Septus

Well kill command had a 6 second cooldown, had no serious cost to use, and was a part of an already highly macroed dps rotation due to steady shot.

There is an incentive to keep some runic power in reserve for several DK abilities that aren't for straight up dps. But Blizzard should just make it proc less, like a 40% chance on crit, or raise the cooldown, so the average period of use is perhaps every 15-20 seconds instead, and increase the damage and runic cost accordingly.

 

PSGarak

In order to make it a truely "reactive" ability you need to fulfil at least two conditions.
First, you wouldn't always use it or attempt to use it as soon as the proc activates. If this is true, you macro it into a rotation and forget about it. Raising the cost is one way to solve this. Making it break rotations is another.
Second, you need to make sure that the activation proc isn't basically always active. If the activation conditions are almost always met, like having crit in the last 10 seconds, then it's basically not a reactive ability, it's a normal on-demand ability with a marginal chance not to be available. That still has to be balanced against always being available.
The third (or zeroth) condition is that the thing does have to be worthwhile on occassion, or else the ability gets relegated to the spellbook.

I think the ideal solution to the first problem for the DK is one where you would want to use the proc when it activates, but you wouldn't necessarily want to use it immediately. A 10-second usewindow would let you delay use to put it in an optimal part of your cycle regardless of when it procs. Now you just need to somehow make the ability do slightly different things depending on when in your cycle you use it (affect next 2-3 abilities/runes? 3-second buff/debuff?) and you have an ability that you honestly react to.

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

 

Hearteater

They could make Runic Strike cost 50 RP. Then each time you crit, the cost drops 10 RP. Stacks 5 times, lasts 10 seconds. Using Runic Strike resets the cost back to 50.

So every 5 crits it's absolutely free. Optionally, have it usable anytime, but regular crits increase your next Runic Strike's crit chance by 100% for 6 seconds.

 

Pyros

So, just hit 80, got Army of the Dead, I'm uploading a video atm, but it seems rather weak. I expected it not to work at all though, and it seems to be working, somewhat.

The part where it reduces damage doesn't seem to be working at all to be honest. It pops a lot of ghouls, which seem to taunt everything around, but they're normal ghoul, so low hp. They do a decent bit of damage, but overall, nothing really great. Will test more, respeced unholy for the talent to reduce the cd on it, not sure if it works so well.

Edit:
armyofthedead.avi - FileFront.com

Edit2: It's actually bugged, instead of reducing damage taken by parry+dodge, it increases damage taken by parry+dodge. For people who are wondering, it adds your dodge and parry and use that as a % to reduce damage. So like, with 20%dodge and 15%parry, you get 35% dmg reduction(when it's fixed) for 8secs. Assuming you scourge strike every unholy rune after that with night of the dead, you can use it every 1min35(I think).

 

Clandestine

I've been too lazy to grind past 78, what with having basically no quests left available to me, but I was wondering how long the ghouls last after being summoned?

 

Grimsky

I know this was touched on briefly in the past, but since then mechanics have changed a lot.

For tanking is it still preferable to use DWing? Just curious, seems like a DW tank would need to waste a lot of hit budget to be able to not miss like a mofo. I was hoping for my DK to tank 2her style.

Is there any spec that is particulary good with DW vs 2h?

 

Spiry

I think that the general consensus was that DW tanking wasn't the best way to go, due to being parry-gibbed.

 

Deathwing

When was DW tanking ever preferable? I don't see the advantage aside from slightly increased threat from white damage. And even that is debatable in terms of overall threat.

 

Fellwraith

I think killing machine has changed a couple different times. Early in the alpha/beta it was assumed you'd want to DW tank since it increased your chance of a crit if I remember correctly.

Really the only talent that screams DW to me is blood caked blade (possibly bloodworms), unless it has a hidden internal CD at launch (it doesn't appear to have one right now). With the way strikes work, it's really not worth it for a lot of specs to even consider wielding 2x 1h weapons for DPS.

 

Weidekuh

Just to throw in some numbers to crunch on. I recorded a Nexus run with my lvl 71 Deathknight.

http://s8.directupload.net/images/080825/bbi255cw.jpg Frostrike + Charscreen

http://s7.directupload.net/images/080825/ol56s4i3.jpg Howling Blast

http://s6.directupload.net/images/080825/5qbiegy6.jpg Autoattack

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

Needless to say, this was probably the most fun i've had in an instance since a very long time. The group was great fun, very good tank and i could just blast away with my spells critting my big numbers all over the place. I pulled quite many times aggro tho. No way to hold aggro for an overgeared Warrior against those massive AOE hits/crits i did. :p

PS: It was my first time DPSing as a Deathknight in an instance. So my rotation might not have been the best.
PPS: I was in Blood Presence DPSing and switching to Frost Presence doing the magic damage adds at one boss. Antimagic shell = win too

 

Mild Confusion

Has anyone done some pvp as DK? I am curious about their pvp strengths and weaknesses. For both solo and group/arena pvp. I am wondering which spec would be most effective as well.

 

Pyros

Did a bit, the issue is a good part of the server plays DKs too, so it's mostly stupid RNG fights. I fought a frost mage that pretty much perfected me 3times in a row. Deepfreeze, icelance spam, waterlem. DKs are terrible when it comes to kiting. Fought an elem shaman a few times, beat him everytime even when he ankhed. Can easily interupt lighting bolts both at range(strangulate, death grip) than in melee(mind freeze), not too hard to keep in melee range against frost shock. Can soak them up nicely too. Against other melees, I guess DKs would be pretty good, but haven't seen any. Have only started PvPing since I hit 80 though, and BGs are still off on euro server. That and it crashes pretty much during the ~6hours of primetime, so can only fight a few people during the night or the morning.

I tried frost and unholy specs. Frost had some issues yesterday but seems fixed now, howling blast wasn't hitting people. It's pretty powerful, but hard to compare since frost is currently the most powerful spec for DKs, for everything(frost strike and howling blast damage is about twice as high as any other ability). It was like, chain of ice some guy, then deathchil/howling blast him for 6k, froststrike him for 3k, do some crappy melee attacks while waiting on frost runes and pop icebound fortitude, then once frost runes are back just finish him. Was pretty mindless.

Unholy has perma ghoul which you can control, it's pretty nice, bone shield which is still better than any other of the deep defensive skills in other trees since it mitigates spelldamage, and it makes up for the lack of frost spell with solid deathcoils and better dots. Overall it's ok.

Haven't tested blood because I don't really like the playstyle, it's too straightdps, which I find boring. I'm still pretty bad at PvP with the DK, and I think it'll stay that way for a while, like every other class, you need to learn the basic tricks against each class, but it's even more important with the DK since you have to plan in advance to have ressources to use your stuff. Like, runes and RP. There's also some stuff I haven't really used, so don't know. Army of the Dead is stupid in PvP however, I guess I see why they'd extend it to 20mins, in arenas it could be pretty damn brutal since those ghouls would just pileup on a few people and put some serious dps, and they can't be AEd down that easily either.

 

kriS411

I really like the new frost, its just FUN to throw around with 7k+ Crits.
Hope they dont nerf that again, doesnt seem like overpowered DPS overall (think i have to do some blasted lands action, while leveling im suistaining around 1000 dps after a few hours in recount).
Maybe PvP is a little bit to stong against low targets, pretty much everything below 35% should die if you Killing Machine -> Froststrike -> Death Chill -> Howling Blast it...

Blood seems more a solo/suvivability tree now, with Frost you need alot of bandages as a cost for the high amount of damage.

As the talents currently stand i'll go Frost for both PvE and PvP.

 

Fellwraith

Rogues with a well-timed cloak of shadows and evasion can pretty much ruin you, even though half their skills are NYI. Any other class is pretty hard to evaluate at this point. Hunters are bugged (explosive shot does more damage than it says it should), paladins are bugged (no judgements this build), warriors are overtuned.

Basically it's people in S3 or S4 epics slaughtering any lower level people they see (particularly DKs with 0 resilience) with abilities that aren't tuned yet.

 

Caggy

Also Strand was weird when I went in the last build. Tanks are hilarious though. The frontal ram kocks them high up.
Mages can also camp the second seat and play turret.

 

Sinazeel

A quick couple of questions:

Does the resistance given by Frost Presence stack with the resistance from Mark of the Wild, shaman totems, or paladin auras? What about the resistance from Frost Aura, on both yourself (with Frost Presence on and off) and on other people? Same with Acclimation.

I would think that Frost Presence would stack with everything, since it's a stance-type ability, but I'm curious as to how everything else would work. If you can find the time to try to test it, I would appreciate it.

 

Pyros

Seems buggy, would need to test more. Currently I'm frost aura speced, and it doesn't stack with paladin auras. However, frost presence used to stack with aura a few builds ago, and now it doesn't, but might be because of the frost aura spec. Acclimatation stacks with everything. Oh and frost aura doesn't stack with your own frost presence, like every other aura doesn't stack with the presence effect.

 

Bluefish

I find this interesting. I was assuming that since it gives ~the same amount of resist as the various Auras and Protections, it would be a Death Knight's way of contributing those Auras and Protections when another class is missing. If it does stack, and stacks for the whole raid, one Frost DK would be a large survivability boost in consistent same-element damage situations.

 

Sinazeel

Frost Aura/Presence gives (level) amount of resistance, right? So that's about a 50 resistance difference between the Auras at level 80, and the resistance totems don't seem to have been given new ranks (yet?). Frost Aura seems a bit superfluous if it's a resistance-based fight, then. I could see it being useful for soloing or arena, though.

What's the amount of resistance granted from Acclimation for each stack? Given that it stacks up to 3 times, it can't be that much.

 

Trimm

At level 78, its 50 resist per stack.

You can't feed a baby onion rings.

 

Pyros

50 at 80 too, not sure it scales at all. Easy to get a full stack if you take regular damage though, since it lasts for 20secs.

Aura/Presence give 80 yeah(well at 80, give 1 per level), but paladin new auras give 130(new rank), I guess totems will too, so really it's more like a bandaid resist than anything. It's full passive, and gives all resists though, so I guess there might be a point for 10man raids, and maybe fights that have a lot of magic damage but where you can't really gear on resist and don't want to afford someone using a totem or an aura. Also provides the only arcane resist aura.

Still not a great talent, I see potential in it for a PvP build though, I have it in my current wintergrasp farming spec, it's a decent boost for 2points, have acclimatation too, when it starts procing I can get some nice group resist buffing.

 

SpaceDrake

So I'm wondering if anyone has an idea about this. Crossposting from the beta forums.

I've specced my current DK as Unholy for maximum corpse-exploding good times and I thought it'd be neat to control the ghoul... for the time I'd be able to keep it up, since initially it seems like the Ghoul is a temporary thing.

I noticed something, though. He was staying around... a fairly long time.

http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k1...608_015327.jpg

... for a really long time. Far past his previous life span. At first I simply thought it was Night Of The Dead somehow extending his lifespan as well as lowering his resummon cooldown. Curious, I went AFK to deal with something else and came back a good while later.

http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k1...608_020831.jpg

So yeah. As it currently stands, Master of Ghouls turns your ghoul into a full-blown, immortal PET rather than a limited time thing. You can, however, still reduce the cooldown on re-summoning to nearly nothing.

I just wanted to make sure this functionality is intentional, as this has... somewhat interesting implications for soloing, damage dealing, grouping and tanking. I feel the need to point out that my little ghoul was being accosted by a plaguehound as I was coming back... and he barely broke a sweat killing it. I spent a short amount of time tonight seeing how far I could push this little team-up, and I got to six-on-two with plenty of steam left over for more.

Quite simply, I'm a little unsure as to just how wise a permanent pet would be for us. We're a plate class, and Master of Ghouls turns us into a plate class with an extra hitpoint buffer and pocket Rogue. It's fun, don't get me wrong, I love the little dude and already have a nickname for him, but a hard-hitting plate class with the possibility of a permanent, competent combat pet seems like a bit much to me. My next stop is going to be Outland and I intend on trying my luck against the various wandering elites there. I fully expect the result will be brutal.

So given how profoundly *great* the permanent ghoul for Unholies is, I just want to confirm: is this intentional? Is Master of Ghouls supposed to make the ghoul permanent, as far as anyone knows? I mean, it doesn't give the OMG SICK CRITZ that everyone in the beta is currently fapping over, but for real, my Paladin and my Warlock don't grind like my Unholy DK does now. I've gone for hours without needing to stop once, due to the ghoul being able to soak some hurt at the start of an encounter and due to the way Ebon Plague further buffs Death Strike. And I'm not even 60 yet, Blight is going to make this shit even more bananas. And then you have things like being able to leisurely take a ghoul into a boss fight with the resummon easily up, so you get at least two death pacts without much effort at all. And that's just the simple, wasteful version of what you could do...

 

• Foundry

The tooltip for Raise Dead says "Lasts until cancelled" in the current build (8870). Testing it just now, the ghoul I had out died out it's own accord on a timer. No points in Unholy. Confusion there as you note between tooltip and the talents.

Edit: Checking Ghostcrawler posts, this is all I can find from a few days ago, feedback on build 8820:
Source

 

cutfang

If its an ability thats always useable, but only deals some proper damage when your proc debuffs the enemy with say, a horrific ailment, that causes your reactive ability to deal 5x its usual damage. I'm not sure if you mentioned this already when you said to raise the cost, but this ways seems to prevent macroing the ability.

 

P51mus

This has been mentioned before: the gear you get from the Death Knight quests is meant to get you through Outlands, or at least most of Outlands. It's overpowered for your level when you're ejected back into the "normal" questing world where everyone else is.

Also, what spec warlock/paladin?

For warlocks, affliction is top of the heap for grinding. I know with my warlock the main thing that stops me is finding the bodies and looting them. Demo is okay, but not as good. And destruction is being a mage without being able to conjure food/water for yourself.

Paladins I haven't had much experience beyond mid level protection (which can keep up against multiple targets fairly constantly at a certain point, as long as the enemies are melee and not casters).