Upcoming Death Knight Buffs/Changes/Issues in Wrath of the Lich King for Sept. 17th

It warms my frigid heart to see that Blizzard has read the valid and well written arguments that us Beta testers have provided and knowing we have a point, they acted. For the first time since I started my Death Knight I am extremely excited to log back on.

DPS changes

– Death Coil, Frost Strike, Death and Decay damage increased.
– Strikes that scale with diseases changed so that the weapon damage, not just the flat damage, scales with the disease.
– Double rune abilities damage increased: Obliterate, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike, Death Strike.
– Unholy Blight no longer causes Blood Plague, but had its cooldown removed.
– Several attack power coefficients increased.
– Bloody Strikes and Scent of Blood swapped places.
– Bladed Armor now turns armor into Strength (which then is turned into Parry).
– Master of Ghouls’ Ghoul now lasts until killed or similarly dismissed.
– Ravenous Dead no longer affects Ghoul duration, but grants your rotting little buddy 60% more of your Str and Sta. (Stam goes from 30% of yours to ~50% of yours. Strength goes from 100% to 160%.)

Tanking changes

– Frost Presence now grants 10% total health in addition to its current bonuses.
– Blood Gorged, Rage of Rivendare and Tundra Stalker all grant 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.
– Veteran of the Third War increased to 6/6/6 Str / Sta / Exp to match warriors.
– Will of the Necropolis no longer grants expertise and now lowers Anti-Magic Shell cooldown.
– Pestilence has no target limit. (It still has a radius limit.) Pesilence glyph now increases area.
– Death and Decay no longer has a cower component, but a glyph can add that back.
– Frigid Dreadplate now has a 100% chance for 2/4/6% miss but only on the DK.

Rewards for the selfless buffer

– Abom’s Might now grants 2% Strength at all times.
– Improved Icy Talons now grants 2% haste at all times.
– Ebon Plaguebringer now grants 3% crit at all times.

Runeforge changes

– Lichbane now does 2% weapon damage as Fire, and double damage to undead.
– Swordbreaking and Swordshattering add disarm duration reduction.
– Spellbreaking and Spellshattering add silence duration reduction.
– Cinderglacier reduced to 2 charges.

No doubt many awesome small tweaks I am forgetting.

AWESOME SMALL TWEAKS. (src)

Also Improved Rune Tap was buffed making it worth taking now.

Improved Rune Tap now improves Rune Tap by 100% and also reduces its cooldown by 50%. (src)

DK Tanking – Having a hard time
I don’t think the parry speed up should be a major factor in 5-player instances. It may come into play in some raid encounters, but without crushing blows you shouldn’t hit too many big number in a row even in those cases.

Now it is possible that DK mitigation is just too low. It isn’t our intent that you go put together an awesome tanking set while leveling up to do Nexus and Halls of Stone. We are tuning those instances so that you don’t need them, but also realize that a lot of people who are running them now are doing so in Sunwell gear and are basing their experiences on that. We recently made some changes to improve DK tanking. (src)

Death Coil Sigil
By chance do you have the Death Coil sigil? It still had values for the older DC damage so it’s a little too good for DC in its current state. (src)

AoE Spells changes
Unholy Blight — does not cause Blood Plague. No cooldown. Lasts as long as we can make it last for the damage it does — ideally 20 sec. Counts as a disease for purposes of DK abilities. It might be an okay tanking ability, but should do good damage in longer fights too. At 20 sec it might be perma up if you forsake other runic power abilities, which is probably fine. Remember we are buffing Death Coil too though.

Death and Decay — the fear component became a glyph. This will allow base damage to come up, making it a more useful tanking and general AE ability.

Pestilence — limited by its area (which stays the same) but no target limit. We found the argument compelling that without Challenging Shout, and since it requires an additional step to apply the disease, that this is probably fine. At worst, Pestilence’s disease might have to come down a little or it might need a short cooldown to prohibit spamming, but I don’t think any of you will mind. The glyph will change to enlarge its radius.

Bug – Can’t learn Death Gate spell from quest
We’re looking into the cause of this bug. The only advice that I can give to death knights that have experienced this problem is to find a friendly warlock and get summoned out of the Scarlet Enclave. Once you finish the Light of Dawn you are able to be summoned, etc… Meeting stone summons should also work.

I know this isn’t a great solution, but short of starting over, it’s the only solution (for now). (src)