Tier 16 Armor Set videos: Paladin, Druid, Rogue, Death Knight [Updated]

Adriacraft are back with more tier set videos. This time we've got the tier 16 armor sets for Paladins and Druids, with Rogues to follow later. What do you think of the sets? Here at WoW Insider we're unsure, both these tiers look rather similar, and there seems to be a recurring theme of basic-colored armor with some unusual, even bizarre, frill detail.

As previously, the tiers' different colors will come from different difficulties. You can also remind yourself of the previous datamined tier sets for the Warrior, Priest and Hunter. Hit the break for the other two sets! And do check out Adriacraft on YouTube for all the latest patch videos!

Tags: breaking, druid, paladin, patch-5.4, rogue, tier-16

Filed under: Mists of Pandaria

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Lichborne: Addressing ability bloat in death knight skills

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Recently on Twitter, Lead systems designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street was asked what issues he'd fix if he could immediately wave a wand and make it better. One of the ones he mentioned was ability bloat. Ability bloat is the term used to describe a class needing to press too many buttons simply to perform the basic tasks expected of them in group PvE and PvP content.

Ability bloat is certainly something that's been on my mind as well, so this week we'll consider the possibility of ability bloat in death knights and figure out various ways to address it. Much like how talents were pared down for Mists, I wouldn't be surprised to see abilities pared down in major ways for the next expansion, and we might as well start anticipating it.

Streamline the daily grind

I personally don't know if our day to day rotations need much changing. I'm still not a huge fan of unholy's rotation, per se, but it avoids bloat because it uses different buttons than frost or blood as opposed to additional buttons. I'd still ultimately argue that it makes it overly confusing to switch between specs, but especially with addition of Plague Strike adding both diseases, it's a much more tolerable rotation.

Plague Strike, though, brings up an interesting point. Why shouldn't it work that way for all specs? Right now, in order to properly make sure we have the ability to apply diseases, blood and frost death knights have to have a lot of buttons their bar. Outbreak and, if you can spare the talent point, Unholy Blight offer free disease application, but each have restrictive cool downs. Thus, you also need Plague Strike and Icy Touch on your bars. Technically, frost death knight use Howling Blast, but there are times when you need precision single-target disease application (or a single target way to spend Rime procs) in which case only Icy Touch will do.

Giving Plague Strike the ability to apply diseases at any time could be invaluable in that it might neatly justify removal of at least 2-3 other buttons from a death knight's main toolbar, but it does have drawbacks as well. For one, since it costs a single unholy rune, it leaves an orphaned frost rune. Unholy death knights take care of that with Festering Strike, but that isn't (and shouldn't be) an option for the other specs. With that in mind, perhaps the proper option is to simply remove the cool down on Outbreak (We have a glyph that does that now, but it also makes it cost runic power, which makes it impossible to use as an opener). Consider it somewhat like a warlock's Corruption or a shadow priests Shadow Word: Pain. Both cost so little they hardly register as mana drains. Disease should be a step toward using our other abilities, not a shackle keeping us down.

Soul Reaper is another prime candidate for removal, and honestly the button I'd least miss if it were gone. This is an ability that directly complicates the existing rotation, especially for two-handed frost death knights. You have to wait for the right moment to fit it in, which includes tweaking your UI or using addons to predict it, and you have to . Personally, I'd love to see Soul Reaper gone, especially since you can essentially replace it with Merciless Combat, the old frost passive talent. It may be the most obvious way to reduce button bloat that we have.

When something extra is just extra work

With those two issues out of the way, it falls to look at our major cool downs and situational abilities to see if any of them could leave. I'm going to say that one of the first things to go would probably be Dark Simulacrum. In PvE, especially in unskilled hands, it often becomes more of a gimmick or a party trick than a helpful tool. It doesn't actually absorb many PvE boss abilities, and many of the spells it does absorb it shoots back at minimal damage because they require spellpower to work. It does have it uses, especially in PvP, and can even be manipulated using mind control for more predictability, but ultimately, it requires such a high level of skill and such specific circumstances to be used effectively that it seems a prime candidate for removal.

Army of the Dead is another candidate for removal. It has seen significant improvement in Mists with the introduction of a glyph to remove the taunt factor, and if used correctly, is a DPS boost, but if it's unglyphed it can cause havoc, and it's relatively easy to forget since it stays on cooldown for so long. I'm a huge fan of the ability for "look and feel" alone, but it'd be one of the easier abilities to remove. On the other hand, at a 10 minute cooldown, you can assign it to a relatively obscure hot key and not having to worry about getting too overwhelmed. Regardless, if they do remove it, I'm still pushing for that Wild Imps-style ghoul summoning passive as a replacement. It's basically my new pet issue now that we can make our ghouls look like geists, sorry.

Are we the ones in trouble?

When all is said and done, there's one more tack to take: Maybe death knights aren't really a problem class in this regard. One of my favorite alts is my hunter, and I can certainly confirm that between all of her stuff, even with macros, it's often a struggle to get all the buttons for every ability mapped and hotkeyed were I need them. So far, I really haven't faced the same struggle with my death knight. We have an established set of priorities with just enough extra burst or situational buttons to make it interesting, and I'm fine with it, for the most part.

Regardless, something like this would really have to be done as part of an expansion redesign, allowing the dev team time to re-balance the game and class to compensate for the missing buttons and giving us time to say goodbye to some old friends. It's likely something that's needed for the long term health of the game in the same way the Mists talent revamp was, and I can't say I'd fault the developers for doing it, even if I am a little still sore over losing old school Unholy Blight. Learn the ropes of endgame play with WoW Insider's DK 101 guide. Make yourself invaluable to your raid group with Mind Freeze and other interrupts, gear up with pre-heroic DPS gear or pre-heroic tank gear, and plot your path to tier 11/valor point DPS gear. Tags: ability-bloat, army-of-the-dead, blood-death-knight-lichborne, dark-simulacrum, death-knight-abilities, death-knight-blood-lichborne, death-knight-diseases, death-knight-frost-lichborne, death-knight-guide, death-knight-info, death-knight-skills, death-knight-talents, death-knight-unholy-lichborne, dk-guide, dk-info, dk-talents, featured, frost-death-knight-lichborne, ghostcrawler, guide-to-death-knights, merciless-combat, outbreak, patch-6.0, plague-strike, soul-reaper, unholy-death-knight-lichborne, wow-death-knight, wow-dk

Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

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Lichborne: Reviewing death knight talents for patch 5.4

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has indicated that Blizzard is pretty happy with the new Mists of Pandaria talent design, and I have to agree with him. While it does suck to wait 15 levels between new talent choices while leveling a new alt, otherwise the new talent system allows real flexibility and interesting, meaningful choices, arguably more than we had under the 51 or 31 point talent systems, where almost every tier had a clear best choice for whatever role you were playing.

That said, there's always room for improvement, and the devs have mentioned they plan to use patch 5.4 as another opportunity to go over talent trees and bolster talents that see less use or otherwise feel underpowered. With that in mind, this week we'll look at the death knight tree and pick out some candidates for a patch 5.4 redesign.
The first tier of our talent system deals primarily with the manipulation of diseases. This is, all in all, a relatively balanced tier. There's two small problems here. The first, and more minor, is that Roiling Blood doesn't fit comfortably into frost anywhere. This is one that probably won't need to be fixed, per se. Talents that are naturally better for specific specs seem like a reasonable thing, and Roiling Blood is very good at what it does.

What probably will need fixing is Plague Leech. Plague Leech is a talent that a lot of death knights have had some justifiable distaste for since it was first introduced. Because it supplies an extra death rune, it ends up being a straight up damage increase, but only if you use it just as your diseases about to expire. Interestingly enough, while it is a damage increase, most death knights seem to agree that it's not the end of the world if you don't take it. Part of this may be because it's only a damage increase if you use it exactly right.

Still, if any talent of ours is liable to be changed, I'd expect it to be Plague Leech. It does technically have an unfair advantage of increasing damage over the other two, but is similarly so complicated to use right that many death knights skip it anyway. Swapping it for a less awkward talent would be welcome.

The second tier is a set of survivability options. This one is actually pretty solid. Purgatory here is probably mostly blood-only since it's so hard for a DPS to get the healing needed to survive, but both Lichborne and Anti-Magic Zone have a lot to recommend to any spec depending on the situation. If there's an argument to be made here, it might be that Anti-Magic Zone should be baseline so that all death knights have a solid raid-wide cool down, but I wouldn't expect this tier to be touched.

If the 3rd tier has a problem, it's that Death's Advance is just too good. Having extra movement speed is very hard to pass up. One of a melee's main duties, whether tank or DPS, is getting out of the fire and getting into position, and a talent that helps you do that is pretty solid. That said, the other two options have good situational use. Chilblains is amazing for kiting duty. So there's possibly an argument for making Death's Advance baseline (or taking it out altogether) and placing another mobility or control option here -- maybe even a long-term crowd control option. That's probably something that would be more a decision to made in a patch 6.0, though, so I wouldn't expect this tier to change.

Tier 4 is our health regeneration tier, and has already seen quite a few tweaks. At this point, both Death Pact and Death Siphon are solid talents and unlikely to change. One offers a big chunk of emergency healing every few minutes, while the other allows on-demand healing as long as you're willing to give up a more hard hitting strike you could have use that death rune for. Essentially, you decide whether you want a strong burst of healing every few minutes, or quicker, smaller bursts at the cost of a chunk of your DPS. Conversion, on the other hand, is the black sheep of this tier, and for good reason. Since it drains a steady stream of your runic power, it essentially blocks the use of our rune regeneration talents and the benefit of Scent of Blood, resulting in a crippling us in ways the healing doesn't make up for. Conversion is right up there with Plague Leech for things that should be redesigned or removed.

The 5th tier, at this point, is what it is. At this point, it's an essential part of our class, and if it's ever removed, it's going to need to be part of a more complete redesign that you'd see in an expansion beginning patch. I would not expect to see any changes in patch 5.4. That said, what might be interesting here is a return of Blood Tap to a base emergency cool down as it was before the revamp, though it's unclear what one could replace it with.

I admit that I was not a fan of the final tier when it first came out, and I'd still kind of like damage talents as our top tier. That said, the tier as it's shaken out in actual game play has been relatively strong. Both Gorefiend's Grasp and Remorseless Winter have been very solid crowd control and mob wrangling options for trash pulls, and really have no pressing need to be changed. That leaves us with Desecrated Ground. While it has some limited use for PvP and specific PvE fights, it just doesn't have enough to recommend it in the long run. This is one that may need a revamp of sorts. Giving it a damage absorption component like Anti-Magic Zone might beef it up enough to be useful, though that might also beef it up so much as to make it mandatory, which wouldn't be any better. Arguably, it would also see a resurgence in use if one of the bosses in the Siege of Ogrimmar uses fear spells liberally, though that would still bring up a possible needed redesign for future boss tiers. Learn the ropes of endgame play with WoW Insider's DK 101 guide. Make yourself invaluable to your raid group with Mind Freeze and other interrupts, gear up with pre-heroic DPS gear or pre-heroic tank gear, and plot your path to tier 11/valor point DPS gear. Tags: anti-magic-zone, asphyxiate, blood-death-knight-lichborne, blood-tap, chilblains, conversion, death-knight-blood-lichborne, death-knight-frost-lichborne, death-knight-guide, death-knight-info, death-knight-talents, death-knight-unholy-lichborne, death-pact, death-siphon, deaths-advance, desecrated-ground, dk-guide, dk-info, dk-talents, featured, frost-death-knight-lichborne, gorefiends-grasp, guide-to-death-knights, lichborne, mists-of-pandaria-talents, patch-5.4, plague-leech, purgatory, remorseless-winter, roiling-blood, runic-corruption, runic-empowerment, talent-revamp, talent-system, talents, unholy-blight, unholy-death-knight-lichborne, wow-death-knight, wow-dk

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Death Knight one-per-realm restriction lifted

WoW Insider received an email this morning about a small change that has us all a'fluster. Saruya sent us a notification that the restriction preventing players from having more than one death knight per realm has been lifted. We immediately logged into WoW to check this out, and as the eagle eyed among you will be able to see, this is definitely the case. I was able to make six death knights on Argent Dawn, with no issues whatsoever, and many more on other realms.

What's got us a little confused, though, is that we're not entirely sure when the restriction was lifted. Nethaera posted on the official US forums on April 14th, after the release of patch 5.2, that there was no update on when it would be lifted. This implies to us that it's a recent change, but it is conspicuously absent from the patch notes! Funny enough, when you assume there is not the possibility to create more than one DK per realm, you don't often try. So, we thought we'd post this here to clarify: you can now have all the DKs your cold, frostbitten heart desires.

Tags: breaking, death-knight, DK, one-death-knight-per-realm, one-dk-per-server

Filed under: Death Knight

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The hero you once were: Roleplaying the death knight

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. In World of Warcraft, that player is you! Each week, Anne Stickney brings you All the World's a Stage with helpful hints, tips and tricks on the art of roleplay in WoW.

A hero... that's what you once were. You stood boldly against the Shadow and purchased another dawn for the world... with your life.

The death knight class was introduced in Wrath of the Lich King as the first, and to date only, hero class. Former minions and soldiers of the Lich King, these warriors of darkness have now risen against their dark master and obtained their own freedom, of sorts. But the path to acceptance is much more difficult for a death knight than any other class in the game. After all, you were a tool of darkness at its finest, when you were "born."

This makes death knights a really unique opportunity for roleplay, because they essentially have two lives -- the life before they died, and the life after. It's that reconciliation between the two that offers the most fascinating moments for roleplay. How does a person come to terms with the fact that they were turned from hero to butcher in what should have been their final moment of saving grace?

Who you are

For a death knight, the answer to who you are is pretty simple -- you are a former citizen of Azeroth who died in one fashion or another, and were raised by the Lich King for the purpose of filling out his army of undead. But there is much, much more to consider when you're roleplaying a death knight, because your life didn't begin at the moment you came to awareness in Acherus, heeding the Lich King's call and wreaking havoc on the Scarlet Crusade. It did not begin when you broke free from the Lich King, joining Highlord Darion Mograine as a member of the Ebon Blade.

No, your life began much as anyone else in Azeroth. You were a traveler, a hero, a friend, a confidant, a lover, a husband or wife, a daughter or a son. You were born into this world and you followed your own path, seeking out your destiny, whatever it may have been. Your character may have been a different class entirely at one point -- a spellweaving mage of the Kirin Tor, a devout follower of the Light, a simple hunter that sought solace in the wild.

These are all things that you should determine when you're thinking about that death knight character. Where did he come from? Who were his parents? Are they still alive? Did he have any relationships prior to his death? Did he have any children? What path did he follow -- was he a warrior, a priest, a rogue? What, ultimately, led to his death? Was it a moment of heroic intent, or an act of cowardice that led to his demise?

Flesh out that character as much as you can -- treat it as seriously as you'd treat any other character's backstory. Write down everything about that character's life, any major moments that had particular impact on his life. When you are all done writing, take a long look at everything that has happened in the scope of your character's life to date. Consider what kind of person your character was, what kinds of hopes and dreams they possessed. And then put that paper away, because all of that was lost the moment your character died.

Now consider this: Your character is undead. Everything that he was prior to his death is in its way a chapter of his life that can never, ever be opened again. He can visit his old friends, his lovers, his parents, but they will never react to him the same way again. He is, by all accounts, dead. It's the fact that he's come back to life and started wielding unholy powers that many may have issue with.

What defines you, and why you fight

That is what a death knight of the Ebon Blade is -- a sum of everything he learned and experienced in his life, prior to undeath. A death knight of the Ebon Blade doesn't start out remembering all of these events, but as a player quests through the opening zone, they will begin to realize, and remember, and quite possibly be horrified at what they have done. It is that horror that causes a death knight to eventually turn on his master -- because the Lich King is the one being responsible for ripping his life away, and ensuring that whatever happiness he achieved in life will forever remain just beyond the reach of his cold, dead hands.

If this sounds morose, it's because it is. Death knights are not particularly happy people. Think about it -- would you be, if you had suffered the way that your character has suffered? In a way, the death knight situation mimicks the Forsaken to a degree -- dead characters that have suddenly found themselves returned to unlife. But unlike the Forsaken, a death knight almost has it worse. Because he has the opportunity to return home. He can look into the eyes of his loved ones, and he can see the horror, the unease, the hint of disgust hidden there.

That is the defining factor of what made a death knight fight, in Wrath of the Lich King. The knights of the Ebon Blade wanted revenge for what the Lich King had done to them. And in a way, a death knight may also have fought for his former life, fought to protect his former family and loved ones from sharing his fate. It's a dark, grim reason to fight.

But now that the Lich King has been defeated, the death knights of the Ebon Hold are without purpose. And a death knight character now has to contend with the fact that his destiny is entirely in his own hands. So why does your character continue to fight? Is he trying to regain some semblance of life before he died? Is he trying to make up for whatever sins he may have committed while under the sway of the Lich King?

Is he fighting in order to do what is good, to make up for the bad that has happened in his life? Or does he fight, does he kill, does he torture with the intent of somehow punishing himself? Is he fighting because he wants to right what's wrong in the world, or is he fighting and secretly hoping that someone will put an end to him for good?

Interaction with others

Needless to say, a death knight isn't exactly the most fun person to be around, and a death knight's interaction with others may be slightly awkward at best, painful at worst. Death knights were not welcomed with open arms into the Alliance or Horde -- they had to run a gauntlet of rotten fruit and screams of those that were affected by the Scourge. It's a painful way to gain acceptance, and it's not soon forgotten.

There are two things that ultimately wander through the mind of a death knight as he talks to the living: Is this person I am speaking to looking at me differently, is that fear lurking in the back of their eyes? Will I ever be able to have a normal conversation with a person again?

But while a death knight is far from a cheerful character, it doesn't mean that he can't crack a joke, even if that joke is grim. It doesn't mean that he's unable to have friends. It just means that even though he has friends, there's still that wall between himself and others. No matter what he says, no matter what he does, no matter who he was when he was alive, he can never go back.

A death knight's journey officially begins the moment he enters the starting zone. That passage of time in your character's life is quite clearly defined through quests and events, so there is little for a roleplayer to invent, in that aspect. The challenge of a roleplayer in this case is to define what came before, and use that to determine what comes next in their character's life.

Death knights may be a grim bunch, they may seem sad and morose, but there's something sweet in all that sorrow. There's an ultimately fascinating element to that journey of trying to balance who a character used to be and who a character is now. That dual nature of the death knight represents an emotional, powerful journey that allows for far deeper roleplay than one would expect.

All the World's a Stage is your source for roleplaying ideas, innovations and ironies. Let us help you imagine what it's like to sacrifice spells for the story, totally immerse yourself in your roleplaying or even RP on a non-RP realm Tags: featured, guide, guide-to-lore, lore, lore-guide, role-play, role-playing-guide, rp-guide, world-of-warcraft-lore, wow-guide, wow-lore, wow-role-playing, wow-role-playing-guide, wow-rp, wow-rp-guide, wow-rping

Filed under: All the World's a Stage (Roleplaying)

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