Death Knights in Legion: Summary

games World of Warcraft
1

Key points from the preview:

  • One rune type instead of four (three cooling down at any one time)
  • One disease per spec

Blood

  • Death Strike now costs runic power (40)
  • Death Strikes below 35% of DK’s health consume all runic power for more potent heals.
  • New ability: Marrowrend - Generate three charges of bone shield.
  • Blood Plague heals the DK.
  • Blood Strike returns. Infects target with Blood Plague, and if you stand in Death and Decay, Blood Strike hits all nearby enemies.
  • Autoattacks have a chance to reset the cooldown on DnD.
  • (Possible) new ability: Bonestorm - hits nearby enemies three times per sec, healing the DK.

Frost

  • Killing Machine now only affects Obliterate.
  • Frost Fever generates runic power.
  • (Possible) new ability: Glacial Advance - summon glacial spikes from the ground that advance forward, dealing moderate frost damage to enemies near eruption point.

Unholy

  • Virulent Plague: diseases that deals shadow damage, erupting when the target dies (or a 30% chance to erupt each tick). Eruption causes damage to multiple nearby targets.

  • Festering Strike: infects target with 1-3 Festering Wounds, which themselves may be burst by Scourge Strike.

  • Scourge Strike: triggers a stack of Festering Wound, if present on target.

  • While standing in your Death and Decay, Scourge Strike hits all nearby targets.

  • (Possible) new talent: All Will Serve - raise dead raises an additional skeleton minion, and removes the cooldown.

2

I’m on the fence about the single rune type, which smacks of the ongoing “dumbing down” of the game, but will have to see how this plays out.

Excited about the possibility of Unholy summoning multiple minions, but it reads like “two”, and I would love to see that be more (doesn’t have to be an army, maybe three or four?) - but now there’s a possibility for a great set bonus (“Your Raise Dead spell now produces twice as many minions”). I’d be legit stoked to see four waddling around.

Through the entire preview, surprised to read nothing about changes to runeforging, which really needs to happen.

3

also on the fence. really want to see how demon hunters play out as well. overall i want to play test the lot before i finalize where i stand.