World of Warcraft
Article published 10th April 2010, 22:18 by DY357LX and last updated 10th April 2010, 22:18
WoW: Death Knight Cataclysm Changes Announced.
What to expect for Death Knights.
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| Rune System Changes
While the current system works overall, Blizzard plans to make a few changes to help Death Knights feel a bit less constrained. Below is a rundown of the rationale behind the changes and an explanation of the changes. * Any time a rune is sitting idle a Death Knight is losing damage. * Death Knights have to wait until the runes are fully active, if they spend anytime even considering anything the rune is basically wasted. Missing an attack is devasting and it's impossible to "save" resources. * Each ability on it's own has a very low impact making Death Knights "seem weak". Players are even more heavily affected if you have high latency or your timing is even off by a little. * The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"  , rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.
New Spells * Outbreak (81) Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows Death Knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled. * Necrotic Strike (83) Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the Death Knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health. This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when Death Knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect. * Dark Simulacrum (85) The Death Knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the Death Knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either. Changes & New Talents * Cataclysm will introduce massive changes to how Death Knights' talent trees work. The biggest change is in the Blood tree - it will no longer be a DPS/Tank hybrid, but tank alone, much like the Protection tree for Warriors and Paladins. It will offer more talents for threat and survivability (e.g. attack power reduction), as well as self-healing. Some fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved to Blood, to allow Blood tanks to spend a similar number of points in their tanking tree as the other tanking specs. In addition to this, Frost and Unholy will no longer have tanking capabilities. Both will be DPS only specs, with the main difference being in the damage focus. Frost DKs will concentrate much more on dual wielding and runic power attacks, while Unholy DKs will power their ghoul(s) and improve the diseases' damage. * Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy. * The plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy. Mastery Bonuses Blood * Damage Reduction * Vengeance - Every time the Death Knight takes damage, he or she will gain (up to) 5% of the damage taken as attack power. This buff will stack to (up to) 10% of the Death Knight's maximum un-buffed health. * Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage. Frost * Melee Damage * Melee Haste * Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing. Unholy * Melee Damage * Melee and Spell Critical Damage * Disease Damage: Unholy Death Knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style. |
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