Blizzard announced some of the upcoming death knight changes in detail yesterday. These should show up in patch 3.1, which isn’t even out for testing yet so we’ve got a while. You can see the original post here, however MMO Champion has a nicely laid out version.
These are good changes, both the buffs and the nerfs.
We’re going to end up with more runic power. At first glance this seems sweet, but now figure out how to get more runic power abilities into your rotation. Uh huh, had some ill thoughts about Blizzard there didn’t you? Still I’m looking forward to be able to keep Death Coils pumping out while using other runic power abilities.
The new tank runeforge is good, certainly a help for those with defense cap concerns. Being capped already will I use it? I don’t know, my concern would be having to suddenly tank w/o being about to redo my runeforge. New glyphs sound good, even though I finally settled on my level 80 ones. Oh well, herbs hopefully will keep dropping in price. New sigils are excellent, and this announcement just saved me from buying [Sigil of Haunted Dreams]. Probably still a good one for Blood spec, but I’ll wait.
Blood is getting some needed updates. Frontal AoE with Heart Strike, though still weaker than many AoE tank abilities. More healing makes Blood Aura a nice utility for groups and raids. Some improved mitigation talents, too. Will these changes make Blood compete with Frost for tanking? No, but it might give those you prefer Blood a viable tank build.
Frost changes looks scary for tanks but they are a good thing. Icebound Fortitude is getting nerfed, but if you have tank gear it isn’t so bad. If you’re in DPS gear stop relying on it to survive aggro and learn to manage aggro instead. Frost Presence is a big boost. It is making up for the Icebound Fortitude change, which means we can be less reliant on a cooldown ability because we have better all the time mitigation and survivability. Horn of Winter change is awesome. Hungering Cold is still PvP only, the cost wasn’t the PvE issue.
Unholy got the most loving. Anti-Magic Shell cooldown is great for boss fights with repeated big magic hits (heroic Loken anyone?). Bone Shield change will work out just like Icebound Fortitude, except this may put more distance between Frost tanking and Unholy tanking (advantage remaining with Frost) unless you have a lot of avoidance. Corpse Explosion may become viable, but I’ll need to see it first. Night of the Dead is not favorite place to put pet AoE avoidance, but I see why. This is going to throw off all Unholy builds, though, as most of them don’t include it currently but will have to include it after patch. Pestilence cooldown removal is great for when you get that add right after you used it. The Raise Dead split needed to happen, and not for the cooldown and [Corpse Dust] cost. While recovering from raid wipes I found out that if I raise my ghoul before everyone is alive then it automatically ghouls a player, and with the 5 minute cooldown that isn’t so great. Shadow Death nerf makes sense, we were up and running way too long.
Again, good changes and certainly not the nerfs some other classes have been calling for on us. Of course, Blizzard might be holding off on the bad news until the test realm comes online.
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