The Queue: Death Knight jamboree

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.
Now with that cleared up, the Q&A! We'll start with Stormscape's question...
Does Crusader Aura or On A Pale Horse affect vehicle speed?
I can confirm that Crusader Aura does. My raid's Protection Paladin was one of the first people on my server with a motorcycle, which is technically a vehicle. He rocks out with his chopper out. I cannot promise that On a Pale Horse does, but I think it's a pretty safe assumption.
Eisengel asked...
I was just wondering if anyone else found Unholy aura a little... out of place? Blood aura; extra damage and healing, yeah! Frost aura; extra armor and stam (and spell resistance on talenting), yeah! Unholy aura... here we go... the crazy, insane power of an Unholy ex-minion of the Arthas and one-time Knight of the Scourge is... you can run faster! ...What?
Hey, don't underestimate that run speed. It might be ho-hum in 5-mans, but extra movement speed is truly, legitimately useful in raids. Not only for getting out of AOEs and all of that jazz, but from getting from target to target, increasing contact time and thus increasing your DPS.
Plus, there's no escaping death. Death is inevitable. Especially if it runs faster than you do.
Ness said...
Originally, Death Knights were gonna be available to make on every realm as long as you had a 55 character on one realm. When they changed it to only having a Death Knight on the realm your character was on, I heard it was only temporary and at some point it would change back. Is this true? And if so, when?
We don't really have an answer for this except that it might change. From what I understand, there were some technical issues that prevented them from allowing this across realms and they may or may not find a fix/workaround for it. All that we know is they might do it, they might not. If you're waiting to decide on whether you should roll your Death Knight now or wait until Blizzard can allow it crossrealm, I guess the question is how bad do you want to play a Death Knight? If you can wait, wait and see. If you really want to play one, you might want to just cave and powerlevel a throw-away character to 55 somewhere else.
Terethall said...
How much harder are WotLK heroic dungeons than their regular counterparts? When I hit 80 in my levelling greens and blues, will I be successful in heroics with a decent group, or is there a significant gear check on heroic dungeons?
Heroics are far more brutal than their Normal counterparts, but if you're in mostly Northrend blues you should be alright to start them. I went into Wrath in Tier 6, so I started Heroics pretty much just as soon as I hit 80, which is the point where blues start to catch up to T6. The biggest difference I noticed is that encounters just required a lot more finesse in execution.
We still hardly use CC on trash pulls and AOE it all down, but bosses require a bit more coordination. Loken in Heroic Halls of Lightning will ruin you if you have people who don't know how to run out of the huge freaking explosions, whereas on normal mode you can sort of blunder through it. If you're in full level 80ish blues, the claims of people needing to CC in Heroics is completely false. If you're a little undergeared (greens, sub-80 blues), yeah, play it safe and use a bit of crowd control.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Mounts, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Will Nov 26th 2008 5:05PM
I can foresee a nerf with certain "vehicle" speed abilities stacking with talent/class abilities.. having a DK with on a pale horse and crusaders aura from a group buff would be pretty OP on a 310% mount.
NoTomorrow Nov 26th 2008 5:10PM
so two paladins and a death knight got onto a traveler's tundra mammoth...
Shiianna Nov 26th 2008 5:13PM
Remember that Crusader Aura doesn't stack with anything.
FlameFlash Nov 27th 2008 2:19PM
Have to disagree. Even when say running back from a wipe, if I slam 'dash' in cat form and really get a speed boost from aspect of the pack from the hunter in the group (and pop a drums of speed just for the heck of it) it isn't long at all before I'm suddenly out of range of the hunter speed buff and just depend on my own dash and drums until the hunter catches up.
Have to stay in range that whole time, and you won't manage to without purposefully slowing down.
darren Nov 26th 2008 6:13PM
And based on the linked tooltip, neither does On a Pale Horse . . .
Akussa Nov 26th 2008 10:27PM
I'm surprised no one has brought this up but Aspect of the Pack gives a 30% speed increase bonus. The mounts count as part of the party for mechanic purposes. While pack sucks in that you get dazed from damage that's a HUGE speed boost!!
vexill Nov 26th 2008 5:12PM
Unholy aura also reduced the GCD and increases the DK's haste.
vexill Nov 26th 2008 5:13PM
OH man!!! its too early in the morning!! I got aura and presence mixed up.....please ignore my comments and note me down and a noob!!
Kaphik Nov 26th 2008 5:48PM
I think the aura is nice for leveling, if you have a partner or are multi boxing. I also believe it's a wonderful talent to have for pvp. Combined with On a Pale Horse for yourself, you have a faster team to capture nodes, flags, etc.
Shevaresh Nov 28th 2008 5:37PM
God forbid you have any lag when fighting Loken; I would run as soon as I could and still got caught 4-5 times (we wiped on him for an hour last night). Finally got through when I used Demonic Teleport to TP out the first time, VW/Sacrifice and eat the second and circle again for the third. And I still died on the fourth.
This was with a relatively uber-group, 6.2k combined DPS and a paladin healer throwing out 8-10k flash heals.
(Even on the wipes, we got him down about 300k before the second blast)
Honestly, he needs a small nerf; maybe reduce the AoE 5 yards or something.
parkermon Nov 26th 2008 5:19PM
"Originally, Death Knights were gonna be available to make on every realm as long as you had a 55 character on one realm."
A lvl 1 character starts with no money. This is so you can't simply make character after character sending the money to yourself. I imagine that if the above option was made available across all realms, it would be a gold farmer's wet dream. Who needs those 55 levels anyway? Why not skip that and get to the bigger money quicker?
Not to mention - a DK has to be one of the easiest classes to level. And I say with a good experience of hunters. So you've got a wonderful chance to sell lvl 80 characters a lot quicker.
As lovely as this would be for every player, it would simply be too easy to exploit.
Kassu Nov 26th 2008 6:00PM
You only start out with like, 20s.
Once you level up, you'll have about 40g or so and that's hardly worth the effort, as you can make a lot more off dailies.
Also, I think you had to quest for quite a while until you ran into a mailbox.
svenhoek Nov 26th 2008 8:02PM
No not long. In the first "phase" your in, by one of the buildings in town is a mailbox. When you get your steed and go to the nether-realm theres even a quest sitting on top of it. Watch out for the horsemen though....
CSJenova Nov 26th 2008 5:24PM
The answer was worded a little funny, but regarding death knight creation, you can create more than 1, just not per realm. So you could still roll one now to play around with and then wait for if/when they unlock them across the board. That announcement has not gotten any closer though.
Nindle Nov 26th 2008 5:56PM
With the recent solo clearing of Zul'Gurub, my question is what instances do you think a level 80 Naxx geared rogue could solo?
i ask this because i am a rogue (Obviously) and i dont forsee me getting much higher gear then Nxx dues to the fact im a member of a small roleplay guild who does Casual weekly-ish raids. Long but...meh ^_^
- Nindle
DM7000 Nov 26th 2008 6:05PM
So has anyone figured a simple way to raise weapon skill since after WotLK? My druid just picked up a new weapon and he has zero skill with it (he's resto so yes it does matter a little).
Thaumaturgis Nov 26th 2008 6:10PM
Try the target dumies in every major city. Smacking those for a while is a completely harmless (if very boring) way of upping your skill level with a weapon.
darren Nov 26th 2008 6:15PM
I tried this with 3.0.2, target dummies do not give skill ups (unless this changed in 3.0.3 or the WotLK launch)
DM7000 Nov 26th 2008 6:20PM
yeah that's the impression i was under.
ZekeGrimsblade Nov 26th 2008 8:05PM
Rats in the Tram between IF and SW. That's an easy start.