Death Knight Cataclysm preview, much like everyone else

I feel this dog pretty accurately sums up my reaction to the preview. The shaman preview made me have to change my pants with joy; the warlock preview kinda sucked until I realized it was mostly outright or stealth buffs to my all-time favorite tree, demonology. I actually enjoyed reading the warrior changes more than this, and my warrior is level 24. The DK posts mostly left me going, "well, what the hell was that?"

And now, the blue post(s), with commentary. Follow along after the jump, ‘cos this is a big ol’ wall of text. As you may have guessed, there’s the occasional bit of foul language in this post.

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.

It was cleared up in a Q&A (which is reprinted below) that Outbreak is one of those new "free" actions that we’re going to be applying now that we’re not pressing a button every single second of the day. Assuming there’s some way to lower the cooldown on this (and, well, let’s face it, a minute isn’t that long, it’s still every few rotations), Glyph of Disease just got obsoleted. I, for one, would welcome the ability to get the GoD’s effect without giving up a more useful glyph for what is essentially a "quality of life" glyph, but this seems sort of… well, underwhelming.

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.

A PvP ability? Bestill my beating heart. (Actually I figure this’ll be something more like Mortal Strike for Arms warriors – its primary utility is in PvP, but PvE still hits it because it’s a button that does damage.) Still, this is unimpressive, in my opinion. I’m sure some hardcore PvPers will disagree with me.

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.

Okay, that’s kinda cool. Assuming it does what it says on the tin, it’s a nice little addition to our arsenal, even if it is just a copy of Spell Reflection wherein we get hit (and wherein we put a debuff on the enemy instead of a buff on ourselves). My one issue with it is that it’s only going to work in melee range, but that’s really a minor gripe.

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.

Rogue comparisons are something they seem really keen on making. I’m a little displeased; if I wanted something that played like a rogue but wasn’t a rogue, I’d finally give in and roll a druid.

* 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.

These two points are simply matter of fact. Anything that requires split-second non-stop button pressing is of course affected by latency; getting a rotation even slightly off can result in a ridiculous loss of DPS. This is the main reason why simulator and dummy DPS is often leagues higher for us. Oddly, though, I’ve never really felt like I wasn’t making much impact with my individual attacks, except when I’m doing something like PvPing in all tank gear.

* 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.

Oh good, a use for haste besides speeding up white swings. This seems usable, at least. Off the top of my head this seems like it will slow down most rotations, especially on the second pass. Initial rotations will probably be unchanged but once our diseases are up and ticking, and we dump some RP, it looks like we’re going to be waiting a bit longer between each strike, which is probably where new free abilities like Outbreak will come in. I’m very wary about this – yes, our current DPS rotations are so tight that if we needed to add something new we’d have to use Unholy Presence, but fundamentally changing the way the system works?

* 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.

Meaningful is probably just developer slang for "hits a little harder." Try and make a Blood Strike meaningful for anyone but deep Unholy.

Going to divert from the notes here to insert Ghostcrawler’s answer to rune system questions. I feel it clears up a few things.

I’ll take a stab at explaining the rune mechanic. Once you see it in action, it’s pretty easy to understand.

Just focus on Blood Runes for the moment. The big change is that rune #2 will never start filling up until rune #1 is full. They always fill 1 then 2. Today 1 and 2 can both fill at the same time.

In Cataclysm, when you’re killing things, you use rune 1. Then any extra "red" in rune 2 will fill rune 1 back up again. If both of them are full, you can use 2 Blood Runes immediately. But after that, rune 1 will fill up first and then rune 2. If it helps, imagine rune 2 is the extra tank.

I’m still not sure he’s phrasing this right – I suspect it’s a flawed analogy – and if he is, then what the hell? This sounds like if I use one rune, the second rune will start "draining" into the first one. That can’t be right, because then rune 2 has to fill up, and I’ve essentially blown two runes by using one.

This sounds like it will slow down DK attacks, and it will to a point. That’s part of what we’re trying to accomplish. We can then fill those extra GCDs with things like free abilities or runic power abilities or we have room to add talents that make runes fill faster. Remember, slow attacks can hit harder though. Instead of DKs hitting fast like a rogue, they’ll hit slower and harder, like a warrior, which fits a lot of player’s image of a DK anyway. Dual wield will hit faster of course.

However, I’d rather not be standing around doing fuck-all while auto-attacking. Frankly, there’d better be a lot of these free or runic power abilities that are interesting enough to punch in combat, because this sounds like an enormous slowdown.

I’ll try another comparison. Imagine that all rogue abilities cost 100 energy. They have to wait until they get 100 energy, and then immediately use an attack so that they aren’t wasting future energy. That’s how DKs play now, except they have 6 runes to watch. Now imagine the same rogue except all his abilities cost 50 energy. If he hits an attack when he has 60 energy, then 50 is consumed but he has 10 energy still left and a head start on the next attack. That’s the way we want DKs to play.

If that still doesn’t make sense, then focus on what the experience will be, which is that you’ll have more breathing room in your rotation and won’t have to hit a button every single GCD. If you don’t use a strike the second it’s available, that’s more okay because the extra tank will store extra rune resources rather than just wasting it. You’ll still be hitting a lot of buttons though. We’re keeping double rune strikes and Death Runes and disease multipliers and all of that. We’ll have to make some changes in some abilities to accommodate the resource change, but it won’t be unrecognizable to you.

This is the part that actually makes sense, because his analogy of an "extra tank" is kind of flawed. Let me try another one: we’re like rogues, except with three energy bars instead of one, and each one’s broken in two halves. If I use a Blood Strike, I now have tank 1 at 0% and tank 2 at 100%. Now tank 1 starts filling up: 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%… but if I hit Blood Strike again, tank 1 is still filling up 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, but tank 2 is now empty, and tank 2 just sits there until tank 1 hits 100%. Then tank 2 fills up. Like I said: for initial rotations, this isn’t going to matter, but we’re going to find ourselves with breathing room in the second half of our rotation.

If there’s enough Fun New Buttons™ to punch, Frost may actually have to start running in Unholy Presence again – as you’ll see below, being primarily in Frost gives you melee haste, and assuming there’s no difference between haste and melee haste, their runes are going to fill up faster than everyone else’s and they’ll probably want to look into UP if they need to punch more keys. That reminds me of the old glory days of Frost, when it just had so many buttons to push that the GCD was an enormous constraint.

We’re not sure DKs even need Rune Strike any longer. If it survives, we’ll turn it into an instant swing. But if we turn it into an instant swing, then it really isn’t that different from existing strikes so it’s possible we can just make a tanking rotation without it.

Then just make it work like Revenge, or get rid of it. /shrug.  It’ll make all my macros shorter, at least. And frankly with Vengeance (see below) making everything hit harder basically all the time, I don’t think Rune Strike – primarily a single target threat buff – is necessary anymore for us.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled preview notes, already in progress.

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.

Well, thanks for not telling us a damned new thing. This is the content of the "Blood bomb" a few days ago, only summarized. The only solid change mentioned was that Bone Shield will jump over from Unholy. I’m okay with that. I still have a huge concern, though, and that is Blood’s AOE threat. Blood AOE threat, unless you talent specifically for it and thus gimp yourself somewhere else like single-target threat or survivability or utility, is in the shitter. There’s only so many Icy Dickpunches I can throw around.

Additionally, I’m not sure how dual-specialization makes having a single tanking tree necessary. In fact, if anything, I’d say it was the only thing that made multiple tank setups worked – back when I was still actively tanking 5-mans, I had to carry two tank specs – one to throw around massive AOE for you half-retarded douchebags in random heroics who attach your AOE attack of choice to every key on the keyboard and slam your face into it, and the other for when I’m tanking raids with actual skilled WoW players. The anti-douchebag spec did, at least, have the wiggle room to let me take Anti-Magic Zone. I love that big pink fucking bubble.

Whoops, off-topic. Moving on.

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

Nothing too surprising, really.

Healing Absorption: When you heal yourself, you’ll receive an additional effect that absorbs incoming damage.

I haz a bubble! Seriously, though, that’s kind of cool, and moves Death Strikes up in our priority, unless they’re planning to make more than one move self-heal in Blood. Well, and Rune Tap. They could change it, but right now, Bloodworm and Mark of Blood heals aren’t considered self-heals (Bloodworm heals come from the worms themselves, while Mark of Blood heals – according to my combat logs, anyway – come from whoever you put the Mark on.)

Runic Power Generation: This will function as the name implies, and the new rune system will make generating Runic Power more appealing.

Another statement they keep throwing around without justifying it. Does this mean Frost is going to get something to do with all that RP besides spam Frost Strike?

Disease Damage: Unholy death knights will be able to get more out of their diseases, which are integral to the tree’s play style.

Unholy DKs: now even more like warlocks in plate.

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.

Vengeance is probably the one change I actually got excited about, but I read it in the warrior changes, so it really kind of wore off by the time I got to the DK changes. I did some napkin math on this, and assuming "unbuffed health" means "unbuffed health with all our armor on," let’s take Icecrown as an example – most bosses hit for somewhere in the 16k range, so I’d be gaining 800 AP (roughly) per hit, up to a max of around 3100. That’s pretty impressive. Shouldn’t have a problem holding onto a single target pretty much ever, and this will make doing dailies or questing in tank spec a lot more fun.

Again, though, the majority of what this amps up is single target threat. Still no answers as to how we’re going to handle AOE threat. Maybe we’ll finally get a damage shield, since we’re the only tanks without one unless some druid is kind enough to give us thorns.

Bonus round! DJ Zarhym on the ones and twos:

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.

Welcome back, 2H Frost, my old friend. We missed you. Also, it’s not in our Q&A, but it was confirmed somewhere else that there will be Strength-based one-handed DPS weapons available again, for dual-wielding Frost death knights and Fury warriors using the new Single-Minded Fury talent. Huzzah!

Outbreak is free with a 1-minute cooldown. It’s not supposed to completely replace Plague Strike and Icy Touch.

I mentioned this above.

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.

Cosmetic, but it does seem backasswards that Frost DPS uses Blood Presence and Blood tanking uses Frost Presence. I worry about what "take some other action" might mean.

And now back to Mr. Greg "TO THE GROUND" "Ghostcrawler" Street.

Quote:
GC, does this mean that important cooldowns won’t require runes? Instead we’ll see things like Strangulate, Bone Shield, Ghoul Frenzy, UA and stuff cost runic power or just be free? They would be incredibly frustrating to use with such long rune cooldowns.

I don’t think we can make them all cost runes. That would be too hard to manage. If I had to guess, some will be runic power and some will just be free. If we did move Bone Shield to Blood, then that one might be okay as a rune since it’s something you do pre-emptively, but we have some more talent tree work to do first before we can really answer that.

This is the one scenario where I’d fully support the removal of Rune Strike – moving survival tools onto RP.