Posts with tag death-knight-unholy-lichborne

Heart of Fear, which will open up this week, is the next step up from Mogu'shan Vaults. As a result, the ilevels are a bit higher and the gear just a bit more desirable. We'll be checking out the loot on a boss by boss basis, in order to give you a better idea about which bosses to spend your Elder Charms of Good Fortune on. As with last week, our analysis will be based primarily on normal gear drops. If you are raiding LFR or heroic tiers, your gear choices may vary a bit based on item levels.

It's actually more important than ever to know what loot drops from what bosses in raids in Mists. This is because, if you've been collecting Elder Charms of Good Fortune, you'll have the option when a boss dies to spend one for a chance at extra loot. Knowing what loot is available means you can be better informed when you spend coins. With that in mind, let's take a quick look at the bosses of Mogu'shan Vaults and figure out if their loot is worth spending charms on.

This analysis is made on the basis of the normal 25-man raid drops. If you are running raid finder, many valor point choices may pull ahead because of superior item level. On the other hand, you do have a highly limited number of valor points due to the 1000 per week cap, so in some cases you may want to "settle" for the raid drop so you can use your valor points to buy something else. In addition, DPS will want to maintain 7.5% hit and 7.5% expertise at the raid level. This can usually be accomplished via reforging, but there may be times you take an "inferior" piece of gear to hit one of those caps.

This week, we'll cover the personal benefits of the primary professions for death knights at level 90. Many of the perks and benefits are the same as they've been at levels 85 and 90, but there's stronger versions, of course, and a couple other changes that are worth covering. This guide will focus primarily on the self-buffs and bind on pickup rewards, though many professions will, of course, have its own BoE things that all death knights will want to make use of, so consider that when you pick your professions.

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.

By the time you read this, Mists of Pandaria should be out and playable in Europe (coming soon to the US), and there's probably even a few of you who will have hit level 86 or 87. With the new talent and specialization system, I expect figuring out how to level will be easier than ever, if only because it's a lot more difficult to go wrong. Still, there's a few recommendations to make that may help you hit level 90 just a bit faster, and we'll go ahead and dispense some of that advice today. Note that all advice here is for leveling only, and may not apply to end game dungeon running or raiding.

Choosing your leveling spec

I would recommend you choose either two-handed frost or blood as your leveling spec. Blood is strong enough and has enough self-healing and emergency defense tools that will probably never die. That said, your DPS won't be as high as you might like. Frost will allow you to kill things faster but still gives you some decent survivability options in the form of Death Strike and, if you talent in to it, the Lichborne heal trick. If you do level as blood, make sure you are either queuing for dungeons as a tank, or have a secondary frost or unholy spec ready to switch to when you DPS a dungeon. Blood is still not great DPS, and your dungeon group will need better than what you can put out as blood.

Death knights are not always the first class you think of when you think group utility. They don't have a long-term crowd control method, they can't summon food or Healthstones, and they don't have one of those long term castable stat buffs like Mark of the Wild or Power Word: Fortitude.

That said, you shouldn't sell them short. We have a lot of little things we contribute to a group in a ways people may not think of. This week, we're going to look at some of the buffs, debuffs, and group utility moves death knights contribute, with an emphasis on things that or new or significantly changed in Mists of Pandaria.

Bringing the Buffs

Horn of Winter has long been a valuable buff that you should never neglect, and it's changed in some interesting ways in Mists. Instead of a flat buff to strength and agility, it now adds 10% attack power to you and your group. This ends up being pretty handy since it should scale as gear levels increase.

With Mists of Pandaria less than a month, it's a good time to get caught up on your chosen class' mechanics and playstyle in order to get a good start in the new expansion. With that in mind, we've spent the past few weeks discussing the various specs and how they'll play. This week, we add to the collection with a guide to unholy death knights in PvE. As a reminder, the following guide is for the basics of the class and spec.

Unholy basics

Unholy, much like its sister trees, remains more or less unchanged in basic look and feel. Of course, there's enough tweaks that there's stuff to learn, but if you liked the way unholy played back in patch 4.3, you'll like the way it plays in patch 5.0.4 and Mists of Pandaria. The biggest change you'll notice is that the new version of Ebon Plaguebringer no longer has the magic damage debuff or the third disease. They have upped the damage on our strikes to compensate, but it's one more little piece of unholy look and feel that's gone.

Unholy is, of course, played with a two-handed weapon enchanted with Rune of the Fallen Crusader, as you will need its power to get the most damage from your strikes, and in Unholy Presence. You will also want to make sure you have your ghoul out as much as possible, as it makes up a not insignificant amount of your damage. If you don't want to deal with a pet or want to dual wield, you're better off switching to frost DPS.

Last week, we started our discussion of the redesigned glyph system for Mists of Pandaria. This week, we'll finish out that discussion, covering the remaining major glyphs as well as minor glyphs.

The glyph system continues to look remarkably alien compared to what we have had before, but there are still some familiar glyphs, as well as a few long sought-after cosmetic additions. As we mentioned last week, there are very few mandatory glyphs, so a lot of this is going to come down to your personal preferences and playstyle. Be sure to read part 1 of this guide if you haven't already, then read on for the rest.

In redesigning the glyph system for Mists, Blizzard's taking away the prime glyph tier. More than that, though, they've essentially gutted the system, removing many glyphs and changing others in incredibly drastic ways. In the case of death knights, what this has done is leave us with very few mandatory]glyphs and even fewer glyphs that greatly affect our ability to do our jobs or climb higher on the damage meters in any meaningful way.

With this in mind, lets take a look at death knight glyphs in Mists of Pandaria as they stand. You will be able to use three major glyphs and three minor glyphs at any given time. There's a lot of glyphs to cover, so we'll do this in two installments. We'll cover most of the major glyphs today, and next week we'll finish off the major glyphs and talk about the minor glyphs.

With a release date finally forthcoming for Mists of Pandaria, we have less than two months until the expansion drops and even less time until we reach patch 5.0.4. With all that in mind, how do you pass the time until then? This week, we'll take a look at a few things death knights can do to look and feel their best when the expansion drops.

Solo to swell your stables

Soloing is a time-honored death knight tradition, and with the expansion winding down, it's the perfect way to pass the time. When choosing your soloing target, you may factor in nostalgia, transmogrification needs, or just plain ease of access. Another popular reason is grabbing mounts and pets. In the Cataclysm era, both Vortex Pinnacle and The Stonecore normal modes drop a mount.

Soloing same-level dungeons can be a bit hairy, but considering these two were in the game at the start of the expansion, you should find that even with Dragon Soul raid finder gear, you'll barely break a sweat in blood spec. As a bonus, both of these mounts will be going account-wide in Mists of Pandaria, so you'll be grabbing some possible stylish mount options for your alts as well.

A few weeks ago, we talked about some relatively subtle changes to death knight tanking in Mists of Pandaria. Subtle changes are often times more extensive than we first realize, changing the class in ways that go further than even a complete talent revamp.

This week, we'll take a look at a few more of these subtle changes. These are recent changes on the Mists of Pandaria beta that novice death knights may not even notice. Some of them will just change the feel of the class without really changing how we work. Others, however, will require adjustments to your playstyle. Let's check out three of these recent tweaks and see how they'll affect you once the expansion goes live.

While we still don't have a release date for Mists of Pandaria, there's a general feeling that it's coming soon, possibly by the end of the summer. With that mind, just about every class' big names and theorycrafters are scrambling to get those last few class issues and pet peeves ironed out and bought to the devs' attention.

Death knights are no exception. Some of those issues have, in fact, received recent fixes. Others have remained unchanged, and a few have gotten worse. Today, we'll take a look at the latest death knight changes in the beta and see what they've done for us, both good and bad.

With a new expansion coming out, it's a perfect time to try out a new character. New skills, new spells, and new mechanics all mean there will be new ways of playing and new ways of looking at things, and sometimes you just want a fresh start. Of course, there are only a few people dedicated or crazy enough to play multiple characters of the same class on a regular basis, but sometimes, I find that leveling the same class more than once gives you insights and helps you remember the basics.

With this in mind, I've started a couple new death knights of my own on the Mists of Pandaria beta. And while there's a lot for new death knights to learn, it's interesting to note what lessons this old death knight learned and what subtle differences herald for the class.

It's easy to become talented

In the original plan for creating a death knight, you got chunks of talent points to spend when you completed certain quests. In theory, this allowed you to slowly build up a talent build as you would when leveling a fresh character, getting small chunks of talent points to distribute bit by bit. In practice, I feel it was a bit more confusing than that. A level 55 character with no talent points getting those talent points from random quests with no real rhyme or reason to when or how they came wasn't a deal breaker, but it really felt like you didn't quite have a handle on your talent points until you were finally caught up at around level 60 or so.

If you've been following death knight news at all, you know that presences -- specifically, the interplay between Frost Presence and Unholy Presence -- have been a hot button issue for some time now. The flames only got hotter in the Mists of Pandaria beta, as massive changes to presences caused severe issues in our class mechanics and rotations. Luckily, Blizzard's heard our pleas and recently released a huge overhaul to the DPS presences on the beta. This week, we'll take a look and see what they did.

The basic rundown

• The base global cooldown for all death knights is now 1 second. As a result, Unholy Presence no longer provides this bonus.
• Unholy spec death knights now get Improved Unholy Presence, which provides an extra 10% rune regeneration and attack speed when in Unholy Presence.
• Frost Presence lost a good chunk of its extra runic power regeneration (it's down to 20% from 100%), as well as the extra 30 base runic power.
• Frost spec death knights now get Improved Frost Presence, which reduces the cost of Frost Strike by 15 runic power when in Frost Presence.
• Might of the Frozen Wastes no longer generates 15 runic power per a hit but does make your Obliterates cause 50% more damage while using a two-handed weapon.
• Threat of Thassarian no longer has an off-hand damage bonus but does increase your Frost Strike damage by 50%
• Improved Icy Talons is now Unholy Aura, and both DPS specs gain use of it.

Last week, I talked about three quick fixes death knights should get before the Mists of Pandaria beta is over. This week, I'd like to discuss three more death knight issues. These aren't necessarily any less urgent or problematic than last week's issues, but they're complicated enough that we probably can't expect them to be fixed before the expansion goes live. Still, they should probably be dealt with sooner rather than later.

1. Tier 5 talents have got to go. I have to admit, the level 75 death knight talent tier had me pretty excited when it was unveiled. Finally, anyone could choose their flavor of rune regeneration. At optimal balance, it seemed like everything could turn out great. People could choose how much control they wanted, people could avoid rune tetris if they wanted, and everything would be cool.

In practice, it hasn't worked out like that. It's become more and more obvious that it will be nearly impossible to balance the three types and that Blood Tap is the clear winner for any death knight DPS player, with Runic Empowerment nearly equal and Runic Corruption taking up the distant rear. The level 75 tier, in other words, doesn't pass the basic litmus test for the new talent system. There's no real choice. Min-maxers will feel forced to take a specific talent on this tier in all situations, and it will, in fact, almost always be Blood Tap.

If you've been paying attention to the death knight community lately, you know that there is general sense of dread about the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion. Sure, as far as general content goes, Mists is shaping up to be the best expansion yet. Unfortunately, for the death knight class, many people are afraid that we'll see a repeat of Cataclysm, in which the death knight community saw problems in beta remain in live, only to be removed over multiple patches.

There's certainly some merit in that view. In the Mists beta, the removal of many runic power-generating talents and the adjustment of presences means that PvE DPS is in a very weird place right now, with the promise of new resource levels to juggle, exacerbated by trying to find a balance between global cool down capping and resource availability.

A lot of my fellow death knights have already started talking about switching to a new main when Mists goes live. I'm not against this at all. If it's no longer fun for you to play a character, switching is a very valid response to that. Why are you paying for this game every month if not to have fun? That said, I do not plan to switch. There's still a lot of fun and even a bit of optimism to be had in playing a death knight. This week, we'll look at some of the upsides of playing a death knight in Mists of Pandaria.