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Death Knight in Tier 8.5

When Patch 3.2 for the World of Warcraft hits, Death Knights are once again going to see some pretty big changes.  The test realm patch notes are online for players to start looking at and discussing, and the discussion has already become fairly heated.  Many of the changes are being viewed as fairly substantial nerfs to the class, and many players are quite upset.  Are they really nerfs though? Should they be viewed as such, and how bad are they?  Those are just some of the things Byron "Messiah" Mudry looks at in his overview of the proposed Death Knight changes for patch 3.2.

The Changes Proposed

Before we look at any of the changes in depth, let's take a look at the changes as Blizzard describes them in their proposed patch notes found here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Death Knight Changes

• Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.
• Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.
• Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of Ice will not have to re-issue a movement command to continue moving.
• Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
• Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
• Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.

Blood

• Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
• Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.
  Frost
• Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 5/10/15%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
• Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
• Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.
• Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.

Unholy

• Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent.
• Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.
• Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%.
• Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
• Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 30% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

Runic Power Dumps

One thing that is pretty obvious is that Blizzard is unhappy with the way that runic power dumps currently work, and as a result are changing it dramatically.  The runic power dumps that I am talking about are Dancing Rune Weapon and Summon Gargoyle.  These abilities will now have set durations for a set runic power cost.  Previously these abilities lasted different amounts of time based on how much runic power you had when you used them.

The old mechanic of these abilities meant that a Death Knight had to time their use to coincide with maximum runic power, so the ability lasted the longest and did the most damage. The new mechanic will make the abilities far easier to use as you can use them as soon as you reach the runic power requirement.  This will allow them to do more consistent damage from one application to the next, as you will not have to wait as long to activate them.

Tanking Changes

Death Knight tanks are going to see several substantial changes in this patch.  The first is a loss of health.  Frost Presence will now supply a little more than 4% less health than it did before.  This is due to the change from it supplying 10% additional health to only 6% additional stamina.  This means that you will not gain a 10% bonus on health only effects such as flasks.  Depending on the number of buffs or items you have that supply straight health, the difference from a straight 4% health drop changes. In addition, the talent Veteran of the Third War now only provides a 3% boost to stamina instead of the old 6% boost.  Combined, this makes for a 7%+ health drop!  This will take a 40,000 health tank down to roughly 37,000 health!  The loss of 3,000 health will be hard for many tanks to take.

Secondly, Death Knight tanks will be once again losing some armor.  This time the armor loss is due to the change to toughness, which will only provide a 10% armor boost instead of 15%.  Coming so quickly after the change to armor values from Frost Presence, one is left wondering how much more armor they can remove.  Between these two changes, armor values will not be that much higher than Warriors or Paladins, yet Death Knights will still not have Shields and Block Value.

Lastly, Death Knight tanking cooldowns are being changed.  Icebound Fortitude will have its cooldown raised to 2 minutes, while Lichborne will have its duration chopped by 33%, down to 10 seconds instead of 15.  At least Lichborne’s cooldown is being lowered as well, down to 2 minutes, from 3.  These changes combine to substantially change the cooldown management for Death Knight tanks.  While Icebound Fortitude’s cooldown increases it is still available fairly often.

DPS

Dealing damage as a Death Knight will change a little with the new patch.  At first glance it appears to be a buff to single target damage for most specs, as well as a simplification to play.  This could be a good thing for many Death Knights that really do not understand rune and runic power management and suffer in raids due to it.  For those good players out there that already know how to cause significant damage, this could be a further boost.

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New Blood Strike Buff

The first big change is that Blood Strike will deal more damage due to increased damage per disease on the target.  It will also allow you to do more damage with other attacks due to the new Desolation talent.  Combined, this may make Blood Strike a key attack instead of just a filler and a way to generate Death Runes. Overall, it is hard to evaluate it before seeing hard and fast numbers, but it could amount to a lot.

Another big change is the complete rework of Unholy Blight.  I always like the way Unholy Blight worked and thought that fluff wise it fit Death Knights very well and will miss the image of a Death Knight surrounded by a cloud of pestilent disease that I always imagined when casting it.  While it used to be essentially a moving consecration, it will now be a single target DOT effect added to your Death Coil.  Again it is hard to say with certainty, but it appears that this could be a decent boost to single target DPS.  Unholy will lose a very nice AoE damage dealing ability though, which will hurt overall Raid DPS numbers, but help on Boss fights.

The last big DPS change is the return of dual wielding to the Death Knights repertoire.  While it never really left, it was neutered.  The new talent Threat of Thassarian will provide some real damage from your off-hand weapon when using some of your main strikes.  It appears that dual wield setups will not approximate the damage of a two handed weapon.  This could make for some interesting setups.  You could focus on two weapons that have special abilities, or even two tanking weapons to add additional stats such as avoidance.

If there is one really bad thing for DPSers, it is a change to Frost Strike.  This strike will no longer be unavoidable by enemies, meaning it will now be able to be parried, dodged and blocked.  Frost strike will also do slightly less damage.  The change to avoidance will leave many players wondering if it is worth using over any other strike.  If you are expertise capped, it shouldn’t make that much of a difference, but if not, it may be worth looking at other options. 

Overall

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New Unholy Talent Tree

Wow, that really is a lot of big changes, isn’t it?  How do they stack up overall though, are they nerfs, buffs, or just changes?

For tanking, I think that if the PTR notes go live as stated, then they are fairly substantial nerfs to Death Knight tanking.  The health and armor drops are fairly substantial and will hurt.  Both health and armor are dropping perilously close to warrior and paladin level, but those two classes have shields to help them, while we don’t.  Also, cooldowns are the real strength of Death Knight and changes were expected, so no real surprise there. Since Death Knights are still very solid tanks right now, and still dominate end game raiding, it waits to be seen if the changes take them to a level playing field with the other tanks, or remove them from viable play.  I personally think they went a little overboard though, and hope they real the changes back a little before 3.2 goes live. 

For DPS players the class gets a little easier to play and manage due to the changes to runic power dumping abilities.  Death Knights should also see slightly more single target DPS, but at the cost of some AoE.  This should be a wash to most players, and if Boss DPS goes up, Death Knights may earn a few more raid DPS slots. 

I am not thrilled by any of the changes, but am not going to cry foul just yet on Blizzard.  The DPS changes seem reasonable, and may even amount to a buff.  The Tank changes seem a bit over the top, especially considering some of the other tanks proposed buffs, but they may change before release.