From wowinsider, today we have no daily Q/A column, but lucky enough, from their, we have a weekly Death Knight column. The column name is “Lichborne”, hope you have already read it from their before. Let’s begin the weekly Death Knight:
The "New Skins"
First off, though, we've been getting a few questions about this here at WoW Insider's Ebon Hold division news desk, so I thought I'd set the record straight. That line about new skins and looks for Death Knights was a mistake. There are new skins for Death Knights, but, as you know since you saw our gallery back during beta, those have been in for a while, and were available for all new Death Knights when Wrath released.
The note went in because Blizzard has been fiddling around with ways to make the skins easier to find and use. Right now, some of the skins refuse to show up all the time or only show up if paired with a specific skin color, so it's harder to get to them. But until they get a more elegant solution or find a better way to express it in the patch notes, they've already removed it from the newest version of the notes.
Defense Weapons
So coming our way in 3.0.8, we have 2-handed tanking weapons made with Blacksmithing. Unfortunately, they're also bind on pickup. This has quite a few serious tank Death Knights already scrambling to level their smithing so that they can grab these babies come 3.0.8 and kiss their defense woes goodbye.
Me, I'm sticking with Inscription, not only because I am pretty sure the 540 defense cap is reachable without the weapons, especially once the +25 defense skill +2% stamina Runeforging enchant goes live, but because I am also sure that Blizzard will make them BoE. Blizzard's been all about making a tank's life easier. Warriors, Druids, Paladins, and Death Knights have been getting tools all through the Wrath beta and into live designed to reduce the need for crowd control, make threat easier to get and manage, and so on, all to fix that dreaded tank shortage. Even changes that look like nerfs, such as the Bone Shield and Icebound Fortitude changes, are offset by the Frost Presence buff, which should make us overall take more consistent damage and be easier to heal when we tank.
In addition, they've also been about making professions less about the BoP reward you get at the end and more about personal preference. While you do have a couple BoP holdovers such as engineering goggles, the good stuff is now all BoE, such as the tailoring armor, and blacksmithing DPS weapons such as the Titansteel Destroyer, which back in BC surely would have been an macesmith only weapon. For both of these reasons, suddenly introducing such an effective and near mandatory weapon for Death Knight tanks and making it require grinding what is, in my experience, one of the most labor-intensive and time-consuming professions to level, would go against the loot and gameplay philosophies they seem to have espoused so far.
Howling Blast and Dual Wielding
So here, to me, is the biggest change that's come along in 3.0.8 is simple: Howling Blast no longer has a cooldown. This change, if it goes live, may single-handedly vault dual wielding to the top of the Death Knight charts, with builds designed to churn out Howling Blasts as quickly as possible dwarfing the damage potential of all other builds.
To get an idea of how this works, check out this Frost-heavy build, or this build which is more Unholy biased. The main point with both these builds is to grab Howling Blast, Killing Machine, either Reaping or Blood of the North for the Death Runes, and as many other skills as you can grab to up your magic damage and/or Howling Blast damage.
Happy reading!
