Old Blue Posts:
This is an archive of some of the blue posts that have pertained to Death Knights, I probably have missed a lot of them but here is some of this information:
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.
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.
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
TimbalandHowling 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.
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.
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.
- 4. Re: Block 09/30/2008 11:30:45 PM PDT
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.
- 12. Re: DK weakest tanks? 10/02/2008 12:02:47 AM PDT
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.
- 80. Re: Icy Touch does an insane amount of dmg no 10/01/2008 11:52:40 PM PDT
- 43. Re: Death Knight Changes (Build 9012) 09/30/2008 08:42:39 PM PDT
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.
- 0. Upcoming Death Knight Changes 09/17/2008 12:22:01 AM PDT
-- 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.
- 35. Re: Current List of DK Concerns: 09/16/2008 12:09:52 AM PDT
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.
- 11. Re: Master of Ghouls? 09/12/2008 11:04:32 AM PDT
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.
- 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.)
- 4. Re: Howling Blast - Definitive Answer Please 08/22/2008 10:00:01 AM PDT
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.
- 42. Re: Feedback on all specs after todays patch. 08/22/2008 10:07:07 AM PDT
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.
- 10. Re: Change back Chinas of Ice Animation 08/22/2008 03:53:01 PM PDT
- 1. Re: Honestly Merciless Combat needs a revisio 08/22/2008 10:12:56 AM PDT
- 3. Re: Windfury Totem > Imp. Icy Talons? 08/22/2008 10:11:28 AM PDT
- 6. Re: Double Rune Cost - Should be Double Runic 08/21/2008 05:02:58 PM PDT
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.
- 56. Re: 8820 unholy feedback 08/21/2008 10:28:08 PM PDT
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. :(
- 27. Re: Frost Tweaks 08/21/2008 04:51:19 PM PDT
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.
- 14. Re: Why am I all green? 08/21/2008 10:46:42 PM PDT
- 2. Re: Death knight tanking impressions 07/28/2008 05:34:04 PM PDT
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.
- 14. Re: Rune Strike: 08/21/2008 10:16:02 PM PDT
It's a fun ability.
- 1. Re: Talent Coherency and Death Knight tanking 08/06/2008 11:48:03 PM PDT
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.
- 0. Feedback on all specs after todays patch. 08/21/2008 11:11:05 PM PDT
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.
- 1. Re: Feedback on all specs after todays patch. 08/21/2008 11:50:46 PM PDT
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.
- 3. Re: Are DKs going to get a new Taunt skill? 08/21/2008 04:57:53 PM PDT
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.
- 27. Re: Frost Tweaks 08/21/2008 04:51:19 PM PDT
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.
- 5. Re: Obliterate and pve 08/21/2008 10:38:08 PM PDT
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.
- 25. Re: [Suggestion] Upgrade Scourge Strike 08/19/2008 07:13:39 PM PDT
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.