Segment 34: Add-ons for Death Knights

NOTE: I have not had the opportunity to test these add-ons with 4.0.1 and would appreciate comments from those who have tested them.

In this segment we’ll look at add-ons meant strictly for Death Knights. As you might imagine, most of them are for management of runes and diseases. Since those all perform pretty much the same function, my advice is to try them – one at a time, of course – and see which one provides you with the best fit for your play style.

The rune optimizers are, in no special order:

Lorack’s DK Optimizer
DKiRunes
RuneWatch
Engraved
Acherus
MagicRunes
FaceSmasher (WoWmatrix only)

There are also two which have been recommended by other sites in the past, and which I want to mention simply so you won’t try them and become too attached before Cataclysm is released (and yes, Jason, you’re right, it’s going to be on December 7th). Those are:

SimpleRune (discontinued)
EbonBlade (abandoned)

Finally, we have two that are just for fun; they add audio events for Death Knights:

ServantofArthas
ComeHere

Music for this segment is from FreePlayMusic.com and is entitled ”Flagship Commander” by Patrick Smith

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According to the author’s description, Loracks DK Optimizer will help you to optimize health regen, DPS, and threat. I know from my own use of it that my DPS has at least doubled, and my health at the end of each melee is a great deal higher than it was before I installed this addon, so I am confident that it does, indeed, perform “as advertised.”

Loracks DK Optimizer adds a “click-through” window (that is, it won’t get in the way of your mouse when you’re trying to click on something in the field of play) which will suggest, using spell icons, which spell or attack you should use next. The main icon is largish, in the center of a rectangular area, and lesser spells will appear near the corners as smaller icons, to help you remember to cast such things as Death and Decay. The main icon changes according to how much runic power you have available, distance from your target (e.g., melee or ranged), and which aspect you are currently using. Some of the suggestions change so quickly that you have very little time to react, so it’s a good idea to be very familiar with the locations of your hot keys. Of course, that’s probably a good idea anyway.

Loracks DK Optimizer is a lightweight add-on; if you’re playing a Death Knight on a computer with limited memory, this is *the* must-have mod for your DK.

Loracks DK Optimizer is available from Curse and through WoWmatrix (and the comment shown in WoWmatrix is hilarious!).

Music for this segment is provided by Freeplay Music and is entitled Army Angels.

Bonus image

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Part of our goal with the death knight was not to have a tanking or PvP tree, and we feel we’ve been pretty successful with that. However, adding dual-wield to that matrix just gives us an impossible task, because then you need to have the Blood dual-wield tank spec and the Frost two-hander PvP spec and so on. We think in this case our only option is to remove some player choice in order to provide a real choice in other areas.

Death Knights already have more options to balance than any class. They have 6 possible specs whereas all other classes have only 3. Adding Dual wield options to every Death Knight spec would give 12 possible specs.

It does make me wonder where the line is for the impossible matrix. How many specs are too many balance.

If you remember back to early incarnations of WoW, each class had a spec for a certain area of game. Think back to early Warriors. Prot was your Tanking tree, Arms was the PVP tree, and Fury the PVE DPS tree. There were no Death Knights, so WoW had only 9 classes. That gave you 9 DPS specs, 9 PVP specs, 4 healing specs and 2 tank specs to balance. Now fast forward to WotLK. The Developers decided to add a class, but not only add 3 more specs. They decided that Death Knights should tank and DPS in every tree giving 3 more DPS specs and 3 more tank specs. At the same time they decided to finally bring Paladin Tanks up to par.

So in Wrath the design would have become 12 DPS specs, 12 DPS specs, 4 healing specs and 4 tank specs. But the Developers were really feeling their oats. They decided that every spec should be usable in every area of the game.

Suddenly, you have 22 possible DPS specs, 30 PVP specs, along with still having 4 tanks and 4 healers. Balance becomes much trickier.

So the question becomes at what point do you reach the ‘impossible task’? Would the game be better by limiting the number of specs that were viable in each area of the game. This is someting that truly couldn’t be changed until an Expansion, but it would seem self evident that even 12 PVP specs would be easier to balance than 30.

By removing some player choice the developers could provide a real choice in other areas?

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