The times they are a-changin' -- 3.1 announcementsFollow

DEATH KNIGHT (source)

- Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.

- Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.

- Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.

- The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.

- Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.

- Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.

- Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

edit: cleaned up some visual items, no text changes


Edited, Feb 5th 2009 11:07pm by TherionSaysWhat

Oh, well, at least I'll get some re-spec...

I love these changes.

Frost tanking got a significant buff, pest is a fix to make sure its not better than blood boil (i still with it had a VERY LOW damage component for snap aggro), blood of the north also helps frost tanking a lot.

Sudden Doom helps a lot for blood dps. Many times i have more actions to make than I have GCDs because of sudden doom. and blood gorged is a good change as i'm over expertise cap on my dps set.

woo hoo

Just as I said in the other thread, the change to blood gorged could be a nice buff, if its a nice amount of armor penetration.
I already have to watch out not getting exp. capped, and a few upgrades have a buttload of exp on it, so i dont mind the loss of expertise.

You're supposed to look at the bright side of this idiotic change. Blade Barrier will be up that much sooner...

People have been screaming that UB was way too weak (and if you played beta you'd know UB is a pitiful shadow of its former self) and at the same time anti-DKs have been screaming that gargoyle was way overpowered. There was a few of us, myself included, that had been making posts to Blizzard in the forums asking for this very change. It makes sense, unholy is all about summoning stuff, UB just didn't fit well for the 51 point talent. Lower UB in the tree, buff gargoyle and make it the 51 point talent. I have literally been wanting this since before lich king was even released. Glad to see they finally took our advice. Good job on this one Blizzard.


All this does is make you want to use blood boil more, I am 100% OK with this change.


I don't think this will actually impact stuff, other than it makes the talent less appealing as a dpser. It's supposed to be a tanking talent and so I'm OK with making it more tanking oriented.


Considering the PvP nerfs they have made recently this will help balence things out. It will also give PvPers more options as to what spec you can go. You may not have to see a million PvP clones all the same spec.


YESSSSSSSSSSS. More damage without the cost of a global cooldown? DPS increase INC! I don't always get a chance to use it if I'm in the middle of my DRW and hit empower rune weapon and am in a long chain of attacks. Even if they change this like lightning overload to do less damage (which I'm guessing they might do eventually) I still like this change a lot.


This is a buff, straight up. You can't complain about buffs.


Eh I have mixed signals about this one. It's not really a nerf, it's just a change in mechanics. I don't NEED the expertise, and blood (if I'm not mistaken) had more expertise than the other specs, so this will bring it in-line with the other trees. On top of that, armor pen is really nice for blood, so I'm OK with this. It'll just mean I might switch some gear/gems/enchants around.

I'm assuming you mean UA here, Unbreakable Armor. UB, Unholy Blight, never had parry and strength components. I think they will probably leave it alone.

A B C D E F G.... H is for Hangover, my bad.

Well bugger me, I must be the only one happy with these changes I guess.

The Frost reshuffle can ONLY be a good thing because the PvP talents they mentioned (Endless Winter etc) have always been too deep; it opens up the option for an Unholy/Frost PvP spec that has additional control. Assuming they dont move something really nice, I'm optimistic. Ive always hated the Frost tree's talent distribution, sheer probability suggests cocking it up MORE would be a struggle for them.

The Blood change isnt a nerf or a buff until we see the numbers. Since ArPen is no longer the premier PvP stat I imagine there will be quite a lot of it on this talent. Bottom line is, Expertise has a cap (and changes usefulness depending on enemy's facing) whereas the ArPen cap is essentially unreachable and it gives the same bonus at all times. Blood Knights are mostly Physical damage after all, so I shouldnt worry about a DPS loss. In the end, if you've already got pots of Expertise (like me) this could easily turn out to be a buff.

Blood of the North and Magic Suppression were long-overdue no-brainers; DK trees dont need those indigestable lumps in the middle.

Unholy Blight and Gargoyle swap is FABULOUS. Gargoyle already got nerfed and all the Unholy DKs in my guild wept like kids with a skinned knee, hopefully this will give them a reason to cheer up. It even cheers me up, as a 0/32/39 DW spec Unholy Blight is WAY more useful than Gargoyle and it can be worked into my normal rotation and then forgotten about while it ticks. Gargoyle's DPS boost was nice, but in most Naxx25 encounters (in fact most 25 encounters, period) keeping it up for the whole duration was nearly impossible; too many engage-disengage mechanics.

Overall, happy. Until I see the numbers on Blood's ArPen.

Edited, Feb 8th 2009 12:56am by Sinstralis

I just hope that Howling blast doesn't move. I like being 0/32/39 spec. Even if I have to give up dual wielding to get my full KM procs. As for Gargoyle I'll either grab unholy blight or corpse explosion so my trash dps will go up even if I lose some of my boss dps.

I wish I could argue with Nero on that point but I can't, it really could just be the final nail in the Dual-Wield coffin. I find that quite annoying actually, 32/39 never seemed like a 'real' spec but I wish they'd at least offer one good DW spec instead of repeatedly nerfing it.

If Nero is right and Killing Machine (I dont see any other good candidate to be honest) is moved down the tree then all 32/39 specs disappear overnight, the spec will lose so much DPS. Fortunately my guild doesnt use DKP at the moment because Naxx is so bloody easy, so I have two good 1H and a good 2H to back it up.

The most worrying thing is that if they DO shift up KM, there are no longer enough good talents in the top five Tiers to reach KM's new slot, assuming it's a straight swap. Even full Frost DKs would be forced to spec into rubbish like RPM or Lichborne (not recommended for a DPS build) just to make up the numbers, and would therefore be talent-starved when they came to pick up the newly-shifted KM.

In retrospect it IS possible for Blizzard to cause more damage with this change...

As an aside, the Sudden Doom thing isnt quite as nice as it could be; previously in PvP you could slap one player and use Sudden Doom to finish off a ranged who was low on health; now the Death Coil will always hit your current target :\

Fully agree, that damn GCD is so bad I wish DKs had a 1sec GCD innately...

True story, I originally rolled 51/13/7 for my raid DPS spec but had to spec out of it (eventually to Frost and then DW) due to it causing me agonizing Repetetive Strain Injury. Hitting my '3' key for HS constantly and having to tap DC all the time just killed me.

Since Blizzard were factoring the extra DC into Blood DPS calculations you are actually falling behind if you dont hit those procs, and half the time I didnt have the finger-power to take advantage enough... my DPS as Blood was about 10% behind a same-geared Unholy for no good reason at all besides lack of GCDs.

Blood, here I come, unless they somehow change Frost into a competetive raid DPS spec (seriously, why does it need to blow so hard?)


Ennnnhhh..... yes and no. Yes it's low-percentage I agree, but it was absolute gold in 2v2 Arena; I had a great time harassing low-HP healers like Shamans with quick DCs, without substantial Resilience it forces them to switch to healing themselves after a couple of shots which gives me a bit of space to burn down their DPS. I was paired with a Retadin and we would focus the DPS, Id pop a SD proc at the healer and at the same time the Paladin would stun the DPS and jump on the healbot; usually it made healers panic so much they forgot to heal the DPS, and Blood Plague would cleanse off the HoTs. Didnt work on Druids though... shifty high-HP insta-healing sods...

Edited, Feb 9th 2009 7:05am by Sinstralis

They're obviously quite serious about keeping it the avoidance & control tree. I'd be fine with that as long as they manage to keep 2 dps trees that are about equal without totally raping frost in it's overall usefulness.

The changes to UA are pissing me off, even more so as it is obviously done for no other reason than to keep things in line with the change to druid's SoTF. That's all good and great, but as long as I don't get crit-immunity through talents, I am stuck with +defense as my main stat to look out for, with avoidance or threat simply not being a possibility.

They've become such hypocrites. They pull the tanking 2-handers or the +stam weapon enchant because they "didn't want everybody to feel obliged to use them and keep variety instead" yet they now have me tied to the Gargoyle rune until I -maybe- eventually reach item levels that are somewhere beyond my imagination. What's the difference between having a tanking weapon made or as it is currently having the vast majority of DKs using Titansteel Destroyer? It's just as idiotic as back when hunters were expected to use Sonic Spear. Variety my ***!

Where are the buffs to frost that make up for the things I can't access in blood or unholy? Increased range and/or reduced CD on Hungering Cold? More damage on Frost Strike? Reduced CD on Howling Blast?

Frost's true usefulness currently stops in tier 7 of the tree. Pretty sad IMO