Ill agree that forcing you to keep 1 rune "untapped" lowers DPS, but considering you should be popping your other rune every 10 second Cool down popping the other within that 10 second period is only 1GCD, youd have to have an unforseen DPS burst ((i.e. a random one)) hit that window
The unholy tree seems quite convoluted with the massive talent point sinks in Crypt Fever and Magic Suppression. I doubt anyone would put points (5/5 anyway) into either talent if it weren't for AMZ/Ebon Plaguebringer, which falls into the same argument that fury warriors have been going about for years with their Enrage->Flurry dependency.
I also don't see the point of Unholy having far and wide the highest aoe tanking viability, when its primary mitigation tool 'Bone Armor' is useless for multi mob tanking. They should look into placing a minimum damage intake requirement for a bone charge to be used up (such as 5-10% of max health), perhaps as well reducing the mitigation and having the rune cost lowered (or changed to Runic Power as it is a reactive ability).
The Vampiric Blood/Unbreakable Armor mechanics are awkward to say the least, it would be easier to make them active abilities which 'light up' after you use the runes. Having a player refrain from using a rune for 90 seconds to time the proc with an incoming enrage is a massive threat loss, and i think fails to achieve the effect of an 'emergency' button since you can't use it unless you foresee the situation 90 seconds earlier.
I also don't see the point of Unholy having far and wide the highest aoe tanking viability, when its primary mitigation tool 'Bone Armor' is useless for multi mob tanking. They should look into placing a minimum damage intake requirement for a bone charge to be used up (such as 5-10% of max health), perhaps as well reducing the mitigation and having the rune cost lowered (or changed to Runic Power as it is a reactive ability).
Is it working differently than the various Shaman shields? IE: charges can only be triggered several seconds apart, not all at once from rapid incoming attacks in the same second (or less).
Having Bone Armor on at the start of the AoE pull is the most important part of the pull, in my opinion, since I'd rather ease my healer into patching up the massive damage I'm about to take, rather than go from full-to-half in the first few seconds and then having them play catch-up.
Pretty sure it expands all charges right away. However it seems it doesn't expand charges at the same time as Earth Shield. I have to further test that, but I often had bone armor still up after full pulls when I grouped with a resto shaman the other day, which was weird since I don't believe my avoidance was that high. So yeah bone armor sucks for AEing, it's all about icebound fortitude when I pull a big pack for AEs.
Is the DK's spell crit modified by int or agi? I know the spells' mechanics were changed to function based on AP rather than Spellpower. But did that also include modifying them to crit based on agi and not int?
It would be odd that they use int because the starting gear is not itemized with any int. But I haven't seen a comment on this issue before
Is the DK's spell crit modified by int or agi? I know the spells' mechanics were changed to function based on AP rather than Spellpower. But did that also include modifying them to crit based on agi and not int?
It would be odd that they use int because the starting gear is not itemized with any int. But I haven't seen a comment on this issue before
Int, but its really negligible, there isn't agi itemized on plate dps gear either really. Since crit rating affects both spells and melee now, the difference is pretty small. The biggest gap is in talents that affect melee crit (a LOT) vs spell crit (none). Its fine for the most part though.
Is the DK's spell crit modified by int or agi? I know the spells' mechanics were changed to function based on AP rather than Spellpower. But did that also include modifying them to crit based on agi and not int?
It would be odd that they use int because the starting gear is not itemized with any int. But I haven't seen a comment on this issue before
Well to be honest, I don't have a single piece with either int or agi, agi is definitely not a stat you see often on plate, if at all. Maybe rings and stuff, and I guess it's a good question, and I have no idea, would need to run tests. I suspect they'd follow the same rules enhancement shams and retadins do though. So int based for spells.
But since they made crit into one big stat, I guess everyone actually gets crit from both agi and int now. After all, mages and locks do get melee crit% from agi too. And since melee crit=crit in wotlk, means agi=spellcrit for them too. Every class seems to get double dipping crits from motw and kings, and also from grace of air for casters. Or there's still different crit tables, just one crit stat, which seems a better explanation, it'd be weird for mages to get spellcrit from grace of air(or strength of earth, since they rolled it in that I believe)
Seems somewhat tough to test though, the crit gains from stats is generally low, so you'd need a huge number of casts to get a somewhat accurate figure, especially since you can't really stack int or agi that easily unless you purposefully chose int or agi gear without crit on it(stuff that you can't use either). Probably easier to ask on the US beta boards and get a dev answer, if someone wanna do it.
And since melee crit=crit in wotlk, means agi=spellcrit for them too
No, critical strike rating gives both spell and melee/ranged crit. Agi only melee/ranged. Int only spell.
It's easy to test, look at your spell crit chance then get more agility and check your spell crit again.
About ghouls, then don't always leap on a target you pulled, they also sometimes jump on random mobs around, especialy when you just summoned it. The worms cause the same problem : I just killed a mob, Infected Corpse procs and pops worms, they immediately run to a nearby ennemy. They seem to have an agro range, larger than mobs of my level.
edit: Now that Frozen Rune Weapon is gone, what's the interest of dual wielding?
edit: Now that Frozen Rune Weapon is gone, what's the interest of dual wielding?
Well they did say something about making Frozen Rune Weapon a weapon enchant through Runeforging.
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
Since Frost Fever became a disease that you can keep up relatively easy (and at range even), the Frost Fever runeforge isn't very useful so we plan on replacing it with the something like Frozen Rune Weapon.
Just discovered that when I use Rune Tap while in Lichborne form the Lichborne form fades. Bug I hope.
That might explain why I sometimes lost the Lichborne effect after only a few seconds. I was to busy to pay attention and didn't notice that it could be related to Rune Tap. I'll try that tonight.
Well they did say something about making Frozen Rune Weapon a weapon enchant through Runeforging.
Posted (twice!) on the previous page
Kerchak, have you got the new Heartstrike on the beta server yet? It doesn't redice HP anymore, it's a more damaging Bloodstrike and prevents benefits from haste for 10 secs.
Kerchak, have you got the new Heartstrike on the beta server yet? It doesn't redice HP anymore, it's a more damaging Bloodstrike and prevents benefits from haste for 10 secs.
Yeah I know they have recently changed the skill.
But the old one was bugged and I just wanted to be sure if it was or not.
Anyone know if the "prevent haste effect" of heart strike includes "parry haste". Since it's not a buff, there's not really anything to prevent buff wise, and strikes me as more an anti-enrage/PvP skill then a valuable tanking mitigation toy.
Heart Strike seemed to be bugged yesterday, am I right?
There was no debuff on my target.
As of right now it seems the debuff gets applied maybe 1 in 5 times, even though the ability lands and does damage.
@ Calgra: I doubt it'll change something like parry haste, and will be something more to the effect of "does not allow any buffs on target to increase attack speed". Oh, and herrow from BDF.
Has anyone else had rune usage problems when taking DRM? I've had half a bar of death runes and was unable to use any talent that those runes were associated with. For instance, if I had 1 Blood and 1 Death up in the other blood spot, I wasn't able to use any Blood related skills. I toyed around with it for about an hour and once I spec'd out of DRM I no longer had that issue.
The long CD on Unbreakable Armor and the fact that it is tied to not spending your last Frost Rune, make that an incredibly cumbersome talent to use. So much so that in its current state, I would not even make the 3pt investment in it. and just stick with keeping Blade Barrier up.
The Frost Rune Mastery change is a good one, it will actually proc on bosses now (those that can't be frozen).
The Runic Power Mastery change seems odd. I'm not sure it will be worth the points but haven't give it much thought. If it affects the new Frost Strike that weighs in its favor.
I do like the new Frost Strike. It is something to spend runic power on other than Death Coil spamming and it no longer relies on enemies being frozen (or even having the new frozen disease).
One topic that I would like to see more discussion about: When would it be more beneficial to dual wield? It seems the vast majority of the DK abilities are slanted towards using big two-handers, so I am not even sure when it would even be desirable to dual wield. The only scenario I can think of is dual wield tanking in order to gain the benefit of dual Runeforging enchants (and Frozen Rune Weapon prior to its removal), but it sounds like two-handed tanking is the preferred approach so far.
Ghostcrawler said that whenever they give the ability to dual wield, that tends to dominate 2H use for sustained DPS. So to maintain the image of DK wielding large 2Handers, they're giving 2H use as much love as possible in order to swing the pendulum over its way. By default they will leave dual wielding with the mininum support necessary to keep it as a alternative for those who wish to be different but not necessarily the most viable option.
Has anyone else had rune usage problems when taking DRM? I've had half a bar of death runes and was unable to use any talent that those runes were associated with. For instance, if I had 1 Blood and 1 Death up in the other blood spot, I wasn't able to use any Blood related skills. I toyed around with it for about an hour and once I spec'd out of DRM I no longer had that issue.
edit: this only happened since the last push
To be honest, I've had these issues with and without DRM. Since last major patch(not the small one). It just randomly happens as far as I can tell. Graphic UI issues, probably.
Ghostcrawler said that whenever they give the ability to dual wield, that tends to dominate 2H use for sustained DPS. So to maintain the image of DK wielding large 2Handers, they're giving 2H use as much love as possible in order to swing the pendulum over its way. By default they will leave dual wielding with the mininum support necessary to keep it as a alternative for those who wish to be different but not necessarily the most viable option.
Thought your post a little misleading as if Blizzard was looking at making 2H more favorable to DW so I figured I would post the exact quote.
"Death Knights will be able to dual-wield. The design is that DW and 2H are about equal. Because DW tends to dominate for specs that have it as an option, you probably won't see it propped up much more than it is now. Ideally we would like to see 2H and DW DKs. I suspect 2H will be slightly more popular since that fits most people's notions of a proper DK."
The long CD on Unbreakable Armor and the fact that it is tied to not spending your last Frost Rune, make that an incredibly cumbersome talent to use. So much so that in its current state, I would not even make the 3pt investment in it. and just stick with keeping Blade Barrier up.
I don't see why it's not worth it. Sure you can't use it like a 2 min CD and always time it perfect but perhaps just to do your normal tanking rotation and let it proc when it can. It's still a massive amount of mitigation weither you needed it that second or not. It might just proc when you need it most you never know :-P. You could even hold out maybe for 10 secs to use it knowing a crazy hard hitting enrage is coming up shortly. It's situational, so you have to judge it on that mentality.
Vampiric Blood
One Rank
1 Blood, Instant (no GCD), 2 min cooldown
Increases the amount of health generated through spells and effects (i.e. your own or heals from other players) by 50% for 20 sec.
Unbreakable Armor
One Rank
1 Frost, Instant (no GCD), 2 min cooldown
Increases your armor by 25% and your total Strength by 5% for 20 sec.
With these changes, the mechanic ends up being pretty similar, where you have to sacrifice dps or other abilities for a mostly defensive one. However you don't feel like you're wasting Blade Barrier and overall it's easier to understand how you'd use these abilities. The cooldown still needs to be reasonably long in order to save these for the right moment rather than spamming them constantly (we want them to work like new Shield Block, not old Shield Block). You might still sometimes end up having to sit on a Rune for a bit, but probably no longer than a few seconds, and at least you won't have to worry about the ability going off when you don't want it to.
Anti-Magic Shell at the very least can no longer be dispelled, and we're looking at it preventing dots and possibly all magical debuffs while it's up.
We'll continue to massage the numbers to try and achieve rough parity among Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor and Bone Shield (Bone Armor) so that nobody feels compelled to go down one tree just because its talent is so much better than the others. Though obviously the 3 talents will still fulfill slightly different niches.
We'll continue to adjust mitigation and threat numbers in general to achieve rough parity among DKs, warriors, paladins and druids, while still trying to give each a certain type of battle they excel at.
I'm really enjoying the interplay between a defensive stat (armor) driving up a threat stat (AP via Bladed Armor), and between a threat stat (strength) driving up a mitigation stat (parry via Forceful Deflection.) Nothing feels wasted, even if the benefits are relatively modest.
I don't see why it's not worth it. Sure you can't use it like a 2 min CD and always time it perfect but perhaps just to do your normal tanking rotation and let it proc when it can. It's still a massive amount of mitigation weither you needed it that second or not. It might just proc when you need it most you never know :-P. You could even hold out maybe for 10 secs to use it knowing a crazy hard hitting enrage is coming up shortly. It's situational, so you have to judge it on that mentality.
Sorry, but most tanks do not think this way... There are primarily three useful things to increase your survival (not counting threat or utility) for a progression tank: increases to your Effective Health (to survive the encounter), increases to your armor/avoidance/resists (so the healers don't run out of mana trying to keep you alive), and emergency buttons (to hit when you are in trouble, whether due to healer deaths, healer distractions, or enrages/short-term increases in damage). Does Unbreakable Armor, as it was changed, accomplish ANY of these objectives?
We know it can't work as an emergency button, except in the most contrived of situations, due to the 10% avoidance one has to give up in order to use it as such. We know it doesn't increase your effective health, since it isn't always up, so if you dont have the EH to survive an encounter with it down... you don't have the EH to survive an encounter. So does it decrease healer's mana usage significantly enough to warrant getting it, as opposed to Bone Armor (which is great at the last two, and even the first one when combined with Icebound Fortitude)? Well, it does, assuming that your healers are paying attention to your buffs... and they are able to quickly slow heals/downrank the exact right amount for the time Unbreakable Armor is up (10 seconds), while adjusting fast enough so that you don't die when it comes down. That is a quite ridiculous scenario, and in all practical terms, the healers will continue healing you exactly as they were before, as 10sec is nowhere near enough time to make those adjustments.
Let's ignore that... it still only increases your armor by 25% for 10 seconds out of every 90, at the cost of three (deep) talent points. Compare that to Toughness, which increases your armor by 2% per talent point (the 15% instead of 10% just takes into account the fact that both it AND frost presence only count armor-from-gear, so they don't "double-dip", if you will). Unbreakable Armor gives you 8.33% armor for 1/9th of the time per talent point... or less than one percent average armor per talent point... and this is for a Tier 8 talent, as opposed to a Tier 1 talent! And this is if we ignore the fact that it only goes off at random points of the battle.
Bone armor gives 40% mitigation from ALL sources. If you're talking about a physical-damage boss that swings at a 2 second speed, and assume your DK has 50% avoidance (which will probably be low, when it comes to mid-raid DK tanks)... Bone Armor will be up for an average of 16 seconds every 30, will provide MORE mitigation against MORE damage when up, and will smooth out the damage taken by what is likely to be a slightly lower mitigation, higher avoidance tank. In other words, Bone Armor is the perfect tanking talent for the DK, as it perfectly fills in the DKs weaknesses. It has synergies with the DK's strengths... as parry and avoidance increase, Bone Armor uptime also increases, plus it works against spells, giving the DK additional anti-caster strengths. It's usable on demand, and increases damage (slightly) to make up for the rune usage somewhat.
Right now, there just doesn't seem to be much reason to go past Frigid Dreadplate in frost... yeah, I'd love to pick up Frost Aura, but it doesn't make up for losing Bone Armor... that talent is just perfectly designed for what a DK needs when moving to a Raid MT role. It is an extremely well-designed talent, that the other two "late-tree tanking talents" need to live up to in order to make a non-unholy tank viable.
Edit: Wow, just read the changes and it ruins a decent portion of my long, thought-out post =P Guess that's what I get for writing such a long one. That said, I still think Bone Armor wins out, although now the other benefits of the Frost tree may let it have a shot. Good job, Blizzard, on finding and fixing this one quickly!
I don't see why it's not worth it. Sure you can't use it like a 2 min CD and always time it perfect but perhaps just to do your normal tanking rotation and let it proc when it can.
The normal tank rotation will just trigger it... that's the problem. Unless the DK is just banking that 1 Frost Rune all the time, it will just proc when it comes up off the cooldown. Sure, the DK could be smart and just bank the Frost Rune when appropriate, but that would require knowing a fight well enough to be able to time this in 90 second increments. And to be honest, if the DK needs to do such timing, IBF is vastly superior to mitigating burst damage you know is incoming on a timer (there is also Lichborne). Sure, the armor/strength buff for 10 seconds on a 90s CD is nice to have, I just don't think it is worth it for 3 points deep in the frost tree on the same tier as Blood of the North in its current form.
EDIT: Ha! Just as I write the above reply, they have already slated a change for Unbreakable Armor. My response still applies as to why the previous version of Unbreakable Armor was pretty undesirable.
08/03/08, 2:31 AM
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