4.0.6 Death Knight Live Patch Notes

4.0.6 Death Knight Patch Notes

The official 4.0.6 patch went live yesterday and even most servers came up on time.  By now you've probably had an opportunity to see the previous PTR notes affecting Death Knights, but here is the list that is now officially in game.

Death Knight

• Death Coil damage has been reduced by roughly 10%.
• Icebound Fortitude now breaks stuns when used, in addition to providing immunity to them.
• Necrotic Strike’s absorption effect is now reduced by the target’s resilience. In addition, its debuff duration has been reduced to 10 seconds, down from 15.
• The spell hit bonus previously given by Virulence (Unholy) has been rolled into the Runic Focus passive effect that all death knights possess.

Talent Specializations


Blood

• Bone Shield now has 4 charges, up from 3.
• Crimson Scourge has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a 50/100% chance to make the next Blood Boil free when Plague Strike is used on a target with Blood Plague, the talent now gives a 5/10% chance to provide a free Blood Boil when the death knight lands any melee attack on a Blood Plagued target.
• If Death Strike is used while a Blood Shield is already active, the new absorb will stack with the old one instead of replacing it.
• Heart Strike now deals 175% weapon damage plus 15% per disease, up from 120% plus 10% per disease.
• Improved Death Strike now increases the damage of Death Strike by 30/60/90%, up from 15/30/45%.
• Scarlet Fever now applies via Blood Plague, rather than Blood Boil.
• Will of the Necropolis no longer refunds a Blood Rune when it resets Rune Tap’s cooldown. Instead it makes the next Rune Tap free while Will of the Necropolis is active.

Frost

• Chilblains now also causes Chains of Ice to root the target for 1.5/3 seconds.
• Howling Blast now deals 40% less damage to all targets other than the primary target of the spell.
• Hungering Cold now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Might of the Frozen Wastes now also increases all melee damage by 4/8/12% while wielding a two-handed weapon.

Unholy

• Blightcaller (Mastery) has been redesigned and renamed Dreadblade. It increases all Shadow damage by 2.5% per point of mastery.
• Dark Transformation now increases pet damage by 80%, down from 100%.
• Death’s Advance (new talent): While both Unholy Runes are depleted, movement-impairing effects cannot reduce the death knight below 75/100% of normal movement speed.
• Desecration is now also triggered by Necrotic Strike.
• The ratio of runic power return from Magic Suppression has been reduced by roughly one third.
• Rage of Rivendare now increases strike damage by 12/24/36%, down from 15/30/45%.
• Runic Corruption procs while the aura is already active now add 3 seconds to the existing aura duration, instead of simply refreshing/overwriting the existing aura.
• Shadow Infusion now increases pet damage by 8% per stack, down from 10%.
• Sudden Doom is now triggered only from main-hand auto attacks, and is normalized according to weapon speed rather than having a fixed percentage chance.
• Unholy Might (passive) has been reduced to a 5% Strength increase, down from 10%.
• Virulence has been redesigned. It now grants 10/20/30% additional disease damage.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Dark Succor (new glyph) raises the minimum healing done by Death Strike from 7% to 15% of maximum health, but only while in Unholy or Frost Presence.
• Glyph of Death’s Embrace no longer refunds Runic Power when self-healing via Lichborne.

Runeforging

• Swordbreaking and Swordshattering now reduce disarm duration by 60%, up from 50%.

Death Knight Bug Fixes

• Blood of the North is no longer incorrectly increasing Blood Strike damage by 10%.
• The tooltip for Blood Presence was giving an incorrect value and has been corrected.
• The amount of bonus damage Blood Strike was receiving per disease was inconsistent with its tooltip and has been amended.
• Crimson Scourge will no longer proc if Blood Plague is not present on the target.
• Death Grip has a minimum range requirement of 8 yards against players, but this was not stated in the tooltip. The tooltip has been updated.
• Desecration should stay in place while on the Alliance Gunship in Deepholm.
• When a character is raised as a ghoul with Raise Ally, there is no longer a considerable pause after losing control of the ghoul before being returned to the corpse or graveyard.
• The Scourge Strike tooltip is now correctly augmented by Rage of Rivendare.
• The shadow portion of Scourge Strike was receiving more than 10% increased damage from Frost Presence and has been corrected.
• The shadow portion of Scourge Strike no longer incorrectly still receives a 13% spell damage increase from Earth and Moon.

Glyph Fixes

• The Chains of Ice tooltip is now correctly augmented by Glyph of Chains of Ice.
• Glyph of Raise Ally now correctly affects the risen ally's health.
• The Vampiric Blood tooltip became awkwardly worded after applying Glyph of Vampiric Blood. We made the words less awkward.