Death Knight Glyph

It is the time for us to take a quick look at the new Death Knight glyphs, and figure out how useful they'll be to the various playstyles and specs of the Death Knight. As always, it's worth noting that these are beta numbers, so things could change by the time Inscription and Death Knights see the light of day on live servers.

We're not prepared to announce specific changes to DKs yet, but here are some general areas we are tinkering with. Most of these changes apply predominantly to tanking death knights, so I avoided cross-posting this thread, but there are probably items of interest to dps specs as well.

1) Death knights seem to tank well when they have cooldowns available and take too much damage otherwise. The change here seems obvious – boost Frost presence's mitigation while reducing the mitigation of some other abilities, especially Icebound Fortitude and Bone Shield.

2) One idea we have for Icebound Fortitude is to scale the mitigation based on defense skill. This lets the ability be less of a paladin bubble in PvP for dps knights, while still letting it act more like Shield Wall for tanks. It also has the side effect of making defense slightly more attractive to death knights. (Let me add before it's asked that yes we understand Ferals have this problem too and we are working on it.)

3) Unholy is a very popular tanking spec, largely on the strength of Bone Shield. Expect to see some buffs to tanking talents in the Blood tree especially.

4) Rune Strike was intended to be a reactive tanking tool, not a rogue killer. We will probably chill its weapon damage and increase its threat.

5) We don't like the behavior where DKs feel like they are supposed to drop Death and Decay to generate runic power before a pull. It just looks goofy. We will probably lower the runic power costs of Unholy Blight and Horn of Winter, which seem to be the primary reasons to generate RP. Horn of Winter will probably be something like no cost, 30 sec cooldown, generates 10 rp.

Minor glyphs are discovered by using Minor Inscription Research. The minimum skill listed is the lowest Inscription skill you will be able to discover the glyph. Major glyphs are thought to be discovered using Northrend Inscription Research, but not all these glyphs have been confirmed yet.

Glyph of Dark Command - Increases the chance for your Dark Command ability to work successfully by 8% - When you're tanking, there's very little worse than a failed taunt at a crucial moment. If you plan to tank often on your Death Knight, this is probably a very good glyph to consider,in particular if you're low on hit rating in your tank gear.

Glyph of Strangulate - Increases the range of your Strangulate by 20 yards - This one is going to see a lot of use by PvP focused Death Knights. Really, it means that you'll be able to shut down pretty much any long range magical attacker as long as they're within line of sight. It should give you enough time to close distance or get into Death Grip range or allow yourself or a teammate to escape from a barrage.

Glyph of Chains of Ice - Your Chains of Ice causes 240 to 260 Frost damage in addition to its normal effect - This glyph honestly doesn't seem incredibly hot at first glance. The Frost damage doesn't really seem to be worth enough to bother, unless it scales.If the damage scales with AP, then this may actually see quite a bit of use by PvP specced Death Knights, who use Chains of Ice quite often to keep their prey in melee range.

Death Knight Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Bone Shield - Adds 1 additional charge to your Bone Shield.
Glyph of Frost Strike - Your Frost Strikes have a 10% chance to Freeze the target for 8 sec.
Glyph of Icy Touch - Your Icy Touch does 10% less damage but generates 10 additional runic power.
Glyph of Death Grip - Increases the cooldown of Death Grip by 10 sec but stuns targets for 1 sec.
Glyph of Plague Strike - Your Plague Strike does 20% additional damage if there is a disease on the target.
Glyph of Unbreakable Armor - Unbreakable Armor grants an additional 5% parry chance but no longer increases your Strength.
Glyph of Rune Tap - Your Rune Tap also heals your party for 10% of their maximum health.
Glyph of Blood Strike - Your Blood Strike causes an additional 20% damage to snared targets.
Glyph of Scourge Strike - Your Scourge Strike has a 25% chance to cause Blood Plague and Frost Fever.
Glyph of Death Strike - Your Death Strike's damage and healing increase by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have. The runic power is not consumed by this effect.
Glyph of Vampiric Blood - Your Vampiric Blood also heals you for 3% of your total health.
Glyph of the Ghoul - Your Ghoul receives an additional 20% of your Strength.
Glyph of Strangulate - Increases the range of your Strangulate by 20 yards.
Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell - Increases the duration of your Anti-Magic Shell by 5 sec but increases the cooldown by 15 sec.
Glyph of Blood Boil - Lowers the damage of your Blood Boil by 20% but causes it to slow affected targets for 5 sec.
Glyph of Chains of Ice - Your Chains of Ice also causes 144 to 156 Frost damage, increased by your attack power.
Glyph of Dark Command - Increases the chance for your Dark Command ability to work successfully by 8%.
Glyph of Death and Decay - Targets of your Death and Decay have a 20% chance to cower in fear for 2 sec.
Glyph of Icebound Fortitude - Your Icebound Fortitude costs no runic power.
Glyph of Obliterate - Your Obliterate strikes for 20% additional weapon damage, but does 50% less bonus damage per disease.
Glyph of Rune Strike - Increases the critical strike chance of your Rune Strike by 10% but increases cost by 5 runic power.

Death Knight Minor Glyphs:
Glyph of Corpse Explosion - Any target killed by your Corpse Explosion will also explode. This effect cannot happen more than once every 6 seconds.
Glyph of Death's Embrace - Your Death Coil refunds 20 runic power when used to heal.
Glyph of Pestilence - Increases the radius of your Pestilence effect by 5 yards.
Glyph of Raise Dead - You generate 20 runic power whenever you summon a ghoul.
Glyph of Blood Tap - Your Blood Tap no longer causes damage to you.
Glyph of Horn of Winter - Horn of Winter costs 10 less runic power.