Theo's Death Knight Beta thread.Follow

You'd want on a pale horse, too, for PvP.

Edited, Jul 24th 2008 4:50pm by Kavekk

Yeah, I'm not quite sure I understand that one either. Maybe if the ability is not quite up to the tooltip you could explain it to us? I can see how maybe with the rest of the DK's abilities it might be rather superfluous for leveling, but it looks damn near broken for PvP.

Yeah, pretty much. I can see spending a point in Rune Tap, since most of the other talents that low kinda blow, but Imp Rune Tap actually is pretty much made of suck.

This is probably the only PvP build I could see Rune Tap working in. It's not really worth going into Blood if you're Unholy or Frost main spec. Mainly because as Frost you'll be using one blood/unholy set of runes to put up Plague Strike, another blood with a frost to use Obliterate, and your other frost on Frost Strike/Icy Touch, and your other unholy on Degeneration.

You also might just use Degen in PvP and forget Plague, but you'd miss out on a bit of damage.

My own personal feeling on PvP will be that DWing with this build will be the best, though it's entirely possible that you move those three points in Nerves of Cold Steel to Blood for a build like this. I personally think the second will be better, though my brother argues with blood-caked blade, the amount of diseases put up will allow for insane damage with Blood Strike.

I think I'll be trying a deep Unholy build tonight, as I've had little opportunity to do so.

Another PvP build I just came up with is this. Similar to the last build, but much more anti-caster. I also changed the frost talents a bit more for a better setup.

imp rune tap may not be worth it... but 10% heal for 1 rune seems like a good deal... especially since i got blood rune mastery

if imp rune tap is that bad, ill just move those points into death rune mastery... those 2 were a tossup for me

also, what are your thought on blade barrier?

with the reduced spell damage thing equal to parry chance, seems like it could be useful (rune tap helping me burn runes for it... like a mark of blood, rune tap, some strikes = easy rune burning for extra parry chance.. kinda thought)

I haven't had a chance to PvP on my DK.

Mongoose, Blade Barrier is an awful talent.

Rage, I don't really know anything about tanking. From what I've heard deep blood will not be a tanking tree; that's more frost's schtick.

Excuse my DK noobness, but would you mind explaining why Blade Barrier sucks? Is it hard to keep it up most of the time?

I had originally thought Blade Barrier would be decent for a tank spec, but then again I also thought that I would be able to spam 6 Frost runes to proc Unbreakable Armor(Frost) most of the time =/

Well, with the removal of Blade Barrier this is what I'm looking at as a tanking spec.

Hungering Cold seems to be more of a PvP talent to me. I don't know how quickly Runic Power generates, but it seems that by the time you have 100, freezing all your enemies in an instance-pull for 10 sec may not be very useful anymore (since damage breaks the effect). Then again, I haven't fought any WotLK bosses yet, it may be useful for minion control.

edit, nvm nvm

Edited, Jul 27th 2008 1:58am by mongoosexcore

?

1.5 second GCD.

0 Rune 1
1.5 Rune 2
3 Rune 3
4.5 Rune 4
6 Rune 5
7.5 Rune 6
- Trigger Blade Barrier

Or am I missing something here?

Even easier if there's move that use more then 1 rune.

Might be a pain in the *** when grinding/pvping, but in a pve situation, I'm not sure how that's much harder then keeping 5 S&D and a 5 Rupture up...

Hey Theo, Glad to see you spreading your knowledge on other forums. Anyways, maybe this is covered somewhere, but I don't have time to look it up atm. How does the rune power work? Is like mana/rage/energy? I've been trying to look from the videos, but can't tell.

RP makes me think of a more 'fluid' finisher system... since it seems all RP ability are affect by slice of 10. So it's like a '10 point' combo system.

Escape Artist, at the moment, seems lackluster for the frost DK, which most are going to at least have 3 points in frost to give Icy Touch a freeze chance. With Death Grip as well as Icy Touch and Death Coil, DKs are still quite powerful from range.

Expertise and Diplomacy, for PvP, aren't as big of a deal as Perception is. Druids are the natural prey of this class, with Degeneration, and rogues look to be pretty nasty when going up against a DK, as they'll simply kite you and bleed you down. You can try and Death Grip them, they'll just ShS it and use their speed boost to get away. You can try to Icy Touch freeze them, but they'll CloS it.

So yeah, Perception at the moment is the biggest racial a DK can get.


Your main RP abilites, Tyr, aren't based on how much RP they use. Death Coil is the main thing you use RP for, and it's 40 always, except with the talent in blood. But yes, the talents seem to rely heavily on this "finisher system" of RP.

I wish they'd put more abilities on RP; I usually spam Death Coil because I generate too much.

I'd probably agree for leveling there are better ways to spend your points rather than Blade Barrier. But with tanking I'd still think it's worth it. Based off of the basic table Tyr set up, I see having no runes available as very feasible.

And the ability doesn't last "while you have no runes active", that's just to activate it. Once it's been activated you get the effect for 8 secs after that.

Being able to spot a rogue in stealth before he gets the opener on you is key. Rogues are one of the most dominating classes in the game in PvP. Why? Because they can pick their fights with whomever they want, whenever they want. In the kiting situation Theo was describing if a rogue finds you in stealth he can garrote you and that is a silence/dot. A good rogue can win almost every battle all the time if they get the jump on someone. A great rogue can do the same even if they don't get the jump on someone via stealth. We all know how many great rogues there are out there. Not many. Perception is the single best PvP ability for any race. Followed closely by Will of the Forsaken.