Bornakk
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- 1. Re: Class Q&A Series: Death Knight 06/25/2009 10:13:33 AM PDT
Community Team: One question in particular that relates to one of the earliest designs of the Death Knight class and has been burning on the minds and tongues of every death knight for quite awhile now.
Q: How do we feel about the current viability of dual-wielding? Are there plans to improve it or have it fit a specific role for the class?
Ghostcrawler: This is a controversial topic because we realize some players just aren’t interested in dual-wielding (or seeing any death knights even do it), while others love the faster strikes that come with it. Our design has always been that dual-wielding should be an option, but that also means that it can’t take over, as it often does for classes in which we provide the option.
Part of our goal with the death knight was not to have a tanking or PvP tree, and we feel we’ve been pretty successful with that. However, adding dual-wield to that matrix just gives us an impossible task, because then you need to have the Blood dual-wield tank spec and the Frost two-hander PvP spec and so on.
What we are going to do with dual-wield in 3.2 is just provide the Frost tree with the talents necessary to prop-up dual wielding, including a new talent that lets Frost Strike, Death Strike, Obliterate etc. hit with both weapons. This will likely mean that Blood and Unholy dual-wield specs just won’t work anymore. It also carries the risk that all Frost death knights feel like they have to go dual-wield. This latter part isn’t necessarily a goal, but could be the outcome. We think in this case our only option is to remove some player choice in order to provide a real choice in other areas.
Community Team: The Blood tree has been quite popular lately, but the players have been actively discussing the 51-point talent, Dancing Rune Weapon, lately. Even with the glyph for it, Dancing Rune Weapon only lasts through about one rotation of abilities while the Unholy 51-point talent, Summon Gargoyle, lasts much longer.
Q: Do we have plans for any changes or improvements to Dancing Rune Weapon?
Ghostcrawler: We tried to make Dancing Rune Weapon and Gargoyle unique, but I think it has ended up causing more problems than anything. I think it’s likely you’ll just see both abilities as flat runic power costs that summon a creature for a flat period of time. This will let us balance the numbers appropriately.
Community Team: Due to their effectiveness while tanking, death knights saw a rapid popularity growth as tanks which caused the reduction of the armor bonus of Frost Presence in patch 3.1.3. Some players are afraid this will push them out of being an option as a main tank as they felt they were when originally implemented.
Q: What are our current thoughts on the status of death knight tanks and do we have plans for further changes?
Ghostcrawler: Almost all of the top raiding guilds considered the death knight to be overpowered as a tank and the only real option for many of the Ulduar hard modes. While the community isn’t always right about everything, they are right a lot, and in this case we think the evidence is overwhelming. We wanted to make the cooldowns the unique part of death knight tanking, and we haven’t given up on that design, but it has also turned out that having lots of powerful cooldowns is just an extremely potent way to tank. Many of the Naxx and Ulduar bosses were dangerous from predictable blasts of damage on cooldowns longer than the death knight ones. Plus the cooldowns could be used to survive just a bit longer. When the other tanks could survive two hits, the death knight could survive three. It’s entirely possible you’ll see Icebound Fortitude on a two-minute timer in the 3.2 patch. I want to reiterate though that our vision hasn’t changed -- we still want death knights to be able to tank every encounter. Rather than posting in the forums that you are now doomed and will have to reroll, help us get the death knights in a place where they are an attractive option but not the clear best option on most fights.
Q: How do we feel about the current viability of dual-wielding? Are there plans to improve it or have it fit a specific role for the class?
Ghostcrawler:
Part of our goal with the death knight was not to have a tanking or PvP tree, and we feel we’ve been pretty successful with that. However, adding dual-wield to that matrix just gives us an impossible task, because then you need to have the Blood dual-wield tank spec and the Frost two-hander PvP spec and so on.
What we are going to do with dual-wield in 3.2 is just provide the Frost tree with the talents necessary to prop-up dual wielding, including a new talent that lets Frost Strike, Death Strike, Obliterate etc. hit with both weapons. This will likely mean that Blood and Unholy dual-wield specs just won’t work anymore. It also carries the risk that all Frost death knights feel like they have to go dual-wield. This latter part isn’t necessarily a goal, but could be the outcome. We think in this case our only option is to remove some player choice in order to provide a real choice in other areas.
Community Team: The Blood tree has been quite popular lately, but the players have been actively discussing the 51-point talent, Dancing Rune Weapon, lately. Even with the glyph for it, Dancing Rune Weapon only lasts through about one rotation of abilities while the Unholy 51-point talent, Summon Gargoyle, lasts much longer.
Q: Do we have plans for any changes or improvements to Dancing Rune Weapon?
Ghostcrawler:
Community Team: Due to their effectiveness while tanking, death knights saw a rapid popularity growth as tanks which caused the reduction of the armor bonus of Frost Presence in patch 3.1.3. Some players are afraid this will push them out of being an option as a main tank as they felt they were when originally implemented.
Q: What are our current thoughts on the status of death knight tanks and do we have plans for further changes?
Ghostcrawler:
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