I don’t have beta access, didn’t get it an invite on either of my active accounts. I don’t feel motivated to really cover this stuff in great detail because it’s second-hand information.

This latest build, #12604 introduced some new talent and ability changes. Looking at what’s been published so far, it looks to me that Blizzard is trying to make every DK play style mimic the priority system of pre-Cat frost. I liked Frost, but I don’t think I totally enjoyed having to watch the procs so much. I felt like running a buff mod like DebuffFilter or Power Auras was mandatory for top-level DPS. I’m not sure that I agree that a third party add-on should be required equipment for ANY class.

Frost

•Festering Strike *New* - An instant attack that deals 150% weapon damage plus 840.54 and increases the duration of your Blood Plague, Frost Fever, and Chains of Ice effects on the target by up to 6 sec. / 5 yd range, Instant

•Runic Empowerment *New* is now baseline - When you use your Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike ability, you have a 45% chance to activate a random fully depleted rune.

•Chains of Ice now reduces movement speed by 60% for 8 sec. (Down from 95% + 10% movement each sec over 10 seconds)

•Chill of the Grave now has a chance to generate 5/10 Runic Power. (Up from 2.5/5)

•Nerves of Cold Steel is now a Tier 1 talent, down from Tier 2.

•Improved Icy Touch now increases the damage of Icy Touch by 10/20/30%. (Up from 5/10/15%)

•On a Pale Horse is back as a Tier 2 talent.


Unholy

•Anti-Magic Shell no longer costs Runic Power.

•Ebon Plaguebringer is now a 2 ranks talent (Down from 3) and now increases damage taken from Disease by 15/30%. (Old - 10/20/30%)

•Dirge now has a chance to generate 5/10 Runic Power. (Up from 2.5/5)

•Virulence now increases your chance to hit with spells by 2/4/6%. (Up from 1/2/3%)


Blood

•Crimson Scourge is now a 2 rank talent. Increases damage dealt by Blood Boil by 20/40% (Down from 15/30/45%) and 50%/100% chance to proc. (Up from 33/67/100%)

•Improved Blood Presence is now a Tier 4 talent, down from Tier 5.

•Blood Parasite is now a 2 rank talent with a 5/10% chance to proc. (Up from 3/6/9%)

•Toughness is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 4.

•Sanguine Fortitude is now a Tier 4 talent, down from Tier 3. 2 ranks instead of 3.

•Hand of Doom *New* - Reduces the cooldown of your Strangulate ability by 60 sec.


  -  Mmo-Champion Class Changes ( Source )

I’m disappointed. If you haven’t seen this announcement, here’s a link to worldofraids and their summary of the information. I need to shut my mouth. Every time I say that a feature is good, it gets axed.

So Long Guild Talents

One of the two banner features of the expansion was the new Guild Progression and talent system. The feature will still exist in some form, but the feature won’t be as pro as they originally planned. We’ll still get guild experience for doing raids, however the perks will be mandatory and there won’t be any choice involved.

If you’ve been playing for a while, you’ve no doubt noticed the current glut of guilds. Everybody has a raiding guild and thinks they can manage raids, qualified or not. Since Burning Crusade, there are so many guilds that recruitment is impossible and 10-man raiding guilds are becoming a norm. I was hoping that the guild talent system would separate the good guilds from the mismanaged ones and give players incentive to stick in one place and not switch guilds at the drop of a hate. If the guild could provide players with some other innate value other than managing raids, people would be less apt to gquit for silly reasons.

Path of the Titans GONE

Secondly, Path of the Titans has been axed. This was one of the big banner features in the original expansion teaser trailers. Path of the Titans was supposed to be a new alternate advancement system and character customization opportunity; their redesigned take on the original hero class ideas. With Path of the Titans gone, Archeology is going to be a useless afterthought; relegated to crappy visual items which are probably going to be similar to the useless trivialities given out for holidays. It took me less than 5 seconds to decide hat Archeology is going to be useless and not worth the time and cost to level. Less than 5 seconds to go from a banner features to an annoyance; GG.

Since Path of the Titans is gone, they felt they needed to throw us all at least a small bone for taking away such a talked-about feature. So, they’re going to enhance the Glyph system. But wait, shouldn’t they have already been doing this as a part of the general profession upgrade for Cataclysm; like every other profession is getting. The answer is, yes, you know that this was probably in the works anyways. They’re only mentioning it as a fallback because they eliminated PotT.

OMG Fix Inscription

I’ve mentioned several times that I think Inscription is a broken profession, and I have zero confidence that this will improve it or fix the problems associated with it. Inscription has little money-making value. To make money off Glyphs and such, you have to literally sit in front of the AH all freaking day, making a few gold here and there off the glyphs your auction spamming. I hear they have a little new app that can help you, all Scribe should go out and purchase mobile auction house service! Ca-ching Ca-ching, $15\month in Activision’s pockets.

Here’s what I think they should do; first off, remove Minor Glyphs, they’re irrelevant and useless. Most minor glyphs suck. For Death Knights, we have 3 useful minor glyphs; most sites quite all three no matter what your spec is. There’s no possible variation that’s provides and different value to us. According to these announcements, they have no plans to change them.

Secondly, Inscription provides some value in the form of Shoulder Enchants, however it has little money-making value. Everyone can make glyphs, I’m betting most players have Scribes, everyone has the potential to spam the auction house with low-priced glyphs and try to make money. Inscription needs some value that it can provide to others; such as epic craftable recipes that require whatever the current equivalent is of Frozen Orbs or Runed Orbs. Make a few droppable recipes like Enchanting. Another option would be to make some of the popular Major Glyphs require these crafting materials.

Blizzard Doesn't Like Bloggers

Blizzard isn’t doing me any favors as a blogger, so I feel no reason to hold back my opinions. I don’t really think they like criticism. Just look at how they screwed over my man Skeleton Jack. I don’t really mention him here. I don’t think he knows or cares that there are other Death Knight blogs besides his; He doesn’t link to me; so I’m in no hurry to link or mention him. But, I’ll make an exception this one time.

He recounts a story about how he was all set to get into the Cataclysm Alpha, but was blocked in the final hour because they told him “they don’t allow bloggers or media types to participate in NDA-related activities” like alphas and betas and such.

It’s pretty inflammatory to me that Blizzard intentionally excludes us, the people that help to spark interest in their products. They want you as the consumer, but don’t care about the community that assists the players in understanding the game. Doesn’t that seem counter-productive to you. Oh, and this policy seems to make a huge exception for BRK; whose blog is read by gazillions more than mine or the Skelinator.

As a fellow blogger, I feel for people when I hear how Blizzard treats bloggers. I know they don’t care about me, and would probably be happy if I canceled this domain name; all the more reason to give my accurate analysis and opinions on the game.

$$ is the Bottom Line

This has been one huge side-track. I think that this recent announcement has everything to do with the bottom line. Somebody somewhere is forcing the developers to put a date on the shipping of the expansion; which is HIGHLY un-blizzard-like. Blizzard is known for slipping release dates when they can’t get stuff done in time. In this case, a shall we say, outside source is forcing their hand to commit to a release date. Consequently, some of their announced and looked after features won’t make the cut.

What are we to do when the game begins to feel tedious and annoying? Why reroll of course. I’ve had a lot of issues in the past with my guild. I know a lot of them will come back to the game when Cataclysm hits; it’s the same ol’ cycle that we go through in every expansion. I logged on the other night, it was a Tuesday, usually a good night for us, and I was the only person online. It’s hard to raid with a guild of 1. Even when they decide to pick it back up, I know that it’s going to be raiding their way and not my way; their times, not my times.

Me and my pal Astar, and possibly Seeathis, if assuming we can persuade him are going to reroll on a new, low-population RP server. We’re going to start a new guild and start at the beginning again, AS HORDE. With Cataclysm, all the new areas are getting revamped, it’s time to go back and enjoy them all again. Raiding is the ultimate goal, but its only part of the new content being released in the expansion. I’m going to take my time and enjoy it.

Our new guild is going to be called “Evil to the Core”. I feel like a fresh start, on a new server is what I need. I’m planning on rolling an Undead or Orc Death Knight, and a Blood Elf Paladin. I’m going to play and try out both the new races and their starting areas, but I definitely don’t want to stick with a Goblin as my main class; to gnomey, never liked gnomes. Gnome and Night Elf Death Knights strike me as oddities, like Gnome warriors. People play them because they look like contradictions. I’ve never felt that either of those races fit Death Knights. You’re free to have your own opinions, but that’s mine. I don’t think I’d want UnholyGnome and BloodyNightElf in my guild (because those are the wonderfully original names they’d have).

Speaking of names, you people are getting lazy. I’ve ran into waaay too many stupid named in Silvermoon while I’ve been leveling yet another Blood Elf. Every time I see a HoofnHots or TrollTamer, I want to gouge my eyes out and quit Wow; another reason why I want to be on an RP server.

What I want from the expansion

I’ve had a lot of time to sit and think what I’m looking forward to, or what I want out of the expansion. I have a number of expectations, for us as a class. I’m hoping that, like last year, I’ll get a beta invite so I can work out some of the details for you all before release. If I were Blizzard, I’d make sure that all us blogger and community people got them. If I get one, I get one, if I don’t; that’s how the system works. I’m not pandering for an invite here, just stating that it’s in their best interest to make the bloggers excited about new releases.

Death Knights Beyond Northrend

The Death Knight storylines are linked to Northrend and the Lich King. As a Death Knight, and a lore fan, I’m looking to see how Blizzard keeps the Death Knights relevant to the storyline following the defeat of the Lich King. I’ve devoted considerable time, both in the game and here on my site to the Death Knight; I don’t want to play the one-trick pony. Blizzard needs to give us a reason to keep playing (sub fighting) after Arthas gets his clock cleaned. They can’t just ditch the “hero” class after the expansion it’s themed after has been completed. I’ve beat the de-heroization horse to death, so I won’t drag that back out now.

Death Knight Playstyles

Our class is undergoing a ** HUGE ** change in the expansion. We’re getting a dedicated tanking tree; gone is the “each tree fits all” mantra of Wrath. This will undoubtedly create confusion when lots of the classic talents are changed and swapped around. I also can’t possibly see how Blizzard can leave the presences the same as they are now. I expect the presence system to be completely redesigned as well, or even reimagined. In the least case, Blood Presence and Frost Presence will have to be swapped. Their effects are too confusing taking into account the talent tree changes.

Our resource system is undergoing drastic changes. Rune refresh times are being altered. This change is going to fundamentally alter how we craft our attack rotations. It should have the effect of reducing the impact of lag on our dps cycles and eliminate the “GCD starvation” that plagues most Death Knight specs. This change wasn’t as well received as others, but in the end, I think it will play to our advantage; assuming that Blizzard can re-baseline our abilities to match. However, I predict buffs and nerfs in the future, much like the rebalances that occurred following the release of Wrath. I’m not a fan of the buff\nerf cycle, please don’t jerk us around.

Guild and Raid Changes

I haven’t heard too much about this since the Cataclysm rumors and blue posts started. I hope that this feature has not been quietly dropped. There were comments early on about “guild advancement”, almost like a talent tree for guilds. I hope this feature has not been eliminated, because it’s the one thing that I think will help to return guilds to what they were in the beginning. Making raid content available to everyone is good, but it’s also served to create a glut of guilds. It’s hard for guilds to recruit and retain members, when the marked of available guilds is so large. The content has been changed such that anyone can form a guild and run raids; guilds aren’t the pinnacle of achievement they once were. By providing some form of “alternate advancement” for guilds, the guild provides a larger benefit to members, discouraging them from jumping ship. Such a system would need to be balanced such that it provides enough benefit, and that the benefits have staggered effects such that a new guild is not as attractive as an established guild.

With their philosophy of making raids available and attractive to everyone, I just don’t know if Blizzard is going to be able to bring themselves to execute this feature like I’d want them to.

Blizzard, if you’re listening, I’m looking for awesomeness. When I start raiding in Cataclysm, I want it too feel like that first time I walked into Molten Core or Blackwing Lair. You’re overhauling the world we’ve known and loved for 5 years. I also want you to overhaul my enjoyment of the game. Draw me back in and make it feel like that first shot of wow-crack in the vein. You’re on top of the market and you have the money to make Cataclysm everything that we expect it to be; and we expect AWESOMENESS.

Cataclysm Raid Changes

1. 10 and 25-mans will be –more or less- equal difficulty and will drop the same level of items.

2. 25-mans will drop –MORE- items to reward the higher player count.

3. Raid Dungeons will focus on less time commitment; they’ll be a few smaller dungeons instead of 1 big dungeon (think Ulduar, that dungeon was freakin huge).

4. Dungeon Gating will see a return.

So far, I’m a fan of this approach. My opinions are self-serving though. I haven’t been able to have a functional 25-man guild in a long time. The friends that I play with are all a little older now than when Wow started up, so we all have less time to commit to raiding. We like to do it, but there really isn’t a desire to manage a full 25-man raiding team. I’m also not a fan of raiding 4-6 in a stretch. It seemed like progression, especially in Ulduar required us to knock out everything up to General V in one night; that’s a lot of killing at one sitting.

Source: forums.worldofwarcraft.com

Mobile Auction House

Blizzard has found another golden cow to milk. Hopefully you all aren’t so bored at work that you’re going to suck down the $2.99 fee to have the auction house on your iPhone. Blizzard could easily offer this feature for free just like the Armory, but after the epic success of offering mounts and pets for cash, why would they pass up another change to make an easy few million to pad the bottom line. Those server replacement costs are probably starting to add up. Maybe I could legitimately see using this if you’re watching for a Battered Hilt or some other epic item, but I can’t see a reason to add this to my monthly Blizzard bottom line permanently.

The growing trend of micropayments in MMO’s is worrying me. Especially as Blizzard tries to cram more and more pay-for services into Wow. We already pay them a pretty hefty monthly fee for new content and server maintenance. Companies are stupid, moneywise, to not take advantage of player’s willingness to cough up more money for pretty shiny things, but most of the services offered are largely cosmetic and easily done without.

My fear is that the trend in micro-payments is going to lead to an “authorized” currency purchasing and that these GDKP runs that seem to be the current trend will end up giving out items to whoever has the most disposable incoming. I pay my $15 and I think that that entitles me to a fare share of loot. I don’t want to have to compete with some guy who can literally buy whatever the hell he wants from under me.

Inscription

A while back, I wrote an article about the problems I perceived with the Inscription Profession. Recently, Blizzard put out some info about profession changes in the works for Cataclysm. At least they’re realized that pretty much every Minor Glyph sucks. I use the same three for any spec really. The rest are trash. Hopefully Blizzard will either fix that, or remove Minor Glyphs entirely.

More Darkmoon cards are good, but Blizzard needs to pay attention to what they’re creating and make them all useful instead of having 1 useful 1 and 3 shitty ones. It was hard for me to care about throwing money into Darkmoon card crafting when I had a 75% random chance of throwing my gold coins down the toilet.

They’re adding new Major Glyphs, but those won’t come out until after the expansion’s been around a while … so no help there. Many current glyphs will be altered or changed; pardon me for being cynical.

The last tidbit offers a little hope. One of my main criticisms is that the only way to make money with Inscription is to spend a ton of time flooding the AH with glyphs and hope someone buys them. Blizzard mentions the possibility of making Relics with Inscription instead of the crappy off-hands that nobody ever wanted. If this is true, and those items are comparable to low-level raiding gear, we may actually have a way to make some money. I’ll believe that when I see it.

I’m holding out hope that Blizzard can fix Inscription, but from what I see so far, I’m not impressed. It doesn’t appear that they’ve taken any of my advice. Without making some serious changes, Inscription will be “that profession I have on my alt that I don’t play just to have one”.

Cataclysm

I’m looking forward to Cataclysm. See beyond my cynicism. Wow is the best MMO out there and nobody has been able to challenge it. This is Blizzard’s chance to impress me while they still have my attention. Give me a reason to continue playing beyond shiny flashy decorations. I want the fun gaming experience that I’ve had in the past in Wow. I want to raid and have that first-kill thrill once again.

Blizzard posted our Cataclysm preview. Instead of posting it here, I’ll depend on your Reading Rating to head over to Mmo-Champ, or the news site of your choice.

So, if you failed to read the my earlier post, Blood is being converted to the tank tree. Death Knights will have a similar setup to warriors with a dedicated “protection” or “tanking” tree and two dps trees. Frost will focus on dual-wielding and magic damage, although Blizzard has confirmed that they want to support two-handed frost as well in the expansion. Secondly, Unholy will be the diseases and pet tree. Critical tanking talents in Frost and Unholy will be moved to Blood, leaving more room for greater specialization and flavor talent abilities. I would imagine we’ll see better pvp design as well.

New Abilities

Another damage ability with pvp implications is Necrotic Strike. It has broad damage implications, but its anti-healing abilities have the most promise for pvp. The ability is basically a tricked out mortal strike. Instead of reducing healing, the attack takes a queue from ToC and adds a healing absorption debuff to your target. The devs say that retooled this ability to replace the Death Knight’s lost abilities to counter HoT’s.

The interesting addition of Dark Simulacrum will add to the Death Knight’s tanking toolbox. I can’t imagine how this ability will be used much as a dps ability, although I don’t discount the devs ability to surprise me. I was not surprised when they stated that one of their main reasons for making the tree changes was to make the Death Knight class fit more neatly into the mastery system. I voiced my opinion when the Mastery System was announced that I was skeptical they could make it work for Death Knights. This is a change many of us were expecting.

Mastery Bonuses

Mastery Bonuses include

Blood: Damage Reduction, Vengeance, Healing Absorbtion
Frost: Melee Damage, Melee Haste, Runic Power Generation
Unholy: Melee Damage, Melee\Spell Critical Damage, Disease Damage

Another thing worth mentioning, is that they touched on the opposite presence situation by saying that they may, prior to release, rename the presences or otherwise change them to make it easier to understand.

Rune Resource Overhaul

The white elephant at this party is the Rune overhaul. Blizzard feels that the current system both trivializes individual Death Knight attacks, as well as makes us overly dependent on rotations for damage as well as low lag conditions. A missed GCD means a big damage loss. So, they’re changing what is essentially 6 runes regenerating all at once to 3 groups of 2 runes regenerating on a shared pool. This means that if you use an ability that requires two frost runes, the two runes will not regenerate at the same time. The first rune must regenerate before the second frost rune can begin its regeneration cycle; they will not regenerate simultaneously as they do now. Each type of rune will share this regeneration cycle. I’m not sure at what I think about this, since a lot of the Death Knight’s abilities will require tweaking to make it work. It really just seems like they’re going to have to redesign (or rather rebalance) the entire class from scratch. I’m just not sure that’s necessary.

A friend of mine recently pointed out to me that it’s his opinion that Blizzard likes to make changes like this from time to time to keep things fresh and to keep you hooked on the Wow-crack. It looks like these changes have far reaching implications on how Death Knights function, and it looks like Cataclysm over all will be yet another shot of your favorite crack directly into the vein.

Yesterday, we had a big announcement from Blizzard about Death Knight tanking in Cataclysm; and it was a big one. Blizzard is reversing their long-held “every roll in any tree” policy to make Blood the only tanking tree for Death Knights. Blood will be like the Protection tree for Death Knights. Here’s what Ghostcrawler had to say about it:

We're doing our Cataclysm preview on the death knight changes later this week, but we knew one change risked overshadowing all the others, so we figured we'd go ahead and drop the proverbial Blood bomb today.

In Cataclysm, death knights will have a dedicated tanking tree, much like the other three tank classes. That tree will be Blood.

We’ll go into more detail in the upcoming preview, but we wanted to take the opportunity to explain the reasoning for such a big change.

Why the about face? We actually thought the “tri tank” experiment worked out okay. We suspected there would always be a “best” tanking tree, because that’s the way these things shake out, but we hoped it would be close enough that many players could tank with their favorite tree. When we tried out this design for Wrath of the Lich King, we were using it as a test case to see if we wanted to do similar things with the warrior and paladin talent trees.

A lot has happened since that time. We introduced the dual-spec feature, allowing players to have a tanking spec and dps spec that they could switch between. We introduced Dungeon Finder, which makes it easier to find players who want to tank, and even let players level up using a dedicated tank spec. In Cataclysm, we are introducing the concept of passive talent tree bonuses and we think that feature is a lot stronger when the talent tree has a particular focus (such as damage, tanking or healing). For example, it’s safer to give more passive damage to a tanking tree than we can a dps tree. Above all, we were just spending a lot of effort trying to balance three trees (though it was really six trees, since each tree was trying to do two things).

It started to feel unfair to the other tank classes that we had to spend so much effort tweaking three types of DK tanks, and it even started to feel unfair to the DK that we couldn’t focus their tanking experience. One bit of feedback that really struck home was the DK players who said, essentially, “I look at the Protection tree and I’m jealous of all of the cool tools they have to help their tanking. As a DK, I have to pick and choose tanking talents from within a sea of dps talents.” Rather than have a strong focus, the trees felt a little watered down because they were trying to do so much. With Frost as a dual-wield, spell and runic power focused tree, Unholy as a disease and minion focused tree, and Blood as a self-healing, defensive cooldown, tanking tree, we think the focus of each tree is a lot clearer and cooler.

In Cataclysm, Blood will be the death knight version of a Protection tree. It will have passive talent tree bonuses that reflect tanking. It will have tools, such as a Demo Shout equivalent, necessary for tanking. Several of the more fun tanking talents from Frost and Unholy will be moved into Blood. We will be able to revise (or even remove) clunky mechanics like Rune Strike and focus on letting DKs generate threat with their normal Blood tanking rotation.

This is major change, and we understand it will be met with some disappointment from players who really liked the flexibility, those who appreciated the unorthodox talent tree design, or those few of you who really liked Blood dps. Nevertheless, we are convinced that this is the right change for the game.

More exciting death knight news coming up soon in the preview.

  -  Ghostcrawler ( Source )

I wanted to wait until this morning to post to let this announcement sink in. My feelings on it are mixed. I saw this coming because, as I pointed out in my post titled Have You Attained Death Knight Mastery?, it would be EXTREMELY problematic for Blizzard to continue with the same Death Knight class design and make it fit into the new Mastery system in Cataclysm. A change was necessary.

Death Knights are set apart because their class design attempts to support every role in any tree. The direct result is that tanking talents are watered down and disbursed throughout the three trees, leading to what really are three different tanks. I like the current approach, but it’s not a good design decision. By focusing Death Knight tanking into one tree, tanking talents can be more focused, and lead into a single class role design.

What this all fails to take into account is that Death Knight players feel a lot of loyalty to their play style. Those who have devoted their characters to Blood dps will not be as happy as the tanks to have this change forced upon them.

As we all leave Northrend behind, and journey back to Azeroth for the first time in five years, its best to keep in mind that Death Knights, the iconic class of Icecrown are just one of ten classes. This change, while maybe good from a gameplay view, chips away just a little more from the uniqueness of the Death Knight. If I wanted to play a warrior, Grendaran wouldn’t be sitting at 70 right now. Someone had to say it.

Another interesting question is the presence situation. Frost presence is supposed to be for tanking, but the Frost tree is a dps tree, while Blood presence is used mostly for dps. Blood however is going to become the new tanking tree. The presences seem a little backwards. I’m certain that originally Frost was designed as the tanking tree and presence, however this was changed somewhere closer to release (in fact, I think that I remember this from some of the older expansion infos; not sure I really have any evidence to cite on it).

This is a big change, Ghostcrawler has promised more information on the Death Knight changes in Cataclysm; all of this could change. What’s your opinion on this, do you support it? Let me know.

The biggest pieces of news so far, on the heels of 3.3.3 is some Blizzard chatter on the new Mastery stat and talent tree changes in Cataclysm. Mastery is a new stat that Blizzard is introducing to replace redundant and inconsequential stats which make itemization and gearing more difficult than it should be. As a Death Knight, you will no longer see stats such as Attack Power, Armor Pen, or Defense on your gear. These itemization points will be devoted toward things like Strength, Stamina, Haste, Crit, and Mastery.

Blizzard is using this opportunity to remove talents that are not dynamic; talents that give passive bonuses or are really not that interesting. In exchange for these changes, you will gain Mastery with that given tree as you spend more points in it. To give an example, Blizzard used Frost for Death Knights, they said that some Mastery bonuses for this tree could include increased Damage, Haste, and Runic Power generation. The amount of the bonuses you gain would depend on how many points you’ve spent in that tree.

I’m fairly excited about this. I started to get annoyed with item stats back in Zul’Gurub when Blizzard started adding hit rating (or at the time hit %) to gear. After hit came haste, and armor pen, and these other stats. This has had two unfortunate results; It’s harder to understand gearing for people who aren’t experts and It’s forced Blizzard to make a greater variety of gear sets to suit all these different play styles; This, I’m sure, has made dungeon itemization a nightmare for the designers.

While I see the potential benefits of this plan, it has several major issues, especially for Death Knights. I’m sure maybe that I don’t understand everything, because all has not yet been revealed, however at this moment I see this potential pitfall. Eyonix mentioned that Mastery bonuses would be in line with that spec’s specific role. However, the Death Knight trees are built so that no one particular tree is for tanking, dps, or pvp. Out of all the classes, Death Knights idealize the take the player not the class (or in this case talent tree). They expect all the trees to do everything, so I don’t see how you can apply this same Mastery philosophy to Death Knights as you would to a Druid or Paladin, whose trees each have specific roles in mind. To answer this very concern, Eyonix stated the following:

I hate the fact that I need to be extremely vague here, but there is specific information that we're not quite ready to discuss that will alleviate your concerns in this area.

We have quite a bit of information coming regarding the next expansion, so just hang tight, and have faith. I know many players will naturally be skeptical of what I'm about to say...

I've honestly never been more excited about this game with what's to come (and I've been playing for over 8-years), than I am now. I cannot wait to share more information with you, and I can't wait for you all to experience it first hand.

And to be honest, I can't wait for me to experience it first hand!

  -  Eyonix ( Source )

Required Reading

    Mastery System Preview

    Cataclysm Stat & System Changes