WotLK Discussion - Talents and abilities. - Page 53

Lamaros · 08/14/08, 1:14 AM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

From WoR:

Blood
- Bloodworms: 3/3 Your weapon hits have a 12% chance to spawn 2-4 Bloodworms. Bloodworms attack your enemies, healing you as they do damage for 20 sec or until killed. (Healing amount remains the same)

Unholy
- Morbidity moved to Tier 1 in unholy
- Virulence moved to Tier 2 in unholy
- Blood-Caked Blade: Your autoattacks have a 5/10/15% chance to cause Blood-Caked Strike, which hits for 50% weapon damage times the number of your diseases on the target. (Was 60%)
- Night of the Dead: Hitting a target with Plague Strike or Scourge Strike reduces the cooldown of your next Raise Dead and your next Army of the Dead by 30 sec / 1 min. This effect stacks up to 5 times. (was bugged to be 1 min for both ranks)

Endless Winter is now tied to Chilblains, Aneurysm is gone.

Endless Winter is now two points (down from 3) and does not affect Frost Strike. Additionaly, it also lowers the cost of Mind Freeze.

Chilblains now appiles to any victims of frost fever, and lasts 10 seconds (up from 6).

Considering I made a point about this on a number of times in this thread it's nice to see it changed. Looks like good changes to me. Well done!

Deathwing · 08/14/08, 1:23 AM

Originally Posted by Eishara

Ghouls no longer have Infect, so you're looking at 4 max with Frost Fever, Blood Plague, Ebon Plague and Unholy Blight. Maybe five if Gift of Arthas still counts.

With the new look for lower unholy I wonder if a Blood/Unholy spec rather than Blood/Frost would do better for DPS. You're giving up 20% haste and Runic Power Mastery for 15% more DC damage (so that's a wash) 20% shadow damage (less chance to proc BRM but might be affected by spell damage increasing talents) and you'd get BCB too. You wouldn't have as many diseases but your white damage is that much higher so it should hit for significant damage.

Runic Power Mastery and Morbidity(in a non-AE situation) are not a wash. RPM will always be better because of it's synergy with Dancing Rune Weapon. DRW is also why 2H blood/frost builds will always beat tri spec builds, even with the current state of Necrosis and BCB.

Is Necrosis doing 25% of your hit after armor, or before?

Feorthas · 08/14/08, 1:25 AM

Thottbot has a list of ability changes and new talent trees. I've linked them below.

Talent Tree

Ability Changes

Lamaros · 08/14/08, 1:36 AM

Originally Posted by Feorthas

Thottbot has a list of ability changes and new talent trees. I've linked them below.

Talent Tree

Ability Changes

I assumed someone had linked MMO-Champions already. It is also up. (And easier to use if you ask me).

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight

Cloudgatherer · 08/14/08, 1:40 AM

Originally Posted by Grizzly

Lichborne is only a 10 second duration now (previously 30s), but the cooldown is reduced to 1 min (previously 5 min)

Frigin Dreadplate changed to: 100% chance reduce attackers chance to hit by 5% for 12 sec when hit by them.

Ouch, those are both pretty significant tanking nerfs for Frost. I'm not sure why 3 of the frost tanking talents (Lichborne, Frigid Dreadplate, Unbreakable Armor) have to be significantly weaker than IBF. Not to mention Bone Shield in the Unholy Tree.

On the plus side, a DK might be able to shake off regular fear effects if Lichborne is on a CD that short. A fight that has a regular fear (ex: Archimonde) usually forces a tank to be a warrior (or stack priests in the raid), maybe this will offer an alternative for when we see that encounter in WotLK.

Sinzar · 08/14/08, 1:44 AM

Frigid Dreadplate is a definite buff, not a nerf, considering Devs have already said it would not work on bosses in it's -50% speed form. Now with -5% miss, it should work on bosses just fine, effectively giving DK's another 5% mitigation while MT'ing for a raid.

• Bluefish · 08/14/08, 1:49 AM

Originally Posted by Sinzar

Now with -5% miss, it should work on bosses just fine, effectively giving DK's another 5% mitigation while MT'ing for a raid.

Miss falls into the avoidance category (with dodge and parry). Mitigation refers to static damage-reducing stats, usually -% damage or +armor. Sorry to be a stickler but in a serious tank's eyes these are two very different things. If Frigid Dreadplate was -5% damage taken, it would be far superior to +5% miss.

Feorthas · 08/14/08, 1:50 AM

Originally Posted by Lamaros

I assumed someone had linked MMO-Champions already. It is also up. (And easier to use if you ask me).

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight

I think they mentioned that it was probably going to be up soon but dont believe that they actually linked it (could be wrong though).

Regardless, based on some gut feelings:

If I were to spec out a Frost tank--which I'm admittedly biased towards--it would be this build

-I like the Lichbourne change (10s/1m Duration/CD)
-Frost Fever causes the melee slow debuff / haste buff? Did I miss this change earlier? (wouldn't be surprised)
-Nice buff to Frigid Dreadplate.
-Frost Aura is GREAT. 40 points (?) of resist per party member? Wow.

The only thing I really, really wish I had was Desecration in unholy; that's almost too cool to miss out on.

Banda · 08/14/08, 2:27 AM

Originally Posted by Cloudgatherer

Ouch, those are both pretty significant tanking nerfs for Frost. I'm not sure why 3 of the frost tanking talents (Lichborne, Frigid Dreadplate, Unbreakable Armor) have to be significantly weaker than IBF. Not to mention Bone Shield in the Unholy Tree.

On the plus side, a DK might be able to shake off regular fear effects if Lichborne is on a CD that short. A fight that has a regular fear (ex: Archimonde) usually forces a tank to be a warrior (or stack priests in the raid), maybe this will offer an alternative for when we see that encounter in WotLK.

Neither of those were nerfs. Lichborn can be used more often and has an 80% greater average up time. It's a little annoying for PvP, but I would personally like more often over longer initial duration. I know opinions vary about that though. Though for tanking it is now 10/60 * 25% = 4.16% more average avoidance for one talent point

Frigid Deathplate was already confirmed to not work on bosses, so this is a buff to boss tanking. It's not even necessarily weaker for everything else. And IIRC, it didn't stack with other slowing effect. I'm sure opinions will vary for whether this was a good trade off. Its previous incarnation was frustrating in that the higher your avoidance, the weaker it got. Assuming a reasonable 30% total avoidance when tanking, it only had 100% - (100%-15%*30%)^3 = 28.30% chance to be up on a given swing averaging to roughly a decrease of 14% average DPS taken. Assuming it does stack with IT, about 9% if it didn't. Which isn't high enough to not work on bosses at all. Assuming the same 30% current avoidance it has a near 100% up time (no less than 97% on bosses under the effect of IT). It has a 100% - 65%/70% ~ 7% decrease in DPS taken. Pretty fair trade IMO, and both versions are worth 3 talent points.

msg · 08/14/08, 2:57 AM

There was a post here estimate necrosis at 5-6% damage for 5 talent points, and I think it's pretty far off for a big reason unaccounted for (forgetting for a moment synergy with other talents).

Necrosis is 25% of your white damage before armor. So if you paper doll for 1000, and your white hit is reduced by armor to 600, necrosis is hitting for 250 (not 150).

With a bit of insight into how much white damage a DK does as a percent of total damage, and how much average armor reduction we're getting, we can calculate how much of a boost necrosis really gets.

Raid boss armor values ([RAID] Boss armor values), if you just average the reductions together, I'm getting, on average, a 39% damage reduction to armor.

Estimates of % of DPS as white damage from a handful of people (WoW Forums -> % White Damage not scientific, but whatever) range from 28%-35% - call it 32% for the purposes of this scenario.

So with 1000 damage, 32% or 320 white dps damage. Calculate out the value pre armor reduction:
base white * damage % going through armor = actual white damage shown
X * 0.61 = 320
X = 524.6 white damage if there was no armor.
25% of that that (necrosis) 524.6 * .25 = 131.15 dps from necrosis.

131.15 dps from necrosis on top of an existing 1000 dps = 13.1% dps boost for necrosis, which is pretty huge for 5 talent points. (Forgetting the fact that this scales multiplicatively with 20% haste talent, 15% shadow damage talent - assuming you had the 20% haste and 15% shadow damage talents factored in to your base 1000 dps, necrosis becomes an 18.1% damage (not white damage, total damage) increase).

I'll honestly be surprised if necrosis goes live as is.

Cloudgatherer · 08/14/08, 3:05 AM

Originally Posted by Banda

Neither of those were nerfs. Lichborn can be used more often and has an 80% greater average up time. It's a little annoying for PvP, but I would personally like more often over longer initial duration. I know opinions vary about that though. Though for tanking it is now 10/60 * 25% = 4.16% more average avoidance for one talent point

At 10 seconds and a 1min CD, it feels like just another button to push when the CD is up (except if the non-avoidance aspects would be useful, such as the fear breaking). The previous version was quite good at riding out enrages or sticky parts of an encounter, because the 30 second window and 5 min CD required a little foresight in using it and actually gave some breathing room. 10 seconds isn't going to buy your healer much of a breather, especially given this ability is pure avoidance and in the short 10 second window, you may not even notice a difference in incoming damage. Over 30 seconds, the 25% miss is much more noticeable (gives the RNG a chance to even out).

msg · 08/14/08, 3:06 AM

Originally Posted by Banda

Neither of those were nerfs. Lichborn can be used more often and has an 80% greater average up time. It's a little annoying for PvP, but I would personally like more often over longer initial duration. I know opinions vary about that though. Though for tanking it is now 10/60 * 25% = 4.16% more average avoidance for one talent point

Frigid Deathplate was already confirmed to not work on bosses, so this is a buff to boss tanking. It's not even necessarily weaker for everything else. And IIRC, it didn't stack with other slowing effect. I'm sure opinions will vary for whether this was a good trade off. Its previous incarnation was frustrating in that the higher your avoidance, the weaker it got. Assuming a reasonable 30% total avoidance when tanking, it only had 100% - (100%-15%*30%)^3 = 28.30% chance to be up on a given swing averaging to roughly a decrease of 14% average DPS taken. Assuming it does stack with IT, about 9% if it didn't. Which isn't high enough to not work on bosses at all. Assuming the same 30% current avoidance it has a near 100% up time (no less than 97% on bosses under the effect of IT). It has a 100% - 65%/70% ~ 7% decrease in DPS taken. Pretty fair trade IMO, and both versions are worth 3 talent points.

The new fridged dreadplate is a pretty awesome 1 point investment for PvP. 30% of hits against you leave a 12 sec debuff. Forgetting how fast dual wielders hit (so you can just assume it's up all the time).....

Even with a 3.6 speed (the 2h arena weapons), you get 3.33 white swings in a 12 second span, plus assume 2 "special" strikes in that time period which is reasonable for any 2h class... 5.33 swings * 30% application chance = Your fridged dreadplate is proccing an average of 1.6 times in a given 12 seconds. Count in an avoidance of 12% dodge/parry (culled from a random DPS arms warrior profile), it's still got an average proc rate of 1.4 times in a given 12 seconds.

So while it may take a while to get rolling, statistically it will be up and will be refreshing frequently enough to stay up all the time vs a melee class beating on you.

So for 1 point in the talent.... you get 5% avoidance for PvP (or tanking). This, too, I will be surprised if it's not retuned downwards - not much reason to invest more than 1 point for a fairly solid return.

Edit:

Someone below me mentioned a couple of good points:

Higher avoidance and tanking - yeah, it would probably mean you'd go 3/3... but 3 points for 5% avoidance is higher than the average talent puts out.

Also, I have no idea if it'll stack with scorpid sting / insect swarm... but those two currently stack together (for 7%). There's probably at least some chance that fridged dreadplate does stack with them also, because most of the buff stacking seems to have gone (all personal buffs + the biggest single external buff) - so if anything, it would make sense if fridged dreadplate stacked with the external buffs.

In the interest of what blizzard seems to be doing now, which is reducing the number of "required specs" (by giving imp windfury to enhancement shamans OR frost deathknights, and improved curse of elements to affliction warlocks OR unholy deathknights) I wouldn't be surprised if Insect Swarm was bumped up to 5%, and made to not stack with scorpid sting. But, who knows.

Zaroua · 08/14/08, 3:11 AM

Originally Posted by msg

The new fridged dreadplate is a pretty awesome 1 point investment for PvP. 30% of hits against you leave a 12 sec debuff. Forgetting how fast dual wielders hit (so you can just assume it's up all the time).....

Even with a 3.6 speed (the 2h arena weapons), you get 3.33 white swings in a 12 second span, plus assume 2 "special" strikes in that time period which is reasonable for any 2h class... 5.33 swings * 30% application chance = Your fridged dreadplate is proccing an average of 1.6 times in a given 12 seconds. S

o while it may take a while to get rolling, statistically it will be up and will be refreshing frequently enough to stay up all the time vs a melee class beating on you.

So for 1 point in the talent.... you get 5% avoidance for PvP (or tanking). This, too, I will be surprised if it's not retuned downwards - not much reason to invest more than 1 point for a fairly solid return.

You'll want all 3 points for PvE once you hit high enough avoidance. I'm sure that someone who's more math inclined than be can figure out the breakpoints for Dreadplate uptime per talent point given a certain amount of avoidance.

The other thing to consider is if it stacks with Scorpid Sting and Insect Swarm.

Lamaros · 08/14/08, 3:30 AM

MMO-Champion's list:

Blood

* Bloodworms (Tier 7) now gives you a 4/8/12% chance on hit to spawn 2-4 Bloodworms. (Previously was 20/40/60% chance on Death Strike to spawn 1/1-3/3-5 Bloodworms)
* Sudden Doom (Tier 8 ) lasts 15 sec now. (Previously 10)

Frost

* Improved Icy Touch (Tier 1) changed to make your Frost Fever reduce melee, ranged and casting speed by an additional 2%. (Previously was 1%)
* Icy Talons (Tier 3) changed to affect targets afflicted by Frost Fever. (Previously affected targets afflicted by Icy Touch only)
* Lichborne (Tier 3) reduced to 10 sec. (Previously was 30 sec)
* Runic Power Mastery (Tier 4) Scaling runic power abilities behave as if you had an additional 20% runic power. (Previously was 2%)
* Frigid Deathplate (Tier 5) changed to: Enemies who hit you in melee have a 30/60/100% chance to become unsettled, decreasing their chance to hit for 5% for the next 12 sec.
* Aneurysm (Tier 7) Removed
* Endless Winter (Tier 7) is now a 2 point talent and Your Chains of Ice has a 50/100% chance to cause Frost Fever and the cost of your Mind Freeze is reduced to 20/0 runic power.
* Acclimation (Tier 9) now affects the whole raid.

Unholy

* Virulence (Tier 2) and Morbidity (Tier 1) have swapped spots in the talent tree.
* Blood-Caked Blade (Tier 4) reduced to 50% weapon damage times the number of your diseases on the target. (Previously was 60%)
* Desecration (Tier 7) increased to 7 yards around the target. (Previously was 2 yards)
* Night of the Dead (Tier 8 ) reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 30 sec now. (Previously 1 min)
* Scourge Strike (Tier 9) damage slightly increased.

Most we have covered.

Banda · 08/14/08, 3:38 AM

Just to help out the less mathematically inclined here is some math for less talent points and various avoidance levels. Let S be the number of swings in a 12 sec period, timing of the effect always guarantees that this count will always start at the beginning of a swing timer. So a 2.99 swing times gets 5 hits in, etc. Let P be the percentage from the talent 30/60/100%. And let A be your avoidance. The expectation that the effect will be up on any given swing is:

100%-[100%-(100%-A)*P]^S

Given a normal mob with a 2sec swing timer, under the effect of IT, S = 6. Low balling your character with 1 talent point and a mediocre 20% avoidance gets you, 100%-(100%-(100%-20%)*30%)^6 = 80.74% up time. Not bad. Rogues meleeing you in Arena is closer to S = 12 which is 96% up time. High end raid tanks will definitely want more than one point since you're likely to be hitting 50% avoidance, which is a less exciting 62.29% up time. 2 points gets you 88.24%, 3 gets you 98.44%.

Disargeria · 08/14/08, 5:09 AM

Every time there's a new build, I always check how tri-speccing looks. This time, it looks really nice with Blood-Caked Blade in easy reach, on top of its already nice scaling. Any thoughts about how well this'll work?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Lileith · 08/14/08, 5:20 AM

Frigid Deathplate don't stack with Scorpid Sting, so in 25man raid, It'll just allow your hunter to do another sting. It's not giving us 5% avoidance other tanking class couldn't have. I'm not even sure It wouldn't be better to spend the 3 talents points elsewhere and let the hunter use Scorpid Sting.

Lileith · 08/14/08, 5:23 AM

Originally Posted by Disargeria

Every time there's a new build, I always check how tri-speccing looks. This time, it looks really nice with Blood-Caked Blade in easy reach, on top of its already nice scaling. Any thoughts about how well this'll work?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Why no epidemic?

Disargeria · 08/14/08, 5:27 AM

Originally Posted by Lileith

Why no epidemic?

I wasn't really sure if I should put points into that because my Oblits wouldn't be wiping my diseases. It'd be easy to move those two talent points over.

Lileith · 08/14/08, 5:49 AM

Without Epidemic your diseases won't last enough for 2 rotations,at best you can do:

Icy Touch, Plaguestrike, Obliterate, 2xBlood strike, Obliterate (your diseases are fading very soon after that, actualy before if your plaguestrike miss and you have to wait too long for the unholy rune Frost fever may fade before the 2nd Obliterate).

With Epidemic you can do:

Icy Touch, Plaguestrike, Obliterate, 2xBloodstrike, Obliterate, Obliterate, 2xBloodstrike

then your diseases fade but you start over.

Overall I don't see much use of Annhilation without Epidemic.

This spec would result in a lot higher dps with the 2nd rotation (just change 1 pt if you want to use DRW as RP dump):
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

Disargeria · 08/14/08, 6:07 AM

I see! Thanks for pointing that out. I also got a bit ahead of myself and skipped Glacier Rot. I moved points out of DRM, too.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...00000000000000

I'd like to know if the difference in white damage and scaling outweighs the investment into deep Blood.

Grizzly · 08/14/08, 9:20 AM

Diseases seem to be hotfixed down to around the 250ish dmg now (was up around 800-1k last night).

Also it seems that Unholy Presence stacks with Unholy Aura currently, giving 20% movement speed bonus.

Dont have speed enchant on boots to see if that stacks also.

Darkrenown · 08/14/08, 9:25 AM

I didn't see it mentioned, but Frost Strike and Deathcoil should be back down to 40 RP from 50. Some of the MMO list is old stuff too, pretty sure RPM has always been 20% and Talons have proced from Frost fever rather than IT for the last few patchs

Given how tight GCDs are for DKs, I wonder if it'd be better to just give them the 1 sec GCD as default and give Unholy presence something else, that way you could actually use all your runes in a rotation as well as be able to use reactive/RP stuff. Failing that, what about taking reactive/tank stuff, like Unbreakable Armour/AMZ/AMS/Bone Shield off the GCD?

Deathwing · 08/14/08, 9:40 AM

Originally Posted by Lileith

Frigid Deathplate don't stack with Scorpid Sting, so in 25man raid, It'll just allow your hunter to do another sting. It's not giving us 5% avoidance other tanking class couldn't have. I'm not even sure It wouldn't be better to spend the 3 talents points elsewhere and let the hunter use Scorpid Sting.

Source on this?

Kinda stupid, if so. I can understand spec redundancy, but what's the point of giving us a talent that doesn't stack with a class base skill?

erragal · 08/14/08, 9:51 AM

Originally Posted by Deathwing

Source on this?

Kinda stupid, if so. I can understand spec redundancy, but what's the point of giving us a talent that doesn't stack with a class base skill?

So you can get the 5% hit debuff when there isn't a hunter in your ten man raid.

For min-max purposes you'd have to make a determination if your three talent points would be equal to the raid dps increase of a hunter using a damaging sting. If the hunter happens to be Marksman with their new Chimera Shot, they would have to be a very strong three points as well.

On a side note, I'm actually surprised they haven't changed insect swarm to 5% as well and made it non-stacking. I would have thought that a pretty obvious change.