- Blightcaller (Mastery) has been redesigned and renamed Dreadblade. It increases all Shadow damage by 2.5% per point of mastery. With the current design causing Unholy DKs to completely ignore all mastery this comes as a welcomed change. With 20% shadow damage being base line this will be just above Crit in our stat rankings.
- Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%. 20% reduction to enrage pet damage will be a big blow for us. The pet should be usually around 30-40% of our overall damage, so this will be quite a bit of dps lost for us.
- Death’s Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 75/100% of normal movement speed. Finally a talent that lets DKs not be kited by every other class in the game! A very welcomed change, while finding 2 talent points we can use for this talent may be a big choice, definitely a necessary talent for pvp.
- Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike. This should of been in since they released Cataclysm! But better late than never.
- The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third. Not a huge nerf, but with our pvp spec having 3/3 in this, you should cap rp just fine if your taking some heat.
- Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%. A 9% strike damage reduction will hit our dps, but not be as bad since Necrotic Strike will be our main source of pressure.
- Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura. This is a very nice change, as it was before the patch you wouldn't want to reproc RC when it was up as you would lose time on the buff that way. Now you can DC back to back without having to worry as much about those procs overwriting themselves.
- Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%. The pet nerf carried down from above.
- Sudden Doom is now triggered only from main-hand auto attacks, and is normalized according to weapon speed rather than having a fixed percentage chance. This change won't affect pvp at all, it was done to stop DKs from being Unholy DW in pve.
- Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%. A 5% strength nerf is huge! With my DK having in the range of 5k str in pvp gear, this will hit all damage i do.
- Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage. The change to the talent comes as Blizzard rolls in 9% hit for our spells into the class itself, making hitting that cap not require the talent, we will now skip this talent for pvp.
Glyphs
- Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence. This is a nice addition to the DK arsenal, a way of using DS to actually gain some health, but i think it should of been left at 20% like it was on the PTR, the way our runes work will not allow you to have more than 3 back to back in the very best case scenario, while 1 will be the norm to get off with runes.
- Glyph of Death’s Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne. This is a HUGE nerf to our self healing, letting only 3 DCs off with a full bar instead of the 6-7 we could get with this glyph, the glyph will still be taken as it affect DCs sent to your pet for healing him.
Runeforging
- Swordbreaking and Swordshattering now reduce disarm duration by 60%, up from 50%. They changed all disarms to 60%, so this is just following suit. All DKs should have a second weapon with this on it for fighting players who can disarm them.
A lot of changes are happening tomorrow (err today depending on your timezone) so buckle down and wait for the storm. I believe there are too many nerfs in store for the unholy DK, but only time will tell if blizzard agrees with me.
