Blue Posts:

I will be posting blue posts that have to do with Death Knights here... This page may not be as up to date as some sites such as worldofraids.com but I will do what I can to post information from forums about Death Knights.

 

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.2.0 Released(08-04-2009)

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Call of the Crusade

  • Since the opening of the Argent Tournament in northeastern Icecrown, adventurers have journeyed from across Azeroth and beyond to prove their worth in the heart of the Lich King's domain. Under thundering skies the tournament's participants hone the arts of war and face off in bone-shattering jousting matches to earn the right to be called champions. Yet these heroes have yet to face the greatest challenge of all: the Crusaders' Coliseum. Formidable Horde and Alliance champions, ferocious beasts, and Scourge lieutenants are just some of the opponents awaiting adventurers in this gladiatorial arena. Few will survive the coliseum's perils, but the Argent Crusade is confident that the worthy heroes who do emerge victorious will be ready to join the offensive against Icecrown Citadel and end the Lich King's reign of terror.

Isle of Conquest

  • Off the coast of Northrend, Horde and Alliance forces are locked in an epic struggle for a tiny island rich in resources. Known as the Isle of Conquest, this rocky battleground's proximity to Icecrown makes it a highly prized base in the war against the Lich King. Both factions have deployed devastating weapons to drive each other from this strategic location. Day and night the ground trembles under lumbering siege vehicles while monstrous airships pummel enemy positions with fiery cannons. The bloody conflict spreads to every corner of the island as new heroes arrive to aid their factions. It remains to be seen whose banner will wave triumphantly over the Isle of Conquest and at what cost victory will be achieved.

General

  • Construction of the Crusaders' Coliseum is complete. New raid normal and Heroic modes for the Crusaders' Coliseum can be toggled using the Dungeon Difficulty setting. This applies to 10 and 25-player versions. 10-player (normal), 25-player (normal), 10-player (Heroic) and 25-player (Heroic) all share separate raid lockout timers.
    • Trial of the Champion
      • 5-player (normal and Heroic mode) dungeon.
      • Daily quest added to the Heroic daily dungeon quest giver.
    • Trial of the Crusader
      • 10 and 25-player (normal mode) raid dungeon.
    • Trial of the Grand Crusader
      • 10 and 25-player (Heroic mode) raid dungeon.
      • Crusaders' Tribute: Active on Heroic difficulty only, the tribute system will limit players on the number of attempts the raid is allotted each week. Additional rewards can be earned depending on the number of attempts left in the tribute run each week when the final boss is defeated.
  • Head to the new 40 vs. 40-player siege-style Battleground, the Isle of Conquest, to vie for control of a strategic location with a host of resources sought by the Horde and Alliance.
    • Two level brackets are available: 71-79 and 80.
    • Defend the walls of your keep and protect your general by killing enemy players and destroying their siege vehicles.
    • Capture the Docks, Gunship Hangar, or Siege Workshop for access to destructive siege vehicles or strategic attacks on your enemy's base.
    • Capture the Refinery or Quarry for their resources to garner reinforcements, a steady flow of bonus honor and a 15% increase to siege vehicle damage for each of these capture points your team controls.
    • To claim victory, bust through the enemy's keep walls (or find other ways to get inside) and kill their general, or obliterate your opponents until their reinforcements are depleted.
  • The Argent Tournament Expands
    • All new Argent Crusader daily quests and rewards have been added for players with the Crusader title. Rewards include a new Argent Crusader banner and tabard (which can port players to the tournament grounds), a mounted squire (can periodically run bank, mail or vendor errands for the player), a paladin-exclusive Argent Crusader Charger mount and new heirloom items.
    • All new Silver Covenant and Sunreaver daily quests and rewards have been added for players exalted with these factions. Rewards include tabards, new ground and flying mounts and a new pet.
    • Just when you thought you had seen the last of the Black Knight, he makes his astonishing return to the tournament. Wait, didn't you kill him?
  • New Dungeon Loot Feature
    • Players will now be able to trade soulbound items with other raid or group members that were eligible for the loot. This system will work like the Item Buy Back system and allow 2 hours for players to trade an item after it has been looted. Players who choose to enchant or add gems to the item will get one last confirmation before losing the ability to trade the item.
  • New druid art for Cat Form and Bear Form has been added. There are now five unique color schemes for each form and faction. Changing hair color (night elves) or skin tone (tauren) via the barbershop will change the look of one's cat and bear forms.

PvP

  • Arenas
    • Beginning with season 7, players will no longer have access to the newest season's weapons or shoulder armor and will not qualify for the Gladiator title/rewards with ratings from the 2v2 bracket alone. Ratings obtained through 3v3 and 5v5 game play will be required for these rewards, while the rest of the newest season's items will remain available to players in all brackets (standard rating restrictions still apply).
    • Dalaran Sewers
      • The entire Arena has increased in size by 25%.
      • Mounts can now be used in this Arena.
      • The position and collision of the crates on the central platform has been modified.
    • Ring of Valor
      • The flame wall has been removed.
    • Ruins of Lordaeron
      • Alcoves have been removed from the starting chambers.
      • The collision around the central tomb has been smoothed out to prevent players from becoming stuck on the terrain as often.
  • Battlegrounds
    • Battleground experience has arrived!
      • Players will now be awarded experience for completing objectives and actions that yield honor in Battlegrounds (honorable kills not included).
      • Players who do not wish to gain experience through PvP can visit Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar - both located near the Battlemasters in either city - and turn off all experience accumulation for the cost of 10 gold.
      • Disabling experience gains will prevent a player from gaining experience through any means available in the game.
      • Players with experience gains turned off who compete in Battlegrounds will face off only against other players with experience gains turned off.
      • Behsten and Slahtz can reinstate experience gains for players, for a 10 gold fee of course. Any experience that would've been accumulated if experience gains were enabled cannot be recovered.
    • Battlemasters in major cities affiliated with specific Battlegrounds have been replaced with a Battlemaster for each faction that will allow players to queue for any Battleground. Battlemasters for specific Battlegrounds will still be seen around the cities during corresponding Battleground holiday weekends.
    • When standing at a capture point that you control, you will gain a buff called Honorable Defender. This buff grants +50% honor gained from kills. This currently affects Arathi Basin, Eye of the Storm and Isle of Conquest.
    • Arathi Basin
      • The time it requires to capture a base has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds.
      • The game now ends when one team reaches 1600 victory points, down from 2000.
    • Eye of the Storm
      • The time it requires to capture the center flag has been reduced to 8 seconds, down from 10 seconds
      • The game now ends when one team reaches 1600 victory points, down from 2000.
    • Strand of the Ancients
      • The faction starting on attack/defense will now be randomized at the start of each match.
    • Warsong Gulch
      • There is a now a 20-minute timer on this Battleground. After that time, the team with the most flag captures wins. If this would result in a tie, the team that captured the first flag wins. If neither side has captured a flag, then the game ends in a tie.
  • Wintergrasp
    • Against the Odds: This achievement has been removed and converted to a Feat of Strength.
    • Industrial Warfare: This achievement has been removed.
    • To provide players with a more transparent notification of when Wintergrasp battles occur, as well as better control zone population and stability, several changes have been made.
      • Players now have the option to queue for Wintergrasp from a Wintergrasp Battlemaster in any capital city or by simply entering the Wintergrasp zone.
      • Queuing will begin 15 minutes before each battle. If chosen, you will automatically be teleported to the zone. Any players in the zone who have not been chosen from the queue will be teleported out when the battle begins.
      • The queue system remains active for the entire battle. As soon as a player leaves, a new one will be chosen from the queue.
      • Trying to enter Wintergrasp during an active battle for which you have not been chosen will teleport you out. Please note that, as you are now able to fly over Wintergrasp, you will only be teleported out if you try to land and join the battle.
      • Level 80 players get higher priority in the queue than lower level players. In addition, a random selection of queued players will be taken from both the Battlemasters and the zone itself.
      • The queue will accept up to 120 players from each faction, resulting in a maximum battle of 240 players at a time.
    • Wintergrasp factories can no longer be damaged or destroyed.

Dungeons and Raids

  • Dungeon and Raid ID Extensions
    • In order to allow for parties and raids to progress through instances at their own pace, players can now extend an instance ID on an individual basis.
    • Existing or recently expired IDs can be extended via the Social tab under Raid by clicking on Raid Info.
    • The ID of any instance to which a player is saved can be extended. Doing so will extend the instance lock period by the same amount of time as the original lock (i.e. extending an Ulduar instance ID will add 7 days, a Heroic: Halls of Lightning instance ID will add 24 hours, and a Zul'Gurub instance ID will add 3 days to the instance lock time).
    • An ID can be extended more than once.
    • An extension can be reversed on an individual basis provided the player does not do anything in the instance during the extended instance lock period that would save that player to the instance.
  • Emblem System Changes
    • Both the 10 and 25-player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
    • Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
    • The Heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Conquest.
    • New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.
  • 25-player raids will no longer be referred to as Heroic versions of a raid, as there is a new distinction between normal and Heroic modes for both 10 and 25 player versions of the Crusaders' Coliseum.
  • The Nexus: The Oculus & The Eye of Eternity
    • Drakes used by players in these instances will now scale in health and damage according to the rider's average item level.
  • Ulduar
    • Players can now use Blink, Shadowstep, and Demonic Teleport while participating in the illusion events in the Yogg-Saron encounter.
    • Ominous Clouds in the Yogg-Saron encounter are now more vocal about touching players and should no longer sometimes appear to be in the wrong place for certain players.
    • An Immortal Guardian targeted for Empowering Shadows in the Yogg-Saron encounter will now become a 'Marked Immortal Guardian' while targeted.
    • Crusher Tentacles in the Yogg-Saron encounter spawn a little slower in 25-player mode allowing a bit more time for players to clear out the Illusion room.
    • Empowering Shadows in the Yogg-Saron encounter now targets a maximum of three Immortal Guardians in 25-player mode.
    • Yogg-Saron's health has been reduced by 20% in the final stage of his 25-player mode.
    • Winter Jormungars will no longer put everyone in the zone in combat when they emerge from a Snow Mound. Additionally, Snow Mounds will now disappear when all their jormungars have emerged.

Races: General

  • Axe Specialization (Orc): The weapon bonus from this effect now applies to fist weapons in addition to axes.
  • Tauren now have the option of changing skin tone by visiting the barber shop.

Items: General

  • Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.
  • Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
  • On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier-8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier-5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier-5 warrior Shield Block bonus.
  • Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.
  • Item Buy Back Feature Revised
    • The Item Buy Back time will now expire if the player enchants or sockets an item. Players will see a confirmation dialog box now when they attempt to enchant or add gems to an item giving them a last chance to reconsider.
  • Items with Triggered Effects: These items generally have cooldowns on how often they can be triggered. Those cooldowns are now triggered each time the item is equipped (example: A trinket has a 45-second cooldown on an effect triggered by player attacks; when a player equips that item, the effect will be unable to be triggered for the first 45 seconds it is worn).
  • Mounts
    • The cast time for summoning any ground mount is now 1.5 seconds, down from 3 seconds.
    • Apprentice Riding (Skill 75): Can now be learned at level 20 for 4 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 20 directing them to the riding trainer.
    • Journeyman Riding (Skill 150): Can now be learned at level 40 for 50 gold. Mail will be sent to players who reach level 40 directing them back to the riding trainer.
    • Expert Riding (Skill 225): Can now be learned at level 60 for 600 gold from trainers in Honor Hold or Thrallmar. Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold for Alliance; Thrallmar for Horde). Flight speed at this skill level has been increased to 150% of run speed, up from 60%.
    • Artisan Riding (Skill 300): Faction discounts now apply (Honor Hold or Valiance Expedition for Alliance; Thrallmar or Warsong Offensive for Horde).
    • In order to further equalize the number of purchasable mounts available to each race, a new 60% speed ground mount has been added for night elves, and a new 100% speed ground mount has been added for the undead.
    • Flying over Dalaran and Wintergrasp is now possible so long as players keep a healthy distance above the ground.
  • Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.
  • Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.
  • Resilience: No longer reduces the amount of damage done by damage-over-time spells, but instead reduces the amount of all damage done by players by the same proportion. In addition, the amount of resilience needed to reduce critical strike chance, critical strike damage and overall damage has been increased by 15%.

Classes: General

  • All pets now receive 40% of their master's resilience and 100% of their master's spell penetration. In addition, if a player is at their appropriate spell hit chance or hit chance maximum, their pet will be at the maximum for spell hit chance, hit chance, and expertise. If they are below the maximum, their pet will be proportionately below those maximums.
  • Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).
  • Silence, Strangulate, Silencing Shot, and Arcane Torrent: These abilities will also apply a 3-second Interrupt effect against non-player controlled targets, making them more versatile against creatures immune to silencing effects.

Death Knights

  • Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.
  • Blood Plague: Damage done increased by 15%.
  • Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of Ice will not have to re-issue a movement command to continue moving.
  • Frost Fever: Damage done increased by 15%.
  • Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
  • Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
  • Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
  • Talents
    • Blood
      • Bloody Strikes: This talent now provides 5/10/15% increased damage to Blood Strike instead of 15/30/45%.
      • Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
      • Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.
    • Frost
      • Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 3/6/10%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
      • Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
      • Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.
      • Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.
    • Unholy
      • Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent.
      • Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.
      • Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%.
      • Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
      • Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 20% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

Druids

  • Enrage: This Bear Form ability now generates 20 rage initially, and 10 rage over the next 10 seconds. The armor penalty is unchanged.
  • Flight Form: Can now be learned at level 60. Flight speed increased to 150%.
  • Flight Form and Swift Flight Form: Now benefit from a paladin's Crusader Aura.
  • Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.
  • Lifebloom: The final heal that occurs when this spell blooms has been reduced by 20% on the base and on the spell power coefficient.
  • Mangle: Ranks 4 and 5 base points reduced by about 11%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
  • Rake: Ranks 6 and 7 base points on initial and periodic damage reduced by about 7%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
  • Rip: Ranks 8 and 9 base points and points per combo point reduced by about 6%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
  • Savage Defense: The animation for gaining this buff will no longer make the bear stand upright
  • Shred: Ranks 8 and 9 base points reduced by about 10%. Scaling from attack power unchanged.
  • Swift Flight Form: Druids who have acquired a mount able to go 310% flight speed will now also go that speed while in this form.
  • Swipe (Cat): Percent of weapon damage done reduced from 260% to 250%.
  • Travel Form: Can now be learned at level 16.
  • Talents
    • Balance
      • Balance of Power: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 3/6%, rather than reducing the chance to be hit by spells by 2/4%.
      • Eclipse: The Starfire and Wrath buffs from this talent are now on separate 30-second cooldowns. In addition, it is not possible to have both buffs active simultaneously.
      • Owlkin Frenzy: Now also restores 2% base mana every 2 seconds for the duration (10 seconds) in addition to its current effects.
    • Feral Combat
      • King of the Jungle: This talent now reduces the mana cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form by 20/40/60%.
      • Primal Tenacity: This talent no longer reduces the mana cost of Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form.
    • Restoration
      • Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%.
      • Improved Barkskin: No longer provides dispel resistance to all effects on the druid, but now reduces the chance your Barkskin is dispelled by an additional 35/70%.

Hunters

  • Aspect of the Cheetah: Can now be learned at level 16.
  • Deterrence: This ability now allows the hunter to parry spells and attacks from behind as well as in front. Now has a new visual spell effect.
  • The time that traps will exist in the world after being put down has been reduced to 30 seconds, down from 1 minute.
  • Frost Trap: Will no longer "fizzle" on targets immune to snare effects, however Lock and Load will not succeed when using Frost Trap if the target is immune to snare effects.
  • Snake Trap: The Mind-numbing Poison effect has been reduced to a 30% increase in casting time, down from 50% to match similar effects.
  • Traps now have separate 30-second cooldown categories: Fire (Immolation Trap, Explosive Trap and Black Arrow), Frost (Freezing Trap, Frost Trap) and Nature (Snake Trap). A hunter can have one trap of each category placed at one time.
  • Talents
    • Beast Mastery
      • Catlike Reflexes now also reduces the cooldown of your Kill Command ability by 10/20/30 seconds.
    • Survival
      • Entrapment: This talent no longer works with Immolation Trap or Explosive Trap.
      • Lock and Load: Now has a 22-second cooldown. The Lock and Load effect cannot be obtained on targets immune to snare effects when Frost Trap is used.
    • Pets
      • Roar of Sacrifice: Redesigned. This ability can now be used on any friendly target to make that target immune to critical strikes, but the hunter pet takes 20% of all damage taken by that friendly target. Cooldown is now 1 minute, up from 30 seconds.

Mages

  • Arcane Blast: Mana cost reduced by 12%.
  • Frost Bolt, Cone of Cold, Frost Ward, Ice Armor, Frost Armor, Frost Nova, Ice Lance, and Ice Barrier: The mana cost on these spells has been reduced by approximately 15%.
  • Invisibility: Can no longer be interrupted by a hostile action or damage done during the 3-second Fade time, however an invisible mage is still vulnerable to Stun and Silence effects.
  • Mirror Image: Images will no longer trigger the death sound when their time expires.
  • Talents
    • Fire
      • Empowered Fire: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also grants a 33/67/100% chance to regain 2% of base mana each time the Ignite talent deals damage.
    • Frost
      • Empowered Frostbolt: Instead of increasing critical strike chance by 2/4%, this talent now reduces the cast time of Frostbolt by 0.1/0.2 seconds.
      • Permafrost: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also causes the mage's Chill effects to reduce healing received by the victim by 7/13/20%.

Paladins

  • Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.
  • Charger: Can now be learned at level 40.
  • Crusader Aura: This ability now also grants its flying speed increase to a druid's Flight Form and Swift Flight Form.
  • Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
  • Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when the target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
  • Judgements: Some of these attacks were considered ranged and some melee. They are all now considered melee attacks that can't be dodged, parried or blocked.
  • Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker's maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
  • Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target's armor.
  • Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
  • Sacred Shield: When a paladin casts Flash of Light on a target with this buff, they also now place a heal-over-time effect on the target, healing that target for 100% of the Flash of Light amount over 12 seconds.
  • Seal of Blood: This ability has been removed.
  • Seal of the Martyr: This ability has been removed.
  • Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned. Only auto-attacks and Hammer of the Righteous can place the debuff on the paladin's current target(s). However, while the seal is active, each melee swing or ability (excluding judgements) that lands on the target will deal a percentage of weapon damage as Holy damage to the target. This damage maxes out at 33% weapon damage with 5 applications of the debuff and scales upward evenly based on how many applications of the debuff are active. This Holy damage deals double-damage critical strikes. In addition, the damage-over-time debuff is now considered a melee attack for the purposes of determining its chance to hit, miss, be dodged or parried.
  • Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%. In addition, the benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level.
  • Warhorse: Can now be learned at level 20.
  • Talents
    • Holy
      • Beacon of Light: The healing amount on the Beacon of Light target is now based on the total healing done (including over-healing) instead of the effective healing done. Radius increased to 60 yards. Multiple Paladins can now have this active on the same target. Buff indicating a player is within range of the Beacon target is no longer displayed.
      • Divine Intellect: This talent now gives 2/4/6/8/10% increased intellect instead of 3/6/9/12/15%.
      • Illumination: This talent now returns 30% of the mana cost of the spell instead of 60%.
    • Protection
      • Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead heal the paladin for up to 10/20/30% of maximum health depending on the paladin's defense rating (example: a paladin with defense equal to only 5 times his or her level will receive no healing from the talent, while a paladin who is immune to critical strikes from boss creatures through defense will receive the maximum amount).
      • Guarded by the Light: This talent will no longer cause Divine Plea's duration to be refreshed by using Judgement of Wisdom, Judgement of Justice, or Judgement of Light.
    • Retribution
      • Art of War: Now only applies to melee critical hits, but will make your next Flash of Light or Exorcism instant. In addition, this talent now provides notification in the floating combat text when it activates.
      • Crusader Strike: Damage reduced to 75% weapon damage to match the new 4-second cooldown. Mana cost reduced to 5% of base mana.
      • Seal of Command: Redesigned. This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing, and deals substantially less judgement damage.
      • Vindication: Redesigned. Now lowers target attack power, is consistent and does not stack with Demoralizing Shout.

Priests

  • Prayer of Healing: The percentage of spell power this spell gains in healing (per target) has been reduced from 80.7% to 52.6%.
  • Psychic Horror: This spell no longer has an invisible missile, so there is no travel time before the spell takes effect.
  • Talents
    • Discipline
      • Penance: Cooldown increased to 12 seconds, up from 10 seconds.
    • Holy
      • Inspiration: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
    • Shadow
      • Dispersion: Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
      • Improved Mind Blast: Redesigned. Now, in addition to reducing the cooldown of your Mind Blast spell by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 seconds, while in Shadowform your Mind Blast also has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to reduce all healing done to the target by 20% for 10 seconds.
      • Vampiric Touch: The amount of damage done when this spell is dispelled has been doubled.

Rogues

  • After much quiet contemplation, rogues now possess the ability to learn how to use one-handed axes.
  • Talents
    • Combat
      • Sword Specialization: This talent is now called Hack and Slash and applies to axes as well as swords.
    • Subtlety
      • Shadow Dance: Cooldown reduced to 1 minute. Now lasts 6 seconds, down from 10 seconds.

Shamans

  • A customizable totem bar will now be available for shamans allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.
  • All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards.
  • Base health increased by approximately 7% to correct for shamans having lower health than other classes.
  • Chain Heal: Jump distance increased by 25% to 12.5 yards. In addition, the amount of healing now decreases by 40% as it jumps to each new target, instead of 50%.
  • Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).
  • Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed.
  • Wind Shock: Has been renamed Wind Shear and no longer shares a cooldown with Flame, Frost or Earth Shock.
  • Talents
    • Enhancement
      • Maelstrom Weapon: Now also has a chance to reduce the cast time of Hex.
      • Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman's attack power, down from 30%.
    • Restoration
      • Ancestral Healing: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.
      • Cure Poison and Cure Disease: Combined into a single spell, Cure Toxins.
      • Earth Shield: Dispel effects will now remove charges of Earth Shield rather than the entire aura.
      • Healing Way: Redesigned. Rather than providing a chance of increasing Healing Wave spells on a friendly target, this talent now innately increases the effectiveness of the shaman's Healing Wave by 8/16/25%.
      • Mana Tide Totem: Totem health now equal to 10% of the shaman's health.
      • Nature's Guardian: Redesigned. Now has a fixed 100% proc rate, has a 30-second internal cooldown and increases the shaman's maximum health by 3/6/9/12/15% for 10 seconds.
      • Nature's Swiftness: Cooldown is now 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
      • Tidal Waves: No longer reduces the cast time of Lesser Healing Wave by 30%. It instead now provides +25% critical strike chance to Lesser Healing Wave, along with the previous 30% cast time benefit to Healing Wave.
      • Improved Water Shield: This talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Warlocks

  • Banish: Effect will now be cancelled if Banish is recast on a banished target.
  • Dreadsteed: Can now be learned at level 40.
  • Felsteed: Can now be learned at level 20.
  • Shadowflame: The angle of the cone effect on this ability was inadvertently very small, making it difficult to use. Its cone is now the same size as similar spells, such as Cone of Cold.
  • Soulshatter cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5 minutes
  • Talents
    • Affliction
      • Pandemic: Now also increases the critical damage bonus of Haunt by 100%.
    • Demonology
      • Fel Domination cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 15 minutes.
    • Destruction
      • Empowered Imp: The warlock's critical hit chance is increased to 100%, up from 20% for the next spell cast after the Imp critically hits a target.
      • Fire and Brimstone: Reduced to 2/4/6/8/10% increased damage from Incinerate and Chaos Bolt on targets afflicted with Immolate, down from 3/6/9/12/15%.

Warriors

  • Battle Shout: Radius increased to 30 yards.
  • Bloodrage: This ability now generates 20 rage initially, and 10 rage over the next 10 seconds. The health cost is unchanged.
  • Commanding Shout: Radius increased to 30 yards.
  • Execute: This ability now never costs more than a total of 30 rage. The tooltip for Sudden Death has been revised to remove reference to that maximum, since the ability now behaves that way even when untalented.
  • Shield Slam: The benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level.
  • Talents
    • Fury
      • Armored to the Teeth: This talent now provides 1/2/3 attack power per 108 armor, up from per 180 armor.
      • Bloodsurge: Notification that Slam has become instant now appears in floating combat text.
    • Protection
      • Devastate: Weapon damage and bonus per Sunder Armor on the target increased by 100%. This ability now requires a shield to be equipped.
      • Shield Specialization: Now provides 5 rage on a block, dodge or parry instead of 2 rage on a block.

User Interface

  • The quest log is now double-paned for more easily viewing quest information. The list of all quests a player has will show in one pane, while the quest details of any highlighted quest will display in the next.
  • Character name auto-completion for the chat frame, pop-ups, and mail interface is now active
  • Character names can now be colorized according to class in the chat frame. This feature can be enabled through the chat settings by right-clicking on a chat window.
  • Casting bars under the target frame, focus frame and nameplates will now display as shielded if the cast cannot be interrupted.
  • Druids will now be able to see their mana bars when shape-shifted.
  • Item Comparisons: Holding the shift key while hovering over an item will now display the stat differences with the item currently equipped in the relevant slot.
  • Item Level: A new option has been added under Display in the Interface Options to show the item level on item tooltips.
  • Macros and scripts will no longer be able to target totems by name.
  • New Feature Icons: Options recently added to any of the options menus will now display a yellow exclamation point next to them to indicate that they are new features.
  • Vendor prices will now be listed on items whether or not players are at a vendor.
  • For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Graphics

  • The frame rate for those with Shadow Effects enabled under the Ultra Video settings has been improved.

World Environment

  • Wolvar and Gorloc orphans have arrived in Dalaran and need your help! Players can find out more by visiting the Eventide District (completing the quests being offered for this event will not count toward any Children's Week achievements). Players have a limited amount of time to care for these orphans before they take their leave. They will then return again for the regularly-scheduled Children's Week next year.
  • Portal areas in all major cities now offer a portal to the Blasted Lands near the Dark Portal.
  • Once crossing through the Dark Portal, players can access a flight path directly from the Stair of Destiny to Shattrath.
  • A new zeppelin docking ramp has been added to Thunder Bluff allowing Horde players easier transport to and from Orgrimmar.
  • The local Postal Service has grown tired of walking so far each day to collect mail and has decided to install a large number of new mailboxes in Stormwind, Undercity, Darnassus and Orgrimmar.
  • Mathiel in Darnassus has finally earned himself enough money from your repair bills that he was able to buy himself an anvil.

Quests

  • The ravasaur trainer Mor'vek has returned to Un'Goro and will offer to help Horde players raise and train a Venomhide Ravasaur as a mount... if they can survive the creature's deadly poison.

Achievements

  • A Brew-FAST Mount: A new Feat of Strength achievement for acquiring any epic Brewfest mount.
  • Have Keg, Will Travel: Now requires either a Brewfest mount or using Brewfest Hops to transform yours into one.

Professions

  • Alchemy
    • All stackable potions now stack to 20.
    • Added a new pattern for Flask of the North, usable by players with a high alchemy skill. The recipe is purchased from Northrend trainers. Flask of the North increases your spell power, attack power or strength for 1 hour and is usable in Arenas. It is not consumed when used.
    • Endless Healing Potion and Endless Mana Potion no longer usable in arenas. Amount of health and mana has been increased, and the cooldown reduced.
    • Five new epic gem transmute recipes are available from the Northrend trainer. The recipe for transmuting a Cardinal Ruby can be learned from a quest, given by Linzy Blackbolt in Dalaran.
    • The Mixology benefits from Northrend elixirs and flasks have been increased.
    • Rage potions can now be used by druids.
  • Cooking
    • Blackened Dragonfin Recipe: Now only requires 1 Dragonfin Angelfish.
    • Chef's Hat is now superior quality and allows the chef to cook faster.
    • Increased the drop rate for recipes from the Outland Daily Cooking quests.
    • Increased the chance to get a bonus Dalaran Cooking Token from the Spice Bag.
    • The recipe for Captain Rumsey's Lager can now be randomly found in the quest reward Crate, Barrel, or Spice Bag from the cooking dailies.
  • Enchanting
    • Values on Northrend ring enchants increased.
  • Engineering
    • Added a new Mind Amplification Dish attachment for helmets, allowing engineers to control other humanoid targets. Some restrictions apply: does not work in Arenas, dish sometimes reverses targets, unable to stack with other stat-improving head enchantments and makes your helmet look... stylish? This attachment provides a passive bonus of 45 stamina.
    • Added a schematic for a Goblin Welding Beam that can heal friendly mechanical or vehicle units.
    • Alarm-o-Bot functionality changed. Materials required reduced.
    • Box of Bombs no longer requires an anvil.
    • The Cobalt Frag Bomb now incapacitates enemies within a 3-yard radius. A short cast time was added, but they are usable while moving. This change applies to any Cobalt Frag Bombs already created. The existing recipe now makes 3 at a time.
    • Engineers can now learn to create a portable Wormhole Generator for Northrend. The Wormhole allows them to travel to different locations in Northrend, although the locations are sometimes in dangerous places.
    • Flying Machine: The level requirement needed to learn how to build and use this machine has been reduced to level 60, down from level 70, and the engineering skill level reduced to 300, down from 350. Material costs reduced.
    • Gnomish Engineers and Goblin Engineers can now switch profession specializations for a fee.
    • Increased benefits from Hyperspeed Accelerators, Hand-Mounted Pyro Rocket and Reticulated Armor Webbing glove modifications.
    • Increased the passive bonuses provided by Springy Arachnoweave, Flexweave Underlay and Nitro Boosts.
    • Mote Extractor now has innate tracking for gas clouds while it is in your inventory. Tracking of gas clouds has been removed from goggles.
    • A new repair bot has been added, and his name is Jeeves. He is the ultimate gentleman robot butler, able to perform all the mundane tasks of repairing, selling and buying junk for your entire raid. Additionally, he can open bank boxes for skilled engineers (350+). Jeeves is not destroyed when used, but due to pressing engagements, can only be summoned once an hour. The schematic for this handsome robot was said to be hidden within the parts of another robot - hoping to be found by an engineer one day.
    • Nitro Boosts: Now have a 5-second duration.
    • Potion Injectors now increase the amount gained by 25% when used by engineers. Quantity produced by recipes for Runic Healing and Mana Injectors has been increased.
    • Reduced the materials needed to create all engineering Dragonlings, and reduced their cooldowns, although they still cannot be used in Arenas.
    • Significantly reduced the cooldown on MOLL-E.
    • The Spynocular belt attachment has been changed to a Frag Belt. The Frag Belt periodically produces a Cobalt Frag Bomb that can be used from the belt every 6 minutes (never runs out!).
    • A Steam-Powered Auctioneer has been added to the Dalaran Like Clockwork engineering shop, allowing access to one's faction Auction House. The Steam-Powered Auctioneer was programmed with a superiority chip, and will only interact with Grand Master engineers.
    • Transporter devices are no longer classified as trinkets and can be used directly from your inventory.
    • The Ultrasafe Bullet Machine and Saronite Arrow Maker schematics have been simplified to create a full stack of the appropriate ammunition. No longer requires an anvil. Reduced the materials required to make this ammunition.
    • World Enlarger: Cooldown reduced to 15 minutes, down from 1 hour.
  • Fishing
    • Players with 300 or higher cooking have a chance to find a Waterlogged Recipe in the Bag of Fishing Treasures awarded by the Northrend fishing dailies. This item can be traded to other players and rewards several Dalaran Cooking Rewards when turned in.
  • Herbalism
    • Increased healing from Lifeblood (Rank 6).
    • Lifeblood now scales slightly with maximum health. No longer affected by global cooldown.
  • Inscription
    • Added a new Glyph of Claw for young feral druids who haven't yet obtained Mangle. Scribes can learn this glyph from the trainer.
    • Master's Inscriptions increased.
  • Jewelcrafting
    • Dragon's Eye gems stat bonuses increased. In addition, these gems are no longer prismatic and must be matched to the appropriate colored socket to activate an item's socket bonus.
    • New recipes have been added for cutting epic gems and can be purchased using Dalaran Jewelcrafter's tokens.
    • Icy Prism now has a chance of yielding an epic gem.
    • Raw epic gems can be obtained via the following means:
      • Prospecting Titanium Ore
      • Alchemy transmutations
      • Purchased with honor
      • Purchased with Emblems of Heroism
  • Leatherworking
    • Added recipe for Heavy Knothide Leather to leatherworking trainers (rather than a vendor recipe). Changed several recipes to use Heavy Knothide Leather instead of regular Leather.
    • Fur Lining values increased.
  • Mining
    • Toughness (Rank 6) provides more stamina.
    • In addition to the normal requirements, mining deposits in Northrend now require a minimum character level of 65 to mine.
  • Skinning
    • Master of Anatomy (Rank 6) provides more critical strike rating.
  • Tailoring
    • Embroideries improved.

Items

  • Feral Druid PvP Gloves (seasons 3 and 4): Maim bonus changed from the Interrupt bonus used in The Burning Crusade Arena seasons to the cost reduction used in Wrath of the Lich King Arena seasons.
  • Glyphs
    • Death Knights
      • Glyph of Unholy Blight: Changed to increase damage done by the updated Unholy Blight talent by 40%.
    • Druids
      • Glyph of Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds.
    • Paladins
      • Glyph of Righteous Defense: Now also increases the chance for Hand of Reckoning to hit.
      • Glyph of Seal of Command: Redesigned to cause the Paladin to gain 8% of base mana each time the paladin judges Command.
      • Glyph of Seal of Blood: Changed to Glyph of Holy Wrath, which reduces its cooldown by 15 seconds.
    • Rogues
      • Glyph of Shadow Dance: Now increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 2 seconds, down from 4 seconds.
      • Glyph of Tricks of the Trade: Now increases the duration of the damage bonus effect instead of increasing the damage bonus.
    • Shamans
      • Glyph of Healing Wave: The amount of healing the shaman receives is now based on the entire healing amount, including over-healing.
    • Warlocks
      • Glyph of Lifetap: Duration of the buff from this glyph increased to 40 seconds.
  • Idol of the Corruptor: The agility buff from this idol is now exclusive with the agility buff from Idol of Terror.
  • Mage Tier-7 2-Piece Bonus: Now grants 25% additional mana from mana gems, down from 40%.
  • Non-Combat Pets: 8 new pets have been added (not including Argent Tournament rewards). Raptor Hatchlings can be found on rare and elite raptors throughout the game world. In addition, an Obsidian Raptor Hatchling can be purchased from Breanni in Dalaran.
  • Tome of Cold Weather Flight: New heirloom item. Players who have reached level 80 can now purchase this book for 1,000 gold from Hira Snowdawn, the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran. Similar to other heirloom items, this item can be mailed to other characters of the same realm, account and faction. The book is consumed when read training the character in Cold Weather Flying. Requires level 68.
  • Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings: This item's stats and level have been increased to match the power level of healer weapons coming from the Coliseum 25-person normal difficulty instance. In addition, each time Val'anyr is equipped, Blessing of Ancient Kings will be placed on a 45-second cooldown before it can occur.

Bug Fixes

  • Death Knights
    • Anti-Magic Shell: The tooltip for this ability will now reflect modifications from the Magic Suppression talent.
    • Blood-Caked Blade: The damage from this talent is no longer normalized to weapon speed.
    • Chilblains: Icy Clutch can no longer miss when Frost Fever hits, however, when Frost Fever is dispelled Icy Clutch will also be dispelled.
    • Dancing Rune Weapon: The rune weapon will no longer cast Corpse Explosion.
    • Desecration: No longer causes unnecessary combat logging.
    • Horn of Winter: Learning rank 2 of this ability caused players to unlearn rank 1, such that it no longer appears in their spellbook. It is now possible to relearn that rank, and death knights will no longer "forget" rank 1 when they learn rank 2.
    • Lichborne: The buff from this ability can now be cancelled.
    • Raise Ally: Using the Gnaw ability while under the effects of this spell will now initiate auto-attack. In addition, the damage done has been changed from a flat value to a percentage of weapon damage.
    • Raise Dead: This spell will no longer give two errors when the casting player lacks the reagent to cast it.
    • Rune of Razorice: Each death knight can now have his or her own copy of this debuff on the target.
    • Rune of Spellbreaking: Tooltip now indicates the effect from this enchantment does not stack with other effects which reduce the duration of Silence effects (including not stacking with a second copy of this enchantment). In addition, now reduces damage from Holy spells.
    • Rune of Spellshattering: Now reduces damage from Holy spells.
    • Summon Gargoyle: Corrected the inaccurate tooltip which claimed a Gargoyle could last up to 40 seconds, when in fact 30 seconds has always been the maximum.
    • Rune of Razorice: Corrected a bug where this applied to frost damage done by others.
  • Druids
    • Bash: Tooltip now specifies that the Interrupt effect only occurs on non-player targets.
    • Bear Form, Cat Form, and Dire Bear Form: Mana energizes that occur while in these forms will now appear in the combat log and floating combat text.
    • Cyclone: Victims of Cyclone can no longer receive healing from health drain effects such as Devouring Plague while they are affected by Cyclone.
    • Dash: Druids who have not learned Track Humanoids will now retain the benefit of Dash while shifting out of and back into Cat Form.
    • Druids should no longer be removed from a form after using any engineered bombs.
    • Maim: Tooltip now specifies that the Interrupt effect only occurs on non-player targets.
    • Natural Perfection: Now properly triggered by periodic critical strikes.
    • Nature's Grasp: This talent will no longer be triggered spuriously by some ranged abilities such as Heroic Throw.
  • Hunters
    • All ranks of Sonic Blast now properly have an 80 Focus cost.
    • Black Arrow Ranks 5 and 6 training costs have been lowered significantly.
    • Furious Howl: Ranks 1-5 will no longer give slightly more attack power than is listed in their tooltips.
    • Lock and Load: The tooltip for this talent has been updated to indicate that it also works with Explosive Trap.
    • Roar of Sacrifice: Damage transferred to pet is now considered Nature damage.
    • The tooltip for Improved Tracking has been slightly re-written to indicate that it only works on the hunter, and works on melee damage as well.
    • T.N.T. (Rank 3): Now indicates that the talent works with Black Arrow.
  • Mages
    • Arcane Instability: Tooltip reworded to clarify design intent.
    • Burning Determination: Some Silence and Interrupt effects that did not trigger this talent will now trigger it properly, including Shield of the Templar, Garrote and Gag Order.
    • Combustion: Fire spell misses will no longer trigger this talent.
    • Conjure Refreshment: Rank 1 food will no longer overwrite the drink buff from rank 2 food.
    • Fireball: Periodic damage from this spell can no longer trigger Combustion.
    • Living Bomb: Periodic critical strikes from this ability can now trigger Ignite and Hot Streak.
    • Mirror Image: The mirror images will no longer complete casts of Frostbolt on targets which are Polymorphed at the time their Frostbolt channel finishes.
    • Molten Armor: Critical strikes from the effect on this armor will no longer trigger Ignite.
  • Paladins
    • Auras: Any paladin aura active at the time of the paladin's death now automatically reactivates when the paladin returns to life.
    • Beacon of Light: Multiple paladins can now have this buff active on the same target. In addition, the beacon target will no longer lose the buff while under the effects of Cyclone or Banish.
    • Blessing of Sanctuary: This talent and Vigilance will now both be able to be cast on the same target without sometimes overwriting each other.
    • Exorcism: Now properly has a 100% chance to be a critical strike when cast on death knights using Lichborne.
    • Eye for an Eye: Now properly triggered by periodic critical strikes. In addition, the tooltip incorrectly stated that 20% damage is reflected, when it is actually 10%. Tooltip fixed.
    • Hammer of Justice: Tooltip now specifies that the Interrupt effect only occurs on non-player targets.
    • Hand of Sacrifice: Casting this spell on a target with Divine Sacrifice active will now generate an error message instead of wasting the cooldown.
    • Heart of the Crusader: The effect from this talent will no longer be removed if a paladin without this talent overwrites the judgement placed by a paladin who does have the talent.
    • Holy Shield: It is no longer possible to have two ranks of this ability active at the same time.
    • Judgements: All paladin judgements are now properly considered as melee attacks that cannot be dodged, blocked or parried. Previously Seal of Light, Seal of Wisdom, Seal of Justice and Seal of Righteousness would cause the judgement to be considered a ranged attack.
    • Judgement of the Just: The effect from this talent will no longer be removed if a paladin without this talent overwrites the judgement placed by a paladin who does have the talent.
    • Judgement of Vengeance: Inaccurate combat log tooltip corrected.
    • Judgement of Corruption: Inaccurate combat log tooltip corrected.
    • Pursuit of Justice: This talent will no longer sometimes be deactivated when leaving a battleground.
    • Sacred Shield: This buff will no longer have any effect if the target is another player engaged in a duel. In addition, the heal from this buff will no longer cause the paladin to stand, and it is no longer possible for two paladins to both have the spell active on one target.
  • Priests
    • Blessed Resilience: Now properly triggered by periodic critical strikes.
    • Div

 

3.1 has been released here is the patch notes:

 

Death Knights

  • Anti-magic Shell: The amount of damage this ability can absorb is now limited to 50% of the death knight’s health.
  • Blood Boil’s damage increased to make up for Pestilence no longer doing damage.
  • Blood Boil now does some damage to undiseased targets and extra damage to diseased targets. Its damage radius has been decreased to 10 yards.
  • Blood Plague: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
  • Blood Strike: Bonus damage for diseases is now a multiplier rather than a flat bonus.
  • Death Pact: This heal cannot be critical.
  • Death Strike: The amount of healing per damage done has been reduced by 20%. Now deals 75% weapon damage, up from 60%.
  • Frost Fever: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.
  • Frost Presence: Now grants 5% damage reduction instead of 15% magic damage reduction.
  • Obliterate: Bonus damage for diseases now increases damage done by a percentage rather than a flat amount.
  • Pestilence does no damage and has only 1 rank.
  • Plague Strike and Blood Plague no longer remove heal-over-time effects. Plague Strike’s damage increased quite a bit to compensate.
  • Raise Ally now has a cooldown greater than 15 minutes and can no longer be used in Arenas.
  • Raise Dead: Duration lowered to 60 seconds and cooldown lowered to 3 minutes. The cooldown on this ability now begins when the pet dies rather than when it is summoned.
  • Rune of Cinderglacier now procs per minute instead of a 5% chance.
  • Rune of the Fallen Crusader: This weapon enchant now provides only 15% strength, but its chance to proc is doubled.
  • Rune of Razorice now affects Frost damage done by the death knight only, but stacks up to 10%.
  • Strangulate no longer does damage and has been reduced to 1 rank.
  • Talents
    • Blood
      • Abomination’s Might: This effect can now also be caused by Death Strike.
      • Blade Barrier: Now grants 1/2/3/4/5% damage reduction instead of 2/4/6/8/10% parry.
      • Blood Aura: Replaced with Improved Blood Presence. This allows the death knight to keep the healing-from-damage-done bonus of Blood Presence in any presence, and increases healing received while in Blood Presence.
      • Blood-Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.
      • Bloody Strikes: The bonus damage this talent grants to Blood Boil has been reduced to 10/20/30%.
      • Bloodworms now heal more.
      • Dancing Rune Weapon: Damage done by, and duration of this pet is reduced by 50%, but the cooldown is reduced to 90 seconds. Attack speed of pet increased from 2.0 to 3.5.
      • New talent: Improved Death Strike: Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20%, and critical strike chance by 3/6%.
      • Heart Strike: Bonus damage for diseases is now a multiplier rather than a flat bonus. No longer affected by Glyph of Blood Strike.
      • Hysteria: This ability now causes the target to lose health rather than take damage.
      • Might of Mograine: No longer affects Obliterate.
      • Scent of Blood: Will now proc on a dodge, parry or when taking damage, and now grants 10 runic power per charge. Internal cooldown removed.
      • Spell Deflection: This talent has been increased to 15/30/45% damage reduction from a direct damage spell.
      • Sudden Doom now procs a free Death Coil instead of requiring you to push the button. Ranks reduced from 5 to 3.
      • Vampiric Blood: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
      • Will of the Necropolis: This ability now has a 15 second cooldown on how often it can occur. No longer triggers from damage amounts less than 5% of the player’s health.
    • Frost
      • The following talents have moved in the Frost tree: Runic Power Mastery, Glacier Rot, Killing Machine, Chilblains, and Endless Winter.
      • Black Ice: This talent now provides a 2/4/6/8/10% bonus to Frost and Shadow damage instead of 4/8/12/16/20% to Frost.
      • Blood of the North: Now also increases damage dealt by Frost Strike by 3/6/9/12/15%.
      • Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff up from 30%. Can no longer be dispelled.
      • 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.
      • Glacier Rot: 3rd rank added, and damage bonus increased to 7/13/20%.
      • Howling Blast: Base damage and scaling doubled. This ability no longer deals bonus damage to targets with Frost Fever. 8-second cooldown. Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree.
      • Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons: These talents now have new icons.
      • Improved Icy Touch: Now increases Icy Touch damage by 5/10/15% instead of by 10/20/30%.
      • Lichborne: No longer improves your chance to be missed. Now correctly grants immunity, and will break all effects to which Lichborne makes you immune.
      • Rime: This talent is now triggered by Obliterate instead of Icy Touch. When this talent triggers, it also resets the cooldown on Howling Blast.
      • Runic Power Mastery: Moved up to tier-1 and reduced to 2 ranks (15/30%).
      • Tundra Stalker: Now increases the damage on abilities by 3/6/9/12/15% instead of 2/4/6/8/10%.
      • Unbreakable Armor: Now grants damage reduction instead of physical damage reduction. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
    • Unholy
      • Bone Shield: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.
      • Desecration: This talent now has a 100% chance to be triggered, works with Scourge Strike, and instantly snares targets within the Desecration area. Additional points in the talent increase the damage bonus and snare magnitude instead of increasing the chance it will be triggered.
      • New Talent: Ghoul Frenzy: Grants 25% melee haste to your pet and heals it for 30% of its maximum health. Costs 1 Unholy Rune and lasts 30 seconds. Requires at least 30 points in the Unholy tree.
      • Impurity: This talent is reduced to 4/8/12/16/20% bonus to attack power scaling.
      • Magic Suppression: Now has 3 ranks (down from 5) for 2/4/6% magic damage reduction.
      • Master of Ghouls: Now also reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 60 seconds. This talent now requires at least 25 points in the Unholy tree, and has Night of the Dead as a prerequisite.
      • Night of the Dead: Redesigned to grant a flat reduction on cooldown to Raise Dead and Army of the Dead instead of a reduction from using abilities. Requires at least 15 points in the Unholy tree; prerequisite for Master of Ghouls.
      • Outbreak: No longer increases Blood Boil damage. Now gives a 7/13/20% damage bonus to Scourge Strike. Plague Strike Bonus lowered to 10/20/30%.
      • Reaping: Now procs on Blood Strike and Pestilence instead of Blood Strike and Blood Boil.
      • Scourge Strike: Damage increased. Bonus damage for diseases now increases damage done by a percentage rather than a flat amount.
      • Shadow of Death: This talent has been removed.
      • Unholy Aura: Replaced with Improved Unholy Presence. Allows the death knight to keep the movement speed bonus of Unholy Presence in any presence, and increases rune regeneration rate while in Unholy Presence.
      • Unholy Blight and Gargoyle have swapped places in the Unholy tree. Gargoyle is the new 51-point Unholy talent.
      • Vicious Strikes: This talent no longer affects Death Strike.

Glyphs

  • Death Knight
    • Glyph of Blood Boil: This has been replaced with Glyph of Heart Strike, which adds a snare effect to Heart Strike.
    • Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon: Increases the duration of Dancing Rune Weapon by 10 seconds.
    • Glyph of Dark Death: Increases the damage done by Death Coil by 15%.
    • Glyph of Death Strike: This glyph now increases Death Strike damage by 1% per 2 runic power, but has a limit of 25% increase.
    • Glyph of Disease: Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.
    • Glyph of Heart Strike: Duration of snare increased to 10 seconds.
    • Glyph of Howling Blast: Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.
    • Glyph of Hungering Cold: Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power.
    • Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Icebound Fortitude now grants at least 30% damage reduction, regardless of defense skill.
    • Glyph of Plague Strike: Bonus lowered to 20%.
    • Glyph of Strangulate: This glyph has been changed to reduce the cooldown by 20 seconds.
    • Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 20%.
    • Glyph of Unholy Blight: Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 seconds

Bug Fixes:

  • Death Knight
    • Acclimation: This talent will no longer sometimes grant nature resistance while fighting Sapphiron.
    • Anti-magic Zone: This ability will no longer cause strange absorb messages in the combat log and floating combat text.
    • Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the death knight. In addition, it will now only echo death knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. This pet will no longer break stealth on nearby targets and attack them. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.
    • Death Coil: This spell will no longer sometimes cause the death knight to animate a swing twice.
    • Death Grip: This spell will no longer automatically cast on the nearest enemy when no valid target is selected.
    • Death Runes: Fixed a bug where it was possible when using two abilities with the same rune cost to not get correctly granted a second Death Rune when appropriate.
    • Ebon Plaguebringer: Multiple death knights can now use this debuff against a target without overwriting each other.
    • Howling Blast: Each rank now properly shares a cooldown with the other ranks.
    • Necrosis: The damage from this ability will no longer benefit multiple times from damage increasing effects.
    • Pestilence: This ability will now spread disease centered on a position between the death knight and its target, rather than the target’s center position (for very large creatures, this used to cause no disease spread at all).
    • Raise Ally: The buff from this ability can no longer be right clicked to cancel. In order to end the effect, the player controlling the Risen Ghoul must right click on the unit portrait and dismiss the pet. In addition, using this ability on a player whose level is too low will now give a “Target is too low level” error message instead of “You have no target.”
    • Raise Dead: This pet now despawns instantly when it dies. In addition, this ability can no longer be used while riding any type of vehicle. The Risen Ghoul is also now properly immune to Charm, Fear, Sleep, and Horror.
    • Rune of Cinderglacier: Charges of this will now only be used if the target actually took damage from the attack.
    • Scent of Blood: This talent can no longer be triggered by environmental damage.
    • Scourge Strike: The tooltip incorrectly stated it did 60% weapon damage increased by 9% from diseases, when it was actually 45% increased 11% from diseases. The tooltip has been corrected, but the damage done is unchanged.
    • Sigil of Awareness: The tooltip on this incorrectly indicated it added much more damage than it actually did. The tooltip has been corrected to show the actual bonus.
    • Summon Gargoyle: The Gargoyle will no longer re-attack rogues after they Vanish, or night elves who use Shadowmeld. Monsters will stop trying to chase a Gargoyle after it flies away. The debuff on the target indicating he or she is being pursued by a Gargoyle will no longer display the duration, and will be removed when the buff is removed from the death knight. Max duration in the tooltip changed to 40 seconds.

 

Previous Changes in last PTR for 3.0.8:

  • Death Knights

    • All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
    • Anti-Magic Shell: The cooldown has been lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
    • Anti-Magic Zone: This ability’s duration has been cut to 10 seconds.
    • Blood Aura now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
    • Blood Presence now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
    • Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence.
    • Bone Shield: The mitigation has been reduced from 40% to 20%.
    • Corpse Explosion: Damage increased substantially, added 5 sec. cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
    • Dark Command: Range increased to 30 yards.
    • Death Pact now grants 40% instead of 20% healing.
    • Frost Presence: The bonus armor has been increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%.
    • Heart Strike no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets. (woot!)
    • Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 20 second cooldown.
    • Howling Blast: Cooldown removed.
    • Icebound Fortitude now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but can go higher).
    • Killing Machine: Instead of a chance to be triggered on critical strike, this talent now has a chance to be triggered on each swing based on the swing time of the weapon (slow weapons more likely, fast weapons less likely).
    • Mark of Blood: The total amount of healing this can grant is now capped based on a percentage of standard creature health at the target’s level.
    • Night of the Dead now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
    • Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
    • Pestilence no longer has a 10 seconds cooldown.
    • Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:
      • Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.
      • Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.
    • Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
    • Rune Strike: Damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
    • Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 secondsseconds and now has a 15 minute cooldown.
    • Summon Gargoyle: Damage dealt by the Gargoyle reduced by approximately 20% and maximum duration cut to 30 seconds.
    • Unholy Blight had had its cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
    • Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being castand now considers the resilience of the target in determining its chance to be triggered.
    • Vampiric Blood (DK) changed from 20% health / 50% healing to 15 % health / 35% healing.
    • Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded. It no longer affects the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell and retains the current damage reduction bonus.

 

Previous changes and blue posts:

3.0.8 PTR: Build 9386

The PTR was updated with a new build; there were a number of changes

 

Deathknight

Items

  • Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets Savage/Hateful/Deadly have a new bonus. Was: Reduces the cooldown of your Strangulate by 5 seconds. Now: Whenever you cast Chains of Ice, the Frost Rune used becomes a Death Rune when it activates.
  • Sigil of Haunted Dreams changed to crit rating
  • Sigil of Arthritic Binding, Sigil of the Frozen Conscience, Sigil of the Wild Buck added to the Venture Coin Vendors in Grizzly Hills.  They each cost 30 Venture Coins as well as a small amount of gold, though the gold cost is likely a bug.
  • Sigil of the Unfaltering Knight]can be purchased for 15 Emblem of Heroism from multiple vendors in Dalaran, including Arcanist Ivrenne and Magistrix Lambriesse.
  • Glyph of Blood Boil: Causes your Blood Boil to slow affected targets for 5 sec.
  • Glyph of Death and Decay: Targets of your Death and Decay have a 10% chance to cower in fear for 2 sec.
  • Glyph of Icy Touch: Your Icy Touch generates 10 additional runic power.
  • Glyph of Death Strike: Increases your Death Strike's damage by 20%.
  • Spells

    • Howling Blast no longer has a cooldown.

    Death Knight Changes in build 9138:
    Blood

    • Bloody Strikes - Now increases the damage by 10/20/30% and the bonus damage from diseases by 20/40/60% of your Blood Strike and Heart strike. Up from 6/12/18% damage.
    Frost
    • Improved Icy Touch - Now Frost Fever reduces melee and ranged attack speed by an additional 2/4/6%. Up from 1/0/0%.
    • Improved Icy Talons - Now increases the melee haste instead of melee and ranged attack speed.

     

    Death Knight Changes in build 9038
    Blood

    • Blade Barrier - Changed to when you have no Blood runes. (Old No runes)
    • Heart Strike - Damage increased. (Now Rank 6 60% weapon damage plus 220.8, and an additional 110.4 bonus damage per disease.) (Old Rank 6 50% weapon damage plus 184.0, and an additional 92.0 bonus damage per disease. )
    • Dark Command Range increased to 20yds (Old 5yds)
    Frost
    • Frost Presence - Armor contribution from items increased to 65%. (Old 45%)
    • Frost Strike - Now cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried.
    • Black Ice - Frost damage doubled (Now 6/12/18/24/30) (Old 3/6/9/12/15). It no longer affects Shadow damage.
    • Tundra Stalker Passive Icy Touch damage lowered by 25%, expertise increase doubled. (Now 5/10/15/20/25% increase to icy touch damage, and 2/4/6/8/10 expertise) (Old 20/40/60/80/100% increase to icy touch damage, and 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.)
    • Rune Strike - Runic Power cost lowered to 10, and damage increased, now only useable after an attack is dodged or parried. Can't be dodged, blocked or parried. (Damage Now - 200% weapon damage plus [200.0 * AP * 10.0 / 10000.0].) (Old 65% weapon damage, and only usable after a critical hit with an ability that causes a disease)
    Unholy
    • Blood-Caked Blade - Chance to proc doubled. (Now 10/20/30%) (Old 5/10/15%)
    • Scourge Strike Damage lowered. (Now Rank 4 60% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 190.5, and an additional 95.25 bonus damage per disease.) (Old Rank 4 60% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 226.8, and an additional 113.4 bonus damage per disease.)

    Recent Ghostcrawler Posts:

    March 12, 2009, 5:40 pm
    We debated long and hard about whether to change Fallen Crusader or MoM / GoG. We ended up changing both, but later decided that the big crits were one of the things that helped the DK feel more like a warrior (big numbers from slow swings) even though they actually play more like a rogue with regard to resource use and number of specials per second.

    We did prune some of the abilities from the talents however.

    Ghostcrawler

    March 12, 2009, 8:51 pm
    If you have played a DK at all, you would have noticed that most of their strikes hit for relatively small numbers. Most of their attacks do less than 100% weapon damage. They get one big hit a cycle (modulo other talent effects). Getting lots of small hits led to feedback during beta that DKs felt more like rogues than warriors, while the expectation was warriors since both are usually portrayed swinging two-handed weapons. The big crit talents were designed to work around that somewhat.

    If you have issues with warriors or any other class, I would suggest bringing them up in other threads and not trying to use your dissatisfaction to lobby for nerfs for other classes. That tends to make players mad. We have made a lot of warrior changes lately and more are on the way.

    As players have pointed out, these changes help Blood and Frost DKs, which were not typically the specs dominating PvP. We have toned down the burst in lots of other ways, including the runeforge enchants and the 51-point talents.

    We don't want Unholy DKs, or any DK spec, to be as dominant in arenas as they have been. Do keep in mind however that part of the DK popularity comes from them being new. I would not expect to see the number of DKs stomping around Northrend to drop anytime soon.

    Ghostcrawler
    March 13, 2009, 12:01 am

    Q u o t e:
    If only other classes would also get larger crits because of flavour or "expectations".


    You may have noticed talents like Ruin and spells like Arcane Barrage (which has a higher than normal coefficient).


    Q u o t e:
    IT hits harder than most classes primary attacks, it certainly hits hard as full frost than a mortal strike or a stormstrike on most targets, because of this funny thing called armor, I know, weird huh?


    Spells that are not mitigated by armor are balanced around that fact. In sustained damage, DKs are now below rogues and mages and close to warriors. It’s hard to interpret “sustained damage” in a PvP setting though.


    Q u o t e:
    Burst is too high for rogues and mages. But death knights need more to "feel" like a warrior.


    Nobody seems too worried about warrior burst at the moment (at least post Sudden Death nerf), which is where I made my comparison. I understand if you are a little jumpy based on your experiences from DK burst in 3.0. We think we have toned it down for 3.1.


    Q u o t e:
    Hey GC, is Obliterate being phased out of Blood rotations? It is going to be hitting a heck of a lot weaker for Blood specs now. Are we supposed be using mass HS instead now perhaps? (Thanks to DRM.)


    That is the idea. It also lets everyone avoid Annihilation except Frost who wants it anyway. (I know I said recently that we still wanted Blood to Obliterate, but we since soured on that idea.)


    Ghostcrawler
    March 13, 2009, 10:57 am
    To answer a few questions, Frost and Unholy will probably both lose some Icy Touch damage when all is said and done. Not all of those changes are in yet. It's cool for Unholy to dip into Frost for some more damage, but it's degenerate (in the sense that the design collapses) for Unholy to do that just so it becomes a crazy Icy Touch spamming juggernaut.

    Blood should be about Heart Strike, Death Strike and healing.
    Frost should be about Obliterate, Frost Strike and some (key word) ranged Frost damage.
    Unholy should be about Scourge Strike, diseases and minions.
    A little crossover for hybrid builds is fine.

    Ghostcrawler

    March 14, 2009, 11:27 am

    Our intent is not to force DKs down one tanking tree any more than they were before. It's cool that Frost tanking is getting more attention, but I think the jury is still out on whether one build is so much better than another one that players feel that they have no options. We'll give the community a chance to chew on all of the changes (more are coming, though mostly for dps DKs) and see if our opinion changes.

    Since Unholy slightly emphasizes avoidance, Frost slightly emphasizes armor and Blood slightly emphasizes health, it's also likely that some builds will be more useful on some encounters compared to others. That isn't necessarily what we're going for, but it's a likely outcome, and again as long as the delta isn't too huge, it should work out fine.

    March 10, 2009, 5:27 pm
    We need to do some more testing on DK threat, and additional feedback in that dept. is useful.

    It gets tricky for a number of reasons. Some DKs go for some kind of health or mitigation buff in every possible way and then are surprised their threat is low. Threat is something you are supposed to care about as a tank, and gear accordingly. The question is whether DKs who sacrifice a little bit of mitigation (in the broad sense -- I don't strictly mean armor) for dps then fail at tanking encounters. We don't know that yet because the DK tanking nerfs just hit (and Blade Barrier was broken).

    Some DKs blow IBF and Rune Strike every time they can, and then wonder where their runic power went.

    I don't know that just losing 10% avoidance from Blade Barrier makes the difference between getting Rune Strike procs or not. Again, some DKs use the defense runeforge enchant instead of the avoidance one because of their gear choices (or luck therein) elsewhere.

    We need to see the effects of losing Bo Sanc on all the tanks. Some never had it before, so all and all, that change is beneficial for the game.

    March 10, 2009, 8:53 pm
    Just saying "We need more runic power so we can Rune Strike more," doesn't really address the question. Yes, Rune Strike is an excellent use of runic power for purposes of threat generation. Nobody is arguing that. The question is: are you converting every single white swing into a Rune Strike? If not, how many are you missing? If you miss Rune Strikes do you have trouble maintaining threat? If so, why? Do you get 10% fewer Rune Strikes with 10% less parry? Does that mean the difference in being able to maintain threat or not?

    Most importantly, is it the lack of avoidance or the lack of runic power than limits you?

    March 11, 2009, 10:19 am
    Death and Decay works fine for group AE. It's not designed to be a great single target threat spell.

    Rune Strike isn't the most exciting ability in the world, but it does the job, which is giving DKs a high threat move that doesn't use a global and can't generally be used for dps. Creating a new high threat ability, which is something we might eventually do, is complicated because we would not want it to be used for dps and we would not want it to compete with all the other rune and runic power abilities.

    We can understand why you might Rune Strike less with these changes. What you haven't convinced us of is that DKs are doomed if they Rune Strike less. Are dps classes pulling off of you today on live? What is your highest possible threat per second? What will it be after these changes? (I saw one estimate of 5% less threat.) Would it be higher if you made some gear changes? Will you die too ofter with those gear changes? I'm trying to get players to just stop saying "If I Rune Strike less, nobody will let me tank."

    Scent for Blood is a reasonable talent for us to look at in order to provide a little more rp per sec to the tanking DK.
    March 11, 2009, 4:58 pm

    Q u o t e:
    Secondly Scent of blood has several problems.
    1. .75% average proc rate every 10 seconds / with a 10 second cd.
    2. only grants 15 total RP / 10 seconds
    3. RP only gained on white melee hits, not gained if white hit is replaced by a rune strike(which costs RP)


    Scent of blood needs to provide enough RP to rune strike, or use ibf/ams
    Scent of blood needs to proc the RP gain on any melee hit, white or yellow.
    Scent of blood needs to provide RP gain threat equal to chill, dirge, and butchery.
    Scent of blood needs to have a shorter internal cd or a stacking charge based, and it needs to provide all the RP at once.


    Scent of Blood would be a good replacement for Bo Sanc if it had better numbers. It's high enough in the tree, and just below a mandatory tanking talent, that most DKs should have access to it.

    I will correct one misconception though. On-next-swing attacks do count as melee swings, so Rune Strike actually will generate runic power with the Scent of Blood aura on you (though Blood Strike will not).
    March 10, 2009, 8:39 pm
    You might not be able to step into Ulduar in blue gear, but you don't need crazy high avoidance numbers for most content in the game including Naxxramas.

    The intent of Rune Strike isn't that every hit becomes one. This is more true of Heroic Strike for warriors, but even then it's only in high rage situations.

    One mistake that new tanks tend to make is to go overboard on defensive stats and ignore threat generation. For example, I know some older warrior guides would sometimes suggest going with a high threat weapon for that one slot. DKs do struggle a little to reach the defense "cap" but beyond that, you can probably tank in a lot less than full T7, especially if your group is not also new to all of their roles.

    March 11, 2009, 4:50 pm
    Expertise and hit are great +threat stats. That is especially true of DKs who suffer a lot when one of their rotational abilities fails to land.

    My point about DKs just starting out is that the content just starting out is very forgiving of gear. The 5-player content is designed to be tanked by an Arms warrior.

    Sad face that yet another thread turned into an argument about which tank class is the best / worst / has it easiest. :(

    Q u o t e:
    Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
    Frost

    * Howling Blast damage has been doubled (from 259-281 to 518-562 for max rank), cooldown changed from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
    * Frost Presence now reduces spell damage taken by 10%. (Down from 15%)
    * Guile of Gorefiend now increases damage done by your Blood Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast and Obliterate abilities by 5/10/15%. (Old - Critical damage only, 15/30/45%)
    * Lichborne doesn't increase the chance of your enemies to miss you anymore.

    Blood

    * Dancing Rune Weapon now lasts 20 sec (up from 10sec) and last 2 (up from 1 sec) sec per 5 additional runic power but attacks for ?% reduced damage.
    * Will of the Necropolis now cannot occur more often than once every 15 sec.
    * Might of Mograine now increase all damage done by your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate abilities by 3/7/10%. (Old - Critical damage only, 10/20/30%)
    * Vampiric Blood cooldown has been increased from 1 min to 2 min.
    * Blade Barrier now decrease damage taken by 1/2/3/4/5% for 10 sec.

    Unholy

    * Bone Shield cooldown has been increased from 1min to 2min.
    * Ghoul Frenzy cooldown has been removed.
    * Blood-Caked Blade proc limitation has been removed. (Old - This effect cannot occur more often than once every 3 sec.)
    * Outbreak now Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 10/20/30% (Down from 15/30/45%) and Scourge Strike by 7/13/20%. (Down from 10/20/30%)
    * Necrosis now affects all your auto attacks. (Old - Only Main-Hand)


    I really don't know what to say here. Nothing was left untouched.
    Mirte - 80 Warlock ► Adanel - 80 Deathknight


    Q u o t e:
    did you Blizzard really too stupid to read?

    What is this I don’t even?...


    Yes, death knights tanks were too good on almost any kind of challenging fight. The number of cooldowns and high avoidance were too blame. (Druids were also too good on almost every fight, but bringing their health down may have fixed that.)

    We want you to be able to tank any content in Ulduar, but you can't be the best tank for every fight.

    We need to see what effect these changes have. We are not done with 3.1 yet. Constructive feedback and concerns are appreciated. You certainly do not have to agree with us, but please keep your posts free of ranting and insults if you want to be able to keep posting here.

    March 6, 2009, 12:37 pm
    Unbreakable Armor also has a 2 min cooldown, just like VB and BS.

    March 6, 2009, 4:03 pm
    Frost is not intended as the tanking tree. DKs should be able to tank using appropriate builds from all 3 trees. It is likely that some builds will be superior for some encounters of course.

    When we originally designed the DK, Frost was going to be the tanking tree. We later soured on that implementation.

    March 6, 2009, 4:27 pm
    Thanks, Hanzgrimm. I am going to requote it below because a lot of that is still true today.

    I understand that DK tanks are going to be upset over the changes. These were big nerfs. But we have invested a lot into this class and we aren't going to see it chased out of Ulduar, heroic dungeons or PvP. We have plenty of time left on the PTR to see what these changes do. We still have a lot of knobs to turn, from Blade Barrier to Frost Presence. I know it may be convenient to accuse other tank classes of trying to get yours nerfed, but today you may feel exactly how they felt a few days ago. Players often give too much credit to forum QQ, especially when their class is nerfed. We gather a lot of data that generally isn't available to players. We know what happens with various classes tanking.


    Q u o t e:
    Most of the arguments and concerns on this topic that I see seem to come down to these issues. Correct me if there are any I'm missing.

    1) Blizzard doesn't intend death knights to be end-game tanks.
    Ghostcrawler: Yes, we do.

    2) Death knights don't have the mitigation to tank end-game bosses.
    Ghostcrawler: We don't have enough information yet to make that call, but the design is that they do, so if they don't, we'll change the numbers. There are a lot of knobs to turn from Forceful Deflection to Frost Presence to Icebound Fortitude to passive bonuses.

    3) Death knights don't have a traditional tanking tree, which feels weird.
    Ghostcrawler: Totally valid concern. But we want to try and fix some of the problems with traditional tanking, such as it being not fun enough to attract enough players or utility being marginal when not tanking.

    4) Because death knights don't have traditional tanking trees, I can't get all the tanking talents.
    Ghostcrawler: True. Also by design. You CAN get all the tools you'll need for tanking in any tree though.

    5) Death knights can tank and dps with the same spec.
    Ghostcrawler: Maybe. Warrior and paladins can tank and dps with the same spec too, though a hybrid warrior tends to be less than optimal for either role at the cutting-edge of raiding. The same should be true of death knights.

    6) Because death knights can tank and dps, it isn't fair to existing plate tanks who have to give up a lot of dps in order to tank.
    Ghostcrawler: Also valid. Just remember the design is that any DK or warrior should be able to tank a 5-player dungeon. A dps death knight, with no tanking talents and crappy gear isn't going to be a very impressive Naxxramas MT. Maybe the death knight doesn't have to give up as much as existing tanks, though that may also be something we want to fix in the other classes.

    7) Because death knights need to spend so few talents on tanking relative to warriors or paladins who spend a great chunk of talents on tanking, it's not fair.
    Ghostcrawler: This is a valid concern. First, I'm not sure the numbers are all that different. Second, gear and skill probably have a much bigger impact on tanking effectiveness than spec. Third, a lot of a warrior's best tanking abilities are core to the class, though talents definitely help (and a few talents help enormously). Fourth, and most important, it doesn't seem like smart design to keep designing trees in such a way that chase off tanks.

    That's a pretty controversial statement, so I should elaborate. We don't know for sure that the Prot tree scares off tanks. A lot of you adore tanking just as it is, thank you, and I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong. (I've tanked for years and I still love it.) There are some things that aren't fun about tanking that have nothing to do with the prot trees: inability to solo, stress at wiping the raid, stress at often having to lead and mark, stress at having to play every night lest your friends have to cancel the run, etc.

    On the other hand, we do think the prot trees (and even Feral) could use some improvement, and you've seen a lot of those changes already. Starting over with a class' talents would be a lot of work and probably really anger players, so that isn't terribly attractive. But here is a new class without a lot of baggage, and a chance to try something different with the talent trees. Clearly a lot of people are excited about it, so maybe we're onto something. If it isn't your thing, that's cool. But make that decision for aesthetic or other reasons, not because you're convinced DKs will be bad tanks. Unconventional doesn't need to mean inferior.
    March 7, 2009, 10:31 am
    If DKs take too much damage now, we can fix that. If increasing cooldowns means they aren't fun any longer, then we can try and fix that too. But I hope you understand that we don't want to have an unbalanced class in any aspect of the game just because that makes it fun (for that class).
    March 8, 2009, 11:07 am
    There are two arguments being used here that I want to dismiss:

    1) Because you said DKs are supposed to use cooldowns to tank you can't change it.

    2) You said tanking with DKs should be fun. Because the DKs were fun when chaining cooldowns you can't change it.

    These are both examples of what I call "lawyering." Essentially you are trying to get us to revert a change by claiming that we went back on our word or somehow broke our rules.

    Making DK cooldowns fun and meaningful is absolutely a priority. But having 4 viable tanking classes is also a priority. One of those things cannot just completely trump the other. We also have a slight concern that DK tanking was fun for some players not because of the mechanics but because it was overpowered.

    Players who are making suggestions about how to keep DK tanking mechanics fun without being overpowered are making useful comments. Players who are just posting "the class is now gutted; I'm gonna reroll" are making the kind of comments I just skip over (and the mods tend to delete).

    March 2, 2009, 9:35 am
    We don't have a problem with DW tanking or DW dps. Whenever I say something about DW tanking it is usually to say that we don't want DW tanking to dominate. Before the Stoneskin Gargoyle rune, having two tanking weapons was a big benefit to DW, and in a world with crushing blow, "parry instagibs" are much less scary now.

    That said, the Howling Blast changes were much more about DW dps builds. Death knight dps was just too high across the board, especially with certain hybrid builds. If we're convinced we fixed the problem, then we might improve Howling Blast damage again (though we might imcrease its cooldown).
    March 3, 2009, 8:33 am
    Someone earlier in the thread said basically...


    Q u o t e:
    Ghostcrawler has said very bluntly in the past that they will nerf DW tanking and buff 2-hand tanking as necessary to insure that people do not do it.


    I was clarifying that was not our intent. We are not trying to kill DW tanking at all. We are trying to kill DW dps from being vastly superior to 2H dps, which it was.
    With the recent change to howling blast, it seems as though many tanks will be sticking with Unholy. The change I am referring to is howling blast back on a 5 second cd. This makes it extremely awkward to keep in rotation when tanking. I understand the nerf from the pure dps stand point. We have people in guild that are 32/39 already doing insane dps numbers. But for a tank this was such a relief as it seemed we could now spec into frost without totally gimping our AoE threat.

    One idea in order to help tanks would be to reduce the cool down with +Defense just as you did with Icebound fortitude. For every 125 defense it would knock off 1 second of the cool down. So at around 540 defense, you would have the cool down reduced to .68 seconds. It seems to have worked so far with IBF, and I think it would have a lot of tanks still consider going frost.

    I for one will not be specing into frost from unholy tanking with this nerf. There is really no incentive from the frost tree over the unholy tree. This will ultimately keep most tanks in the unholy tree which if I am not mistaken is what blizzard was trying to change. Unholy is so dominate over frost once a certain level of gear is achieved. The HB cd from +def would change this and even out the playing field.


    Tristrim
    January 17, 2009, 11:56 am
    Howling Blast was designed for AE dps, for which it was doing too much damage without a cooldown. We totally understand the concern about having a cooldown being awkward to work along with rune cooldowns, which is why we removed it. But that change made the spell too powerful, as we feared.

    We will continue to iterate on the design and the ultimate goal is to remove the cooldown. There are some ways we can reign in the damage (such as a smaller AE cap or the damage falling off after the initial target) that will take some more time and testing to implement.

    The DK is a new class, and while it is working well overall, you can expect to see some iteration on it compared to the classes that have been tested and upon which players have experimented for four years.

    Ghostcrawler
    January 17, 2009, 11:56 am
    Timbaland
    Howling Blast was designed for AE dps, for which it was doing too much damage without a cooldown. We totally understand the concern about having a cooldown being awkward to work along with rune cooldowns, which is why we removed it. But that change made the spell too powerful, as we feared.

    We will continue to iterate on the design and the ultimate goal is to remove the cooldown. There are some ways we can reign in the damage (such as a smaller AE cap or the damage falling off after the initial target) that will take some more time and testing to implement.

    The DK is a new class, and while it is working well overall, you can expect to see some iteration on it compared to the classes that have been tested and upon which players have experimented for four years.
    Threat has been and still is a major concern for DK tanks that do competative content.

    It's not an issue in heroics, everyone agrees.

    It's not an issue with low DPS, everyone still agrees.

    It's not an issue for AoE packs.

    It's a HUGE issue when you play with other solid tanks and you realize Paladin and Druids can maintain 6-10k TPS (Paladin on the top end, Druids on the low)

    It's a HUGE issue when your DPS starts cranking out 4-6k DPS and you're stuck topping out at 5k TPS.

    DK's have by far the lowest threat of all the tanks at the moment. Maybe it's enough for you to handle your DPS. It isn't for me. It makes a big difference when deciding who should tank an encounter. DK threat needs to be balanced with the other tanks. We don't need more, we're not asking to be OP, but it is a severe hinderence on our raid viability.

    I hate to say it, but people in full blues being blown away by their 4.5k TPS need to stop posting that our threat is not a problem. It is a problem for those of us tanking in raid guilds competing with great players. It is much lower then other classes.

    Please God stop posting your 3.5k TPS acting like everything is fine because the 1000 DPS rogue wasn't even close to out-threating you. That isn't the point.


    Q u o t e:
    simple answer here: threat is an issue when you dont have blessing of sanctuary; non-issue when you have it.


    That is plain wrong. Druids and Warriors get as much of a benefit from BoSanc as we do. Just because our threat increases does not make it competative. Raids need to be able to see either a benefit or equality (indifference) in DK tanking compared to the other classes or they will consistently find themselves "off-tanking."

    It seriously matters. DK threat needs to be looked at. I don't know if it's the threat modifier of Frost presence or whatever, but something needs to change.

    I'm just so fed up between Blizzard's "tests" claiming that all tanks are equal in threat (which we know is completely false, even if you leave DK's out of the equation) and DK players tanking for the first time in their lives thinking that they're doing good TPS but can't complete a heroic because the DPS they play with is so bad.

    [ Post edited by Timbaland ]


    January 12, 2009, 2:58 pm
    We're looking at the issue since players have brought it up. However, we are not hearing widespread feedback from across the board that DKs are struggling to maintain single-target threat. That is what makes me wonder if something else is going on, like it only occurs with some gear choices for example.

    Ghostcrawler
    January 12, 2009, 10:08 pm
    If I am summarizing this thread, it appears most of the concern is about single-target threat vs. well-geared dps, especially against slow-swinging or magic-using bosses who don't proc Rune Strike as often. Groups with reliable BoSanc don't notice the problem as much.

    I would compare yourself to warriors more than paladins, since the next patch removes the threat of Light, which sometimes grants paladins crazy numbers.

    Ghostcrawler
    January 13, 2009, 2:20 pm
    We are looking into this issue and found one bug that we are hotfixing.

    I will attempt to explain:

    Most auras go away when you die, but some don't. Frost Presence and Defensive Stance have some effects that go away and some that do not (this is the bug). It ends up that a DK who dies loses some of the threat bonus from Frost Presence, but doesn't get it back when he comes back to life because the game thinks Frost Presence is still active and doesn't attempt to reapply the buff. If you change presence from Frost to something else and back, then all the buffs get reapplied correctly, but most tanks probably aren't doing that.

    So it's entirely possible that if you die and come back without changing presences that you have just gimped your threat generation. You aren't losing all your bonus threat generation. You are basically losing the amount that we gave all tanks to compensate for pulling Blessing of Salvation out of the game.

    If all of that confuses you, the take home message is we fixed a bug where your threat would be low after dying. Again, by the time you read this, the bug should have been hotfixed.

    It is likely this bug was also affecting warriors in Defensive Stance and the hotfix will catch that too. It was not affecting paladins or druids because their spells work differently.

    We don't know if this is the entire issue with DK (and possibly warrior) threat being low, but it should help, especially if you ever die while raiding. Some of the guilds who are seeing this problem have very high dps, which implies they have experienced the content a lot and might not be dying that much.

     

    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 4. Re: Block   09/30/2008 11:30:45 PM PDT
    Thott is correct that warrior block gains more from Strength than DK parry does. But we don't really want DK parry to reach crazy levels. A death knight with 80% parry is probably a very bad tank, not a great one. Block on the other hand always does a great job of mitigating physical damage, as long as it continues to grow.

    Abilities like Forceful Deflection are intended to make up for differences such as not having a gun or shield with mitigation stats on it. To actually get death knight mitigation where it needs to be, they are going to need a lot of block like a plate-wearer or a lot of armor like a druid. The second option is far more likely.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 12. Re: DK weakest tanks?   10/02/2008 12:02:47 AM PDT
    Druids mitigate a lot more damage at the moment than warriors do without any block at all. If DKs are low, improving their armor will have a similar effect. We just have to be careful, because DKs do have a lot of cooldowns, and it's possible they'll mitigate too much if we overcompensate.

    Now, it's possible that block might eventually surpass druid armor for mitigation, but that makes a lot of assumptions based on fights, item levels and content in general that doesn't exist yet. We have done some comparisons based on theoretical gear, but it's going to be theoretical for many months.

    Also remember that while avoidance is still dangerous to rely on as a tank, it is less dangerous than it used to be since bosses won't be doing back to back crushing blows. Druids were amazing tanks in BC even with crushing blows, and only started to fall down because they ran out of gear to improve their mitigation, hit the armor cap, and ran into Sunwell Radiance.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 80. Re: Icy Touch does an insane amount of dmg no   10/01/2008 11:52:40 PM PDT
    We think what we might end up doing is shifting some of that damage from Icy Touch to Obliterate and Howling Blast. We got Frost's dps up a lot, which is good. It's also cool to see Icy Touch feel like a nuke again. We just want to back off of it a little and buff the double rune abilities.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 43. Re: Death Knight Changes (Build 9012)   09/30/2008 08:42:39 PM PDT
    Disease damage went down a little, which will lower's Unholy's overall dps.

    Dancing Rune Weapon was doing a huge portion of blood's dps. We thought it was cooler to let it hit hard but be out less often.

    When we made these changes, Blood's dps was higher than Unholy's, which was higher than Frost's. Frost is probably still a little light as I write this so they may get more buffs.

    Death Knight Changes in build 9014

    • Blood Tap - Tooltip Fix : Duration changed to 20 seconds. (Old 47802d.)
    • Bladed Armor - Now increases attack power by 1/2/3/4/5 for every 180 armor value. (Old 1/2/3/4/5 strength for every 400 armor)
    • Abomination's Might - Range of attack power increase now 45 yds (Old 20 yds)
    Frost
    • Obliterate Damage lowered. (Now Rank 3 - 100% weapon damage plus 238.5, and an additional 119.25 bonus damage per disease) (Old Rank 3 - 100% weapon damage plus 252, 126 bonus damage per disease.)
    • Tundra Stalker - Now gives a passive bonus increase to your Icy Touch. (20/40/60/80/100%)
    • Guile of Gorefiend - No longer gives bonus to Rune Strike critical damage.
    • Howling Blast - Damage increased on all ranks. (Now Rank 5 - 259 to 281) (Old Rank 5 - 192 to 208)
    • Runic Focus - Description changed to : "Unlike most casters, a Death Knight's spells cause double damage on critical hits."
    Unholy
    • Death and Decay - Damage Increased (Now Rank 4 - 62 Damage) (Old Rank 4 - 52 Damage)
    • Blood-Caked Blade - Damage increased to 25% of weapon damage. (Old 20% of weapon damage.)
    • Blood Plague - Chance to remove a Heal over Time effect reduced to 25% (Old 50%)
    • Reaping - Pestilence removed, Blood Strike added.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 0. Upcoming Death Knight Changes   09/17/2008 12:22:01 AM PDT
    DPS changes

    -- Death Coil, Frost Strike, Death and Decay damage increased.
    -- Strikes that scale with diseases changed so that the weapon damage, not just the flat damage, scales with the disease.
    -- Double rune abilities damage increased: Obliterate, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike, Death Strike.
    -- Unholy Blight no longer causes Blood Plague, but had its cooldown removed.
    -- Several attack power coefficients increased.
    -- Bloody Strikes and Scent of Blood swapped places.
    -- Bladed Armor now turns armor into Strength (which then is turned into Parry).
    -- Master of Ghouls' Ghoul now lasts until killed or similarly dismissed.
    -- Ravenous Dead no longer affects Ghoul duration, but grants your rotting little buddy 60% more of your Str and Sta. (Stam goes from 30% of yours to ~50% of yours. Strength goes from 100% to 160%.)

    Tanking changes

    -- Frost Presence now grants 10% total health in addition to its current bonuses.
    -- Blood Gorged, Rage of Rivendare and Tundra Stalker all grant 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.
    -- Veteran of the Third War increased to 6/6/6 Str / Sta / Exp to match warriors.
    -- Will of the Necropolis no longer grants expertise and now lowers Anti-Magic Shell cooldown.
    -- Pestilence has no target limit. (It still has a radius limit.) Pesilence glyph now increases area.
    -- Death and Decay no longer has a cower component, but a glyph can add that back.
    -- Frigid Dreadplate now has a 100% chance for 2/4/6% miss but only on the DK.

    Rewards for the selfless buffer

    -- Abom's Might now grants 2% Strength at all times.
    -- Improved Icy Talons now grants 2% haste at all times.
    -- Ebon Plaguebringer now grants 3% crit at all times.

    Runeforge changes

    -- Lichbane now does 2% weapon damage as Fire, and double damage to undead.
    -- Swordbreaking and Swordshattering add disarm duration reduction.
    -- Spellbreaking and Spellshattering add silence duration reduction.
    -- Cinderglacier reduced to 2 charges.

    No doubt many awesome small tweaks I am forgetting.

    AWESOME SMALL TWEAKS.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 35. Re: Current List of DK Concerns:   09/16/2008 12:09:52 AM PDT
    We did a big comparison recently between tanks in Naxx 10 gear with appropriate talents. I referenced this recently in the druid forums.

    DK armor ended up being within 3% of warrior and paladin armor. Avoidance is high, as you can probably guess, and we don't want to boost it a lot higher, because avoidance-based tanks can have problems when that hit does get through. Health was a little low, though still within 10%, and that's something we are looking into buffing. DKs also ended up with low expertise, which is a problem, because failing to land an early strike can throw everything out of whack. Other tanks can get expertise fairly deeply in their trees. We might adjust DK trees to make sure expertise is available for more than just Blood. It's hard to pin good numbers on mitigation abilities with cooldowns. If you assume that Icebound Fortitude is up 20% of the time, then it's comparable to warrior damage reduction on physical hits and AMS ends up being slightly better on magical hits. But warriors always have their damage reduction on, so it's either a wash or slightly better for warriors. Scaling is still a little hard to evaluate at this stage: warriors gain more block with strength and DKs gain more parry.

    We haven't finished dps tests yet. If dps is low, as many of you suppose, then threat will likely be low too because DKs don't have a lot of +threat modifiers. But that's a whole other issue. Low threat tanks aren't fun and we wouldn't want to ship one in that state.

    Another point worthy of note is that except for the druid (who can be uncrittable in any gear), all the plate-wearing tanks could not get to the defense "cap" without gemming for defense. If you feel like you're getting two-shotted by bosses, you might look at your defense. We don't intend for leveling instances to require a hefty investment in defense (you should be able to go with whatever quest gear you acquire) but you'll want more for the end-game dungeons and certainly for heroics and raids.

    The thing limiting runeforging from being really cool, in our opinion, is new art. At this stage in development, new art is pretty expensive to get, so that might be something we leave for the next patch.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 11. Re: Master of Ghouls?   09/12/2008 11:04:32 AM PDT
    This has been confusing, so we're trying to clean up the design a little bit.

    Raise Dead -- 2 minute duration. 5 minute cooldown. Summons a guardian (no pet bar).

    Ravenous Dead -- extends duration (passively)
    Night of the Dead -- lowers cooldown (actively)
    Master of Ghouls -- the summoned ghoul is a pet instead of a guardian. This means he gets a cute name, a pet bar, and there is no duration to the ability. If your ghoul is killed, you will have to wait for the cooldown before bringing him back.

    But your rotting little friend will stick around forever if you can keep him alive.


    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 19. Re: Regarding the removal of Obliterate from    08/22/2008 09:38:46 AM PDT

    Q u o t e:
    so heartstrike hits even less now that blood strike and its a deep talent?


    I hope someone can explain why this gets referenced everywhere. Rank 6 Blood Strike hits for 273 and Rank 6 Heart Strike does 355 damage per disease. It sounds like there might be an issue with Sigil of the Dark Rider not affecting Heart Strike, but that was just an oversight, and in any case should not have changed this patch.

    Heart Strike should always hit for more than Blood Strike. Ideally it should always hit for less than Obliterate *unless* you have every possible talent to buff Heart Strike, but those numbers may need massaging. (The logic being that Death Rune Mastery is less sexy if you don't want to do more Heart Strikes.)
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 4. Re: Howling Blast - Definitive Answer Please   08/22/2008 10:00:01 AM PDT
    Howling Blast costs 1F,1U. We can't control what other sites post, so please always take them with a grain of salt. (And sadly sometimes even ours is out of date.)

    Obliterate will often be better vs. single targets and Howling Blast will often be better for groups, especially when they are out of melee range. Howling Blast may also be better in situations where you only have Frost Fever up. Your exact talent allocation may skew one slightly ahead of the other.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 42. Re: Feedback on all specs after todays patch.   08/22/2008 10:07:07 AM PDT
    All DK abilities scale off of AP.

    Don't worry about the healing threat from Blood Aura. It's intended to be a benefit not a kiss / curse mechanic

    If the dps from different trees is out of line, we will continue to adjust the numbers. Many of the things being decried as nerfs were bug fixes, and some things that are being accused of buffs have always worked the way they do now. Just try out the abilities and see what works and what still needs work.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 10. Re: Change back Chinas of Ice Animation   08/22/2008 03:53:01 PM PDT
    It just looked dumb having someone walking along dragging that big set of crystals and chains with them. It worked better when Chains of Ice had a root. Hopefully the art in there at the moment is not the one we'll ship with. :)
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 1. Re: Honestly Merciless Combat needs a revisio   08/22/2008 10:12:56 AM PDT
    The funny thing is the only change to this talent (IIRC) was increasing it from 20% to 35% to bring it line with similar talents and abilities. Mobs at 20% (or even 35%) don't last long these days. I think people are just starting to discover what Frost can do, though improvements like Rime and a lower CD on Howling Blast definitely help.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 3. Re: Windfury Totem > Imp. Icy Talons?   08/22/2008 10:11:28 AM PDT
    Imp Icy Talons and WF Totem are alternatives to achieve the same haste benefit.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 6. Re: Double Rune Cost - Should be Double Runic   08/21/2008 05:02:58 PM PDT
    While Obliterate generates half as much runic power as 2 Heart Strikes, it does its damage twice as quickly too. Putting more damage per GCD is almost always beneficial. If Obliterate did more damage and runic power per GCD, it feels like there would never be a choice about using it and talents like Death Rune Mastery might start to feel underpowered.

    We can try increasing double rune abilities to generate 15 runic power, though I have the standard concern that runic power will be too easy to generate, especially with Death Coil and Frost Strike at 40.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 56. Re: 8820 unholy feedback   08/21/2008 10:28:08 PM PDT
    Not sure what is up with the Ghouls. That ability mix seems strange. They are not supposed to be up permanently. That's what Night of the Dead is for. Ghouls have always had the ability to Explode though.

    Master of Ghouls was only ever intended to have a pet bar for players that wanted extra control over exactly what the Ghoul did. Hence 1 talent point.

    Corpse Explosion is supposed to be Nature damage. That's just a bug.

    Bone Shield and the other two tanking abilities are supposed to be short cooldown buffs you can throw on yourself, like Icebound Fortitude. They aren't intended to be permanently up as passive mitigation. We are going to keep tweaking the numbers until they are approximately equal but because they do such different things, that isn't just simple math.

    We raised the cooldown on Army of the Dead because we found tanks were basically waiting for it to do any boss pulls. It's supposed to be an emergency ability, not something you bust out every fight.

    From looking at other forums, it sounds like several abilities for all classes are broken. We don't do a ton of testing on them because we want to get stuff out in a timely fashion, but with so many people pouring so much content into the game at once, it can sometimes happen. :(
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 27. Re: Frost Tweaks   08/21/2008 04:51:19 PM PDT
    Integrating Hungering Cold into a standard rotation hasn't a big design goal for us. It's designed more for emergencies and special cases. I don't think we'd want to give DKs an ability to do a massive group freeze every pull. We think making a decision between Frost Strike and Hungering Cold is fine.

    We lowered the cooldown on Howling Blast and it's possible we can lower it some more. But it hits big and crits bigger, so if we got to the point where you were throwing out 3 a rotation, that would be bad (though not for the DK). I think in this case, having it hit hard is more fun than having it hit often. We aren't trying to design the trees so that e.g. Frost never uses Obliterate. They are the exact same cost for a reason. The only exceptions are Heart Strike and Scourge Strike which are intended to completely replace thier analogs.

    Having finally made Frost Strike fun on runic power, I don't think we'd be likely to change it again. It was an unloved button for too long. Now I generally only hear complaints about Scourge Strike (which I think we solved) and possibly Icy Touch and Deathstrike (and maybe Obliterate) not doing enough damage.

    Frost can already Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Howling Cold -> Obliterate with Blood of the North, so I'm not sure why their rotations feel any more awkward than anyone else's. But feel free to enlighten me if I'm just missing something.

    It is entirely possible that Frost's dps just can't keep up, which would be a lot of fun to fix up by letting Icy Touch and friends hit a lot harder. Frost used to be a blast for big crits (esp. against wounded targets) so I'm not sure why it fell out of grace except that Blood started doing a lot / too much damage.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 14. Re: Why am I all green?   08/21/2008 10:46:42 PM PDT
    We have no idea where the +green came from. Enjoy it (or not) while you can. :)
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 2. Re: Death knight tanking impressions   07/28/2008 05:34:04 PM PDT
    Useful feedback. Thanks. :)

    I don't know if this was true in your situation, but one thing I have noticed is that the death knights who have leveled quickly tend to be grouping with veteran characters in epic gear. It's tough to test threat generation of a death knight in Shadowmoon quest blues against dps classes in T4 or better gear.

    If you're getting trounced by Ingvar, that is probably a problem with the dungeon and not the guys you're running with. The earlier instances need to be reasonably easy, especially since a lot of players will be running them in Borean Tundra greens.

    We haven't made a big pass comparing threat, dps and mitigation among all the classes yet, frankly because the abilities haven't stabilized enough yet. Fortunately with the death knight in particular, there are a lot of knobs to turn.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 14. Re: Rune Strike:   08/21/2008 10:16:02 PM PDT
    It sounds like the data is older than I thought. It should be off the GCD and any melee ability should benefit from AP and other melee stats.

    It's a fun ability.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 1. Re: Talent Coherency and Death Knight tanking   08/06/2008 11:48:03 PM PDT
    It's definitely a different approach than we've tried before.

    But here's the problem with those existing tanking trees: not many warriors or paladins want to go into those protection trees, so there are a lot of 4-player groups out there wishing they could run an instance but unable to find a tank. And even if there were a lot of prot warriors and paladins, there is a math problem because a 5-player run needs 1 tank but a 25-player run doesn't need 5 tanks. A potential prot warrior might not see the point of taking up the shield knowing that some percentage of prot tanks will have to give up that role in order to get into the raid.

    We chose the death knight as the new class partially to address that tanking shortage. We feared that having Frost be a traditional protection tree might flood the realms with even more dps specs looking for groups.

    So we thought maybe it's time to try a different approach: Let a tank choose what kind of abilities they want access to, while still giving them access to enough tanking talents to do their job. While every tanking warrior worth her salt has Shield Slam, Imp Shield Block and Last Stand, none of them has Mortal Strike (at least not since MC and BWL), or Imp Execute or Flurry. A death knight can be a tank, yet some death knight tanks will have Howling Blast and some will have Heart Strike. A death knight tank that gets a little bored with his spec can try a completely different one and still tank. A warrior tank trying a different spec gets very limited options, like whether he wants Improved Revenge or how many points to put into Imp Defensive Stance.

    The point isn't that ALL death knights will be amazing and effortless tanks regardless of talents, but that there will have some variety in what talents the tanks do pick up. All Frost tanks will get Unbreakable Armor for the armor and parry, but maybe some will take Deathchill and some will take Killing Machine. Maybe that will convince them to tank a little longer. If not, maybe the possibility of spec'ing into Unholy and having to change up their play style will keeping them interested.

    Bottom line: maybe the DK style of tanking trees will be more fun and encourage more players to try tanking out.

    (I'm excluding druids because they actually do pretty well swapping from tanking to dps with one spec, but then again it is still pretty much one spec.)

    Side note: clearly there are some things we can do to make tanking more fun for all classes, and those are discussions we are taking very seriously.

    I hope this does not come off as dismissive or defensive. It's a totally valid question you're asking, so I wanted to try to give you a glimpse of our logic here.
    Illifar
    Player
    • 0. Feedback on all specs after todays patch.   08/21/2008 11:11:05 PM PDT
    After playing all three specs today post-patch, I figured I'd post what I've noticed so far.

    Blood

    Overall, nerfed. After logging in, I couldn't figure out what changed that made my survivability so different from before. Apparently the change to bloodworms and reducing the health we get back from blood presence(not aura) was enough. I'd say it still has the most solo survivability of the three.

    Blood worms: Nerfing the proc rate was fine, and fixing the amount of healing was fine, but together make it 3 wasted points. They used to heal you, now they just aggro @*#% and get in your way.

    Blood Aura: I never had this talent, partly because I didn't group as blood, partly because it reset all the time before, but this seems like another over nerf. 2% of damage done is really, really crappy.

    Heart Strike: Eh...not that big of a deal.

    Might of Mograine: I guess this was overdue. Obliterate seems like more of an option instead of a necessity.

    Blood Boil: I love the new blood boil, it's amazing. Great change.

    Unholy

    Shortly after I logged in I went to tank Utgarde as unholy. I was excited to see the changes to Unholy Blight since they appear great, but found it to be a nuisance.

    Unholy Blight: Seems like you overdid it, like the change to Death Coil RP cost last patch, and most of the changes to blood this patch. You're always so close to the perfect balance. The changes to unholy blight look great, till you pull with 0 RP. We can't generate enough RP from using all 6 runes to put up UB or even a death coil. That leaves 10 seconds of auto attacking. No runes, no RP, you're a sitting duck. Any time I pulled from scratch, one of the DPS had a good chance of pulling aggro.

    On a side note, was RP generation changed again this patch? Seems slower.

    Bone Armor: I never looked at this as something that should be up all the time, but a 1 minute cooldown is a bit much. Maybe 5 charges or 45 second cooldown.

    Ghouls: I'm sure there's enough feedback elsewhere on the forums. They're weird.

    Scourge Strikes new icon is pretty sweets.

    Night of the Dead: I didn't even try this because it looks bugged/useless. "Your next 10 plaguestrikes and scourge strikes lower the cooldown of raise dead by 30/1m". Your next 10? No cooldown shown? What? Not sure what's going on here, maybe someone who's tried it after the patch can explain.

    Unholy Command: I know you've said you just sort of push the patches when you feel like you have enough content to make a patch, but removing our taunts and then having a talent to increase a new taunt we don't even have....I dunno. Would be nice to hear what Demand does.

    Frost
    Honestly seems like the other specs were heavily nerfed and Frost was buffed a ton so we would all test it. Yes, pre-patch it was pretty weak, but now people are calling it the new Ret.

    I won't go in to details, a lot of people are testing Frost now with the changes and there should be sufficient feedback from someone more interested in the spec. Overall, Frost got too much love and Blood/Unholy got a lot of tough love.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 1. Re: Feedback on all specs after todays patch.   08/21/2008 11:50:46 PM PDT
    Thanks for the feedback.


    Q u o t e:
    Blood Aura: I never had this talent, partly because I didn't group as blood, partly because it reset all the time before, but this seems like another over nerf. 2% of damage done is really, really crappy.


    Two percent... to the entire raid.


    Q u o t e:
    Unholy Blight: Seems like you overdid it, like the change to Death Coil RP cost last patch, and most of the changes to blood this patch. You're always so close to the perfect balance. The changes to unholy blight look great, till you pull with 0 RP. We can't generate enough RP from using all 6 runes to put up UB or even a death coil. That leaves 10 seconds of auto attacking. No runes, no RP, you're a sitting duck. Any time I pulled from scratch, one of the DPS had a good chance of pulling aggro.


    I wouldn't always pull with Unholy Blight if that's what you mean. Six Runes generally = 50 RP. Death Coil = 40 RP. That assumes no talents to improve generation.


    Q u o t e:
    On a side note, was RP generation changed again this patch? Seems slower.


    It's exactly the same except for a buff to one of the runic power generating talents. Death Coil and Frost Strike are cheaper.

    Night of the Dead: I didn't even try this because it looks bugged/useless. "Your next 10 plaguestrikes and scourge strikes lower the cooldown of raise dead by 30/1m". Your next 10? No cooldown shown? What? Not sure what's going on here, maybe someone who's tried it after the patch can explain.

    Look at the cooldown on Rais Dead. After 1 Plague Strike, the cooldown goes down to 4.5 min. After another Plague Strike, it goes down to 4 min. After 10 Plague Strikes, you can use Raise Dead again and Army of the Dead only has a 10 min cooldown.



    Q u o t e:
    Frost
    Honestly seems like the other specs were heavily nerfed and Frost was buffed a ton so we would all test it. Yes, pre-patch it was pretty weak, but now people are calling it the new Ret.


    Ah you give us too much credit for planning all these things out. Actually, not much changed to affect Frost's damage IIRC. The big changes were a new talent to buff some Frost spells, more damage on Icy Touch, a lower cooldown on Howling Blast and raising Merciless Combat to 35% from 20%. But perhaps I forgot something.

    Demand (or whatever it's called now) = Taunt.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 3. Re: Are DKs going to get a new Taunt skill?   08/21/2008 04:57:53 PM PDT
    Pestilence still spreads diseases.

    Blood Boil does damage to an area per disease. It is very similar to Blood Strike, but affects an area (and doesn't hit as hard as a result). Making it a more core ability let us tie more talents to it. Pestilence and Blood Boil play really nice together.

    We gave DKs a new taunt and changed Death Grip to work like Mocking Blow (it makes the target attack you, but doesn't change your threat).

    As we started dealing with tanking some more, we were worried that a druid and warrior-like taunt is just too fundamental a tool. Because Death Grip has some massive PvP implications, we risked the DK taunt getting pushed to a longer cooldown if we ever needed to change Death Grip. The old Blood Boil would always be awkward to use as a taunt since it required one or two attacks before it to really work.

    At the moment there is no true Challenging Shout, but Army of the Dead is pretty good for using in those situations because the ghouls all taunt, which will save any healers or casters in trouble. It is probably an overpowered ability currently, but at least you won't be disappointed when you hit 80.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 27. Re: Frost Tweaks   08/21/2008 04:51:19 PM PDT
    Integrating Hungering Cold into a standard rotation hasn't a big design goal for us. It's designed more for emergencies and special cases. I don't think we'd want to give DKs an ability to do a massive group freeze every pull. We think making a decision between Frost Strike and Hungering Cold is fine.

    We lowered the cooldown on Howling Blast and it's possible we can lower it some more. But it hits big and crits bigger, so if we got to the point where you were throwing out 3 a rotation, that would be bad (though not for the DK). I think in this case, having it hit hard is more fun than having it hit often. We aren't trying to design the trees so that e.g. Frost never uses Obliterate. They are the exact same cost for a reason. The only exceptions are Heart Strike and Scourge Strike which are intended to completely replace thier analogs.

    Having finally made Frost Strike fun on runic power, I don't think we'd be likely to change it again. It was an unloved button for too long. Now I generally only hear complaints about Scourge Strike (which I think we solved) and possibly Icy Touch and Deathstrike (and maybe Obliterate) not doing enough damage.

    Frost can already Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Howling Cold -> Obliterate with Blood of the North, so I'm not sure why their rotations feel any more awkward than anyone else's. But feel free to enlighten me if I'm just missing something.

    It is entirely possible that Frost's dps just can't keep up, which would be a lot of fun to fix up by letting Icy Touch and friends hit a lot harder. Frost used to be a blast for big crits (esp. against wounded targets) so I'm not sure why it fell out of grace except that Blood started doing a lot / too much damage
    .
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 5. Re: Obliterate and pve   08/21/2008 10:38:08 PM PDT
    Obliterate should not wipe anyone else's diseases. That's not a fun dynamic.

    In general, the references to "diseases" on the death knight should refer to your diseases. We get weird scaling problems when it doesn't. Part of our push is to get lots of different classes into groups, so having DKs want to bring more DKs along works against that.
    Ghostcrawler
    Blizzard Poster
    • 25. Re: [Suggestion] Upgrade Scourge Strike   08/19/2008 07:13:39 PM PDT
    We will probably add an Unholy talent to reliably generate Death Runes. That has proven to be a pretty fun mechanic. At the moment it would probably really only benefit a DK with Bone Shield and / or Corpse Explosion.

    The idea of having Scourge Strike be an Obliterate upgrade has come up a few times, and it does have some benefits (especially if you do something like have Scourge Strike not remove diseases). It does turn Unholy into a rotation a little like Frost though, with the double FU ability on every other rotation.

    I have had trouble figuring out how Scourge Strike as BU would work. It would be nice on times when you had Death Runes, but with a normal rotation, I'm concerned you'd see something like:
    Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Scourge Strike -> Blood Strike... er Icy Touch again?

    You'd have a similar problem with the proposal to have Scourge Strike renew Frost Fever. Freeing up a Frost Rune doesn't help you that much unless you want to Chains of Ice.

    There is also an idea to make Scourge Strike FU but apply both diseases. Then you could do Scourge Strike -> Blood Strike -> Blood Strike -> Obliterate, at least when in melee.

    But... Heart Strike is pretty fun as a pure replacement for Blood Strike, so there is also a pretty decent reason to leave Scourge Strike as is. :)

    Blue post by Ghostcrawler 07/31/2008

    We're almost ready to show the updated death knight talent tree. It was quite an overhaul but we're pretty excited about it. In case the talent trees go out before a new data push, I wanted to explain what we're trying to do here.

    We revamped the DK to have a standard rotation that used all the runes intelligently. Then we tweaked a lot of other abilities to be able to swap out one for another with similar rune costs. Some talented abilities can be used situationally for this purpose, while others just flat out replace one of the core abilities. I don't want to give the impression that "standard rotation" means the DK loses all its depth (or that the game forces you to use this rotation at all). On the contrary it feels like you are making an intelligent decision about what to do next instead of just randomly pounding abilities when they light up.

    1) Icy Touch -- 1 Frost -- Pull a mob and get a Frost Fever disease on it.
    2) Plague Strike -- 1 Unholy -- Get a Blood Plague disease on the enemy.
    3) Blood Strike -- 1 Blood -- Do extra damage for getting both diseases up.
    4) Blood Strike -- 1 Blood -- Do extra damage for getting both diseases up.
    5) Obliterate -- 1 Frost, 1 Unholy -- Your diseases are going to expire soon, so time for a big hit.
    6) Death Coil -- Runic Power -- You probably have enough Runic Power by now.

    Those are the basics, but you can swap out those moves as you see fit. If you're wounded, instead of Obliterate for Step 5, you can Death Strike instead for the same cost. Or you can Chains of Ice. Or Howling Blast. If you are deep Blood, you can Heart Strike instead of Blood Strike for bigger damage and an all new debuff. If you are deep Frost, you can use Blood of the North to earn 2 Death Runes and then get 2 Obliterates next time around. Or you can Frost Strike instead of Death Coil, especially if the target is really wounded and you also have Merciless Combat.