the state of the lich king (ver 3.1)

As you all know (and those who are too busy playing the game probably won't be reading this), major content patch 3.1 came out Tuesday. What does this mean for WoW players? Significant changes to our way of life. Dual-spec? The notion of being able to swap in and out of any spec is invaluable. It feels like the first car was just invented, or the color television, or sliced bread. New raid content joins the fray, as always, a larger loot table, an Argent Tournament with brand new dailies, more shenanigans and trinkets to drool over, and a gnome-head flying mount? The game just keeps on getting more bizzare and more inventive on the casual side of things. 

The Fall(?) of Death Knights

The notes projected a supposed nerf to the DK class. I say supposed because I think someone somewhere fucked up again. When I saw the constant lowering of our damage, I had only one thing in mind: we were finally going to be put in our place. They already took gradual steps, like slicing Black Ice damage boost in half, and even bigger steps, like moving Master of Ghouls further down the Unholy tree, making it virtually inaccessable by deep Blood and deep Frost. However, they did what they always do: compensate. For every nerf, there was a minor buff, and in the end, all of it equated out to one simple word: change. Not nerf. Change. You heard me. We're still the fucking beasts we were before the patch, and your children will be eaten alive.

Death Knights in PvE

I almost want to just say "move along". Most of the DK nerfs concerned PvP and not so much its raiding counterpart. Where huge blows like cutting huge chunks of frost damage off of Icy Touch, minor changes to talents like Black Ice increase shadow damage, thus buffing Scourge Strike and Unholy Blight even more. Blood, on the other hand, recieved a different kind of treatment. Development decided that Obliterate should no longer be the spec's primary strike and promptly opted for Death Strike to be the new "blood" hard-hitter. Well, when you combine Improved Death Strike, Glyph of Death Strike, and the new improvements to armor penetration, you're getting an attack that hits just as hard as Obliterate back in its hayday. Ontop of that, Death Strike heals for a ridiculous amount - meaning more survivability in AoE intensive fights. Frost is still the weakling of the trio, but when the Frost Strike sigil and tier 8 set bonuses arrive, we might have a different story. Dual Wield is no longer as popular, due to the absence of a powerful Icy Touch and the free Ghoul/Gargoyle.

Death Knights in PvP

This is where we were expecting the most change. Basically, powerful and skilled Death Knights will still be, well, powerful and skilled. However, Death Knights that mashed their way to victory as 130RP DRW or ShadowFrost builds will find the game much more difficult. Granted traditional Unholy is still the powerhouse it was before, even that spec took a substantially greater amount of effort to perform well with at high level play. The two new speculative PvP juggernaughts will now be deep Frost and deep Unholy. Deep Unholy needs no rehash and definitely not an introduction. Those who played (or were victims of) Unholy know the potency of its constant pressure and damage, with the ability to spread diseases, lock down casters, provide substantial burst, and multiple defensive options. The appeal with deep Frost lies in its ability to dish out ridiculous amounts of damage in a very short amount of time. This spec was actually viable even before this patch, but now that ShadowFrost is no longer existent, permanent ridiculous damage is no longer available. Instead, Frost DKs will have to depend on proper timing of CC's before unloading saved RP in a huge burst cycle involving Hungering Cold. This makes deep Frost highly valuable in teams that have CCs on different DRs, allowing for a more effective Hungering Cold. 

That's about it for Death Knights. I don't feel nerfed at all. For reference, the PvE builds are: 12/0/59, 0/10/61, 51/0/20, and 51/2/18. The PvP builds are: 17/51/3 and 0/19/52. Happy face-rolling!