Is Horn of Winter still on GCD or it's been changed on PTR? If the cost is removed and a cooldown is added GCD should go.

Well, I have 12568 base armor from the items that will be eligible for bonus armor next patch. That becomes 14453 armor with Toughness. Currently that would put me at 23125 armor in Frost presence which is 58% damage reduction from armor. Patch day that would jump to 26015 armor in frost presence which is 61% damage reduction. So on patch day without any gear changes I will take 5% less damage than I did before all the time.

So I trade 5% damage reduction on melee hits and 10% magic reduction for 4.5% damage reduction from Ice Bound fortitude (assuming 18 second duration and 35% cap at 540 defense).

Sounds like a buff to me, until you realize that what they are trying to fix is our how squishy we are when off cool down, and trading 4.5% damage reduction averaged out over 60 seconds for 5% damage reduction and 10% magic damage reduction just puts us basically right back where we were before the patch.

I hate to say it, but we either need some new mechanic on par with shield block, armor much higher in bear form ranges, or some huge boost to stamina via talents/presence. Currently DK are just not cutting it in a raid. The promise of being able to OT fights and DPS elsewhere is a pipe dream that the feral druid in my guild crushes. We are ding very competitive DPS right now, but tanking is far lackluster in comparison to the other classes.

Well it does address the problem, since it'll smooth things out a little more. Like you say that 4.5% is averaged over 60 seconds, which means the first 12s are nice and low, while the next 48 are a roller coaster ride. Now those first 12 seconds are going to be a little tougher, while the next 48 will be less of a roller coaster.

Question is, does it address it enough?

PTR patch notes are up on the official site, pretty close to what MMO-Champion lists. No idea on GCD.

The glyph now increases duration by 60 seconds.

can we use two of the new rune on a dual welding spec? how do they stack? it could be a +50 def skill and 4% stam...

Its a 2H weapon rune only. The reason being that a DW tank can get defensive stats from the weapons themselves. 2H tanks cannot.

The heart strike change bothers me as well. I honestly don't care about doing aoe damage, and preventing haste effects could be very useful depending on the way it interacts with mechanics.

I've never checked on this, but things like boss frenzy's or haste gains? As well as haste gained by players from talents? Or things that proc and reduce the casting time of the next spell. Not to mention slice and dice.

The bottom line on it is that it doesn't improve single target dps, and it removes something that I don't know was fully understood. Limiting our use of it around mobs with CC is also just silly, I have to use the strike I replaced it with when I want to have CC?

I personally make people use CC on runs that I tank, not that it is really needed, but I like things to be smooth and predictable when I tank, and now I have to use blood strike?

I just do not agree with the change.

Do you really think Blood needs to have significant improvement in the area of single target DPS?

Heart Strike used to be amazing (reduces max HP of target by 20% for 10 seconds) but they couldn't figure out how to make it work as a on-next-swing. It was then changed to a Blood Strike replacement with the Haste prevention debuff suggested by a dungeon designer. Even then, it was useless.

At least now that it cleaves it actually serves a purpose aside from novelty debuff that doesn't amount to anything. Clearly it's a shame that you can't go full DPS with CC around. I mean, now you're just like Frost DKs with Howling Blast and Unholy DKs with Unholy Blight. Shucks, now that we get some decent AE we have to deal with CC like the other specs that already had AE.

A Heart Strike Cleave still pales in comparison with Frost and Unholy in AOEing larger packs, though. Partly because it uses Blood Runes, which you could be using on Blood Boils and partly because hitting 4 targets with 2 Heart Strikes each rotation isn't going to mean jack crap when a Frost DK is using Howling Blasts and an Unholy DK is running through the pack using Unholy Blight. The overall outcome of those 2 extra heart strikes in a clusterfuck of mobs is going to be completely negligible.

It depends on the number of mobs in said pack. Considering Heart Strike crits for upwards of 4-5k and you can dump 4 of them in the timespan of one Howling Blast, odds are you can do quite a bit of damage.

One thing talked about but not in the notes is the speed in which the ghoul is available after dismounting. Can anyone who is able to get on PTR check that?

"Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from Pestilence. "


The way they word talents that boost spells is bizarre.

Shouldn't it say "Pestilence will no longer receive bonus damage from Outbreak" ?

Meh.

If you want to plan gear for the PTR changes, I've uploaded a quick Rawr modification.

It assumes Bone Shield/Unbreakable Armor Glyphs and the 2% armor Metagem bonus.

It has the new Runeforge.

It has correct stats for Humans! And hopefully other races, too!

Diminishing returns, new armor calcs, etc, work.

Calculated Bone Shield Uptime for a 2.0 sec attack speed. The formula is universal but this version doesn't have calculation options to change incoming attack speed.

Purely for Mitigation/Survival purposes.

http://www.filedropper.com/rawrv213_1



How to get the most out of Rawr:

Use the optimizer! First, check all of the items, gems, and enchants you want it to compare under comparisons on the right.

Tools - > Optimize...

Select parameters.
I suggest Calculation to Optimize: Overall Rating

Add additional requirements: % Chance to be crit <= 0

I think that if they are going to change a single target nuke, they should stay in the design philosophy. Howling Blast is an AOE ability, Unholy Blight is an aoe ability. Heart Strike will now be some sort of bastard child aoe/single target ability. It will be silly and awkward.

A frost 2 hander build just spams obliterate when there is cc. An unholy build just can use extra DC instead of unholy blight. The unholy build loses a small amout of dps by using DC but not alot. A blood knight will be losing dps when it can't use heart strike. Overall, the cleave breaking cc isn't a serious issue, just another thing that makes the change feel clunky.

It's only been on PTR for a day. If enough people bring that point up and back it with real numbers, maybe they'll make it a smart ability that doesn't hit cc'd critters. Who knows.

If you are using the new HS to tank, there should be zero issue with CC; just change positioning. It's not as though it's a consecration replacement, or thunderclap. It's very easy to avoid conflicting with CC.

With that said, I can see it being an issue while DPSing since you aren't in control of the mob positioning. Just have the CCers/Tank be aware? I can see it being a smart ability as it's multi-target, not necessarily AOE. Hammer of the Righteous is multi-target and skips CCed mobs. Same with the modified Avenger's Shield.

You know, it honestly *feels* like an ability that should have a mortal strike component. Just the name alone...

A few things. First, the Rawr module is intended solely as a DPS module. It doesn't have the foundations to work as a tanking module, so I'm not sure why it was included.

Second, Rawr is designed to be released as a complete package. Please refrain from releasing Rawr without the owner's consent (Astrylian on these boards). If you'd like to help me work on Rawr, you're more then welcome, but you shouldn't be doing it ad hoc. Rawr has a name, and by releasing it in the way we do we can insure no malicious software enters the package and is distributed.

Finally, it's still a work in progress. More updates are planned shortly.

To the members of this board, please note that the posted release is NOT an official Rawr release, and the Rawr devs will take no responsibility if it contains malicious software.

Is there a tanking version forthcoming in addition to the dps module for Death Knights? I loved using Rawr for my bear tank back in the day, it'd be great to have a DK version.

Never going to happen.

Anyway, Ret Pallies and the two other DPS DKs deal with AoE damage on their main attacks and now Blood DKs will too.

This is simply not true. We're running a DK MT and his Bone Shield uptime is insane. The only argument I would accept is that Frost/Blood have nothing to compare to Bone Shield once you reach a certain avoidance threshold.

Here is the armory Teeps

Between Bone Shield and IBF, even post patch, Unholy DKs are amazing tanks, not to mention the sheer power of a tank who can Cloak of shadows against various spell effects (Sartharion Flame Breathe w/ Shadron comes to mind). These new changes make Unholy DKs the best spellcaster-boss tanks by far and are still very competitive against melee bosses.

This is all discounting the additional advantage of DK MTs in any fight with phases where the cooldown uptime is much higher.

If anything, DK MTs are going to get nerfed as we move on in content, things like Blade Barrier are absolutely overpowered if your MT is good.

I apologize for the confusion but this is just an older version of my Rawr Tank module. It doesn't have threat in it because it will take more time to complete those changes.

I've never uploaded a version to the SVN because I've just been using it for private use. I would have released it here as just the .dll but I needed to recompile the enchants.cs to get the Runeforge crap to work, and the item database was missing a few key tank pieces. I removed the other class dlls to reduce download size.

Edit: http://i38.tinypic.com/5mabs8.jpg