DK, the great balancer?Follow

i was thinking the same thing. in one fell swoop you provide a harder counter-class to rogues instead of warriors (dps plate wearer with heals vs one without heals), a huge amount of anti-hot abilities and what amounts to an number of great combat control moves, not the least of which is pulling your enemies to you.

an elegant solution, if it works out in the end.

I'm just wondering who will be the anti Death Knight class.

Warriors perhaps, since they hit like a truck with so much hp and with the MS effect added, DK's healing ability will be in trouble.

Hunters maybe, since they shoot from a range with many snares and what not. Also with the recent reduction to healing ability, it can also hurt the DK a lot.

I'm going to assume that no cloth wearer is going to be an anti DK class, since the DK itself are the anti-caster tank type of WoW.

I was kinda thinking Paladins would be the anti-DK. They can Cleanse diseases.

I'm not sure the paladin's ability to cure disease will play a big factor in his ability to deal with DKs - After all, they can cure poisons as well, but rarely bother to do because it's a waste of a GCD.

Shaman and Druids deal with poison via totem and Abolish poisons, which are extremely potent way to remove poison because they don't affect the GCD. So yeah, I can see shaman being somewhat of a counter to DK because of disease cleansing totems.

What Paladin do have however, is way to deal damage and fear Undead.

I am going to make a Paladin/DK combo.



It will never really brake higher than 1500, but I will take every druid with me and make every druid Cry.


JoJ + Antihealing.



I love their tears.

I think Death Knights should count as "undead" for purposes of damage. Makes things more interesting. Therefore; Paladin.

Actually, the leaked talent a talent tree showed us that the DK's 11 point talent in Unholy was called 'Lichborn', which change his type to undead, make him immune to stun and give attacker 25% chance to miss him for 12 seconds.

One can only assume that this will make him weak to Exorcism, Turn Evil and Shackle Undead.

Edited, May 26th 2008 2:47am by Tyrandor

Well the spell description I read specifically and verbosely stated that the DK becomes 'Undead', capitalised. It would make perfect sense to me, becoming Undead strengthens you against some classes that have solid CC (Mage/Lock/Rogue) but opens you up to more CC from the classes you always see in Arena, Paladins and Priests. That said, in 5v5 both Shackle and Turn Undead would be dispelled pretty quickly, so immunity from Stun would seem to be the real gem there. Unfortunately, crap like Blind will still work :(

I'm a bit miffed that Warlocks get another anti-class, but it is Mages that are going to get hit almost as hard as Druids. No Polymorph, and if you succeed in Frost Nova/Blink away, you just get Death Gripped back to the DK and then snared.

With that in mind, Undead and Gnome DKs are going to be extremely dangerous as they have a second CC break (in addition to PvP trinket); Gnomes in particular as Escape Artist complements a DK almost perfectly. They can already break/become immune to other forms of CC except roots, with Escape Artist they can even break out of Frost Nova and Entangling Roots.

The other races' racials dont seem to synergize so well, Humans and Dwarves in particular, but the Draenei HoT might be nice, as might the BE Silence ability for another caster shutdown.

Regardless, in the end, Blood Elf DKs are going to look bada$$.

The same mentality could be used to explain why Fear and Polymorph suck in 5v5... oh wait, they don't.

I know that for 3v3, as rpm, getting the DK to go lichborn to get out of the Rogue's stun and mage polymorph only so he walks right into a shackle undead will probably be a common tactic.

If anything, with the DK being a disease based class who control Undead (And can become one), Blizzard is making it so many abilites that were formerly useless in pvp are now at least somewhat helpful.



I think that now that we have more information about the DK, starting a new threat about racial choice is in order. One where we actually try and figure out what's a good choice or bad choice with none of that 'THEY ARE ALL EQUALS! PICK THE ONE YOU LIKE' nonsense.

So much Rogue hate, are they doing better than MS Warriors now?
(which DK isn't countering either as far as I can tell)

Btw, Death and Decay is a pretty good way to ***** Rogues, it will knock them out of Stealth (like Consecrate).

Well, I do think Feral Druids have a great deal to worry about in future.

The overrepresentation (I read a figure close to 150% in S2, not sure what it is now admittedly) of Druids in Arena statistics, 2v2 in particular, will not have gone unnoticed. It is Blizzard's modus operandi to deliver major changes around the same time as major content patches to soften the blow ("The Shaman Review"), and I personally expect to see Feral's PvP utility go down in comparison to other classes in the expansion. I'm not saying there will be a direct nerf, just that other classes will find they have more success in 1v1/2v2 against well-geared Ferals.

While it can be seen that Ferals dont need to worry about DKs Freezing them because DKs are themselves melee characters, it can be argued that DKs dont need to worry about Druid powershifting for the same reason. Why care if a Druid can shift, if you are able to cause maximum damage at close range anyway? The current class concept seems to focus on many things that could cause Feral Druids a big problem; no more HoTs (Degen turning them into a mega DoT instead), Icy Touch reducing attack speed while increasing DK attack speed, a good number of spelldamage abilities that cut right through Bear armour, a number of shadow-based DoTs, limited self-healing providing greater longevity than an Arms Warrior, Ghouls that can interrupt spellcasting and use a Shadowstep-like ability, Death Grip to retrieve an enemy using travelform to escape, and Mind-Freeze to finally interrupt the inevitable casterform heal?? This is ignoring a great many talented abilities like Hungering Cold, Gargoyle and Lichborne (-25% to hit? No stunning?) which are easily obtainable and further diminish the effectiveness of a Cat or Bearform Druid.

I'd say Feral Druids are in for a world of hurt. Ferals will still most likely be very powerful, but if any class is going to take them down a peg it'll be Death Knights.

Edited, Jun 5th 2008 6:32am by Sinstralis