WotlK and DK info compilation.Follow

interesting. im torn between deep frost, deep blood, and some kind of frost/blood hybrid with a bit of unholy as my arena trees (using current info of course). depending on how the cards fall we'll know if DKs are a prime focus target or not. my money is that theyll be up there, but probably not as high priority as shammies and priests. easily tied with warlocks tho, what with their anti-caster and control abilities.

of course, theres a bit of a catch-22 here as the best control abilities are deep frost, and the whole point of going into blood would be to provide healing capability to withstand focus fire, but if a DK isnt deep frost, will they be as much of a threat then?

ahh, speculation.

I don't see a pvp build being viable without Lichborn.

11 point in Unholy will be pretty much necessary. Not to mention that this allow you to grab the 30% harder to dispel disease talent.

It's the rest of the unholy tree I'm having problem with.

Something like this is what I think will end up being a good pvp frost tree.

Another interesting point I hadn't picked up...

You use runes, which build runic power... then runic power is used to 'finisher' like abilities, meaning that you probably use ALL your runic points when you use a runic ability.



Edited, May 29th 2008 3:24pm by Tyrandor

What I'm wondering is if there will be spells that do not require runes (that require health instead, for example.)

update on the DK talents on the official site:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/deathknight/gameplay.xml

previously, the talent desc. said stuff such as "focuses on pve dps" or "focuses on tanking". now the trees are as follows:



this does away with the whole "unholy is pvp, frost is tanking, blood is pve dps" thing that was originally said.

as for me, im really looking forward to playing as a melee control class. that sounds like FUN.

Edited, Jun 3rd 2008 8:27pm by Quor

Unholy also seem to need SD as well as Hit both normal and spell...

That's a concern overall for the DK imo, itemisation is going to be a pain in the ***.

SD = Spell Damage, as indicated by "increases spell damage by up to <xx>" in item descriptors.

As detailed on the wikidot, most DK abilities scale with AP rather than spell damage, so itemisation wont be too much trouble for most DKs. Only Unholy relies on Spell Damage to a greater degree, but there's even a talent for that.

Spelldamage is obtained from the Unholy Tree via Impurity, a large talent investment but 20% AP>SD isnt bad and we don't have any idea on the final coefficients yet.

To be honest, as this is an alpha the talents should be taken as more of a statement of intent than a final tree. Blizzard clearly intend Unholy to be the SD-dependent tree, but intend to provide some kind of AP conversion talent to soften the blow. I expect Impurity to either provide an additional benefit or be reduced to three ranks like Mental Quickness for Shamans.

I concur that deep Frost is looking like the hardcore PvP tree... an AoE sap is just astonishing, particularly when combined with Death Grip to drag any errant healers into the area of effect before casting. That ability alooe has the potential to shut down half an Arena team, allowing focus fire on the remaining players and possibly winning a match. Compared to that, Unholy Blight just seems...lacklusre.

Incoming: a nerf to the incapacitate function of Hungering Cold, or a buff to Unholy Blight. As it stands, Unholy is a far poorer PvP tree than Frost.

Blood continues to stand as a solid melee DPS tree; it reminds me of the Shaman Enhance tree; lots of solid DPS talents, but precious little in the way of CC/anti-CC.

EDIT: With the recent changes to the Frost tree in particular, I submit this as a revised deep-frost PvP tree. There are unspent points as wildcards, you can put them in Death Runes or Chillblaines etc depending on your playstyle.

Looking at the talents, the DK is heavily combo-based as the deescription states; get the enemies into a big furball, wait til you score a crit (for the guaranteed Howling Blast crit), Hungering Cold for a mass Freeze and then spank them with Howling Blast... six times base damage to everyone you can fit in the cone.

Edited, Jun 5th 2008 10:30am by Sinstralis

The current alpha build has Icy Touch and Mind Freeze (no word on Howling Blast but I dont see why it should be different) gaining 20% and 10% respectively from your Attack Power stat rather than spell damage. The non-talented Unholy spells (Death and Decay, Death Coil) also gain damage from Attack Power. They seem very keen to remove the dependence upon Spell Damage for Frost and Blood DKs (read: tanks).

Link here

Unholy DKs I expect to benefit from SD, presumably increasing overall disease damage (lest the damage scale poorly and become irrelevant) and the effect of Gargoyle/ etc. I am not certain if they will implement dual scaling with both AP and SD... that opens up the potential for serious abuse of Impurity at high gear levels, there are very few abilities in-game that scale directly and powerfully with two basic stats (Im not talking about crit/ArPen here) at the same time. Even if they do include SD scaling, it'd be a simple matter to do what Paladins used to do and stack spelldmg enchants on melee gear.

Spellhit I agree might be a bit of a nightmare... I cant think of any reasonable way to include spellhit in a DK's gear without nerfing something else badly. Hopefully Blizzrd have learned from their Ret Paladin experience, and will give us something workable instead of the expensive and awkwardly-placed Impurity.

Edited, Jun 5th 2008 2:04pm by Sinstralis

I can see Unholy as becoming another PvP tree, especially in confined spaces such as arenas with the addition of things such as Anti-Magic Zone (creates an Anti-Magic zone which reduces magical damage taken by 75% when standng in it for all party members).

Edited, Jun 5th 2008 6:07pm by IDrownFish