Saturday, September 25, 2010

Death Knight Changes - Part One

Ahh Death Knights...you either hate them, or they're your new main. I fall into the latter. ^_^ I came back to WoW for WotLK primarily because I wanted to try the Death Knight; WoW's first Hero class, and one I had personally hoped for as a Horde exclusive, has lived up to my expectations. From an amazing starter experience, to an unstoppable solo powerhouse while leveling up, to a monster in PVP BGs and WG, to a badass tank; I've had my fun. But let's talk about the future...

New Rune System
The biggest change for DKs in Cata is the revamping of our Rune system. On live now, both runes of any given type (Frost, Blood, or Unholy) refresh at the same time; in Cata only one rune of each type can refresh at one time. This will essentially half the frequency with which we are able to use abilities, barring some front-loading like a rogue or kitty. To compensate for that, Blizz has given us Runic Empowerment. Whenever we dump RP, we have a 45% chance to activate a random rune. The other change (particularly for tanks) is that Rune Strike is no longer 'Next Melee' and is instead an instant strike. This will give us something to do when all our runes are cooling down, and hopefully proc one back for us. Here's a blue post with some more discussion about Runic Empowerment, and it's affect on DPS rotations.

New Skills
As mentioned above, Runic Empowerment is the first of our new skills; Dark Simulacrum is another. It's similar to spell reflect except that it acts as a debuff on the target, triggering when they next cast a spell and copying it's effect for the DK. We also get Necrotic Strike, a PVP skill that absorbs healing that would be done to the target. This is sort of a replacement for the old Plague Strike functionality that removed HoTs. Next we have Outbreak, a 1m cd that applies both of our diseases to a target and consumes no runes or RP. I like this one, because it will help me still be able to drop DnD, get both diseases up, and throw a DS on pull. Finally we get Festering Strike, a B/F skill that extends the duration of Frost Fever, Blood Plague and Chains on the target by 6 seconds. I'm not sure how much use that'll see outside of PVP, but we'll see.

Next time, I'll talk about the talent changes coming for Cata.

13 comments:

  1. I remember playing WoW forever ago, do you think it would be worth getting back into?

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  2. When Cata comes out, it'll definitely be worth coming back.

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  3. DKs are just for those who are to lazy leveling...

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  4. its been a while but you make me want to play it again

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  5. Keep it up man, i want more wow blogs :]

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  6. im a human paladin at the minute, its pretty badass when its melee combat but im tempted to move to a different class, any suggestions? are death knights realy all that amazing?

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  7. sounds interesting! too bad I recently quit WoW but I might rejoin.

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  8. I must not read this !! I quit WoW a solid 1,5 years ago and I must not start again, it takes up way too much time :P

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  9. @Anothe11: DKs are really awesome; I like mine way more than my ret pally because the rotation actually takes some skill.

    To all the quitters: Now's the time to come back! Get used to the game again before Cata hits!

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  10. This is such a crazy post. I've never played WoW but thought about getting into it so it's always nice to read stuff from people who really seem to know what they are doing.

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