Filed under: (Death Knight) Lichborne

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

By the time you read this, patch 5.3 should be on live servers. We've already written a couple columns on what patch 5.3 will mean for death knights, but as always, things change on the PTR. With that in mind, this week we'll take a final look at patch 5.3 for death knights and what you can expect and do once the servers are back up (if they aren't already). I also have a couple notes on completing Wrathion's legendary quest line for death knights.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

In a recent update on the patch 5.3 PTR, Blizzard applied an update that applied some unexpected changes to the death knight unholy tree, most of them nerfs.

Blizzard

Death Knight

Unholy

• Festering Strike now deals 175% weapon damage, down from 200%.
• Scourge Strike now deals 165% weapons damage, up from 135%.
• Unholy Might now increases the Death Knight's Strength by 10%, down from 15%.

source

This has, unsurprisingly, left many death knights at a loss. After patch 5.2 seemed to cure unholy's woes and allow it to at least be a viable and fun alternative to frost, these nerfs came as a surprise. Frost is so far still the more damaging death knight DPS spec in patch 5.2, so the idea that unholy is the one that got nerfs was somewhat discouraging.

That said, it might not be as bad as you think. It's worth noting that in the long run, the Scourge Strike buff should cancel out the nerfs to Festering Strike and Unholy Might, at least in theory. This brings to mind one question as to what this shifting of damage toward Scourge Strike is actually meant to accomplish. Essentially, the main purpose here appears to be a nerf to festerblight.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

With BlizzCon officially announced, the question on everyone's lips is whether or not we'll get a new expansion announcement. Myself, I'm pretty sure it's a done deal, which makes this a perfect time to speculate and daydream about the inevitable changes that will come with patch 6.0. Today, we'll dream a bit about what could be coming for death knights.

Swelling the armies

It's been more or less traditional that we do get a new ability every time the level caps get raised. Whether this tradition will continue or not is admittedly hard to say. A lot of classes are already suffering from "button bloat," and Blizzard may want to shy away from adding new buttons. In addition, not adding new buttons may give them more leeway to adjust other buttons, as well as ensure classes don't get too powerful or infringe on other class' territory.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

With patch 5.2 having, if not solved, at least soothed most of our balance problems, patch 5.3 seems like a relatively quiet patch for death knights. Our class changes are a handful of relatively small fixes.

That said, there's still a good amount of content coming. Today, we'll look at patch 5.3 content and what it offers for the death knight. Note that what we're discussing today is primarily PTR content, and thus may not make it live, or will make it live in a slightly different format.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

A few weeks back, I wrote a column singing the praises of the patch 5.2 death knight. I definitely stand by that column. Death knights remain a solid, fun class to play this patch. That said, there's always problems. Some of them probably won't ever be solved by patch changes. Today, we're going to look at some of the sillier death knight problems I've been dealing with lately, and see if there's any chance of relief for them.

My weapon won't drop

This is a problem I've had for ages. It seems like ever since Wrath, my death knight has had to wait a little longer for the weapon I actually want to wield because either it never drops or because someone else generally wins the roll or pays more DKP than me.

I, of course, do my best to do a little bit of every spec every patch because I want to be able to report on DK issues first hand, but my first death knight love and my main spec will always be some form of two-handed DPS.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Hit rating and expertise are the life blood of the max level PvE death knight. DPS death knights need exactly 7.5% hit rating and 7.5% expertise to avoid missing raid bosses or having their attacks dodged outright. Even tanks, while a miss is less of a big deal for them, may find hit and expertise helps them keep threat and prevent key debuffs from falling off the mob. They're so powerful that if you aren't near those caps, your DPS will suffer horribly, and in most cases, the one thing you do to increase raid DPS is to hit those caps if you aren't at them already.

Now, this is what we have reforging and regemming for though, right? Sometimes it's just not that simple. Today, we'll take a look at the problems with hit gear and suggest some solutions.

The big problem is that once hit and expertise do their job of letting you hit the mob, they are almost literally useless. Dual wielders get a little bit of extra help for their normal weapon hits, but 2 handed wielders get literally nothing else out of them at all. They're dead stats. Arguably, it's bad even if you are at the 7.5% caps, because that means you have a bit of hit and expertise. and expertise rating that's not needed for daily questing or dungeon runs, or even for most raid trash.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Death knights have long been notorious for their insane survivability since they were first introduced. Over the years, a lot of it has been nerfed, but a lot remains. While blood knight survivability feels somewhat obvious, it's a little harder to see what unholy and frost death knights have going for them. Today, we're going to examine how DPS death knights can use their skills to stay alive when the heat is on.

Anti-Magic Shell

Anti-Magic Shell remains one of the most versatile and underrated tools in our arsenal. By absorbing most of the magical damage from a massive magical attack, it allows us to stay in position longer than other classes, and save ourselves from own mistakes in some cases.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

With patch 5.2 well underway, by now you've probably spent a good amount of time on the Isle of Thunder. There's lots of fun stuff to dig into there. For the most part, non-raid content seems designed so that most classes can deal with it with a minimum of fuss. Still, some classes will have an advantage, and this time, death knights are among them. Today we'll look at a few ways in which you can use your death knight specific skills to make your time on the Isle of Thunder more profitable.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

DPS guides are usually pretty straightforward. You have your damage rotation, your stat priorities for gear, and maybe an extra section with some tips on using some of your more esoteric abilities. Tank guides get a little bit more slippery, though. Sure, you can cover some of the same stuff you cover in a DPS guide, included stat priorities and tips and tricks for using specific abilities, but a tank will operate on a different level. They need to know when to use their defensive cool downs. They need to know when specific boss fights may require them to switch up gear. In some cases, they need to know certain intangible things about a boss and about raiding or grouping that it doesn't seem like DPS quite need to deal with. These aren't things that will ever really involve using Death Strike, but they may be just as important to being a successful tank as Death Strike ever will be.

This week, we'll take a look at some of these intangible things and discuss ways to make sure you're on top of them. Most of this will apply primarily to pickup groups, since at the raiding level, it's easier (or at least necessary) to make sure even healers and DPS know this stuff. But if you're in Raid Finder, boy howdy will you want to keep this advice in mind.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

With patch 5.2 in full swing, we've had time to take stock of the changes, not just in terms of new content, but in terms of the buffs and nerfs our classes received. I'm just going to come out and say it. As a class, death knights feel about the best they've been since the Wrath era. There's a lot of great stuff to be excited about, so let's go down the list.

Unholy is fun again

Unholy has, as a spec, been sort of on the outside since Cataclysm. Blizzard's revamp, which put unholy on a different rune spending scheme from the other specs and pulled it even further away from weapon damage and toward special ability damage, created a unique melee spec, but the complications and weaknesses that came with that spec were a bit much for many people, and with frost generally beating it in both DPS and simplicity, the spec gained a reputation for being played only by the most hard headed diehards.

Patch 5.2 came along and bought with it a much needed unholy revamp. The addition of Frost Fever to Plague Strike alone has helped make unholy's rotation smoother and more intuitive, as well as made target switching feel at least a little less punishing. AoE is still a little more awkward, but with Icy Touch on Reaping, you can at least get through that first setup and get to the main AoE rotation a lot more smoothly.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

This week, we'll face down the final few bosses of Throne of Thunder to see what loot they have. After that, we'll take a look at our valor point offerings and the world bosses of patch 5.2 for their loot. This will round out our look at patch 5.2's loot, and as with the last 2 weeks, the same disclaimers apply. Since this is based on PTR information, drops can change. In addition, this preview focuses on normal gear, so your gearing priorities may change if you get thunderforged gear or heroic gear.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

We continue our loot preview this week by delving into the Forgotten Depths and Halls of Flesh-Shaping in the Throne of Thunder. The same disclaimers apply as did last week. Since this is based on PTR information, drops can change. In addition, this preview focuses on normal gear, so your gearing priorities may change if you get Thunderforged gear or heroic gear.

With that in mind, lets dig in and see what the next six bosses of Patch 5.2's Throne of Thunder raid have to offer.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

With the PTR getting closer to release, it's about time to start looking forward to that most cherished of patch rituals, the changing of the gear. Today, we will look at the first few bosses of Throne of Thunder and see what they have in store for death knights.

There are a few words of warning to offer here. First, this is based off PTR Info, which means they may or may not decide to adjust, remove, or add loot before it goes live. Second, this information is based off normal mode raid loot. You may find monkey wrenches thrown into the gearing process courtesy of both heroic gear and Thunderforged gear, which can be 6 ilvls higher than usual for the item. You will have to make your own judgement calls in cases where you have access to that gear. Adding to the complication is the fact that tier gear won't be Thunderforged, meaning you may have to give up some Thunderforged gear despite the higher ilvl in order to keep set bonuses.

We'll first look at the bosses in the The Last Stand of the Zandalari, the first section of the Throne of Thunder.

When a new patch comes, especially one with some major class changes like patch 5.2, it becomes a good time to reflect on your play style and priorities. Does your spec serve those priorities? With a new patch coming, it's a good time to experiment with new stuff. You can do it pretty easily on the PTR, and when the patch goes live, the game's got some fresh new content, so it's as good excuse as any to jump into a new spec and get used to it while killing trolls for all these new quests. You'll also be getting new gear, so changing up gearing priorities becomes easier.

Today, we'll take a quick look at all the death knight specs, with some of their pros and cons, so you can make a solid judgment call as to whether to switch and try something new, or stick with the familiar. This isn't meant to a complete guide to playing each spec, just a quick overview so you can decide if the play style and responsibilities of the spec are right for you.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

In the weeks since the patch 5.2 PTR has been up, death knight changes have held pretty steady. The announced unholy changes have stayed in place, and so far seem to be working out much as expected, making the spec a little easier to handle and overall promising to put unholy in a better place once patch 5.2 comes out. That said, there have been a few other tweaks added, as well as the revealing of the tier 15 raid gear set bonuses. Today, we'll dig into these changes and see how they're stacking up.

Tier 15 death knight DPS bonuses

• Death Knight T15 DPS 2P Bonus Your attacks have a chance to raise the spirit of a fallen Zandalari as your Death Knight minion for 15 sec.
• Death Knight T15 DPS 4P Bonus Your Soul Reaper ability now deals additional Shadow Damage to targets below 45% instead of below 35%. Additionally, Killing Machine now also increases the critical strike chance of Soul Reaper.

I'm going to be honest, I'm a little bit in love with the current 2 piece DPS bonus, if only for the flavor. A few columns back, I mentioned that one of my wildest dream updates for death knights would be a Wild Imps style ghoul summoning, and the 2 piece tier 15 bonus is sort of probably the closest we'll come to that. We'll need more solid parses to see if stacks up damage bonus wise, but in flavor, I'm pretty excited for it. The biggest issue here may be if the summoned pets end up dying prematurely to mobs before they can do their damage.