Death Knight PvP in MoP

[Brewski]

I'm an avid PvP'er and that's all I do. I love arena, RBG's, strategies, etc. I've always played rogues, but they aren't appealing to me anymore for some reason. When I look at the death knight class I see a leader of everything and center of attention, always on the front lines controlling the game. I already decided I'm coming back to WoW and rolling a DK to aim for gladiator in MoP. The question is are DK's becoming more appealing or are they going to remain neutral? Do you see them as becoming better than they are now or are they being changed in a bad way? I haven't really done research about DK's in MoP and I wouldn't be able to compare and contrast anyways. Cheers.

[SoldierStevens]

I'm quite curious about DKs in MoP as well. In particular, I want to know how Frost is doing with Death's Advance and Runic Corruption... and 35 second Death Grip, since you can't possibly give up Lichborne heals for a 20 second Death Grip with the Icy Grip talent... can you? =\

[Deleted]

It is too early to tell, if you aren't familiar with the current state of DKs on beta, I can tell you they are a complete mess and will probably undergo many changes before live. I love playing DK though and right now they are ok.

[Maxweii]

I'm quite curious about DKs in MoP as well. In particular, I want to know how Frost is doing with Death's Advance and Runic Corruption... and 35 second Death Grip, since you can't possibly give up Lichborne heals for a 20 second Death Grip with the Icy Grip talent... can you? =\

Well based on some changes this might be a little differently approached. Although, since the tool tip only says allies, this might be diff in live or even in Beta but for now let's assume this is usable on you too. Glyph of Death Coil as worded right now and if usable on yourself, would be great not only in PvE for tanks (know a big magical hit is inc and AMS is on CD? spam this for a bubble), but in PvP it might replace Lichborne for the healing purpose at least. Yeah you would get rid of the immunity to charm fear sleep, but maybe the decreased time between grips along with the slow on the enemy would help balance that since you have yourself a bubble, it may not be a heal but it may be enough of a bubble to give you time to close in and get that last attack in.

I agree though Frost with Death's Advance and Runic Corruption has got to be scary... combine that with the 20 sec grip with a slow, and then the 90 talent of Remorseless Winter.. Depending on the situation that could lead to a huge nuke on a target.

Then again, that does have to balance it out with losing the immunity, with AMS always giving RP, spamming DC on yourself could possibly be a huge bubble when facing a mage. Bah, I want to test this out now.

[Baphomette]

I'm quite curious about DKs in MoP as well. In particular, I want to know how Frost is doing with Death's Advance and Runic Corruption... and 35 second Death Grip, since you can't possibly give up Lichborne heals for a 20 second Death Grip with the Icy Grip talent... can you? =\

Lichborne is a primarily a CC break for Frost. It really doesn't heal that much without the talents, glyphs, and high AP/Strength of the other two specs.

[JGWentworth]

Well based on some changes this might be a little differently approached. Although, since the tool tip only says allies, this might be diff in live or even in Beta but for now let's assume this is usable on you too. Glyph of Death Coil as worded right now and if usable on yourself, would be great not only in PvE for tanks (know a big magical hit is inc and AMS is on CD? spam this for a bubble), but in PvP it might replace Lichborne for the healing purpose at least. Yeah you would get rid of the immunity to charm fear sleep, but maybe the decreased time between grips along with the slow on the enemy would help balance that since you have yourself a bubble, it may not be a heal but it may be enough of a bubble to give you time to close in and get that last attack in.

I agree though Frost with Death's Advance and Runic Corruption has got to be scary... combine that with the 20 sec grip with a slow, and then the 90 talent of Remorseless Winter.. Depending on the situation that could lead to a huge nuke on a target.

Then again, that does have to balance it out with losing the immunity, with AMS always giving RP, spamming DC on yourself could possibly be a huge bubble when facing a mage. Bah, I want to test this out now.

As of now on beta you can't use the glyph of death coil on yourself

[ducklino]

anyone know if the spell "control undead" works on a enemy unholy dk pet? how long it lasts?

[Denalian]

Control Undead does not work at all in PvP, not on pets or Lichborne players.

[Tyrean]

Also on beta the self bubble on heal does not stack. One bubble, totally not worth it. I also agree that lichborne for Frost currently is not so much a heal as a fear break. I have to be almost RP capped and have all my runes for the lichborne cooldown to be any meaningful heal. It also loses its usefulness outside of solo play as you have healers to do that job for you.

I think right now in beta the DKs are falling behind the other classes. We are mostly untouched and that could either be because we are a newer class and they feel we are in a good spot, or they just have not gotten to us yet. Also, you can't give up chillbains for death's advance. The AoE slow and the root are too important for frost. I would actually rather have the improved strangulate from that tree, but chillbains is a must.

And runic corruption is not as good as runic empowerment for frost. You have very little haste as frost, so your runes are pretty close to 8.5-9 second cooldowns. With the absurd amount of frost strikes you can currently put out in beta (RP is flowing oh so much) you are better off use full rune recharges and using runes on oblit (hits pretty hard in beta) and all that RP on FS which gets you faster runes, etc.

Finally, the most awesome of all the top tier talents, remorseless winter, is weak in the sense that the stacking debuff that needs to be applied can be dispelled, so it is possible to negate the stun even with 8 second dispel cooldown with multiple healers (talking RBG mostly). I do think that DKs will be switching talents a lot based on map, for instance gorefiend's grasp will be good for cliff maps like Eye/AB, while remorseless winter will be good for flag maps and large scale clashes.

Right now on beta our glyphs are in a bad spot, they are still as boring as ever and doing pretty useless or mundane things. Who in their right mind would take the pillar glyph when it will root you in place for an absurd amount of time? No one has ever used that glyph EVER. AMS glyph is also pointless in beta because the revamped AMS already does that.

TLDR: Too early to tell if DKs will be strong in MoP. Doesn't look like Blizz has spent a whole lot of time on them yet.

[Deleted]

My frost DK just got copied to beta, so I didn't test much yet.

- Lichborn is mainly a CC breaker.
- I think Conversion is a much better heal than anything else. It has no CD, you can use it whenever you have runic power. My DK gets healed for 4400 every second, and you can keep this up for a very long time, if you don't use other abilities which consume RP. Only autoattacking a target dummy and not doing anything else healed my DK for 114k until Conversion stopped. Remember that you can still spam howling blast and plague strike as much as you want, just don't use frost strike. (did this test in unholy presence, much more powerful in frost presence, which probably also allows frost strike usage)
- Necrotic Stike now costs a Death Rune... I hope this never goes live.

[Pr0ev0lution]

- Necrotic Stike now costs a Death Rune... I hope this never goes live.

ouch that would be horrible for frost since we just plain don't have enough death runes to make necrotic strike useful then.

overall just by looking at talents and what not DKs look like they will be in a good place for pvp though looking at some things i can see nerfs which i think will come to remorseless winter its gonna be hit with all the tears that forced a cast time onto hungering cold. with the roughly 50k hits i don't see soul reaper lasting too long how it is either.

in terms of pvp i can't wait to hit lvl 90 and pop remorseless winter in a huge group (i'm thinking boss rooms of the 40 man bgs ) its gonna bring an interesting new dynamic to not only defending flag carriers but also killing them. though for flag carrying desecrated ground also looks damn nice

[rzy]

Hopefully they get removed from the game..

Infracted

[Deleted]

For those of you interested in this, serennia often streams beta frost DK on twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/serennia1/

He also has a feedback thread on the us forum:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4366248191

Didn't read all of it now, but he got a few things wrong, for example he writes:
-Necrotic Strike nerfs were pretty brutal. This ability will become unused if both the rune cost nerf and damage nerf remain. I really recommend that one of the 2 nerfs be reverted, either making it an unholy rune again and keeping it at 55% weapon damage or changing it to death rune cost and upping damage back up to 100%.

The rune cost change is clear and correct, it's a brutal nerf to necrotic, but the dmg numbers are something we should NOT be worried about atm.
My ilvl 410 Mace does 1002 dps on live, in beta it does 2005 dps. So what does this tell us?! If necrotic does 100% weapon dmg on live, and 55% weapon dmg in beta, it still got BUFFED in beta.

100% of 1002 = 1002 (live)
55% of 2005 = 1102 (beta) <-- it's a buff, not a nerf.

I just used the dps numbers for this calculation, of course the actual weapon dmg numbers matter for necrotic, but that doesn't change anything regarding of what I did want to show with this example. That's the theory part, though I don't know what else determines necrotic damage, as the very same DK indeed hits harder on live than in beta, on a target dummy.

Btw. I tested conversion in frost presence, left my DK alone, autoattacking a target dummy for 15 minutes. Conversion was still up and running when I returned... lol!

[Intrikat]

Besides talking about the current state of numbers certain attacks do.. certain moves in the talent tree do seem quite interesting for PvP. Gorefiend's Grasp for Blood PvP players pulling everyone in upon himself for some group CC. The lack of a snare shy's me away from this move personally. Remorseless Winter, my personal favorite so far, with a stacking debuff to reduce movement speed will be amazing in so many situations in Arena's and BG's. Last the Desecrated Ground, while the CD is a minute longer than the others, being able to have the CC immunity would perhaps keep you on a Healer for the final % and prevent you from being pealed off.

There's also Death Syphon, with a 40yd range, possibly being buffed from Unholy Mastery would also make Unholy PvP interesting