Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for DPS death knights
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Mar 3rd 2010 at 9:00AM
We've known for a while that we were getting some pretty sweeping stat and gear changes in Cataclysm. The other day, the blues over at Blizzard put together a nice little post that outlined all the big points of the revamp. As you might expect, there are a few changes that DPS death knights are especially going to want to watch out for. Let's take a closer look at the changes that are most likely to affect the DPS death knight.
Attack Power: Attack Power will be completely removed from gear, to be replaced by agility and stamina. For the most part, this should have minimal impact on us, as the best death knight DPS gear already uses strength. That said, some death knights do end up using attack power gear just because they haven't seen a better drop, especially if you're a new 80 running, say, the coliseum or the Icecrown 5-mans. What this means is that if you have any attack power items laying around, you'd best get them replaced by strength gear before Patch 4.0 gets here.
Armor Penetration: Armor penetration will be gone from gear, to be replaced by haste and critical strike rating. Armor penetration is currently a pretty powerful stat for both blood and unholy death knights, and not completely worthless for frost death knights either, so chances are you have a decent amount of it on your gear. It'll be gone, but chances are we'll see it on mastery again anyway.
Haste: Haste will be reducing the cool down of our runes in cataclysm. The exact effect this will have on DPS should be interesting. Death knight DPS involves not only getting out attacks quickly, but efficiently as well. We have to make sure our weapons strikes fall on a target loaded up with diseases in order to optimize our DPS. Therefore, we'll need to determine if the haste allows our runes to cool down fast enough that we can get in extra strikes before our diseases need to be refreshed. It's going to take some math.
Mastery: Mastery is a new statistic that will show up on gear and will give you extra passive stat bonuses based on your class and spec. Of course, since death knights can tank or DPS in the same trees, we'll have to see how Mastery determines whether a death knight is tank or DPS. As far as what stats to expect here, it may differ a bit by tree, but I expect we'll see armor penetration, critical strike chance, and haste off our mastery. Whatever we get, the devs say they'll have more information on mastery for us soon.
Plate DPS Gear: It's worth noting that stamina and armor class are going to be bumped up for classes across the board. We should still be relatively non-squishy, but there will be less of a gap between us and, say, a mage. It's also worth noting that wearing your proper armor class will provide a mastery bonus. This will probably just be icing on the cake for us, since only plate DPS gear will have the strength we need in the first place, but it's worth a mention.
Ratings: Combat ratings, such as hit and expertise, will not "cap out" as easily in Cataclysm. You'll see higher raiding tiers of mobs being harder to hit, for example. This should allow the developers more freedom to itemize, and should mean that all that hit rating off every other drop might actually be useful. On the more annoying side, this could mean we'll be missing our target a bit more with swings and spells, which means more dropped rotations and less DPS. Again, though, we'll need more solid numbers to be absolutely sure.
Weapon Skill: I'm sure most of us old time death knights have our weapon skills all properly trained to at least the 390 skill range now, but for new death knights, this is going to be nice news: weapon skill is gone in Cataclysm. You'll be able to wield the weapons your class can wield without having to kill grey mobs for 2 hours. For everyone who had to skill up maces from 0 to wield their nice new Titansteel Destroyer, this one's for you.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Death Knight, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
naudiss Mar 3rd 2010 9:07AM
Finally Blizzard shows some love to haste, will give us Frost users a good dps gain including
haste will be reducing the cooldown of our runes. Less QQ more pew pew!
BlackTiger™ Mar 3rd 2010 9:14AM
Still waiting for titles such as "Cataclysm: Stat and system changes for hunter's and warlock's pets" (pets have own talent trees!).
Might be even more detailed like "for Felguards", "for Cats" and even for "for Nightsabers"...
Gethe Mar 3rd 2010 12:47PM
No, only hunter pets have talents, warlocks do not. In cata all stats will transfer from the hunter to the pet, so any changes that apply to hunters will be the same for their pet, making a pet specific post redundant
Chilblain Mar 3rd 2010 9:28AM
Could you guys publish Byron the Tauren Rogue for each individual class as well? I would like to see how his adventures impact Holy Paladins.
Sterb Mar 3rd 2010 9:37AM
I remain skeptical of haste's values on specs that are already GCD bound (Unholy being the one expection). How are runes available sooner going to benefit a Blood DPS DK? They'll still be waiting on GCD to do their next attack more often than a rune cooldown.
Ethan Mar 3rd 2010 9:59AM
They could do any number of things to balance this, like making haste reduce the GCD for rune abilities.
Sterb Mar 3rd 2010 10:33AM
Maybe, but Blizzard thus far as been really careful to not reduce the melee ability GCD because they don't want people to be good just because they can hit a sequence of buttons super fast (casters at least have breaks in between a series of shortened instant casts).
Plus, that means a "haste cap" for melee becomes a reality and likely would happen soon into Cataclysm (haste affecting GCD too little makes it an ineffective stat, affecting too much hits ceiling quickly).
serf Mar 3rd 2010 10:58AM
Yeah, seeing as how I'm already hitting a button on every GCD the only thing I can really see them doing with haste is make me hit hit them faster.
That honestly doesn't sound to appealing.
my mourningangel Mar 3rd 2010 11:40AM
There could be a lot of impact on Blood, actually. With a faster rune refresh, it's entirely possible that there could be some situations where blood runes refresh before you're entirely through your rotation, allowing extra heart strikes with a refresh in the middle, or making GoD much more useful, since you'd not be wasting extra GCDs putting diseases up when you could be hitting things.
The ramifications are pretty big, but I don't think we'll see how big until 4.0 drops. Think of it this way: Have you ever run yourself out of runes and RP at the beginning of a fight or after a movement phase? Not any more! Because those runes that are 1sec from being back will have been back for a while now. Go Haste!
thebitterfig Mar 3rd 2010 12:17PM
With the new Haste (faster rune refreshing, shortened GCD), at least one advantage is clear: the tighter rotations of Glyph of Disease specs (both Blood and Frost) will be a lot easier to maintain. In the current system, you are GCD capped and barely able to execute your full rotation within the disease timers, but with a little haste, you'll be able to shave 1 or 2 seconds off that rotation and have a lot more leeway for missed/dodged attacks or time off target due to movement, or tossing an extra DC/IT/HB. It doesn't seem like it will be a large dps increase on paper, but it will probably be more significant in practice than it looks.
Sterb Mar 3rd 2010 12:55PM
I'll give a nod to bitterfig's point, but I still see Haste being a rather undesirable stat after a fairly minimal level for Blood. Initial rotation deadspace is simply cause by a lack of RP, and stacking haste to minimize that space in an initial rotation is a waste of itemization. The only time you care is on trash (yawn).
Haste will heavily favor GCD unbound specs like Unholy. Blood will probably see a haste cap at a really low rating level. Blood DKs stacking haste will probably have excessive RP rot.
Korenn Mar 3rd 2010 9:37AM
Really Daniel Whitcomb, did this *really* merit two articles? Even if your editor instructed you to write them, that's poor judgement.
Keith Mar 3rd 2010 9:49AM
Why do you care? Don't read it, move on.
Korenn Mar 3rd 2010 9:55AM
Why do you comment on my comment? don't read my comment, move on.
But besides your post being even more pointless than mine; retarded RSS spam is retarded.
Ethan Mar 3rd 2010 10:05AM
At least he didn't do one for blood tanks, blood DPS, blood PvP, frost tanks, frost DPS, frost PvP, unholy tanks, unholy DPS, and unholy PvP. P.S.: This isn't a suggestion Mr. Whitcomb...
Keith Mar 3rd 2010 10:09AM
I'm not the one complaining about the repetition. You are. You're being a hypocrite by wasting time whining about articles that waste your time. I'm quite happy to waste my time arguing with you.
Korenn Mar 3rd 2010 10:13AM
I see what you did there to counter me applying your own argument on you by ignoring it and flaming me. Very clever.
But to cater to your love of repetition, I'll reiterate what I said before: Retarded RSS spam is still retarded.
brownyboi Mar 3rd 2010 10:53AM
Oh chillax will ya?
Although as a sign of goodwill, I think that WoW.com should refund the subscription fee that Korenn paid today to this site. Might make him feel better...
A5 Mar 3rd 2010 9:46AM
We get it. The stats are changing. We don't need this many articles saying the exact same thing with the class names changing.
Blacksheep Mar 3rd 2010 9:47AM
You guys usually do an amazing job here, I love your posts and having been a journalist in the past, I understand editor's orders about doing stories, however, these stat posts are simply rehash after rehash after rehash. I read about these stat changes in your original Cataclysm post several days ago, then I read about them for hunters, then DK tanks then DK DPS and so on, all containing the exact same data as the original post. This isn't necessary, the information is being over duplicated, perhaps just posting up a recap on Cataclysm now and then with the overarching post on stat changes would suffice?