Unholy Presence and arthritisFollow

That's fair, but for the vast majority of users it just got a massive nerf, particularly in soloing and pvp ability.

Let me clarify:

DS is still very useful in raiding, but it's use is generally characterized by the ability for a DK to DS right after a large burst. Since DS is 7% of your health or 20% of the preceding 5 seconds of damage, a raiding DK is likely to see some pretty large returns on the ability. In many cases, Dark Succor would have been irrelevant. In most others, since the DKs were only trying to take stress of the healers, it wasn't a huge loss. In any case, it wasn't a "must have" glyph, just highly recommended.

Maybe most DKs do raid now--IDK. I still assume that raiders are a minority of players.

In PVP, however, it's a very different story. It's highly unlikely that you would have suffered a ton of damage in just 5 seconds (unless you were carrying a flag). So the increase in the minimum threshold was significant. Frost PVP strategies primarily involved around outlasting an opponent. Their ability to do so just took a massive hit--their effective health is essentially 33% lower now.

Unholy, naturally, feels the affects as well. However, they are more about damage than longevity, so it isn't as harsh.

In any place where the ability to DS outside of tanking roles actually mattered, it's a pretty big nerf.

That's what we are talking about--it was just nerfed to 7% health minimum.

They're removing Glyph of Dark Succor in 4.2?

That... that makes no sense. Why add something and then remove it again?

Meh.

I guess I'm not giving up on my Druid just yet. Glyph of Ferocious Bite looks yummy in 4.2.

Just hit 85 with my DK last night, and Maz I totally see where you're coming from with the arthritis comment lol. I'm constantly pressing buttons. I switched from 2H to DW when I hi 85, just to give it a try and see how I liked it, and I gotta say I love it.

Call me a dork all you want, but I love the flips! So cool looking. And the DPS is just insane... I went out and bought 2 BoE maces from the troll dungeons off the AH, and in my first heroic I was doing 11k. Craziness.

DW definitely plays slower, but it's still too fast with Unholy Presence.

Wish they'd switch it around so that DW was the fast playstyle and 2h was the slow(er). Dual-wielding Death Knights... psh. And maces even! They're called Runeblades for a reason, dammit!

I'll admit DK's using maces is kind of silly... but I'm not complaining. My maces helped me do 11k on bosses in my first heroic. I haven't noticed there being being a speed difference between the two different frost specs really. Even though my haste is going up though, it seems like I'm getting rune locked more often instead of less often, which is kind of annoying. With Blood Tap having a minute CD and Empowered Rune Weapon having a 5 minute CD, there's not much I can do when I get rune locked, and it kinda sucks.

Paladins though, I think swords make sense for a paladin. Axes not so much...

Edited, Jun 30th 2011 2:34pm by PigtailsOfDoom

Okay, maybe in an exclusively WoW lore ideal it doesn't make sense. Generally speaking though, a typical paladin with a sword makes sense to me.

But she has big boobs so it's okay.

Yup, it's good to be a C. Or better. =x

That was supposed to be a play on "It's good to be the king" but I think I failed.

Had kinda kept an eye on this thread wanting to see where it was going.

My DK is 2H frost (unholy presence per the usual recommendations) and, much to my surprise, Rawr's recommendations have focused me away from haste stacking and instead capping hit (easily done) and *gasp* expertise.

With 346+ gear I've capped expertise out too. While I will randomly get the "no runes/no runic power" for a second, I don't feel my dps has suffered and it has slowed down the button mashing I used to compare with my rogue.

I don't know if this method of stat stacking is optimal, but a lesser frenzied button mashing feel and not having to worry about being behind the target (except for nasty cleaves :P) has opened a new perspective for my DK's playstyle.

Yeah, capping hit and expertise are kind of implied for most melee specs.