Apparently all I really needed on my Death Knight to rekindle my interest was, of all things, a PUG. When Bellbell is right, Bellbell is right. Murloc kisses, Bell!

So I’d popped online in Wyrmrest Temple, because apparently I thought logging out in Wyrmrest Temple was a good idea, and figured since I was there I’d do the temple defense quest. I only missed the achievement by 20 seconds or so - a new one for me - and then moved on over to Coldarra to hit Aces High. (I also looked sadly down at Kaskala and remembered that I should probably go help those walrus people again sometime. They probably miss me.)

While I was at Aces High, I decided for the hell of it to turn on Looking For Group and put myself in the list for the three instances I still needed to complete the non-raid portion of Champion of the Frozen Wastes: Heroic Ahn’kahet, Heroic Halls of Lightning, and Heroic Oculus. A more dastardly bunch of heroics ye could not ask for, yarrrrr. … Ahem. Where was I? Anyway, about the time I crossed from Coldarra to the Storm Peaks to work on the Brunnhildar daily, I got a whisper… “Are you still looking for heroic Old Kingdom?” Why yes, yes I am.

I then jumped into a group with some really cool people - organized, intelligent, geared, skilled, friendly, and actually pretty funny. Good folks. I tip my metaphorical cap to Ruckoning, Belan, and Nigl of Lunchbox Heroes, the unguilded Rageis, and Talaheo of Edge of Honor on H-Feathermoon - cool folks all around. (Ruckoning, Belan, Nigl, and Rageis were in the Old Kingdom group - but Talaheo joined us later - more on that in a sec.)

So Ruck, Belan, Nigl, Rage and I proceeded to blast through Old Kingdom; I’d never been there, but apparently I’d read enough to be useful. Army of the Dead really is useful on Insanity - took down my own images in record time, then proceeded to slaughter everyone else’s images. … Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details, but we then went on to Halls of Lightning and The Oculus. Yes, these guys helped me clear everything that was left to do for my Champion achievement except Malygos, netting the following achievements:

• Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom

• Northrend Dungeonmaster

• Heroic: Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom

• Shatter Resistant

• Timely Death

• Heroic: Halls of Lightning

• Heroic: The Oculus

• Northrend Dungeon Hero

All those lovely emblems helped me get a Tattered Dreadmist Mantle to be shared among my spellcaster-type alts (the baby boomkek gets it first - those shoulders look ridiculously huge on a tauren, incidentally). I then went to Orgrimmar for some reason and knocked out Second that Emotion with Vandersloot’s help and, for no reason, Ragefire Chasm.

I think I’m going to try to find a Malygos raid soon. If anyone knows of a 10 or 25-man Malygos raid on Feathermoon (Horde-side) that could use an extra DPS who’s at least familiar with the fight, please let me know!

Lately I’ve been in kind of a funk on my death knight - I log in, I do my dailies for Wyrmrest and the Sons of Hodir, then I jog in circles in Dalaran or on the Orgrim’s Hammer for an hour or two. I’ve been thinking of leveling of my alts instead. I was wondering - what do you do when you just don’t feel like doing anything?

(Last night? I played Street Fighter IV instead with my roommate. Capcom: stop it with the cheap bosses already. Seth is the worst designed character in a fighting game ever.)

Our knights of the bug swarm, summoners of gargoyles and ghouls, heavily armored warlocks - call them what you will, Unholy is a heavily-represented Death Knight spec, favored by both those who love it for what it is, and those who love it because it makes dual-wielding better. Not for long on the latter, kiddos… Let’s see what they’ve done to Unholy.

Skills

Plague Strike now deals 50% weapon damage plus 189 and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time. (No longer removes a HoT)

Hey, look at that, they’re trying to make Plague Strike not suck. No one’s been a bigger disparager of Plague Strike than me - removing a HoT frankly isn’t that great in PvE, and because of that PvP ability, its damage was crippled in both environments. Now it just inflicts damage and adds Blood Plague, and that’s satisfying. And yet… I probably will remain diseaseless.

Raise Dead cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. The ghoul now only lasts for 1 minute. The cooldown now starts when your ghoul dies

Not a big deal for Unholy DKs, as you’ll see below, but basically we of the other two trees will only be busting the ghoul out on bosses now. (Of course, that’s all I do anyway - he has an uncomfortable tendency to go aggro trash… especially on Gothik the Harvester. I watched my ghoul leap across the room to hit a knight that just spawned on Live Side.)

Talents

Unholy Blight moved from Tier 11 to Tier 5.

Swapping places with the Gargoyle. Unholy will pick this up on their way down anyway; sucks for dual-wielders (or 50/0/21) who used the Gargoyle for burst damage. The 50/0/21 build is now basically dead in favor of some variant of 51/0/20, and probably not even that with Shadow of Death being eliminated.

Yes, you read that right. See below.

Scourge Strike (Tier 9) now deals 55% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 185.63, increased 9% per each of your diseases on the target. (Previously dealt 60% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 81, and an additional 40.5 bonus damage per disease.)

Scourge Strike is taking the same change as Blood Strike and Heart Strike - dealing more flat damage and less of a percent of weapon damage, plus a percent per disease as opposed to a flat amount per disease. I can’t help but think that this doesn’t feel like much damage, though, for the Unholy tree’s “signature” strike.

Night of the Dead (Tier 8 ) now reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 45/90 sec and Army of the Dead by 5/10 min. (Previously reduced cooldown when you hit the target)

Well, Army of the Dead usually cools down by the time I get to a boss anyway… but the flat cooldown reduction just makes sense. The current way Night of the Dead reads doesn’t make a lot of sense, anyway.

Desecration (Tier 7) now causes all Plague Strikes to cause the desecrated ground effect. Targets in the area are slowed by 10/20/30/40/50% by the grasping arms of the dead while you cause 1/2/3/4/5% additional damage while standing on the unholy ground. Lasts 12 sec.

Good. No need to take all 5 points in this to guarantee it appears. Unfortunately this means it now doesn’t provide that 5% damage boost unless you get 5/5 in it. I suppose individual DKs will have to decide how much this matters to them.

Anti-Magic Zone (Tier 7) no longer requires a rune to activate.

Handy. Assuming it doesn’t cost Runic Power, it’s now an even better emergency ability, and one that’s easier to work into any rotation. Sweet!

Unholy Aura (Tier 7) renamed Improved Unholy Presence and changed to: While in Blood Presence or Frost Presence, you retain 8/15% increased movement speed from Unholy Presence, and your runes finish their cooldowns 5/10% faster in Unholy Presence.

Ouch. One of the reasons to bother taking Unholy Aura was to increase run speed for the entire raid. On the other hand, the rune cooldown increase finally reduces the amount of time you spend twiddling your thumbs waiting on runes to cooldown if you’re using Unholy Presence. If only there was a way to get that without investing 7 tiers worth of talent points into Unholy.

Magic Suppression (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent and reads: You take 2/4/6% less damage from all magic. In addition, your Anti-Magic Shell absorbs an additional 8/16/25% of spell damage. (Previously a 5 point talent)

Flat-out magic reduction? I can hear casters crying now. It’s basically the same as it is now, and it’ll continue to see far more use for tanks, though, given as how it doesn’t have the stupid single-target-spell restriction of Spell Deflection, and the amount of magic damage flying around in raids.

Master of Ghouls moved from Tier 6 to Tier 4. It now also reduces the cooldown of your Raise Dead spell by 60 sec.

There’s a reason for this. It’s coming up shortly. This is a good combination with the new cooldown rule on Raise Dead, too.

Summon Gargoyle moved from Tier 5 to Tier 11.

Gargoyle is now the capstone talent, as it probably should’ve been all along. Sucks for dual-wielders and 50/0/21’ers, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Sorry ‘bout your gargoyle, enjoy your bug cloud, I guess…

Blood-Caked Blade (Tier 4) now has a 3 sec internal cooldown.

To be honest I thought it always did have an internal cooldown.

Shadow of Death removed from the game.

This was the change I alluded to above. I guess this was easier than fixing the bugs in it, though to be perfectly honest it hasn’t been that bad lately. I’m going to miss the passive bonuses from this more than the ghoul form, though.

Outbreak (Tier 3) no longer affects Blood Boil. It now affects Plague Strike and Scourge Strike.

If this ups the damage of Plague Strike and Scourge Strike by the same percentage (15/30/45%), I know a lot of Unholy DKs who are going to be seeing massive increases in the damage they deal with Plague Strike.

Nec rosis (Tier 3) now only affects main hand auto attacks. (Previously affected all auto-attacks)

Another shot at dual-wielders.

Virulence moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1.

Woohoo?

Morbidity moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2.

It’s like a Chinese fire drill, but for talents.

New Talent Ghoul Frenzy, Tier 6, 1 point talent - Grants your pet 25% haste for 15 sec and heals it for 30% of its health over the duration. 1 Unholy Rune. 45 Yard range. Channeled Instant cast (build 9626). 30 sec cooldown.

Alright, so we get a Mend Pet that has to be slotted into a rotation, and gives our pet haste. At least it’s not channeled anymore, right? Waiting on hunters to cry foul in 3, 2, 1…

Raise Ally has a >15 min cooldown to keep it out of Arena.

I doubt I’d have time to think about using it anyway, but now I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

And now on to our chilly northern brethren, the Frost DKs. The forecasted changes had the entire tree being shuffled around due to moving PvP utility abilities higher up (presumably so that anyone can be competitive in PvP). What did this result in?

Skills

Icy Touch now causes Frost Fever to last 15 seconds.

Well, this means that in combination with Epidemic, Frost Fever will now last for an obnoxiously long time. Gotta love it.

Talents

Hungering Cold and Howling Blast have switched places in the talent tree.

I’d like to just go ahead and apologize to all dual-wielding DKs, because Blizzard basically sent you a letter, and all the letter said was BOHICA. One of the premier damage-dealing talents for a 0/32/39 or 0/31/40 dual-wield build (at least, last I checked y’all were still using it, because it’s independent of weapon damage) is now at the very bottom of the frost tree, and in its place is the uber-questionable Hungering Cold.

Howling Blast (Tier 11) now deals 50% additional damage to targets infected with Frost Fever. (Previously dealt double damage)

A slight damage nerf, and it’s way down at the bottom of the tree. Was Frost burst DPS that crazy? I’ve seen it be equal to other bursty builds, and even some sustained DPS builds, but I’m not sure it merited knocking 50% of its bonus damage off.

However, and to make this damage nerf possibly even worse, the official patch notes say the damage bonus is 20%. 50% is what’s implemented, 20% is what the notes say. Be prepared for this to get even lower than currently implemented, I guess.

Unbreakable Armor (Tier 8 ) now Reinforces your armor with a thick coat of ice, reducing physical damage from all attacks by 0.05 and increasing your strength by 25% for 20 sec. The amount of damage reduced increases as your armor increases. (Previously just increased armor by 25%, strength by 10%, and parry by 5%)

This talent now has even more damage-dealing use again too, so Frost Knights take note! 25% bonus Strength is nothing to sneeze at. For Frost tanks, they lose flat boosts to three different stats, resulting in what I feel is probably a loss of Parry overall. I’m also guessing that’s 0.05 per level or per X amount of armor, since this is straight from the files, but I couldn’t tell you for sure.

Blood of the North (Tier 8 ) now affects Frost Strike as well as Blood Strike. Blood of the North is 3 ranks instead of 5 for the same effect.

Sweet, 15% more damage to Frost Strike as well? That’ll help. I’ve always been a Frost Strike fan. Maybe it’s time to look at Frost DPS again… Guess that lowered talent point investment will help those of the frosty persuasion take more points in everything else, too.

Chilblains (Tier 7) now reduces movement speed by 15/30/45%. (Previously 10/20/30%)

Pure PvP utility. More slowing is never a bad thing and fits with the control & burst theme of the Frost tree overall.

Endless Winter moved from Tier 6 to Tier 4.

More PvP utility. (I gotta admit, though, I think a free Mind Freeze is probably attractive to more than just PvPers. Too bad there’s no way to reduce the cooldown.)

Chill of the Grave moved from Tier 5 to Tier 4.

A pretty standard Frost ability, now higher in the tree.

Runic Power Mastery moved to Tier 1 and is now a 2 point talent. Increases your maximum Runic Power by 15/30. (Previously 3 point talent that increased runic power by 10/20/30)

This is an odd change, but I can see why they did it… it’s handy to pretty much every tree, I gotta admit. The thing is, due to Blizzard standardizing on 40 RP cost for almost every RP dump, previously 2/3 was enough. Now you’ll always have 10 bonus RP. Wonder if it’d be possible to shuffle talents around and get this for my Blood build… bonus RP means a longer-lasting Dancing Rune Weapon. (Since Shadow of Death is going away, I have a few points in Unholy to free up…)

Black Ice (Tier 2) increases your frost damage by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Previously 6/12/18/24/30%)

A slight nerf to Frost damage. Seems designed to take dual-wielders down a peg, again. I really think Blizzard regrets putting dual-wield on the Death Knights and is just trying to make it continually less attractive until it finally goes away.

Glacier Rot moved from Tier 1 to Tier 5 and is now a 3 point talent. Now diseased enemies take 7/13/20% more damage from your Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Frost Strike. (Previously 5/10%)

This is hella sexy now for Frost damage. Howling Blast essentially turns into an AOE Obliterate, and Frost Strike into a RP-powered Blood Strike, by making them both gain bonus damage on diseased foes. It was good before - it’s better now.

Damn, Blizzard, y’all got me thinkin’ Frosty again.

Frost Aura: Replaced with Improved Frost Presence. Allows the deathknight to keep the health bonus of Frost Presence in any presence, and decreases magic damage taken while in Frost Presence.

Alas, no more raid-wide chromatic resistance. Sorry guys! Magic damage reduction is okay, though, I suppose. And more health never hurt anyone (unless you’re fighting Patchwerk).

Let’s jump right in, shall we?

Skills

Pestilence is now 1 rank. It now spreads existing Blood Plague and Frost Fever infections from your target to all other enemies within 10 yards. (Previously dealt damage)

Blizzard said previously that they wanted Pestilence to basically be a disease vector instead of a source of damage, and to be honestly it was a pretty wussy source of damage, so I can’t say I’m disappointed in this change. Plus this will finally clear up the bug they were supposed to fix in 3.0.8 and 3.0.9 but never did - currently, if you kill an enemy with the tiny damage from Pestilence, the diseases are not spread. Now that’s not a worry!

Strangulate no longer deals damage.

Grats casters: now we can choke you, but it doesn’t hurt.

Blood Boil damage increased, but its range has been reduced. Blood Boil’s damage increased to make up for Pestilence no longer doing damage. Blood Boil now does some damage to undiseased targets and extra damage to diseased targets. Its radius has been decreased.

Guess it was increased by approximately the damage that Pestilence used to deal - just a guess, though. I never used this outside of tanking or some trash pulls, and unless this is a significant change I doubt I will.

Death Pact’s heal can no longer crit.

A.K.A. the “explode your ghoul” heal. Possibly my least-used spell. I wasn’t aware it could crit… and now it doesn’t, so no big loss, right?

Blood Strike now instantly strikes the enemy, causing 40% weapon damage plus 305.6, increased by 12.5% per disease on the target at rank 6. (Previously caused 50% weapon damage plus 191, and an additional 95.5 bonus damage per disease)

Blood Strike and Heart Strike are sharing a change - both of them do less of a percentage of weapon damage (10% less each), but now do higher flat damage, and a percentage per disease instead of a flat amount per disease. Obviously without testing I can’t say how this impacts the diseaseless build I posted yesterday, but it will definitely impact it in some way. Let’s check, shall we?

Heart Strike now instantly strikes the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 368, increased by 10% per disease on the target at rank 6. (Previously caused 60% weapon damage plus 220.8, and an additional 110.4 bonus damage per disease)

Using Cryptfiend’s Bite, my current Heart Strikes do a base damage of 572.4 to 748.8, ignoring any bonus from diseases, glyphs, or attack power. (With one disease, 682.8 - 858.8; with two diseases, 793.2 - 970.2.) On the PTR, my Heart Strikes would do 661 - 808 without any bonuses from diseases, glyphs, or attack power. (With one disease, 727.1 - 888.8; with two diseases, 793.2 - 969.6.)

I sort of wonder if this in combination with the Plague Strike change(s), will bring the other 51/0/20 Blood spec, the “Alternablood,” to popularity again. Still, even without diseases, that’s a pretty significant leap in damage!

Talents

Blood Gorged (Tier 10) no longer grants expertise. Instead your attacks ignore up to 2/4/6/8/10% of the targets armor.

This is basically Blizzard admitting Blood is the Ret tree for DKs: as much as they keep saying all three trees can tank, a talent like Blood Gorged granting Armor Penetration (typically a DPS ability, and definitely a good one for Blood-spec) instead of Expertise pretty much solidifies it as the physical damage-dealing tree.

Heart Strike (Tier 9) now strikes the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 125, increased by 10% per disease on the target.

This is just a change to rank 1 of the spell. The change to the highest rank is already covered above.

Might of Mograine (Tier 9) now increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate abilities by 10/20/30%. (Previously was 15/30/45%)

Ooof. Blizzard giveth with one hand, and taketh away with the other. Nerfing Might of Mograine is not cool, guys. This is the one change I’m most heavily dissatisfied with - we’re the physical damage dealing class, let us keep dealing heavy physical damage!

Sudden Doom (Tier 8 ) is now a 3 point talent and now has a 5/10/15% chance to launch a free Death Coil at your target. (Previously gave a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to make the next death coil cost no runic power and guaranteed it to crit).

I’m like a Lightning Capacitor, only filled with unholy energy! This will ease the need to interrupt rotation and blow a GCD to use a Sudden Doom proc. However, on the downside, this is no longer a free crit. I suppose that’s a worthwhile tradeoff - I’d almost rather just proc free damage and be able to keep on swinging, though it’s gonna be really unnerving when it happens.

Blood Aura (Tier 7) renamed Improved Blood Presence and now while in Frost Presence or Unholy Presence, you retain 4% healing from Blood Presence, and healing done to you is increased by 10% in Blood Presence.

Another hit to our raid buffs. Now Blood only brings those might buffs. (Unholy gets a little of this treatment, too.) On the other hand, this might be a good reason to give Unholy Presence a try, since the healing is retained now. I know I’ll definitely be soloing in Unholy from now on once this change goes live.

Bloody Strikes (Tier 5) now increases the damage of Blood Strike and Heart Strike by 15/30/45%, and increases the damage of Blood Boil by 20/40/60%.

Bloody Strikes now does not increase bonus damage from diseases at all, but the overall damage boost to Blood Strike and Heart Strike is increased by 15% at the highest rank. The Blood Boil addition is just due to the fact that Pestilence doesn’t deal damage anymore. It looks like they really may be setting Blood Boil up to do some serious damage at this rate - at least, maybe for Blood DKs. Now the Might of Mograine nerf doesn’t hurt quite as much, though the nerf to Obliterate due to the nerf of MoM is kind of sad.

Scent of Blood (Tier 2) now can proc off dodging, parrying or taking direct damage.

People take Scent of Blood?

New Talent Improved Death Strike, Tier 8, 2 tale nt points - Increases the damage of your Death Strike by 15/30%.

Remember what I said about Death Strike becoming a damage dealer? With the Glyph, at 100 RP you’re potentially looking at a Death Strike that does 60% weapon damage, plus 40% from the glyph, plus 30% from the talent, plus 178.2, and heals the DK for a percentage of diseases on the target. Of course, that’s assuming (Death Strike + no RP dump) > (Glyphed Obliterate + RP dump). My gut feeling is not. But it should be easier for DKs to do a little self-healing now, assuming they take this talent. Hell, I may take a talent point in this instead of Vampiric Blood.

Just as a side note, the official patch notes are wrong: this is not in the Unholy tree, it is a Blood tree talent.

Blood Plague: Now lasts 15 seconds untalented.

Woohoo: long-lasting diseases! Eases up disease-using rotations a bit.

Bloodworms now heal more.

Good news for people leveling with Bloodworms.

Dancing Rune Weapon: Fixed a bug making it trigger an unusual number of effects from the weapon equipped by the Death Knight. In addition, it will now only echo Death Knight spells whose primary purpose is dealing damage. Also corrected a bug making the effect last 8 seconds longer than intended.

I only wish I had run into one of these bugs. The downside is that this means it won’t be possible to make the Dancing Rune Weapon use Hysteria on itself, and if I were to guess it probably means the Dancing Rune Weapon won’t proc Sudden Doom anymore. Alas. It will still continue to kick ass, take names, and look badass.

Welcome to the first of several of The Stoppable Force’s look at the death knight changes coming in patch 3.1! The following will be a combination of the official patch notes and the unofficial changes found by digging through the files, and updates may follow in the coming days.

We’ll start with glyphs - everyone needs ‘em, and just a few of them are changing. My source for all changes is MMO Champion, as usual. Without further ado, here we go:

Glyph of Strangulate – Reduces the cooldown of your Strangulate by 60 sec. (Old: Increases the range of your Strangulate by 20 yards.)

Better for PvE, I’ll give you that… but to be honest, Strangulate doesn’t work most of the time that you’d need it to in PvE. Mind Freeze, however, usually does. It’s also kind of interesting that this comes at the same time as the removal of the DoT from Strangulate. Probably to save us from having a long-distance silencing DoT spell.

Glyph of Icebound Fortitude – Your Icebound Fortitude now always grants at least 30% damage reduction, regardless of your defense skill. (Old: Your Icebound Fortitude costs no runic power)

Hmmm. I’m torn on this one. While the new implementation does basically make it a better Barkskin, the old one meant it was always available in case of emergencies even if we’d dumped all our runic power elsewhere.

Glyph of Unbreakable Armor – Increases the amount of damage absorbed by Unbreakable Armor by 1%. (Old: Unbreakable Armor grants an additional 15% armor)

They just can’t decide what to do with the Glyph of Unbreakable Armor, can they? Unbreakable Armor itself has changed; see the post on Frost changes for that.

Glyph of Plague Strike – Your Plague Strike does 60% additional damage. (Old: 20% additional damage if a disease was on the target)

This plus the change to Plague Strike might finally make it worth using. Maybe. I still don’t see it making its way into my rotation but it is nice to see it not sucking again.

Glyph of Death Strike – Increases your Death Strike’s damage by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have. The runic power is not consumed by this effect. (Old: 2% regardless of runic power)

Kind of a mix of the first iteration of Death Strike, and the horribly underpowered current Death Strike, the new Glyph of Death Strike is… still probably not that great for leveling. (I say that now, but you know, someone’s going to find a way to make this move a primary damage-dealing ability one of these days. The DK community’s ingenuity never fails to surprise me.)

Glyph of Hungering Cold new – Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power.

Fitting, given as how this is now waaaay up higher in the tree.

Glyph of Unholy Blight new – Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.

Good for Unholy DKs; one less fiddly thing to keep up at all times.

Glyph of Death Coil new – Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power.

Good for everyone, really, since Death Coil is a go-to runic power dump - but especially for Blood DKs, for whom it’s the primary runic power dump.

Glyph of Blood Boil: Now only applies a snare to diseased targets.

A change necessary since Blood Boil now does damage to all targets within its radius, but bonus (and, glyphed, a snare) to diseased ones.

Glyph of Pestilence – Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.

Simply an extension of the new change to Pestilence. Theoretically you could apply your diseases once then use a combination of moves other than Icy Touch and Plague Strike to keep them up. Handy for tank DKs, maybe, who could use this to build a lot of threat by constant disease ticks + Blood Boil while working other moves into their rotation. Or not. It’s just a thought. I don’t think Glyph of Pestilence will be so mandatory for raiding DKs now, though.

Glyph of Howling Blast new – Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.

Handy, especially if you can cast it twice in a row and Frost Fever has fallen off for some reason - you can apply Frost Fever, then immediately hit Howling Blast again to do extra damage to a target with Frost Fever.

Rune of Cinderglacier now procs per minute instead of a 5% chance.

Given how often this went off, it always felt like a ppm mechanic anyhow, but now it definitely is.

Rune of Razorfrost now affects Frost damage done by the DK only, but stacks up to 10%.

One: the patch notes are wrong again; it’s Razorice. Stacking this is excellent. I wonder if a deep-Frost dual-wield build might want to use this and Cinderglacier in tandem for mad damage on Howling Blast?

Spotted at the forums and World of Matticus: what would your Dalaran fountain coin say? Thread-starter Palehoof says:

I saw a thread over on my realm forum which I really enjoyed, thought I’d mention the same over here.

High level fishermen (or fisherorcs, fisherbulls, etc) can fish in the Dalaran Eventide fountain and catch, occasionally, coins that figures from WoW history have thrown in, complete with the wish they made when they did so etched on the coin. My favorite is Landro Longshot, who wished “I wish i still had that coin.” Amusing from the purveyor of TCG loot items.

With that in mind, if someone caught your coin from the fountain in Dalaran, what would it say on it? I’ll start.

Palehoof Geargrinder’s Shiny Silver Coin:

“I wish I knew how to make a Mechanostrider!”

http://usera.imagecave.com/Palehoof/Portraits/Pinktoque%20Palehoof.jpg

Bornakk later chimes in:

Bornakk’s copper coin: There are so many cool coins and you got mine, poor you!

As for me… hmmmm. We could go serious:

Zulfon’s Gold Coin: I wish to hear the spirits again… and for them to hear me too.

Or silly:

Queklain’s Shiny Copper Coin: They keep telling me not to stand in stuff. I wish the ground wasn’t so dangerous.

Or both:

Whitebough’s Silver Coin: I wish I could muster up the energy to wander out of town!

Warning: the info in this post was posted prior to patch 3.1, and as such, while there may be some relevant information in it, large parts of it may be outdated or irrelevant. You have been warned.

I have to admit, when I first heard about the 51/0/20 “Disease-free” death knight build, I was extremely skeptical. I’d been running largely with a decently stereotypical two-hander 17/0/54 build, and a few things bothered me about this setup.

1. I don’t like doing pet management with the Death Knight. While it’s unavoidable to an extent as a warlock, for some reason having to manage the ghoul just grated on my nerves. As a result, I had attempted to shortcut around it via macros and accidentally pulled early before with the ghoul. Never resulted in a wipe, but did result in a bit of chaos sometimes.

2. There’s a lot of fiddling with this build to keep things up and running. Bone Shield has to stay up as often as possible. Unholy Blight has to stay up as often as possible. Frost Fever, Blood Plague, and Ebon Plague have to stay up as often as possible. Playing an Unholy-spec Death Knight sometimes feels an awful lot like playing an Affliction-spec warlock with heavy armor and a weapon you actually use. This means that on movement-heavy fights, like for example Grobbulus, I was doing about 1/4 of my normal DPS - diseases would fall off, the boss was out of range of unholy blight, and so on.

3. No matter what gear I attempted to get, I never got about 3.0k, maybe 3.1k DPS, except on fights where movement was non-existent - like Patchwerk. However, I couldn’t crack that 4.0k ceiling.

The Search for Spock A New Build

So for a while, I basically gave a lot of things the ol’ college try, which meant a lot of experimenting with strange new experiences and waking up with no pants and no money. (Seriously, those respec costs hurt now, as does reglyphing every time.) I even tried dual-wielding, an experience I’m not particularly proud of (but which I would try again, provided I could get two Naxx-level one-handers - two reputation one-handers just can’t stack up to my Cryptfiend’s Bite).

The Build and Glyphs

And then, while dredging the depths of Elitist Jerks’ forums, I ran across word of a 51/0/20 disease-free build. This was a unique beast: unlike most death knight builds, it didn’t rely on any disease uptime at all, because it didn’t apply diseases. You heard me: no diseases. And, on top of that, it’s based on Blood, which was my first love and will always be my true favorite (I’m waiting for the day it’s even remotely viable for tanking). So, I gave it a try. I put the points in, I applied the glyphs, and I came out disease-free and looking a bit like this.

(EDIT: sorry to replace this with a pic, but MMO Champion updated their talent calculator to match the 3.1 build and therefore the previous link was totally broken. The post-3.1 diseasefree build will probably look a bit more like this 51/1/19 build)

Glyphs for this build: Glyph of Blood Strike, Glyph of the Ghoul, Glyph of Obliterate.

Caveat Sanguinator

First, a few up-front notes about things that look initially weird:

1. Vampiric Blood instead of Rune Tap. The reason for this is simple: this build doesn’t have enough points to move around to take 3/3 Improved Rune Tap, at which point the skill becomes valuable. As it is, Vampiric Blood is largely an “oh shit” button, and I’ve been known to pop it just before or just after Hysteria. (The fun part about raiding, though, is that the health loss from Hysteria is rarely ever a problem except in fights where there’s massive raid damage, such as Loatheb.)

2. Glyph of Raise Dead. This glyph is a little buggy for some people. Most notably, despite having the Glyph, Raise Dead will complain that it needs Corpse Dust - and if you get Corpse Dust, it will continue to complain that it needs Corpse Dust. If this happens to you, feel free to remove it. I haven’t had this issue yet. /knock wood

3. Glyph of Blood Strike. Two points about this one.

   • First, it works on Heart Strike. I’ve tested it, lots of people have tested it, it’s verifiable - apparently anything that applies to Blood Strike also applies to Heart Strike, and the Glyph is no exception. This means that on any target that’s snared, my Heart Strikes do 20% more damage - and as you’ll see when I talk about the rotation, I do a lot of Heart Strikes.

* Secondly, there are a _lot_ of things that count as a snare. While you're solo, you may not see the extra damage pop up, and that's fine - honestly, you should be blowing through mobs so fast that it won't matter. However, this is a raid build, and when you're raiding, there are a lot of things that count as snares that don't necessarily snare a boss. The [Frostfire Bolt](http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=47610) debuff jumps out at me as one obvious one; [Slow](http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=31589) is another. (I loves my mages.) I believe Thunderclap counts as another, if you're running with warriors. Basically, unless your raid has a really strange setup where no snare-like effects are on the boss at all (which could happen fairly often in 10 man situations, I suppose), you'll see a lot of benefit from this one. I do - as it happens, Heart Strike is my #2 source of damage, right behind melee. 

1. 3/3 Virulence. I don’t really like it, but the other option in that level isn’t even worth it. Basically this is 3% more chance for Death Coils to not miss.

There’s also a few things you should know, if you want to optimize your DPS in this build.

1. Your gear has to be pretty good to pull this off. There, I said it. You need to be hit-capped for special abilities (8%), you need to have a lot of Strength attack power, you need a good helping of crit rating. You could try this in heroics, or in early raiding, but I don’t know how much it’d help you. (That said, if one of my Blood-happy readers who’s just getting into the heroics would like to try it out and get back to me, please do so.)

2. Sunder Armor is extremely beneficial to this build. All your damage, outside of Death Coil, is physical - you do it, your ghoul does it, your Dancing Rune Weapon does it. If you’ve got a warrior tank who’s slacking on the Devastates in favor of Shield Slam (as a lot of them are nowadays), ask him nicely if he’d throw a couple more in his rotation for you. I did, and I immediately saw the benefits. If you’ve got Fury or Arms Warriors, they may already be applying Sunders, so do a little research. This’s all about synergy.

3. Be sure and utilize the ghoul, and be sure and do so when your Strength buffs (especially from Rune of the Fallen Crusader) are up. The ghoul lasts for a decent length of time even without him being a standard Unholy ghoul, so use him on bosses or any other time you need to boost DPS.

4. Fire your Sudden Doom procs whenever you can. Remember, there’s a lot of Heart Strikes in this build, so you’ll see a lot of Sudden Dooms. Death Coil is almost always my #3 or #4 source of damage. And when you get them, your Dancing Rune Weapon gets them too, so be sure and use it then. Double RP-free auto-crit Death Coil? Yes, please!

5. For movement heavy fights where you need to switch to Unholy Presence in order to keep moving (Heigan and Grobbulus come to mind), you should not see a drop in DPS. Period. You may have a couple seconds of dead time in which you’re not doing anything but auto-attacking, but even with the decrease in global cooldown, you shouldn’t see a ton of them. This is important, because in a lot of builds, running in Unholy Presence is pretty much just a way to embarrass yourself, and Blood Presence is recommended at all times. 51/0/20 seems to cope just fine with both. That said, I’d still stay in Blood Presence when at all possible.

6. If given a choice between Haste and Armor Penetration on a piece of armor, go with Armor Penetration. All things being equal, this build will see a lot of benefit from Armor Penetration. It’s still inferior to just having Sunders, but it’s better than Haste in most cases; see point #1.

7. This is one of the builds that benefits most from having Hysteria cast on itself. Feel free to toss it on you instead of a Warrior or Rogue buddy and watch yourself start hitting like a truck. Well, a bigger truck.

Puff Puff Then Pass, Don’t F@#$ Up Rotation

Alright, I’ve been talking for the entire post about the rotation. Are you ready for this? This is seriously the most forgiving rotation you’ll see in a Death Knight build, simply because of the removal of diseases as a requirement for doing damage.

Key: OB = Obliterate, HS = Heart Strike, RP = Runic Power dump (usually Death Coil, but also Dancing Rune Weapon once you’re at 100 RP)

OB > OB > HS > HS > RP
HS > HS > HS > HS > HS > HS > RP

That’s it. Seriously. That’s it. It’s the “Burning Crusade-era BM hunter” of Death Knight specs (ha ha, I kid BM hunters… but only a little). Stop to throw Death Coils whenever you get a Sudden Death proc, be sure and utilize your ghoul and Dancing Rune Weapon when you can, but otherwise… yeah. That’s it. Just thwack the enemy good.

It’s forgiving, it’s easy, and you’ll do a lot of damage. What’s not to love?

Impressions

Holy shit.

I cannot state how dramatically my DPS jumped as a result of this build. Even in my gear, which still has a few weak points (like still being way overcapped on Hit and lacking in crit), I see some pretty dramatic DPS - like finally breaking that 4k DPS ceiling with ease, on pretty much every boss (unless something dumb happens like getting knocked down on Sartharion while trying to avoid a lava wave, eating the lava wave, getting turned around, and accidentally walking into the frontal cleave - not that that’s ever happened to me cough).

My only regret is that I no longer provide the synergy back to the raid that I used to in some cases - Ebon Plague was a help to all our casters. But I guess if you want to look at it another way, I’m now providing a benefit to all our melee instead in the form of Abomination’s Might.

And, in a less tangible benefit, this has gotten me talking to some of my raid-mates who I simply worked alongside before. My Death Knight hero (who I look up to for advice and gear and whatnot) and I switched specs at almost exactly the same time - both of us away from 17/0/54, him to a heavy-Frost burst-damage build, me to this build, and now we have a constant friendly rivalry for top DPS (and an ongoing dialogue too). I’ve had conversations with Mages I never really spoke to, got in touch with our Warriors - basically this build has made me feel like more of a component of a bigger machine, instead of just someone who deals damage. That’s a good feeling, ya know?

And, oh yeah - I hit like a truck. Can’t forget that. A heavily armed truck. A heavily armored and armed truck with spears on the front, that shoots sharks and lasers and yells “WELCOME TO THUNDERDOME!”

I love it. If you’re experiencing some build stagnation, or just want to try something new, go for it. Tell ‘em Queklain sent you.

Today, it seems, was a good day to get achievements. Managed to knock out the following even with a large gap in my day to play Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (whew) and the Resident Evil 5 demo with my roommate:

• The Argent Dawn

• To Hellfire And Back

• Mysteries of the Marsh

• Journeyman Fisherman

• 25, 50, and 100 Fish

• Explore Zangarmarsh

However, the highlight of the day actually came about 15 minutes ago. As I was sitting in Orgrimmar fishing, I dozed off (because it’s about 1:30 in the morning here). As sometimes happens when I fall asleep, I twitched a little - in this case, my right finger. As sometimes happens when I twitch, I woke back up. And when I did … I noticed that in twitching, I had looted my bobber, and pulled up a fish in the process. Hence, I award myself the following achievement to cap off my day before sleeping (for real this time):

Good night, Azeroth!

Well, I was tagged by the lovely Miss Siha, and all this nonsense started with Maiara over at Voodoo Ventures. The thing’s simple enough: post the sixth screenshot in the sixth subfolder of your screenshots folder.

Well, hmm, what a dilemma. Only when I got to ‘09 did I think, “I should probably make a subfolder to separate out my screenshots.” So I really only have one subfolder - 2008! So we’ll try this a few different ways and see what comes out of interest, shall we?

Let’s take it from the top - sixth screenshot in my main screenshot folder.

Oh well, hm, just exploring Burning Steppes, that’s not terribly interesting. Let’s try something else - sixth from the bottom, perhaps.

Well, alright, there’s a bit more going on here (and it’s a good look at the minor changes that’ve taken place in my DK’s UI since the beginning of the year), but at the end of the day, it’s just another achievement snapshot. I was relating this in the Blog Azeroth chatroom and Nibuca suggested I pick the sixth non-automatic screenshot. Fantastic! Let’s see what that yields.

Heaven only knows what I was trying to do, but that’s a screenshot of the back of my raid getting ready to go fight Loatheb - or else finishing off the maggots from the gauntlet before Loatheb, it’s hard to say. You can barely see my helmet peeking over the right shoulder of the orc warrior in the foreground of this shot.

Alright, well, that was okay, but let’s try one more. I’ll delve into my 2008 folder of screenshots and see what pops out. What’s the sixth one shown there, you might ask?

Apparently a shot of me flying through Nagrand on my warlock. It’s kind of a nice view! (I’ve always had a soft spot for Nagrand.)

Alright, I’ve done my part. Time for a few more people to pitch in. How about… mmm… the newly-relocated Maerdred, Nightravyn, BBB, Bre, Byaghro, and Eglador?