[Death Knight] Cataclysm Preview

[Mozen]

Yes that's exactly what's happening.

Old:
Torment - very short cooldown, add fixed amount of threat to current target
Suffering - 2min cooldown, add fixed amount of threat to all targets
*note that there are not true taunts

New: Torment and Suffering effect reversed. Didn't say anything about the cooldown, though.

However, I think it's more a quality-of-life change. As it is the VW is incapable of holding even two mobs that the warlock is dotting. It's much better now, but still quite useless. I'm guessing (hoping) that we may be able to see low level warlocks doing a voidy-aoe-tank and Rain of Fire for some AOE leveling. That'd be cool for Demonology.

[Grehn|Skipjack]

We're veering dangerously off topic, but I feel the need to mention that in their description for the VW's new Torment:

Voidwalker Torment will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat

Torment doesn't DO damage... Screw up or hint to the future?

[Levantine]

Totes annoyed by most of these DK changes. I spose it means I can play my Hunter or Shaman I guess. Worgen Hunter sounds fun.

[Shoju]

The biggest problem I have with these changes are simple.

They are changing it so that your runes refresh 1 per type at a time.

They said that they are going to compensate for this by changing costs, and changing the amount that they hit for. If they are adjusting to make them hit harder, then OH MY GOD THE BURST.... IT HURTS.

I don't like the rune change, and I don't think that it will go live this way. If anything they should make abilities that ONLY take death runes. That would add some variation. This change does nothing to alleviate always hitting buttons. Making something only take Death runes would actually be a very interesting change.

IMagine for a second if they don't change the cost of anything, just increase the damage to account for the awesomeness of slower refreshing runes.

Outbreak - Ob/SS - Ob/SS - BS - BS - ERW - Ob/SS - Ob/SS - OB/SS - Dump to 0RP

That is a lot of damage, inflated health pools or not.

[Flex]

They have said you need to see how the new rune system works to grasp how it functions.

[Chicken]

It actually wouldn't surprise me if they abstract it a bit, so it's not so much about the actual runes but the amount of "energy" they represent. Imagine if you will that each rune represents 10 energy of that rune type, and that abilities could cost any amount of that rune type, instead of the current static part where they can use 10 exactly of the "energy" each rune represents. The "energy" also replenishes at a steady rate of 1 energy a second.

Then you could have an Obliterate costing say, 15 Frost Energy and 15 Unholy Energy to use, which gets you a bit of both. A bit of leeway where you aren't 'wasting' DPS by having the runes for the ability ready, while you also don't allow a Death Knight to use a stronger (compared to now) version of Obliterate twice in short succession at the start of a fight.

The only issue I see is figuring out how to get Death Runes to work in a system like this, there's a couple of solutions but they're all rather clunky when it comes to abilities that require two different runes.

If I'm correct in this guess I'd wager they also change the way the standard Death Knight UI looks a bit.

[Folstar]

Any idea that will make a tree that doesn't have a rotation that goes:

IT > PS > BS > BS > OB [or some incredibly similar substitution]

at the start of every fight is a winner. Maybe make frost a legitimate single disease tree, amp up the focus on ghoul/gargoyle/aotd/diseases (a ranged PS + unholy making standing back and blasting/commanding worth it maybe?) in unholy to make it different, have a two rune ability that ISN'T FU, or really anything to make dk trees more distinct. In fairness, unholy/frost/blood dks are kind of distinct, but not nearly as distinct as the three trees paladins, druids, priests, warriors, rogues, hunters, shaman, warlocks, mages, and everybody else have*.