Niil

I think it's more that of all the specs, the tightest rotation that is extremely subject to melee range requirements which can throw off a rotation is blood. Delaying at all due to things like web wrap, moving to avoid void zones, vortex on maly, etc...and the back end of a rotation can have diseases fall off. Frost specs can default to throwing IT's, HB's, and DC's during those times, but blood shuts down altogether. That's not as important in a 51/0/20 build though but it does hurt a lot in 51/13/7. At least that's my impression.

 

• Zurm

While you may find always having a button to push more fun, a very tight rotation is usually harder to pull off properly (meaning slight delays are introduced every rotation due to lag/reaction time, eventually spreading runes out and lowering final dps). The two best performing specs right now are 0/32/39 and 17/0/54, two specs that typically have 1-2 free GCDs every 20 seconds, unlike blood, which always has 0 (overflowing with RP). The rotations (actually in this case, priority queues) allow for human error and are fairly simple.

Regardless, blood is the black sheep of DPS specs right now. Any love they can give it would be good.

 

Mystryl

Personally I DO think they will move HB with Hungering Cold. Probably swap the talents a bit, but something like that.

Why?

Because: A DW DK with rime procced has insane AOE abilities, at least together: Howling Blast, Unholy Blight, Blood Boil and Death n Decay.

Why would blizzard make it possible for a DK build to get ALL the AoE abilities there are? Especially considering it will be quite a lot of AoE dmg for such a specc. The only way they can prevent all that AoE dmg is moving HB to 51 frost. I just don't see them wanting to give us that much AoE potential. - Might be wrong ofcourse, just what I think.

 

Dev93L

If they move it to 51, they might remove the 5sec. cooldown. That would very much make up for the loss of deep Unholy talents.

 

Mystryl

Exactly. Hopefully, moving KM deeper down the tree, they will make it more useful too, but dunno about that.
I hope they'll buff HB dmg aswell though. Seeing as 2 IT's does more dmg than 1 HB ATM and I dont think they want IT to be a main attack for DK's tbh, which it is for what 2 or 3 speccs atm? Something like that.

 

Bluedoo

I doubt that would happen unless they nerf Rime too. Not to mention, if they move HB that deep, you lose the damage on it from Impurity (if your spec has it anyways), which makes it slightly less viable.

Concrete numbers are still too far off to make a best guess, but I smell a rat...

 

Niil

Eh, all this conjecture is interesting. I don't know if I'd be put off from using HB while losing Impurity if I had Tundra Stalker. Has anyone calculated out the increase to Howling Blast from Impurity at various levels of ap? So much to test once the ptr comes up.

 

Dev93L

This. Secondly, I noticed this morning there are a lot of blues throwing up PTR posts this morning so the PTR build may be a little sooner than we think. Speculation is almost as fun as seeing what rolls out.

 

Boldin

Blood Gorged changing to Armor Pen sucks. I don't really mind the other changes but blood gorged makes me sad.

 

dr_AllCOM3

Arp is good for Blood, as an Orc I have way too much Exp anyway.

DocsDK UI
Simulator

 

Tharvos

Well it is already possible to get "good" rotations with a 51 0 20 build even in blood presence. But after 3.1 it will be much easier because you can "use" more than 1 SD proc without sacreficing your rune cooldowns / messing up your rotation.

I think I will go with something like this:

1. IT > PS > HS > HS > OB > DC > IT > PS > HS > HS > HS > HS > DC > DC > HS > HS > OB > DC

2. IT > PS > HS > HS > OB > DC > IT > PS > HS > HS > HS > HS > DC > DC > HS > HS > OB > DC > DC


The first cycle will "generate" 10 unused RP each time you finish it (with 4 part DPS setbonus) ignoring "Butchery".
So you swap between cycle 1 and cycle 2 after 4 repetitions.

Considering "Butchery" you would swap after 2 repetitions.

So: 1) 1) 2) 1) 1) would be the rotation after 3.1.

My english isn't perfect, but i hope you can understand it.

 

Dacrusha

I totally agree with this. I can see them moving HB down the tree more. If they don't, 32/39 will dominate even more then it does now (I won't argue with that though). If they don't move HB, and having a spec with desecration will be an AOE monster. Rotations with:

IT -> PS (des) -> HB -> Pest -> BB -> UB

This will destroy every AOE spec out there.

 

Hidden

Impurity is way stronger than Tundra Stalker in a DW build.

HB has a base damage of 270, IT has a base damage of 236. Both have a base coefficient of 0.1. Here's a table of HB base damage (IT benefits even more than HB from Impurity) depending on AP:

Attack Power	Damage	/w TS	/w Impurity(% Increase)
3000	570	627	645(13%)
4000	670	737	770(15%)
5000	770	847	895(16%)
6000	870	957	1020(17%)
7000	970	1067	1145(18%)
8000	1070	1177	1270(19%)
9000	1170	1287	1395(19%)
10000	1270	1397	1520(20%)

 

Bluedoo

That's working under the assumption that they don't nerf UB to oblivion for moving it higher in the tree.

 

Cambriel

Talents aren't budgeted based on how high in the tree they are. I wouldn't expect UB to change at all, just move up to 21 points. Its a good change, and makes sense overall.

 

Solithaira

I don't believe that they will swap HB and HC. If you look at the frost tree (and specifically deep frost talents) I feel that it leans towards a 2h spec, as opposed to DW. Unless there are large changes to HB (and there might be) the +crit and damage that obliterate gets will cause it to always scale better than HB. Thus having HB as the king talent (from a pure damage prespective) makes no sense.

If HB were placed at the end of the frost tree to provide Frost would AoE capabilities, this would go against GC's suggestion that 51point talents should not be mandatory. You could conceivably pick between HB and UB in this situation, but I don't think 51point talent placements are determined solely to nerf a potential spec.

Also, the only thing I see people going nuts over (if HB were to remain where it was) is the Frost AoE potential. Realize though that Ulduar will have less opportunities for simply pulling entire groups and AoEing them down, and will probably require some type of CC, thus limiting mass AoE.

Two things i'm looking forward to that GC has mentioned in the past are:
1) Increasing Plague Strike's damage/efficiency
2) Potentially making ebon plague a non-disease debuff, and Unholy blight a disease.

I'd be very interested to see how a deep frost spec (0/50/21) would perform with Obliterate hitting with three diseases up.

 

kurokaze

I don't see why people are saying a reshuffled Frost tree, or losing Gargoyle means DW could be dead. Look at the rather large variety of viable DW builds out there: 10/10/51, 0/20/51, 0/13/58, 0/3x/3x, 0/44/27, 10/31/30. The important common factors are Impurity, perma-ghoul, Black Ice, and Imp Icy Touch.

After the nerf, losing Gargoyle is trivial. It would barely even be worth using if you couldn't time it with procs. That's not to say that it isn't a solid talent, but so is Unholy Blight. That swap basically does nothing to the viability of DW hybrid builds, though it does change their playstyle.

The key DW talents that are in Frost and thus prone to shuffling are Imp Icy Touch and Black Ice. Black Ice might go anywhere, but it's got to be replaced by something. As long as they keep a reasonably powered DPS talent in the second or third tier - KM, Rime, TS - it won't be the end of the world for Icy Touch. Imp Icy Touch is staying where it is; they want every tank to have access to it.

However, I'm starting to think that HB will likely be shuffled to 51 points for one simple reason: HB + UB = OP. That's definitely a scary change for the 0/3x/3x build and due to the loss of Impurity and perma-ghoul might make Howling Blast DW go the way of the dodo. But even if it does, Icy Touch DW shows no signs of dying and is quite a powerful build as is.

 

shed

It's important to remember that everyone can be easily expertise capped at the moment with best in slot peices, and we're only in the first tier of Wrath gear. So this makes the Blood change from expertise to armor pen really good, especially when you consider GC said armor pen will be getting a buff in the near future.

 

Cambriel

Since we're speculating anyway, I really see no reason for Nerves of Cold Steel to be a tier 2 talent. Switching it with Improved Icy Touch would open up dw possibilities a bit more for the other trees without affecting frost in the least. Beyond that, I would expect some of the frost damage bonus talents to get spread further down the tree rather than front loaded in the first few tiers. It takes much more buy in for blood to get a majority of its physical damage buffs, or unholy to get its shadow damage enhancers. The fact that icy touch can be buffed to such an extreme degree with the top 1/3 of the tree causes it to eclipse too many other abilties in the other specs.

 

Rham

Hi, i PVP as 19/52/0 Frost, and i LOVE HC. its easy to force healers to trinket using it and than let my mage open up with full Polys. obvioulsy we are still working up as this is our first week playing together, but i prefer this spec over unholy and for my combo shadowfrost just didnt cut it. frost is as it stands just isnt played enough, and the theoycrafting got in the way (imo) of HC being seen for the great CC it is. its great to have both OB and FS+IT depending on what defenses are popped on my target.

 

Andoras

Exactly. Every other plate DPS spec needs more expertise than us, so the gear will have enough to get them there. That will push Blood way over the cap. It already has, I'm forced to use the Titanium Impact Band and pass on bidding on the Obsidian Greathelm simply because I'm already expertise capped. Changing Blood Gorged to Armor Pen is a perfect change to raise DPS a bit while also allowing more gear flexibility, which is always a good thing.

 

Dev93L

Those are all good points, but suppose they shuffle HB down without changing the talents around. That leaves really only one viable build left for all of DW'ing; Unholy. I just don't think they'll do that. They've said they were definitely not happy with only Combat Rogues being viable (I know Mutilate was o.k. but you get the point), and the feel this days to WoW is all about choice, and switching things up. Retadins, Arms Warriors, all trees of dps classes are working towards being balanced and being viable in a raiding environment. Given all of this, and even though DW is a subset of a class, I can't think they'd leave only one single option for DK's. Then again, they may not have the time or resources for giving us any more than one DW option until later on given Ulduar and all its implications are on the table. It's still all speculation.

I think we're likely to see some other talents (KM namely) shuffled down also, thus possibly giving deep(ish) frost more viability.

 

Melchior

My expectation is that we are going to see a significant re-balancing of Icy Touch as well as Plague Strike. They are well aware that the two baseline diseases are not even close to balanced in the PvE environment; I don't expect IT to remain as powerful of a strike as it is currently.

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

 

Illundai

I'm missing quite a few BiS pieces (most noticable the helm from Sartharion) but I'm not really Expertise capped as Blood (w/o Blood Gorged Expertise) with Betrayer of Humanity unless I use some Expertise gems. Maybe you guys are forgetting your orc racial?

Besides Sartharion hat I'm missing Girdle of Razuvious and that's it for Expertise items... so it's not *that* easy.

 

Cambriel

But it will get easier as gear improves. Remember, you're in the equivalent of Kara loot right now, we've still got 2 or possibly 3 tiers to go before you're facing Arthas. We'll have to see if it's a worthwhile amount of armor penetration (especially considering all boss armor is being dropped, and we don't know how much), but this could be the sort of change that really only shines down the road.