The PvP Basics
The PvP Basics
So far, for Death Knights, the biggest PvP problem can be summed up in one word: mobility. Most of a Death Knight’s major damage moves require that a person be in melee range. In part, this can be fixed with a quick application of Death Grip. However, Death Grip has a somewhat restrictive cooldown (which is probably needed), and after a Death Grip, the victim is not snared or stunned, making it easy for them to run back out to range and beyond the Death Knight’s reach.
Chains of Ice helps in this matter too, applying a short freeze to allow the Death Knight to catch up, then a snare which, as of this build, has been made physical, making it harder to dispel. In this case, the problem is the cost and cool down, which give more than enough chance for the target to escape simply by waiting out the Death Knight’s Frost runes.
What a Death Knight really needs is a more dependable snare, one that’s baseline or in the first few talent tiers, if possible. The suggestion that seems to come up the most regarding this is around the Frost talent Chilblains, which applies a 6 second snare on victims of the new Frost Fever disease. If it were converted a two-point talent and switched with Glacier Rot, a 1st tier Frost talent that mostly boosts the damage of deep Frost talented abilities, it could be easily picked up by any PvP build. There, it could provide the dependable snare that we need.
On Unholy PvP
The nice thing about Unholy as it stands is that it makes Ghouls viable in PvP and it shores up some of the primary weaknesses of a Death Knight in PvP by providing superior mobility and protection from dispelling. Consider the following Unholy/Frost PvP build.
Mobility
Superior Mobility is provided from Unholy Aura and Desecration talents. Consider Desecration a bit like a reverse Frost Trap. Cast Icy Touch on a person, Death Grip them over to you, and if you can keep them in range long enough to apply Scourge Strike and follow them up with an Obliterate, you’ve suddenly done a while lot of damage to them and stuck them in the middle of a nice patch of ground that they’ll be hard pressed to get out of. Likewise, Unholy Presence combined with Unholy Aura will give you and your teammates an even greater edge against anyone who decides to run.
If there’s one complaint I have, it seems like the radius of Desecration could stand to be a little wider, or attached to me as a sort of temporary aura. But then again, that might prove a little overpowered. Still, I’d like to see it tested. In addition, I’d sort of like to see Desecrate available off of Scourge Strike as well, for those times when my Frost runes aren’t ready or I really need a bit of slowing power right off the bat.
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