So I got in the Beta, and hit level 61. During this leveling, I tried all 3 specs, first doing Blood, then doing a whole level has Frost (ugh) and I did 60-61 Unholy. I just respecced to Blood.
Disclaimer: This is a beta. And as such, things will change. I'm also only level 61 so any duel/pvp I've had the occassion to try was against other DK. My observations may not hold water once I reach 80 and start mixing it up with other classes.
First, however, the DK's basic gameplay explained!
The latest build took out a lot of the chaos of the DK - the rotation are now much clearer and they've gotten rid of a lot of 'filler' abilities, merging them with others and so on.
First thing first, you have 2 Frost Runes, 2 Unholy Runes and 2 Blood Runes. Every ability that requires a Rune in turn build Runic Power, which goes to a 100.
The DK's core game play is centered around 6 abilities.
Icy Touch - 1 Frost Rune. Does (puny) frost damage and lower attack/ranged/casting speed by 15%. Also put a Frost Fever disease on the target that does shadow damage over time. 20 yard, 6 sec cooldown.
Plague Strike - 1 Unholy Rune. Does 60% Weapon Damage and put Blood Plague disease on that target that does shadow damage over time. It also removes one HoT.
Blood Strike - 1 Blood Rune. Does 60% weapon damage + X per disease on the target.
Death Strike - 1 Unholy & 1 Frost Rune. Does 60% weapon damage and heals you for 100% of damage dealt per disease on the target.
Obliterate - 1 Unholy & 1 Frost Rune. Deals 100% weapon damage + 300 + 50% per Disease on the target. Consume the diseases.
Death Coil - 50 Runic Power, Deal Shadow Damage to a target or heal a undead. 30 yard range.
Rince and repeat.
You essentially put up your disease (Icy Touch + Plague Strike), then do damage (blood strike) or heal (death strike), when the disease are about to run out, you Obliterate to do big damage and then dump your Runic Power (Death Coil)... and then repeat.
Different build will alter or enhance this core and different situation will call for use of your utility power or more unique abilities... but this is basically the core gameplay. In the same way that a rogue will use Combo building moves to release finishers.
The main difference between builds is that they give your new RP Dump as well as have incredible synergy with each other's key power - A Blood/Unholy Knight's Icy Touch is a puny thing... a Frost Knight's Icy Touch is a vicious ability.
With that out of the way, I'll use the next few posts to give my overview of all 3 specs.
Sadly, the talent tree is still the one for the last beta patch so I won't be able to use it as a visual aid :(... that being said, one of the common problem for all 3 tree is that they're too big! There's so much good stuff in there, that I wouldn't be surprised if most people ended with more then 51 points in there given tree.
Edited, Aug 10th 2008 4:42pm by Tyrandor
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Unholy -
Going into the Beta, unholy was the spec that excited me the less.
It seemed gimmicky. It seemed like despite being heralded as pvp spec, Frost would be better. It seemed like it relied to much on Ghouls, which may or may not be usable in arena... It seemed weak.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Unholy is a superb build, only overshadowed by blood right now because Blood is 'broken' (Blizzard even said so themselves).
In any case, Unholy is all about Shadow Damage. Remember that DK don't actually need +Dmg, since their attack power also increase their +Dmg.
From the get go, the Synergy is obvious... you have Talent that increase the damage of your disease, talent that make your auto-attack do an an extra 15% damage as shadow damage, talent that further increase the +Dmg gained from your attack power, a talent that make your disease gives a debuff that increase +13% damage from magical effect, talent that increase your Death Coil damage - etc.
But the crown jewel of it all is the 'new and improved' Scourge Strike.
Scourge Strike is essentially replace Plague Strike for Unholy... it does the exact same thing, except that it does 50% (Can be talented to 53%) + X (very small amount) SHADOW damage. So yes... it totally ignore armor and it synergise with every other talent in the tree that increase shadow damage.
I've had crit for over 1k damage against plate wearer (other DK :P) with it... over 1k dmg may not sound impressive, but remember we are level 60... back in the day, Ambush would crit for 600 on a plate wearer.
Unholy also has a talent that makes Obliterate snare the target in place, which help in making them much harder to kite, which is a huge concern for them pvp wise.
Unholy Blight + Death and Decay also make AE grinding child's play.
Now since this is the pvp build, I figured I'd pvp with it some. I was extremely aggressive in world pvp, even got myself 9 mark of honor hold from the Hellfire world pvp thingie. I also did plenty of duels.
I even managed to beat most of the 'overpowered' blood death knight I ran into, only losing to those who were able to fully exploit their 'OP-ness'. (More on that when I talk about the Blood tree).
In any case,
One of the misconception I had about Unholy was that it relied to much on the Ghoul, fact is, all spec use the ghoul to great effect - the Unholy Ghoul are a bit stronger however. I was also afraid that since you needed a 'body' to raise it, it would be unusable in Arena - Well, you can use a Reagent (Corpse Dust) to summon one. So it should be usable just fine in Arena. You can thus expect DK to be a 'pet class' really. Only Unholy DK get a pet bar for their ghoul however, Blood/Frost's ghouls aren't under their control.
It's actually funny to jump a DK and beat him up while his pet is still fighting the initial mob he attacked, because he can't order it around.
So how's pvp?
It's actually pretty fun. It's a shame the only thing I can fight at the moment are other DK... it kinda makes fights a bit repetitive.
Thanks to the talent that increase Disease Duration, it's easy to keep them up and give you more 'leeway' in your abilities.
With Dirge, the DK's main attack (Scourge Strike), also create more Runic Power, which is good - because Unholy DK have 2 great RP dump - Gargoyle and Unholy Aura, which both deal considerable damage that is pretty much unpreventable.
Blood Runes are pretty low priority for a Unholy DK... meaning you'll pretty much always have 1 up to use for Strangulate... which is pretty much useless atm, but against caster, that will be very nice.
Bone Armor is very good against 'big burst' class, such as Warrior, Mage or Death Knights ;p... absorbing 40% of the damage of the first 4 attack is a pretty massive burst damage reduction against those class... I don't foresee it being much use against rogues tho.
Between Icy Chain, Death Grip (Which can be talent down to 25sec cooldown, making it a pretty good ShS counter) and the 'imp' Obliterate talent, it's actually pretty hard to get away from an Unholy DK.
My basic pvp tactic so far, has been to get close to the target, build enough Runic power for Unholy Blight, and then use it, drop Death and Decay and an Ice chain. The target is pretty much stuck in the double AE, while I spam my various strikes as my Ghoul keeps beating up on him. If he manage to get away, I can death grip him back to me =D.
Between the periodic fear of Death & Decay and its damage, the damage of unholy blight, the damage of Frost Fever and Blood Plague and Scourge Strike/Icy Touch damage... all enhanced by the previously mentionned talents... targets just melt away.
So while it is fun and I think DK will come to be feared in 1v1 pvp (They seem to have an answer for almost every other ability in the game) - I'm still not convinced of what role they will fill in Arena.
They are mana less, so maybe they'll team up with a Healer and just weather stuff like Warlocks do, using their pets to prevent the healer from drinking. Pets are quite killable tho, but I suppose the same can be said for hunter/warlock's pet.
I think that as Rogue, having to deal with Chain of Ice (which according to beta forum, is going to be changed into a physical debuff... so no Clos/Dispel) and Death Grip while trying to stay on a healer is going to be a pain in the ***.
The problem however, is that as mana less as their damage is... a good healer should be able to heal through it with no real issue. And while a Ghoul will stop a healer from drinking, the healer facing a DK simply won't go oom as fast as one fighting a warrior/rogue/lock/hunter.
DK will probably be incredibly powerful in 3v3 however, where a warrior partner solve a lot of their issues. If you were sick of double melee 3s... sadly, it isn't going away.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:45am by Tyrandor
Going into the Beta, unholy was the spec that excited me the less.
It seemed gimmicky. It seemed like despite being heralded as pvp spec, Frost would be better. It seemed like it relied to much on Ghouls, which may or may not be usable in arena... It seemed weak.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Unholy is a superb build, only overshadowed by blood right now because Blood is 'broken' (Blizzard even said so themselves).
In any case, Unholy is all about Shadow Damage. Remember that DK don't actually need +Dmg, since their attack power also increase their +Dmg.
From the get go, the Synergy is obvious... you have Talent that increase the damage of your disease, talent that make your auto-attack do an an extra 15% damage as shadow damage, talent that further increase the +Dmg gained from your attack power, a talent that make your disease gives a debuff that increase +13% damage from magical effect, talent that increase your Death Coil damage - etc.
But the crown jewel of it all is the 'new and improved' Scourge Strike.
Scourge Strike is essentially replace Plague Strike for Unholy... it does the exact same thing, except that it does 50% (Can be talented to 53%) + X (very small amount) SHADOW damage. So yes... it totally ignore armor and it synergise with every other talent in the tree that increase shadow damage.
I've had crit for over 1k damage against plate wearer (other DK :P) with it... over 1k dmg may not sound impressive, but remember we are level 60... back in the day, Ambush would crit for 600 on a plate wearer.
Unholy also has a talent that makes Obliterate snare the target in place, which help in making them much harder to kite, which is a huge concern for them pvp wise.
Unholy Blight + Death and Decay also make AE grinding child's play.
Now since this is the pvp build, I figured I'd pvp with it some. I was extremely aggressive in world pvp, even got myself 9 mark of honor hold from the Hellfire world pvp thingie. I also did plenty of duels.
I even managed to beat most of the 'overpowered' blood death knight I ran into, only losing to those who were able to fully exploit their 'OP-ness'. (More on that when I talk about the Blood tree).
In any case,
One of the misconception I had about Unholy was that it relied to much on the Ghoul, fact is, all spec use the ghoul to great effect - the Unholy Ghoul are a bit stronger however. I was also afraid that since you needed a 'body' to raise it, it would be unusable in Arena - Well, you can use a Reagent (Corpse Dust) to summon one. So it should be usable just fine in Arena. You can thus expect DK to be a 'pet class' really. Only Unholy DK get a pet bar for their ghoul however, Blood/Frost's ghouls aren't under their control.
It's actually funny to jump a DK and beat him up while his pet is still fighting the initial mob he attacked, because he can't order it around.
So how's pvp?
It's actually pretty fun. It's a shame the only thing I can fight at the moment are other DK... it kinda makes fights a bit repetitive.
Thanks to the talent that increase Disease Duration, it's easy to keep them up and give you more 'leeway' in your abilities.
With Dirge, the DK's main attack (Scourge Strike), also create more Runic Power, which is good - because Unholy DK have 2 great RP dump - Gargoyle and Unholy Aura, which both deal considerable damage that is pretty much unpreventable.
Blood Runes are pretty low priority for a Unholy DK... meaning you'll pretty much always have 1 up to use for Strangulate... which is pretty much useless atm, but against caster, that will be very nice.
Bone Armor is very good against 'big burst' class, such as Warrior, Mage or Death Knights ;p... absorbing 40% of the damage of the first 4 attack is a pretty massive burst damage reduction against those class... I don't foresee it being much use against rogues tho.
Between Icy Chain, Death Grip (Which can be talent down to 25sec cooldown, making it a pretty good ShS counter) and the 'imp' Obliterate talent, it's actually pretty hard to get away from an Unholy DK.
My basic pvp tactic so far, has been to get close to the target, build enough Runic power for Unholy Blight, and then use it, drop Death and Decay and an Ice chain. The target is pretty much stuck in the double AE, while I spam my various strikes as my Ghoul keeps beating up on him. If he manage to get away, I can death grip him back to me =D.
Between the periodic fear of Death & Decay and its damage, the damage of unholy blight, the damage of Frost Fever and Blood Plague and Scourge Strike/Icy Touch damage... all enhanced by the previously mentionned talents... targets just melt away.
So while it is fun and I think DK will come to be feared in 1v1 pvp (They seem to have an answer for almost every other ability in the game) - I'm still not convinced of what role they will fill in Arena.
They are mana less, so maybe they'll team up with a Healer and just weather stuff like Warlocks do, using their pets to prevent the healer from drinking. Pets are quite killable tho, but I suppose the same can be said for hunter/warlock's pet.
I think that as Rogue, having to deal with Chain of Ice (which according to beta forum, is going to be changed into a physical debuff... so no Clos/Dispel) and Death Grip while trying to stay on a healer is going to be a pain in the ***.
The problem however, is that as mana less as their damage is... a good healer should be able to heal through it with no real issue. And while a Ghoul will stop a healer from drinking, the healer facing a DK simply won't go oom as fast as one fighting a warrior/rogue/lock/hunter.
DK will probably be incredibly powerful in 3v3 however, where a warrior partner solve a lot of their issues. If you were sick of double melee 3s... sadly, it isn't going away.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:45am by Tyrandor
Frost -
Frost was a fun talent tree at first... but it quickly became tedious and boring to level with. The damage output is nowhere near the other spec, and as such, neither is the self-heal. Despite being the 'tank' spec, I found myself dying a lot as frost :(.
Although to be fair, I didn't have Obliterate when I played Frost, and the Annihilation Talent gives Obliterate a chance to not use up Disease... so I understand spamming Obliterate is a valid tactic as a Frost DK and it does pretty big damage (it obliterates! har har).
Much like Unholy, Frost is a lot about magic damage - in this case, Frost. A lot of the talents are about increasing the power of your frost spell, making them auto-crit, etc. You can also make your Frost Fever chill the target, as well as give Frost Fever to other abilities (Mind Freeze, Chain of Ice, Frost Strike). The snare however, is only 30%, making it pretty weak in and out of itself.
Despite the fact that I was speccing with pvp/solo grinding in mind and didn't go out of my way to take the tanking talents, the tanking application of Frost are pretty damn obvious.
You apply Icy Touch (both for Frost Fever and the 15% lowered attack speed) and Blood Plague with Plague Strike, you then use Pestilence (1 Blood rune, spread disease on the target to 3 nearby targets, cause high threat), and then you use Howling Blast which is an AE that does increase damage to target affected by Frost Fever (Which you just spread with Pestilence). Toss in a Death & Decay as well as Bloodboil (Make all disease within 30 yard blow up, dealing damage, high threat, and forcing the affected mob to attack you for 3 seconds) and you've got some pretty decent AE tanking skill right there.
What's interesting from a raiding point of view (5 man too i guess) is that a Frost DK can improve his icy touch so that it lower attack speed to 18% (instead of 15 - granted, all spec can do this) and then further bump it up so that it increase his attack speed by 20% (Not 15% like the talent tree says)... and then improve it one last time so it gives 20% 'Haste' to the entire raid. So bringing a Frost DK to a raid isn't a waste of a spot if he's an OT in a fight that doesn't require him to tank... he'll still be debuffing the bad guy and he'll still be boosting the raid, not to mention that if he switch to Blood Presence and start hacking away, he'll most likely do better damage then a prot war/pld would.
Frost Strike is a powerful ability, it cost 50 runic power, and it's a melee swing that deals 100% wep damage + X (tiny amount) as Frost Damage. So it's kinda like Scourge Strike in the sense that it ignore armor and it synergies with all the Frost Talent that increase frost ability... but it's Runic Power, not Runes. This make it extremely easy to fit it in your rotation, since it just replace Death Coil. Properly specced, it also applies Frost Fever/Snare and in conjunction with the Killing Machine talent, it can do a lot of damage. If you're doing multiple target tanking, it's also an extra way to apply Frost Fever to a different target.
Runic Power Mastery is a pretty cool talent, especially since you'll most likely have Chill of The Grave, which increase your RP consumption. This goes a long way into making Frost Strike devastating.
Oh, and for what it's worth, a Frost DK actually has some pretty decent 'ranged' ability. You can 'spam' icy touch/chain of ice from a 30 yard distance, and then use Death Coil when your runic power allow and Howling Blast when the cooldown is up. You can easily kite mobs to their death this way, even more so if your ghoul is beating on them at the same time. It's not fast by any mean, but essentially, if it can be snared, a Frost DK can kill it.
So how's pvp?
I didn't focus that much on pvp with this build, but I did get in a couple fights. For the most part, I got my *** handed to me. Frost DK are going to be pretty weak for 1v1, although I believe with proper support they might come into their own.
Fighting against other DK, using my 'ranged superiority' (mentioned above) actually paid off whenever possible. Getting 2 Icy Touch + Hungering Cold on a DK who doesn't want to waste his Death Grip right away was a great way to start a fight... but sadly, they usually turned me into so much minced meat once we get into melee range :(
Frost Mage/Frost DK might very well be a powerful 2v2 team.
The 51 point talent in Frost is not a tanking move, which is a bit weird considering this is the tanking tree. But it's a powerful pvp ability... essentially a short range AE Blind. That sets up the targets for shatter combo and from what I can gather, doesn't share the same CD as polymorph... the synergies with a Frost Mage is is all over the place. Hungering Cold on Target 1 & 2, blast Target 1 to bits, Deep Freeze Target 2 right before hungering cold ends, then chain polymorph it, then Strangulate it... that's over 40 seconds of CC/Silence.
As a mage in Arena, one of the biggest issue is pillar humping. It forces you to cast nothing but instants. It's hard as hell to polymorph a healer hugging a pillar. Death Grip is instant and will bring the choosen target directly where you want - in melee range of your big beefy ally, ready to be nuked to hell.
I do have to say that Mind Freeze costing 0 runic power instead of 20 was awesome against caster mobs, so I can only imagine it being just as good in pvp.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:47am by Tyrandor
Frost was a fun talent tree at first... but it quickly became tedious and boring to level with. The damage output is nowhere near the other spec, and as such, neither is the self-heal. Despite being the 'tank' spec, I found myself dying a lot as frost :(.
Although to be fair, I didn't have Obliterate when I played Frost, and the Annihilation Talent gives Obliterate a chance to not use up Disease... so I understand spamming Obliterate is a valid tactic as a Frost DK and it does pretty big damage (it obliterates! har har).
Much like Unholy, Frost is a lot about magic damage - in this case, Frost. A lot of the talents are about increasing the power of your frost spell, making them auto-crit, etc. You can also make your Frost Fever chill the target, as well as give Frost Fever to other abilities (Mind Freeze, Chain of Ice, Frost Strike). The snare however, is only 30%, making it pretty weak in and out of itself.
Despite the fact that I was speccing with pvp/solo grinding in mind and didn't go out of my way to take the tanking talents, the tanking application of Frost are pretty damn obvious.
You apply Icy Touch (both for Frost Fever and the 15% lowered attack speed) and Blood Plague with Plague Strike, you then use Pestilence (1 Blood rune, spread disease on the target to 3 nearby targets, cause high threat), and then you use Howling Blast which is an AE that does increase damage to target affected by Frost Fever (Which you just spread with Pestilence). Toss in a Death & Decay as well as Bloodboil (Make all disease within 30 yard blow up, dealing damage, high threat, and forcing the affected mob to attack you for 3 seconds) and you've got some pretty decent AE tanking skill right there.
What's interesting from a raiding point of view (5 man too i guess) is that a Frost DK can improve his icy touch so that it lower attack speed to 18% (instead of 15 - granted, all spec can do this) and then further bump it up so that it increase his attack speed by 20% (Not 15% like the talent tree says)... and then improve it one last time so it gives 20% 'Haste' to the entire raid. So bringing a Frost DK to a raid isn't a waste of a spot if he's an OT in a fight that doesn't require him to tank... he'll still be debuffing the bad guy and he'll still be boosting the raid, not to mention that if he switch to Blood Presence and start hacking away, he'll most likely do better damage then a prot war/pld would.
Frost Strike is a powerful ability, it cost 50 runic power, and it's a melee swing that deals 100% wep damage + X (tiny amount) as Frost Damage. So it's kinda like Scourge Strike in the sense that it ignore armor and it synergies with all the Frost Talent that increase frost ability... but it's Runic Power, not Runes. This make it extremely easy to fit it in your rotation, since it just replace Death Coil. Properly specced, it also applies Frost Fever/Snare and in conjunction with the Killing Machine talent, it can do a lot of damage. If you're doing multiple target tanking, it's also an extra way to apply Frost Fever to a different target.
Runic Power Mastery is a pretty cool talent, especially since you'll most likely have Chill of The Grave, which increase your RP consumption. This goes a long way into making Frost Strike devastating.
Oh, and for what it's worth, a Frost DK actually has some pretty decent 'ranged' ability. You can 'spam' icy touch/chain of ice from a 30 yard distance, and then use Death Coil when your runic power allow and Howling Blast when the cooldown is up. You can easily kite mobs to their death this way, even more so if your ghoul is beating on them at the same time. It's not fast by any mean, but essentially, if it can be snared, a Frost DK can kill it.
So how's pvp?
I didn't focus that much on pvp with this build, but I did get in a couple fights. For the most part, I got my *** handed to me. Frost DK are going to be pretty weak for 1v1, although I believe with proper support they might come into their own.
Fighting against other DK, using my 'ranged superiority' (mentioned above) actually paid off whenever possible. Getting 2 Icy Touch + Hungering Cold on a DK who doesn't want to waste his Death Grip right away was a great way to start a fight... but sadly, they usually turned me into so much minced meat once we get into melee range :(
Frost Mage/Frost DK might very well be a powerful 2v2 team.
The 51 point talent in Frost is not a tanking move, which is a bit weird considering this is the tanking tree. But it's a powerful pvp ability... essentially a short range AE Blind. That sets up the targets for shatter combo and from what I can gather, doesn't share the same CD as polymorph... the synergies with a Frost Mage is is all over the place. Hungering Cold on Target 1 & 2, blast Target 1 to bits, Deep Freeze Target 2 right before hungering cold ends, then chain polymorph it, then Strangulate it... that's over 40 seconds of CC/Silence.
As a mage in Arena, one of the biggest issue is pillar humping. It forces you to cast nothing but instants. It's hard as hell to polymorph a healer hugging a pillar. Death Grip is instant and will bring the choosen target directly where you want - in melee range of your big beefy ally, ready to be nuked to hell.
I do have to say that Mind Freeze costing 0 runic power instead of 20 was awesome against caster mobs, so I can only imagine it being just as good in pvp.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:47am by Tyrandor
Nice post. This is all great information.
I've got one question that has been nagging me a bit for some time. Do you think Frost is going to be the mandatory DW tree? Or is Frost just as viable with a 2H? Off the top of my head, the obvious benefit of DW is the higher white damage over time, and a couple of the talents (like the one that procs off of melee crits, which there will be more of with DW), but a 2H will keep the damage of all your weapon damage strikes higher.
I dunno. This is something of a concern for me as Frost is currently the tree that appeals to me most (despite what you said =P), but I'm fairly set on the idea of using a 2H even if it means I have to give Frost up for Unholy or Blood.
Edited, Aug 10th 2008 3:31pm by Gaudion
I've got one question that has been nagging me a bit for some time. Do you think Frost is going to be the mandatory DW tree? Or is Frost just as viable with a 2H? Off the top of my head, the obvious benefit of DW is the higher white damage over time, and a couple of the talents (like the one that procs off of melee crits, which there will be more of with DW), but a 2H will keep the damage of all your weapon damage strikes higher.
I dunno. This is something of a concern for me as Frost is currently the tree that appeals to me most (despite what you said =P), but I'm fairly set on the idea of using a 2H even if it means I have to give Frost up for Unholy or Blood.
Edited, Aug 10th 2008 3:31pm by Gaudion
Frost isn't a bad tree, it's just painfully obvious that it's an 'end game' tree. You can level as Prot Warrior or a Holy Paladin/Priest - doesn't mean it's a good idea or that it's effective, but that doesn't make the tree bad. And I like I said, I did not have Obliterate when I was frost, and I understand Obliterate is a big deal for it.
I don't think DW will be the way to go for DK in general to be honest - no matter the spec. Pretty much all their move are Wep Dmg based, meaning the bigger the weapon, the more damage they will do. While they can dual wield, they have very little synergy with it to be honest. Yes, there's nerve of cold steel and killing machine... but does that make up for your weapon strike being so much weaker? Killinh Machine is also pretty deep in the Frost Tree if you aren't planning to go Frost and all it'll do is make your next icy touch crit, which is pretty crappy if you don't have it improved in some way. A 2H DK also doesn't have to waste itemization on +Hit, allowing him to stack up on other stats.
DK aren't like Warrior, who have Whirlwind that strikes with 2 weapons and blood thirst which ignore weapon damage anyway... all their moves are weapon related (aside from icy touch and death coil, but a frost dk will use frost strike instead, which is also weapon related)... that's lot of damage lost from using a 1 hander.
Also, it's pretty easy to go deep frost for tanking and pick up 2 handed weapon spec from Blood, since you want to get 5 points for Blade Barrier anyway. Like so (Yes, I said the talent tree have been updated, but the change to blood/frost are minor, it's unholy that got a big face lift).
Typical DK rotation when tanking will probably look like this:
Rotation 1
0.0: 1 Frost; Icy Touch (18 RP) (Also increase attack speed for raid by 20%)
1.5: 1 Unholy; Plague Strike (28 RP)
3.0: 1 Blood; Blood Strike or Pestilence (38 RP) (This depend entirely on how much extra threat pestilence gives - if you're doing AE tanking, Pestilence is a no brainer. If you use Blood Strike, it will give you a Death Rune)
4.5: 1 Blood, 1 Frost, 1 Unholy; Death & Decay (68 RP) (High Threat on D&D)
- Proc Blade Barrier
6.0: Frost Strike (18 RP)
Since you disease are on for about 20 seconds each, at this point you can get fancy and repeat the rotation, but instead using Death Strike (for heal) or Obliterate.
Rotation 2
10.0: Nothing
11.5: 1 Unholy, 1 Frost; Obliterate or Howling Wind or Death Strike (28 RP) (Death Strike will give you 2 Death runes (Opening up Rotation 3) and heal you, Obliterate will do massibe damage and threat Howling Wind will do AE damage, making it the logical choice if it's CD is up and you're doing AE Tanking)
13.0: 1 Death Rune; use whichever 1 rune ability cause the most thread and isn't on CD. If you've used Pestilence earlier and are AE tanking, this is great time for Bloodboil, beside, if you've used pestilence instead of Blood Strike, this is plain old boring blood rune and not a death rune, leaving you little choice. (38 to 46 RP depending on what you use)
14.5: 1 Blood, 1 Frost, 1 Unholy; Refresh Death & Decay (68 to 76 RP) (High Threat on D&D)
- Re Proc Blade Barrier
16.0: Frost Strike (18 to 26 RP)
Then you'd pretty much restart with Rotation 1 (Although if you've used Death Strike, you now have 2 Death Rune, giving you a lot more flexibility) at 20 seconds. You'd probably lose some kind of Blood Plague upkeep here, but it doesn't matter as much since the DK's frost ability are all linked to Frost Fever, and not Blood Plague... just make sure Blood Plague is up if you plan on using a Death Strike.
I'm not saying this is set in stone or anything, and I may be totally wrong and it might end up not playing that way at all... it's just my guesstimates.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:42am by Tyrandor
I don't think DW will be the way to go for DK in general to be honest - no matter the spec. Pretty much all their move are Wep Dmg based, meaning the bigger the weapon, the more damage they will do. While they can dual wield, they have very little synergy with it to be honest. Yes, there's nerve of cold steel and killing machine... but does that make up for your weapon strike being so much weaker? Killinh Machine is also pretty deep in the Frost Tree if you aren't planning to go Frost and all it'll do is make your next icy touch crit, which is pretty crappy if you don't have it improved in some way. A 2H DK also doesn't have to waste itemization on +Hit, allowing him to stack up on other stats.
DK aren't like Warrior, who have Whirlwind that strikes with 2 weapons and blood thirst which ignore weapon damage anyway... all their moves are weapon related (aside from icy touch and death coil, but a frost dk will use frost strike instead, which is also weapon related)... that's lot of damage lost from using a 1 hander.
Also, it's pretty easy to go deep frost for tanking and pick up 2 handed weapon spec from Blood, since you want to get 5 points for Blade Barrier anyway. Like so (Yes, I said the talent tree have been updated, but the change to blood/frost are minor, it's unholy that got a big face lift).
Typical DK rotation when tanking will probably look like this:
Rotation 1
0.0: 1 Frost; Icy Touch (18 RP) (Also increase attack speed for raid by 20%)
1.5: 1 Unholy; Plague Strike (28 RP)
3.0: 1 Blood; Blood Strike or Pestilence (38 RP) (This depend entirely on how much extra threat pestilence gives - if you're doing AE tanking, Pestilence is a no brainer. If you use Blood Strike, it will give you a Death Rune)
4.5: 1 Blood, 1 Frost, 1 Unholy; Death & Decay (68 RP) (High Threat on D&D)
- Proc Blade Barrier
6.0: Frost Strike (18 RP)
Since you disease are on for about 20 seconds each, at this point you can get fancy and repeat the rotation, but instead using Death Strike (for heal) or Obliterate.
Rotation 2
10.0: Nothing
11.5: 1 Unholy, 1 Frost; Obliterate or Howling Wind or Death Strike (28 RP) (Death Strike will give you 2 Death runes (Opening up Rotation 3) and heal you, Obliterate will do massibe damage and threat Howling Wind will do AE damage, making it the logical choice if it's CD is up and you're doing AE Tanking)
13.0: 1 Death Rune; use whichever 1 rune ability cause the most thread and isn't on CD. If you've used Pestilence earlier and are AE tanking, this is great time for Bloodboil, beside, if you've used pestilence instead of Blood Strike, this is plain old boring blood rune and not a death rune, leaving you little choice. (38 to 46 RP depending on what you use)
14.5: 1 Blood, 1 Frost, 1 Unholy; Refresh Death & Decay (68 to 76 RP) (High Threat on D&D)
- Re Proc Blade Barrier
16.0: Frost Strike (18 to 26 RP)
Then you'd pretty much restart with Rotation 1 (Although if you've used Death Strike, you now have 2 Death Rune, giving you a lot more flexibility) at 20 seconds. You'd probably lose some kind of Blood Plague upkeep here, but it doesn't matter as much since the DK's frost ability are all linked to Frost Fever, and not Blood Plague... just make sure Blood Plague is up if you plan on using a Death Strike.
I'm not saying this is set in stone or anything, and I may be totally wrong and it might end up not playing that way at all... it's just my guesstimates.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:42am by Tyrandor
Blood -
As mentioned before, Blood is currently overpowered.
Well, a lot of higher level DK are saying it scale better once you're above 70... but that sounds a lot like people afraid of losing a shiny toy. :P
It's all because of the change to Bloodworm... everytime you hit something with Death Strike (Which heals you to begin with), there's a 60% chance to spawn 5 bloodworm which do damage and heal you. There's no cap currently... I've seen people going around with 25 bloodworm. End result? You never die.
Wild feats like soloing (At level 65) all the Elite in Nagrand and running 5 man instance with 5 Blood DK are realized on a daily basis at the moment.
And obviously, this make them juggernaut in pvp too. I found that I can handle them with unholy if I can control them enough to keep them in my D&D and Unholy Blight area - the worms die incredibly quick to this. But smart DK protect their worm and just come in and out, building a literal army and not truly engaging battle until they have 10+.... it's extremely frustrating to get a DK to 15% health and then watch him get enough worms that he not only beats you, but end up with 100% hp. :(
As for the gameplay? I think Blood is the most boring of the 3 to be honest. It's still fun, because DK is a fast paced and involving class to play... but it has the less 'wow' factor of all 3. You're basically just a big melee brute who heals a % of the damage he does. None of the Blood spell are really flashy either. Even the blood worm just look like little purple slugs following you.
You get Heart Strike, which replaces Blood Strike... it does 60% wep dmg + X per diseases, where X is about 50% more then the X from Blood Strike. It also prevent Haste effect from helping the target for a few seconds, which gives it some pvp value.
Aside from that tho, Blood is all about keeping the rotation mentioned above, but replacing Blood Strike with Heart Strike. You'll also try to use Death Strike more often, because of the Bloodworm proc and Death Strike Mastery (Which turn the Unholy and Frost rune used by Death Strike into death rune, usable for anything).
Blood doesn't build RP as fast the other build, and it only has 1 RP dump - Dancing Rune Blade. Dancing Rune blade is going to be sick for raiding, but it's not that impressive for pvp - the fact is, you pretty much want to wait until you have a full RP bar and all your rune up to make the most of it... that's 'idle' time you can't afford in PVP.
It does speed up grinding by a lot tho, since you'll fill up your RP on the first mob, and then unleash the Rune Blade and just slaughter mobs for a few seconds. Blood does have a talent that make your next Death Coil cost nothing, which allow to keep using it while building their RP up for dancing rune blade.
The Blood DK however, does bring some interesting buff to a raid/party, and those can be used in pvp as well to some effect;
Blood Mark - Debuff on a mob/player. When said mob/player attack a target, the target heals 2% of it's health. The Raid application are obvious on a MT, and in pvp it essentially become a 'damage reduction'.
Hysteria - Hysteria is a bit silly... because overall, it messes up your 'rotation' because it requires a Blood Rune. Many people are asking for it to be a RP based ability. That being said, the damage it gives is decent, and will be even better in raid environment.
Abomination Strength - A 50% chance to increase raid wide attack power by 10% on an ability you'll spam the hell out of? This is really good, especially since it's pretty much always up.
Blood Aura - While the DK' self healing will most likely be toned down, it will never completely disappear. 45% of all the healing he receive is like having a passive HoT ticking on your melee group, and if the AE splash damage of TBC stick around for raid, this is going to be a nice one.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:41am by Tyrandor
As mentioned before, Blood is currently overpowered.
Well, a lot of higher level DK are saying it scale better once you're above 70... but that sounds a lot like people afraid of losing a shiny toy. :P
It's all because of the change to Bloodworm... everytime you hit something with Death Strike (Which heals you to begin with), there's a 60% chance to spawn 5 bloodworm which do damage and heal you. There's no cap currently... I've seen people going around with 25 bloodworm. End result? You never die.
Wild feats like soloing (At level 65) all the Elite in Nagrand and running 5 man instance with 5 Blood DK are realized on a daily basis at the moment.
And obviously, this make them juggernaut in pvp too. I found that I can handle them with unholy if I can control them enough to keep them in my D&D and Unholy Blight area - the worms die incredibly quick to this. But smart DK protect their worm and just come in and out, building a literal army and not truly engaging battle until they have 10+.... it's extremely frustrating to get a DK to 15% health and then watch him get enough worms that he not only beats you, but end up with 100% hp. :(
As for the gameplay? I think Blood is the most boring of the 3 to be honest. It's still fun, because DK is a fast paced and involving class to play... but it has the less 'wow' factor of all 3. You're basically just a big melee brute who heals a % of the damage he does. None of the Blood spell are really flashy either. Even the blood worm just look like little purple slugs following you.
You get Heart Strike, which replaces Blood Strike... it does 60% wep dmg + X per diseases, where X is about 50% more then the X from Blood Strike. It also prevent Haste effect from helping the target for a few seconds, which gives it some pvp value.
Aside from that tho, Blood is all about keeping the rotation mentioned above, but replacing Blood Strike with Heart Strike. You'll also try to use Death Strike more often, because of the Bloodworm proc and Death Strike Mastery (Which turn the Unholy and Frost rune used by Death Strike into death rune, usable for anything).
Blood doesn't build RP as fast the other build, and it only has 1 RP dump - Dancing Rune Blade. Dancing Rune blade is going to be sick for raiding, but it's not that impressive for pvp - the fact is, you pretty much want to wait until you have a full RP bar and all your rune up to make the most of it... that's 'idle' time you can't afford in PVP.
It does speed up grinding by a lot tho, since you'll fill up your RP on the first mob, and then unleash the Rune Blade and just slaughter mobs for a few seconds. Blood does have a talent that make your next Death Coil cost nothing, which allow to keep using it while building their RP up for dancing rune blade.
The Blood DK however, does bring some interesting buff to a raid/party, and those can be used in pvp as well to some effect;
Blood Mark - Debuff on a mob/player. When said mob/player attack a target, the target heals 2% of it's health. The Raid application are obvious on a MT, and in pvp it essentially become a 'damage reduction'.
Hysteria - Hysteria is a bit silly... because overall, it messes up your 'rotation' because it requires a Blood Rune. Many people are asking for it to be a RP based ability. That being said, the damage it gives is decent, and will be even better in raid environment.
Abomination Strength - A 50% chance to increase raid wide attack power by 10% on an ability you'll spam the hell out of? This is really good, especially since it's pretty much always up.
Blood Aura - While the DK' self healing will most likely be toned down, it will never completely disappear. 45% of all the healing he receive is like having a passive HoT ticking on your melee group, and if the AE splash damage of TBC stick around for raid, this is going to be a nice one.
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 1:41am by Tyrandor
Damn you for making me want to try out a Death Knight.
Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.
Unholy sounds like the most fun out of all those, and the one I may level as if I make a DK.
But for now, WTT my soul for a Beta key.
But for now, WTT my soul for a Beta key.
IDrownFish wrote:
Unholy sounds like the most fun out of all those, and the one I may level as if I make a DK.
But for now, WTT my soul for a Beta key.
But for now, WTT my soul for a Beta key.
Unholy isn't fun IMO. Neither is Frost. They both feel incredibly underpowered.
Overlord Theophany wrote:
Unholy isn't fun IMO. Neither is Frost. They both feel incredibly underpowered.
Yeah; every time I spec into either, I find myself running back to Ebon Hold ASAP to switch back into blood.
As far as blood, holy hell, it is OP. Blood Worms is just insane. I don't think I even need anything else, to be honest :\ .
I'll find myself starting a fight with half of my health (usually I'll do an AoE bout), and by the end of it, I'm at full health.
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible c*** : me."
I have to wonder if you've tried Unholy since the last patch? It got quite the facelift.
And also, compared to the 2,500 HP5 that Blood can give you... der, it's gonna feel underpowered. But that has more to do with Blood being totally insane then Unholy/Frost being underpowered.
Unholy can kill mobs in 8-10 seconds, can AE grind with no problem and gives you a lot more choice/option then Blood: Control on the Ghoul alone change gameplay, not to mention unholy DK have 3 runic abilities as well as corpse explosion and anti-magic zone, who opens up much more tactical possibilities then the DK's utility (which are basically - You dps more and you heal more). And coming back as Ghoul is a blast, especially since the ghoul itself has about 7 abilities you can use.
It lacks in power compared to blood right now, but that's because blood dk are invicible ;P. You need to remember that when you're comparing the two other trees to Blood.
This is also what make blood incredibly boring. Get frost fever and blood plague up, then spam Death Strike... any time you don't spam death strike is less chance to get bloodworms. Sure, you can use Runic Sword when it's up, use Heart Strike, use free DC... but you don't really need to. Once you got 10 or so bloodworm up, you could basically auto-attack an elite to death.
Once Blood get nerfed to the point where something else then death strike need to be used and so that it doesn't make the two other trees feel obsolete, we might get a better picture. Right now thought, I'm half shocked that you like Blood Theo (I figured a 1 button class would bore you) and half understanding why you think DKs are boring (I figure a 1 button class would bore you).
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 11:17am by Tyrandor
Edited, Aug 12th 2008 10:38am by Tyrandor
And also, compared to the 2,500 HP5 that Blood can give you... der, it's gonna feel underpowered. But that has more to do with Blood being totally insane then Unholy/Frost being underpowered.
Unholy can kill mobs in 8-10 seconds, can AE grind with no problem and gives you a lot more choice/option then Blood: Control on the Ghoul alone change gameplay, not to mention unholy DK have 3 runic abilities as well as corpse explosion and anti-magic zone, who opens up much more tactical possibilities then the DK's utility (which are basically - You dps more and you heal more). And coming back as Ghoul is a blast, especially since the ghoul itself has about 7 abilities you can use.
It lacks in power compared to blood right now, but that's because blood dk are invicible ;P. You need to remember that when you're comparing the two other trees to Blood.
This is also what make blood incredibly boring. Get frost fever and blood plague up, then spam Death Strike... any time you don't spam death strike is less chance to get bloodworms. Sure, you can use Runic Sword when it's up, use Heart Strike, use free DC... but you don't really need to. Once you got 10 or so bloodworm up, you could basically auto-attack an elite to death.
Once Blood get nerfed to the point where something else then death strike need to be used and so that it doesn't make the two other trees feel obsolete, we might get a better picture. Right now thought, I'm half shocked that you like Blood Theo (I figured a 1 button class would bore you) and half understanding why you think DKs are boring (I figure a 1 button class would bore you).
Edited, Aug 11th 2008 11:17am by Tyrandor
Edited, Aug 12th 2008 10:38am by Tyrandor
Warchief Tyrandor wrote:
And coming back as Ghoul is a
Is a what? And is this refering to the DK "Rez" or have they got a sort of "ghoul ankth"?
Unholy DK have a talent that increase their strength, agility and stamina by 2% and make them come back as a ghoul for 45seconds after dying. The ghoul has several ability he can use and he has Energy (like a rogue).
He's not really tough tho, but he can get the job finished when you lose to someone by 5% or something.
It has more in common with the priest's spirit of redemption then the shaman's ankh.
He's not really tough tho, but he can get the job finished when you lose to someone by 5% or something.
It has more in common with the priest's spirit of redemption then the shaman's ankh.
Killed a Mage with that lovely little dude... so many DKs are Blood on the Beta servers nobody expects the Ghoul to appear and start eating faces. Just as Tyr mentioned, I got him (Frost Mage) to around 7% when he Nova'd me and got a lucky crit. As a result, he was defenseless and unable to escape my re-appearence.
Death breaks snares ;)
Death breaks snares ;)
Hit level 62.
I grouped up with 5 other blood dk, we ran Rampart. No healer ;p. Nobody died. GG self heal.
I spoke to a higher level DK who told me that the bloodworm never gain a damage increase... so they do the same healing at level 55 that they do at level 80. So yeah, while it's amazing now, by the time you reach northrend, it's really not that awesome anymore.
This makes me hope it stays that way. Doing 2 rampart in a row, chainpulling like crazy, was sick XP. This will make the 60-70 'grind' a real joke.
I'm going to see if I can get a dps meter of somekind, out of boredom yesterday I resppeced unholy... and I swear, it feels like my dps is so much higher as unholy then blood.
I grouped up with 5 other blood dk, we ran Rampart. No healer ;p. Nobody died. GG self heal.
I spoke to a higher level DK who told me that the bloodworm never gain a damage increase... so they do the same healing at level 55 that they do at level 80. So yeah, while it's amazing now, by the time you reach northrend, it's really not that awesome anymore.
This makes me hope it stays that way. Doing 2 rampart in a row, chainpulling like crazy, was sick XP. This will make the 60-70 'grind' a real joke.
I'm going to see if I can get a dps meter of somekind, out of boredom yesterday I resppeced unholy... and I swear, it feels like my dps is so much higher as unholy then blood.
Ramparts was fun. We had the famous ghoul glitch hit us right before the second boss....we tore through him like Kleenix.
Killed a Mage with that lovely little dude... so many DKs are Blood on the Beta servers nobody expects the Ghoul to appear and start eating faces. Just as Tyr mentioned, I got him (Frost Mage) to around 7% when he Nova'd me and got a lucky crit. As a result, he was defenseless and unable to escape my re-appearence.
Not to mention player controlled ghouls get suicide bomber mode. :)
Quote:
Killed a Mage with that lovely little dude... so many DKs are Blood on the Beta servers nobody expects the Ghoul to appear and start eating faces. Just as Tyr mentioned, I got him (Frost Mage) to around 7% when he Nova'd me and got a lucky crit. As a result, he was defenseless and unable to escape my re-appearence.
Not to mention player controlled ghouls get suicide bomber mode. :)
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible c*** : me."
Warchief Tyrandor wrote:
Unholy DK have a talent that increase their strength, agility and stamina by 2% and make them come back as a ghoul for 45seconds after dying. The ghoul has several ability he can use and he has Energy (like a rogue).
He's not really tough tho, but he can get the job finished when you lose to someone by 5% or something.
It has more in common with the priest's spirit of redemption then the shaman's ankh.
He's not really tough tho, but he can get the job finished when you lose to someone by 5% or something.
It has more in common with the priest's spirit of redemption then the shaman's ankh.
I'm just seeing more and more reasons to go Unholy. :D
Incidently, how much survivability to normal ghouls (and the gargoyle) have? I love my druids treants, but they are rather fragile, are the ghouls just as bad?
Micros wrote:
Warchief Tyrandor wrote:
Unholy DK have a talent that increase their strength, agility and stamina by 2% and make them come back as a ghoul for 45seconds after dying. The ghoul has several ability he can use and he has Energy (like a rogue).
He's not really tough tho, but he can get the job finished when you lose to someone by 5% or something.
It has more in common with the priest's spirit of redemption then the shaman's ankh.
He's not really tough tho, but he can get the job finished when you lose to someone by 5% or something.
It has more in common with the priest's spirit of redemption then the shaman's ankh.
I'm just seeing more and more reasons to go Unholy. :D
Incidently, how much survivability to normal ghouls (and the gargoyle) have? I love my druids treants, but they are rather fragile, are the ghouls just as bad?
You won't necessarily need to go Unholy to get the self-rez. Keep in mind, just about all of the feedback you're hearing is from low-to-mid 60's Death Knights that are still in the process of filling out their main trees. (Meaning, of course, that if they're not all Unholy they don't have it.) After all is said and done, I'm seeing 18 points into Unholy being completely mandatory for any Death Knight that intends to PvP at 80. Almost everything along the way nets you PvP functionality that culminate with On a Pale Horse and Shadow of Death at tier four.
Quote:
Incidently, how much survivability to normal ghouls (and the gargoyle) have? I love my druids treants, but they are rather fragile, are the ghouls just as bad?
They're much more fragile then the DK himself. This isn't a hunter/pet relationship, where your pet is designed to take hits while you pew pew away... no, your pet is meant to assist in dps while you take hits.
That being said, the pet has solo'd equal level mob, so he's not that crappy either.
As for the gargoyle, I'm not sure if it can even be attacked. All it does is follow you around and automatically attack (With ranged attack) whatever you are also targeting.
The Gargoyle is pretty much an inferior runic dump to Unholy Blight in every way... the only time when it's truly worth using it is when Unholy Blight is on CD and you find yourself with a lot of RP (which simply doesn't happen that often).
And yes, having 20ish in Unholy is probably going to be a staple for any pvp build.
As I side note, since I actually have obliterate I tried out the Desecrate Talent and it's hilarious. The graphic for it are so bad in an 'evil dead' kind of way with the big phoney skeletal arm reaching out to grab the opponent. It also worked great as snare... D&D + UB + Obliterate. Lots of damage on a snared target, loved it. If you have Annihilation in Frost, you can also use Obliterate much more freely.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jZG0xzhZfMMGxfogzqMfout - possible 'cookie cutter' pvp build.
Warchief Tyrandor wrote:
Quote:
Incidently, how much survivability to normal ghouls (and the gargoyle) have? I love my druids treants, but they are rather fragile, are the ghouls just as bad?
They're much more fragile then the DK himself. This isn't a hunter/pet relationship, where your pet is designed to take hits while you pew pew away... no, your pet is meant to assist in dps while you take hits.
That being said, the pet has solo'd equal level mob, so he's not that crappy either.
Was definetly not thinking it was like a Hunter or a Lock, but glad to hear it can take more than 3 hits before dying. Awesome.
Quote:
As for the gargoyle, I'm not sure if it can even be attacked. All it does is follow you around and automatically attack (With ranged attack) whatever you are also targeting.
The Gargoyle is pretty much an inferior runic dump to Unholy Blight in every way... the only time when it's truly worth using it is when Unholy Blight is on CD and you find yourself with a lot of RP (which simply doesn't happen that often).
The Gargoyle is pretty much an inferior runic dump to Unholy Blight in every way... the only time when it's truly worth using it is when Unholy Blight is on CD and you find yourself with a lot of RP (which simply doesn't happen that often).
Sounds interesting nonetheless. Thanks.
Giving unholy a fair trial now, after leveling blood through hellfire; it is very much improved; an average fight for me is plague strike, icy touch, and some bloodstrikes. It's very effective, I think I'm killing things now faster than I was with blood.
Out of curiosity, what runes are you guys using? I'm using the +4% to parry at the moment.
Out of curiosity, what runes are you guys using? I'm using the +4% to parry at the moment.
"Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible c*** : me."
Using the one that can proc and give you extra strenght.
Haven't gotten to play much this week, doing double shifts at work.
:(
Haven't gotten to play much this week, doing double shifts at work.
:(
After looking over the talent trees a few times, I decided I wanted to use Unholy when I finally make my Death Knight but I was concerned that (with it being classed as the PvP tree) it wouldn't be great for PvE survivability or efficiency. But the more I read and see, I'm getting encouraged that it can work for me if I do it right.
I found two youtube vids posted, which display examples of two play styles. Blood does seem much simpler in its actions, though the player's health bar barely seems to get touched - and those blood worms are kinda creepy. Unholy takes many more hits but it looks to be a freaky-*** Prince of AoE slaughter gaming. Plus that ghoul jumping a dozen yards just looks awesome.
Someone playing AoE style in Outland with Unholy spec:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT10WGBFfFE
Someone doing Blood spec in the Plaguelands:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thgCrFBUCU0&NR=1
These could be private server things with tweaked mechanics or they could be real Beta play shots. Tyr and other Beta participants will be able to say more on that topic (since I'm not part of Beta at this time). I've gotta say that all this info has really switched me. I liked the DK idea but I wasn't specifically buzzed about them coming. I was more into the additional environments and stuff really. But I now find myself really hanging out for this new class.
I found two youtube vids posted, which display examples of two play styles. Blood does seem much simpler in its actions, though the player's health bar barely seems to get touched - and those blood worms are kinda creepy. Unholy takes many more hits but it looks to be a freaky-*** Prince of AoE slaughter gaming. Plus that ghoul jumping a dozen yards just looks awesome.
Someone playing AoE style in Outland with Unholy spec:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT10WGBFfFE
Someone doing Blood spec in the Plaguelands:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thgCrFBUCU0&NR=1
These could be private server things with tweaked mechanics or they could be real Beta play shots. Tyr and other Beta participants will be able to say more on that topic (since I'm not part of Beta at this time). I've gotta say that all this info has really switched me. I liked the DK idea but I wasn't specifically buzzed about them coming. I was more into the additional environments and stuff really. But I now find myself really hanging out for this new class.
I was soloing level 62 elite with my level 62 Unholy DK yesterday...
Yeah, everything in those video look on par with what you can do.
I need to respec and pick up Corpse Explosion, right now my spec is pvp based... which is kinda pointless since all there really is to do is grind atm.
Yeah, everything in those video look on par with what you can do.
I need to respec and pick up Corpse Explosion, right now my spec is pvp based... which is kinda pointless since all there really is to do is grind atm.
Frost gets so little love and it's the spec I'm most interested in. =(
Any good Frost videos out there?
Any good Frost videos out there?
Gaudion wrote:
Frost gets so little love and it's the spec I'm most interested in. =(
Any good Frost videos out there?
Any good Frost videos out there?
I wanted to include a Frost video with the others but it was late and I couldn't find one. I've since found these two that are marked as Frost DK's. They look to be mixing Frost with Unholy use:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDCLWLHrbQ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xq65DtL5GU
Warchief Tyrandor wrote:
I need to respec and pick up Corpse Explosion, right now my spec is pvp based
I wondered, at first, about how useful Corpse Explosion would really be and if its damage would be worth it. Now, after watching the Unholy AoE killing spree and seeing the player have a small army of corpses to blow up, it looks like it could be a potential winner of a talent.
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