Patch 3.3.3 Notes, A.K.A. Blizzard Loves Me

As of this writing, the Patch 3.3.3 notes have some pretty delicious changes for Death Knights, especially of the Frost DW variety. Go on, take a look at them. I'll wait.

Done? Excellent.

There are three of these that I find particularly exciting for DW Frost in general and my playstyle in particular:

• Nerves of Cold Steel: Now increases off-hand damage by 8/16/25%, up from 5/10/15%.

This is just a nice, straightforward DPS buff for DW. Any attack based on weapon damage, including some of our staples like Obliterate and Frost Strike, get a nice little buff from this talent by working alongside Threat of Thassarian. This will also buff threat generation for tanks as Nerves of Cold Steel was already a staple of DW tanking specs.

• Icy Touch: This ability now causes a very high amount of threat while the death knight is in Frost Presence.

The implications of this are obvious, targeted at tanks of any spec. One of our lead-off spells, and a ranged one at that, now generates extra threat when in Frost Presence. I see this as a sign that Blizzard is trying to move people away from the single-disease Glyph of Howling Blast tanking style that's become popular of late. When single- or no-disease rotations have become popular in the past Blizzard has made changes to make them less desirable, and they seem to be continuing to assert that a two-disease (or three-disease for Unholy) rotation is the way they intend the class to play.

• Improved Icy Talons: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc. The self haste buff remains unchanged.


• Glyph of Disease: When this glyph causes Frost Fever to be refreshed, it will now also trigger a refresh of Icy Talons. (This is further down under the "Items" header.)

Now, the first of these two changes seems to negate the second, but a blue post has since explained that the glyph change was implemented before they decided to phase out ability-procced raid buffs across a number of classes. What this effectively does is make Glyph of Disease viable for Frost DKs who were only loved for their ability to keep Improved Icy Talons up for a raid group. I've spoken before of my fondness for Glyph of Disease for keeping your diseases up at a minimal cost, and this will enable you to do that without getting chewed out by your raid leader. I also note the second change because it shows that this is something Blizzard intends for us to be able to do rather than just a nice side-effect of the change to ability-procced buffs.

Of course, this is all subject to change, and I assure you if it does I'll let you know with a nice round of QQing. In the meantime, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that this goes live.

On "Rotations", Part 2: DPS

On Friday I posted about a fairly standard tanking rotation for Frost Death Knights, and I'd recommend at least glancing over that article first since I'll be referring to it a bit here. Death Knights produce threat by DPS, so the abilities that generate the most threat, with a couple exceptions, also generate the most DPS. There was a little controversy in the comments about another rotation that's gained some popularity, and if that rotation becomes a little more accepted I'll write up an article on it as well, but for now I'm focusing on the best-known Frost rotation that also, IMO, gives the best idea of how the class is intended to function.

I will note again that this rotation is helped immensely by having Glyph of Disease, which causes Pestilence to refresh your diseases on all targets. If you prefer not to use that, you'll have to add another Icy Touch > Plague Strike to refresh the diseases. It's very important to keep your diseases up! You may even want to look into an addon to help you track them if you don't have one already.

Again, your rotation will vary slightly depending on whether you're fighting a single target or AoEing. Frost is excellent for AoEs thanks to the high AoE damage of its signature 51-point ability, Howling Blast. I usually start off with Icy Touch > Plague Strike to get my diseases up, a Pestilence to spread the love around, Howling Blast, and then a Blood Strike to turn over that last Blood Rune. You want to make sure Frost Fever is up on everything before even bothering with Howling Blast. After that it's just a matter of hitting Howling Blast whenever it's available, Frost Strike to dump HP, Pestilence when you need to refresh diseases (or Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Pestilence if you're not glyphed for it), Obliterate whenever your runes are refreshed and Howling Blast is still on cooldown, and Blood Strike to flip Blood Runes. And be sure to take advantage of those Killing Machine and Freezing Fog/Rime procs! I generally skip Death and Decay when DPSing because I'd rather spend those runes on Howling Blast. You can try it if you really trust your tank, but I wouldn't recommend it with anything but a paladin or another DK, and not until they have a good tight hold on the group. It's a decent enough AoE DoT, but it does generate extra threat, relies on keeping the mobs standing in it, and at a whopping 1 of each Rune it's the most expensive ability in your arsenal.

On a single target, just as when tanking, you want to focus on Obliterate over Howling Blast unless you have a Freezing Fog/Rime proc. Killing Machine procs can be put to use with Frost Strikes unless Freezing Fog/Rime is up. Even on a single target, it's better to use Pestilence to refresh your diseases if you're glyphed for it.

The main differences between the Frost tanking and DPS rotations, beside the hopefully obvious difference that you're doing it in Blood Presence instead of Frost Presence, are the lack of Death and Decay, the lack of Rune Strike, and the lack of bothering with your mitigation cooldowns unless you really feel like popping Anti-Magic Shell (or as I call it, the Banshee Bubble) so you can keep standing in that Blizzard. Unbreakable Armor is also back to giving a Strength bonus, so it's still worth speccing into and using even for DPS. And pop a ghoul every so often! If Rune Strike does proc there's not much reason not to use it, but if you just dodged something that means you've gotten something's attention and you might want to throttle back for the tank to pick it up. For me it's extremely easy to switch between the two since they're so similar. Your biggest difference is going to be gearing, which is a subject for a whole 'nother post.

But before that, we'll be discussing something that's become a hot topic lately: How Not To PuG.

On "Rotations", Part 1: Tanking

I often get asked what my rotation is, and the idea of "rotations" as something to strictly follow is a pretty strong one in the WoW theorycrafting community, but personally I don't feel they're as valid for Death Knights as a spell priority. There is a particular sequence I always use for starting combat, but once that has been established it's largely a matter of using the best abilities for the resources I have available. Death Knights have a complicated resource system, and it lends itself to a much more reactive playstyle than, say, a mage. As always, my advice is heavily biased toward Frost, but can be adjusted for your spec of choice.

I should start by saying that I can't lavish enough praise on Glyph of Disease. It's vastly preferable to spend one Blood Rune that'll flip into a Death Rune to refresh your diseases on all targets than it is to spend a Frost/Unholy pair that could be spent on an Obliterate or a Howling Blast. I'm also fond of Epidemic from the Unholy tree for letting you refresh them less often. Disease management is important, but anything you can do to keep it from taking too many resources from other things is worth doing.

A good Death Knight will remember that their starting rotation is highly situational. If you're tanking multiple mobs, you want to start with Death and Decay, then Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Pestilence. From there it's just a matter of hitting Howling Blast whenever possible, especially if Killing Machine or Freezing Fog proc, Rune Strike when it becomes available, Frost Strike when you have the spare Runic Power, Obliterate if you have the runes for it but Howling Blast is still on cooldown, Pestilence whenever your diseases need to be refreshed if you glyphed for it, Icy Touch > Plague Strike >Pestilence if you didn't, and Blood Strike whenever you need to flip an extra Blood Rune.

When tanking a single target I personally skip over D&D and go straight to Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Obliterate, then Blood Strike/Blood Tap to churn out some Death Runes, Rune Strike/Frost Strike because I have some RP now, and then I move to a minor variation on the priority above. A good single-target priority is pretty much the same as the AoE priority with Obliterate replacing Howling Blast. If Freezing Fog procs, use it. Try to fit it in when your runes are on cooldown and you don't have enough Runic Power for a Frost Strike, since it's not as important to get maximum AoE out on a single target, but don't let it go to waste because even on a single target it's a nice chunk of damage and damage, of course = threat. If you have Glyph of Disease it's best to just hit Pestilence to refresh your diseases when needed, since even on a single target it's cheaper than Icy Touch > Plague Strike again and you get a Death Rune.

I'll note that I don't bother with Blood Boil much because Death and Decay generally provides all the AoE aggro I need until Howling Blast is available, and since it doesn't refresh into a Death Rune it's not as good a use of a Blood Rune as an ability that does.

There's also the matter of your mitigation cooldowns. Those are too situational to hammer into an iron-clad rotation, and on top of that hitting them takes away resources that would throw your rotation off if you stuck to a set one, so the fact that you need them pushes DKs further into a "priority" playstyle rather than a "rotation" one. I'm personally fond of tanking trinkets with a Use effect, as that gives me a mitigation cooldown to add to the rest that doesn't use any resources. I wouldn't turn down a significant upgrade in favor of one, but I would probably hem and haw over it for a bit first.

Tomorrow I'll be back with a look at optimal Frost DPS priorities. Spoiler alert! They're very similar to the tanking ones. :)

Welcome to Chill of the Grave!

I know, there are already so many WoW blogs out there, why start another one? Well, for one thing, because my boyfriend was getting tired of me keeping him up all night debating to myself the relative merits of Glyph of Death and Decay and Glyph of Obliterate. I'm a writer deep down in my bones, and a chatty one too, so this is largely a place for me to talk about things.

It's also a place to provide information for people who want to actually learn to play this class, though I'm more interested in debate than simply saying "This is how you have to do things or you fail". While there are definitely things you have to follow, there's plenty that is open to your own personal playstyle, and I believe all valid ways of playing the game are, well, valid. I prefer debating the advantages and disadvantages of one thing vs another to outright declaring that one is the only way to do things. I personally prefer to play as DW Frost, both in my Tanking and DPS roles, and that's the view I'm going to bring to this blog, but I don't think other specs are wrong. In fact, if this blog catches on, I'll look into getting Blood and Unholy columnists, too. I'm planning to approach things more in the fashion of sites like Mania's Arcania than Elitist Jerks. So expect that to be the attitude of the blog going forward: Informing and discussing decisions, not making them for you.

I'm also planning to do something most class sites don't: Discuss the lore of the class. I'm a creative type and an RPer at heart, and part of what made me so certain I would love playing a Death Knight from the start is the compelling lore around which the class is based. Expect to see discussions of lore and write-ups/reviews of things like the Death Knight manga in between posts about PvE mechanics and tanking.

And just who am I? My main is Dariahn of Thorium Brotherhood, Forsaken Death Knight of the RP guild Hand of the Blightcaller. I don't do much in the way of progression at the moment because of time limitations, but I do weekly 10-mans, roflstomp Heroics, and stay abreast of everything going on with the class. I was raid-tanking in Burning Crusade as a Forsaken Prot warrior, and I knew from the announcement of the Death Knight class that the combination of tanking capability and Forsaken-esque lore was going to make me love them. Since before I could roll one I was determined to learn to play the class well, and I like to think I've done a pretty good job of it.

So check back every so often! I hope to update at least once a week, ideally more, with assorted thoughts and opinions on WoW's most misunderstood class, and always feel free to comment!