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

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

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.

Frost
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Runic Power Generation

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

Unholy
Melee damage
Melee and spell critical damage
Disease Damage

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

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.

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.

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Death Grip – This ability allows you to grip a target enemy and bring them to you. A very powerful gap closer that can be used to bring ranged enemies to you or stop a fleeing enemy.

Chains of Ice – A very versatile ranged snare, this is one of your best abilities. This ability costs 1 frost rune and applies Frost Fever to your target, so it can be spammed to keep an enemy from running.

Mind Freeze – The generic kick, when used during a spell cast, it will lock out any healing from that school for 4 seconds. Very powerful when used correctly.

Anti-Magic Shield – Puts a shield on the Death Knight that will absorb 75% of incoming magic damage and effects. Also renders you immune to the application of dots and other various magic abilities for 5 seconds. Any damage absorbed will give you runic power so this ability can be used offensively and defensively. With a cooldown of 45 seconds, don’t be shy of using this.

Death Pact – Basically a large heal, this ability will sacrifice your ghoul for the cost of 40 runic power healing you for 40% of the ghouls maximum health. Great for a last stand or when your healer is unavailable.

Talent Builds

Currently the best spec for PvP’ing as a Death Knight is Unholy. Sadly the other trees do not provide as much utility and while they can be used, you generally are gimping yourself with other builds. While there are several accepted Unholy Builds, they generally all revolve around the same talents.

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Basic Unholy / Wandering Plague Build (0/17/54) Uses scourge strike / wandering plague. Ideal build for arena and battlegrounds. Glyphs used are Glyph of Icy Touch, Glyph of the Ghoul, and Glyph of Dark Death.

Strategies

Against a hunter: Pop on Frost Presence, keep defense cooldowns up and snare the hunter, death grip when they Disengage and re-apply Chains of Ice. Basically keep him close to you and if he snake traps, blood boil. If he gets you low, try and use Death Pact when Aimed Shot is not applied to get the full effect and it should be an easy win.

Against a mage: A mage is a tricky fight, depending on the skill of the mage. Against an arcane or frost mage, it should be easy prey for you, just mitigate damage when they nuke and interrupt/stun/silence where possible. Against a frost mage, you need to use your cooldowns defensively and grip him when he blinks. Try to gargoyle him to keep the damage on him and strangulate, ghoul stun, and interrupt as necessary to reduce damage. Without heals, it should only be a matter of time until your gargoyle and diseases strike him down.

Against a paladin: A ret pally is similar to fighting another DK, play defensively and mitigate damage and heal yourself with anti-magic shield, etc. Against a Holy Paladin, gather enough Runic Power for a gargoyle and then summon it with a ghoul stun. Try to interrupt a heal to lock them out and effectively score a kill. A fight against a holy paladin is a long fight as they have many abilities that allows them to survive, such as Aura Mastery and Divine Shield which effectively prevents you from killing them.

Against a priest: When fighting a priest, they will try to fear you while keeping dots up on you. Depending on what spec of priest you are fighting against, you will use a different strategy. Against a shadow priest, you need to pump damage into them and blow your cooldowns to stay alive. It’s going to be a close fight as they can fear, disarm, and silence you while healing themselves so you want to use Anti-Magic Shield to it’s full effect. Against a disc priest, the strategy is similar to a Holy Paladin. Get enough runic power for a gargoyle and then blow him up with stuns, strangulate, and Mind Freeze. Save your trinket and Lich Borne for when you are actually going for the kill to avoid being feared. Do not use it at the start of the fight as any damage you do to them without gargoyle up is almost nothing.

Against a Rogue: The rogue will stun you at the start and stun you again. Do not trinket this stun as it will allow him to blind you and thus letting him reset the fight. Start the fight in frost presence to reduce the damage he does to you and after his first two stuns, apply your diseases to him and pop any cooldowns you may have, Ice bound fortitude, anti magic shield, etc, once he blinds you, trinket it and apply a disease to him before he re-stealths.

Against a Death Knight: Start off by applying diseases and then use anti magic shield. This will soak up a lot of initial damage and allow you to get a boost in runic power. Avoid attacking your enemy if he has magic shield up as well. Put up your gargoyle and then play as necessary. Fighting a death knight is best done defensively and try to heal / mitigate as much damage as possible.

Against a druid: A dps druid shouldnt be too hard for you to defeat, pop defensive cooldowns, keep them snared and it should be an easy win. Against a resto druid it’s going to be tough as they generally can outheal your damage and innervate prevents you from winning in a mana burn. The best you could do is summon a gargoyle with ghoul stun and strangulate, pump deathcoils into them and hope they cast a regrowth or nourish that you can mind freeze. If they don’t cast any non-instant spells then you are not dealing enough damage. Beware of nature’s swiftness as well which effectivly allows them to top off with one heal.

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Death Knight                                 Normal                                                        Professional specifics

Head               Arcanum of Torment (+50 AP, +20 crit)

Shoulder         Greater Inscription of the Axe (+40 AP, +15 crit)

Back(cloak)     Major Agility (+22 Agi)

Chest              Powerful Stats (+10 All Stats)

Bracers           Greater Assault (+50 AP)                                            Fur Lining – Attack Power (LW, +130 AP)

Hands             Crusher (+44 AP)

Waist              Eternal Belt Buckle (gem slot)

Legs               Icescale Leg Armor (+75 AP, +22 crit)

Boots              Icewalker (+12 hit, +12 crit)

Finger                                                                                                  Assault (JWC, +40 AP)

Weapon          Rune of the Fallen Crusader(3% heal, 15% str)

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