5.4 PTR DK Changes

[Nangz]

Item - Death Knight T16 Blood 2P Bonus (New) Every 4 Heart Strikes, Rune Strikes, or Blood Boils will add one charge to your next Bone Shield.
Item - Death Knight T16 Blood 4P Bonus (New) Dancing Rune Weapon will reactivate all Frost and Unholy runes as Death Runes, and make your next 4 Death Strikes free.
Item - Death Knight T16 DPS 2P Bonus (New) Killing Machine and Sudden Doom grant 500 Haste or Mastery, whichever is highest, for [ 200% of hnd + 4 ] sec, stacking up to 10 times.
Item - Death Knight T16 DPS 4P Bonus (New) Death Coil increases the duration of Dark Transformation by 1.5 sec per cast. Pillar of Frost increases rune regeneration speed by 100% while active.

Death Knight (Forums, Talent Calculator)
Blood
Dancing Rune Weapon Summons a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 12 sec, mirroring the Death Knight's attacks. The rune weapon also assists in defense of its master, granting an additional 20% parry chance while active. Requires Melee Weapon. Death Knight - Blood Spec. 60 Runic Power. 30 yd range. Instant. 1.5 min cooldown.

Unholy
Master of Ghouls The Ghoul summoned by your Raise Dead spell is considered a pet under your control. Unlike normal Death Knight Ghouls, your pet does not have a limited duration. Death Knight - Unholy Spec. Also reduces the cooldown of Raise Dead by 0 sec. Death Knight - Unholy Spec.

Major Glyphs
Enduring Infection Your diseases are undispellable, but their damage dealt is reduced by 30%. Major Glyph. Instant. 15%. Major Glyph. Instant.
Glyph of Enduring Infection Your diseases are undispellable, but their damage dealt is reduced by 30%. Major Glyph. 15%. Major Glyph.
Glyph of Mind Freeze Reduces the cooldown of your Mind Freeze ability by 2 1 sec, but also raises its cost by 20 Runic Power. Major Glyph. 10 Runic Power. Major Glyph.
Glyph of Outbreak Your Outbreak spell no longer has a cooldown, but now costs 40 Runic Power. Major Glyph. 30 Runic Power. Major Glyph.
Mind Freeze Reduces the cooldown of your Mind Freeze ability by 2 1 sec, but also raises its cost by 20 10 Runic Power. Major Glyph. Instant.

Feels like good overall changes. Concerns personally with regard to the 2 piece's interaction with the 4 piece for frost.

Really ecstatic about the blood tier bonuses and changes. Quite happy.

[Zatheyll]

I had doubts about the 4P Blood bonus but fell in love when I saw the DRW change to no RP. The 2P will be nice for better survival.

Frost 2 and 4P look beastly though.

[Maxweii]

Darn your quick posting :P but I understand <3 haha

I personally love all of this, sounds like a really nice set of bonuses. The 2 set on dps is pretty rng based, but OH MY the 4 set for Unholy sounds just godly.
Especially since I stack mastery and I spam DC a lot more then I should this will lead to just ENDLESS TIMMY

I cant wait to see the working on when its worth breaking the 4 set because that thing is awesome

[IRunSoFarAway]

Love the set bonuses, glad they got it right out of the gate unlike the current tier.

[Maxweii]

Love the set bonuses, glad they got it right out of the gate unlike the current tier.

Ugh I agree, I hated that we got jerked around a bit with what we might end up with. IMO overall we ended up with a decent set bonus (and way better then what it almost was)

[kalathoran]

right now most dk tanks are mastery as best secondary stat, i could see haste taking over for the 2 piece bc w/ the faster rune regen would allow for more of the attacks which would allow for more of the bone shield charges to be applied. i dont really see an advantage for a haste build w/ the 4 set so maybe not., either way, the extra dps would be nice

[Frolk]

Removing cost for DRW was very nice
And for "Item - Death Knight T16 Blood 2P Bonus (New) Every 4 Heart Strikes, Rune Strikes, or Blood Boils will add one charge to your next Bone Shield."
2 heart strikes, 1 rune strike and 1 blood boil will add a charge or Is it 4 of 1 spell that will give a charge to bone shield?

[Bawse]

I'm skeptical about the two piece for unholy. I'm at 11.8k haste rating, I feel global'd. The two piece should also include crit, and should also give two stacks for unholy as opposed to one. Considering KM procs more then SD.

Edit: Similar to how they removed the unholy damage component to the two piece t15, I think they should either give both unholy and 2h frost a higher amount of secondary stats per stack or give them more stacks per proc.

[Pouponu]

Oh man, that Frost 4P looks incredible but also very dangerous. Especially for already totally GCD capped 1h but even for 2h as well those will be a stressful but amazing 20 seconds! I'm guessing that both the 2P and the 4P are going to make all 2h Frost players start reforging away from haste and into crit. I'm not sure that this is a good thing, as they are essentially devaluing our best secondary stat while not directly compensating by making the others better.
However I am excited; I've always wanted a personal 100% rune speed bonus! 20 second long Runic Corruption, here I come! (Thinking about that now... with even 9 sec regen, under RC and Pillar 4P, Runes will regenerate at 2.25 seconds each. That's absurd!)

[Nangz]

My initial thoughts on the set bonuses. For unholy, the 2 piece allows us to reforge more out of haste and more into crit. Currently crit can surpass haste every so slightly in high gear levels so it is still a gain. The 4 piece is a reasonable increase even thought it doesn't seem that big at first. On my most recent jinrokh kill I cast 52 death coils. This would add 88 seconds of duration to my dark transformations. I cast a total of 4 over the fight. This adds almost 3 more. I'm not exactly sure on the mechanics because it could work like the blood 2 piece where it causes your next DT to last longer. Will need more testing/confirmation.

For frost, the 2 piece sounds good as its both of the spec's favorite stats. However the 4 piece is wonky. 2h frost will be overly resource capped which could result in it moving away from haste prioritizing. It conflicts with the 2 piece in that regard for 2h and may cause some strange stat priorities. Would love more raw data on that one!
For dw it seems fine. The 2 piece is amazing and the 4 piece isn't bad for it!

For blood the bonuses seem almost imbalanced. My DK tank got 88 combined RS, HS and BBs. This is an extra 22 charges. Currently since bone shield is 6 charges, it is almost 4 more bone shield's in a fight. The 4 piece gives something like 4 extra death strikes per minute if you use it on cd. Quite good!

[Zatheyll]

Removing cost for DRW was very nice
And for "Item - Death Knight T16 Blood 2P Bonus (New) Every 4 Heart Strikes, Rune Strikes, or Blood Boils will add one charge to your next Bone Shield."
2 heart strikes, 1 rune strike and 1 blood boil will add a charge or Is it 4 of 1 spell that will give a charge to bone shield?

Either way it adds on to the next Bone Shield, so it shouldn't matter too much in which order you do it unless you get them all off quickly before you use your Bone Shield CD again.

[Maxweii]

Edit: Similar to how they removed the unholy damage component to the two piece t15, I think they should either give both unholy and 2h frost a higher amount of secondary stats per stack or give them more stacks per proc.

They never actually did extra damage if you were unholy, that was a blue post that was mistaken in what they said

[Bawse]

They never actually did extra damage if you were unholy, that was a blue post that was mistaken in what they said

They responded sarcastically. It did do shadow damage.

[Squishei]

Great tier bonuses, though I'm hoping that death strikes use runes before the the 4p set bonus, or else you'll have double death runes sitting there for 4 death strikes.
Really excited when DRW had its cost removed, really helps out.

Still waiting on those promised AMZ changes, hoping it will be good.

[Maxweii]

They responded sarcastically. It did do shadow damage.

I would say that it's hard to read sarcasm on the internet because well, yeah.
Unless someone on youtube or such posted a video and it shows specifically that it did do shadow, I see it as he was misinformed. It would have been obviously bias to Unholy and if they really did do it then they were smart to say it doesnt anymore along with its change

[Bawse]

I would say that it's hard to read sarcasm on the internet because well, yeah.
Unless someone on youtube or such posted a video and it shows specifically that it did do shadow, I see it as he was misinformed. It would have been obviously bias to Unholy and if they really did do it then they were smart to say it doesnt anymore along with its change

It was actually pretty obvious due to the usage of there words in that statement.

[Astro9866]

DW frost will reign king next patch? 5000 mastery with 100% PoF rune regen? I think yes!

[Hemalador]

Pretty exciting teir bonuses

Looking at the 2 peice for Unholy/Frost

First does anyone know what hnd stands for?

Which brings me on to, how possible would it be to get to 10 stacks? 5000 boost to secondary stats is pretty amazing, but would it be obtainable?

It will be interesting to see if reforging Mastery higher than Haste will be a viable/superior option for both specs.

Kinda looks like Blood will be spamming Death Strikes next teir when ERW is cast. It'll be better than current bonuses for sure, might be very useful against periods of burst physical damage, but seems like it'll be a bit clunky (guessing you'll have to use up the 4 charges before having access to your runes, meaning your rune capped for a long time)

DRW change and summon ghoul changes are sweet (still looking for cost removal of IBF, DT and PoF)

Lol at Glyph changes. I still can't imagine a situation where outbreaking would be worth 30 rp.

[Maxweii]

First does anyone know what hnd stands for?

Not a clue, but I wish I knew. The duration of it could really affect weather it would be feasible to maintain the 10 stacks or if it will be really horridly rng based because of a short duration

[Hemalador]

Edit: Similar to how they removed the unholy damage component to the two piece t15,

Pretty sure it was never going to do shadow damage. GC just thought our mastery was the same as BM hunters and Demo locks for a second.