A few weeks ago, I did a post over the new talents and what they would mean for Frost DKs and Death Knights in general. Earlier today Blizzard released the new Talent calculator for all the classes except the monk, and DKs got quite the change. Below is the new tree, the changes from the past, and my thoughts over the new talents as well as the Lv87 Ability.
As previously stated, the new trees have six sets of three, each of which has a focus. You get to choose one of these talents per set, and each set is in increments of 15 levels. Here’s the newly revised tree:
The new talent tree!
Alright, so what’s been changed?
LEVEL 15: SPREAD THE SICKNESS
Roiling Boil – No Change.
Vile Spew – A new talent. Basically, when you use it, one of your undead minions (either from Raise Dead or Army) explodes in an AoE Outbreak and deals minimal damage. If Raise Dead wasn’t a 3 minute CD, I’d like this one. However, it is, so that’s 1 AoE outbreak (and losing your ghoul’s DPS), followed by 5 rounds of manual refresh. (Also, Corpse Explosion seems to have disappeared at this point)
Unholy Blight – This one makes me laugh a little, and not in a ‘haha’ kind of way. Unholy blight is now basically a shroud of Outbreak that lasts 10 seconds and infects everyone within 10 yards. On a 1.5 minute CD, this would allow every other ‘manual refresh’ to be taken care of with the Blight instead. (Outbreak is now the lv81 class talent.)
My Choice: Unholy Blight. Hell Yes. It’s back to being almost the original form that DKs started with, so there’s nostalgia value. In addition, it cuts down on the manual reapply phases you’ll have to do, and its AoE outbreak. Literally, what is not to love?
LEVEL 30: DAMAGE MITIGATION
Lichborne – No change.
Anti-Magic Zone – No Change.
Icy Grip – The new talent. (Bone shield has moved to being a blood-specific ability). Reduces the CD of your DG by 15 seconds and reduces the movement speed of the target by 50% for 6 seconds. I can see this really nice in PvP, to pull and keep enemies where they are, but unless the encounter has a Sapper-like mechanic.
My Choice – Since Bone Shield is gone, I’ll probably take either Icy Grip or AMZ, just depending on the fight.
LEVEL 45: CONTROLLING THE CROWD
Death’s Advance – Slightly changed, no longer requiring your Unholy Runes to be on CD. Still a PvP talent. Still can’t find the energy to care.
Chilblains – No change.
Asphyxiate – No change. Still not a valid CC.
My Choice – Still Chilblains. Nothing has changed here.
LEVEL 60: HEAL ME!
Death Pact – Making up for the fact that Vile Spew kills our ghoul, Death Pact now doesn’t. It just deals 50% of its max health and heals you for 50% of your health. Yes, they doubled the healing done and no longer kill your ghoul. The drawback is that it’s still a 2 minute CD. Unholy will probably like this ability, with their never-die ghoul they can heal themselves.
Death Siphon – Changed. It now does less damage (2920 down from 4701 originally shown before modifiers), costs one Unholy rune, and is on no cooldown. Your only limitation on it appears to be your GCD speed and your DPS loss. It heals you for 75% of the damage dealt. Unholy will also like this one because it is apparently affected by their mastery. (RETRACTION: The tooltip was glitchy. Death Siphon does have a rune cost, but still seems to be a GCD cooldown.)
Vampiric Blood – No change
My Choice – If I was unholy, I’d jump all over Death Siphon and Death Pact and see which worked better. As frost, I’m torn between trying Death Siphon and sticking with VampBlood. I’ll probably try out Death Siphon when it comes out. I like the idea of having my own life in my hands at this point.
LEVEL 75: RUNIC RECOVERY
Blood Tap – No change, aside from still no CD. Still on-use, still random.
Runic Empowerment – No Change
Runic Corruption – Only change is they put a hard number on the chance of proccing in the tooltip: 45%.
My Choice – Still Runic Corruption.
LEVEL 90: GETTIN’ FANCY
Gorefiend’s Grasp – The damage dealt was halved. Other than that, no change.
Remorseless Winter – The damage was cut down to 10% of its old number (3777 down to 374), the range was cut from 10 yards to 8. Other than that, it’s unchanged.
Desecrated Ground – No change.
My Choice – I’m extremely unhappy with the nerf to Remorseless, but I did see it coming. The damage is negligible, which means it’s not particularly useful for ‘a little extra damage’ as I’d said earlier. Now it’s basically a very impressive temp-CC on a minute CD. I may end up taking Gorefiend instead to help tanks with add management.
LEVEL 87: SOUL REAPER
The 87 ability for DK is ‘Soul Reaper’, which takes no runes, is on a 6 second CD, and instantly deals 50% of the melee weapon damage. However, after 5 seconds, if the target is below 35% health, it does an additional 50k shadow damage. If the target dies before that, you get 50% haste.
It’s an execute, basically, but with a delay and the potential to give you 50% haste for a few seconds. I really, really like this ability. I can imagine it making doing quite a bit of damage. It’s once again Shadow Damage, meaning it will probably be affected by Unholy’s mastery. (In my mind, this is infinitely better than the Control Undead, which was at least rumored to be the lv87 ability. It’s been downgraded to lv69 at this point)
With all the Shadow Damage talents, I’m curious to see if it’s going to do anything funny to the Unholy mastery priority. Probably not, but it would be interesting if it did, huh?
Chill of the Grave 