Blog Archives
Your Mom Is A Blood Death Knight
I hope you bought her flowers.
Some things are just a given. For example, in the animal kingdom, most of us know that it would be twelve shades of stupid to get between a mother and its spawn. Sure that little bear cub wandering around the camp ground looks cute, but if Mama catches you anywhere near that cub you won’t have to “play” dead.
The only way out of the tent is through the bear’s butt after it eats you and poops you out.
Human mothers are less, uh, savage, but still very protective of their children. They protect their kids from strangers, the evils on television, and even their father after Junior decided it would be a great idea to scribble all over the walls in permanent marker. I think we’ve all been there – we do something stupid and Mom is there to protect us, make us feel safe, tell us it’s going to be okay and to just ignore your Father’s shouting and Oh Bill stop it you’re over reacting we were going to repaper the walls anyway he didn’t know any better he’s been eating the paste again.
Uh, we’ve all been there… right? Right?
*tap tap* Is this thing on?
Bringing this around to World of Warcraft and Death Knights, your Mom protected you. Kept you safe. Just like a tank in World of Warcraft. Your Mom tanked your Dad, and all the other things in the World. Tanked them just like a Blood Death Knight.
You might be thinking that this was a bit of a stretch, some pandering for the Mother’s Day holiday. To that I say shut up and go thank your Mother for bringing you into the World in the first place. And if you’re reading this and you’re a Mom… ‘sup.
Happy Mother’s Day!
The Fury Warrior in Patch 5.2
Anyone seen my chill pills?
I’ve always been a fan of the Fury warrior. Not so much for the play style, but more for what it represents as an ideal. A Protection warrior is a guy who uses a sword and shield to defend himself, and those around him in a party and raid setting. You’ve got the Arms warrior who can take a two handed weapon and kill with his superior weapon proficiency. Nobody uses a weapon as effectively as it is in the hands an Arms warrior.
Then you’ve got the Fury warrior. This is a dude who will grab two very large, very heavy things and beat the life out of you with them. He doesn’t even care what is is he’s using as a weapon – swords, clubs, circus midgets, ponies. Even the torsos from the last two things he killed. A Fury warrior is a nuclear reactor of anger and rage, and the only way he can keep it from burning him alive is by venting his anger on the head and shoulders of anything stupid enough to get in front of him.
That’s a mindset I can embrace. My therapist would disagree, but I offered to pull his tongue out for him if he kept flapping it.
MMO Melting Pot gave a quick and dirty breakdown on the Fury warrior in Patch 5.2 (HERE). Noxxic and Icy Veins also weighed in on the changes to the Fury Warrior in Patch 5.2 (HERE and HERE). Torage, the quintessential Fury warrior released a video on the Fury warrior in the 5.2 era. It is naturally worth a look. Do so NAOW!
Isle of Thunder – Patch 5.2
I’m a little slow. There I said it.
Patch 5.2 has been out for, well, a little while now but I’ve been busy doing mostly non-Patch5.2 stuff. Specifically I have been leveling Jewelcrafting on Herculano the DK. Seemed like the thing to do, since I was Exalted with the Cloud Serpent people which gave me access to the cool JC Panther mounts.
Like Power Rangers, but without the stupid giant bosses in ugly suits.
Leveling Jewelcrafting on a low pop server sucks so much ass. You can’t find low level mats, not even ore to prospect. And when you don’t have a miner to help with the process, well you just want to find a way to kick yourself in the balls and do it repeatedly, knowing it would be more fun than profession leveling. But perseverance (and server transferring a character with Mining) paid off, and Herc hit 600 JC.
Success!
So what’s with the Isle of Thunder that I’ve heard so much about…
I think I got the original quest at some point, the one that prompts you to go to the Isle of Thunder. But something got bugged somewhere, and the quest didn’t show up in my Quest log. Therefore I had no idea how to find the Isle of Thunder. As luck would have it, I found a Youtube video that showed me the way. Here it is, for those of you like me who are just a little behind. So watch, learn, and I’ll be back with some Death Knight updates soon!
Patch 5.2 and the Death Knight
The Death Knight is either an awesome class, or a forgotten one. I’m not entirely sure which is the more accurate description, although there are days when I can roll through any capital city and maybe see one DK checking his mailbox. Poor guy is probably just waiting to see if anyone’s responding to his raid resume. Or any resume for that matter.
Whenever a major patch comes along, every class tends to tighten their sphincters. Some do it because they are excited about the changes coming to their class. Some do it because those changes are going to screw their class up royally. Death Knights can finally unclench, because Patch 5.2 has gone live and it was pretty good to us.
The Dev’s discuss their thought process on the 5.2 changes to the Death Knight in a Class Discussion Blue Post –
We had three main goals:
- Make some less attractive talents more compelling.
- Improve quality of life for Unholy Death Knights.
- Give a small PvP buff.
We didn’t feel like Death Knights needed many changes overall, and we try not to change classes for change’s sake, especially midway through an expansion, so you’ll see fewer changes here than for some other classes.
To address some issues with less attractive talents, you’ll see buffs to Death Siphon (more damage dealt) and Conversion (less Runic Power over time).
Unholy’s quality of life changes were mostly to solve the problem of “orphaned” runes. A Death Knight would, for example, Blood Boil twice and then Scourge Strike, leaving two Frost Runes, which weren’t sufficient to use Festering Strike. Now Icy Touch activates Reaping, which will allow those Frost Runes to convert to Death Runes. We also made Plague Strike apply Frost Fever to reduce the need to use Icy Touches. We also made Summon Gargoyle no longer cost Runic Power and changed the damage done to both Shadow and Nature to synergize better with Unholy’s Mastery, Dreadblade.
While we think Death Knights are in a good place in PvP overall, we did agree with the feedback that Strangulate has a very long cooldown for what it does, so we lowered its cooldown and also lowered Asphyxiate to match. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the tier 14 2-piece ended up being overbudget to the extent that we were concerned DKs would keep using it in the 5.2 raid. We nerfed the set bonus and buffed Death Knights to compensate. Blood is in a good place overall, but we did buff Blood Parasite dramatically, because it was just undertuned.
There you go. Straight from Blizzard themselves. “We didn’t feel like Death Knights needed many changes overall.” That is due to the fact that Death Knights are Awesome. DK = OP. Simple as.
Champion of all the things.
So what exactly were the 5.2 Patch changes for the Death Knight? Let me drop them on you… BOOM!
- Death Siphon now heals for 150% of the damage dealt (was 100%).
- Conversion now costs 5 Runic Power plus 5 per second thereafter, down from 10 Runic Power plus 10 per second.
- Death Knights now maintain the same health percentage when switching into and out of Blood Presence.
- Blood Plague now deals 15% more damage.
- Frost Fever now deals 15% more damage.
- Strangulate cooldown has been reduced to 60 seconds (was 2 minutes).
- Asphyxiate cooldown has been reduced to 30 seconds (was 1 minute).
- Blood Parasite now summons Bloodworms with 15% of the Death Knight’s health (was 18%) and Blood Burst now heals for 25% per stack of Blood Gorged (was 30% per stack).
- Frost
- Howling Blast now deals 8% more damage to the primary target. Damage to other enemies in the area-of-effect remains unchanged.
- Icy Talons now increases attack speed by 25% (was 20%).
- Might of the Frozen Wastes now increases melee damage by 15% (was 10%).
- Unholy
- Reaping now also applies to Icy Touch.
- Summon Gargoyle no longer costs Runic Power.
- Gargoyle Strike now also deals Shadow damage, in addition to Nature damage.
- Ebon Plaguebringer now causes Plague Strike to inflict Frost Fever, in addition to its other effects.
- Scourge Strike now deals 3.8% more damage.
- Frost and Unholy Tier-14 2-piece set bonus has been reduced to 4% (was 10%) increased damage on Frost Strike, Obliterate, and Scourge Strike.
Death Knights just went from “pretty damn good” to “OMG jacked”.
Born to wreck shit.
But that’s not all! Oh no, there’s so much more that has changed, but I’m not about to copy and paste every damn thing. You can just click yourself right over to MMO Champion, home of all things World of Warcraft where they cut and paste from Blizzard themselves! GO THERE NAOW!
PTR Updates for Death Knights… Again
Honestly, I don’t know why I bother posting this stuff. I’m probably the only one reading it because as near as I can tell, I’m the only one who still plays a Death Knight. Really. I don’t know why the apparent hate or overall disinterest with the Death Knight class. But hey, this is the 21st century. People are free to play dudes what wear dresses or laser chickens until the cows (or Taurens) come home. Hell, I might even start up my own Warlock to satisfy my need to have my nipples tweaked by succubus (succubi?). I am not one to judge people. My only purpose is to dislike them based solely on the fact that they exist.
Speaking of anti-social, sociopathic rants, how ’bout them PTR Patch notes! (Editor’s Note — This makes no sense. Also, take your meds.)
On February 23rd, the following updates were made to Death Knights on the PTR:
- Might of the Frozen Wastes to 15% melee damage (down from 20%).
- Icy Talons increases attack speed by 25% (down from 30%).
- Blood Plague and Frost Fever damage +15% (down from +30%).
- Howling Blast damage to primary target +8% (down from +23%).
- Scourge Strike damage +3.8% (down from 7.7%).
Interesting, but not surprising. Patch 5.2 PTR – Build 16634 will be released soon with the following updates:
- Blood Plague damage and AP scaling reduced by 12%.
- Frost Fever damage and AP scaling reduced by 11%.
Frost
- Howling Blast base damage was reduced by 13%.
- Icy Talons now increases melee attack speed by 15%, down from 30%.
- Might of the Frozen Wastes now causes all melee attacks to deal an additional 15% damage when wielding a two-handed weapon, down from 20%.
Unholy
- Scourge Strike weapon damage reduced to 135% from 140% and additional damage reduced by 9%.
But what does this meeeeean? It means it’s the Public Test Realm. It means Death Knights are so fine, they just need minor tweaks with a handful of their abilities. DK’s are fine. And so the testing goes…
Rokk Talk 