Death Knights get quite a few changes in patch 3.3 and I want to go over some of them with you. As of this writting these are the changes. Mind you, I have not gone into to much detail because it could all change as of patch day!! We are at your mercy Blizzard.
- Army of the Dead: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.
Ok now this change seems like nothing really happened, if you consider what they really did. The main thing I see with it though is it means Army of the Dead will be ready for every boss in a dungeon or raid when combined with Night of the Dead.
- Raise Ally: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas. Has anyone ever used this besides me?
When I used it, the player got so angry with me I thought he was going to hunt me down and hurt me. He cursed so much and so loud I think I actually heard him from hundreds of miles away. Also make sure that the person you use it on knows what is going to happen.
- Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.
Finally Blizzard has listened and helped the Death Knights that want to tank. The added defence and Stamina will help alot.
- Rune Strike: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.
Now this also will help the tanking ability and improve the ability to hold aggro.
Talent Changes
Unholy
- Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 2/4 minutes, down from 5/10 minutes.
This will definitly be a help to the unholy build.
- Scourge Strike: Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done.
It was needed to boost Unholy build to the level of the Blood build. With this change it is like Heart Strike for the Unholy build causing lots of damage.
- Unholy Blight: This talent now deals only 10% of Death Coil damage as a damage-over-time effect on the target.
Well it was bound to happen sooner or later another nerf but at least this one isn’t to bad.
Glyph Changes
- Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.
This is the best change of all on the DK changes. An Additional 20% is huge!!
Glyph Fixes
These are some minor fixes to some known to exist bugs and nothing is changed that affects build.
- Glyph of Bone Shield: Now updates the number of charges in the Bone Shield tooltip.
Glyph of Dark Death: Now updates the tooltip on Death Coil. In addition, its own tooltip has been clarified to indicate it also applies to healing from Death Coil.
Glyph of Death’s Embrace: Now updates the tooltip on Death Coil to indicate runic power is refunded.
Glyph of Heart Strike: Now updates the tooltip on Heart Strike to indicate Heart Strike applies a movement snare.
Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Now updates the tooltip on Icebound Fortitude to show increased damage reduction.
Glyph of Plague Strike: Now updates the damage shown in Plague Strike’s tooltip.
Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Now updates the tooltip on Unbreakable Armor. Tooltip on glyph modified to make its effect more clear as well.
Class Changes Mainly just corrections and do not affect gameplay.
- Bloody Strikes: Now properly increases the damage displayed in the tooltips of Blood Strike and Heart Strike.
- Bone Shield: Tooltip corrected to indicate the player has the correct number of bones.
- Chains of Ice: This ability will no longer appear to land on targets which are immune.
- Desecration: The debuff from this ability will no longer sometimes appear as if it were cast by someone else. In addition, the visual and snare from this ability will now both dissipate at the same time. Further, this talent will now respect snare immunities, and no longer sometimes snare immune targets.
- Frost Presence: The animation for activating this presence will no longer also have the animation for Blood Presence played at the same time.
- Master of Ghouls: Tooltip typo corrected.
- Night of the Dead: Tooltip typo corrected.
- Obliterate: This ability will no longer sometimes fail to do additional damage based on diseases on the target.
- Raise Ally: While this spell is active on a target, they will not be sent to the graveyard, prematurely ending the spell.
- Strangulate: Updated tooltip to include the functionality that this ability also interrupts spellcasting on NPCs.
- Taste of Blood: Corrected inaccurate information in combat log tooltip.
- Unholy Presence: The animation for activating this presence will no longer also have the animation for Blood Presence played at the same time.
Bottom line here folks, Unholy is getting a big buff, big enough that it just may rival Blood in terms of DPS and possibly Frost for Tanking. All this while blood retains the status quo. Blizzard made great efforts to balance the trees out in one of the biggest updates any class has ever received in a single patch.