Death Knight - Cataclysm Preview Compilation

[cabbageloins]

People who cried because they didn't have a dedicated tanking tree as a DK weren't doing it right. There is nothing lacking in the current blood DK tank; bad tanks will still be bad with a dedicated tree.

[Demoncrash]

People who cried because they didn't have a dedicated tanking tree as a DK weren't doing it right. There is nothing lacking in the current blood DK tank; bad tanks will still be bad with a dedicated tree.

Yea bads will be bads, nothing new there and were not talking about the current blood tank here. Things will be different in Cata. They are not going to put 6 masteries in every tree just in case u feel like tanking UH/Frost. You get 1 dedicated tanking tree with masteries, and if Blood dps has to take the fall for it, so be it.

My view would be the same if UH (my main spec) or Frost dps were removed.

[Bloodgruve]

Blood dps is not better then Frost and Unholy, I can personally pull better numbers from Frost atm. I like the versatility of the three tree tanking or dps but I think the direction they are moving is a good choice. Anyway, it'll be like playing a whole new class with the changes, keeps it fresh.

Blood~

[Mawnix]

Makes sense they'd make Blood into the Tanking spec so STOP FRIGGIN' QQING.

If they're getting rid of Arpen, Blood will never be able to compete with Unholy and Frost since you need to be hard capped in Arpen to get it to compete with Frost and Unholy.

And don't you even TELL me that it can because, I'm a 5913 GS DK and I've used Blood in ICC and then used Unholy the next weed, 2k difference in DPS from not being Arpen hardcapped, and I am at 43% Arpen.

Point proven, stop QQing.

[Buckwald]

I'm a 5913 GS DK ...

I didn't finish reading your post and I forced what I already had read out of my mind.

[Mawnix]

I didn't finish reading your post and I forced what I already had read out of my mind.

Hey hey hey now, I'm not a GS tard. I just think, and it's obvious, that someone above a 5.5k GS is obviously geared for ICC 10/25. Jeez don't take me for one of those idiots.

[HunterIV4]

I can already see the headaches that will come with Healing Absorption.

"Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage."

Imagine if Blizzard makes Blood Tanks heals scale decently, they would be self healing for decent amounts plus absorbing incoming damage (OP or what!)

Now if they realize this and make the absorption scale poorly with the healing, or the healing scale poorly with absorption.... then the ability will be pretty us-less as content progresses and Paladins and Warrior (maybe druids to) all start taking less damage as gear upgrades and Dk's 51 point Mastery lags behind....

Why don't they make the absorption effect scale with Damage the tank does?

Or simply make it a flat 30% damage reduction for X seconds when the DK performs X heal spell (Death strike probably) and call it Blood Barrier. Then have the Damage reduction scale with mastery.

I just see a-lot of problems balancing Healing Absorption from what they have shown in its current format.

You mean a tank that self heals and absorbs damage? What OPness is this!? It's completely different than paladins (sacred shield/judgement of light) and druids (savage defense/improved leader of the pack)! No other class has anything like it (other than 50% of them)! /eyeroll

They won't make absorption scale with damage for the same reason they made virtually all self-healing abilities scale with hit points...they're supposed to be more effective for tanks than DPS specs. Death Strike was originally based off damage dealt and it was completely OP. They didn't change it on accident.

Outbreak is a cooldown virtually identical in purpose and nature to the rogue version...if you need to switch targets really fast (like to burn down an add) you can quickly shift over to the new target. It's not extremely powerful but it's certainly useful.

Dark Simulacrum is a fantastic situational DPS ability and PvP ability. For some reason people seem to think it's just spell reflect that doesn't negate the incoming spell...this isn't true. It puts a debuff on the target which allows the DK to "cast" the spell back at the target. Since it's a debuff and not a self buff like spell reflect this means you don't have to be the target of the spell in order to reflect it. Depending on how they allow it to behave in PvE this is an enhancement to our "convert enemy spell damage into DPS" abilities and fits nicely with AMS for both DPS and tanking.

Necrotic Strike is likely going to be mostly useless in PvE except in rare situations but that's fine...we don't really need any more stuff to press in PvE right now. In PvP it helps make up for the glaring hole in DK power in which it's dang near impossible to kill a skilled, geared healer. You can get lucky and lock them down at a good point but even with mind freeze half the time a healer is going to be able to heal up to full in the six seconds they aren't locked down. With bigger health pools and smaller heals this gives DKs a tool to whittle down a healer and become a threat to be dealt with rather than a nuisance.

I'm not entirely sure where this idea that ArPen capped blood being superior to the same gear as unholy came about. This isn't true. An ArPen capped unholy DK will out DPS a blood DK with the same gear and skill (in other words, in sims). This is especially true of any fight where blood gorged may be down for any significant time, any fight with movement, and any fight with AOE. Unholy's effective survivability is likewise higher as permanent 20% damage reduction is equal to or better than being able to death strike in your rotation (and nothing prevents unholy DKs from death striking to gain health at a slight DPS loss for the same health gained if needed). Blood isn't behind in the same way that mage frost tree is behind arcane but unless you are personally playing unholy worse than blood unholy will produce more DPS. While it's up to you whether or not your personal suckage is a valid excuse for doing less DPS don't expect other people to agree.

Currently blood is slightly behind frost and unholy and is arguably the most popular tanking tree. It makes sense to convert it to a dedicated tanking tree. Not only that but by making it have all the good tanking talents in one tree they can better balance DK tanks in general as well as let us use some of the more fun tanking talents that people rarely take (like spell deflection or even rune tap).

I'm really looking forward to these changes. The rune system change means that I can blow all my runes if I know I'm going to have to move soon and then have ten seconds where I'm only losing white damage instead of all my strike damage as well. It also means that my strikes will hit harder and I like big numbers =). It gives us short burst capabilities much like a rogue using all their energy instead of getting into a rhythm, plus then I don't feel like using death coil is only a DPS gain because if I didn't I might cap RP.

And yeah, seeing a mage wind up a big spell and hitting AMS+DarkS, taking a fraction of the damage he just did from his own spell while boosting up my RP and then nuking him in the face sounds awesome. Maybe that's just me

P.S. I wonder if the reduction from necrotic strike stacks. To use their example if I hit it twice and they cast a 10k heal right after do they only get 2k healing (4k plus 4k)? Or does the second strike simply refresh the first so they heal 6k? If the later all it means is that necrotic strike is only worth using if it's debuff is removed first but if it stacks that means you could build up a "healing deficit" on someone to bring them down. That would be pretty cool in my opinion.

[Klasis]

Unholy and Frost are shit dps tree's

Blood > frost/unholy

I beg to differ.. unholy dks can put out much dps.

[h4rr0d]

Unholy and Frost are shit dps tree's

Blood > frost/unholy

Numbers can always be tuned up or down (see what tweaking with just SS did to unholy). As for the playstyle, sorry, but Blood plays prety much the same as Unholy. You have your rotation set in stone with nice neat spots where you pop your CDs. Between Blood and Uh there are prety much just 2 differences worth noticing. Pet (with the 90% damage reduction it's just a /petattack macro on your IT button anyway) and damage breakdown. While Frost uses priority system dependant on procs. In Cata it will boil down from 3 half assed tank specs, 2 retard proof DPS specs and a fun DPS spec to 1 full blown tank spec, 1 retard proof DPS spec and a fun DPS spec.
Right now being DK tank means doing same stuff as you'd be doing as DPS, just with 1/3 numbers flying around and huge responsibility on your head. Not fun imho. In Cata we get unique tanking tree so that tank gameplay will actualy feel different from DPSing. I like that idea (might actualy get me to like DK tanking after 2 years).

[jayremy]

I still don't get why they aren't going to try to keep at least two of the trees hybrid. I can see where unholy fails at the tank concept, but frost has been fun, blood is great melee/physical dps, unique from the other trees. Blood is not all about hp regen, your not looking at the whole picture if so, it has hysteria, dancing run weapon heart strike isn't that great but is still fun when all of your hits are heavy blows with chances to proc death coils and easy runic power generation.

I mean the spec is solid as it stands for dps, afflic locks can self heal, I don't see them becoming tanks why not leave it at the fact that its raid utility?

I lvled my dk after playing my dps warrior, i didn't fancy all the magical based dmg in frost getting my stuff resisted and absorbed wasn't fun and if my diseases got dispelled i did about 50% less damage, blood wasn't that way, and had everything I wish i had on my warrior and many dps warriors had asked for what DKs got mainly blood and their taking that away now too.

[bluestaff]

blood is ideal for tanking as it is already, im psyched for the blood overhaul! ~ also i never see blood boil get the credit it deserves.. it is an decent aoe threat tool that is near spammable. i also spec into corpse explosion, which is a situational aoe, but great! in a perfect world i lay dnd down put diseases up, use pestilence, use blood boil, use corpse explosion to burn RP, rinse and repeat. i use war stomp(tauren)and in my mind it helps

[Leviatharan]

I really can't see why anybody would complain- Yes, Blizz is taking out the DPS abilities from the Blood spec and replacing them with the Tanking abilities from the Frost and Unholy specs.
But this also leaves space open in the other two trees, now that a good half/third of the talents considered worthless for Dps Knights are being removed.
This means that we'll not only be seeing abilities like Acclimation, Magic Suppression, Bone Shield and Unbreakable Armor moved into the Blood Tree, but now we'll see Two-Handed Weapon Specialization in the Frost tree, and possibly even Hysteria or Bloody Vengeance in the Unholy tree. You think the DPS trees suck right now? Wait till Cata, your fears have been addressed. I think.
They're not really *removing* the talents so much as rearranging the trees so its easier to see the focus of each tree. Just cause Blizz only revealed details about the one tree doesn't mean they have nothing in store for the other two

[yantzee]

Okay long story short, blood dps was just as legitimate as unholy and dw frost. 3 months ago (Before I quit) I had a blood dps and unholy dps and I was running easily 7.5-8kdps consistently in ICC. Granted on the larger trash mobs I'd lean towards unholy because 13k+AoE on trash is more appealing that 10k but thats the just basic dynamic of unholy over blood. People only getting 3.5k in blood and then 5k in unholy are basically just playing their class wrong and thats the end of it.

[Ponza]

Well were suppose to post questions, ideas, and suggestions so here are a few that I have.

Okay my first question is about Rune Strike. Considering you guys want to get rid of non global cool down moves as they confuse new players is it going to have a global cool down?... If so are you going to remove the proc rate of dodge/parry from it? Or would you be adding something like when you take a hit it also procs to make sure that there is a chance in which you'll always be able to use it when it comes along. On top of that if it has a global cool down would it be taking the place of Death Coil? If that's the case would it be a move that requires blood presence to use to prevent dps from using it over frost strike, or death coil with the reduced cost to the other moves? Is it going to keep it's 20 runic power, or is it going to end up being a 40 runic power move to make up for the loss of Death Coil usage? Of course some of these questions are chained upon each other, but are valid in their own right.

With the new cycling of the way runes are done it appears it'll be harder to use runes as a cool down for defensive abilities. Is this going to be a problem, or is there going to be a new style to compensate for this?

DKs all ready have their bars full with all sorts of different abilities as there is just so much to do with them. On average you only need to know about 8 different buttons with a class though there are many buttons that you need to have on your action bar for just in case moments. With the archeology system will that push us to have more buttons then we have room for? Will it be nearly impossible to play with a keyboard and be forced to use a mouse in order to play?

With the weapons being changed over all for tanks, and to make single handed weapons an option for Fury warriors wouldn't it be fair to put a dual wielding tier for DK tanks as well. I'm talking about a 5 point talent 20/40/60/80/100% chance of using your off hand with Heart Strike, Death Strike, Plague Strike, Rune Strike. With it being a 45 point talent to even get, and with slow one handers you wouldn't be getting people complaining about DKs taking fast weapons. On top of that considering on average you normally place 5 points in every tree as a tank (unless your a druid) you could easily then get a few talents to make Dual Wielding decent as a tank.

[Lopiak]

Well were suppose to post questions, ideas, and suggestions so here are a few that I have.

Okay my first question is about Rune Strike. Considering you guys want to get rid of non global cool down moves as they confuse new players is it going to have a global cool down?... If so are you going to remove the proc rate of dodge/parry from it? Or would you be adding something like when you take a hit it also procs to make sure that there is a chance in which you'll always be able to use it when it comes along. On top of that if it has a global cool down would it be taking the place of Death Coil? If that's the case would it be a move that requires blood presence to use to prevent dps from using it over frost strike, or death coil with the reduced cost to the other moves? Is it going to keep it's 20 runic power, or is it going to end up being a 40 runic power move to make up for the loss of Death Coil usage? Of course some of these questions are chained upon each other, but are valid in their own right.

With the new cycling of the way runes are done it appears it'll be harder to use runes as a cool down for defensive abilities. Is this going to be a problem, or is there going to be a new style to compensate for this?

DKs all ready have their bars full with all sorts of different abilities as there is just so much to do with them. On average you only need to know about 8 different buttons with a class though there are many buttons that you need to have on your action bar for just in case moments. With the archeology system will that push us to have more buttons then we have room for? Will it be nearly impossible to play with a keyboard and be forced to use a mouse in order to play?

With the weapons being changed over all for tanks, and to make single handed weapons an option for Fury warriors wouldn't it be fair to put a dual wielding tier for DK tanks as well. I'm talking about a 5 point talent 20/40/60/80/100% chance of using your off hand with Heart Strike, Death Strike, Plague Strike, Rune Strike. With it being a 45 point talent to even get, and with slow one handers you wouldn't be getting people complaining about DKs taking fast weapons. On top of that considering on average you normally place 5 points in every tree as a tank (unless your a druid) you could easily then get a few talents to make Dual Wielding decent as a tank.

Just so you know, Blizzard / Ghostcrawler dont respond to posts here (Technically no one can prove they even read it, although we assume they do). The questions your asking seem to be directed not at us but at them.

[rampagerush]

In my opinion , most people follows the great guilds in the world that they are dpsing in unholy and frost , but in my opinion Blood>Frost>Unholy ... They don't play blood cause they don't know how to play it .. simply if you know what to do , you could over DPS the whole raid , Just 4 words Blood Is the Best .

[AkimarAA]

@rampagerush

sorry but i think u stoped playin round patch 3.1 where blood was a realy good dps spec.. but sorry..
it dont work anymore... u say u need to know which rota to use and how to play it...
sorry but blood rota [DPS] is nearly as easy as.. eh arcane mage?

i like the idee to make blood the tank tree...
im atm playin Frost DW as MS [even if my unholy gear is bit better [UH GS: 5.8k / Frost: 5650]]
i feel like frost is doin better DPS SGL / Uh is still better at trash etc [but love the Killing Machin HB 77k crits xD]

just my 2 cents

happy about hanges / dont like the rune power system

[Frozenmerc]

Unholy and Frost are shit dps tree's

Blood > frost/unholy

i pull 10k dps in ICC 25 so im shit dps???? damn i wonder how good blood is is it 19k dps huh? no thats impossible + wtf do you use mark of blood for if your getting healed from it and also will of the necropolis and rune tap

[xeroxide]

Numbers can always be tuned up or down (see what tweaking with just SS did to unholy). As for the playstyle, sorry, but Blood plays prety much the same as Unholy. You have your rotation set in stone with nice neat spots where you pop your CDs. Between Blood and Uh there are prety much just 2 differences worth noticing. Pet (with the 90% damage reduction it's just a /petattack macro on your IT button anyway) and damage breakdown. While Frost uses priority system dependant on procs. In Cata it will boil down from 3 half assed tank specs, 2 retard proof DPS specs and a fun DPS spec to 1 full blown tank spec, 1 retard proof DPS spec and a fun DPS spec.
Right now being DK tank means doing same stuff as you'd be doing as DPS, just with 1/3 numbers flying around and huge responsibility on your head. Not fun imho. In Cata we get unique tanking tree so that tank gameplay will actualy feel different from DPSing. I like that idea (might actualy get me to like DK tanking after 2 years).

agree 100%
having a dedicated tree for each would mean different rotations/playstyles depending on role.
while i did love the 3 way tank/dps option... that very feature made it rather monotonous regardless of role.

[Leviatharan]

What I'm more concerned with is... where did Dark Simulacrum come in?

Outbreak... easy niche they filled. Sometimes DKs need to app diseases at a moments notice. Sometimes mobs are too weak to take your diseases and let you spread them around (or you were afk at the start of the fight and arrive to see the last 5% health on the mob marked with the skull). And sometimes you're in ICC, fighting Professor Putricide, trying to hit that green ooze up with as much as you can before it becomes active and blows the hell up.
Necrotic Strike, also understandable. When they removed Plague Strike's ability to remove diseases, healers became a problem in PvP again for us (ie. a Nelf resto druid in WG with 18 stacks of tenacity could take down about 10 people with insect swarm (?) before going down to 50%; same thing in some 1v1 duels).
Actually, I'm a little excited about NS: what if it becomes a disease, like Unholy Blight used to be? Instant PvE AND PvP ability, our third disease (fourth for unholy). Plus, the Severed Essences in ICC (the adds that those Valks summon in the Upper Spire... you know the ones) always end up app'ing this on you for 15k heal blocks- ouch. Wouldn't you want?

But Dark Sim? Sure, it sounds cool, but it also sounds like it would be a PvP-only spell to put on mages and locks, since tanks can't use it to spell reflect (since it doesn't cancel the damage of the spell, just copies it and fires it back like a Blue Mage in FF) and it would probably take the FU runes that Dps knights need for their base attack... Unless it's RP based, in which case it'll take up Death Coil or Frost Strike.
Also, on a slightly unrelated note, it doesn't copy heals, which makes my cry a little inside. No idea why there... just kinda disappointed I suppose.
Course, I'm probably just slightly biased... I got my hopes up for a Cleave (1. Two links right there, 2. HS doesn't count if it only hits 2 targets, one for only half damage!) or some other RP-based attack/AoE.