Cataclysm Death Knight Changes
 

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Tehax edit: If you are a crybaby idiot you get double or maybe triple points, depending on how tired and cranky I am. Don't be a crybaby idiot.

I wonder if this means that there will no longer be any standard DK DPS build that is a 2h weapon focused build, but without a minion. If that's the case, it seems odd.

I wonder if they're also considering changing the Blood tanking rotation. In my view, it was the least tanking-friendly rotation of the 3, since it had the fewest free GCDs. I'm glad they realize Rune Strike needs work. If both maul and heroic strike are becoming on-the-GCD rage-dump abilities that use variable amounts of rage, I wonder if they would do the same thing with rune strike.

I think the biggest opportunity having blood as a dedicated tanking tree provides is letting DK tanks worry less about their resources, and react better to what's happening in the fight. For example, right now Icebound Fortitude requires runic power to use. Shield Wall doesn't use any resources, Divine Protection effectively doesn't either, but Icebound Fortitude does. A pure tanking tree for DKs would allow them to give DK tanks an Icebound Fortitude that used no runic power while keeping it as-is for use in PvP and for DPS DKs.

At the same time, I wonder if a dedicated tanking tree will mean that the notorious survivability of DPS DKs takes a hit. If they can expect all tanking DKs to, for example, take the improved AMS, the standard AMS might be weakened to put DPS DK survivability on par with other DPS classes.

I also wonder if they intend the unholy tree to be the semi-official PvP tree. If we're becoming more like warriors, Unholy could be our version of Arms. AFAIK, nobody does serious PvP as Fury, and maybe they're going to concede that supporting 3 PvP trees is too difficult too.

I hope they're making 2h Frost viable, as it's been my favorite spec back in Ulduar. I really prefer 2h above DW and don't really like pet management, aside from some scaling problems that always come with pets.

I definitely like that we'll finally get a dedicated tanking tree. As Neddie already set, we might get rid of the activation costs of our cooldowns while tanking (a big PITA), and I think balancing for PVP will become much easier. With the actual design of the talent trees, the new Cataclysm system with tree bonusses and mastery would never have worked.

What I'm interested into is if they're gonna nerf the self-healing capabilities of the blood tree. As health pools will obviously increase in Cataclysm and tank damage will no more consist of huge spikey hits, self-healing might become much stronger than today, as a lot of our death strikes are producing overheal right now.

As much as I agree, I don't see it as likely. GC has been very adamant about Frost being a DW tree (he moved from making "if 2h ends up being viable we won't shoot it down" statements to a more aggressive "our design goal is to make sure you dual wield as frost" stance).

What's interesting and will remain to be seen is where this leads for UH. UH is an extremely peculiar melee specc, with a long tradition of somewhat eccentric scaling with melee stats, with incredible reliance on Strength and much less enfasis on weapon damage; more importantly, it's the most caster-oriented DK specc and the pet specc. It's definitely the most "far out there" (to use GC's words) specc DKs have and thus it remains to be seen if Blizzard will embrace this aspect (fundamentally casting the 2h DK into the "warlock in plate" role) or they will try and tame the specc somewhat to make sure it can better intercept the tastes of all those who were playing the more melee oriented Blood and Frost speccs.

Only thing to do now is wait and see what the class overview has in store for us.

Once incidental effect of this change will be a massive semplification of these boards: not only there will be 1 less dps specc and 2 less tank speccs to theorycraft, but this will also probably mark the death of subspecc diversification, once the blood talents become more aggressively tank-oriented.

I really hope this is the case as well. It seems odd to me that what started out as a hulking class that wielded the biggest badest weapons is now being turned into as was said above "warlock's wearing plate armor" and a DW specialised class.

Ive seen snippets from GC around the forum the most notable:

It sounds... well Ill be honest better than nothing. I would love nothing more than Frost 2H to make its triumphant return. However I wouldn't put money on it. They've made it pretty clear through patches that they want a DW spec. Perhaps through an optional 2H or DW talent in the Frost tree, Frost with Blood Sub spec for the 2H talent or perhaps moving it into the early Unholy tree. See what happens I spose. I really do not want to see the straight out 2H Physical DPS disappear from the DK's arsenal so hopefully we get a bit of a compromise.

While I am upset that my DPS spec is being shelved this does give DK Tanking much more credibility. The problem we've had for a while is the jumble of defensive talents and intense resource management we've had to master. Not only that, the stigma of not having a dedicated tree. This will provide DKs with a solid answer that Blood is now the tank tree rather than the long winded trail of answers which went back and forth between Frost and Blood.

So this can only be seen as a massive improvement from the Tank perspective, they're getting some clear structure and direction with a dedicated tree.

I think it might get a little weird with the presences. The names were perhaps not best chosen from the start to overlap with the talent trees, but now using frost presence for the blood specs and blood presence for the frost specs is bound to confuse some people. I'm hoping they rename them.

I can't completely see any dps dk spec without a pet now since the boost of talent points to level 85 will make the the permanent ghoul pet possibly accessible even as a frost dps dk. I just wonder what's going to happen to dancing rune weapon.

I agree that the presences with Frost being for tanking and Blood being dps and now the change to Blood as the tanking tree feels a bit funny, but we have been tanking in Frost presence since day one and dpsing (for the most part) in Blood, and basically ignoring Unholy so why change? Might actually create more confusion if Frost and Blood were swapped absent some sort of change.

I am waiting to see if they do in fact make a fundamental change to Unholy presence so that it reacts with one of the trees. It just seems a natural fit to have crit multiplier placed on diseases in unholy presence, similar the tier 9 set bonus for crit on blood plague. IF they do something along that line, then I can see them also addresses Frost and Blood Presence so they match the tree.

I think that we speculate too much, if we assume that the talents for a perma ghoul will stay in the same place as they are today. I could see them moving the perma ghoul talents down the tree out of reach of a deep frost or blood build.

Really I think the biggest boon to all three specs that we'll recieve is that we wont have to navigate through tanking talents in the Frost tree to be able to DPS, etc. We'll likely see some new interesting talents that specifically relate to the purpose of the tree instead of talents that try to be everything to everyone.

When I was a tank, I regreted the fact that I had to spec for threat and had (relatively) nothing to adjust my mitigation. Now as a DPS, I regret the fact that that I can maybe juggle 4 points on my way to 51 in the tree by that point I've really exhausted all the attractive talents out of that tree.

The problem with that is that if you move the ghoul too far down the unholy tree, DKs leveling as unholy would start as a non-pet class, and end up as a class that depends on their pet for 20% of their damage.

In any case, I think it's a given that they're going to massively rework most of the talent trees, but the DK ones in particular, if they're making Blood into Prot.

From the Warrior Cata Preview:

If they're expecting at least some warriors to go for dual one-handed weapons, at least it will mean that frost DKs are not the only class/spec that wants 1h weapons with strength on them. One concern I had with their announcement was that 1h strength weapons might be even more rare than spell plate, as only one class/spec would want it.

Also from the Warrior preview, but apparently it will apply to all tanks:
I don't like this idea, if it requires getting hit to get the buff. As tanks, aren't we supposed to avoid getting hit? What happens if we pop an avoidance trinket or ability, and the Vengeance stack falls off? If it were the opposite, that you got vengeance when you avoided attacks, that would make more sense. That would give us a real motivation to make sure that we didn't just stack stamina, but also kept our avoidance high enough. Instead, especially if our gear starts getting good enough that our avoidance is too high, it sounds like losing your vengeance stack might be a real concern. Does this mechanic make sense to anybody?

Another interesting quote about tanking from the Warrior preview thread:

That's really interesting. As a tank, I completely agree. I want to be up there pushing buttons, but pushing buttons for the sake of threat (i.e. making sure my line on a bar chart stays longer than the next longest line) isn't all that interesting. Pushing buttons for the sake of survival (i.e. keep defensive abilities up, react to what the boss is doing, blow cooldowns either when something bad happens or when something bad is about to happen), is much more interesting.

On my warrior, I love being able to disarm Skadi when he starts doing his whirlwind, or spell reflecting Shadow Blast in Old Kingdom. On my DK, timing an AMS properly on Sindragosa is also fun. I even like the non-reactive tanking abilities. On my paladin, I like the feeling that I'm responsible for my own blocking, and have to actively hit holy shield, and it makes for a good tradeoff. If new adds are coming in, I might have to make a choice, do I grab them immediately and put off using holy shield for a few seconds, or do I make sure I stay shielded, and risk them getting a swing off at a healer.

If Blizzard realizes that tanks enjoy "playing the survival game" instead of fighting for top threat, I think that bodes well for the new Blood tanking tree.

New abilities seem pvp-oriented, curious to know more about the new rune system.

No good reason except they were not posted at the time. Thanks for the edit.

Remember that DKs start at 55, so you'll "start" as a non-pet class and stay that way for the whole of 2 hours it takes to get to deep unholy if you so wish.

Outbreak is an odd choice. With a minute cooldown, it doesn't really fit the stated goal of being able to quickly disease adds in many cases and it will still make us substitute IT/PS for it as often as we can (1/3rd of our disease applications, essentially). Is this spell really needed? Applying diseases isn't an issue in PvE, and not an issue in PvP (it's keeping diseases on which is the problem there, presumably, and the removal of cleansing totem combined with the Unholy Blight change should resolve that problem). Not a bad ability, but definitely not an an imaginative one or a needed one.

Necrotic Strike is practically pointless in PvE. There might be some niche fights where it's worth using, but not many, and if it doesn't stack with the Necotic Strike debuff of other DK's in the raid, then it becomes nigh-worthless. Alternatively, if it does stack, then there are PvP implications to consider of a 4 DK + 1 Healer comp or some such thing being beastly.

Dark Simulacrum is interesting, and a bit ambiguous as to how it will work. Does it cost runes or runic? Once you copy a spell, how do you unleash it? Does unleashing the spell cost runes or runic? Does unleashing the spell cost a GCD in addition to Dark Simulacrum itself costing a GCD? Can you copy healing spells or buffing spells? If the copied spell has a cast time, do you copy that aspect of it too? Does the copied spell function of your stats or the targets? So on and so forth. Lots and lots of questions! The spell has a ton of potential to be incredibly strong, mind-numbingly weak, or someplace in-between depending on the fight. Likely the latter, which is commendable and ideal.

There's also the question of how much damage will Dark Simulacrum do on its own? Will it become part of our regular rotation regardless of whether or not we can copy a spell?

All three seem like primarily PvP focused abilities, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but would be nice to do something differently in PvE.

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The mastery bonuses for Frost and Unholy are somewhat underwhelming. RP generation for Frost? That, combined with the haste change, will likely push people into using Unholy Presence... an Unholy niche, not a Frost one! Frost may get the most damage-per-runic, but Unholy has more GCDs and more incentive to use UP (by taking IUP) if GCD capping becomes an issue. Just seems like it would be better for Unholy. KM being removed as a talent, made into mastery, and adding Obliterate to it would seem much more interesting to me, and much more Frost-esqe.

That aside, disease damage for Unholy? How dull! This won't change our playing style in any manner whatsoever. "You do more damage from a passive source". Increased disease damage isn't bad, per se, it's just quite uninteresting. Ap increases disease damage, while also increasing most of our other damage. I'm sure mastery will increase disease damage by more than AP on a point for point basis, but that doesn't make it any more imaginative or good, just more/less desirable to maximize damage.

Follow-up clarifications: I hope they post a little more about the new rune system. I think the intentions might be to have half the strikes compared to now and more open GCDs? If that is the case that could make the runic power generation for Frost really nice.