Death Knights 3.1: BIG UPDATE - Page 11

Lujaar · 02/12/09, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Megaera

HB doesn't figure into single-target Frost at any reasonable gear level and raid comp.

As far as I can tell HB beats out oblit for single target damage as 0/44/27 2h frost.

With Impurity, HB deals more direct damage than oblit, even if you ignore killing machine. Oblit pulls ahead only if you assume that (1) you're using Sigil of Awareness, (2) you're using the Oblit glyph, (3) you're able to spend the extra 10 RP per oblit without delaying your cycle or running unholy presence (this is the big one), and (4) you're actually wearing 4pc T7 to give you the extra 10 RP per oblit.

(1) Sigil of Awareness comes at the cost of not using Sigil of Frozen Conscience, which contributes almost as much total damage.
(2) The oblit glyph is, once again, in competition with DPS gains to other abilities. 0/44/27 has four potential glyphs: IT, FS, ghoul, oblit. You can only use three.
(3) The IT and froststrike glyphs give you more than enough RP to GCD-lock yourself in blood presence, which should be immediately obvious. 4pc T7 is wasted runic power.
(4) 4pc T7 becomes suboptimal if (3) isn't true. Only one piece of T7 is best in slot, the shoulders. If you don't need the 4-piece bonus, you can gain stats by wearing other pieces of gear.

The point is, just because you CAN make oblit better than HB at the expense of buffing other abilities doesn't mean that doing so is your best option.

Megaera · 02/12/09, 4:52 PM

Originally Posted by Lujaar

As far as I can tell HB beats out oblit for single target damage as 0/44/27 2h frost.

With Impurity, HB deals more direct damage than oblit, even if you ignore killing machine. Oblit pulls ahead only if you assume that (1) you're using Sigil of Awareness, (2) you're using the Oblit glyph, (3) you're able to spend the extra 10 RP per oblit without delaying your cycle or running unholy presence (this is the big one), and (4) you're actually wearing 4pc T7 to give you the extra 10 RP per oblit.

(1) Sigil of Awareness comes at the cost of not using Sigil of Frozen Conscience, which contributes almost as much total damage.
(2) The oblit glyph is, once again, in competition with DPS gains to other abilities. 0/44/27 has four potential glyphs: IT, FS, ghoul, oblit. You can only use three.
(3) The IT and froststrike glyphs give you more than enough RP to GCD-lock yourself in blood presence, which should be immediately obvious. 4pc T7 is wasted runic power.
(4) 4pc T7 becomes suboptimal if (3) isn't true. Only one piece of T7 is best in slot, the shoulders. If you don't need the 4-piece bonus, you can gain stats by wearing other pieces of gear.

The point is, just because you CAN make oblit better than HB at the expense of buffing other abilities doesn't mean that doing so is your best option.

I'm trying to remember where I got involved in this discussion a few days ago, probably in a tanking thread, but I don't think it involved specs with Impurity. I stand corrected for 44/27 assuming all this checks out (which I'm sure it does...I trust the people who use the spec over my obviously patchy knowledge).

So with 2H Frost hitting 'enough' buttons (and 5 buttons is definitely plenty), I'm left with "philosophical" reasons at best for objecting to the lack of PS in the rotation. I understand that in isolation the breakdown of a no disease, one disease, and many disease tree looks like variety, when you step back to view the classes as a whole I have a hard time getting behind that vision. If you wanted a plate-wearing all-physical tank/DPS hybrid you already had that option...it's called a Warrior. Part of what makes DKs a distinct class is the disease mechanic.

Does single-disease Frost feel distinct enough? I don't know, probably. I tank that way often, and I like it. But in the back of my mind I still find myself wishing Blood Plague were a regular part of all DK specs. Obviously some people disagree, but as I said a few pages back, those people are likely to be disappointed. All indications are that they're going to keep tweaking mechanics until every DK should be using the two core diseases.

Derivel · 02/12/09, 5:21 PM

Originally Posted by Cambriel

Absolutely not. If anything, I think Nerves of Cold Steel should move up so that dual wielding is more viable, not less. In a perfect world, the choice between a 2hander and dual wield would be purely cosmetic and a few minor point investments (NoCS rather than 2H Mastery). It would take normalizing strikes to work like stormstrike and use both weapons, and shuffling some things around, but it's doable. Then dual wield would be about the equipment you have available rather than twinking out a spec that exploits the unintended synergy between trees.

I think a lot of DWers would have a valid argument against you here, in that they want DW to feel different than 2 handing rather than just being a cosmetic change of weapons. I know I was attracted to it for a while because of the more spell based gameplay, and only stayed away because I knew the current system was going to get changed.

Diseases are the core of the DK class and the fact that Blizz is moving towards improving it so that you want to use them is great. It sucks that everyone has grown accustomed to how things are now but the changes should be wholey beneficial in the long run.

Indeed. The class description includes the fact that is disease based (though the class descriptions on the site are obviously not 100% concurrent with how the game plays). It seems a bit silly to me that anybody would roll a DK specifically wanting to ignore the diseases totally. Of course I heard about and became interested in the DK during alpha/beta, whereas some people might be rolling them now after seeing diseaseless viability.

Feorthas · 02/12/09, 5:56 PM

Originally Posted by Lujaar

As far as I can tell HB beats out oblit for single target damage as 0/44/27 2h frost.

With Impurity, HB deals more direct damage than oblit, even if you ignore killing machine. Oblit pulls ahead only if you assume that (1) you're using Sigil of Awareness, (2) you're using the Oblit glyph, (3) you're able to spend the extra 10 RP per oblit without delaying your cycle or running unholy presence (this is the big one), and (4) you're actually wearing 4pc T7 to give you the extra 10 RP per oblit.

(1) Sigil of Awareness comes at the cost of not using Sigil of Frozen Conscience, which contributes almost as much total damage.
(2) The oblit glyph is, once again, in competition with DPS gains to other abilities. 0/44/27 has four potential glyphs: IT, FS, ghoul, oblit. You can only use three.
(3) The IT and froststrike glyphs give you more than enough RP to GCD-lock yourself in blood presence, which should be immediately obvious. 4pc T7 is wasted runic power.
(4) 4pc T7 becomes suboptimal if (3) isn't true. Only one piece of T7 is best in slot, the shoulders. If you don't need the 4-piece bonus, you can gain stats by wearing other pieces of gear.

The point is, just because you CAN make oblit better than HB at the expense of buffing other abilities doesn't mean that doing so is your best option.

Maximum strike/critical damage numbers for Howling Blast are great to throw out in a vacuum; however, in a Physical-centric 2H Frost build--17/54, 21/50, etc--HB averages 1.1-1.2k less damage than Obliterate when leaving KM and sigils out of the picture (and FS hits for 600-800 more in the same situation), but affording 2T7. The reason 44/27 works is because of the Ghoul and because Icy Touch gets even better (talking 2h 44/27, which has come up in discussion many times); however, perma-ghoul is a poor investment because he gains no avoidance at that point in UH and will usually die if AoE is present. Heck, IIRC, Obliterate was still worth using over HB, just a bit, in 2h 44/27 because it does the same amount of damage as HB but generates more RP with 4T7 (yielding more high power frost strikes that dip into both your weapon modifier and the Unholy Spell Damage bonuses).

If you want to check for yourself, hit my spreadsheet (spreadsheet thread) and play with it.

-----

Regarding diseases, as I said before, I'd love to have a disease for each tree (and 2nd in UH) that gets built upon by talents and does substantially more than just be a DoT that buffs strikes by being there, but it's unlikely to happen or get more complex than the two(/three) disease system we have now.

Megaera · 02/12/09, 6:04 PM

Originally Posted by Feorthas

Heck, IIRC, Obliterate was still worth using over HB, just a bit, in 2h 44/27 because it does the same amount of damage as HB but generates more RP with 4T7 (yielding more high power frost strikes that dip into both your weapon modifier and the Unholy Spell Damage bonuses).

Not to be a jerk, but did you read points 3 and 4 of his post? I'm not going to sit here and count GCDs on my fingers, but assuming he didn't make the GCD bind up he explained exactly why this isn't true.

Feorthas · 02/12/09, 6:39 PM

Originally Posted by Megaera

Not to be a jerk, but did you read points 3 and 4 of his post? I'm not going to sit here and count GCDs on my fingers, but assuming he didn't make the GCD bind up he explained exactly why this isn't true.

Yes and I'm also one of the idiots who confirmed that 2H frost can sustain a 21s rotation and gain dps. Yeah, we have 8 spare RP that can't be used but that's not the end of the world. The Rime Proc Chance and 25% Frost Strike left doesn't make up for the loss in raw damage by swapping to UH Pres.

nachrichter · 02/13/09, 3:59 AM

In the vein of random suggestions, I'd like to see Blood Boil work more like Bloodboil's Bloodboil. Afflict the target and anything within 10 yards with a dot. Make it 6 seconds or so with no initial damage, non-stacking. Move Howling Blast to 11pt Frost. Make it double off Blood Boil (possibly consuming the BB dot, inverting the original BB function) and BP/FF or just BB. BB could be a third disease or it could just be a magic effect that buffs HB, mimicing the BP/FF relationship to strikes. Rebalance Howling Blast to be significantly less effective for every spec for single target, leave the 5sec cooldown. Make Corpse Explosion baseline, maybe rename it, find a way for every spec to use it without corpses.

Now you have a base aoe rotation of BB CE HB (with DnD as/if appropriate) that you can tune to provide an appropriate level of damage/threat for every spec. Let deep Blood get a little extra BB damage, deep Frost gets a little extra HB damage, deep Unholy gets Wandering Plague (make it proc off BB as well). Redo strikes to work with DW so you don't abandon the tree's signature strikes as soon as you add a second weapon.

With it all balanced right, you'd use diseases or the equivalent on trash (BB) and larger targets (FF/BP), every tree could go DW or not as they saw fit and it'd be more straightforward without losing the fundamental interaction of DK abilities.

Megaera · 02/13/09, 10:10 AM

Originally Posted by Feorthas

Yes and I'm also one of the idiots who confirmed that 2H frost can sustain a 21s rotation and gain dps. Yeah, we have 8 spare RP that can't be used but that's not the end of the world. The Rime Proc Chance and 25% Frost Strike left doesn't make up for the loss in raw damage by swapping to UH Pres.

I'm sure you have excellent credentials; asserting them, however, proves nothing. If there's a post elsewhere you could link to containing information on why the partial RP gain from 4T7 outweighs the gains from wearing otherwise superior pieces and replacing one OB every 5 seconds with HB, that would be more helpful. If it's important enough to put in your sig file, I'm sure you have it on hand. I'm not saying you're wrong, hell, I was the one who originally posted that HB was no part of 2H Frost DPS. I just don't see what ignoring the content of the post you're quoting then acting insulted when someone points it out accomplishes.

Honestly, the whole "should I use HB" debate is kind of afield from the discussion about how best to incorporate the core diseases into every viable DK build. I regret having waded into it, and am content to leave it to the Frosty DPS or FAQ threads.

EwokChilli · 02/13/09, 10:57 AM

When they give frost talents based on Blood Plague, you'll see Frost use PS. Pretty much as simple as that. Other then Acclimation, Frost doesn't have many dead talents that aren't useful to at least somebody or some spec. They don't have a Vendetta talent like Blood that never gets used by any spec ever.

In fact, if they added a talent towards the top of the Blood tree to do something with Blood Plague, you'd probably see a lot of blood and frost specs use PS then. Would be nice if the strike part of the ability weren't complete trash either.

**edited to keep from double posting

• Darkside · 02/24/09, 2:02 AM

Lots of news, check the OP for details as they show up.

Lumiis · 02/24/09, 2:27 AM

* Blood Boil’s damage increased to make up for Pestilence no longer doing damage.
* Blood Boil now does some damage to undiseased targets and extra damage to diseased targets. Its radius has been decreased.
* Blood Plague: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
* Death Pact: This heal cannot be a critical.
* Frost Fever: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
* Pestilence does no damage and has only one rank.
* Plague Strike and Blood Plague no longer remove hots. Plague Strike’s damage increased quite a bit to compensate.
* Raise Ally has a >15 min cooldown to keep it out of Arena.
* Raise Dead: Duration lowered to 60 sec. and cooldown lowered to 3 min. The cooldown on this ability now begins when the pet dies rather than when it is summoned.
* Rune of Cinderglacier now procs per minute instead of a 5% chance.
* Rune of Razorfrost now affects Frost damage done by the DK only, but stacks up to 10%.
* Strangulate no longer does damage and has been reduced to 1 rank.

Talents
Blood

* Blood Aura: Replaced with Improved Blood Presence. This allows the deathknight to keep the healing from damage done bonus of Blood Presence in any presence, and increases healing received while in Blood Presence.
* Blood-Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
* Bloody Strikes now increases Blood Boil damage instead of Pestilence.
* Bloodworms now heal more.
* Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.
* Scent of Blood will now proc on a dodge, parry or taking damage, and internal cooldown lowered to 10 from 20 sec.
* Sudden Doom now procs a free Death Coil instead of requiring you to push the button. Ranks reduced from 5 to 3.

Frost

* The following talents have moved in the Frost tree: Runic Power Mastery, Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Chilblains, and Endless Winter.
* Black Ice now grants 2/4/6/8/10% Shadow damage in addition to the Frost damage.
* Black Ice: Frost Damage bonus lowered to 4/8/12/16/20%
* Blood of the North is 3 ranks instead of 5 for the same effect.
* Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff (up from 30%). Moved to position currently occupied by Glacier Rot.
* Endless Winter: Moved to position currently occupied by Chillblains.
* Frost Aura: Replaced with Improved Frost Presence. Allows the deathknight to keep the health bonus of Frost Presence in any presence, and decreases magic damage taken while in Frost Presence.
* Glacier Rot: Third rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20. Moved to position currently occupied by Endless Winter.
* Howling Blast: Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree (HB is now at 51, and HC is now at 31). In addition, the damage bonus for targets with Frost Fever is now only 20%.
* Icy Talons - This talent how has a new icon.
* Runic Power Mastery down to 2 ranks.

Unholy

* Blood-caked Blade: Now has a 3 second cooldown on the effect.
* Desecration: This talent now has a 100% chance to be triggered. Additional points in the talent increase the damage bonus and snare magnitude instead of increasing the chance.
* Epidemic: Epidemic now has 3 ranks (adding an additional 3 sec of disease duration). Magic Suppression is 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction.
* Master of Ghouls: Now also reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 60 sec.
* Necrosis: Can now only be triggered by main hand attacks.
* New talent: Improved Death Strike. Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20.
* Night of the Dead: Redesigned to grant a flat reduction on cooldown to Raise Dead and Army of the Dead instead of a reduction from using abilities.
* Outbreak bonus for Scourge Strike lowered to 10/20/30%.
* Scourge Strike: Damage increased.
* Unholy Aura: Replaced with Improved Unholy Presence. Allows the Deathknight to keep the movement speed bonus of Unholy Presence in any presence, and increases rune regeneration rate while in Unholy Presence.
* Unholy Blight and Gargoyle have swapped places in the Unholy tree. Gargoyle is the new Unholy 51 talent.

====================

Huge DW nerfs, helllooooo blood

sindele · 02/24/09, 2:32 AM

Ow. Will anything survive this in a competitive state other than 2h blood/2h unholy? I think three or four specs just died a horrible death here.

The two-fold Howling Blast change (deeper in the tree and a huge cut to damage with the frost fever bonus change) makes it fairly pathetic, won't it? Especially with no mention of it coming off cooldown. With Obliterate almost always being a better choice of those runes for a 2h spec on single target anyway.. hm. Will have to see how it plays out I guess.

◊ Eej · 02/24/09, 2:35 AM

Unholy 2H is going to be the superior spec because with a 24 second window to refresh diseases with Scourge Strike glyph... well, you're going to have to be fairly unlucky to miss a refresh.

RADRyanD · 02/24/09, 2:41 AM

I am dissapointed with the changes to nerf DW. A lot. Looks like I'll be dusting off Betrayer for Blood or Unholy now.

kudzupo · 02/24/09, 2:41 AM

Originally Posted by Eej

Unholy 2H is going to be the superior spec because with a 24 second window to refresh diseases with Scourge Strike glyph... well, you're going to have to be fairly unlucky to miss a refresh.

Not only this, but with the change to unholy presence you will likely be able to pull off 2-3 more SS's (depending on how much rune cooldowns are reduced) per rotation in unholy presence.

I think the big news, as mentioned, is basically the death of most hybrid builds and dual wielding.

Mimirswell · 02/24/09, 2:45 AM

Originally Posted by Eej

Unholy 2H is going to be the superior spec because with a 24 second window to refresh diseases with Scourge Strike glyph... well, you're going to have to be fairly unlucky to miss a refresh.

Is it not going to be 18 seconds as Epidemic was nerfed to 1 second per talent point?

Lazareth · 02/24/09, 2:48 AM

Originally Posted by Mimirswell

Is it not going to be 18 seconds as Epidemic was nerfed to 1 second per talent point?

Yes. Innate 15 second plagues with +3 seconds fully talented. No change to disease duration if you're specced into Epidemic.

EDIT: Actually, re-reading the change, I'm not sure if it means an additional 3 seconds on top of what it is, or an additional 3 seconds total. It's pretty vague, but I'm going to go with the former. Soo .... yeah, 24 second diseases?

Xequecal · 02/24/09, 2:49 AM

Does anyone know what the deal is with the MMO-Champion DK test talent calculator? It contradicts the posted patch notes in several places, and lots of changes on it aren't mentioned in the patch notes at all.

Mindaika · 02/24/09, 2:51 AM

Originally Posted by kudzupo

Not only this, but with the change to unholy presence you will likely be able to pull off 2-3 more SS's (depending on how much rune cooldowns are reduced) per rotation in unholy presence.

I think the big news, as mentioned, is basically the death of most hybrid builds and dual wielding.

I believe that was the point. From what I understood of GC's early comments, DKs were allowed to DW in order to use 2 tanking weapons and gain the defense stats off them. DW was not intended (Blizz side) to be the dominant DPS spec. Personally, I won't miss it.

That being said: The biggest news is that you can SS -> SS -> BS -> BS -> repeat all day long now. '

The real question though is: will Improved Unholy Aura's "increased rate of rune regeneration in Unholy Presence" be better, equivalent too, or worse that Blood presence's 15% damage? (And yes, I mean improved Unholy Aura)?

Judeca · 02/24/09, 2:55 AM

Quite sadden by the loss of DW specs, added flavor to DKs and different options (especially for people in guilds like myself who haven't seen a Betrayer in 3 months and only one Sigil).

With Unholy being such a power house now, I'm concerned about the Ebon Plague and multiple DKs bug. If it's not handled, that'd be pretty crappy for multiple raiding DKs.

RADRyanD · 02/24/09, 2:56 AM

Interesting... if the talent trees are what MMO says they are then Blood can spec into Ghoul now. Looks like I'll be powerhousing a lot of testing on the PTR.

Lazareth · 02/24/09, 2:58 AM

I don't see anything beating 2H unholy. increased SS damage, quicker rune cooldown as well as gcd from unholy presence, stronger gargoyle.

/sigh

Dreamwalker · 02/24/09, 2:59 AM

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Does anyone know what the deal is with the MMO-Champion DK test talent calculator? It contradicts the posted patch notes in several places, and lots of changes on it aren't mentioned in the patch notes at all.

Try doing a hard refresh. Hold down your Ctrl button and hit the refresh button.

Lanlaorn · 02/24/09, 3:00 AM

Assuming the new Unbreakable Armor is 0.05 damage reduced per point of armor, it's looking fairly interesting.

With my current 33k raid buffed armor that'd be -1650 damage a hit, which while on big, slow hitters like Sarth and Malygos is a bit of a nerf, on everything else is a fairly nice change. Especially for trash tanking.

However losing the 5% parry is annoying and more strength is really not what I'm looking for in my tanking cooldowns.

I wonder what the glyph does now?

Xequecal · 02/24/09, 3:07 AM

Originally Posted by Dreamwalker

Try doing a hard refresh. Hold down your Ctrl button and hit the refresh button.

I did. It's still really messed up. A few examples:

- Improved Death Strike is in Blood, patch notes say Unholy.
- Blood of the North is still 5 ranks.
- Black Ice only affects frost damage, patch notes say frost + shadow.
- Lots of Frost talent positions contradict what the patch notes say.
- Howling Blast says 50% extra damage to diseased targets, patch notes say 20%.

There are also lots and lots of changes not mentioned in the patch notes at all, (Outbreak affecting SS instead of Blood Boil, new Ghoul Frenzy talent, Shadow of Death not giving STR/STA anymore) I'm assuming these changes were mentioned in some previous message and I just missed them. That's just the contradictions.