Source: WorldofRaids.com

(I’m having some trouble formatting the text, if you’re having trouble reading it, please check out the Forum Post.)

Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.

Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.

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 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

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 5/10/15%. 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 30% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

If you were hoping Dual Wield will make a comeback.. we may actually be surprised!

“Next major patch.”  is our response to a plea by Erregant from Terenas.

There is no more info at this time, so we can only speculate to what changes may come our way. But if you were missing the flailing of your 1handers – pull them outta the bank and sharpen them. Your time may come sooner than later~

Crazy week for Azeroth! Yogg-Saron has been killed in 10 and 25man versions of the instance, many hotfixes had to be pushed through for certain encounters to work, the masses are either thrilled or angry at the latest changes… But, hey what else is new?

There are now 2 Yogg videos available (there may be more out by now but I haven’t seen them yet), one by The Legacy in a healer’s perspective, and another by Epicfabriken as a Ret Paladin. Inner Sanctum has had some world first Hard Modes down already!! Grats to them – hard mode is hard! (seriously. have totally seen the 10man versions of some of them. >.< )

The Blue Boss this week has some things to say about Death Strike, Dual Wield, and Gargoyle~

Can we please get some feedback on the status of buffing a dual wield build for us?

This is one of those categories, like the Conflag nerf, that we feel like you have options. We needed to kill the DW spec where you pretty much ignore weapons and just try and proc big spells. That was not the DW DK style we wanted. We felt like we had a choice between OP DW DKs and no DW DKs and thought the second was a more acceptable risk.

As we have explained, one of our ideas long term is to give Frost a couple of DW talents. It might not take much more than “Your Frost Striks and Oblits now hit with two weapons.” Having 3 tanking and PvP trees is challenging enough. Expanding that matrix by also having DW Blood PvP and DW Unholy tanking gets to the insane level. But having DW Frost PvP, DW Frost PvE and DW Frost tanking (only) may be more manageable. We are not at all sure if this is the approach we will use, but it’s an idea.

DKs were overpowered in a few ways. Fixing that was more important thank keeping DW at equal dps to 2H. That does not mean we have given up on DW for DKs in the same way that we no longer support 2H for Enhancement shamans.

Q u o t e:
I think it’s time to drop the “Let DKs be able to tank/DPS/PvP with any spec” thing. Other classes don’t seem to follow that design, I don’t understand why DKs need to. If each tree had a focus, then it’d be a lot easier to balance DKs.

It would also be a lot less interesting. We don’t like the trees being that narrow for any class. Arms vs. Fury or Arcane vs. Fire or whatever should be a style choice, not what you pick for a certain role in the game. It’s going to take some time to get everything there, but it’s something we want to do.

Q u o t e:
I understand your situation, but please don’t kill Frost 2H. I feel for the dual wielding death knights, but I don’t want my spec killed in the process.

Absolutely. We would not turn Frost into a DW tree. We would just make sure all DW DKs were Frost. And again, this is just an idea. We may reject it for some reason. As I have said many times, we want DKs to be a class that uses 2H or DW. We do not want DW to dominate, as it typically does in classes that have that option.

Q u o t e:
What’s wrong with a spec of DKs that has an emphasis spell damage?

Some spell damage is fine, and an interesting niche for them, but they are designed primarily as a melee class. When you face Arthas, I guarantee he is going to hit you hard with Frostmourne.

Could you please hotfix summon gargoyle? According to the tooltip it’s supposed to last a maximum of 40 seconds, and only lasts 25. It was like that for well over a month on the PTR, and never addressed.

Gargoyle is working as intended. Because of the way it works some of the tooltips are never going to be totally accurate. To be honest. the entire spell is a little complex and I’m not sure we get much from that complexity. We have discussed changing it to something simpler (like no RP over time or something).

Death Strike Healing Nerf Announcement

We hotfixed a change to the amount of healing provided by Death Strike.

Originally, this ability was something you would use only situationally to heal yourself at a cost of damage. Since then we have redesigned the death knight class sufficiently to where Death Strike was a major rotational ability for Blood. Given how much the attack is hitting for, we think the amount of healing it provided was too much.

Healing still scales based on diseases and the damage is unchanged. Blood retains its other tools to heal.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend in Northrend!!

PS:  Funny thread on Blues and how they evade telling their guilds they are blues!

Get your addons, spec choices, flasks and excitement ready – 3.1 is Coming tomorrow, April 14!!

Check out the Ulduar Preview page to check out some of the new features being implemented, as well as the new trailer. Some realms will be having extended maintenance, the list is here, and the same thread holds the truth to 3.1 coming out tomorrow if you are doubtful. This also marks the end of Season 5 of the arenas! For those ready to battleground on the fly – please be aware of any issues you may encounter. Anyone who is an Addon developer – take notice of the implementation of the new Addon Policies in the near future!

If 3.1 is getting you down – please enter the Plaguechill.com  Contest!! Prizes and laughs make for happy times

See you in Ulduar!! <3

Sources:  MMO-Champion & World of Raids

Source

As posted by Gorgrom in the Dual Wield forums, our friend Bornakk over at blizz has made an interesting post about the future of our DK trees, specifically in reference to dual wielding.

We want both dual wielding and 2-handers to be viable for Death Knights, balancing both of these inside each tree has been exceptionally challenging and caused an issue or two. If we have to make it so DKs have one type of fighting, it will be the 2-handers.

We are considering something like making the frost tree the dual-wield tree, so some frost specific abilities would hit with both weapons through that tree only, and then have unholy/blood as 2-hand focused. Nothing is set in stone though.

According to some latest Blue Posts, there are some major changes coming to Flasks in 3.1!

Flask duration will be changed to 1 Hour – Mixologists will get 2 hours out of their flasks. Creating flasks will yield 2 Flasks instead of 1 – so you will still get a minimum of 2 hours worth of flasks at the current mat cost. Flasks will now stack to 20 instead of 5 cause of this change – get ready to fill your bags with more purples! =D

According to Bornakk, these changes were made to offer more flexibility in raiding times, as people were raiding around their flask durations. This also makes flasks more attractive for Battlegrounds and Dungeon use! So what do you think about this? Is it time to hold onto your Frost Lotus?

Honestly it’s not a big deal ~ As soon as 3.1 hits, our current flasks will change into “Mixtures” that can be converted to 2 new flasks with 1 Hour durations! And anymore Flasks created  post-3.1 will yield the new flasks with 1Hour duration~

Personally, I think this is a great change. I know sometimes we end the raiding night with plenty of time left on our Flasks, either cause we went into overtime and need to reflask, or maybe cause we’re ending early. Most people feel punished when this happens, cause they “Just wasted a Flask”.  I think with shorter durations, people will feel more comfortable about reflasking for the raid. I don’t think I will be using them for dungeons, but I could see myself grabbing some resilience flasks for a day of PvP. Either way~ I am looking forward to this change!

Source: MMO-Champion

Death Knight

Frost

• Frost Presence now reduces damage taken by 5%. (Old – Reduces spell damage taken by 10%)
• Guile of Gorefiend now Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Blood Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast and Obliterate abilities by 15/30/45%, and increases the duration of your Icebound Fortitude by 2 secs. (Old – Increased all damage done by these abilities by 5/10/15%)
• Unbreakable Armor now reduces all damage from attacks. (Old – Only physical damage)
• Improved Frost Presence now decrease the damage done to you by 1/2% while in Frost Presence. (Old – Reduced spell damage done to you while in Frost Presence by 2/4%)

Unholy

• Death Strike now deals 75% weapon damage (up from 60% weapon damage), additional damage increased as well. (From 178.2 to 222.75 for Rank 5)
• Desecration is now also caused by Scourge Strike.
• Vicious Strikes doesn’t affect Death Strike anymore.

Blood

• Dancing Rune Weapon now lasts 10 sec plus 1 sec per 5 additional runic power, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage. Cooldown reduced from 3 min to 1.5 min.
• Will of the Necropolis now affects damage that would take you below 35% health or taken while you are at 35% health. (Old – Only damage that would take you below 35% health)
• Might of Mograine now increases the critical strike damage damage bonus of your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, and Heart Strike abilities by 15/30/45%. (Old – Increased damage of all these abilities and Obliterate for 3/7/10%)
• Improved Death Strike now Increases the damage of your Death Strike by 15/30% and increases its critical strike chance by 3/6%.
• Bloody Strikes now Increases the damage of Blood Strike and Heart Strike by 15/30/45%, and increases the damage of Blood Boil by 10/20/30%. (Down from 20/40/60%)
• Spell Deflection now give you a chance equal to your Parry chance of taking 15/30/45% (up from 10/20/30%) less damage from a direct damage spell.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Blood Boil has been removed.
• Glyph of Heart Strike added – Your Heart Strike also reduces the movement speed of your target by 50% for 5 sec.
• Glyph of Unbreakable Armor -  Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 20%. (Up from 1%)
• Glyph of Death Strike – Increases your Death Strike’s damage by 2% for every 2 runic power you currently have (up to a maximum of 25%). The runic power is not consumed by this effect. (Old – Increased your Death Strike’s damage by 1% for every 5 runic power you currently have.)

Set Bonuses:

• Item – Death Knight T8 Melee 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) — Increases the critical strike chance of Death Coil and Frost Strike by 5%.
• Item – Death Knight T8 Melee 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) — Increases the bonus damage done per disease by 20% on Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate, and Scourge Strike.
• Item – Death Knight T8 Tank 2P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) — Increases the damage done by Rune Strike by 5%.
• Item – Death Knight T8 Tank 4P Bonus (Class: Death Knight) — Anti-magic shell also grants you 10% reduction to physical damage taken.

Latest Build 9658 of the PTR has just been released. Source: MMO-Champion

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)

Here is also the latest Blue Post video provided by BlizzardBluePosts on Youtube!

The source for the Death Knight video commentary is Here.

UPDATE: Undocumented changes! Source: MMO-Champion

• Rune of the Fallen Crusader — Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase total Strength by 15% (down from 30%) for 15 sec.

• Glyph of Strangulate — Reduces the cooldown of your Strangulate by 20 sec. (Down from 30 sec.)
• Glyph of Death Coil — Increases the damage done by Death Coil by 15%. (Old – Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power.)