Lichborne: Mists of Pandaria skills for death knights
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Nov 28th 2011 at 4:00PM
Hot on the heels of our analysis of the Pandaria talents, Blizzard has now released an entire talent calculator for the expansion that lists not only the talents, but the new passives and class skills everyone will be getting as well. Today, we will take a look at the new stuff that death knights get, the good, the bad, and what it says about the direction of our class as we head for patch 5.0. Since we've already discussed the talents, we'll focus mostly on the class and spec-specific skills.
The first thing I figured I should do is point out the new stuff. Alas, we have yet to see a new level 87 skill. However, we did receive a new level 81 skill (likely as a replacement for Outbreak) in the form of Control Undead. Much like a Warlock's Enslave Demon, this allows the death knight to make an undead mob his pet for up to 5 minutes.
From a pure usefulness point of view, this may not seem like much. After all, the "undead expansion" has been here and gone, and there's no word yet if we'll see any real undead mobs in Pandaria. At the same time though, it is a nice bit of fun flavor, and hey, if only for 5 minutes at a time, I'll finally have that geist pet I always wanted. It's also no level 87 skill, so hopefully we'll still see something new for that. Regardless, I do want to see Control Undead stay in, if only for the fun factor.
The other new thing worth mentioning isn't new, but rather expanded. On A Pale Horse, the previously frost-only mount speed increaser, will now be granted as a passive to all death knights at level 61. I have to say, I'm incredibly pleased by this change. One of the big reasons I recommend leveling as a frost death knight is the mount speed increase, and it'll definitely be nice to have this cool bit of utility for leveling (or herbing, or mining) without locking you into one spec. This is another thing I feel definitely needs to stay in the final build.
There are, though, a few missing passives that are worrisome. With no Runic Focus showing up, will we be expected to gear for spell hit again? The loss of useful passives like Runic Power Mastery and Endless Winter will make it a little more difficult to perform some of our utility moves for sure. Saving 30 runic power for a Mind Freeze is going to be brutal on some fights. In addition, a lot of our runic power generation buffs, such as Chill of the Grave and Magic Suppression, are gone, making it worth it to ask if we'll get improved runic power generation from other sources or not. I'm also sad that Army of the Dead still taunts. We really need an on-off switch for that to make it useful in more situations.
It's also interesting to note that most of our raid utility buffs, from Abomination's Might to Improved Icy Talons and Brittle Bones, are missing. Does this signal a new direction in Blizzard's design philosophy? While it may not seem like much, having those buffs was a good way to sell ourselves to raid groups and get ourselves a slot. Losing them may make those raid invites a little harder to come by.
Blood Strike is now completely gone, which is understandable, since its hardly used at higher levels, but it feels like that means strikes like Festering Strike and Heart Strike should probably be level 55 to compensate. Otherwise new death knights are going to have all these orphaned blood runes and no idea what to do with them.
Blood commands tanking
One of the most striking issues with Blood is that Dark Command is now blood only. It appears that no other tank class has its taunt as tank-spec only, so this is a little disconcerting. It may be that Blizzard assumes that Death Grip is enough of a taunt for everyone to share, but Death Grip has issues of positioning, immunities, and the whole wearing off thing for sure. It feels like a blow to death knight utility and off-tank potential to have it exclusive to blood, for sure.
Other than that, blood looks more or less intact. Rune Strike is now blood only, and we also get some key passives like Scent of Blood, Veteran of the Third War, and Rune Tap. Conspicuously missing is Sanguine Fortitude, which makes one wonder if we're getting away from being the cooldown tank. 20% is still nothing to sneeze at, but it's not 50% either. It's also worth noting that Veteran of the Third War still has the Outbreak cooldown reduction on it, which makes this a good time for me to reiterate that I seriously think that Outbreak should be baseline instead of talented.
If there's another complaint that blood can make, it's that some talents seem pretty much mandatory. Any tank who doesn't take Bone Shield or Vampiric Blood is probably gimping himself. Of course, I know I would like to keep the Bone Shield option for my DPS spec as well, but it's true blood's losing a few talent points right off the bat.
Unholy: Where's the change?
The basic size of unholy is about the same so far. Ebon Plaguebringer remains as the last raid utility death knights can bring with them. Then again, it could be that it only remains for the third disease functionality and will have the magic damage utility stripped from it soon. Festering Strike is now understandably unholy only, which does mean that unholy death knights still have to deal with that strangely backwards rotation. Shadow Infusion and Dark Transformation remain in the same form, meaning our ghoul ramp-up issues will remain for now. It's also worth noting that Summon Gargoyle is now 70 runic power, which is made even more of an issue by, again, the loss of certain runic power regenerating talents.
So the problem right now is that very few of unholy's basic issues are solved with this new tree. We still have the ramp-up time, we still have the weird rotation that's at odds with the rest of class (and makes Outbreak, again, somewhat mandatory), and we still have the AoE problems (though level 90 talents may help with that, as might level 15 if Outbreak goes baseline). Hopefully, we see some more adjustments here for sure.
Frost: Paladins stole my Hungering Cold
Much like unholy, frost remains unchanged in basic feel and rotation, which is less of a problem, unless you dislike the whole proc-based thing. Rime, Killing Machine, Blood of the North, and Icy Talons all survived the transition. Obliterate is now frost only. Threat of Thassarian and Might of the Frozen Wastes are both passives, meaning you can switch weapons more freely. Among the missing stuff is Nerves of Cold Steel, which might be troubling for dual wielding enthusiasts, though that may also be Blizzard's method of equalizing damage between two-handed and dual-wield play. Hungering Cold is also gone, which is a little confusing considering that paladins essentially got it in the form Blinding Light, an instant-cast AoE CC. Denerfing Hungering Cold is welcome. Giving it to paladins instead of death knights? Not so much.
Looking to the future
It's difficult to say much about these trees because they're very obviously early, and I don't know how much meaningful feedback we'll be able to give until we have beta servers or a better understanding of new combat design philosophies in Pandaria. Still, there's stuff to be said. I'm hoping we get more fixes to base unholy issues, a more thorough accounting for the missing raid buffs and runic power generating passives, and some attempt to bring two-handed and dual wield frost back into parity. Here's hoping those beta servers go up soon. Dec. 20 might be a good date for that, right?
Learn the ropes of endgame play with WoW Insider's DK 101 guide. Make yourself invaluable to your raid group with Mind Freeze and other interrupts, gear up with pre-heroic DPS gear or pre-heroic tank gear, and plot your path to tier 11/valor point DPS gear.Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
monotype Nov 28th 2011 4:09PM
I hate that I have to choose between outbreak and corpse explosion. Outbreak is probably more useful, but...corpse explosion! I've missed you so much!
monotype Nov 28th 2011 4:16PM
Also, I'm disappointed that AMZ still bursts when subjected to extreme stress, such as a boss sneezing on it.
djsuursoo Nov 28th 2011 7:58PM
roiling blood looks fun from a disease/AoE tank perspective. instant spread/refresh of diseases? heck yeah.
it might actually be worth taking instead of outbreak. sure the loss of a death strike at the *start* of the fight won't hurt.
the only place it could see it being sticky is on single-target fights... but then i've planned on runic corruption over runic empowerment since the talents were announced. hellooooo 4-second rune regen you wonderful amazing creature you oh who's a good rune regen, who? you are, yes you are you wonderful fast-regenerating runes.
with runes coming up that fast pumping out tons of deathstrikes AND keeping diseases up will be trivial.
monotype Nov 28th 2011 9:35PM
Things I miss about Wrath DKing: Raising a party member as a ghoul, then corpse exploding their original body while they stand around staring in confusion at their new rogue-lite action bar. Endless fun for all, and by all, I mean me.
chadk21 Nov 28th 2011 5:37PM
I'm a little concerned about possibly losing Dark Command if not blood. It's a small utility, but helpful at times when needing to wrangle in a loose mob to the tank, or help with getting spiders down from their webs in the Beth'tilac fight. Small, but I use it often as a frost DK, considering the long CD on deathgrip.
ecotter Nov 28th 2011 6:03PM
So is this really going to happen? Why all the dumbing down of the game. I mean a 7 year old can play this game now..but now I think this will be its death knell.
Why is blizzard constantly trying to reduce this game to a simple one button spam?
Where is the entertainment in that?
I don't get it?
Daniel Whitcomb Nov 28th 2011 6:48PM
To be frank, there were always cookie cutter specs. Don't pretend their weren't. And most people didn't math out their own optimal spec, they went to a website (such as ours) and copy-pasted whatever spec the people on the website said was best. There was little to no thought. You did not choose, you went to a website and did what it said.
This change just cuts out the middleman for most choices, and gives us 7 more interesting (if still likely to be cookie cuttered) choices. Plus, this will be a LOT easily to expand for future expansions, whereas the old method was so bloated as to be near impossible to balance.
ecotter Nov 28th 2011 7:25PM
I respectfully disagree with your assertion that this will somehow make the user more or less involved in the character creation process.
I just think it lowers the bar that much more when playing this game. I for one will not be playing much after these changes come out. I have been playing this game for a long time probably too long (since it came out). And it's frankly boring as it is now let alone making it even easier. It is trivial to do most anything in this game anymore.
By ever reaching for more and more lower hanging fruit they are starting to get some ground rot.
matthewlamotta Nov 28th 2011 7:26PM
if u keep looking you will see that blizzard has not yet completed the talents and therefore some are not appearing, they have stated it themselves. Most of the abilities that aren't there i.e hungering cold and nerves of cold steel may just not be implemented in the previews YET.
djsuursoo Nov 28th 2011 7:45PM
army of the dead taunting actually makes it a very useful tool.
there have been times in heroics where pulls go to absolute hell in a handbasket, and extra mobs get pulled like mad.
army is a wonderful tool in those moments as the ghouls pull everything off the tank and everyone else, and hold aggro well enough that the entire group can go AoE/cooldowns on them for maximum effect, and wowee, we survived a pull that should have wiped us!
i like the taunt. keep the taunt. make army of the dead a smart 'save our collective bacon' button rather than some sort of goofy DPS-boosting cooldown that would get spammed. if you like, buff the main ghoul so that IT is the DPS cooldown for non-unholy DKs.
goldeneye Dec 1st 2011 11:56AM
Remorseless Winter
*drool*