New DK changes inc

[Multibocks]

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 don’t 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.

So I don't run a DK tank currently and I'm curious to how this will affect DK MBers. Is unholy still the MBers first choice?

[Ifalna]

It puts a little less emphasis on using the Oh shit! abilities just to keep damage under control, all in all it looks like less damage will be taken in general, with the cooldown abilities helping a bit less, which imo is a lot better then taking more damage, but having to constantly blow your cooldowns to keep it all under control.

Not that much bad to say about the changes at all really.

[Bigfish]

Horn of Winter and Frost Presence got buffed? Nice.

[Hachoo]

Yeah actually this whole thing looks more like a tanking buff for the entire class. Might be a SLIGHT pvp nerf but the tanking buffs are awesome. Will make MB tanking even easier with a DK.

[FIra]

BAH! Big drop in pvp with the 20% from 40 and 50%. The frost presence might make it worth it though. Can't wait to find out how well it works.

[Dominian]

"Chill out some of the defensive capabilities all DKs have in PvP."

It was pretty obviouse that the DK class would be very good from the start in order to secure a decent DK population and now the nerfs will come.

[Redbeard]

Wow im excited about a couple things there:

Unholy blight cost dropped 1/3 (awesome)
Corpse explosion taken off of a rune and uses power now (i need to work wtih corpse explosion some more but i think this will be a good change) and the damage increased.
Pestilence - Cooldown removed.


I wish they wouldve put an eta on when the changes were going in... if these are for 3.1 then it will likely be a while.

[Siaea]

A lot of the PvE stuff looks good, my DK is super spiky at taking damage in instances. Looks good. Bone shield nerf sucks, but I guess it had to happen.

[Hachoo]

I'm pretty sure these changes were confirmed for 3.0.4 which will be the next patch - could be a month away though since its not even on the PTR yet.

I'm not that concerned with any of the nerfs...hell I haven't even used bone shield or icebound fortitude yet at all and I'm almost 75 lol.

[TheBigBB]

"Chill out some of the defensive capabilities all DKs have in PvP."

It was pretty obviouse that the DK class would be very good from the start in order to secure a decent DK population and now the nerfs will come.

These changes are not all nerfs. There are some nice buffs in there, especially for PVE.