don't recall explicitly any time where I was trying to strike and couldn't because of a silencing mechanic. Death and Decay obviously, the frost talented AE's and all that can be silenced.

The level 80 ability seems a little special, I wouldn't bet on it too much either way, but my bet is you won't be able to silence it. You also gain some survivability from your dodge/parry that I don't quite understand yet. The tool tip for the skill is very nondescript at the moment. It's also channeled... which is not similar to anything else a DK is doing before that point, so there's not a lot to compare it to.

gah, I heard level capped and thought he meant 80. Disregard that, then.

I don't think I've ever seen any melee-range ability silenced or school-locked on my DK. I have encountered silences preventing me from using Icy Touch/Death Coil/Mind Freeze. Havn't tested Death Grip.

Of note in that regard, pretty much every DK ability except Army of the Dead is instant-cast/non-channeled. It's pretty hard to impossible to counterspell us.

Going with assumptions and baseless guesses here, but the way I envision Army of the Dead working is simply as a cast and forget channeling. What I mean is it won't follow the rules of chanelling, in terms of counters and movement, and you might even keep doing stuff while the duration runs. I hardly see how it could be usable at all if it's a true channelled ability(especially as a tanking "oh shit" button that they advertised it as), and it totally doesn't fit with the DK stuff. In the worst state I'd see a chanelled bar that's not interuptable by melee, in the best a physical buff that just keeps popping ghouls around you while you mind your own business and keep killing stuff.

Anyway, new build going up, I'm excited. Lots of testing tomorrow, I think I might just take a few hours in blasted lands and run some heavy parsing for all the theorycrafters out there that are bored. I suck at math, but I should be able to take relatively small samples(50ish) of each abilities with different AP(for scaling, but not sure if that was done already) and I also have quite a few weird stuff to test, see how it works. If a wiki already has the AP contributions of skills though, tell me so I don't do useless tests ^^.

I haven't extensively tested it, but the way I see it is the mob goes back to 7k/10k. Which means Heart Strike really is just an opener, or you have to refresh it maybe once, in a raid setting, and soloing it's simply an opener. Also one thing to consider is, I reported it but don't know if it's intended, when you use a on next hit attack(curent frost strike and heartstrike) it actually consumes the rune right away, so say you queue it, then wait 10secs, you'll have full runes when you hit the mob/guy.

I've had quite a few issues with heart strike though, it was part of the stuff I wanted to test, some mobs would simply not get the debuff even though I was hitting them fine(normal mobs too), but it'd pop on others, so unsure if it has a failure rate, or some mobs are immune, something like that. As I level up I actually make a little list of things to test when I have time, and also add random questions that haven't been answered in here there(like does poly work on lichborne, which my guess is, no, but remains to be seen...).

Issue is I can't test much when I'm leveling, since I use such a cookie cutter build for leveling, that pretty much has not a single special ability but pure damage increasing stuff. Trispec stuff too, so I don't get any of the lower talents. It mows down through mobs like butter though, with absolutely 0downtime, it's faster than obliterate with the axe from utgarde(might go back to 2h obli build once I get zuldrak sword however).

Heart Strike will stay queued that long? I think if you leave heroic strike queued up that long, it will drop off once you contact the mob.

It says you take less damage equal to your dodge + parry, so I assume if you have 25% dodge and 25% parry you take 50% less damage while casting it. Of course, I haven't seen it, that;s just my impression from the wording.

Have you tanked much? If so, how was? What did you do for aggro, how easy was it to hold aggro and did you feel like you were taking too much damage?

Edit: About heartstrike not applying, could it be the HP lowering part has a seperate hit check like BCB or Necrosis? E.g. the melee hit lands but the Heartstrike is dodged/parried etc. so the HP lowering debuff is not applied.

Do we know what Heart Strike does and does not apply to?

From what I've read it seems to be 20% less hp, and then when it runs out, they dont get that hp back? ie 10k mob Heart Striked goes to 8k/8k, runs out and they go to 8k/10k
Im assuming all bosses are immune but what about elite mobs and stuff?
Anyone tested its limits

I have tanked. Halls of Stone today actually, which is a level 77-78 instance or so. Admittedly I have done little in the terms of frost spec before that, and I have 0 tank gear (no defense gear, no extra evasion etc) so take this with a grain of salt when I say:

Tanking on a Death Knight was the worst experience I've ever had in this game.

I have a fair amount of experience tanking on a Prot Paladin on live servers and beta. So I have a LOT more practice, and Protection Paladin tanking is already a pretty easy deal, especially with the post 70 talents/skills. Comparing it to said Paladin it was... terrible. Laughably terrible.

Single target threat was no problem, mostly because you are basically just dpsing with 40% increased threat. AE on the other hand... forget about it. If you don't have CD's up (Death and Decay, Howling Blast) good luck trying to start or continue to deal with an AE pull once things start slipping off you when the threat from those fades.

The amount of damage I was taking was... exceptional. These instances are tuned waaaay easy right now. Most people tank in dps specs and gear if they showed up with a raid geared main. Halls of Stone would probably lead to a very rage starved t6 warrior for example, and I was being incinerated by some of the pulls/bosses. Like I said I had no evasion, no tank gear... just the stuff a heavy frost/blood spec provides. I imagine if you stack up some tank gear (if you can manage to find some, which you can't leveling) you'd be able to tank this stuff alright in terms of survivability. I also don't think single target would be a big, big deal even when trying to itemize more like a tank. Doing multiple mob encounters though... well, imagine a Prot paladin with consecrate on a long cool down and no holy shield and you might start to get an idea about how it goes down for a Death Knight. The other complaint (which you'll see if you read the beta boards) is a huge overload of Frost Rune use. A lot of people are mumbling about more things being under the cost of Runic Power (which is generally just used to spam Death Coil a large part of the time).

Tab target, strike, tab target, strike... run out of runes and still have mobs left or you start losing threat and it can be problems. Also the only short cool down taunt (blood boil) requires a disease to be on the target, which is rarely possible to keep up reliably in large pulls.

The good news is that Frost is looking like it's going to be high or the highest dps spec next build, so for some reason... the closest thing to a "tank" build is going to have some great dps too. The tank aspect of it though... well, I'm sure it'll get a lot of attention before release. Survivability, multiple mob threat over time, Rune cost and Runic Power cost etc. This is the case for the Death Knight in general though, it just doesn't matter as much as when the group is depending on you to be a reliable threat generator.

Edit: I also saw some people talking about Icebound Fortitude a few pages back. The skill would make a big difference if it worked like the tool tip indicates. It currently does not, it's just an armor booster currently, and it's certainly nowhere near doubling absorption from physical. (Something more like 4500 armor boost)

I have a kind of bizarre question but I'm sure it would be fun to test.

When you death grip someone do they get pulled to where you were when you started the spell or do they get pulled and have some travel time before they arrive at where you are now.

The first implication I can see is death gripping someone then running slightly around a pillar so they get pulled completely out of los of their area team, or for that matter a pull of mobs. Secondly can you chain death grips from different DKs to pull a character higher and higher into the air or over the edge of a ledge? I was thinking that if you could chain it then you could pull someone up into the air to kill them but that will depend on exactly how it is implemented.