(Insert Doctor Who or Twilight Zone music here)

For all of you who haven’t checked out the 3.1.0 patch notes that Blizzard has revealed, please do so now. There are quite a few upcoming class changes that are very easily going to turn the PvE and especially the PvP scenes upside down. I’m not going to get into all the nitty gritty details in this post because like all test realm patch notes they’re not definitive yet but I feel the need to discuss the changes that have been going on and what will happen to Death Knights, Blizzard’s experimental monstrosity.

As always my main class, Warrior, is the one less affected by the upcoming patch changes which makes me believe that Warriors truely are the center piece of the World of Warcraft classes. What I mean by this is that they tend to be the one class that all other classes are balanced around instead of the latter. Blizzard is content  with the design and mechanics that warriors are currently at so they change everyone else (drastically at times) to achieve WoW nirvana. Despite QQ done by warriors as a warrior myself I have to admit the class is very solid and no where near broken or in nead of ‘something’.

Death Knights on the other hand… this class has gone through some INSANE changes since their first appearence in WotLK 3.0.2. They’ve been molded and morphed in only a few months what the other 9 classes have gone through in the past 4 years. I honestly feel like my Death Knight is a pile of clay, easily moldable and plyable into any form, and no I don’t mean this because of their versatile and dynamic talent trees (although this is true). From the nerfs done to Unholy to the changing of Heart Strike and most importantly the changes done to our zombies I can’t say I feel like I’m playing the same class I was months ago.

After this next patch it will be even worst, it’s no wonder that there aren’t any real solid cookie cutter builds. Sure there are a few but if you look at the builds people have in general you see a bit of everything except perhaps the basic 17/0/54 Unholy Death Knights running around in PvP and PvE which remained popular even after the nerfs to Unholy in 3.0.8. With the switching of Unholy Blight and Gargoyle it’s dubious if this specc will still be the most popular. Other builds that have arisen in PvP inolve points in Frost to get Lichborne to help compensate for the drop in survivability from the Unholy nerf in the last patch.

The changes are too many to list here so I’ll detail the most important ones that’ll change the way we play our Death Knights or fight with/against them (Next to each I’ll write PvE and/or PvP to indicate what it will affect the most, my comments are in italics/underlined):

• Blood Plague: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented. Frost Fever: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented. PvE The change to BP and FF will render current rune cycles moot and we’ll have to come up with new ones
• Death Pact: This heal cannot be a critical. PvP/PvE
• Plague Strike and Blood Plague no longer remove hots. Plague Strike’s damage increased quite a bit to compensate. PvP/PvE Druids will no crumble as quickly before our mighty visage and Resto Shamans will be even more impossible to kill (
• Raise Ally now has a cooldown greater than 15 min and can no longer be used in Arenas. PvP
• Rune of Razorfrost now affects Frost damage done by the DK only, but stacks up to 10%. PvE

Talents

• Blood
  • Blood-Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise. PvP/PvE This should increase Blood DPS considerably since it relies heavily on melee damage
  • Bloody Strikes now increases Blood Boil damage instead of Pestilence. PvE This along with the changes to Blood Boil should help Blood DKs compete with Frost/Unholy AoE.
  • Sudden Doom now procs a free Death Coil instead of requiring you to push the button. Ranks reduced from 5 to 3. PvP/PvE More burst in PvP and no more worrying about throwing off rune cycles by using another global cooldown
• Frost
  • The following talents have moved in the Frost tree: Runic Power Mastery, Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Chilblains, and Endless Winter. PvP/PvE This is going to be HUGE since up until now Frost has been the least mutilated tree. Hopefully this will increase it’s viability as a main specc and secondary tree
  • Black Ice: Frost Damage bonus lowered to 4/8/12/16/20% PvE Considering the buff to Rune of Razorfrost it almost equals out but still equates to a 5% nerf, the curren 0/32/39 Dual Wield speccs will have to change post patch
  • Blood of the North: Now also increases damage dealt by Frost Strike by 15%. PvP/PvE The earlier tier nerfs may be justified by this change, testing will have to be done to see if this talent is DW worthy
  • Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff (up from 30%). PvP Pure 100% awesome, enough said
  • 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. PvP This will easily make Frost a force to be reckoned with in PvP since they can maintain Frost Presence survivability while in Unholy Presence. Is needed considering Frost has the least survivability in PvP out of the 3 trees
  • Howling Blast: Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree, and damage bonus to targets afflicted by Frost Fever reduced from 100% to 50%. PvE/PvP Goodbye 0/32/39 forever! Hello new PvP toy
• Unholy
  • Blood-caked Blade: Now has a 3 second cooldown on the effect. PvP/PvE This seems to make the talent favor 2H builds over Dual Wielding
  • 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. PvE/PvP The player can now choose how much bonus damage/snare they want without having to worry about procc values. This should free up some possible talent points to put elsewhere.
  • Magic Suppression: Now has 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction. PvE/PvP Slight nerf for tanks and Unholy PvP but also frees up 2 talent points for those who invested in Magic Suppression to get Anti-Magic Zone
  • Necrosis: Can now only be triggered by main hand attacks. PvE Obvious nerf to Dual Wield speccs, it seems Blizzard wants to rip 0/32/39′s heart out and gloat over it’s death
  • 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. PvE/PvP Interesting… honestly I’m not sure what to think of this yet
  • Unholy Blight and Gargoyle have swapped places in the Unholy tree. Gargoyle is the new Unholy 51 talent. PvE Will give Blood/Frost builds access to a nice AoE ability, PvP isn’t affected as Unholy DKs who PvP already go this far down the tree. This is however the final nail on the coffin for 0/32/39.

So there you have it, my analysis of the current PTR patch notes for us followers of the dark faith clad in plate. Overall to sum this up for all you TLDR folks out there:

• 0/32/39 will be DEAD, gone forever into the abyss (Think HARP 2.3.2)
• Frost will be PvP/PvE viable
• Unholy will still be popular, it isn’t the specc it’s the concept people love
• Frost will be the new ‘flavor tree’ for Blood and Unholy PvP DKs to dip into (even moreso than before)
• Blood will be a force to be reckoned with in PvP and PvE equal  to Unholy and the newly revamped Frost
• Blood Worms will stuck suck a big can of jagons

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Death Knight, Patch Notes, PvE, PvP, Talents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.