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MMO PC Hands On by Oli Welsh
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There are some sensational new abilities coming for most of World of Warcraft's character classes in second expansion Wrath of the Lich King: of course there are. As much as every player of Blizzard's massively multiplayer monster can't wait to tear across Northrend, delve into its dungeons and batter its new battleground - all of which we discussed in detail in last month's preview and interview - there is a part of you that cares about nothing more than new toys to trash with.
The level 70-80 skills themselves are still largely under wraps, but we did get to explore the new talent trees at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational event in Paris this past weekend, and some of them made our eyes pop: Fury Warriors dual-wielding two-handed weapons and a breathtaking demon form for Demonologist Warlocks in particular. Deeper changes were discussed at a developer panel, including a complete revision of the Hunter pet system that gives pets their own talent trees. More on these later. But there was one skill that, for us, eclipsed even these, and it doesn't come at level 80, or the top of a maxed-out talent tree. It comes at level 55, for a freshly-minted Death Knight, Lich King's unholy new hero class: the Death Grip.
In the grip of death
Death Grip warps space to instantly teleport an enemy to the Death Knight's position, from up to thirty yards away. It then forces the enemy to attack the Death Knight for three seconds. In the parlance, it's a ranged pulling and aggro spell, extremely useful for tanking (soaking up damage and protecting your allies).
The Dwarf Death Knight. Wasn't he in Legion of Doom?
But that's a dry and utilitarian description that doesn't remotely cover the outrageous, hilarious sense of power you get from simply plucking hapless monsters out of the ether and dumping them under your sword. It's the Death Knight all over: no cast times, no tricksy positioning, just instant gratification, tanking without pain, slaughter without pause.
Designed to address the shortage of tanks in the game - due to the necessity for classes like the Warrior and Paladin to decide between doing decent amounts of damage, and taking it - the Death Knight is designed to do a balance of both and, simply, make this crucial and demanding group role more fun. Based on our very limited hands-on with the class at WWI - we could take level 55 Death Knights for a run around the Eastern Plaguelands with their handful of starting skills, and no talent points to spend - it should do that with ease. Death Grip alone seems to guarantee it.
Ultimately, Death Knights will have their own adventuring zone to start in, and a home town called Ebon Hold they can teleport to at any time, though these weren't in the build of Lich King at WWI. They also start ready-equipped with a mount - an 'epic' one at that, a Death Charger (zombie horse) with the full 100 percent speed boost and the riding skill to go with it, easing cash drain considerably when you start. Any race can be a Death Knight; Tauren, Orcs and male Draenei have an imposing mass in their heavy black plate armour, although nothing beats the extraordinarily ridiculous sight of a Death Knight gnome, which looks something like a super-deformed, medievally-themed LEGO Darth Vader.
Hands of blue, two by two.
Although it's closest to the Warrior and Paladin in role and equipment, being heavily armoured, the Death Knight plays something like a Rogue. Most of its magical effects are linked to melee attacks, most of its abilities are instant cast, and it has an elaborated version of the Rogue's complex and rhythmic twin resource mechanic - regular abilities are cast out of a small, fast-recharging pool (in the Death Knight's case, runes) with more powerful finishing moves available by building up and unleashing a secondary reserve (in the Death Knight's case, runic power).
In the long run you will be able to alter your line-up of six runes - effectively customising the availability and frequency of your abilities - but in the build we played we were stuck with two each from the blood, unholy and frost schools. They recharge fast - Death Knight play will ultimately not be about how much power you have, but which powers, and when.
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Comments: 1-33 of 33 in total
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titans grip....
damn it, how the fuck am i supposed to hate blizzard now! my tauren fury warrior with two two handed weapons!!!!!! what type of madness is that!?!?!??! his dispenses with pet skill points and replaces them with a trio of talent trees for Hunter pets, one that enhances tanking, one that increases damage, and one that improves all-round utility. sounds very like the white lion in WAR though but still, no bad thing
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 30/06/08 @ 12:46
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farticusmaximus
30/06/08 @ 11:51
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Unless there are some radical improvements in the feral tree it looks like druid tanks could be a thing of the past. Blizzard hates druid tanks with a passion.
Good news on the rogue sapping and shaman CC, will make for more varied heroics as DPS classes without CC tend to find it hard to group. |
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Thunderhead
30/06/08 @ 11:53
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I must be the only person in the world not rolling a Death Knight, I mean I want to get stuck into the new content ASAP.
Ok, I might rull a DK Gnome just for a few mins to see what it's like...... /2 years later /does the stompy DK gnome dance
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 30/06/08 @ 12:53
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MrChuckles
30/06/08 @ 12:18
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Stat 1 * Stat 2 = Stat 3 which is > than Stat 4 which used to be Stat 1 * Stat5.....
zzzzzzz..... In short... more of the same... If you like it, buy it, if not, nothing to see here, move along... |
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The solution to tanking always seams to be to make protection warriors less and less attractive relative to the competition.
I was farming MC as a guild MT pre burning crusade and frankly was really pissed off with how protection warriors got totally shafted when BC came out. Looks like the same crap once again. |
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"Unless there are some radical improvements in the feral tree it looks like druid tanks could be a thing of the past"
TBH Druid tanks have not been very good in the last 2 instance raids. They have been moving to Warrior Tanks a lot the last few months. Probably with Death Knights filling in the role as OTs in WotLK. "I was farming MC as a guild MT pre burning crusade and frankly was really pissed off with how protection warriors got totally shafted when BC came out" In what way? Prot warrior tanks are *the* ultimate tanks in the game right now.
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 30/06/08 @ 13:54
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"In what way? Prot warrior tanks are *the* ultimate tanks in the game right now. "
Agreed. My lvl 68 Troll Prot warrior was storming in instances, holding aggro very well, and taking massive amounts of damage. Obviously one of the healers would be often solely focused on my character, but prot warriors taken far up the prot talent tree are the most formidable tanks there are...in my opinion ;) |
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The problem with Warriors is that we (well, I say we, though I haven't played my Warrior for months) have very little AoE aggro moves. We got friggin' Thunderclap and that's about it, and even then that move has to be used carefully if you're near sapped/polymorphed enemies.
Paladin and Druid tanks are a very viable replacement for Warrior tanks these days, and the inclusion of Death Knight will only help to make Warriors die out, as tanks at least. As for being able to dual-wield two-handed weapons -- I think it sounds stupid. I can't see using two massive weapons looking anything but ridiculous. |
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"The problem with Warriors is that we (well, I say we, though I haven't played my Warrior for months) have very little AoE aggro moves. We got friggin' Thunderclap and that's about it, and even then that move has to be used carefully if you're near sapped/polymorphed enemies."
I haven't played for months now either, and yes this is a common problem, but if you spend points in the right skills, such as Heroic Strike etc, then you add a lot more aggro and threat once you hit with it, therefore I just mapped thunderclap, heroic strike, cleave etc to the mouse scroll wheel and just spammed the fuck out of my skills whilst contantly tabbing between individuals in a group of enemies...can be a pain in the ass, but nobody said a tanks job was easy ;) The only time this was not always possible was as you say on sapped/polymorphed enemies. My first thought on the dual wielding two-handed weapons, was how frigging awesome that would be, and I still think that actually. You'd be doing a shedload of damage with that, especially if you specced into whirlwind as well, using whirlwind amongst a big group of enemies whilst holding two two-handed weapons would create a shed load of aggro and threat! |
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Really a shame that all races can be Death Knights. I've always loved them - to see a bunch of pink haired gnomes running around as them will be terrible. It's also a shame that they're going to be so easily accessible... Death Knights? Awesome. Death Chargers? Awesome. Seeing everyone and their mother roll one, completely taking away the specialness? Not so much.
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"using whirlwind amongst a big group of enemies whilst holding two two-handed weapons would create a shed load of aggro and threat! "
"And would kill you pretty quick as well without a shield ;) Then again, some of those 2H have +50 or more STA. 2 of those would be extra 1000 HP ;) " Hehe, yeah I forgot to think about that ;) Although as you say, a couple of good 2H with great stamina stats would remedy that, but as a tanking tactic it's a no-go, that's more for a secondary warrior taking the role of damage dealing. I did try once to re-spec my prot warrior so that for solo'ing I'd take enemies down quicker, so a quick reshuffle of talents and some macros for easy weapon swapping meant he whipped out either two 1H's or his 2H for quicker damage, however I always felt a part of him was missing...mainly a big fuck off shield and all the shield spec talents...even if it was slower, I did prefer being a proper prot warrior...soaking up all that damage ;) Although I have to say for WAR I fully intend to create a Chaos Marauder and focus on damage dealing this time round.
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 30/06/08 @ 15:43
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"Christ, it's hard enough deciding how to spec your hunter, let alone having to decide how to spec your pet. :/"
I would definitely enjoy going back to hunter for this very reason. Hunters can be so damn boring - most go Beastmastery for plain DPS (and often forget you do damage you need to feign often. Tossers.) when it's more fun to be Survival. As for pets, right now it's a choice beteeen cats and raptors for their plain DPS or if you go survival, a wind serpent to abuse high crit. Having the chance to diversify hunters more is a great idea, and by diversifying the pets you'll definitely start to see a change. It will make old pets viable. The only other change they can do to make it even better is to give hunters different styles of ranged weapon. There's no real difference between them right now and I'd like to see some changes there. Though knowing Blizzard, we'll likely end up seeing SV hunters dual-wielding guns... probably blood elf females called Tanya... |
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@Dizzy
"I was farming MC as a guild MT pre burning crusade and frankly was really pissed off with how protection warriors got totally shafted when BC came out" In what way? Prot warrior tanks are *the* ultimate tanks in the game right now. Indeed but after BC launch that was not the case, you were better off with a feral druid a lot of the time in the 60-70 instances, particularily with the gear that was around fairly easy. And a feral druid could dps, a prot warrior at the time was fairly shagged. Have they fixed it since - yes for the deep end game but not before I gave up tanking in disgust. And with the way WoW works once you fall out of active raiding it is very difficult to be bothered getting back. |
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Immaterial
30/06/08 @ 16:50
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Hurrah! My newly minded lvl 70 feral Tank will become rapidly pointless!
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"titans grip....
damn it, how the fuck am i supposed to hate blizzard now! my tauren fury warrior with two two handed weapons!!!!!! what type of madness is that!?!?!??! " Neverwinter Nights 2 has had this since launch; it's not so revolutionary seriously, so much of this stuff would be such small beans in any other game |
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