Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsGhostcrawler's thoughts on Death Knights
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 2nd 2008 at 7:00PM
He mentions a number of problems that have cropped up with Death Knights since launch (or before in some cases) and some potential ideas on how they can be fixed in upcoming patches. No official change announcements, just thoughts and discussion. If you want to see the full list, head on over to the forum thread. I'm just going to touch on a few that I've experienced firsthand.
Ghostcrawler mentions that Death Knights tank well when their cooldowns are available, but take too much damage when they're not. The potential fix being lowering the effectiveness of things like Icebound Fortitude, but boosting their baseline mitigation. A simple fix, and a good one. This is probably the single biggest annoyance when working with a Death Knight tank. They quickly go from having higher mitigation than any other tank to taking massive spikes of damage that you can't do much about except spam your heals harder. It's less than ideal, to say the least. I'm really glad that this is a recognized issue and something will be done about it. Right now, they're really not in line with the other tanks.
The ability Rune Strike came up: "Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat." Yeah, this is a good move. I think this is one of those things everyone saw a mile away. Rune Strike is basically Overpower combined with Revenge and injected with steroids. That's pretty wild and not what I'd call balanced at the moment. Toning down its damage is a good move.
It looks like there will be a whole bunch of changes to the Ghoul for ease of use, which I'm happy to see. Unholy ghouls need better raid survival than they have right now (considering they've become kind of important), and non-Unholy ghouls are just clunky and frustrating.
Ghostcrawler also mentions splitting the Raise Dead spell in half, one to raise players and one to summon your own ghoul. While this is a change mostly aimed at the 'fun factor' of raising your buds as a ghoul while keeping your ability to keep your pet ghoul, I think it will just plain help the spell's functionality.
I can't count how many times my raid's Unholy Death Knight tried to resummon his ghoul after a death and ended up raising another member of our raid that had died. It didn't do anything useful, just wasted a cooldown since its priority is to raise a player before creating a new ghoul. The easy fix is to wait until everyone is rezzed to use the spell, but making two different spells is a much more convenient fix. And yeah, way more fun.
There are more sigils on the way, and their absence is something my guildmates love to complain about, so I definitely can't wait to see them. They're aware of how hard it is for Death Knights to get their hand on Defense gear, and while they don't want to make tanking 2Handers, it is an option. My personal hope is they don't do to Death Knights what Protection Paladins had to go through for awhile. There were really only a couple 'Paladin weapons' that had real tank stats alongside their spelldamage. Beyond that, you just stole whatever caster weapon had the most Stamina. Kind of a pain. I'd much rather see a more graceful fix, like converting weapon DPS into some sort of defensive stat or ability.
Overall, I think these are good changes. As awesome as the class is in certain aspects of the game, it's bogged down with quite a few problems of its own. I hope to see everything get into working order sometime soon.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Death Knight, Wrath of the Lich King, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
kabuki Dec 4th 2008 12:39PM
I play a Dk and I have to be honest, there have been a few times that I've looked at my rune strike and thought WTF? Just the other day, as a green lvl 70, I one shotted a Rogue who was at half health. If they can beef up the way dodge figures into that, not so much as killing the power it does, and maybe make the effect less against players; then I don't see it as a nerf.
ZaVaZ Dec 2nd 2008 8:16PM
From full heath, as a Hunter immediately following Death Grip as I see myself fall to 22% health.... All I can think about is Samuel L. Jackson
"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am a Death Knight, when I lay my vengeance upon thee."
Nick S Dec 2nd 2008 10:25PM
Sad, but true. The only spec I can PvP in is BM; without the snare/stun/root immunity from TBW, Retadins and DKs eat our lunch.
Lord Negatron Dec 3rd 2008 12:27PM
I disagree with Nick S. a bit. Ive been a BM hunter forever until i started doing PvP. I mean, all spec's play a certain role so IMO there is no right or wrong.
I found my pet was dead in large BG against well geared people constantly and the dmg ratio didnt balance out. Since turning Marksman opened a new path option to me.
DoT, snare/kite, One Shot. Prey on the weak and falling.
^_^
Zane Dec 7th 2008 11:52AM
Lol awesome ZaVaZ!
"DO they speak english in WHAT?!?!"
I love Pulp Fiction :)
Elliot Dec 2nd 2008 8:18PM
How about a redesign of how the ghoul looks? That thing looks just silly.
Kazya Dec 2nd 2008 8:22PM
These fixes all sound good and are needed, though they are minor and I do hope the bigger ones come sooner than later.
I am surprised they ahven't addressed the Sigil issue. How hard is it to create 3 blue quality and 3 rare quality sigils (1 for dps, 1 for utility and 1 for tanking) and then hotfix them into the game (via say last nights downtime) with the blues spread across factions as revered rep rewards and the epic ones costing badges at the approriate rate. That would go a long way to help alleviate some of the pain.
On the defence problem I think the only way they can address the issue is to incorporate defence into one of the T1 tank talents, and this too needs to be done sooner than later as most of us are moving into epic gear which has much reduced rates of defence than blues (and thus we give up stamina enchants gems for defence ones which also hurts).
Overall though I have no problems with threat generation or DPS. I think in general DK's are fairly balanced (for a new class) and that the tweaks will be minor which is good.
Heilig Dec 2nd 2008 9:53PM
"most of us are moving into epic gear which has much reduced rates of defence than blues"
While I don't understand WHY Blizzard does this, it seems tehy always do. Why do we have to hang onto level 78 crafted blues to stay crit-immune? Where is the fun in getting a nice shiny piece of gear and not being able to use for fear of getting rocked for 20K?
However, this whole "Death Knights have trouble finding defense gear" argument is just nonsense. You have exactly one less usable slot than my paladin. My shield has a grand total of 32 defense rating on it. Are you seriously saying 32 defense rating (a whopping 5 defense skill at 80) is what has broken DK tanking? I understand the lack of tanking 2Hers and I sympathize, but come on, guys. Drop a stam trinket and replace it with a defense trinket and you're good to go. There are TONS of 2H weapons out there with 100+ stam on them to make up for what you lose. Outside of weapons, your gearing is a non-issue. Try looking for tanking gear with spell damage on it for two years and come talk to me about gearing issues.
Kazya Dec 2nd 2008 10:35PM
Heilig:
I never said anything about having trouble finding defence gear. In fact - I don't. Getting crit immune is not too hard.
"You have exactly one less usable slot than my paladin."
Actually we have two - Shield and Weapon. While its not much as you point out - maybe what 60 odd rating or so, when you move to epics which have lowered defence for more mitigation, it does make that shift easier, at the same time, it also means that you could gem/enchant blues with stamina over defence which does make you easier to heal.
" Drop a stam trinket and replace it with a defense trinket and you're good to go."
If only it was that easy. Defence trinkets are hard enough (there is grand total of 1 that doesn't require raiding in Northrend) to get and are extremely valuable to maintiang crit immunity. I will look forward to when I can drop it for more stamina.
"There are TONS of 2H weapons out there with 100+ stam on them to make up for what you lose."
This is very true, and does help to alleviate the loss from sockets and enchants
"Outside of weapons, your gearing is a non-issue. Try looking for tanking gear with spell damage on it for two years and come talk to me about gearing issues."
Honestly - I couldn't care less about a classes problems of the past - I played a feral druid from day dot - so I understand them well enough. What I do care about is that Blizzard learnt from those mistakes and do not repeat them with DK's.
Eisengel Dec 3rd 2008 3:08PM
I'm not having too much trouble getting my DK a tanky set together. I've been rolling Unholy / Blood so far for levelling. Generally the way I level is I AoE tank. I'll collect about 3 to 6 mobs, let my Ghoul attack for a second or two, then I come in and AoE them while trying to pull back aggro... good practice I think for actual tanking. So I run with about 300 defense just to level, since I'm usually standing knee-deep in an angry mob convention. If I throw on my tanky gear and switch to Frost presence I have well over 13k health, 11k armor, and I'm less than 100 away from the defense cap. All the gear I have are quest rewards, random green drops, and some of the 'Cobalt' pieces made by people leveling Blacksmithing... so I think a DK with access to Blacksmithing (or the AH :^)) and level 80 drops shouldn't have too much trouble putting together a tanking set.
That said, by and large... I have to say the itemization on gear I get from quests has me pretty puzzled. GC said he didn't want any 1 piece of gear to be perfect for 1 class/spec, and boy did he succeed. Any piece I get will have maybe 2 or 3 good stats, but will be missing some other crucial stat so I just can't use it. For instance I could stack up strength/crit gear, but my health would drop like a rock. I could stack up expertise/hit/crit gear, but all my strength and stam are out the window. I could stack up stam/crit gear, but I'd lose my strength and defense. In general I just stash my quest rewards in my bank and wonder if they'll ever be good for anything. If the stats were rebalanced maybe so that a piece of gear would only have 2 stats, but in massive quantity, I could trade out or 3 pieces like that for 2 or 3 of my current pieces and see an actual increase... but right now my quest rewards are basically paperweights, doorstops and stocking-stuffers.
Cyanea Dec 2nd 2008 8:38PM
The change I want most to DKs?
A WoW aptitude test before you can play them. Most of the Death Knights I've come across ingame are worse than "huntards".
Omenscourge Dec 2nd 2008 9:15PM
All in all I like the thoughts GC has on our class. See my full opinion here.
http://omenscourge.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post.html
Frosty Dec 2nd 2008 9:42PM
Thats nothing but PVP nerfs, more class homogenization and a good way to breack the new class.
Nerfing IBF has huge PVP ramifications vs casters, and so would buffing Frost pressense. It also makes it more bearform like.
The rune strike nerf could be predicted tho, it was bound to happen.
The only positive thing from that thrad is that they are looking at blood tanking wich does need some help.
xicarus Dec 2nd 2008 10:24PM
"Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat." Yeah, this is a good move. I think this is one of those things everyone saw a mile away. Rune Strike is basically Overpower combined with Revenge and injected with steroids. That's pretty wild and not what I'd call balanced at the moment. Toning down its damage is a good move."
lol, here we go again, nerfing pve for the sake of pvp. Rune strike is a crucial component of my attack rotation, and I unlike you, will not appreciate having it nerfed for the sake of pvp.
could you be any more toolish?
Eisengel Dec 3rd 2008 3:24PM
Useful? Oh yeah. Crucial though?
I do run my DK mostly Unholy, and I won't say Rune Strike is very nice, but normally I'll land Rune Strikes around 2k, and when I crit stuff just disappears. Rune Strike crits are in general bigger than any other crit I've seen off my abilities. It even blows an Obliterate or Death Strike (with the glyph and 100 RP) out of the water. They'll land for well over 4k. You can also roll your Rune Strikes into another fight... if Rune Strike comes up, before you autoattack again you can activate it and Death Grip someone. Since they're your active target after a DGrip and usually, even with a huge 2-hander, your swing timer will usually reset by the time you get a DGrip off, your 1st autoattack will be a Rune Strike. If you follow that up with a Death Strike (will full RP and the glyph), and then a Blood Strike, if any of those crit, you've basically facerolled most mobs your level. If it was a player that wasn't a tankable class, forget it. If you have a mob to pop Pestilence off of before you land the other Strikes, that mob you DGripped will just disintegrate.
Is this the right decision for Rune Strike? Maybe.. maybe not. Does Rune Strike need to be toned down? Definitely.
outforprophets Dec 2nd 2008 10:55PM
I'm so happy about that Horn of Winter change. I hated when I dropped DnD to buff before a pull (because that 2 minute timer blows) and the tank pulls too quickly. Then I'm useless in the fight after my first round of attacks. Poops. If I need to put up Bone Shield also? MAN I'm worthless on that pull.
Amaxe Dec 2nd 2008 11:19PM
My friends and I ran ramparts tonight. 4 lvl 60 DKs and a 72 healer. We didn't even tank. Our healer just assigned a mob to each of us, and we (literally) pulled and killed our individual mob.
DKs need to get smacked down hard with the nerf bat... that was ridiculous
Gamo Dec 3rd 2008 6:22PM
Ya hey guys lets nerf DK's cause they owned a lvl 60 instance...
Makes perfect sense to me
Please go level to 75+ and try that
Qaen Dec 2nd 2008 11:30PM
Leveling and endgame are two different things.
It wouldn't surprise me if they had intentionally made DK's to be able to storm through outland instances with 3 other knights and a healer -- otherwise, goodluck finding a group out there!
This makes up for the fact that most of us are running through OL for the third or fourth time already, and all the new stuff is 12 levels in the offing.
Amaxe Dec 2nd 2008 11:34PM
You clearly aren't paying attention.
When a group of level 60 DKs can steamroll Ramp with starting DK equipment, using no tanking or strategy, they are too damned powerful. When each DK can solo a 60 Elite with twice the HP as they have, they are too damned powerful.
We weren't powerlevelers. But we slammed through the way a party of ordinary (pre DK) 70s could have.
Your sarcasm aside, it ought to bother you that level 60s can treat an instance the way it used to take characters 10 levels higher to pull off