Lichborne: What Cataclysm might mean for Death Knights
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Aug 31st 2009 at 9:00AM
Welcome to Lichborne, the Death Knight column that dares ask the hard-hitting questions of Blizzard. Questions such as: Can I make a Worgen Death Knight now? Pretty please with sugar on top?
We've now had about a week and a half to digest all the new information from BlizzCon about the Cataclysm, and while it's not a complete picture of what we can expect from the expansion, there's enough information now that we can make some pretty good educated guesses about the direction of the game and the new theorycraft of being a Death Knight. Let's take a look at we can learn from the latest information.
New Races
The new races definitely have some pretty awesome racials. The Worgen's plus damage racial will make them a very solid choice for a DPS Death Knight, and the sprint will be excellent for closing distance in PvP, especially when paired with Lichborne or Icebound Fortitude to avoid CC. Even the skinning racial will be nice for a leveling Death Knight who decides to take some time out to level the money making gathering tradeskills.
Goblins are definitely going to be a nice little convenient race, with low buy and sell prices and a free bit of banking. Combat-wise, the Rocket Boots should be nice for closing distances or running away.
As far as whether these races will end up being the "best" races for Death Knights, I don't think I can say. Part of this is because I think the idea of a "best race" is, to at least some degree, rather subjective, but also, the devs strongly hinted they'll take a look at everyone's racial abilities as they move into Cataclysm, so its certainly possible that other races will get some new or upgraded racials that will keep pace with the awesomeness that are the new races' racials.
Stat Changes and New Systems
We'll be seeing quite a few stats either disappear off gear or vastly change in their mechanics come the expansion. While some of the stats changes, like loss of Spell Power, won't really affect us, others promise to bring up new questions and answers for our gearing and combat conundrums. Let's look at those one by one.
Armor Penetration
As you likely know if you've been following the column, my favorite DPS spec is Unholy. Unholy DPS has been having some troubles lately, specifically with Armor Penetration. Armor Penetration is now so ubiquitous on gear that our signature strike, Scourge Strike, can easily be outpaced by Obliterate with a minimum of Armor Penetration gear at level 80. Luckily, it looks like this will be a thing of the past in Cataclysm, as Armor Penetration will be gone from gear.
With this change, it seems likely they'll simply provide Armor Penetration to Blood through the new Mastery system (and possibly to Frost as well, if only for the Obliterate heavy rotations), while hopefully Unholy will get things slightly more useful to us. If they balance it out right, we should definitely be able to pick up Scourge Strike again full time in Cataclysm.
Of course this does bring up the question of Patch 3.3. Will we see Scourge Strike back on the scene before then? The devs have posted that they want Scourge Strike to be the king of Unholy DPS rotations again, but they don't yet have an elegant way to make that happen. It could be they'll hold off until Cataclysm, and we'll be obliterating our way through the raids and 5 man dungeons of Icecrown Citadel, but frankly, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.
Regardless, this whole discussion underlines one fact: The devs definitely made the right choice in taking Armor Penetration off gear, where it can no longer trip up those classes and specs who do not need it.
Attack Power
Strength has pretty much always been superior for us for both DPS and Tanks, so the fact that we won't have to settle for attack power is definitely welcome. There's not much of a downside to this one, as long as there's enough good plate DPS gear and strength jewelry to go around.
Haste
In Cataclysm, Haste will, in addition to its current uses, cause resources to regenerate or generate faster. In our case, it will be runes. Faster regenerating runes, in theory, equals quicker damage, although it will have to be quick enough to keep up with the global cooldown, of course. If it is, a faster rotation is only a good thing. If not, we just have runes that regenerate faster then sit there as we wait for cooldowns. This is probably a case where we need to see exact values before we can judge how good it is for the class overall, but it certainly has potential, possibly paired with a switch to Unholy Presence.
Defense and Stamina
Defense is completely gone from gear, meaning that every tank class or tree will be getting a talent similar to the Druid's Survival of the Fittest to gain immunity to critical strikes. This isn't so bad a deal now that you can dual spec DPS and Tanking, and therefore offtanks can still be effective tanks and effective DPSers both as needed, but there's still some questions to clear up. Matthew Rossi covered quite a few of those questions in an article on the future of tanking, but I have a few more things to discuss from a Death Knight point of view.
Traditionally, we are able to tank in all 3 trees given that we choose the right talents. However, if we need to grab talented defense, how does that work? Unless they simply add it to the first level tanking talent of all three trees, we may find ourselves incredibly limited in our tank specs as we are forced to work down that specific tree. Of course, they could add it to Masteries, but that means that Death Knight PvE DPS may pick up a relatively useless mastery for them as they work down the tree.
In fact, that brings up a whole different point altogether: How will Death Knight Masteries work? Traditionally, we're meant to be able to tank or DPS in all 3 trees. If Masteries in one tree are tank focused, everyone will flock there for tanking and flock away from it for DPS. That said, it may be that what will happen is that we'll see more tank focused talents instead, which, when taken, will unlock tank focused masteries.
Still, let's assume they have a decent idea for how they'll implement tanking vs. DPS masteries and crit immunity that will work well enough to give us the same tank spec flexibility we have now. That still leaves us with the question of itemization.
It sounds like the developers mean to finish what they started with Burning Crusade and essentially make Stamina so ubiquitous that pretty much every character has tank-level HP. If so, at least that clears up one itemization issue. We'll, in theory, have the Stamina to tank regardless. However, high stamina alone does not a complete tank make.
Bear Druids can attest to it. Sharing your itemization with DPS classes is not fun. You're scrounging for hit and expertise, trying to find gear that still has a decent amount of stamina on it. And good luck finding dodge rating on pieces. They don't exist. That's my biggest fear: Will we run short on defensive stats as everything is itemized to be modular? It's possible this could be sidestepped if Reforging allows conversions to dodge and parry rating, but it'd be way too easy to make reforging far too restrictive for that be effective. Masteries could possibly pick up some of the slack here, but again: With the way masteries are set up, how do we assure adequate tank masteries without rewiring Death Knights so that only one tree is the tank tree?
I'm not ready to completely condemn the idea, but I get the feeling itemization is going to be a sticky subject as Cataclysm begins. Here's hoping the dev team can figure it out, but part of me thinks there may be a limit to how far you can take the "one size fits all specs" gear philosophy.
Then again, I'm still all for getting rid of some stats and firming up others. It really shouldn't take a spreadsheet and a custom made calculator to figure out if an individual piece of gear is really an upgrade for you or not, to be honest.
And the Rest
Of course, this column is hardly going to be the final word on Death Knights in the Cataclysm. We'll be discussing the Path of the Titans and which paths seem best for Death Knights, and talents are probably going to change so drastically as to completely alter how we look at certain talent builds and rotations.
The misgivings outlined above aside, I can say with confidence that I am incredibly pumped for the expansion, and very interested to see what direction the Death Knight class takes with all the redesigns and rebuilds of so many key systems in the expansion. Stay tuned to Lichborne and Wow.com. We'll let you know how this keeps shaking down.
Welcome to Lichborne, the new class column on the new WoW class, the Death Knight, where we discuss Patch 3.1 cookie cutter builds, basic defense gear and Heroic defense gear for the Death Knight tank, 5-man Crusader's Coliseum gear previews for tanks and DPS, and basic Death Knight statistics and mechanics. You might also want to check all the other articles in our Death Knight category.Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne, Cataclysm, Analysis / Opinion, Talents, Worgen, Goblin
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Darkthunder Aug 31st 2009 9:11AM
My vote would be on adding the -6% crit into the Frost Presence. However that may prove to be overpowered in PVP, UNLESS they simply make the -6% crit only function vs PVE mobs.
iamwolfthing Aug 31st 2009 10:34AM
You could even take away the 25 defense from Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle, and make it -6% crit.
K Aug 31st 2009 1:14PM
This man takes the prize.
I'd be suprised if they DON'T do this.
Darkthunder Aug 31st 2009 7:34PM
The easiest solution is to add the -6% crit to the Stoneskin Gargoyle rune. But if they do, I would think they'll have to make the rune work on both 2h AND 1h weapons, but that only the effect from 1 of the 1h weapons work (if someone tries to runeforge both 1h weapons with Stoneskin). There are a relative few DK tanks that enjoy DW tanking, although most DK tanks are 2h wielders.
Rhabella Aug 31st 2009 9:14AM
It is high time someone brought up the issue of crit immunity on DKs. It looks like Blizz may have to make a tanking tree, but that violates their current design philosophy for DKs.
If they put it high in the tree, then every single spec, even those that DPS, are likely to take it, especially if they PVP. If the talents are so deep in each tree, to prevent everyone grabbing them, then the number of players grabbing them will essentially be the same as if they were easily available at the top of the tree.
A built in 6%, or at least 5.6%, feels like it's going to create serious issues with DK balance since the balancing issues have arose because Blizz insists on making every tree do everything. The dual weild fix abandon that philosophy, and I wonder if the defense changes imply they have thrown their hands up in the air with DK balancing issues.
Wipeman Aug 31st 2009 12:39PM
You made a big mistake. Blizzard clearly stated at blizzcon that there will be no new talents and they will be introducing the mastery system instead. So unless they put crit immunity as a mastery stat there will be no such thing as crit immunity. So two things might happen: Tanks will start using resilience instead of defense or Blizzard will introduce gear with extreme amounts of stamina.
Neinball Aug 31st 2009 12:54PM
@Wipeman
You got it a little wrong, they said they wont be adding anything past the 51pt talents, but that they will be heavily editing the trees. So yes they will be adding in some form of talent for crit immunity for tank specs (they stated it during the class panel) the big question will of course be how they plan on implementing it for DK's.
Talent early in one of the tree? OP for Pvp
Talent deep in one tree? Clashes with current design philosophy of DKs
Talent deep in each separate tree? With their design philosophy and the fact they'll be removing/editing a lot of talents this seems to be the winner. I'd also think it would be taking this talent switches that trees mastery system from DPS to tanking focus.
imsobuzzed Aug 31st 2009 1:11PM
And it could be that for Warriors and DKs the crit immunity can be added to stance/presence. Warrior Defensive stance or DK Frost presence could add the required crit immunity. Of course Warriors are intended to spec into protection so this may be tied to a talent in that talent tree or through Mastery of that tree. The DK, if allowed to tank with mastery in any tree, may simply be required to be in Frost Presence and pick up a tier 1 or tier 2 talent from the frost tree. I really do not believe DKs will be forced to be Frost for tanking and Blood/Unholy for DPS.
vocenoctum Aug 31st 2009 1:23PM
I think the simplest way would be to give them a "crit buffer" of the 6% or whatever a boss would have to crit them, but for pvp, it'd not be enough to nullify a rogue's 30% crit or whatnot.
T.T. Aug 31st 2009 9:24AM
I'm just wondering about the lore really. How will the timeline go for worgen and goblin Death Knights? I hope it'll be done well, and explained good too. I'm also curious about the Masteries. Maybe we could see something like dual spec for those too, that would be nice.
Too early to really say anything for sure - unless Blizzard desides to drop Cata on us on the 1st day of January! Now THAT would be hilarious!
Taytayflan Aug 31st 2009 9:26AM
I think you missed something that has hit me in the face as an important question, although this might be more of a lore nerd question: What's the story with Death Knights post-Wrath?
LilBanshee Aug 31st 2009 1:33PM
When you're leveling a character, you're in your own timeline. I.e. Arugal isn't really in Shadowfang keep anymore, but at low levels you still encounter him there. And Tirion Fordring isn't really standing along a river in Eastern Plaguelands anymore, yet to level 50-60 toons questing through that area, yes he is still there.
Just because level 80-85 toons will be questing in a timeline in which the Lich King has been slain doesn't mean that the Lich King will suddenly be stripped from all the storylines of Northrend let alone the DK starting zone.
The one fundamental flaw in the lore is that the greymane wall wall doesn't get busted open until after the lich king is dead, yet worgen characters will encounter him throughout Northrend (including the death knight starting storyline, which makes no sense for them).
Taytayflan Aug 31st 2009 8:41PM
Let me clarify, I'm wondering story-wise what DK's are going to do with the Lich King dead. We got a whole faction of powerful warriors who have now lost their cause, having succeeded.
Deadly. Off. Topic. Aug 31st 2009 9:27AM
Suddenly Cromie swoops in, throws in a bunch of goblins and worgens through a time portal and claps her hand. “There! One of the few (fill in blank) to awaken as DK...etc etc.”
Rhabella Aug 31st 2009 9:53AM
First, Chromie doesn’t have to do anything. There is nothing to suggest that the goblins who are/were/will be raised as deathknights are from Kezan at all. They simply could be deathknights seeking refuge, and choose to do so with the Horde when they learn of Thrall and Co. welcoming goblins in their ranks. Hell, there are goblins in Icecrown now at the Argent Tournament grounds. Are you implying that NONE of them might have fallen at the hands of an attack. The Lich king is unlikely to allow such a bastion of defiance to remain in Icecrown without at least attempting to attack it at strategic moments.
Second, rinse and repeat for worgen. Even if they are the Silverpine worgen who die at the hands of the scourge and/or hordies questing there, nothing prevents the strongest, whom Arthas would hope to make his coveted deathknights, from breaking free and seeking new allies within the Alliance. The fact that both races are already natural inhabitants of Azeroth, and have been since Arthas has been terrorizing both factions means deathknights aren’t unexplainable. Much more explainable than the Dreanei who have become deathknights, and few people have cried foul when seeking that 1% hit chance.
Third, for all the concern about deathknights, wouldn’t the same concerns lie with the Forsaken as well? An entire race of people whose very existence is a result of the Lich Kings power, whether they have been able to break free of his control or not, should create serious questions, especially when part of the Forsaken issue has always been the inability to find true peace like their beloved Sylvannus. The reward for downing the Lich King should be the ability to die and let your soul find rest am I right? I don’t see many people asking how this might impact lore, and my guess is it would be very similar with DKs since they are essentially the crème de la crème of those whose lives have been lost at the hands of the Lich King.
Eli Aug 31st 2009 2:20PM
You're forgetting that in the trailer, we're still distracted by the Lich King when Deathwing strikes. You're forgetting that even if we're not playing them, Worgen and Goblin heroes are still dying, still being resurrected by the Lich King to fight for him/turn against him, even if we don't see them. In 4.0, you'll get to play that badass Worgen DK with the full T12, and everyone will prostrate themselves in awe :)
jair Aug 31st 2009 4:31PM
I agree with you on goblins, as they have been natural residents of Azeroth for ages and there is no argument that some would not have fallen prey to the Lich King.
I find worgen to be a bit of a stretch, however. From my understanding, the playable worgen will be residents of Gilneas who break free of the curse, hence their affiliation with the Alliance. Random feral silverpine worgen will never go through the curse-breaking procedure, so I'm not sure I see a Lore reason for them to go through DK starting quests. The DK starting area is the problem with Worgen DKs, as the battle to be free of Arthas' influence at LHC occurs prior to the breaking of the curse in Gilneas, which results in Alliance worgen. I don't see a good way to resolve that Lore conflict.
The only somewhat backdoor approach out of this Lore conflict is to have worgen and goblin scourge show up prior to Cataclysm. Hence, no reason to doubt there would be worgen DKs, though this does not explain why they would side with the Alliance.
If Arthas wants worgen deathknights, why doesn't he have any thus far?
Envoy Aug 31st 2009 9:32AM
About survival of the fittest. Maybe they will add the -6% crit to frost presence? Instead of health gain, just -6% crit and threat.
Darkthunder Aug 31st 2009 9:40AM
Similar to my idea. Perhaps adding more talents that increase stamina (instead of relying on stamina boost from Frost Presence). Or more probably: Add tanking gear that actually has MORE stamina than the DPS equivalent.
Dokushin Aug 31st 2009 9:43AM
Personally, I think they should add the crit immunity to Frost Presence. That would decouple it from talents and allow DK tanking in any tree. I don't think there's any other solution that would allow them to maintain both no-defense gear and tanking in any tree.