With a new Beta Build on the test servers, there are a massive amount of talent changes to Death Knight. Many of them have been hinted at on the test servers for eons. The new disease changes are in, as is the changing of Chains of Ice's Snare component to an undispellable physical effect. You can check out the full list of changes here.
Among the new changes is a very extensive revamp of the Unholy tree, which features quite a bit of talent consolidation and quite a few new and interesting mechanics and abilities. Actually, the current build may very well mark the rise of the Unholy Tree, with the changes making it an amazing tree for grinding and PvP.
As a disclaimer, there's still lot of bugs in this build. Many abilities don't seem to be working quite right, especially Blood Caked Blade (which only hits for 1-4 damage based on the number of diseases instead of 60% weapon damage per disease), Raise Dead, and Night of the Dead. Because of that, it's often hard to say how or if an ability would be better or worse if it actually worked. Therefore, I'll be discussing the abilities based on if they actually did work, backed with some feel for them from Death Knight play on the Beta Servers.
The biggest PvP problem for Death Knight can be summed up one word is mobility. Most of a Death Knight's major damage moves require that a person be in melee range. To some extent, this can be fixed with a quick application of Death Grip. However, Death Grip has a somewhat restrictive cooldown (which is probably needed), and after a Death Grip, the victim is not snared or stunned, making it easy for them to run back out to range and beyond the Death Knight's reach. In this case this problem is the cost and cooldown, which give more than enough chance for the target to escape by waiting out the Death Knight's Frost runes.
A more dependable snare is a part and parcel for Death Knight. The suggestion seems to come up that the most regarding this is around the Frost talent Chilblains, which applies a six second snare on victims of the new Frost Fever disease. If it were converted a two-pointed talent and switched with Glacier Rot, a first tier Frost talent that boosts the damage of deep Frost talented abilities for the most part. It could be picked up by and PvP build. That's to say, it could offer the dependable snare that we long for.
Superior Mobility is mostly provided from Unholy Aura and Desecration talents. Consider Desecration a bit like a reverse Frost Trap. Cast Icy Touch on a person, Death Grip them over to you, and if you can keep them in range long enough to apply Scourge Strike and follow them up with an Obliterate, you've suddenly done a while lot of damage to them and stuck them in the middle of a nice patch of ground that they'll be hard pressed to get out of. Likewise, Unholy Presence combined with Unholy Aura will give you and your teammates an even greater edge against anyone who decides to run.
The nice thing about Unholy as it stands is that it makes Ghouls viable in PvP and it shores up some of the primary weaknesses of a Death Knight in PvP by providing superior mobility and protection from dispelling.
Among the new changes is a very extensive revamp of the Unholy tree, which features quite a bit of talent consolidation and quite a few new and interesting mechanics and abilities. Actually, the current build may very well mark the rise of the Unholy Tree, with the changes making it an amazing tree for grinding and PvP.
As a disclaimer, there's still lot of bugs in this build. Many abilities don't seem to be working quite right, especially Blood Caked Blade (which only hits for 1-4 damage based on the number of diseases instead of 60% weapon damage per disease), Raise Dead, and Night of the Dead. Because of that, it's often hard to say how or if an ability would be better or worse if it actually worked. Therefore, I'll be discussing the abilities based on if they actually did work, backed with some feel for them from Death Knight play on the Beta Servers.
The biggest PvP problem for Death Knight can be summed up one word is mobility. Most of a Death Knight's major damage moves require that a person be in melee range. To some extent, this can be fixed with a quick application of Death Grip. However, Death Grip has a somewhat restrictive cooldown (which is probably needed), and after a Death Grip, the victim is not snared or stunned, making it easy for them to run back out to range and beyond the Death Knight's reach. In this case this problem is the cost and cooldown, which give more than enough chance for the target to escape by waiting out the Death Knight's Frost runes.
A more dependable snare is a part and parcel for Death Knight. The suggestion seems to come up that the most regarding this is around the Frost talent Chilblains, which applies a six second snare on victims of the new Frost Fever disease. If it were converted a two-pointed talent and switched with Glacier Rot, a first tier Frost talent that boosts the damage of deep Frost talented abilities for the most part. It could be picked up by and PvP build. That's to say, it could offer the dependable snare that we long for.
Superior Mobility is mostly provided from Unholy Aura and Desecration talents. Consider Desecration a bit like a reverse Frost Trap. Cast Icy Touch on a person, Death Grip them over to you, and if you can keep them in range long enough to apply Scourge Strike and follow them up with an Obliterate, you've suddenly done a while lot of damage to them and stuck them in the middle of a nice patch of ground that they'll be hard pressed to get out of. Likewise, Unholy Presence combined with Unholy Aura will give you and your teammates an even greater edge against anyone who decides to run.
The nice thing about Unholy as it stands is that it makes Ghouls viable in PvP and it shores up some of the primary weaknesses of a Death Knight in PvP by providing superior mobility and protection from dispelling.
