Death Knight Changes in Patch 3.2
Posted by 
Tyranis on Friday, June 19, 2009 - 62 Comments Tags: 3:2, DPS, Frost, Patch, Tanks, blood, death knights, dk, nerf, tanking, unholy
Tyranis on Friday, June 19, 2009 - 62 Comments Tags: 3:2, DPS, Frost, Patch, Tanks, blood, death knights, dk, nerf, tanking, unholy 
In the upcoming patch, death knights will be the only class to receive a talent point refund because, once again, they are getting an overhaul. Some of these changes are nerfs, some are buffs and others are redesigns of how the spells and abilities function. The death knight community is already analyzing all of the data and surmising why these changes have occurred. Let's explore some of these changes, but keep in mind that all of this is subject to change before this patch goes live.Blood Strike: The bonus damage this ability receives from diseases on the target has been increased to 50% per disease.
This change is creating quite a stir in the death knight community. That's a huge buff to that ability and some folks are speculating that it's a typo and they meant to say "increased by 50% per disease", which would mean it increases from 12.5% to 18.75% per disease and not 50%. If the change does remain as written, then blood strike could replace heart strike in the blood rotation and some of the scourge strikes in the unholy rotation. The blue post found here seems to indicate that it's not a typo, however, it's already been reduced on their latest internal build, which would make it different than the patch notes.
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.
This is a change for pvp and will probably come as a relief to many hardcore pvpers. However, I don't see DKs making much of a stink over it. Chains of ice is still amazing and has the same basic function.
Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
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.
Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.
Ouch! The death knight tanks take another heavy blow with the nerf bat. In patch 3.1.3 frost presence armor bonus was reduced by 20%. Now we see a 4% nerf to the stamina bonus and the doubling of the cooldown on the death knight's main survival ability. In addition, the armor and stamina talents in the blood and frost trees are also taking a hit.
It seems that they are trying to make death knight tanks more like the other tanks. The original design felt like death knights would have more frequent cooldowns to push to offset the fact that they do not have a shield and cannot block. These changes, however, make them feel more like the other tanks and icebound fortitude is now more in line with other tank talents like last stand.
If I'm being objective, I think the icebound fortitude change can solve some issues. Recently, my guild took down General Vezax using a paladin main tank. It was a little obnoxious knowing that we could survive the surges of darkness easier if our main tank was a death knight solely because icebound fortitude had a one-minute cooldown.
Much of the screaming from the DK tank community seems to revolve around the fact that paladin tanks are getting a decent amount of buffing, including this hard to believe change:
Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin's health to 10/20/30% of maximum.
If I'm reading that correctly, that's a passive guardian spirit every two minutes? I'm sure glad my guild often runs with two protection paladins!
Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
Frost strike hits hard and it was probably viewed as too much burst in pvp especially considering it couldn't be mitigated. The slight reduction of damage is probably going to be a wash considering that blood strike is getting buffed. The blue post here, seems to indicate that the frost dps is being spread out a bit more and not consolidated on just one ability.
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.
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.
These are the 51 point talents for blood and unholy specs. The jury seems mixed on these changes. While I'm not sure if it's an overall buff or nerf to the damage of these spells, what I do know is these spells will be a lot easier to use now that they have a fixed runic power cost and duration. Currently, the timing of when you use these abilities can drastically affect the amount of extra dps they give you. Pop them at the wrong time and you have just wasted a precious cooldown. So I'm eager to see these changes in action.
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.
Dual-wielding used to be one of the top approaches to take for a dps death knight. Recently, however, many of the changes have all but killed it. So in patch 3.2, the dual wielding death knights might make a comeback with this new talent in the frost tree.
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.
Interesting. So the current desecration is being split into two separate talents. Desecration is now mostly a pvp ability. The good news is, the infamous desecration graphic will now be much less prominent in pve, which will make most raid leaders happy. However, the speculation is desolation may not be worth taking because the 12 second duration may mean that it is not active at all times with the current rotations. We'll have to see if this new talent gets modified at all before it releases.
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.
There isn't much to comment on here. The talent points saved on blood of the north are probably meant to make room for the new dual-wielding talent in frost. The lichborne change makes it more dynamic since you can use it more often, but need to be more exact on the timing.
Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%.
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.
Last but not least, some big changes to the unholy tree. Scourge Strike is the bread and butter for the unholy DK. The nerf in damage seems partly pvp related. Since scourge strike deals shadow damage, it is not reduced by armor and can be a wrecking ball. Blizzard doesn't seem to like large amounts of burst coming from a single ability. The reduction in damage on scourge strike is offset by the buff to blood strike, which should see more use. This may also be a push for unholy DKs to get more benefit out of armor penetration. Items with armor penetration are rife in Ulduar and currently it's not a stat that does too much for unholy DKs who spend most of their time scourge striking shadow damage.
The unholy blight redesign is one of the biggest changes for death knights in this patch. Unholy blight is the signature spell of the unholy tree and the main reason that this spec is normally associated with AOE damage. Well that all changes in 3.2. Unholy blight no longer deals AOE damage at all, in fact, it is not even a spell, it is a passive ability that adds a bleed effect to your death coils.
This change really alters the flavor of the unholy death knight and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Don't get me wrong, this change may turn out to be powerful, but I thought it was interesting how each of the three dps specs for death knights felt unique. Blood was the heavy hitting single target crusher, frost seems to be evolving once again as the dual-wielding spec and unholy was the master of AOE damage. Well I guess we'll have to wait and see how unholy feels after the changes go live.
In summary, death knights are looking at some tanking nerfs and a reduction to burst and AOE damage in 3.2. On the other hand, some abilities will be easier to use, dual-wielding should be viable again and raid members should no longer die by standing in fires that are obscured by spell effects.
What do you think of the death knight changes coming in 3.2? Is there anything you're particularly excited or angry about?
Reader Comments (62)
It appears that the judgment of the wise hasn't been fixed yet. I was hoping it would be fixed soon, but I suppose they might not mention it either. Time will tell.
It just seems that the overpowered class of WoW is now whining because they are being brought down closer to everybody else's level. I do a lot of PVP as a Holy Paladin and the only ones that can seem to send me to the grave are Death Knights. Their burst damage is insane, you basically have to pop your cooldowns to stand any chance of killing them and what good is that? You then have to wait 5 minutes or more for them. What ever happen to the drag it out, fight to the last HP point and stand a chance? I die and see the DK run off with almost full health. So this is why Blizzard is doing this, to make things more enjoyable for the rest of us.
I'm god damn close to re-rolling class again because of blizzard fucking up my tanking. I'm a god damn tank that changed to dk for a new playing style when tanking, and they are making us so god damn awfull a pally/warrior/druid seems like almost an obvious choice over us if we are equally geared...
Just to clear it up. wow was ment for PVE and so fucking up for all us pve players on a PVE realm just cause dk is OP in pvp is god damn bullshit, make DK's different on pve and pvp realms then, i dont give a crap, but dont fucking destroy our class....
Okay, so once again people cry about PvP and PvE gets nerfed?
And what's this bringing Toughness "in line" with other classes nonsense - I thought DK's were supposed to be special. At the very least if you nerf Toughness, then buff our Avoidence (or did you forget we cant block).
Now that we have the Dual Talent capability I think the time has come to have completely different Talent Trees for PvP vs. PvE. Or maybe different Trees on PvP servers versus PvE servers. This constant messing with PvE to satisfy PvP'ers is getting pretty annoying...I thought this was WoW not Warhammer?
yeah, I don't pvp, so i can't talk for that, but a scourge strike nerf and an unholy blight deletion is the last thing i need
This is absolutely ridiculous blizz has to stop messing with us Dk's I mean it takes alot more work to tank with a dk then any other class and there just making it harder and as for messing with unholy blight if they dont put it back normal there is gonna be some pissed off unholy Dk's
I think what they are doing to frost tanking is bull shit and you prety much just changed the way Unholy plays, and made it so their tanking capabilities are now gone.
I can personally say im happy I play blood spec.
i like these changes. im really liking the big boost to dual wields and blood strike, and although i love unholy blight i just hate having to keep it up all the.
im just wondering how unholy blight will work with death coils. will each death coil reset the charge ? i would hate sending off a critical hit death coil and then sudden doom activating and reducing its damage.
gargoyle and dancing rune weapon is a welcome change for ease of use and you get to save your runic power for better things.
desolation is also a welcome change, as youre not being confined to a small area, plus with blood strikes activating it you can save on unholy runes.
the frost tanking spells were balanced and thats fine. im sure you wont be able to tank as well as other classes, but you can still tank.
frost strike nerf is ok i guess, it pretty much made rune strike worthless.
the only thing im disappointed in seeing is still no increased duration to horn of winter : / and maybe letting chains of ice activate things like merciless combat and glacial rot (since i use chain of ice instead of icy touch on one of my specs)
/target Blizzard
/pat on back
This is great news, love knowing that Blizz is still paying attention to equalizing the game.
Also for all you DK's that say it's your skill that allows you to spank other classes, stop kissing your own butt and thinking you just know how to play your class. If your class is getting nerf'd then all the awesome stuff you were doing before was because YOU WERE OVRPWR'D, now you all just have to figure out how to play a "more" equal class.
Good Luck DK's and Retadins.
LAWL @ all the DK noobs
In the Future we should have two seperate comment areas for pvp and pve regarding nerfs, I never know if im really being called a noob or not.
but seriously i dont think that these changes are as big as we think they are. we just have to adjust is all, im looking forward to trying out dualwield again though.
Thanks Blizzard why did you make a hero class in the 1st place? >.> Don't you love nerfs!
Jay S. is right, blizzard should do the right thing and delete his ass so he can level his death knight from level 1 like all the other non-hero classes.
bull shit
jalous bastards we get it you dont like DKs so you dont have to beat the crap out of hte lifeless body taht is the DK they wont anything left soon they are about 2 pounches away from a knockout and then you might aswell take away the DK class away this patch is turnng out to be one of the worst seems the only way blizz an make a petch work is by adding new content and even then they still manage to screw it up i am not even goig to say anything about the noobs who actauly like this change because its really not thier fault its like being mad a hiv + person for having HIV i am mad at blizzard for listening are they fucking blind or just mentally retarded or both first they screw up tne mounds then they screw up the new BG and now they are completly screwing up DK their hero class it ems blizz is detormened to bring WOW to its nease and beat it sanceless this game is not about pvping its about pve and DK are taking another blow to the cruch no other class is getting this much bull shit ya i know that both rogues and paly have gotten some serious shots to the junk nothing compared to the DKs if only this was first nerfs DKs started at teh top and they plunged to the bottom i could deal with making DKs "egual" in power to the other classes but it went way past that. or here is an idea if you really do feel that DK are OP isntead of beating the living crap out of the DKs why not buff the rest of the classes to the levels of the DKs who wont be happy with stronger class the only one in disadavantage thier are the mobs of azeroth bt i know blizz is gointo dish oout another dish of crap and completly ignore all other possibilitys
QQ I finally get my deathkinght geared for tanking and then Bliz gets to play whack-a-DK with the nerf hammer.
Nothing i can do about it so might as well buy more stamina gems
U oughta be a fucking retard for calling the dks noobs for screaming about these messed up nerfs.
The main problem in PVP the way i see it is that DK easily beat dps over other classes equally geared quite often, meaning there is a problem with the dps dk, not the tanking one, so instead of making us pathetic lowlife tanks and a easy peasy killable target, maybe nerf our damage instead of INCREASING it like ure doing now..
you realise if the new dual whielding talent is going to be very low, it'll boost unholy dps so much that it makes up form the lose of unholy blight, + the Bloodstike HUGE buff .
blood spec i dont think will affect with this so much, unless heart strike will also affect with offhand but i very much doubt that.
unholy dosent want to be a AE spec, it'll be a nice more single target orient dps spec like blood and thats nice
You know, I love seeing people telling DKs that it's about time. It's not an issue to nerf something if it does indeed balance it out with other classes. Blizzard doesn't balance the classes. They always overdo the nerfs. I have a feeling that this will always be the case. We just happen to be the ones hit with the nerf bat this time.
Me, being an UH DK, I won't be hurt much. I hate seeing UB disappear though.
I was toying with the idea of trying my hand at tanking, but I don't think that'll be happening. The nerfs to our tanking abilities is definately taking it too far. Many people have pointed out that nerfing IBF would have solved many of the problems. Instead, they are esentially destroying the dks ability to tank.
@Ryan Scorpion
Oh, and I love seeing a pally come on here saying that we need nerfed because, in his own words, "the only ones that can seem to send me to the grave are Death Knights." Come on many, because we're the only ones that can beat you, we need nerfed?
@jimmyjammy
No, the Unholy tweaks won't be nice. The ability to be somewhat of an AoE damage dealer added to the fun factor of the Unholy tree. This sucks just a little. :(
No, it's not a game breaker for me and no I won't be ditching my dk. I like dks too much. I hear people hating on dks so damn much. You know what? Suck it! I love my DK.
This is the first patch note for 3.2. They always make the first changes a bit on the extreme side. I'm pretty sure they'll ease up, as they've done before on many other things.
stop QQing about DK nerfs, l0sers
Are they nerfs to DK tanking - yes.
Is this a bad thing? I'm about 50-50 on this. Honestly, DKs are ridiculously powerful tanks because their cooldowns are godly and on short timers. Since most major boss abilities are on 30 sec to 1 minute internal cds, being able to have a personal CD for every (or every 2nd) major ability makes certain fights a joke. On top of this blizzard has yet to fix the fact that healthpools are still the key to boss tanking. Yes, other stats are important, but in the end having more health than other tanks is a huge advantage. When my alt DK in tank gear and frost presence has 35K unbuffed and I don't have anywhere near top level gear and raid buffed I can get to 43K or so (and remember this is not a top geared toon) and other tanks need ulduar gear to get to the same level, something needs to change. Druids had their stamina and health increases hit for the same reason.
The fact that we don't have shields (thus less base armor and no block) needs to be accounted for - either increase our base mitigation or give us increased damage reduction effects (buff blade warding or add a similar passive ability). But on the whole DK tanks needed some changes.
The other thing to consider is that DKs still have the best magic tanking abilites. If they throw some bosses that require a magic tank (like the old fights that used warlock tanks) then DK tanks will still have a guaranteed tank role. They said the original concept for DKs was as caster tanks, so maybe they'll be giving us some fights where this aspect of the class is actually going to shine.
Finally - this is the first iteration of patch notes, there's a couple of months of testing likely to happen before this is implemented and in that time there will be changes, so why get worked up now? Let the balancing rounds happen and then cry that the world is ending, or better yet, accept that in general you get nerfed in 60% of patches, are unchanged in 30% and only get buffed in 10% (this is true for pretty much every class). Honestly, if people stopped whining about how powerful other classes seem to them and just learned to play their own class every class would probably have recieved far less nerfs over the last 5 years.
mmaaaannnn, another blow to us DK's. Why don't you just buff the other classes? o wait, your not that smart, forgot sorry ;p i thot that WoW was about defeating end game content and the lore? not about PvP. now you get a bunch of whiners b/c you have people that know how to play and you nerf them to hell. WTF stop nerfing us we are a god damn HERO CLASS not a god damn LOSER CLASS. blizz need to learn wtf a hero class is, and stop messing with us. how the hell are we supposed to kill arthas and sargeras and illidan and shit if we can even kill a god damn lvl 1 mob a t 6? at this rate, that's what the dk will be, we cant even defeat a god damn lvl 70 mob at fucking 80...