Not only warlock,but also Deathknight has some big talent tree changes as well.
New Abilities
There are several new abilities that Death Knights are going to have access to past level 80, they are as follows below.
Outbreak – Outbreak is a new way to infest targets with diseases. It will be available at level 81 and lets a Death Knight apply both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This is a huge change as it will allow DK’s to get diseases up on a new target quickly in one step and still have all the runes they need to start a full DPS rotation right off the bat.
Necrotic Strike – Necrotic Strike is a new attack that Death Knights will gain access to at level 83. It is an attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. It is described as instead of doing 8,000 damage it would do something like 6,000 but absorb the next 4,000 healing done to the target.
In effect it is much like a Mortal Strike, since the damage done is not high, but the healing required to get the target back to full health is fairly large. I for one thing this is an awesome looking new ability for PvP that will give Death Knights a really solid ability while still allowing them to feel different than other classes with a Mortal Strike type ability.
Dark Simulacrum - This ability will be gained at level 85 and is kind of similar to a spell reflect further enhancing the Death Knights anti-caster abilities. Mechanic wise it is different than a spell reflect since it is really a debuff applied to the Death Knights target that copies a spell that they cast and sends it back at them, the original spell still hits the Death Knight. If a reflect wouldn’t normally work, neither will this. It seems like a good effect in both PvE and PvP, although the burst nature and player killing ability seems more tuned to PvP against casters.
Class Mechanic Changes
The big change with the class mechanics coming is the way the rune system will work. While the system works, Blizzard feels it could be better. They want Death Knights to feel less constrained by the system and allow them to do more with it.
The first part of the change is that essentially each type of rune will now be considered one rune that goes from 0-200% full. This means that if you use both blood runes, the first one will start filling before the second, but you can use it as soon as the first one if full. Instead of six separate 10 second times you know have 3 10 second times that have an overflow to 200%.
While it could sound like a null change, it can make a huge difference to how the class plays. Over time you will have less runes available to be used since the first one of each type must fill before the next one starts. As a result Blizzard also stated that abilities are going to have to be retuned to do more to compensate for the lower availability of the runes.
It has also been stated that haste will play a part in how fast runes fill, but no numbers have been provided yet. This will be a big tuning issue to resolve and it will be interesting to see what the cap will be for Haste on DK’s in Cataclysm, because in theory it could become the most important stat so that you drive the rune refill fast enough to use abilities constantly between the global cool downs.
Talent Tree Changes
The big talent tree changes were announced earlier this week by Ghostcrawler and are fairly substantial. Essentially Frost becomes a dual wield spec, Unholy a DPS / Pet Spec, and Blood the tanking Spec. I’ll let Ghostcrawlers words speak for them self here:
Quote from Blizzard official site:
We’re doing our Cataclysm preview on the death knight changes later this week, but we knew one change risked overshadowing all the others, so we figured we’d go ahead and drop the proverbial Blood bomb today.
In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.
We’ll go into more detail in the upcoming preview, but we wanted to take the opportunity to explain the reasoning for such a big change.
Why the about face? We actually thought the “tri tank” experiment worked out okay. We suspected there would always be a “best” tanking tree, because that’s the way these things shake out, but we hoped it would be close enough that many players could tank with their favorite tree. When we tried out this design for Wrath of the Lich King, we were using it as a test case to see if we wanted to do similar things with the warrior and paladin talent trees.
A lot has happened since that time. We introduced the dual-spec feature, allowing players to have a tanking spec and dps spec that they could switch between. We introduced Dungeon Finder, which makes it easier to find players who want to tank, and even let players level up using a dedicated tank spec. In Cataclysm, we are introducing the concept of passive talent tree bonuses and we think that feature is a lot stronger when the talent tree has a particular focus (such as damage, tanking or healing). For example, it’s safer to give more passive damage to a tanking tree than we can a dps tree. Above all, we were just spending a lot of effort trying to balance three trees (though it was really six trees, since each tree was trying to do two things).
It started to feel unfair to the other tank classes that we had to spend so much effort tweaking three types of DK tanks, and it even started to feel unfair to the DK that we couldn’t focus their tanking experience. One bit of feedback that really struck home was the DK players who said, essentially, “I look at the Protection tree and I’m jealous of all of the cool tools they have to help their tanking. As a DK, I have to pick and choose tanking talents from within a sea of dps talents.” Rather than have a strong focus, the trees felt a little watered down because they were trying to do so much. With Frost as a dual-wield, spell and runic power focused tree, Unholy as a disease and minion focused tree, and Blood as a self-healing, defensive cooldown, tanking tree, we think the focus of each tree is a lot clearer and cooler.
In Cataclysm, Blood will be the death knight version of a Protection tree. It will have passive talent tree bonuses that reflect tanking. It will have tools, such as a Demo Shout equivalent, necessary for tanking. Several of the more fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved into Blood. We will be able to revise (or even remove) clunky mechanics like Rune Strike and focus on letting DKs generate threat with their normal Blood tanking rotation.
This is major change, and we understand it will be met with some disappointment from players who really liked the flexibility, those who appreciated the unorthodox talent tree design, or those few of you who really liked Blood dps. Nevertheless, we are convinced that this is the right change for the game.
Overall I like this change. While it was cool that all three trees “could” tank, it made it very confusing for non-DK’s as to what was going on. All other tanking classes had one dedicated tree and it makes sense to consolidate the best abilities to one tree for DK’s as well. It will allow Blizzard to move all the best tanking abilities to one place and improve how the class plays each role.
When the tanking from any tree was first brought about it was so that a DK could be what they chose and still tank. With dual spec available to players that isn’t really an issue any more, since players that want to tank will have a tank spec and a DPS spec.
Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Along with the new abilities and mechanic changes Blizzard also outlined the new mastery bonuses that Death Knights will receive.
Blood DKs will be the new tank build and gain extra damage reduction, vengeance, and Healing Absorption. Vengeance is a new mechanic being added to all tanks to ensure their threat and damage dealing ability does not fall behind DPS classes. Vengeance will apply a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done to them up to a maximum of 10% of the character unbuffed health. Healing absorption is a new ability that will place a kind of bubble on you that will absorb some incoming damage after you have healed yourself with an ability.
Frost Death Knights will gain additional melee damage, melee haste, and runic power generation. Not much was said about the runic power generation, but the name alone implies that you will either generate if faster passively or through abilities.
Lastly, Unholy Death Knights will gain additional melee damage, melee and spell critical damage, and additional disease damage. The disease damage is the critical one here since so much of an unholy DKs abilities are structured around their diseases.
Overall
Overall the Death Knight changes look pretty solid. Making each talent tree do a distinct thing will bring them inline with other classes and make them less confusing and more focuses. Giving them a few more PvP abilities should allow them to compete more evenly with Warriors in arena PvP. I love the new way to apply diseases with one hit rather than wasting runes and global cooldowns in your rotation. The only down side is runes being available less often, however since diseases can be applied without runes, and abilities will do more, it may not be as big a deal as it first appears.
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