DK Questions

[Shadowscar]

Hi everybody, im just a little curious if someone could explain to me the death knight talent trees a bit like witch one are for what purposes how they inflict damage etc.. tyvm for your time as well as maybe link a few DK builds

[Theleb]

DeathKnight.info - Index

I normally go there for any sort of DK info, and for indepth theorcrafting I go to EJ.

They're a complex class and some of the mechanics are still only now coming to light but their primarily a DPS/Tank hybrid that inflict damage via melee attacks and diseases - the amount and virulence of said diseases depends strongly on which tree(s) the DK has invested in. If you look at the talent calculator DK's are a break-away from the oldschool "Tree X is for Tanking, Tree Y is for DPS" because there are viable DPS and Tanking talents in each tree - the only tree that really screams "THIS IS MY FORTE" would be Unholy for PvP and even then you can definately employ other builds with aplomb.

Their spells fall into two categories - Shadow and Frost (yes, there's some quite insane synergy with Frost Mages that may or may not be nerfed before live).

If you go here:

Wrath of the Lich King - Death Knight - Blood Skills

There's a talent calculator, as well as a breakdown of spells/talents from each Tree (Blood/Unholy/Frost).

The biggest stumbling block at the moment for many people is the resource management system of Runic Power (from 0 - 100) and Runes (every Deathknight has 2 Blood, 2 Unholy and 2 Frost runes. Earlier builds allowed you to customise this quota but led to insanely powerful builds - 5k+ dps Blood builds for example).

Abilities cost either a rune (or runes) or runic power. Runes, once used (aside from talents) refresh in 10 seconds and Runic Power is built up by using spells/talents which generate Runic Power - you can then dump runic power into other spells and talents which are normally dependant on the amount of runic power available.

Diseases themselves are DoTs and depending on which spec you choose there are options to get from 2 - 4 diseases on a target. Some abilities deal damage based on the amount of disases on the target Obliterate - Wowhead Search and some increase the damage/duration of these diseases Epidemic - Wowhead Search.

I could waffle on for ages and not manage to illuminate you any further - you should definately go check out some links there and check out a couple of video's for a better idea of how they work.

[Shadowscar]

tyvm for the info

[levinho]

Basically, the blood tree gives you some personal dps talents that also give personal and group heals based on the damage you do. It also has a talent rune tap that is sort of like a healthstone, but cannot be shared and uses one of your blood rune charges. Almost everybody in beta is using this tree to level because of rune tap, blood aura, and blood worms, which provide quite a bit of heals.

The frost tree is more of the tanking tree and also has the abilities that allow death knights to kite mobs and cc. It has talents that reduce party and raid damage and also increase party resistance. It also has talents that reduce mob movement, attack and casting speed as well as talents that increase armor and parry.

The unholy tree is my personal favorite and the one I have been playing. It has talents that increase damage of the diseases and also add things like +13% damage to spells to the mob with the disease and an anti magic field. Unholy also turns the 2min ghoul into a pet that you keep till death. I expect the best overall raid dps from this tree.

All in all DK is fun but vastly unbalanced right now. It's disgusting to have seen all DK instance runs because of the massive group heals from dps. It was also annoying to have people running around with 30 ghouls at once. I expect it will be a really good class but considering my play experience with it i'm wondering how raid synergy is going to be affected by DK's. I'm not so sure that tanking is what they should be in the raid for. I am thinking that the support abilities blood and unholy trees bring are going to be more in demand.

[doogless]

Frost isn't really the tanking tree, or at least not since they redesigned them. They spread tanking talents across all 3 trees, although a lot of people spec into Frost for Howling Blast (very good for multi-mob threat), Lichborne (good for an extra avoidance boost), and Unbreakable Armor (good for an extra mitigation boost). There's also some DKs who prefer Unholy for tanking because of Bone Shield, but there's no single "tank" tree like for Paladins or Warriors. Currently their threat is pretty amazing, but they have some problems with the "not dying" part of tanking. I did Halls of Stone (level 77 instance) with a DK tank, and the only issue seemed to be that some bosses just plain hit him too hard, and he was wearing the full blue crafted tank set (so it's not like his gear was lacking).

DK DPS is pretty insane right now, specifically Dancing Rune Weapon. It ends up being a 100% DPS increase when it's out, and if you have 100 RP when you activitate it and use it every cooldown, it ends up being out about 30% of the time. 30% damage increase for 1 talent point is pretty amazing, but it was mentioned by Ghostcrawler that it's going to get toned down.

DKs in PvP hit really hard, and Death Grip is really annoying! You'll be minding your own business, nuking people from range and then BAM you're in the middle of 5 angry horde.