3.1 DK Patch Notes (updated 3/26/09)Follow

Frost
- Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff up from 30%. Can no longer be dispelled.
- Frost Presence: Now grants 5% damage reduction instead of 15% magic damage reduction.
- Obliterate: Bonus damage for diseases now increases damage done by a percentage rather than a flat amount.
- Chillblains: Now a 15/30/50% movement speed debuff up from 30%. Can no longer be dispelled.
- Howling Blast: Base damage and scaling doubled. This ability no longer deals bonus damage to targets with Frost Fever. Cooldown increased to 10 seconds. Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree.
- Lichborne: No longer improves your chance to be missed. Now correctly grants immunity, and will break all effects to which Lichborne makes you immune.
- Runic Power Mastery: Moved up to tier-1 and reduced to 2 ranks (15/30%).
- Unbreakable Armor: Now grants damage reduction instead of physical damage reduction. Cooldown increased to 2 minutes from 1 minute.

Unholy
- Desecration: This talent now has a 100% chance to be triggered, works with Scourge Strike, and instantly snares targets within the Desecration area. Additional points in the talent increase the damage bonus and snare magnitude instead of increasing the chance it will be triggered.
- New Talent: Ghoul Frenzy: Grants 25% melee haste to your pet and heals it for 30% of its maximum health. Costs 1 Unholy Rune.
- Outbreak: No longer increases Blood Boil damage. Now gives a 7/13/20% damage bonus to Scourge Strike. Plague Strike Bonus lowered to 10/20/30%.
- Reaping: Now procs on Blood Strike and Pestilence instead of Blood Strike and Blood Boil.
- Scourge Strike: Damage increased. Bonus damage for diseases now increases damage done by a percentage rather than a flat amount.
- Shadow of Death: This talent has been removed.
- Vicious Strikes: This talent no longer affects Death Strike.

Blood
- Dancing Rune Weapon: Damage done by this pet is reduced by 50%, but the cooldown is reduced to 90 seconds.
- New talent: Improved Death Strike: Increases Death Strike damage by 10/20%, and critical strike chance by 3/6%.
- Heart Strike: Bonus damage for diseases is now a multiplier rather than a flat bonus.
- Might of Mograine: No longer affects Obliterate.
- Scent of Blood: Will now proc on a dodge, parry or when taking damage, and now grants 10 runic power per charge. Internal cooldown removed.
- Spell Deflection: This talent has been increased to 15/30/45% damage reduction.
- Blood Strike: Bonus damage for diseases is now a multiplier rather than a flat bonus.
- Death Strike: The weapon damage percent on this ability has been increased from 60% to 75%, but the amount of healing per damage done has been reduced by 20%.

Glyphs
- Glyph of Blood Boil: This has been replaced with Glyph of Heart Strike, which adds a snare effect to Heart Strike.
- Glyph of Death Strike: This glyph now increases Death Strike damage by 1% per 2 runic power, but has a limit of 25% increase.
- Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Icebound Fortitude now grants at least 30% damage reduction, regardless of defense skill.
- Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 20%.

Edited on 3/26/09: posted additional patch notes in this post.

Edited, Mar 26th 2009 3:22pm by Theophany

The Death Strike changes are functionally Blood buffs, not Unholy buffs.

Blood is going to be ridiculous unless something gets nerfed. From a PvE perspective, 51/2/18 is goddamn amazing with the DS glyph and DS buffs. I'm not sure if you'd be better off dumping some points into Ravenous Dead though... hmm. I suppose you could drop RPM as well, since the new Glyph of DS is functionally the same as the old one was at 125 RP, but it'll help DRW so that one's due for some mathing as well.

Removal of the BB Glyph is pretty crippling but I still think you'll see Shadowfrost running around unless something else gets changed as well.

I really don't see how Shadowfrost can recover from the removal of one of it's strongest points.

BB being an undispellable, 20 yard range, LOS-less, 50% snare was pretty huge. Especially when it gave a death rune back.

Ah, that's true. I mainly thought of it for 2v2, but we've got Blood for that now.

CoI isn't really that good unless you have Endless Winter or are Blood (and thus get about as much damage from the BS glyph as you would with Frost Fever up).

You're right, it's not completely worthless, and I still use it when I play Shadowfrost, but it's definitely nowhere near as good as BB.

Wait, what?

It's the most effective peel in the game, bar none, and i doesn't cost you nearly the damage that any other peel does (read: actually being anywhere near the person you're peeling). "Suck" is not the word I would have used.

No virulence with the Blood+EW spec I just wonder, with all the emphasis on having diseases up for increased damage (even as blood) will diseaseless HS's do enough damage? Snare is take care of very well with COI to get in close then cleavestring, but will it do enough damage with cleansed diseases?

I like the way all three trees are shaping up (even unholy once the BB gylph/desecration debacle was sorted out..so they say). Will DRW do enough pressure on pallies? Can't wait to see more testing.

While I'm expecting nerfs to the recent changes to Blood, it's looking like the spec to beat for raiding. IIRC, Blizz mentioned several times that they really want us all to keep diseases in our rotations so I'm guessing we'll see some change that will make disease-less less than optimal. But on the PTR it's very strong so far.

Thanks for the post Theo.

It looks like it by the patch notes, but we know how they are about keeping them updated and organized.

I mean, keeping a central Word doc on a server that all the devs can go in and update (and CMs could then copy/paste to the forums and to the WoW website) would be the smart thing.

Damn it... I just started compiling numbers again....

Ugh.. Back to another series of tests I guess. Maybe this weekend.

All in all, nothing too shocking other than that they refuse to get rid of Ghoul Frenzy (ugh).

For those that are wondering what most of the PvPers out there will be rolling with, most at the top will be using 0/17/54--and no, before you ask--it's not anything like shadowfrost other than you've got a perma-ghoul and you're unholy.

You don't even use IT.

I'm looking forward to it. 2pc T7.5 (head/shoulders) + 3pc Deadly = win.

Hope you've all got your Sigil of Arthritic Binding/Sigil of Awareness ready.

Be fun to give that a shot if I end up getting roped into a 2v2 this coming season. Honestly, I'm thinking Blood for PvP, but only to make it easier on my utter lack of ability.

Virulence over some added dodge? Either way it's 3 low-priority points, but am I missing something?

And for the record: Yes, that was me blowing up enemy corpses in the stables =)
(damn I love CE!)


It's a PvP spec where burst is more vital.

Edited, Mar 26th 2009 11:58pm by TherionSaysWhat

That makes a lot of sense.^^

I leveled my DK with the intention of being a PvE tank, so I haven't spent (much) time thinking about PvP strategies. Basically, all I do is WG (until I get a PvP set together, and start BGing).