Icy touch will definitely work on raid bosses, it's the DK's thunderclap, every tank is getting one(infected wounds and erm, judge justice holy crap for paladins, forgot the name). Icy talons only proc if Icy touch lands(doesn't work on frost immune mobs for example).

Icy touch will however not stack with the other speed reduction stuff, like curse of tongues or TC. In the hypothesis you have a war TCing your mob, icy touch will still land, and still slow down ranged/spell speed by 15(18)%, and still do its dot, but the melee speed will be slowed down by 20% by the TC.

A new question may be, with all the new synergy and cross-class abilities that do not stack, are debuff slots going to become a premium? If the boss "gets" all the debuffs, they do not stack but take up debuff slots, this might get a bit ugly.

For example, an arms warrior might use up to 8 (rend, bloodbath, trama, blood frenzy, deep wounds, demo, thunderclap, sunder (not really used by dps but lets leave it for arguments sake) along with 3-5 for every DK in the raid trying to do disease rotations, the total number of debuff slots might be stressed, ones that dont stack really should refresh the duration of whatever debuff is currently on the boss and apply threat appropriately rather than fill the boss up with debuffs that do nothing.

It would be incredibly bad design on blizzards part if on a busy 25man boss your DK tank's diseases keep getting pushed off the debuff table by nonstacking useless debuffs.

The current behavior is that if you apply a debuff to a target and it already has a debuff that doesn't stack with the new one, then the target will only end up with the debuff with the greatest effect / longest duration (not sure which of these takes precedence).

For example if I frost shock someone that is hamstringed, then if the hamstring duration is greater than the frost shock duration then the frost shock debuff isn't applied and vice-versa. Expose armor (w/ 5 CP anyway) is a greater armor reduction than sunder, so that's why it'll push sunder stacks off a target.

Yeah but the issue here is, Icy touch for example has multiple effects. It's a disease(dot), and slow downs melee caster and ranged attack speed. It's also vital for DPSing, so it wouldn't be erased by TC. But then the same could be said about Infected Wounds, which is another disease that slows down attack speed. Being a disease, it has side effects on top of slowing down(mostly dk synergy). So you'd end up with 3slots on the boss, with still 20%reduction speed. The speed reduction is wasted, but you can't dismiss the "worse" buffs such as icy touch and infected wounds because one of their attribute is lower than TC. Obviously in the case of simple debuffs such as sunders vs expose armor which do exactly the same thing, the game currently keeps the highest, but with the speed reduction ones, you'll see all of them on the bosses.

Other than that, the debuff limit will become a real issue again, with a new class added and more classes getting new debuffs, when there's already issues in certain raid makeups currently. I hope they use the upgrade to increase it again.

Thanks Pyros, I'm a bit ham fisted when it comes to explaining Theories

Can someone bring this up on the beta forums? Its better to know for sure if and/or how its being addressed than to sit and hope.

While Infected Wounds is unavoidable for the druid, Thunder Clap isn't for the warrior. If there is a DK in the raid, the warriors simply don't have to TC, and let the Frost Fever (and for when FF is obliterated off (if that still functions like that) there is IF) do the slowing.

A few unannounced updates have been posted to the official talent calculator:

• (New) Improved Icy Talons 1/1 - Your Icy Talons effect increases the melee, ranged, and casting speed of the entire raid by 15% for the next 20 seconds.
• Frost Aura 2/2 - While in Frost Presence, all party members within 45 yards take 4% less damage from magic. (Was "all party members within 45 yards gain 6% hp.")
• Ebon Plaguebringer - Effect increased to 13% from 9%.

This is a strange one. I wonder if they are going to make these things stack or not; that will determine if they are excellent or useless/handy for 5/10mans. If it doesn't stack many might prefer that Imp Icy Talons was given a miss and that it does stack as a self buff.

If Ebon Plague doesn't stack with curses and the like then will people spec to it in a 25 man raid guild? People are not going to spec for redundant buffs/debuffs, and it will just mean those that don't have the buffs built into the class will have to spec for DPS too. The only other solution is to make them really cheap to get (Imp. Icy Talons is only 1 point, I suppose) and as viable as other filler talents.

Frost Aura is a nice change though.

The new Ebony Plague is genius. I don't really like Imp Icy Talons, though; You'll always want an Enhance Shaman anyhow and I doubt this is going to stack with Windfury, so it's just a weaker form of Imp Windfury. Surely they could've come with something better.

The point is to make it so you don't always need an enhance shaman. Icy talons applies to melee and spell casting, meaning if you don't have wrath of air and windfury, it covers both for you (admittedly to a smaller effect).

Still, that's an outstanding buff for 1 talent point.

I rather hope they've rolled the +6% HP into the base Frost Presence. If not, it's a loss of 1200 HP for a tank sitting at 20k HP (and I'll wager you'll have more than that at 80.) Be a shame to not even have a partial counterpart to Commanding Shout.

On the upside, the 4% magic damage reduction is welcome (though for personal effect, it's still a little brother to Defensive Stance's 10% global reduction and Righteous Fury's 6% reduction.)

That isn't the point of the buff, I believe. With a greater focus on 10man raids and interchangeability of classes you may not HAVE two shamans to drop Wrath of Air/Windfury but if you take a Frost DK they can make up for the loss of either totem or even both of them. It may be to a lesser extent but it's still better than nothing. It's the same sort of reasoning as to why Ebon Plague is a 13% boost now. It won't stack with Curse of Elements (Ghostcrawler mentioned this in a post) but it means if you don't have an Affliction Warlock with Malediction then the Unholy DK will see to the debuff, if you have a non-Malediction 'lock then they can use a damage curse instead of Curse of Elements.

From comments, my guess is Ebony Plague won't stack with anything, neither Imp. IT. Their philosophy seems to be to focus on making single, class defining buffs redundant across classes, so you're not required to bring any specific class and spec.

I think we need to start looking more at the interchangeability of classes and raid slots as opposed to directly comparing abilities. For example, if we've already got a Malediction warlock, we can have our former Ebon Plague DK spec into Imp Icy Talons and replace our enhancement shaman to free a slot for perhaps a guest.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that going by the talent calculator Unholy Blight will no longer apply a unique Disease but apply Blood Plague to everything. This is good and bad; it's bad that you won't get another unique disease with which to increase Blood Strike/Obliterate damage but it's AWESOME that it would mean that you could apply Ebon Plague to an entire AoE pack of mobs.

Wow, improved Icy Talons is nice! *blinks* Erm, people are talking about shammys as if they drop from the skies. But you may or may not always have them available. Especially for 5 and 10 mans, you may not always have one. This makes a DK very very desired. Let's not forget a DK is a tank and DPS as well. So, now, on top of being both, it brings such group or raid buffs to the table. Seems very nice to me!

Even if it doesn't give as high as a bonus as windfury, it's better because it affects melee, ranged, AND casting. Windfury only affects melee and ranged. Also, Imp IT has no minimum range. This is especially useful for those fights where everyone is spread out.

Icy talons seems like a nerf for personal DPS in 25man for DKs, and relatively a buff to DK utility elsewhere. I believe this new ebonplague is as good as imp coe? That's a nice change, even though now it means they won't stack. Not too sure about these changes, will see how they play out I guess.

Edit: didn't check the talent tree, it's imp icy talon that gives raid wide buff, a new talent, though they changed the old icy talon to that. Guess it doesn't matter either, since it's way too deep for a dps build, I have a hard time figuring what's the point unless you tank deep frost, or pvp frost build, in which it'd actually be a pretty awesome arena buff.

Frost aura, I don't really care since frost always looked like a weak tanking tree deeper in it after I started playing my DK, I like unholy tanking better, so it was mostly a pvp tree for me. The aura talents are way too deep to get them without full specing in that tree too. I also don't like how each tree buffs only one presence, meaning if you tank with blood or unholy spec, you're not buffing the presence you're using, and if you train the others you're forced into that presence too. It somewhat goes against their concept of every tree can tank thing. Maybe they should make the bonuses unrelated to presences, so when you have the unholy 10%speed thing, it works in any presence, frost blood or unholy, and same for everything.

Other changes:

Unholy Rune Mastery - 10% chance when you cause damage to a disease target
Blood Caked Blade(I keep reading that as Blood Baked Cake) - 3/3, 5% per rank for melee attacks and abilities to apply 50% of its damage to an existing Blood Plague on the target. 10s cooldown.
Corpse Explosion - 1 unholy rune, thought it was runic power before

Holwing Blast - 1U 1F, thought it was 1F before
Unbreakable Armor - 1F, 20s duration, increase armor by 25%, strength by 5%, 2m cooldown

Vampiric Blood - 1 rank, 1B, increases healing through spells and effects by 50%, 20s duration, 2m cooldown
Blood Worms - 20/40/60% to proc of a death strike
Scent of Blood generates runic power now, but I think it was this way before

Blood Worm change seems kinda redundant. I like the Unholy Rune Mastery change...basically, with 3 or more targets, DnD is guarunteed to proc this. But this is making it harder and harder to manage Blade Barrier. I mean, with 2 dots, damage abilities every GCD, and regular melee hits, URM is going to proc a lot.

BCB doesn't seem worth it. At least, for tanking, which is why most people will spec up the Unholy tree.

Deathwing those are almost all past changes from a few days ago. I believe howling blast rune cost and unholy rune mastery might be different though, but the rest of your list was changed when they redid the tree last time by moving tanking talents to tier1 and deep instead of the middle of trees.

Edit: Actually seems mmochamp has a list of changes. Copypasta inc


Blood

* Butchery - Changed to generate 1 runic power per 3 sec. while in combat instead of 2 runic power per 3 sec.
* Abomination Strength - Changed to read "Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 50% chance and your Obliterates have a 100% chance to increase the total Strength of raid members within 20 yards by 10% for 10 sec."
* Sudden Doom - Now also procs off of Heart Strikes.
* Vampiric Blood - Whenever you have no Blood Runes active, you have a 30/60/100% chance of increasing the amount of health generated through spells and effects by 60% for 10 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 90 sec.


Frost

* Improved Icy Touch - Your Icy Touch does an additional 20/30% damage and your Frost Fever reduces melee, ranged and casting speed by an additional 2/3%.
* Improved Icy Talons - Your Icy talons effect increases the melee, ranged and casting speed of the entire raid by 15% for the next 20 sec.
* Chillbrains - Victims of your Frost Fever disease are Chilled, reducing movement speed by 10/20/30% for 6 sec.
* Endless Winter - Changed to read "Your Mind Freeze and Frost Strike have a 30/60/100% chance to cause Frost Fever.
* Frost Aura - Increases your Frost Resistance by 32. While in Frost Presence, all party members within 45 yards take 2/4% less damage from magic.


Unholy

* Virulence - Increases your chance to hit with your spells by 3% and reduces the chance that your spells and diseases you cause can be cured by 10/20/30%.
* Dirge - Your Plague Strike, Degeneration and Raise Dead generate 25/75% additional runic power.
* Unholy Rune Mastery - When you cause damage to a diseased victim, there is a 10% chance that the time it takes for your Unholy Runes to activate will be cut in half for the next 5 sec.
* Blood Caked Blade - Changed to 3 ranks, "Your melee attacks and abilities have a 15% chance to apply 50% of their damage to the damage done by an existing Blood Plague on the target. This ability cannot occur more than once per 10 sec."
* Morbidity - Reduces the runic power cost of a Death Coil by 10 and reduces the cooldown of Death and Decay by 10 sec.
* Ebon Plaguebringer - Your Crypt Fever morphs into Ebon Plague, which increases vulnerability to magic by 4/9/13% in addition to increase the damage done by diseases.
* Rage of Rivendare - Your spells and abilities deal 2% more damage to targets infected with Blood Plague.

That's actually the old version of Vampiric Blood. This is the new one. Vampiric Blood - 1 rank, 1B, increases healing through spells and effects by 50%, 20s duration, 2m cooldown

Also Imp Icy Touch is 3 points, 10/20/30% and 1/2/3%

Damn, were those changes posted already? Can't believe i missed them.

Raid tanking, I would probably go

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Death Knight -> Talent Calculator

Switch in Frigid Dreadplate for 5-man tanking if that's your focus.

I can't decide between Blade Barrier or (Improved Icy Talons or Ebon Plaguebringer), Unholy Rune Mastery, and other secondary benefits of not having to be rune empty once every 8s. My instincts tell me the second option, but I'll be damned if I don't want to try to make 10% avoidance work.

DPS, I would still go a heavy Blood spec, with probably up the frost tree to runic power for the rest.

EDIT: Thanks Disargeria, still used to linking from WoWHead.