A new build was tossed on the PTR, build 9733. It meant big changes. Unfortunately, it means big changes for the Unholy tree. The two biggest effects are that Death Strike was hit with the nerf bat, which will affect blood specs that relied on it, and Master of Ghouls a.k.a. Perma-Ghoul has been shifted from a 15-point talent to a 25-point talent. This means that builds that use Unholy as a support tree probably won’t have access to Perma-ghoul (suck as 0/51/20, the replacement Duel-Wield build). Unholy DPS Specs will obviously be unaffected by this change.
This one feels like another nerf to DW specs. Also taking a hit were a few other talents that dps specs relied on. Impurity was nerfed by 5% at max rank, while Black Ice was nerfed 50%. Improved Icy Touch also took a hit and was reduced by half. This change will probably affect DW, Frost, and Unholy DPS Specs.
Here are the PTR changes:
Abilities
Anti-magic Shell: The amount of damage this ability can absorb is now limited to 50% of the death knight’s health.
Death Strike: The amount of healing per damage done has been reduced by 20%.
Talents
Blood
* Dancing Rune Weapon: Damage done by, and duration of this pet is reduced by 50%, but the cooldown is reduced to 90 seconds.
* Heart Strike: Bonus damage for diseases is now a multiplier rather than a flat bonus. No longer affected by Glyph of Blood Strike.
* Spell Deflection: This talent has been increased to 15/30/45% damage reduction from a direct damage spell.
Frost
* Black Ice: This talent now provides a 2/4/6/8/10% bonus to Frost and Shadow damage instead of 4/8/12/16/20% to Frost.
* Howling Blast: Base damage and scaling doubled. This doubled. This ability no longer deals bonus damage to targets with Frost Fever. Cooldown increased to 8 seconds. Swapped positions with Hungering Cold in the talent tree.
* Improved Icy Touch: Now increases Icy Touch damage by 5/10/15% instead of by 10/20/30%.
* Rime: When this talent triggers, it also resets the cooldown on Howling Blast.
* Tundra Stalker: Now increases the damage on abilities by 3/6/9/12/15% instead of 2/4/6/8/10%.
Unholy
* New Talent: Ghoul Frenzy: Grants 25% melee haste to your pet and heals it for 30% of its maximum health. Costs 1 Unholy Rune. Requires at least 30 points in the Unholy tree.
* Impurity: This talent is reduced to 4/8/12/16/20% bonus to attack power scaling.
* Master of Ghouls: Now also reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 60 seconds. This talent now requires at least 25 points in the Unholy tree, and has Night of the Dead as a prerequisite.
* Night of the Dead: Redesigned to grant a flat reduction on cooldown to Raise Dead and Army of the Dead instead of a reduction from using abilities. Requires at least 15 points in the Unholy tree; prerequisite for Master of Ghouls.
Sadly, the 0/51/20 spec I have posted is now obsolete and the 0/10/61 unholy dps spec may now be out of date as well. Stay tuned for updated posts.