While this thread is the new UI thread, am I the only Tank (mainspec, but also DPS/Heal) to use Grid/Clique all the time? ie: not raid healing but just as simple/clean party tracker and use it for non-healing spells as BoP, Cleanse or even Rebirth? I just found it odd during a guild discussion that some people who uses those addons only use it to heal and not all the time for those other beneficial spells.
Awesome sauce: Righteous Defense as a clique binding on a tankadin. <3<3
All of my characters use grid as the raid UI and I see no reason to change it. Of course I am generally a healer, but I have grown far too attached to it at this point. No turning back.
Shaman and Warriors were around 1pm. Warlocks were posted too early so the second preview for today is going to be later than that. Priests were around midnight PST. I'd imagine it'll be any minute now if not 6pm PST.
Shaman and Warriors were around 1pm. Warlocks were posted too early so the second preview for today is going to be later than that. Priests were around midnight PST. I'd imagine it'll be any minute now if not 6pm PST.
I was just thinking what with my griping about PallyPower a few pages back. The best thing the devs could announce for Paladins is to either allow all their buffs to be done by one paladin (wouldn't be all that bad actually, considering Shamans can do something similar, though I doubt it) or to get rid of the class-group buff method and just make the greater versions raid wide. 1 Symbol = full raid, one buff.
If they're getting rid of the whole ease of mana regen, there's a pretty good chance Blessing of Wisdom is getting the axe. It might be changed to something else but I doubt we'll see it change into a Spirit buff since Priests are losing theirs and they gave reason for it, and Mp5 is no longer a "real" stat. I'm actually surprised they didn't touch on this somewhat when they divulged the Shaman preview the other day. They didn't say anything about Mana Spring totem or Water Shield.
That leaves 3 blessings. Kings will stay, but it won't affect spirit. Fine. Might will probably still be around and I wouldn't be surprised if they changed it to give less AP and maybe gave it some +hit or +crit bonus, making it exclusive from Totem of Wrath. Sanctity is spec'd into and fairly unique, which is pretty nice. No complaints there. Honestly? I'm looking forward to having one less blessing to give out.
Shaman and Warriors were around 1pm. Warlocks were posted too early so the second preview for today is going to be later than that. Priests were around midnight PST. I'd imagine it'll be any minute now if not 6pm PST.
Oh, I didn't realise the 'lock stuff came out too soon so I thought the DK stuff would be at the same time, thanks. :^:
I was just thinking what with my griping about PallyPower a few pages back. The best thing the devs could announce for Paladins is to either allow all their buffs to be done by one paladin (wouldn't be all that bad actually, considering Shamans can do something similar, though I doubt it) or to get rid of the class-group buff method and just make the greater versions raid wide. 1 Symbol = full raid, one buff.
If they're getting rid of the whole ease of mana regen, there's a pretty good chance Blessing of Wisdom is getting the axe. It might be changed to something else but I doubt we'll see it change into a Spirit buff since Priests are losing theirs and they gave reason for it, and Mp5 is no longer a "real" stat. I'm actually surprised they didn't touch on this somewhat when they divulged the Shaman preview the other day. They didn't say anything about Mana Spring totem or Water Shield.
That leaves 3 blessings. Kings will stay, but it won't affect spirit. Fine. Might will probably still be around and I wouldn't be surprised if they changed it to give less AP and maybe gave it some +hit or +crit bonus, making it exclusive from Totem of Wrath. Sanctity is spec'd into and fairly unique, which is pretty nice. No complaints there. Honestly? I'm looking forward to having one less blessing to give out.
I was just thinking what with my griping about PallyPower a few pages back. The best thing the devs could announce for Paladins is to either allow all their buffs to be done by one paladin (wouldn't be all that bad actually, considering Shamans can do something similar, though I doubt it) or to get rid of the class-group buff method and just make the greater versions raid wide. 1 Symbol = full raid, one buff.
If they're getting rid of the whole ease of mana regen, there's a pretty good chance Blessing of Wisdom is getting the axe. It might be changed to something else but I doubt we'll see it change into a Spirit buff since Priests are losing theirs and they gave reason for it, and Mp5 is no longer a "real" stat. I'm actually surprised they didn't touch on this somewhat when they divulged the Shaman preview the other day. They didn't say anything about Mana Spring totem or Water Shield.
That leaves 3 blessings. Kings will stay, but it won't affect spirit. Fine. Might will probably still be around and I wouldn't be surprised if they changed it to give less AP and maybe gave it some +hit or +crit bonus, making it exclusive from Totem of Wrath. Sanctity is spec'd into and fairly unique, which is pretty nice. No complaints there. Honestly? I'm looking forward to having one less blessing to give out.
The whole Kings vs Might thing is kinda dumb.
They really need to overhaul Pally Blessings.
Spending fifteen seconds casting buffs is totally stupid, Blessings are the worst buff system in the game.
I was just thinking what with my griping about PallyPower a few pages back. The best thing the devs could announce for Paladins is to either allow all their buffs to be done by one paladin (wouldn't be all that bad actually, considering Shamans can do something similar, though I doubt it) or to get rid of the class-group buff method and just make the greater versions raid wide. 1 Symbol = full raid, one buff.
If they're getting rid of the whole ease of mana regen, there's a pretty good chance Blessing of Wisdom is getting the axe. It might be changed to something else but I doubt we'll see it change into a Spirit buff since Priests are losing theirs and they gave reason for it, and Mp5 is no longer a "real" stat. I'm actually surprised they didn't touch on this somewhat when they divulged the Shaman preview the other day. They didn't say anything about Mana Spring totem or Water Shield.
That leaves 3 blessings. Kings will stay, but it won't affect spirit. Fine. Might will probably still be around and I wouldn't be surprised if they changed it to give less AP and maybe gave it some +hit or +crit bonus, making it exclusive from Totem of Wrath. Sanctity is spec'd into and fairly unique, which is pretty nice. No complaints there. Honestly? I'm looking forward to having one less blessing to give out.
The whole Kings vs Might thing is kinda dumb.
They really need to overhaul Pally Blessings.
Spending fifteen seconds casting buffs is totally stupid, Blessings are the worst buff system in the game.
I think the best thing to do is make it really obvious which type of characters want which buffs. So you'd have 4 Blessings, Tank, Caster, Not-Caster, Kings. (You could maybe keep Tank one as a talent, but whatever)
So Sanctuary would be like +Stam/-damage taken.
Might would be +AP/+Crit (or +Haste or whatever)
Wisdom would be +SP/+Regen.
Kings stays the same.
There, simple and straightforward. You can make it even simpler by getting rid of Kings, but then you only need 1 Pally for a raid to buff and that's kinda lame. So make it 2.
And if you REALLY want to make it smart, instead of Buffs going by class, have them go by Spec. I mean, as of 4.0, the game will already be designed to differentiate whether you are Tank or DPS or Caster or whatever because you will have a specific Talent Tree activated for the Masteries.
Shit, just have a spell called "Greater Blessing of Specificness" and one called "Greater Blessing of Kings" that automagically bless your raid/party as necessary. THe kings one just gives everyone kings, the other one gives everyone the appropriate buff for their spec.
The only issue here would be Feral Druids, as you'd need some way to differentiate a Kitty from a Bear.
I'd be happy with just Sanc and Kings (Since it will no longer buff Spirit, just make it add more than usual STR/AGI/INT)
Tyberius on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
For work filters:
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will bring with it several changes to class talents and abilities. In this preview, you'll get a glimpse at some of the new abilities, spells, and talents in store for the death knight class, along with an early look at some improvements we plan to make to the rune resource system.
New Death Knight Abilities
Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.
Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.
This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.
Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.
Rune System Changes
While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.
In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.
A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.
Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.
The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.
As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.
Talent Changes
Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.
One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.
Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.
Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.
Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation
Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage
Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.
Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.
Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.
Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.
You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.
We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.
Outbreak will be handy, but I wonder how they will balance it compared to Icy Touch/Plague Strike.
Dark Simulacrum sounds like such an awesome move.
And the Mastery Bonus for Blood is pretty damn cool. Will make self-healing even more useful, as overhealing will still help you out.
The new Rune Mechanics are interesting, but there's nothing they've said that makes me see how it will function so you I can't really say anything about them. Hopefully it works out better and makes tanking (especially picking up stray/new adds) less annoying.
The big thing I'm wondernig now is WTF are they gonna do with the Druid Feral tree? How are they gonna design masteries that work for both Kitty and Bear? It seems like they are gonna run smack into the same problem the DK trees had.
So, in order to make us feel "less constrained" with runes, they're...going to slow down rune regeneration? o_O
I do understand the point though, that buffing damage and slowing down the runes means we'll be able to use them more effectively, and not "waste" them. It is kind of counter-intuitive though.
And I didn't get the impression that the UI for runes is changing. They can't just show 3 runes, because then when would you know that you had (for example) 2 Blood runes ready to go?
Doctor Detroit on
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
They already stated the feral tree will have effects saying XXX in cat, YYY in bear.
Dk changes are boring as balls. I mean i hate to sound pessimistic here, but the class order seems to almost have been from most interesting and different to least interesting. Its become progressively worse.
Half the stuff in the DK update is old news (lol at blizz revealing the DK bombshell of blood = tank early) so basically you have new abilities, which are cool but every class has that. Then you have an elaborately worded and explained nerf. They dont want you to have to click as much, so you regen runes slower. Thats it in a nutshell. This is mitigated by haste somewhat, but basically you have slightly less than half the runes at any time.
Then the talent changes are..... just blood becoming tanking. And the slightly obvious bs surrounding it.
Then you get an exact copy of the vengence explanation offered for warriors.
Hopefully rogues are changing a little more here, I think we know that finishers will be more emphasized. Luckilly we can bank on hunters being a pretty huge update, and prolly druids too.
Oh, uh, I mean "We didn't change Demo Shout at all! Who told you that?"
Actually we changed it to a percent physical damage reduction instead of attack power reduction. I thought that had made the preview and was the source of some of the QQ.
They already stated the feral tree will have effects saying XXX in cat, YYY in bear.
Dk changes are boring as balls. I mean i hate to sound pessimistic here, but the class order seems to almost have been from most interesting and different to least interesting. Its become progressively worse.
Half the stuff in the DK update is old news (lol at blizz revealing the DK bombshell of blood = tank early) so basically you have new abilities, which are cool but every class has that. Then you have an elaborately worded and explained nerf. They dont want you to have to click as much, so you regen runes slower. Thats it in a nutshell. This is mitigated by haste somewhat, but basically you have slightly less than half the runes at any time.
They will balance around that. It's not a nerf. Don't be stupid.
The question is, will it free up the DK rotation more. Because DK tanks at least could really use some help in that area.
Oh, uh, I mean "We didn't change Demo Shout at all! Who told you that?"
Actually we changed it to a percent physical damage reduction instead of attack power reduction. I thought that had made the preview and was the source of some of the QQ.
What the fuck were you expecting? They can only add so many new skills and the goal of each expansion isn't to remold each class into something wholly different. They dropped the Blood thing early so it wouldn't dominate the conversation. I cannot see how Shaman is any more interesting than any of the other classes previewed thus far.
The ability to recast a spell is going to be interesting. DS a mage, put up AMS and force the bastard to eat his own poly. Chances are GCD won't allow that, but the possibilities are pretty interesting. Especially against healers.
The clarifications are more interesting than the preview post:
Here are a few points of clarification:
We want to provide a 2-handed style for Frost since we recognize that pets are an acquired taste. We think we have the design space to do that now that we don’t need to support Frost tanking. We’re definitely committed to making Frost work as a dual-wield tree though -- that isn’t going away.
Outbreak is free with a 1-minute cooldown. It’s not supposed to completely replace Plague Strike and Icy Touch.
We’re not sure how we’re going to handle presences yet. We recognize the oddness of Blood death knights playing in Frost Presence and Frost death knights not playing in Frost Presences. We might rename the presences or take some other action.
Outbreak has a cooldown, blizzard will attempt to support both frost AND fury as 1h or 2h trees, and presences will probably get some namechanges to not be rather silly.
What the fuck were you expecting? They can only add so many new skills and the goal of each expansion isn't to remold each class into something wholly different. They dropped the Blood thing early so it wouldn't dominate the conversation. I cannot see how Shaman is any more interesting than any of the other classes previewed thus far.
The ability to recast a spell is going to be interesting. DS a mage, put up AMS and force the bastard to eat his own poly. Chances are GCD won't allow that, but the possibilities are pretty interesting. Especially against healers.
I really like the idea of the spell. It will be interesting to see what it applies to.
Will it just be damage/debuff spells? OR will it include Heals?
I see it following a DnD during a pull. Spreads your diseases fast and get on Blood Boil asap.
1 minute cooldown kinda kills that.
Well, it's not something you use every pull.
But that's my point.
With that cooldown, it becomes something you can't work into your rotation.
So it's really just an "Oh Shit" button, and the times when you REALLY need to "Oh Shit" quickly apply those diseases aren't that common.
Or, really, there's plenty of times where you'd love to be able to do it, but the cooldown means you are gonna just learn to do without and then Outbreak becomes something you forgot you had.
Really, it's kinda like Blood Tap.
shryke on
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I see it following a DnD during a pull. Spreads your diseases fast and get on Blood Boil asap.
1 minute cooldown kinda kills that.
Well, it's not something you use every pull.
But that's my point.
With that cooldown, it becomes something you can't work into your rotation.
So it's really just an "Oh Shit" button, and the times when you REALLY need to "Oh Shit" quickly apply those diseases aren't that common.
Or, really, there's plenty of times where you'd love to be able to do it, but the cooldown means you are gonna just learn to do without and then Outbreak becomes something you forgot you had.
I see it following a DnD during a pull. Spreads your diseases fast and get on Blood Boil asap.
1 minute cooldown kinda kills that.
Well, it's not something you use every pull.
But that's my point.
With that cooldown, it becomes something you can't work into your rotation.
So it's really just an "Oh Shit" button, and the times when you REALLY need to "Oh Shit" quickly apply those diseases aren't that common.
Or, really, there's plenty of times where you'd love to be able to do it, but the cooldown means you are gonna just learn to do without and then Outbreak becomes something you forgot you had.
Really, it's kinda like Blood Tap.
It's a cooldown ability.
Why would you need to work it into your rotation?
I don't understand.
That's my point.
In PvE, you've always got the time to drop those diseases on the target.
Unless you are playing in such a way as to need to use Outbreak, in which case you are gonna be needing to use it alot more often then once every minute.
Posts
Oh and Inner Will stacks with the boot enchant. Makes it more appealing.
All of my characters use grid as the raid UI and I see no reason to change it. Of course I am generally a healer, but I have grown far too attached to it at this point. No turning back.
:^:
Shadow Orbs....so will they be like how the old troll priest racial looked?
and leap of faith is awesome
and a nuke for spriests, nice
Shaman and Warriors were around 1pm. Warlocks were posted too early so the second preview for today is going to be later than that. Priests were around midnight PST. I'd imagine it'll be any minute now if not 6pm PST.
/roll 1-24
If they're getting rid of the whole ease of mana regen, there's a pretty good chance Blessing of Wisdom is getting the axe. It might be changed to something else but I doubt we'll see it change into a Spirit buff since Priests are losing theirs and they gave reason for it, and Mp5 is no longer a "real" stat. I'm actually surprised they didn't touch on this somewhat when they divulged the Shaman preview the other day. They didn't say anything about Mana Spring totem or Water Shield.
That leaves 3 blessings. Kings will stay, but it won't affect spirit. Fine. Might will probably still be around and I wouldn't be surprised if they changed it to give less AP and maybe gave it some +hit or +crit bonus, making it exclusive from Totem of Wrath. Sanctity is spec'd into and fairly unique, which is pretty nice. No complaints there. Honestly? I'm looking forward to having one less blessing to give out.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
The whole Kings vs Might thing is kinda dumb.
They really need to overhaul Pally Blessings.
I think the best thing to do is make it really obvious which type of characters want which buffs. So you'd have 4 Blessings, Tank, Caster, Not-Caster, Kings. (You could maybe keep Tank one as a talent, but whatever)
So Sanctuary would be like +Stam/-damage taken.
Might would be +AP/+Crit (or +Haste or whatever)
Wisdom would be +SP/+Regen.
Kings stays the same.
There, simple and straightforward. You can make it even simpler by getting rid of Kings, but then you only need 1 Pally for a raid to buff and that's kinda lame. So make it 2.
And if you REALLY want to make it smart, instead of Buffs going by class, have them go by Spec. I mean, as of 4.0, the game will already be designed to differentiate whether you are Tank or DPS or Caster or whatever because you will have a specific Talent Tree activated for the Masteries.
Shit, just have a spell called "Greater Blessing of Specificness" and one called "Greater Blessing of Kings" that automagically bless your raid/party as necessary. THe kings one just gives everyone kings, the other one gives everyone the appropriate buff for their spec.
The only issue here would be Feral Druids, as you'd need some way to differentiate a Kitty from a Bear.
Ahahahahahaha
I love it when they continue the proud tradition set by Drysc.
New Death Knight Abilities
Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.
Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike -- the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.
This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.
Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent's next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can't reflect an ability, you won't be able to copy it either.
Rune System Changes
While we're satisfied with the way the rune system works overall, we're making a few major changes to the mechanics that will ultimately help death knight players feel less constrained. Here's the rationale behind the changes, followed by an explanation of how the new system will work.
In the current rune system, any time a rune is sitting idle, death knights are losing out on potential damage output. By comparison, rogues spend most of their time at low energy levels, and if they're unable to use their skills for a few seconds, that energy builds up and can be spent later, minimizing the net loss from the interruption.
A death knight's runes, on the other hand, cannot be used until they are fully active. If a death knight ever goes more than a few seconds without spending an available rune, that resource is essentially wasted. Because the death knight is pushing buttons constantly, it can be difficult to add new mechanics to the class because the player doesn't have any free global cooldowns to use them. We can't grant extra resources or reduced cost, because there is no time to spend them. Missing an attack is devastating, and it's impossible to save resources for when they're most useful.
Additionally, each individual death knight ability has a fairly low impact on its own, making it feel like most of the death knight's attacks are weak. The death knight's rotations are also more easily affected by latency or a player's timing being just a little off. At times, it feels like death knights aren't able to take advantage of their unique resource mechanic, which can diminish the fun.
The new rune system will change how runes regenerate, from filling simultaneously to filling sequentially. For example, if you use two Blood runes, then the first rune will fill up before the second one starts to fill up. Essentially, you have three sets of runes filling every 10 seconds instead of six individual runes filling every 10 seconds. (Haste will cause runes to fill faster.) Another way to think of this is having three runes that go up to 200% each (allowing extra "storage"), rather than six runes that go up to 100% each.
As this is a major change to the death knight's mechanics, it will of course require us to retune many of the class's current abilities. For example, each ability needs to hit harder or otherwise be more meaningful since the death knight is getting fewer resources per unit of time. Some abilities will need to have their costs reduced as a result.
Talent Changes
Next we'll outline some of the death knight talent-tree changes we're planning in Cataclysm. This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a sense of how we're intending each death knight spec to perform.
One of the biggest changes we're making is converting Blood into a dedicated tanking tree. While we feel that having three tanking trees was successful overall, it's less necessary in a world with dual-specialization. In addition, the current breakdown isn't as compatible with the Mastery-based passive talent-tree bonuses we want to add (see below). We'd rather spend time tweaking and balancing one good tanking tree rather than having a tank always wondering if they picked the "correct" tree out of three possibilities.
Blood seemed like the best fit for tanking. Unholy has always had a strong niche with diseases, magic, and command over pets. Frost now feels like a solid dual-wield tree with Frost magic damage and decent crowd control. Blood's niche was self-healing -- fitting for a tank -- as well as strong weapon swings, which could easily be migrated to Frost and Unholy.
Our plan is to move the most interesting and fun tanking talents and abilities to Blood. For example, you will likely see Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis remain, while Bone Shield will move over from Unholy.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Blood
Damage reduction
Vengeance
Healing Absorption
Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation
Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage
Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you'll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.
Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.
Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree's play style.
Vengeance: This new mechanic is designed to ensure that tank damage output (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will grant a stacking Attack Power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's unbuffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have an Attack Power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Blood tree; these values will be smaller at lower levels.
You only get the Vengeance bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Blood tree, so you won't see Frost or Unholy death knights running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to design tank gear more or less the way we do today; there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but the goal is that all four tanks will do about the same damage when tanking.
We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.
Necrotic Strike sounds super cool.
What's so confusing about 3 mini-energy pools that have a minimum energy to cast?
edit: plus it makes the rune UI a lot less wonky, only having to see three runes
Outbreak will be handy, but I wonder how they will balance it compared to Icy Touch/Plague Strike.
Dark Simulacrum sounds like such an awesome move.
And the Mastery Bonus for Blood is pretty damn cool. Will make self-healing even more useful, as overhealing will still help you out.
The new Rune Mechanics are interesting, but there's nothing they've said that makes me see how it will function so you I can't really say anything about them. Hopefully it works out better and makes tanking (especially picking up stray/new adds) less annoying.
The big thing I'm wondernig now is WTF are they gonna do with the Druid Feral tree? How are they gonna design masteries that work for both Kitty and Bear? It seems like they are gonna run smack into the same problem the DK trees had.
I do understand the point though, that buffing damage and slowing down the runes means we'll be able to use them more effectively, and not "waste" them. It is kind of counter-intuitive though.
And I didn't get the impression that the UI for runes is changing. They can't just show 3 runes, because then when would you know that you had (for example) 2 Blood runes ready to go?
Dk changes are boring as balls. I mean i hate to sound pessimistic here, but the class order seems to almost have been from most interesting and different to least interesting. Its become progressively worse.
Half the stuff in the DK update is old news (lol at blizz revealing the DK bombshell of blood = tank early) so basically you have new abilities, which are cool but every class has that. Then you have an elaborately worded and explained nerf. They dont want you to have to click as much, so you regen runes slower. Thats it in a nutshell. This is mitigated by haste somewhat, but basically you have slightly less than half the runes at any time.
Then the talent changes are..... just blood becoming tanking. And the slightly obvious bs surrounding it.
Then you get an exact copy of the vengence explanation offered for warriors.
Hopefully rogues are changing a little more here, I think we know that finishers will be more emphasized. Luckilly we can bank on hunters being a pretty huge update, and prolly druids too.
Then its mega waity time for paladins.
They will balance around that. It's not a nerf. Don't be stupid.
The question is, will it free up the DK rotation more. Because DK tanks at least could really use some help in that area.
Positive change. For sure.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The ability to recast a spell is going to be interesting. DS a mage, put up AMS and force the bastard to eat his own poly. Chances are GCD won't allow that, but the possibilities are pretty interesting. Especially against healers.
Outbreak has a cooldown, blizzard will attempt to support both frost AND fury as 1h or 2h trees, and presences will probably get some namechanges to not be rather silly.
I really like the idea of the spell. It will be interesting to see what it applies to.
Will it just be damage/debuff spells? OR will it include Heals?
My favorite comment from the WoW Forums:
Interesting, but it seems much less useful now.
I guess it's mostly for PvP.
1 minute cooldown kinda kills that.
Well, it's not something you use every pull.
But that's my point.
With that cooldown, it becomes something you can't work into your rotation.
So it's really just an "Oh Shit" button, and the times when you REALLY need to "Oh Shit" quickly apply those diseases aren't that common.
Or, really, there's plenty of times where you'd love to be able to do it, but the cooldown means you are gonna just learn to do without and then Outbreak becomes something you forgot you had.
Really, it's kinda like Blood Tap.
It's a cooldown ability.
Why would you need to work it into your rotation?
I don't understand.
That's my point.
In PvE, you've always got the time to drop those diseases on the target.
Unless you are playing in such a way as to need to use Outbreak, in which case you are gonna be needing to use it alot more often then once every minute.