I know Frost is tanking, but is it good for PvP?

[Ryoten]

At first i liked the Blood Tree untill someone told me it's better for DW'ing or something stupid like that at end game. So how is frost? Obviously its all about 2 handers and frost spells and tanking. How does it do in pvp?

[Shido]

At first i liked the Blood Tree untill someone told me it's better for DW'ing or something stupid like that at end game. So how is frost? Obviously its all about 2 handers and frost spells and tanking. How does it do in pvp?

umm frost has dw talent and blood has 2h talent if u read the talent trees.

[Kanana]

There is no "tank spec" on death knights. Every spec has its style of play and each spec will be viable in dps, pvp, and tanking.

[Soopr Serial]

There is no "tank spec" on death knights. Every spec has its style of play and each spec will be viable in dps, pvp, and tanking.

About as true as paladins being able to tank holy/ret spec. The majority of the tanking talents are in the frost tree, with the remaining parry talents in blood. Unholy isn't useful for tanking.

[Shido]

About as true as paladins being able to tank holy/ret spec. The majority of the tanking talents are in the frost tree, with the remaining parry talents in blood. Unholy isn't useful for tanking.

so ur saying Anticipation (dodge) isnt important? to name one of them in unholy

[Belloc]

About as true as paladins being able to tank holy/ret spec. The majority of the tanking talents are in the frost tree, with the remaining parry talents in blood. Unholy isn't useful for tanking.

You're absolutely wrong.

First, all death knight trees are going to be receiving a tier 1 tanking talent. In other words, all DK tanks will have 5 points in each tree just for those talents.

Second, the parry talent is being removed and added as a base ability -- all DKs will be getting it.

This is beta and things are changing. DKs are intended to be able to tank specced in any tree.

[Verden Odela]

Errr frost isn't only tanking, each tree is good for raiding/PvP/and blood and frost are good for tanking.


And it's beta, Death Knights could completely change in live.

[pranabowjake]

frost is definitely the best pvp spec atm. nothing can put out better damage and is better for 2's and 3's in arena. blood/unholy will probably be better for 5's from the looks of it though. but no matter the spec, almost every dk spec will go atleast 14 points into frost for litchborn and obliterate (90% disease removing prevention). but full frost and you get that talent that gives you uber burst damage (6 sec all your spells and abilities are crits... including your most powerful attacks howling blast and obliterate-and frost strike cost rune power so you can throw them in there between them) with all the damage it can put out, and the ability to having a freezing trap at the end of the talents frost stands out as the best arena spec atm. although frost presences is definitely for tanking, unholy is a much better pvp presence followed closely by blood.

[Brasko]

This is beta and things are changing. DKs are intended to be able to tank specced in any tree.

It is because of this that I sooo want to play one, but... there will be so many death knights.

[Hooch]

Blizzard intends for Frost to be good for tanking. Also, frost Death Knights are buffing Frost Mages pretty good

[Rasputine]

Second, the parry talent is being removed and added as a base ability -- all DKs will be getting it.

i just got hard.

if that is true, i will actually soil my pants

[Hooch]

i just got hard.

if that is true, i will actually soil my pants

I'm pretty sure its true

[Kadvael]

so true you only have to check the blue posts to read it actually ...

[Funnies]

u guys fail.....its a beta no one knows how DK's will turn out and just to say this ....bladestorm and heroic leap should be switched on warriors and deathwish and sweeping strikes should be back to normal

[Jazz]

u guys fail.....its a beta no one knows how DK's will turn out and just to say this ....bladestorm and heroic leap should be switched on warriors and deathwish and sweeping strikes should be back to normal

You my friend, are an idiot. "It's a beta, no one knows how DKs will turn out", well said captain obvious. And I reckon that no one here realy give a damn about warriors. Or well, let me rephrase - Why the hell post stuff about warriors in the Death Knight section of the forum, you blittering troll? To be this offtopic you must really have an attentionspan of a goldfish. Did you even bother reading... hmm... nevermind. Go queue up for AV and farm HK's with the rest of the 12-year-olds. Nothing wrong with discussing the Death Knights current state.

And to the original poster. Yes frost is indeed great for PvP. I guess everything is relative, but lets say you group a frost knight with a frost mage in 2v2. Go look at the two talent trees. Now 'that' is well designed synergi. Imgin' the use of Howling Blast, Hungering Cold (if you go that deep into frost) and Deathchill - as well as Mind Freeze (with chilblains and Aneurysm talented) and such for a bit of cc. Toss in Lichborne and Unbreakable Armour against lets say a rogue, and it's not looking bad.

Death Knights are not perfect yet. I guess we'll have to wait for the Wintergrasp patch to come out, before we'll 'really' start seeing some dev work on the Death Knight, when it comes to PvP.

[Flakor]

I find myself looking at the Unholy Tree for PvP, it feels like a lot of those talents would be handy in BG's and Arena such as the Anti-Magic Zone, Bone Shield, and Insect Swarm.

Frost may be good in certain situations, such as flag running in WSG especially with the Lichborne ability. We'll have to see how things come together when Wrath is actually released, I believe its worth experimenting with.

[pharix]

Frost spells don't really help frost mages anymore, it's a disease now instead of being "frozen"

but there's supposedly a new runeforge enchant that increases frost damage on hit

[Sinspaw]

Yes frost is good for pvp. Icy talons and improved icy talons means that if you play it right, you and your partners will always have 20% haste. It also has lichborne; you can slow targets, hungering cold is an uber aoe cc; acclimation could prove useful if it stacks a good amount of res. And overall, even though they took a lot of the old synergy there was between DK frost and mage frost, HC and chains of ice still freeze targets, meaning mages take good use of it.

[Alubob]

DK is a "special" class because it is a Tank class.. not like warrior which is claimed to be a tank class but has 2 dps trees.. DK IS a tank which ever build you pick

and as for PVP it seems all 3 builds are also viable, Blood = self healing, Frost = CC and damage reduction and Unholy = Ghouls and Dots and stuffz

so i think its all viable, only with lots of high end Arena and PVP will we really know, i think its too early to start selecting definitive specs especially seeing as we had 3 talent revamps in the last few weeks

[Hexxidecimal]

Ok I was suprised to see how many people didn't think unholy was a good tank spec so I made A unholy tank spec with some reasoning behind it. Now keep in mind this is all with current mechanics in mind.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...50051003133051

First thing is that the build can either focus on AoE aggro generation via pestilence+DD+unholy blight+wandering plague+imp. bloodboil (aoe taunt of sorts), or Single Target Aggro generation via an obliterate rotation. For mitigation I chose Bladebarrier, toughness and anticipation, all the t1 tanking talents more or less.

I like the talents deep in unholy better than the ones in frost. We'll start with Magic supression. As a base ability I love Anti-magic shield with it's low cool down, the improved version just makes it that much better. 5% less magic damage over all is great and taking NO damage at all when used is awesome. Best of all it leads to Anti Magic Zone. These talents are all about control. I control when and where the mitigation happens. VS the only magic defense in frost (aside from mindfreeze, although most bosses are immune to spell interupt effects) is Acclimation. My first problem with it is a percent chance to happen, and my second issue...is one of ignorance. I simply don't know how much resistance you are going to get. The downside is that it is a hefty 6 talent point investment to get anit-magic zone while acclimation is only 3. Truth be told I would love to have spell deflection out of the blood tree more than either but opted for more melee mitigation since I think that anti magic shell and anti magic zone will likely suffice.

Ok my next match up is Bone shield vs Unbreakable armor. In the end I think Bone shield is a superior tanking ablity. First it's on a 3.5 second internal cooldown which meants it'll be up for at least 14 seconds, only 6 seconds shorter than unbreakable armor. This is also it's weakness though, any attacks made inbetween those 3.5 seconds will hit a full damage while unbreakable armor will mitigate for the full 20 second duration. However Unbreakable armor by itself only mitigates physical damage, unless you combine it with spell deflection but that becomes a 4 point investment vs 1 point. Bone shield mitigates any damaging source by 40%. Now if it were one use of Unbreakable armor vs 1 use of Bone shield I would say Unbreakable armor, ESPECIALLY with spell deflection was superiour, however Bone shield can be used every 30 seconds!!! That is v.s. a 2 minute cooldown on unbreakable armor, AND bone shield can be applied BEFORE combat because it's a buff that lasts 5 minutes meaning that it's first application won't screw up your rotation!

I have also invested in getting Lichborne for it's obvious mitigation effects and improved obliterate for smoother single target aggro generation. The build also gives plenty of strong passive buffs to my damage based off of Obliterate and DK core mechanics such as AP->spell effectivness and diseases, in turn also increasing aggro.

I think the only thing that frost tanks may have over me that is better burst AoE aggro with howling blast, and the small hp buff from imp Frost presence. However Unholy has better sustained aggro generation in an AoE setting which I think is better overall.

Anyhow, just fun theory craft with no real number or real experiance so I could be dead wrong.