Filed under: Death Knight

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

It's been a few weeks since we last discussed patch 5.4 from a death knight perspective. In that time, we have seen the dreaded fix to the RPPM bug for rune regeneration, but we have also seen unholy buffs as compensation. The first numbers pass for death knights also brings a good chunk of buffs to the death knight. Let's dive in and take a look.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

One of the more intriguing general class changes on the 5.4 PTR has been the complete redesign of frost mage mastery. Frost mages currently get Frostburn, which deals extra damage on specifically frozen targets and adds extra damage from their water elemental. With most bosses being immune from freeze mechanics, you can imagine this mastery doesn't do much good for PvE mages. Thus, the redesign on patch 5.4 grants frost mages Icicles, which allows them to do more mastery-based damage in all situations.

Death knight masteries aren't in quite as dire straits as the frost mage mastery was. Blood Shield, in fact, is downright solid. Our DPS masteries, on the other hand, are rather bland, being straight elemental damage buffs. They also come with some compatibility problems which causes the mastery stat to turn out low value for non dual wielders. With that in mind, this week we'll speculate on what Blizzard could do in the upcoming expansion to make mastery a little more enticing for death knights, especially for DPS.

If you remember from last week, Vengeance is being changed in patch 5.4. If like me you've been curious about how it will specifically be changing, Lore over on the official forums has our first explanation of the changes and how they'll shake out. Here's the breakdown.

Lore - 5.4 Vengeance Mechanics - Info Request

Here's some details on exactly how the multi-target diminishing returns are set to work in 5.4. Warning: here there be maths.

The basic, concise explanation is as follows: The Nth strongest (based on pre-mitigation average auto attack DPS) mob that has hit you in the last 5 seconds grants 1/Nth of full vengeance with their attacks. N is recalculated on every hit taken.

So here's an example. Say you're tanking 3 mobs – we'll say it's a boss and two adds. The boss has pre-mitigation average auto attack DPS of 1500k, one add does 400k, and the other add does 300k. The game will form a list of those mobs from 1-3, like so:
1. Boss: 1500k DPS, 1/1 (100%) of normal vengeance is granted
2. First add: 400k DPS, 1/2 (50%) of normal vengeance is granted
3. Second add: 300k DPS, 1/3 (33.333%, repeating of course) of normal vengeance is granted

This would of course continue as more mobs are being tanked (granting 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, and so on). Also, if the second add were to land a hit at any point when the first add hasn't attacked you in the last 5sec (such as if it swings first), that attack would grant 1/2 Vengeance instead of 1/3.

Hope that clears things up for the theorycrafters.

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So if tanking a small group or adds that accompany a boss mob, this change will have little effect - it's when tanking huge packs that the vengeance decay will be most noticeable. The calculation based on most damage seems interesting to me - hopefully the calculations won't be such that vengeance fails to stack properly.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

So With patch 5.3 not holding much in the way of new content for me, I've been spending my new found free time leveling a brewmastery monk. I must say, it's been a blast. Certainly, I didn't get my entire toolkit at level 10, but I got enough to get by, and as I've leveled almost exclusively by tanking dungeons, I've almost never felt that I was missing something essential to my job.

By contrast, leveling a new death knight in early Mists in order to update and rewrite leveling guides, my experience was different by leaps and bounds. Depending on your spec, a new death knight could be missing vital, near-mandatory pieces of their toolkit for 20 levels. I know I'm not alone in seeing an issue with this, and in fact this column was in part inspired by Magdalena (who just got a namesake item in game) pointing it out twitter this morning.

With that in mind, today I'm going to make a couple suggestions on slight tweaks to the death knight leveling experience to make sure new faces to the class have a smooth leveling experience that properly equips them for the end game.

So the big news around the office these days is that some of our own writers got items in game. Congratulations to Rossi, Olivia, and Anne. That said, we don't want to be selfish here, there's plenty of other news that does not involve everyone's favorite website.

For example, just today, Blizzard released new info on the upcoming connected realms feature. There's also a lot of patch 5.4 news to pore through, with multiple updates hitting the PTR this past week. You can read through the roundup below, or even just watch this video of 6 things you should know about the patch. Or do both. Both is good. There's no announced downtime as of this writing, but it never hurts to take some time out to read up.

Hot news and features

• Blizzard has introduced a new animated series called The Burdens of Shaohao. Check out the Prelude, and the first chapter, Doubt.
• The Store button is active on the PTR, and in addition to those experience potions, it's offering charms for sale.
• Check out the latest patch 5.4 patch note updates for July 29 and August 2.
• The latest PTR data files include some possible BoA epics.
• Vengeance got some pretty hefty nerfs on the patch 5.4 PTR.
• The latest patch 5.4 updates are full of raid spoilers, including a confrontation between two major characters and another major story development that we won't spoil for you here. Click on the links if you want to know.

If you're a tank in World of Warcraft you know what Vengeance is. Originally intended to allow tanks to keep up with increased DPS from improved gear with DPS stats on it while accumulating tanking gear that generally lacked those stats, it's turned into a means for tanking players to do chart topping DPS on some pulls (especially AoE ones with multiple tanked mobs). There's been a lot of discussion about what might happen with Vengeance in patch 5.4, and now we have our first look at what Blizzard is contemplating for the tanking specialization.

Rygarius - 5.4 PTR Patch Notes - August 2

Vengeance has received several changes.

• Vengeance now grants Attack Power equal to 1.5% of the damage taken, down from 1.8% (The tooltip said 2% but it was actually 1.8%).
• Tanks no longer receive Vengeance from many persistent area damage effects (standing in the fire) or from missed attacks (dodging and parrying an attack will continue to work as it has before).
• There are now diminishing returns on Vengeance gains while tanking multiple targets. Each additional target grants progressively less Vengeance.

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These changes are almost certainly aimed at reducing the very high DPS that we can see on trash pulls and boss fights with a great many streaming adds (such as Tortos' bats or the packs before Iron Qon) especially as we head into the final tier of gear for Mists of Pandaria, which would inflate these numbers even more. Raids that use tanks with the highest DPS tanks will probably feel these changes the most. As always, this is the PTR, so if you have an opinion on these changes getting on the test servers and testing them out is useful so you can give proper feedback.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Patch 5.4 continues on the test server, introducing new class changes, new features, and more. Today, we'll keep looking at what the latest changes are, both those specific to death knights and those that affect death knights. Do proving grounds prove useful to death knights? What's the latest one weird bug that does weird things for death knights? Read on for the answers to these and other questions.

A ghoulish energy

While most of the major death knight class changes appeared done a few weeks ago, Blizzard just dropped another one that should be a nice game changer for unholy death knights. Gnaw and Leap, as well as their Dark Transformation equivalents, no longer have an energy cost. This means more energy available for Claw, and the ability for death knights to use those two skills freely without having to worry that they won't have the energy.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

This past week, I finally got my final titan Runestone after a couple very horrible dry spells, and was able to get my epic cloak from Wrathion. To do so, of course, one has to defeat one of the celestial challenges during the Celestial Blessings quest. After reading a couple excellent strategies, including, of course, WoW Insider's guide, and wiping a few times on the DPS challenge, I settled on doing the tanking challenge.

I'd actually recommend the tanking challenge for any death knight looking to finish the legendary quest. As long as you have a tanking set that's made up of Throne of Thunder Raid Finder gear or better (maybe add a few pieces of valor or heroic scenario gear in there), you should be able to do it. I do this primarily because it's easier to control everything. Being able to tank adds straight on helps, as does being able to lead the Vision of Deathwing around rather than trying to strafe Wrathion. With this in mind, I'm using today's column to offer a few death-knight specific tips to defeating Niuzao's challenge and getting your cloak.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

With patch 5.4 coming along on the PTR, one thing that came into my brain as I reviewed the latest changes is thinking about what death knight issues weren't addressed, in this patch or others. Some class changes in this patch are inevitable, because you do want all classes to have a good experience and be well balanced going into the final raid of the expansion, the shining centerpiece of it all. At the same time, though, there's still problems, problems that may not be addressed until patch 6.0, if at all. Today, we're going to discuss one of those problems, namely, Killing Machine, and the deeper flaws it may magnify in the current frost death knight stat priority.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Over the past couple of weeks, Blizzard added a few interesting new items to the patch 5.4 PTR in the forms of new glyphs and possible trinket drops for the Seige of Orgrimmar raid. Now, in both cases, these are pretty tentative. The trinkets don't have proper names yet, and the glyphs are all marked as NYI (Which stands for not yet implemented). This means they may not make it to live servers, or may not make it in the same form. Still, the information's intriguing enough that it's worth taking a look at it.

New beglyphings

Glyph of Regenerative Magic is looking like a very strong choice that may make it into a lot of glyph slots. If you misfire your Anti-Magic Shell and it doesn't completely absorb all possible damage, this glyph gives you a second chance by reducing the cool down. I can see this being useful on magic-damage-heavy boss fights and PvP for sure.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

While we haven't seen many major death knight class changes for death knights on the patch 5.4 PTR since the last column, we have seen a lot of information on items that we have yet to cover. With that in mind, today we are going to examine the new tier 16 set bonuses for death knights, along with Wrathion's new legendary rewards.

Celestial Blessings

Rather than weapons (unless Gorehowl gets made into a legendary, which seems possible), we'll be getting legendary cloaks this patch. The final reward from Wrathion's quest line will include cloaks with some very intriguing procs.

Flurry of Xuen is a proc that will let DPS do extra damage as weapon damage over time. While the language suggests its channeled, it looks like it won't prevent you from using other abilities. It does, however, require the enemies to be in front of you, so once you have this, you will need to pay more attention to your positioning -- which you should be doing already, to be fair.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

The patch 5.4 PTR has seen its first round of updates, and with those updates has come a handful of death knight changes. We had most of our earth-shattering changes in patch 5.2, so while there's nothing completely major here, there are some welcome surprises and good quality of life changes, mostly focusing on making it easier for tanks, both in general and blood tanks in specific, to keep threat. Today, we'll take a look at the patch 5.4 patch notes as they stand at this writing. As always, this is the PTR, so class balances may change pretty drastically before the final patch goes live.

Okay, before we get into it, always remember this is datamined information from the next PTR and none of it is guaranteed to make it live. That being said, there are some interesting changes in the pipeline for tanks in patch 5.4, not the least of which is the creation of Riposte, an ability for warriors and death knights. The reason Riposte is interesting is because it seems to be a means to convert parry and dodge into critical strike, which means several things. First, you'll be less likely to stack critical strike as a tank (warriors were at least thinking about it with the change to Enrage, including Shield Slam and Devastate) and secondly, it makes those purely defensive stats work as threat generators, increased the low tank DPS of the warrior tank (and perhaps the DK tank as well, although I'd not heard any complaints about low DK tank DPS) and it must be noted, is not an ability that druid, paladin or monk tanks will be getting.

I find this very interesting, especially combined with the changes to Dark Command, Reckoning, Growl and Taunt. All of these abilities will now not only force a target to attack the tank in question, but will also increase her threat by 200% for 3 seconds. This means that, even if you are tanking a boss or mob that you already have threat on, these four abilities will still increase your threat overall when used, meaning that if you hit a taunt while tanking it will still have a positive effect on your threat. It's worth noting that hunter pet Growl works exactly the same - hunter pets will also get the extra 200% threat over the three seconds.

We're clearly not even remotely done with tweaks and fixes in patch 5.4, but by themselves these changes suggest that tanking is definitely going to see its fair share. The change to taunts is the biggest change to how taunting works that has ever happened, and the inclusion of Riposte goes one step further towards making avoidance also provide threat.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Recently on Twitter, Lead systems designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street was asked what issues he'd fix if he could immediately wave a wand and make it better. One of the ones he mentioned was ability bloat. Ability bloat is the term used to describe a class needing to press too many buttons simply to perform the basic tasks expected of them in group PvE and PvP content.

Ability bloat is certainly something that's been on my mind as well, so this week we'll consider the possibility of ability bloat in death knights and figure out various ways to address it. Much like how talents were pared down for Mists, I wouldn't be surprised to see abilities pared down in major ways for the next expansion, and we might as well start anticipating it.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

So Rossi bought this up in his last column, and I feel like it is a valid question. If haste is a valid gearing strategy for Paladins, why shouldn't it be for the other tanks? The idea of haste and critical strike as being valid, even desirable stats for a tank seems almost anathema, but as of Mists, especially, it's worth a look. Paladins even have a gearing strategy built around haste. Are they the only ones? Should death knights be considering haste and critical strike rating? Should Blizzard be looking at ways to make haste and critical strike rating more desirable for tanks? We'll consider those questions this week.