Good evening, sorry its been a few days, there was a death in my family, then I got really sick; blah, blah, blah. I've finally had time to take a look at these hot new patch notes. There is good news for Frosties, Tanks, and Unholy Pvpers. Here's what's been published thus far:
Icy Touch: This ability now causes a very high amount of threat while the death knight is in Frost Presence.
Misc
Rune of Razorice: Now stacks 5 stacks of 2% Frost Vulnerability instead of 10 stacks of 1% Frost Vulnerability. Proc chance changed to 100%.
Blood
Abomination's Might: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc on certain strikes. Rank 1 is 5% attack power and Rank 2 is 10% attack power. The self strength buff remains unchanged.
Will of the Necropolis: There is no longer a cooldown on the frequency at which this talent can be activated. In addition, this ability can now also be triggered by damage which deals less than 5% of your health.
Frost
Endless Winter: No longer causes Frost Fever to be applied by Chains of Ice, but instead grants 2/4% strength. The previous functionality of this talent can now be attained via the Glyph of Chains of Ice.
Improved Icy Talons: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc. The self haste buff remains unchanged.
Nerves of Cold Steel: Now increases off-hand damage by 8/16/25%, up from 5/10/15%.
Unbreakable Armor: The amount of strength granted is now 20%, up from 10%.
Unholy
Scourge Strike: Now deals 70% weapon damage, plus 12% of physical damage done as shadow damage for each of the death knight's diseases on the target. The net result should be larger strikes with no diseases present, while maximum damage with all diseases applied to the target should stay the same.
Raid Buff Goodness
First off, this makes our major raid buffs passive, that is they don't have a chance trigger or length. This pretty much moots the discussion we were having here on DKT about separating Heart Strikes to maximize AM uptime, since uptime is no longer an issue.
Frost Goodness
It feels to me like this patch is all about buffing underperforming raid and pvp specs. Unholy and Blood are doing ok, but Frost has fallen out of favor among raiders. These targetted buffs are meant to make Frost viable again.
First, Blizzard has made the effect from Razorice 100%, that means it applies its proc on every hit. Plus, they've changed it to apply double the effect (2% instead of 1%) and made it have half the stacks. This means that the buff from the proc will be easier to maintain at its maximum stack count.
Secondly, Nerves of Cold Steel and Unbreakable Armor have been buffed. NoCS now increases offhead damage by an additional 10% at max level (25% instead of 15%). UA now increases strength by 20% instead of 10%. These buffs are aimed to increase Frost raid damage.
These changes should hopefully make Frost competative again. I'll test this out once I can get on the PTR.
Unholy (Pvp) Might
Scourge Strike has been altered a little. It has been redesigned to cause more damage with no diseases present, but do the same damage when diseases are up. This should silence the individuals whining that Unholy doesn't do enough pvp damage.
Everyone like buffs, this latest round is designed, in my opinion, to make Frost more competative in raid dps because a majority of raiders have shifted toward Unholy and Blood. Blizzard doesn't seem to like it when specs get polarized to this extent.
I'm hoping this will buff Frost raid damage closer to Unholy, and I'll test this with real world numbers when I can.
I'm not sure how much I support the changes to Scourge Strike. I'm just affraid that they'll do something to bug it out or damage Unholy Raid dps more than expected. Scourge Strike has an inconsistent history and has been redefined too many times as of late. I'd like it if they supported one specific version of SS and stuck with it. Overall, this patch is good news for us.