Players have acknowledged that it is now difficult to balance base abilities off the simultaneous assumption of having them be used in a more spammable fashion (i.e. several frost runes for frost strike spam) vs having those abilities also be desirable and just as powerful with less runes available for that school, which can be dubbed as a balance nightmare, for sure.
However, if you look at certain trees it seems that some trees that you spec deep into would really benefit from having multiple runes to use those abilities that you spend all those talent points on.
i.e. A Frost knight would benefit greatly from going 3F/2U/1B in almost every way, just as an unholy knight would benefit from going 3U/2B/1F, strictly from a DPS standpoint.
So what's the scoop? Has this level of DK customization been scrapped for now?
Even just a "we're still deciding" would be awesome.
we stay at the 2/2/2 setup - frost will be underpowered.
Just to give you one (of many) examples - unbreakable armor is a 15% proc. This would be off of only 2 runes. That just doesn't have the uptime to be worth it IMO. Tanking is already streaky enough to add another layer of streakiness.
Also, the frost tree has many activated abilities, so it's really starved with just 2 runes available.
My last quick point that I'll mention even though I have more on the subject - allowing a DK to change their rune setup adds a whole new layer of strategy/foresight to the situation. It would enhance the fun factor quite a bit IMO.
How I envision rune swapping working:
The UI could be a screen you pull up with 6 runes - you click each rune and set it to what you want, click accept and then for each rune your DK takes the same time as making one bandage takes - with the same animation - so it looks like he's working on his sword. Off to the side of the rune screen would be an area to set a hot key for that particular setup to allow faster swapping (or just an area in keybindings). Swapping can only happen outside of combat.
Edit: If the death knight enters combat during the setup process the entire process would be canceled.
Corpse explosion currently costs WAY too much RP for the mediocre damage it does. Once D&D gets fixed, more people might want to gravitate towards CE to do their AOE duty, and they are going to find that Corpse explosion does absolutely horrible damage. It used to do 2000 damage non crit with full runic power. Now it costs 60 RP, and does roughly 1/8th the damage. It's just awful now, and the only reason I ever really use it is if I have a TON of RP to spare, am specced for butchery, and I will be able to instantly refill the lost RP almost immediately to use on something that actually does damage.
I really need to get around to make an unholy write up next.
Also, I have noticed that even if your specials "miss", you are still granted the RP that the special would have given you. I think this was an oversight with the change to runes near-instantly recharging after a parry/dodge/miss on specials. Unholy with dirge actually has fantastic RP generation. Doesn't even matter if your specials land or not (which can be a big problem early on with crap gear and fighting against higher level mobs).
We like the way the death knight plays with 2 of each rune -- BBFFUU. Letting players avoid certain runes plays against one of the greatest strengths of the class -- that you have to vary your rotations and use different abilities. Although it was our original design, I think it is extremely unlikely you will be able to swap out runes. I know some people will be disappointed with this decision, but we have to do what we think makes the game the most fun.
I think you all can imagine situations in which a BBBBBU or BFUUUU configuration would be frighteningly overpowered or hideously underpowered. Theoretically that balances out in the end, but being at 200% effectiveness in some fights and 0% effectiveness in other fights just risks not being a lot of fun in a game where you control a single character.
I do want to stress that the spells and talents were designed assuming a 2/2/2 configuration. It was never our intent that you keep say Unbreakable Armor up 100% of the time by playing with 6 frost runes. No single talent choice should be the difference between a good or bad death knight tank. A death knight needs to be able to tank end-game content with their core set of abilities combined with reasonable player skill and gear. Any bonuses from talents should just be gravy.
You are welcome to argue that their current set of tools isn't yet up to that task. Having those discussions is a great use of a beta. But in the end, we'll make sure they are up to the task. And that goes for whether the task is tanking, Arenas, soloing, end-game dps or justifying a spot in a raid.
Short version: You may not be able to customize your runeweapon, aside from runeforging enchants, which isn't a bad perk, but you should be able to customize your talents to a degree that other classes might find startling.
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