Talent Build Examples for Blizzard's New Death Knight

With Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King NDA out of the way, there has been the inevitable flood of information about the new expansion hitting the streets. One of the most sought-after pieces of information is anything about the new class being introduced, the Death Knight. Massively has a great summary, with video examples, of the three different avenues available to the Death Knight. From the AE strengths of unholy, to the life-stealing blood tree, to the control of the frost tree, it seems that this new juggernaut is certainly going to be a force to be reckoned with.

Re:news?

[MooseMuffin]

You're in the games section. The newsworthy requirement is significantly reduced.

Re:Age of Conan much more interesting.

[Krater76]

I like the way Tycho on Penny-Arcade put it, that standing in Lakeshire makes you wonder why they don't bother making a game out of all the raw material they have in the world.

It might not be the game Tycho wants. They made their game, and while somewhat entertaining it wasn't what I wanted.

And that's the heart of the problem. Some people want crazy continent-wide PvP. Some people just want to explore. Some people want to destroy the largest monsters in the world. Some people want shiny stuff. Some people want to be involved with, or be the focus of, a story. And some people just want to buy/sell/create stuff and never leave town. And everyone wants to do it at varying speeds (the casual vs. hardcore).

You can't please everyone. You can certainly try, but Blizzard has certainly given up in a lot of places. World PvP and crafting are definitely two that come to mind right off the bat. They are going to try for some things in regards to world PvP in WotLK but we'll see how that goes. They tried updates to world PvP in BC as well and that didn't turn out so great. Crafting is more of a money sink than anything else and is considered by many to be one of the worst crafting systems in MMOs. I doubt that will change.

Re:Why is this even on slashdot?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I've seen just as many asswipes in other games as in WoW. While many of them leave for WoW eventually, most don't -- some even bring back bad habits from WoW.

I think the other poster is right -- it's got nothing to do with the game, and everything to do with the scale.

Classes are already out of whack

[Durrok]

All classes are imbalanced in certain situations or against certain classes. Resto spec druids are a good example, almost impossible to take down. Not a huge deal in most situations as they eventually run out of mana, run away, or 5+ people eventually mow them down but for WSG for instance, they make almost unstoppable flag runners. Rogues are another good example: cheat death (although recently nerfed), vanish, cloak of shadows, and stun/mace spec makes fighting most classes one on one or two on one a joke. Once again not a big deal until half the team is rogues and your team gets mowed down as they spawn.

WoW already has unbalanced classes or specs... why makes us think they are going to really care if the Death Knight is out of whack? Isn't that the whole idea as it's a "Hero" class?

Re:Too soon!

[4D6963]

*woosh*

A bit off topic but I see so many people missing jokes on Slashdot and people replying "whoosh" that I seriously think we should have a -1, Whoosh moderation option.

have you looked in a mirror?

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Most of the people whining about how their game is ruined by others ARE jerks, assholes, and selfish pricks out to ruin everyone else's day. Normal people just stop playing.

Re:Age of Conan much more interesting.

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Any game that features PvE and PvP is never going to please everyone. It takes a great deal of effort to fairly balance a game for either PvE or PvP - it's almost impossible to do. People who play PvE want big weapons (or spells or whatever) that do massive damage, and if it can kill your opponent in one swing (casting, etc.) that's even better. In PvP, no one wants to go into a fight knowing that they can be one-hit-killed, so weapons, spells, etc. have to be toned down.

Crafting is another touch situation. If you can craft anything that is profitable, then everyone will jump on that wagon and drive the value down.

I have played a lot of MMORPGs (the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL back in the early 1990s, right up through WoW and have yet to find a game that can fairly and accurately balance a PvE and PvP situation to keep a majority of people happy - WoW comes closest, but there will always be people who are unhappy.

BTW - I'm playing Dungeon Runners [dungonerunners.com] right now and it's a blast (if a bit simple) and you can't argue with the price (free, or $5/mo if you want all the features).

Sorry yer not good enough...

[SpiritMaster]

Sadly Blizzard seems to have lost the point behind expansions first with Outlands, and now with this new class. My greatest concern is that rather than focusing on new content that everyone can enjoy as they did in the original, instead they have just ramped up the difficulty on mobs so much that only insanely well geared people will even SEE most of the end game content. Now I'm not sure if this was an attempt by Blizzard to introduce more of the 'teamwork' element that served them so well, but it seems to have come at the cost of alienating the casual gamer. Tank classes in particular seem to have it the hardest since they are REQUIRED to have nothing but the best in order to survive, and often get replaced in favor of Druids and their 'I Win' tank form (Dire Bear). Now granted all classes are situational but it seems that in their haste to apply a multi-use class system, they have succeeded in seriously unbalancing key aspects. Needless to say this will come as no surprise to long term players, as Blizzards track record at 'balancing' classes is spotty.

Heroic Dungeons were also a poor idea, since by the time you are capable of doing them, your... well, sick of doing them. A better idea would have been to create more Zul'Aman type instances for heroics so that once a player can run them he will have new content to explore, rather than repeating the cookie-cutter method of getting through the instance as fast as possible for the badges. At the end of the day I believe this expansions success will have less to do about what new bells as whistles they add (after all everything gets old eventually), and more about how well they cater to the casual gamers. Please Blizzard remember that some of us want to have FUN, not farm gear endlessly.

Re:Age of Conan much more interesting.

[Tridus]

The real problem with world PvP is that too many servers are faction imbalanced. When one side outnumbers the other 2:1 at ANY encounter, the whole thing becomes pointless.

Making it give rewards makes the problem worse, since the bigger side always wins, it'll also outgear the smaller side. It also encourages people to leech (such as AFKing in BGs and the rampant cheating in Season 3 arenas) to get the rewards faster, instead of actually playing.

(Honestly, world PvP was at its best in the days of the original Taren Mill vs. Southshore fights, which had no rewards whatsoever. People did it because it was fun, not to get l33t shinies.)

Re:Class balance finally revealed

[bwindle2]

If they really want to fix the soloing problem AND the tank/healer shortage all at once, they need to make respecs free. My paladin has a great healing set, and a decent tanking set, and a meh ret set. I am not willing to drop 100G to respec prot and back again to tank some pug that'll likely suck anyway. I also can't afford to drop 100G to respec Retibution to do (some) better damage for soloing.

But if re-specing were free, or at least a heck of a lot cheaper, I might.