It appears as if Blizzard has updated the official Death Knight page on the Wrath of the Lich King website.
The major changes are to the Death Knight's talent trees. There's no longer a heavy focus on tanking in one specific tree; instead, each tree will be capable of offering a different flavor of DPS capability as well as tanking ability.
This seems like an excellent decision on Blizzard's part, as it means that for one of the first times ever, players truly are capable of choosing whichever talent spec they prefer, and are still able to perform each role their class is designed for.
Is this a hint at the future for World of Warcraft's other classes? It's hard to say, as Wrath of the Lich King is still in very early Alpha, but the changes to the Death Knight talents are definitely a step in the right direction.
Here's what the old page said:
And the new description for each tree:
- Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, and strikes.
- Frost: Talents in this tree focus on control, counters, and combos.
- Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, and diseases.
As you can see, none of them really mention a specific role -- each offers its own flavor on playing the class instead -- allowing the player to both tank and dish out DPS effectively, regardless of their talent spec.
What are your thoughts on this new direction with the class?
Comments
I agree with watchout, they just changed the wording/layout of the page, if you look at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/features/deathknight/gameplay.xml, you'll see a seperate section that discusses the Presences for each tree almost word for word as it used to.
The more that I read on the Death Knights, the more I'm looking forward to playing with the class and seeing what it can do. Seriously, the ghoul-ing opposing players on BGs is just insult to injury.
By the way, if there is no race requirement then, TAUREN DEATH KNIGHT FTW!
I think this is a step in the right direction. It looks like there will be less of a chance of the DKs getting forced into "cookie cutter" builds that plague WoW currently.