Most Recent DK Changes to 4.1

It seems, as MMO-Champ had mentioned, the awaited patch will be released by tomorrow or Wednesday, depending where you are. To be more specific, on the 26th or 27th of April 2011. Happy waiting for the patch guys. Relax for an additional twelve (12) hours as I would think there will still be stuff they would have to fix once the patch is implemented. Do not stress yourself out waiting for the wrapping up of the supposed "maintenance end time", which I became a victim of. Not nice considering the time it ends from where I am staying.

In my humble opinion, I think this is a good start and balanced buffing of DK DPS and making us balanced. A battle res, seriously? Nifty tool. Also, myself being a hardcore dual-wielding, swashbuckling Death Knight, the buffs on Frost tree will make the DPS uptime more consistent, and I do see the attempt of Blizzard to remove the heavy dependence on Obliterate and makes the system more flexible, but still challenging. I will post more on this when I do get to experience the changes.

Anyway, the Death Knight changes are here for your perusal. Thanks Blizz and MMO-Champ for being such responsible and diligent posters:

- Dark Simulacrum now works on numerous additional spells in dungeon encounters.

- Raise Ally has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to Rebirth. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.

Talent Specializations

Blood

- Blood Shield now only works while in Blood Presence.
- Death Strike self-healing no longer generates threat.


Frost

- Blood of the North (passive) now permanently converts both Blood Runes into Death Runes. There is no longer any proc interaction with Blood Strike required to activate Death Runes.

- Frost Strike now deals 130% of weapon damage, up from 110%.

- Howling Blast damage has been increased by 20%. To compensate, the area-of-effect splash now does 50% of the single-target damage, down from 60%. The net result of this change leaves the area-of-effect damage roughly the same as 4.0.6 numbers. In addition, Howling Blast now has a facing requirement.


Unholy

- Desecration no longer triggers when an applicable strike hits a snare-immune target. This is primarily to avoid unnecessary spell effect clutter during boss encounters.

- Rage of Rivendare again applies 15/30/45% additional damage to Plague, Scourge, and Festering Strike, up from 12/24/36%.




Glyphs

- Glyph of Raise Ally is now Glyph of Death Gate, and makes Death Gate cast 60% faster.


Death Knight Bug Fixes

- Runeforging no longer displays a skill-up UI element.