Originally Posted by Blue
We have talked about making some of these changes and wanted to provide more details. You should be able to try these out yourselves on the PTR before they go live.
Our reason for most of these changes should be obvious, but some common themes are:
Making tanking still rely on cooldowns, but rely on them a little less.
Make Blood a more attractive spec, and particularly for tanking.
Chill out some of the defensive capabilities all DKs have in PvP.
Avoid having to use Death and Decay as an out-of-combat runic power generator.
General
All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.
New runeforge rune -- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.
Many death knight glyphs have been changed. In many cases the negative consequences were removed.
New death knight sigils are now available, primarily from vendors, including a tanking-oriented sigil.
Blood
Rune Strike -- damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.
The healing of Blood Aura, Blood Presence and Death Pact has been doubled.
Heart Strike we overhauled this ability. It no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets like a cleave. It still hits for more than Blood Strike, but you can still use Blood Strike if e.g. you dont want to break CC.
Bloody Strikes the bonus damage from Pestilence has been moved here to help Blood AE slightly.
Vampiric Blood -- in addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.
Will of the Necropolis -- now reduces the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded,
Dancing Rune Weapon cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
Frost
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 it can go higher). The stun immunity is intended to be its primary role in PvP.
Frost Presence -- bonus armor increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%. We wanted to reduce the effectiveness of cooldowns but bring up base mitigation to reduce damage spikiness.
Horn of Winter -- now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.
Hungering Cold cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
Unholy
Anti-Magic Shell -- cooldown lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.
Bone Shield -- mitigation reduced from 40% to 20%.
Corpse Explosion -- damage increased substantially, added 5 sec cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.
Night of the Dead -- now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.
Outbreak this talent 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 sec cooldown.
Raise Dead -- now split into two spells: Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member (at no reagent cost).
Shadow of Death -- duration reduced from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.
Unholy Blight cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.
