Official 3.1 DK notes

[Sashan]

Firstly this is a *preview* meaning that it is set in as much stone as in a bar of chocolate (ie none).

These arent all the talents/changes and hell, even if they all make it through to the PTR they will probably get changed a bunch.

Right, firstly - pestilence was always intended to be a disease spreader and that was all. The damage bonus is something that has evolved and now people are thinking "omg you completely screwed it now". Going back to early dk development it was pestilence for spreading diseases and then BB to get the threat. So they are going back to no damage on pest, making BB do a baseline damage (prob equal to current damage it does) but pumping it up a shitload if diseases are there. Makes for some interesting AoE tanking rather than just tabbing pest a lot.

The change to Sudden Doom is probably the best thing I have heard tho. No more wasting GCD - just POW, and bonus DC. Good stuff (specially as a blood dps'er).

Swapping of UB and Garg - perfect sense really. They have finally come to the conclusion that balancing gargoyle for the tier it is at quite frankly isnt possible. Its either going to be unbelievely good & overbudgeted for its spot, or nerfed to being trivial and not worth the point. By putting it at 51 point they can at least justify it being slightly OP (a la TG for warriors) by saying it is balanced through the investment of point in Unholy tree means not accessing other good abilities in other trees.

Plus UB being lower will offer quite a little bit of consideration theorycraft for possible tanking builds to incorperate it.

All in all, quite interested to know what other changes are to come (please note, no nerf to damage on shit.. well not yet).

Not sure about the loss of expertise on Blood Gorged really - but with blood being primarily physical damage based, I can kinda see why ArP was viewed by them as being good.... dont like the stat personally (ie I hate it on gear that could itemise better with other stats for us) - but as an added bonus to a talent its well worth taking still.

[AetherMcLoud]

For unholy tanking the Garg-UB switch is awesome. For Unholy PVP, well I lose 1% of crit from blood, nothing more. And garg gets buffed too.

Never liked Mark of blood after the nerf to 10 seconds and 20 charges in pvp anyway.

[Goatlord]

Do you want to drop Mark of Blood for Gargoyle ?

Yes. Gargoyle provides a very strong damage boost (and it gets buffed when it gets moved to the 51 point talent) that in my opinion far outweighs the temporary benefits of mark of blood.

Never used UB, this anygood for some decent arena play ? in other word how much dmg does it tick for with lets say 3500 atp and 5/5 purity

I don't know the number offhand. I'd guess around 200 as a really rough estimate. I think it's worth picking up for the single point, though. I haven't tested this out, but I assume unholy blight can pull players out of stealth/invis, which seems useful in some situations. The damage isn't really all that bad either.

Overall, some of the changes suck, but I think they all make sense. Pestilence was meant to spread diseases. Unholy Blight was never a 51 point talent, but Gargoyle makes sense as one.

The one thing I'm curious about is the buff to Blood Boil. I think changing bloodboil to hit all targets means the glyph will be pretty strong in pvp, and I'm wondering how much (if any) the damage will be buffed.

[AetherMcLoud]

I don't know the number offhand. I'd guess around 200 as a really rough estimate. I think it's worth picking up for the single point, though. I haven't tested this out, but I assume unholy blight can pull players out of stealth/invis, which seems useful in some situations. The damage isn't really all that bad either.

Much more than that.
When tanking, with around ~2600-2800 AP (dunno the real values) and 4/5 Impurity my UB ticks for around 350-450.

[Nightsorrow]

I love changes they made for blood dps SD will be usefull now and you will not need to waste GCD

[Deleted]

As the things go it kinda seems to me that blizz are more and more trying to force dks to spec deep into one tree, thus negating the ability to dual wield. With the garg change the 32\39 and 44\27 builds will be pretty much dead.

Leaving us with 20\51 only.

Seems like a sad change for me, cos i liked swinging two weps much much more than 1.

10/10/51 and 0/20/51 are both good DW specs.

[Scorp223]

Personally just wondering if an unholy dw tank spec is viable in 3.1 due to a few extra points taken out of unholy.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=j0EZ0xcZcxhIxckxL0Mcshx
1 pt in garg = ub, 4 pts in magic suppression = that+AMZ

In a case where we have BoSanc (unlimited RP), using 1.6 weapon such as Last Laugh it means we can use rune strike every 1.6 seconds, even more during heroism (which nowadays is when big threat is an absolute must e.g. 6min malygos due to DPS pulling 8+k TPS). Since a lot of our threat as 2H spec is from rune strike and the change to threat on the ability, could switching to DW meaning we can spam it twice as fast be more effective?

The above spec includes DW threat talents ie. necrosis, bcb, nerves of cold steel while also including the aoe threat talents that makes it superior to other tanks. I assume you'd use runes on ice touch, plague strike and blood boil while spamming rune strike for single targets. Pretty much same rotation as 2h for aoe packs.

Just an idea, perhaps it's completely unfeasible. Any thoughts?

[Envojus]

# Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.This is IMO a good thing.UB was too bad for a 51 point talent.And gargoyle made blookd dks spec to 50/0/21, without taking DRW and instead of it Gargoyle.

# Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.Baaaaaad.Aoe Damage just droped.For tanks it is much worse.Its hard as it is for frost DK's to take aoe aggro when Howling blast is on CD.

# Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.Dont know about this one.When i use Glyphed UA i get armoro capped.I just hope it absorbs a good chum of damage

# The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.Too soon to tell.

# Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.Just good.

# Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.No complaints.Now i have 2 more points to spend

# Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise. They said they want to buff Blood, not to nerf them.Sigh...

[badrsadiq]

With these upcoming changes, the Tri 2h tanking build will DOMINATE all other tanking builds by far for any boss encounter, any single target tanking and any aoe tanking. It will be the best of the best because it has it all !

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jbEG0...Zcghczckgx0o0o

[Pcloadletter]

With these upcoming changes, the Tri 2h tanking build will DOMINATE all other tanking builds by far for any boss encounter, any single target tanking and any aoe tanking. It will be the best of the best because it has it all !

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jbEG0...Zcghczckgx0o0o

That's probably one of the worst spec's I've seen in a long time. Hopefully the new raid content will weed out the bad DKs....

[badrsadiq]

That's probably one of the worst spec's I've seen in a long time. Hopefully the new raid content will weed out the bad DKs....

Then excuse me to say but your a total noob who never fought Sarth +3 drakes.

[Xaos]

It will be the best of the best because it has it all !

except threat generation.

the Sarth tank spec is great for sarth tanking because you dont need to compete with DPS for aggro, you have tons of time to build threat on sarth while they kill the drakes..

the spec will never suffice for any other kind of boss encounter, unless your dps is really really crappy.
deep frost/21 unholy (for UB) will be a good setup, as will deep blood.. but not the one your showing.

[badrsadiq]

except threat generation.

the Sarth tank spec is great for sarth tanking because you dont need to compete with DPS for aggro, you have tons of time to build threat on sarth while they kill the drakes..

the spec will never suffice for any other kind of boss encounter, unless your dps is really really crappy.
deep frost/21 unholy (for UB) will be a good setup, as will deep blood.. but not the one your showing.

I know threat has it's issues with that build, but with UB taking place in mid Unholy tree it will boost the threat of that build by ALOT. making up for any threat lose imo, espically that the points in blood are RP generating.

[Kadvael]

even with the swtich garg <> UB i don't think this build will be viable apart for sarth 3 drakes maybe.

[Shiira]

AoE mob pickup as frost is going to be tricky without any damage from pestilence.

I'm hoping that blizzard are finally going to give blood the AoE buff that it needs, and that this buff will also be useful for frost.

Unbreakable armour looks like it could have real potential now, I don't know why but I expect it to be the same as bone shield but expire based on damage taken instead of number of attacks.

[Myzou]

also i cant believe no news on diseases. blood dps are pulling near 6k (sorry dont have the SS or the report to prove it feel free to find the topic at mmochamp with the link) without using diseases yet they dont address that when the main thing about being a DK is runes and diseases. seems very strange. ill hope this is just a true "highlight" as they said but if this is the biggest news they have for the class every disheartening.

They removed the damage on pestilence. And if your Blood DPS is pulling that much, they're obviously exploiting some kind of bug.

Anyways, I for one understand the UB/Garg swap. It prevent frost/blood from grabbing Gargoyle, which is a major single target damage thing from unholy, probably the biggest. UB will make frost tanking/blood tanking easier, as they can add some more AoE damage.

[Montoya]

Are we talking purely tank or both tank and dps standpoint? Because in both cases a 10% dmg buff is MUCH more appealing than anything (and tanks can very well stay above 75% health for a long enough time for the 10% extra dmg to make a difference) Sudden Doom can provide.

I simply don't understand how you come to the conclusion that the Sudden Doom and Blood Gorged changes are somehow going to change their respective dynamics.

The change to Blood Gorged from a tanking stand point is just bad. Expertise is way better than Armour Penetration and with most tanking your going to be jumping in health all over the place which means that the +10% bonus damage is going to be sporadic at best.

The change from a DPS standpoint is again Expertise vs Armour penetration. Removing the enemies chance to dodge your attacks is more valuable than Armour penetration. Unless they change the mechanics of Armour Penetration to be as valued as it was in high end TBC content.

Sudden Doom from a Tanking standpoint is pure additional threat without the activation of a GCD. Same with it's standpoint in DPS. Free damage for using your main attack.

Back to a tanking standpoint you should only be spending 47 points in blood (if these changes remain the way they are), which gives you 24 points to play around with, allowing you to grab UB when it gets moved. The extra points can also be put into Morbidity, and maybe even Impurity to increase the damage of UB/DnD/DC.

That's how I came to the conclusion to drop Blood Gorged.

[Elektrik]

I might be missing something, but I'm thrilled about the switch of UB and gargoyle. Why is everybody saying that 32/39 will be dead?

Gargoyle is more of a gimmick imo, and UB will be constant damage. This alone should outweigh the pestilence nerf for AoE, and I think UB will do just as much (if not more) damage on bosses.

Prove me wrong please - seems I'm missing something. Janz, what do you think?

[Montoya]

This alone should outweigh the pestilence nerf for AoE, and I think UB will do just as much (if not more) damage on bosses.

Without as much attention being requires as to application and without the use of a Rune. Your not missing much, and it seems as though we are in the same boat on this.

[kudzupo]

I might be missing something, but I'm thrilled about the switch of UB and gargoyle. Why is everybody saying that 32/39 will be dead?

Gargoyle is more of a gimmick imo, and UB will be constant damage. This alone should outweigh the pestilence nerf for AoE, and I think UB will do just as much (if not more) damage on bosses.

Prove me wrong please - seems I'm missing something. Janz, what do you think?

Assuming we will have access to HB, KM, BCB, Necrosis and UB all in the same build, with our beefed up perma-ghoul, you can expect that 32/38+1 will still be quite viable in 3.1. I suspect everyone is scared about the upcoming changes to the positions in the frost tree more. I know I am.