by The Editor on April 3, 2009
Surazc - Death Knight Tank
Hello ITW community! I’ve been gone for a while because life has been hectic for me as of late with my relationship on the brink of collapse and a trip to Mexico for oral surgery. Such are the way things go with life and all its curveballs.
/nice
Prior to writing this article, I popped open an email sent to me from our omnipotent editor here at ITW detailing the fundamentals of running a successful blog. One of those said to NEVER be arrogant or claim yourself to be better than your readers. Keeping this in mind, I wrote the following:
I Am Better than You
An introduction to the dilemma of being better than most of your server
One of the things that irritates me more than anything else in the world are the people who I have to carry on my shoulders through a raid instance. I’ll be generous here and exempt heroics from this zone of objective anger… scratch that, no I won’t. Allow me to make a bold statement here:
This game is beyond easy.
So how in the world can you be bad at it? I understand lag can make you believe you are standing in the right place when in actuality are not; however, using lag as an excuse for jumping off the center ring in The Occulus is a bit absurd. Connection issues can be a pain at times but they don’t make you accidentally taunt Sartharion and kill your raid. The only explanation for anything of the two examples above boils down to either inattentiveness or a lack of player skill.
How about the healing paladin in my raids who dies to the Heigan dance every time without failure even though his latency is below 210ms at all times, or the tank I saw last night in the Eye of Eternity who complained at my moving Malygos around to prevent him from eating power sparks when he refused to attack them?
With the internet the way it is I would expect players to go onto some website (google.com, wowwiki.com, etc.) and learn about the fight’s basic principles before wading into a raid group and claiming they know what they are doing. Case in point: Achievements. With the way that the achievement system has been set up, I consistently watch people get into 10-man Malygos PuG runs by linking their achievement for the heroic version and then proceed to NOT KNOW PHASE THREE.
I do not understand how this, any of this, is possible.
Determined to find the answer I acted cordial (a difficult thing for me) towards one of the people in this EoE PuG run who died in phase three and asked what to do. His response was, “I don’t know, when I do this boss with my guild I always die.”
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
This guy made me so angry that I actually had to physically remove myself from my keyboard lest I enact my fail-safe plan to destroy the world and all its inhabitants. The raid leader for this EoE allowed someone who knew nothing about the instance into the run because he had the heroic achievement.
*sigh*
Coming up in Part 2, Surazc discusses PuGs while his finger caresses the edge of his “Deploy N. Korea” button.
by TGAPGeorge on March 30, 2009
TGAPGeorge - Warrior Tank
I didn’t think it could happen, not to us anyway. I’ve seen even the best bloggers laid low for periods of time by RL, their RSS feeders sitting blank and impotent. Well, damn it if it didn’t happen to us.
Both Lagom and I, in a simultaneous yet coincidental way, moved. He is still working out East or West coast, while I only moved twenty miles into Fort Worth, Texas proper. However, I moved not just myself, but also my sister — in a similar short move — AND my uncle. But my uncle decided to go from Texas to Washington D.C. And guess who drove the truck? I did it in 30 hours all by myself. I was shooting for 24, but… plans change. I did manage to twitter the entire way so if you’re interested, you can follow my journey.
And Surazc? Well, the less said about that mystery shrouded in a fiery — yet black as midnight — enigma the better. All I could do was assume that when he said he was busy, it meant that plans for world domination were at a crucial juncture, demon-imp minions were wailing, and we’d all be subject to a new “Kid n’ Play” movie sometime this summer. Though he did say he would have more of his fine blog entries later this week.
We’re also working on getting our own I’m Tanking What?! website up and running. We’ve run into difficulties, but we shall overcome. And hopefully soon at that.
It’s been a great year here at ITW and it looks like it’s going to get better.
Thanks for reading, you beautiful, intelligent, insightful people. More to come soon.
by masterpsyker on March 19, 2009
Surazc - Death Knight Tank
If you’re a regular here at I’m Tanking What?!, a wowinsider.com patron, or just a drunk college student surfin’ the net, you may have noticed my recent opus, The Saga of Normalization Does Not Balance Make.
(And if you are an I’m Tanking What?! regular, please cover your face with a dark cloth… you wouldn’t want your incredible good looks to blind anyone, would you?)
Anyway, that saga of mine sparked a lot of lively discussion, rapid back-and-forths, and a bit of napalm on wildflowers. Today I would like to recreate if you will, a discussion of Tanks vs. Death Knights with the incorrigible — or is it incomparable? — Billy Wallace of the blog Casual Tank.
So join me in a big cheer for Billy Wallace - Warrior Tank
BillyWallace Says:
I admit that your description of warriors as “sissies” ruffled my feathers a bit. I promise you that I can “live on the edge”,in fact to the dismay of my healers, I often do just that! You all just feel cooler doing it because you’re so OP!
Surazc:
I rotate my cooldowns from the very beginning of a raid encounter as to not make my healers feel that I’m living on the edge. My use of “edgy” is only to reflect that Death Knights do not have access to shields and the block mechanic, a defining trait of both Paladin and Warrior tanks.
BillyWallace:
Seriously though, I agree a lot with what you’re saying here. I love the distinct flavor of each class of tank. I’m bothered a bit by the homogenization of them. And I tire of people whining about other classes being “OP”.
But even Ciderhelm, who I have always gotten the impression that he feels warriors have been able to tank just about everything in game as good as the other classes, has recently been vocal on the official forums about the large advantage DK’s have over all other tanking classes in fights like Sarth.
Surazc:
Rather than answer this with another clone of “it’s a poorly designed encounter,” or “players can’t escape the thought of unilateral thought,” I’ll simply point readers here to either my response to Ancro or Hatch.
BillyWallace:
I kind of feel like Blizzard painted themselves into the corner with the “Take the player not the class” idea. Ideally it’s nice, but how does that work in reality?
Surazc:
Ideally, it functions with the Dual Talent system. If you bring a professional grade player in the shoes of a hybrid then you get much more flexibility in what your raid is able to adapt and shape itself to; however, if you bring a average player who shines in a specific specialization then you’re going to have a problem when you no longer need his shining function.
Players who are exceptional at all facets of the game (or their class) will be the ones asked to swap talent specializations the most and incidentally, they will be the ones who morph the raid into a new composition which makes a group of players capable of clearing content that would otherwise be above their level because of optimization.
The “Take the Player not the Class” mentality would actually disapprove of the new shield glyph for warriors because it enforces the idea of taking the role and not the player. A good player should have the option of not taking the glyph and using another method to avoid the damage that this glyph exists for.
Currently no such option exists and this is why people are saying that the change is needed TO THE SKILLS AND THE GLYPHS but NOT THE ENCOUNTERS THEMSELVES.
In the words of our GM Prometheuss:
“Bosses down… good job everyone, let’s move on to the next room and we’ll see how we have to adapt to the new content.”
Once again a round of applause for Billy Wallace - Warrior Tank!
by masterpsyker on March 16, 2009
Surazc - Death Knight Tank
One of the biggest challenges that exist for MMO games is the fact that your Box sales (copies of the game) will never make you as much money as would your monthly subscriptions.
Blizzard has overcome this problem by producing a record number of 14+ MILLION subscriptions to the game worldwide. At the average rate of $14.99 per month Blizzard is making $209,860,000 A MONTH. That’s revenue of approximately $2,518,320,000 every year. Two and a half BILLION dollars a year.
Blizzard is not hurting for money, and the costs on keeping servers stable and running (which they don’t do a very good job of) is sub $10 million a year.
So why is the game taking a turn for the worse? Why are the classes losing their distinctions and more of the “devoted” fans leaving the game and yet blizzard is turning a blind eye? It’s the money!
You see, when you make a $2.5B yearly gross revenue for doing basically nothing, you are disinclined to change the game in a way that would cause people to be either frustrated or confused. As only 5-10% of the game’s population actually cares about the way their class works and not just the numbers they put out, Blizzard is free to do whatever they want with their game as long as it maintains mass appeal and is easy enough for anyone to feel like they are a champion.
Add to these facts the idea that Blizzard is primed to release Diablo 3… they want you to stop playing. They want you to go and buy D3 and forget about your monthly recurring subscription for a while. Re-read that last sentence real quick: Blizzard wants you to stop playing WoW and buy Diablo 3. It means more money for them if you forget to cancel and let your recurring subscription run for 2 months without playing.
After all that is said and done, Starcraft 2 comes out… a release for which they want the exact same effect.
Then you have the second generation WoW… You see where this is going I hope.
This is the problem with a game studio that has other active franchises developing an MMORPG. They, the studio, do not want you to stop playing their other games because this leads to people in that company who have domain over the IP (intellectual property) leaving and forming their own company. This, in turn, removes potential revenue from the big studio. To justify keeping those people from going out and stealing all that money they have to keep them onboard to develop their franchise, and for THAT to happen, people MUST play those games.
I think Blizzard is screwing up their game on purpose. I think this is a marketing strategy designed to keep us all from walking out the door and leaving blizzard with a mere shell of a $2.5B/Year gross income.
by masterpsyker on March 15, 2009
Surazc - Death Knight Tank
A long time ago a video was made and posted on youtube that was just over 30 seconds long. It made a simplistic depiction of WoW PvP combat using the analogy of Rock, Paper, Scissors. If you haven’t seen it, you should… right now. Go watch.
Or watch it here:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJWeWMKfa3g&hl=en&fs=1]
The reference I make here is to the traditional mechanic of balancing something in a game. The reason that PvP is currently (in this author’s opinion) unenjoyable is that Rogues are capable of beating every class in the game without much effort at all (except for possibly other rogues or mages). I’ve heard people attempt to argue this point with me by saying, “Trinket out of the kidney shot and you’ll be fine.”
The truth is that you WON’T be fine because a smart rogue will just blind you and resume his rotation. You die and you didn’t once get to play your character.
I would like to make it clear that Blizzard has fucked up pretty bad with the DK changes for this patch. Not because there are a lot of class nerfs, or changes to skills that cause us to lose damage, or little things changing like the duration on diseases… no. Blizzard fucked up this patch because they forgot that Death Knights are a hero class.
In an earlier post I made a reference to Star Wars Galaxies and how Jedi were what a hero class is supposed to be: difficult to obtain and beyond the scope of balance. Death Knights are NOT that class. We have been homogenized down to work exactly the same as every other melee DPS class. We have had defining talents removed from our trees. We have been changed to such an extent that now there is no such thing as an Unholy DK tank (unless he has > 59% avoidance unbuffed) any more, and Blood is almost to the same state (a 30 second Last Stand w/ bonus healing on a 1 minute CD is too good to invalidate blood as a tanking spec).
If Blizzard doesn’t get their act straight in the next 4 months, I quit. I’m making that publically known right now. I will most likely change all my account info and sell, or give away, my account. This is utterly ridiculous.
-Surazc Out
by TGAPGeorge on March 13, 2009
TGAPGeorge - Warrior Tank
Okay, so I’ve found a flaw in the upcoming Dual Spec extravaganza for Tanks… actually there are two.
The first flaw has been talked about already. And that is the fact that Tanks are very gear dependent. Being so, we spend a lot of time and trouble — a LOT of time and trouble — in getting that gear. So much so, the typical Tank only has a few pieces of DPS gear.
So the flaw, at least for us Tanks, is that when Dual Specs comes out, Raid Leaders across WoW will say, “Hey, Tank. You’re a superstar threat grabber and aggro holder, but we don’t need you for this fight. Flip over to DPS will ya?”
The results will be less than spectacular.
But we’ve all known about this DPS gear problem since 3.1.0 was announced. So what’s the second flaw? The DPS setup.
Dual Specs allow us to have two sets of talents, glyphs, spells, and action bars. I believe Blizzard kicked ass on designing a fun, easy, and not-a-pain-in-the-ass way to do this. So when you do switch from Prot to DPS, everything is set for ya.
And therein lies the problem. Not with the mechanics, but with what it allows you to do. You can be DPS almost instantly. But what have you been doing all this time? What have you striven to learn and perfect?
That’s right! You’ve been a Tank.
So — shazaam! — in three seconds you’re DPS. What do you do now? What’s the best spell progression? Where should you be? What should you be doing? What key are you going to be stabbing — in a limp futile panicked manner — when a mob breaks away to go munch on some healers? (Your Taunt key, of course)
Now for some Tanks — and all I’m Tanking What?! readers — this won’t be much of a problem. We will have researched our new spec, gone out into the boonies for some one-on-one practice, and generally done our best to be our best. For the rest of the Tanks out there… well, I’m sure “Tanktard” will be a phrase that’ll quickly gain popularity.
Here’s where it gets really tricky. We’ve worked so hard to become good Tanks, it’s gonna be very difficult to switch gears to a completely different role. I’m not talking about waiting for threat, getting behind the boss, and letting fly. I’m talking about all our carefully honed skills kicking in during the heat of battle. 
It’s going to be tough remembering that you’re not supposed to be at the top of the threat meter. It’ll be weird hitting buttons normally used for tanking and getting different results.
It’s gonna be hilarious the first few times you switch spec and rush to tank, but forgetting to first put on the heavy plate.
Well, I’m not one to pose a problem without at least taking a stab at the solution.
So here’s my suggestion. Get as much DPS gear as you can. Try to put spells that do similar things in the same slots as their tanking counterparts. And practice.
Lots and lots of practice.
by TGAPGeorge on March 11, 2009
So, for the last time in this series I’m going to say, “with the 3.1.0 PTR patch notes currently live at MMO Champion, it is my duty to share with you my thoughts on the Death Knight changes, not only from the perspective of tanking, but from the class as a whole (with of course, an emphasis on tanking).”
Now it’s time look at the third Death Knight talent tree. It’s called:
Unholy
Unholy gets to see a new level of favoritism yet unknown by the DK class with the new changes (with the exception of one MAJOR change). Let’s take a look, shall we?
- Plague Strike now deals 50% weapon damage plus 189 and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time. (No longer removes a HoT)
- Raise Dead cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. The ghoul now only lasts for 1 minute.
The change to Plague Strike is DEPRESSING. Blizzard believes that a 20% gain in damage dealt makes up for the HoT removal in PvP? Blizzard believes that removing one of the most interesting and unique mechanics about the Death Knight is a good idea? Well then I want a stun. You heard it and saw it correctly. I want a stun. Forgive me this tangent on PvP, but this change is too serious to slip by just because this blog is primarily about tanking.
The reason that Death Knights had this wonderful mechanic is because it accomplished 3 things that all class and role designers try to do:
1. It was something only that added flavor to the class: the ability to both do damage and prevent HoTs until their disease was cured
2. It was a viable alternative to homogenization. The primary reason classes have stuns is to prevent HoTs from stacking with casted heals and kill someone before they regenerate their health
3. It gave Death Knights a unique purpose not only in a raid setting, but also in a PvP setting as well.
I understand the argument both directions. If you have too many Death Knights, then HoTs become 100% impossible because there are too many iterations of Blood Plague on everyone, by that same token, one Death Knight with pestilence can de-HoT an entire group of combatants.
TOUGH SHIT
If you’re fighting an entire team of rogues, and they’re communicating properly, you’re 100% screwed. Chain disables on everyone, sprints everywhere, blinds… but you don’t see rogues getting any of that removed because it makes PvP unmanageable, do you?
Back to the tanking discussion:
Raise Dead’s change is kind of necessary from the PvE viewpoint. Tanks adding DPS through a ghoul for almost the entire fight (4 minutes) is a little silly. Unholy closely emulates the warlock class and giving frost a equally viable (yet uncontrollable) ghoul is, by my own admission, pretty stupid.
- Unholy Blight moved from Tier 11 to Tier 5.
- This was necessary to facilitate the Gargoyle change. It also allows Blood tanks to dip into Unholy and pick up some decent AoE threat generation while DnD is down.
- Scourge Strike (Tier 9) now deals 55% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 185.63, increased 9% per each of your diseases on the target.
- I’m not quite sure what to make of this. It seems, at first glance, like a nerf… but 27% extra damage is SILLY.
- Night of the Dead (Tier 8 ) now reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 45/90 sec and Army of the Deat by 5/10 min. (Previously reduced cooldown when you hit the target)
- Neutral change. It basically just made permanent what was once stacking.
- Desecration (Tier 7) now causes all Plague Strikes to cause the desecrated ground effect. Targets in the area are slowed by 10/20/30/40/50% by the grasping arms of the dead while you cause 1/2/3/4/5% additional damage while standing on the unholy ground. Lasts 12 sec.
- Damnit. I was hoping this never happened. Desecration is one of those skills that you know is essential to maxing out Melee DPS, but it has the unfortunate side effect of covering the ground, and with it: void zones, plague clouds, runes, etc.
- Anti-Magic Zone (Tier 7) no longer requires a rune to activate.
- Finally. Now they just need to take it off the GCD and we’ll have a tanking viable cocoon of safety for magic damage.
- Unholy Aura (Tier 7) renamed Improved Unholy Presence and changed to: While in Blood Presence or Frost Presence, you retain 8/15% increased movement speed from Unholy Presence, and your runes finish their cooldowns 5/10% faster in Unholy Presence.
- Uh oh… you see that second part? DPS REJOYCE! YOU HAVE BEEN PAMPERED. Expect to read more on this below.
- Magic Supression (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent and You take 2/4/6% less damage from all magic. In addition, your Anti-Magic Shell absorbs an additional 8/16/25% of spell damage. (Previously a 5 point talent)
- 2 more free points, 1% free magic reduction… only a buff. Too bad it still only lasts a maximum of 7 seconds.
- Master of Ghouls moved from Tier 6 to Tier 4. It now also reduces the cooldown of your Raise Dead spell by 60 sec.
- Now ALL unholy DKs can have pets. Shit.
- Summon Gargoyle moved from Tier 5 to Tier 11.
- And it was returned to its former glory damage. Why didn’t Howling Blast get the same treatment?
- Blood-Caked Blade (Tier 4) now has a 3 sec internal cooldown.
- Wonderful. It also procs off the damage for the weapon that caused the strike. A big nerf to DW DPS.
- Shadow of Death removed from the game.
- Outbreak (Tier 3) no longer affects Blood Boil. It now affects Plague Strike and Scourge Strike.
- Increases the damage of an already high-damage skill… I like it.
- Necrosis (Tier 3) now only affects main hand auto attacks. (Previously affected all auto-attacks)
- Another change in the downscaling of DW DPS.
- Virulence moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1. Morbidity moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2.
- Because Frost tanks will NEVER pick up Virulence and have T2 unlocked from Anticipation it is safe to assume this is purely a DPS change. Moving Virulence to T1 gives unholy DPS a decent (3% hit on spells) boost and allows Unholy DKs to completely skip Morbidity (though why they would do that, I don’t know).
- NEW - Ghoul Frenzy, Tier 6, 1 point talent - Grants your pet 25% haste for 15 sec and heals it for 30% of its health over the duration. 1 Unholy Rune. 45 Yard range. Channeled. 30 sec cooldown.
- Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Notice that you have to channel the skill. I’d rather have Shadow of Death for the stat increases.
Unholy Blight being moved to Tier 5 (without a subsequent nerf) makes it a top tanking talent now. You don’t have to go balls deep in DPS talents to get to the prime AoE DoT threat generation. What’s funny to me is that with all the changes to the unholy tree, there really isn’t anything there for tanking any more except for Anticipation, Bone Shield, Magic Suppression, and Anti-Magic Zone.
Unholy has transformed into the DPS tree of choice for AoE. Blood will still ALWAYS be better in the long run for single target DPS because of the changes to Blood Strike and Heart Strike. Expect to see those either changed, or reverted, before long because as they stand they are simply too good.
by TGAPGeorge on March 10, 2009
Surazc - Death Knight Tank
First of all, let me say welcome to our new visitors from wowInsider. Enjoy the site and if you have any questions, let us know!
Okay so I’m saying it again: with the 3.1.0 PTR patch notes currently live at MMO Champion, it is my duty to share with you my thoughts on the Death Knight changes, not only from the perspective of tanking, but from the class as a whole (with of course, an emphasis on tanking).
The spec for today, boys and girls, is:
Frost
The only change to frost “skills” is that Icy Touch now has a 15 second duration base for Frost Fever. This is also true with Plague Strike for the unholy tree.
I would like to point out how awesome this is.
The talent Epidemic in the unholy tree increases the disease duration of your diseases by 3 seconds per talent point. A lot of Death Knights felt forced to take that skill because without it they could not go through death rune rotation without having their diseases fall off and their damage nerfed.
Well, not any more.
I see this as working out in a very positive light for the DKs out there in the world simply because if your DoTs last longer (as a tank) then you have to worry less about threat generation in an area. Sitting currently on Frost for its tanking cooldowns I have planned out my future spec: Surazc’s Frost Tanking Spec.
This talent layout still gets you the very best of the Frost tree while picking up an interesting change from Blood. Before the 3.1 changes, this build was focused on maxing out damage in an area by holding HB until a Killing Machine proc’d, but now it focuses more on generating large amounts of area threat through DoTs and holding targets in place with Hungering Cold so that your threat can build and single target DPS can have fun with huge numbers.
- Hungering Cold and Howling Blast have switched places in the talent tree.
- This wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for…
- Howling Blast (Tier 11) now deals 50% additional damage to targets infected with Frost Fever.
- I’m sure all the Frost DKs out there know that this is a huge downgrade for us. See, not only did the talent get moved down to the 51st point, but it also was nerfed.
- Unbreakable Armor (Tier
now reinforces your armor with a thick coat of ice, reducing physical damage from all attacks by 0.05 and increasing your strength by 25% for 20 sec. The amount of damage reduced increases as your armor increases.
- This is an interesting change, the extra 15% strength adds to your parry chance almost what the removal of the +5% parry gave you. Judgment on this change is withheld until I see how the reduction scales.
- Blood of the North (Tier now affects Frost Strike as well as Blood Strike.
- Increasing the amount of damage Frost Strike does is a big upgrade for Frost Tanks, especially with the changes to Scent of Blood.
- Chillblains (Tier 7) now reduces movement speed by 15/30/45%. (Previously 10/20/30%)
- A buff because the talent was moved deeper into the tree (cough, Howling Blast, cough). PvP oriented change… though it would be good for Gluth Zombie kiting.
- Endless Winter moved from Tier 6 to Tier 4.
- Chill of the Grave moved from Tier 5 to Tier 4.
- Mostly a PvP change, but has some serious implications for Blood DPS
- Runic Power Mastery moved to Tier 1 and is now a 2 point talent. Increases your maximum Runic Power by 15/30. (Previously 3 point talent that increased runic power by 10/20/30)
- While the free point is good (always is) a DK MT should NEVER max out his Runic Power because he should be using Rune Strike macros.
- Black Ice (Tier 2) increases your frost damage by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Previously 6/12/18/24/30%)
- This change I understand for PvP reasons… but from a PvE perspective I don’t get it. They nerfed Howling Blast and now they’re nerfing this too? There is no justice in the world.
- Glacier Rot moved from Tier 1 to Tier 5 and is now a 3 point talent. Now diseased enemies take 7/13/20% more damage from your Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Frost Strike. (Previously 5/10%)
- Ahhh, the changes to Black Ice make more sense now. While the bonus damage on Howling Blast has been reduced down to 1.5X we have received an extra 10% damage here with Black Ice giving 20% extra. (Read: Howling Blast deals 1.8X damage w/ Frost Fever)
- Improved Frost Presence - Replaces Frost Aura and grants you an additional 4% magic reduction. Big deal.
The real question is how do these changes affect tanking? Well, first of all, Blood of the North in conjunction with the changes to Glacier Rot makes Frost Strike now the hit of choice for both DPS and tanking DKs. Frost Strike will be a BEAST when it’s used (and this should only be when you have 52 runic power, or when you are significantly ahead on damage).
With the new mechanics of Unbreakable Armor it is yet unknown if it helps tanking magic damage. Also helps with initial agro generation. I can see UA becoming the new opening cooldown for DK tanks. It allows healers to get set up, while boosting the damage you put out (and hence, the agro you generate) substantially.
All in all, the changes to the frost tree were more for PvP balance and Duel Wielding downscaling rather than PvE tanking improvements or nerfs. I understand completely why the Howling Blast change was done: Impurity + Howling Blast was simply too good. The changes to the disease mechanic are one of the larger boons to tanks (free damage? Yes please!) as is the addition of Frost Strike to BotN.
by TGAPGeorge on March 9, 2009
Surazc - Death Knight Tank
As I said yesterday, with the 3.1.0 PTR patch notes currently live at MMO Champion, it is my duty to share with you my thoughts on the Death Knight changes, not only from the perspective of tanking, but from the class as a whole (with of course, an emphasis on tanking).
Today, we’re going to look at changes to the spec called:
Blood
- Pestilence is now only one rank and no longer deals damage
- Strangulate no longer deals damage
- Blood Boil damage increased, range nerfed
- Death Pact can no longer critically heal
- Blood Strike mechanic changed
- Heart Strike mechanic changed (still cleaves)
The change to Pestilence we saw coming and can’t complain about. With its new glyph, Pestilence will probably be the best Death Knight skill in the entire game; Blood Boil changed to pick up the slack in damage. Strangulate is now JUST a silence for a Blood Rune… total horseshit. Death Pact can no longer Critically Heal: Doesn’t really affect tanking, more a PVP change.
The BS and HS mechanic changes are what I’m excited about the most. They have both been changed to increase the damage dealt by the strike by a flat 12.5/10% per disease on the target. Notice how it no longer specifies “YOUR” disease. The more DKs you bring to a raid now, the fatter DPS will be from your Blood knights.
- Blood Gorged now grants % armor penetration
- Might of Mograine nerfed down to 10/20/30%
- Sudden Doom is now an instant off-GCD uncontrollable Death Coil, changed to 3 points: 5/10/15%
- Blood Aura changed. Keeps your 4% healing self-buff in other presences and increases healing done to you while in Blood Presence by 10%
- Blood Strikes is now a flat % increase to damage from BS, HS, and BB
- Scent Of Blood now procs off Dodge, Parry, or Direct Damage (spells too!)
- NEW - Improved Death Strike: 8th Tier- Improves your Death Strike damage by 15/30%
The only thing that I’m going to really dig into here is the addition of the Improved Blood Presence (replacing Blood Aura) and how it will seem to interact with the new Tier 8 talent Improved Death Strike. I assume everyone reading this is well versed enough in tanking to know that Armor Penetration is NOT a stat we need, and thusly we will be ignoring the changes to Blood Gorged
Firstly, with the Death Strike glyph restored to its former glory, Death Strike is once again raid-viable for damage (it will never keep up with obliterate, but we’ve been given a concession here) and for producing Death Runes without eating diseases (for those super deep blood knights). Second, with the Improved Blood Presence increasing all healing done to you by 10% while IN Blood Presence AND with Improved Death Strike, I wonder if Blood Tanks are supposed to tank in Blood Presence.
It seems like a silly idea. Sacrifice 80% more armor, more health, and 15% global magic reduction for a %10 boost in healing received? I know blizzard is bad… but this is just absurd. Perhaps the change was meant more for PvP rather than PvE.
Oh yeah, almost forgot: Sudden Doom CAN proc off the cleave from Heart Strike!
by TGAPGeorge on March 8, 2009
Surazc - Death Knight Tank
With the 3.1.0 PTR patch notes currently live at MMO Champion, it is my duty to share with you my thoughts on the Death Knight changes, not only from the perspective of tanking, but from the class as a whole (with of course, an emphasis on tanking).
Let’s start with:
Glyphs
- Strangulate - “Reduces the CD on strangulate down to 1 minute.”
- Finally! Range is NOT an issue because of Death Grip. Mostly a PVP change
- Icebound Fortitude - “Your Icebound Fortitude now always grants at least 30% damage reduction regardless of your defense skill”
- This hints at a couple changes to the IBF skill itself. The Runic Power cost has probably been removed and they’ve reduced (or removed) the amount of % damage reduction granted for free. Potentially bad alteration
- Unbreakable Armor - “Increases the amount of damage absorbed by UbA by 1%”
- With the mechanic of UbA changing, it is unknown as of yet whether or not this is a good change.
- Plague Strike - “Your Plague Strike does 60% additional damage”
- Is this supposed to make up for the Plague Strike changes? Pathetic. Barely a DPS upgrade… but a DPS upgrade.
- Death Strike - Good to see this reverted to its original implementation. Blood DKs can now stack their runic power to hell and back without fear of being inefficient. Mostly a PVP change
- NEW - Hungering Cold - “Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power”
- I see this as mostly a PVP alteration. Given the new position of Hungering Cold in the Frost tree, we do not yet know if the skill itself has been altered.
- NEW - Unholy Blight - Increases the Duration by 10 seconds
- Bomb Glyph. This essentially allows you to death coil something without fear of not having enough RP left over for your next UB
- NEW- Death Coil - “Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 Runic Power”
- A direct copy of the Frost Strike glyph. Lazy coding and not worth it for Blood spec. Maybe Unholy can make better use of this.
- NEW - Pestilence - “Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration”
- Oh my god. This is an ESSENTIAL glyph for ANY Death Knight to have. Changing ONE blood rune into TWO guaranteed disease refreshes is TOO efficient. Expect to see this glyph changed or removed quickly
- NEW - Howling Blast - “Howling Blast now infects your targets with Frost Fever”
- Not sure if this is good or not. It all depends on if the Fever debuff is added BEFORE or AFTER damage calculations. What with the new position of Howling Blast in the tree (Point 51) this glyph may be never used.
