Some useful information

Contrary to what I'm sure many of us have figured, Death Knights will *NOT* be gaining additional damage for their abilities via increased spellpower.

In fact, they are slated to utilize an "attack power coefficient" on many of their abilities, where a percentage of their AP will provide increased damage on their abilities.

It's not too different from a lot of the abilities that many physical damage classes have available to them (think anything that gets increased damage from AP), but I liken it in style and theme to the talents Mental Quickness and Sheath of Light. It increases your "spellpower" by an amount of your attack power.

The concept itself is not a big leap by any means, but I'm sure it will be a little bewildering at first for many of us if we weren't informed of how it works before picking up the class. (It helps to just consider the Death Knight's "spells" as "abilities." They're not being powered by mana as a "spell" would, but runic power instead.)

Here's a handy link on the attack power coefficients as we can see them thus far:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/blogs/armstrong/1448-ap-coefficients.html

And the obligatory huge post from ElitistJerks on DK DPS:

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t36303-death_knight_dps_compendium/

Wow i read the whole deal.

It brings up an interesting notion. If we're all going to be rolling DKs we shouldn't be overlapping talents, etc.

Personally i plan to go Unholy and pick up the last talent(AoE based DK) and have a ghoul pet full-time.

Ebon Plague does not stack...so if anyone else planned on going Unholy keep this in mind.

I think jik wanted teh Dancing sword so i'm assuming he's going Blood.

Cool stuff to know.

This is in line with the recent changes to paladins. If ya look at the paladin forum you'll see 1 AP and 1 SP are the same tps. Paladin spells now use AP and SP for damage.

With the reitemization of gear to have str instead of spellpower/int (like yesterday I bought what were the 'warrior' badge pants) Blizz is trying to achieve two things. One is that any plate gear is useable by any plate wearing class. The other is that well doesn't it make more sense for a Knight to actually use his muscles? There are many game mechanics that are affected by this but I think it's a great move thematically as well.

Yeah... while looking into this I stumbled across the coefficients for every class, and I said to myself "What!? They double dip!?" when I saw the paladin table.

As for me, something says I'll be going Frost. It'd be the most befitting with its weapons of choice for how I envision my troll to look. I like what all the tree provides, but I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around where the point of a two-handed weapon gets any buffs from the tree outside of basic concepts (it's "smarter" to tank with a single weapon, for preventing a parry-gib death, for instance).

I'm betting that once I get the real feel for the class and the abilities, though, it'll all click. I'm probably not letting the 50% weapon instant damage attack per rune (if you so chose, or maybe an even better attack) without stopping and 10 seconds to refresh everything sink in deep enough to realize how awesome it might be.

Upon looking at all of the rotation discussion on ability usage for the class and slowly grasping how it all works, I'm somewhat feeling a Rogue vibe when it comes to popping proper cooldowns in correct order to maximize efficiency.

I will say that the death knight will be pure win, if for nothing else but for the second comment on this ability's glyph: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43552#comments

Fivoh wrote:

Wow i read the whole deal.

It brings up an interesting notion. If we're all going to be rolling DKs we shouldn't be overlapping talents, etc.

Personally i plan to go Unholy and pick up the last talent(AoE based DK) and have a ghoul pet full-time.

Ebon Plague does not stack...so if anyone else planned on going Unholy keep this in mind.

I think jik wanted teh Dancing sword so i'm assuming he's going Blood.

I was also going Unholy, and coincidentally, I was not going to get Ebon Plague

well then, i might just pick it up then

Go go power team troll dks!

Frost tank ftw right here.

I'm kind of addicted to tanking now by the way. To me at least, it's the most intricate and detailed aspect of the game and requires the most thought. In other words... it's a challenge, therefore I like it.

i would have to agree with Yyrk. From a paladin point of view......so many damn things to keep up and keep going. Blessings, Holy Shield, Seals, Judgements, Consecration, and the occasional Taunt.

You go tanking. I'll hit things with disease and play a Hunter in Plate.

I'm going Frost partly to get keep my record of having tanked an instance as every tanking class at proper level and partly because I like what I see.

My Mage may be Fire, but the Death Knight will be Frost. (Kinda what I wanted from the Mage to begin with, Fire/Frost)

It's got a lot of "planning" to do if you want to do it right. Keeps me busy at work if nothing else.

My Deathknight will be unholy, and will have Ebon Plague. Figure, not Every group's going to have DKs, and they won't all be specced the same.

But yeah. Unholy. Thank you Blizzard for FINALLY letting me have command over the undead, as it is supposed to be.

I have my DK nam saved already. Its gonna be Bloodrocuter. Now what spec do you think I'm goin lol

you're definitely going Frost.......no way your name suggests anything else.

Will you be getting Dancing Rune blade?

Wakiza wrote:

Yeah... while looking into this I stumbled across the coefficients for every class, and I said to myself "What!? They double dip!?" when I saw the paladin table.

Well really paladins tanks are the absolute hardest toon to gear up and this just makes our lives a bit easier. Have abilities, (though not all of them actually), scale with both SP and AP opens up more gear choices. This is especially useful for tankadins like me who don't have t5/t6 gear that has been reitemized with strength. I kind of still need both SP and AP because my AP isn't there yet but my SP is good. If you look at people in the higher tier gear it's all about AP from Strength which also gives block value.

Another huge benefit of this is Paladins can now actually find some decent tanking gear below Outland. Before that Spellpower is virtually non existent and you end up wearing a lot of 'of the bear' or other 'warrior' gear. Now that Strength will actually be useful. This change gave paladins a reason to go prot at any level now. It really makes me want to have another paladin Yet another toon to level though eh?

yyrkoon wrote:

Yet another toon to level though eh?

It's how Blizzard is going to keep a portion of their population for the rest of eternity.

I'd like to see what it's like to level up a Druid again, as well as a Warrior, but it's just a bit much by this point.

Though I will give Shepherde a bit more thought when it comes to Protection, though. All of that "of the Bear" and Ret gear he's accumulated should be useful again compared to trying to scrounge up some "Eagle" gear. It's easy to forget that some of these changes we've been swooning or crying about take effect at *every* level, so at least they're giving us something easier to work with, as well as themselves.


As for more Death Knight coverage, I'm now certain I'll be Frost, because Frost spec heavily abuses and enjoys spamming Obliterate (Not that Blood wouldn't or doesn't, but I'm really liking the concept of unconsumed diseases). Obliterate, for those who don't know, is one of my most favorite words, ever, so it gets quadruple extra cool points in my book. And the ability to have a 27% crit chance from talents alone as well as a crapton of extra damage potential, it's looking to be really, really destructive, which is awesome. Icy Touch at range > Blood Strike > Obliterate > Deathchill > Obliterate > Howling Blast / Frost Strike. Should just about equal dead, I'd say.

Fives....we aren't all going to be doing the same things at the same times. I say to get the talents that you're interested because, as we all know from leveling alts, there are a lot of times that we're going to be going at it alone.

And yes, Blood. I'll have a Dancing Rune Weapon, and I encourage all other Blood-specs to as well. I'll be going secondary Unholy as well, a good 19 points at least. Necrosis and Blood-Caked Blade for the extra damage off my regular attacks, Ravenous Dead and Shadow of Death for the extra 5% strength to bolster my blood abilities.
Basics:
-4% extra damage with two-handers
-13% additional strength (5% additoinal stam)
-1 AP per 36 armor
-3% damage buff from critting (stacks 3 times)
-14% crit for my most-used abilities from talents, 30% additional damage + extra damage from diseases
-45% additional crit damage bonus from said abilites (75% additional damage from Death Strike)
-20% chance for insta-cast Death Coil from said ability (with 15% extra Death Coil damage)
-10% AP to group upon most crits
-10% more damage while above 75% health
-11 expertise (nearly nonextistant dodge/parry on their end)

Auto-attacks:
9% chance to spawn worms that'll hit them and heal me
10% extra damage as shadow damage
30% chance to do 25% weapon damage plus extra based off diseases as instant-attack

Dancing Rune Blade mimicks everthing I just listed, and attacks every time I attack, and is bolstered by the amount of runic power I have when I cast it. Which is looking to be quite a bit, from what I understand.

So, to each his own, and I"m gonna say that the little ghoul pet can go shove itself. I'll take a big dancing weapon any day. (Probably a mace, they can be trained from what I understand.)

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I'm up fory trying out tanking as Blood, too. I keep reading reports on how one spec is for one style and whatnot. If Blizz is saying any spec can tank, then, I'm gonna test their words. No reason I can't go into another presense or whatever to get my mitigation and threat bolstered.

very nice writeup. Definitely Blood as a secondary for Unholy. Actually blood was my first choice....but i've never had a pet before so i'm going to try it out.

Pets are a pain.

I can't wait until Entombed is high enough to sacrifice his demons and get rid of them. Though I may be biased here because as a tank I see pets causing so many problems.

I like pets, but, in the hunter sense. I like having a little animal to feed, care for, and in turn, give two shits about. Like, Raugdrak is actually Beast Mastery just because of the utility and likability of his trust scorpid Scratch. As a lock....screw that, the demon can go back to where it came from. There's nothing really notable about them, you just kinda get them at a certain level and have them around. They never ran away if you abused them, they never had the same customization of a hunter's pet. Even before the patch to give pets talent points, you had training points and you were forced to pick a pet's abilities off of how many you had, which made it more interesting (for me) than going to a trainer and buying all of the options.

Notwithstanding, go for the ghoul, man. It'll be an interesting change of pace to have a pet around.

And initially I was considerign Unholy, but, I really just want to maul things to death.