What was it like to play DK in WOTLK?

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Like frost which was tanking, blood was dps and such. What was that like?

[Morae]

It was fun. Sure it was overtuned, I hear, but those days I didn't pay much attention to such things.

These days I'm very sad that many things that made DK cool back then have been removed.

[TigTone]

I used blood dps in pvp a lot back then.

It was big crits against almost anything if you have lots of armor penetration stat.

Also since it was blood spec you self heal while dpsing.

It was fun.

I don’t remember the other specs since I played it as blood dps throughout most of wotlk

[Knight Meta]

Blood DK PvP in WoTLK (At any point of the expansion really) is still something that has given me the best PvP moments in this game. The extreme ridiculous OP state it was in at launch all the way to the end of 3.3.5 where it still went strong and usually allowed me to 1v1 anything and even endure 2v1s / 3v1s for extended periods of time.

Ofc if WoTLK is released now I suppose some mong is going to find some secret crit value that always was there but that no one found before which is going to let Retadins oneshot DK's or something stupid like that so - I don't expect it to be awesome as it once was should they ever add WoTLK servers but as far as my memories goes of it; It was just the best of PvP i have ever had.

[Kyphael]

It was fun. Sure it was overtuned, I hear, but those days I didn't pay much attention to such things.

These days I'm very sad that many things that made DK cool back then have been removed.

Yep, it truly felt like a Hero Class. It felt stronger than all the other classes. Frost Tanking was fun, so was Blood DPS. I remember just spamming Heart Strike and Death Coil when it'd pop up.

[Tojara]

They were really fun, but not broken over the entire expansion like some might have you believe. In PvP they were broken in S5 for 90% of the season, and one of the best choices in S6 if you could nab the frost relic out of Ulduar. S7 and S8 for PvP were pretty meh (especially S7), with the rise of heavy caster cleaves in S8 and warriors running around with DBW and Shadowmourne.

PvE is a bit of a different story. Tank wise DK was the most versatile tank class, and probably the strongest option if you combine every single tier together. Popular to contrary belief (while it was certainly viable), most people tanked as UH or Blood, not Frost. DPS wise DKs were never the top DPS except on heavy sustained AoE fights (like Anub'arak in ToGC, where you're sustaining 5 target cleave for the majority of the fight), but they were always above average DPS wise for the entirety of the expansion.

They were just incredibly fun to play and extremely versatile. People might moan and complain about how overpowered DKs were, but that's mainly going to stem from PvP players in S5 and about half of S6. Outside of that DKs were extremely average in PvP, given the rise of much better compositions, and layered DK nerfs over the entirety of the expansion.

TLDR; Aside from the launch of WoTLK where they were absurdly broken in PvP, they just had a bare minimum 6 unique ways to play (if you just consider DPS/Tank of each tree), and every single one of those performed average, or above average in every category. If people tell you they were broken all of WoTLK or the best DPS in PvE, it's simply an exaggeration and likely stems from them getting bent over by a DK spamming icy touch six times in S5 potentially deleting you.

[Chromell]

The Death and Decay glyph good times.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

They were really fun, but not broken over the entire expansion like some might have you believe. In PvP they were broken in S5 for 90% of the season, and one of the best choices in S6 if you could nab the frost relic out of Ulduar. S7 and S8 for PvP were pretty meh (especially S7), with the rise of heavy caster cleaves in S8 and warriors running around with DBW and Shadowmourne.

PvE is a bit of a different story. Tank wise DK was the most versatile tank class, and probably the strongest option if you combine every single tier together. Popular to contrary belief (while it was certainly viable), most people tanked as UH or Blood, not Frost. DPS wise DKs were never the top DPS except on heavy sustained AoE fights (like Anub'arak in ToGC, where you're sustaining 5 target cleave for the majority of the fight), but they were always above average DPS wise for the entirety of the expansion.

They were just incredibly fun to play and extremely versatile. People might moan and complain about how overpowered DKs were, but that's mainly going to stem from PvP players in S5 and about half of S6. Outside of that DKs were extremely average in PvP, given the rise of much better compositions, and layered DK nerfs over the entirety of the expansion.

TLDR; Aside from the launch of WoTLK where they were absurdly broken in PvP, they just had a bare minimum 6 unique ways to play (if you just consider DPS/Tank of each tree), and every single one of those performed average, or above average in every category. If people tell you they were broken all of WoTLK or the best DPS in PvE, it's simply an exaggeration and likely stems from them getting bent over by a DK spamming icy touch six times in S5 potentially deleting you.

What kind of abilities did they have? What specs used what?

[Tojara]

What kind of abilities did they have? What specs used what?

A lot of the same abilities you use today.

The biggest difference was that DKs had an entirely different rune system compared to the one today. All 6 runes could CD at the same time (right now, only three could CD at the same time) and you got two of each rune (frost, unholy, blood). The entire idea, in general, was to use certain abilities that were weak for some specs (like blood strike), which would ultimately convert your rune to a death rune the next time it was off cool down. What this effectively did was the first cycle of runes was fairly average damage wise, while the second set would be far more damage, or at least far more versatile.

But yeah, a lot of the 'core' abilities are still used in some fashion today, as compared to before. It's entirely difference in rune system and utility abilities that made them far different than they were today.

[schwank05]

It was amazing Blood DPS and Armor Penn domination, you made plate wearers Leather wearers and Clothies Naked Night Elf Chicks. You could do any tank spec you wanted we had all 3 in our guild and DPS however you wanted, you had crazy hybrid specs with a mix of DW Unholy or Blood with a Pet. Basically it was the Best and only Xpac that DK's were in an amazing place.

[Nnyco]

Biggest difference was the old rune system. Where you had 6 runes regenerate same time rather than 3, which made the rotation very clunky tbh.

[Super Kami Dende]

Like frost which was tanking, blood was dps and such. What was that like?

Anything was anything really. I played both Frost and Blood DPS.

Blood DPS in ICC with 100% Armor Pen was pretty amazing.

[chubbybunny]

My youngest son didn't know much about classes and their spec... He ended up running most dungeons as a tank in blood spec, his older brother was a healer, and together they spammed a lot of dungeons... Everyone they grouped up with were amazed that blood could tank... What they didnt realise was that my youngest son was only 8 years old and not one group wiped..

[Zaylin]

They were absurdly brokenly overpowered for the first half of the expansion. Bliz had to change the way castrandom macros worked because you could just make a one button castrandom macro with all the DKs abilitys in it and breeze through random dungeons/battlegrounds as both tank and dps.

Bliz also had this idea when they first introduced DKs that every spec would be able to tank or dps depending on talent choices.

[schwank05]

I dabbled in all specs, but by Ulduar I was basically set on Blood DPS spec and Blood Tank spec it was just an all around fun class to play. That and back then you had Set in stone rotations not priority lists for a lot of classes and once you had the rotation down you could play any class/ spec you wanted and do it well.

[Utrrabbit]

Like frost which was tanking, blood was dps and such. What was that like?

I think you are confused.

Back in wrath ALL 3 specs could tank and dps.

[Cyanu]

i was like playing a game on easy mode, except that the game was actually multiplayer

[Krekal]

Like frost which was tanking, blood was dps and such. What was that like?

from 55 to 80 and before raids, you could tank or dps as all 3 specs, use dual wield with all 3 specs if you wanted to, they were really strong

[tamraine]

I will never forget doing Heartbreaker on XT-002 in Ulduar with a bunch of arpen stacked up. Heart Strike hit like a TRAIN on that heart, mmmm.

[Djuntas]

I liked frost tanking.