The New DK changes... Good or Bad?

Death Knights

All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
Anti-Magic Shell: The cooldown has been lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
Blood Aura now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
Blood Presence now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.
Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence.
Bone Shield: The mitigation has been reduced from 40% to 20%.
Corpse Explosion: Damage increased substantially, added 5 sec. cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
Dark Command: Range increased to 30 yards.
Death Knights have access to unique death-knight only facial textures and skin tones. These can be selected at the character creation screen.
Death Pact now grants 40% instead of 20% healing.
Frost Presence: The bonus armor has been increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%.
Heart Strike no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets.
Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
Icebound Fortitude now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but can go higher).
Night of the Dead now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.
Pestilence no longer has a 10 seconds cooldown.
Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:
Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.
Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.
Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
Rune Strike: Damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
Unholy Blight had had its cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being cast.
Vampiric Blood: In addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded,


Not a huge fan of the bone shield change..... Or IBF

They're trying to fix some OP crap, and trying to make damage mitigation more consistent so bosses don't hose you when it's on the low part of its cycle. The changes to Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield are specifically to open up the potential to increase the DKs baseline mitigation without giving them God Mode buttons too.

Arguments about "it should have been caught in beta" aside...these are good things to aim for. I doubt this will be a complete fix, or the last large set of adjustments to the class. This shouldn't surprise anyone.

I think I understand where they are coming from Im just REALLY hopeing it doesnt hose me in the end. Im a fan of what they are doing with frost pres but the over mitigation is going to be lower by like a few % points. Dks already struggle with the tank aspect of the game I think its a little closeminded to base so much of our tank abilities off of what will or what happen in PVP and that (@ least IMHO) is what is happening

In the beta, DK damage was nerfed a few times.
They didn't really have a lot of tanking data, as everyone had fairly low-end gear on the premades or random gear from drops.
Not saying they had no data, just not the best they could have had.

In my opinion, they let DK's enter the live world a bit too strong, because they wanted the class to be initially powerful and kick ass.
The power will gradually (over the course of arena) be scaled back a little, because they have to be at least in the same bracket as other classes.
Otherwise arena's would have 40-50% DK representation, and even if things aren't totally balanced they want a more even spread of classes.
The game is balanced around 5's arena, so depending how they do as the season progresses will determine if they get buffs (probably to pve tanking) or nerfs (pvp damage/mitigation).

Most of these are PvE buffs. Some are PvP nerfs which were mostly needed. But, as I said, some of these are HUGE buffs for PvE. This will make DK + 4 shaman even better than it already is (and I can vouch, its already really really good).

Im a big fan of many of the blood changes. My DK was unholy due to their nice AOE and anti magic zone but im going to give blood a try now that theyre buffing blood aura. It just fits in with the idea of my group. Also going to try to work in corpse explosion now that its getting buffed, but we'll see.