Image of DK T15 Armor Set

Well an image, straight from MMO Champion. Thoughts?

I hope it get “refined” a little, because I don’t understand what the intend of the armor is.
Also its odd that the armor would leave the back of the neck exposed, but perhaps its just highlighted because of the contrast. And odd that the Human model can’t actually see out of the “creature” mouth.

And perhaps the two huge teeth/horns might be the wrong way up. And there are no creature features except teeth and horns. Stuff it, I’m just being grumpy. Not sure. I’ll say one thing, its better than the T14, which is not overtly difficult.

Cosmetic Glyphs are a great idea, more please.

Short comment today to note – I love the fact that we have cosmetic glyphs in the game. Ideally I would have said that we could have kept major & minor glyphs and trivial levels, but its a call that Blizzard made and its not worth crying about.

What I would like to suggest is that the options get expanded for all classes. Paladins for example have a number of cosmetic effects, while DKs have a few that affect out pets. I’m sure Shadow Priests have some (something about being less shadowy) just as examples. More please, perhaps even non-class specific effects too.

A side effect of adding so many new glyphs might be a massive effect on the market, but I think adding very rare glyphs from some other sources or drops is a good thing. In fact I’d like to see some of the rare or lost weapon and armour patterns added to the Blacksmith profession as well.

How about these glyphs:

• (all characters) Burning red flames, blue and white arcane glows and wisps, smoldering smoke, leaves dropping from them, and shadows writhing on the character – as aura effects. These would be translucent effects which surround the character in a subtle way when out of combat.
• (all) The Footsteps of Illidan card where you leave burning footprints effect as a permanent effect.
• (all) Ioun Stones (from dnd, similar to the Shaman watershield), Floating Orbs, etc as special rare find glyphs for Inscription only characters. ie. They get a rare pattern which creates a BoP Glyph. The pattern might be tradable (allowing a market effect) but the glyph is not.
• (all) switch your casting, special weapon swing, standard weapon swing to an alternate animation. Meaning that this will give a fixed alternative for each race, and adding the glyph might make that the default, or even let the toon choose randomly from the set of options.
• (all) Change of default voice, to a different sub-set.
• (all) different Death animation, as many raiders spend a lot of time on the floor. Perhaps the character even twitches a little.
• (all) race specific powers have a chosen colour tint. ie. Let the Draeneo healing effect be a purple aura on my DK, rather than normal.
• (Death Knights) Path of Frost animation whenever a Frost run is used.
• (Druids) As forms are a key part of the class, perhaps allow a greater degree of switching and swapping? Allow a horde model to be used by Alliance. Swim form as a shark, nessy, or Crocolisk.
• (Racial, e.g. Worgen) Make your Worgen form look like the very cool Northrend Worgen instead of your normal model. Likewise for the Dark Iron Dwarves for Dwarves, etc. The roleplaying potential is huge, mechanical effect nill.
• (Engineers) A transporter mistake offers a much wider range of changes, or always one, depending on the glyph used.

What else folks? What is your dream animation, change, or effect?

Related articles

• New and changing glyphs for patch 5.0.4 (wow.joystiq.com)
• Glyph of Disguise (bubblesofmischief.com)
• World Today: This Looks Safe (irez.me)

DK Mullet Set – pvp tier

The new Death Knight set has been shared by MMO Champ – I’m calling it the mullet set. Business in the front, party in the back. … A mullet joke is better than the “me-so-horny” jokes you’ll see in Stormwind and the Deeprun Tram very soon.

The set without the helm is good, I don’t understand the helm design.

New gear, art, strats, and info on Patch 4.3 from MMO Champ

New gear, artwork, strategies and all sorts of lovely information has been data mined by MMO Champion for patch 4.3. There are some nice armor sets for us in Season 11 PvP, although I am reminded of the old Warrior set with the bladed helmet built for head butting Tauren.

DK PvP Season 11 gear set

There is also a stack of great new gear. iLevel 378 gear will drop from the 5 man dungeons, and some of it is rather wonderful. Like this Axe for 2H Weapon wielders.

Death Knight Tier 13 Set Bonuses

Death Knight Tier 13 bonuses, as published by WoW Joystick (or whatever that blog’s name is now):

• Blood, 2P — When an attack drops your health below 35%, one of your Blood Runes will immediately activate and convert into a Death Rune for the next 20 sec. This effect cannot occur more than once every 45 sec.
• Blood, 4P — Your Vampiric Blood ability also affects all party and raid members for 50% of the effect it has on you.
• DPS, 2P — Sudden Doom has a 30% chance and Rime has a 60% chance to grant 2 charges when triggered instead of 1.
• DPS, 4P — Runic Empowerment has a 25% chance and Runic Corruption has a 40% chance to also grant 710 mastery rating for 12 sec when activated.

Overall this looks interesting, and subject to so many smaller factors like up-time and usage that I can’t see any of these as great overall; useful, but not great.

The bonuses also seem somewhat different to some of the other class bonuses in the tier 13. Priests and Hunters specifically seem to have a direct damage increase here, and although I hate to be doing cross class comparison (as its often not at all valid), it does seem odd.

Bring back Dungeon Sets

I was pondering the coolness of the wow days of old, and got to thinking how the old Dungeon Sets really were something interesting.

A Dungeon Set was an introduction to the concept of Tier (or is that tear) Raid sets, and provides something special and different to each class in terms of  a visual representation of achievement.

The method of introduction could and should be totally different, and probably utilise the points / badges rather than just being a random drop.

So Cata Devs, I know this is very late; but please just sneak this one in?

Planned 3.1.2 Death Knight change nurf

MMO Champion has the 3.1.2 planned changes, (which are on PTR?) and one thing in particular pisses me off. [Rant incoming]

Death Knights

• Tier 7 DPS Bonus changed to : Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike, and Death Strike generate an additional 5 Runic Power when used. (Down from 10 Runic Power)
• Tier 8 DPS bonus changed to : Increases the critical strike chance of Death Coil and Frost Strike by 8%. (Up from 5%)

Why in hell change the RP return from the Tier 4 DPS bonus?

This is an awesome set bonus, that was valuable for all DK specs. The RP generation was not overpowered. Consider that every Death Knight spec has to use RP in core abilities in whatever role that are doing. RP generation is pivotal. For Death Knights its the same as mana, except we don’t get it for standing still in a passive manner, we need to use abilities to get RP.

The RP buff helped the Unholy ability Gargoyle a lot. It made Gargoyle a good choice, rather than a somewhat difficult gimmick. With a RP reduction the likelihood of Gargoyle being up for its potential full duration is lower, and that means overall dps is reduced. Most fights have movement, unexpected stuff, strange affects and that makes RP generation a tad less easy.

So DKs get a nurf in our current best gear, which reduces our contribution to progression, and in no way changes the expectation by others that Death Knights should be able to be a solid dps class. Its a nurf to Death Knights just when we’re doing the hardest content, fucking stupid.

(And don’t bother with a QQ comment on the blog, you’ll get deleted. The asshat knows who he is, and knows his comments never see the light of day.)

Oh, but wait TyphoonAndrew – your T8 bonus is increased! Isn’t that OK?

No. It might be nice to raise the dps on a set that almost nobody has, and I have no idea how good the T8 bonus is. But I know exactly how useful and diverse the T7 is, and thats why I’m pissed.

I suspect that the reason for this is that we’re all reading that DKs are better off keeping the 4 set bonus from T7 instead of T8 – so now they nurf one, and increase the other. Now that would be a really shitty thing to do, and basically a screw up.

Can somebody tell me where the justification is for this change? In detail?

Some tooltip information got changed as well for Death Knights, but only to reflect what we already read about in the last patch, so no big deal..