Third in the class Q&A series is Death Knight. I thought it was going to be Warlocks, but I guess plans change. So far Shaman and Mage have been covered, and in each post the Ghostcrawler has been talking about the developer vision for the class past and future, as well as answering popular questions from the forums. What do they have to say about WoW's first hero class? Read on.

Introducing a new class to a game that didn't really have an empty niche was tricky, but they think they have succeeded - "perhaps too well." They like that there's a lot of room for variation in player skill.

In patch 3.2, they wanted to reduce DK AoE and defensive cooldowns, which they definitely did.

The resource system (runes and runic power) is a large part of what makes Death Knights unique. They also have a lot of medium-length cooldown (able to be used a few times per fight), and there's a lot of skill involved in knowing when to use them. DKs are also especially well-rounded, with a lot of versatility and a lot of tricks, which makes them at risk for being over-powered in PvP.

Death Knights are among the most-changed classes in the first PTR version of patch 3.2, which is not terribly surprising for such a young class. Because of such significant changes, all DKs will receive a free respec.

Blood Strike will scale more from disease (up to 50% per disease), while Frost Strike is receiving significant nerfs: it can now be dodged/blocked/parried, and only gets a 55% bonus from weapon damage, instead of 60%.

On the tanking front, one of our major cooldowns was nerfed, although DKs are still probably the king of tanking CDs (disgustingly powerful new Ardent Defender aside). Icebound Fortitude's CD was doubled to 2 minutes. Veteran of the Third War's Stamina bonus was cut in half, and Toughness was cut by a third.

Otharello mentioned...

"I'm pretty sure that suggesting Utgarde Pinnacle for a new tank is the height of sadism."

Welcome to Lichborne, your (usually) weekly (I swear) source for Death Knight news and tips.

So now that Patch 3.1 is underway, the basic cookie cutter tank and DPS builds have begun emerging. The Patch 3.1 nerfs really haven't slowed us down in any major way, and with dual specs in, we're doing better than ever on the whole versatility front. In recognition of this, let's give you some straight information, no chaser. Here's a handful of cookie cutter DPS and Tank builds for each tree to get you on the right path to DPS or tanking dominance in Patch 3.1, or both if you've dropped that 1000 gold. All of these builds also included recommended glyphs at the link as well.

A New build went up on the PTR this afternoon, and as expected, there were another handful of Death Knight adjustments. Overall, not as many of them are nerfs as you might think, and some of them seem more adjustments in philosophy rather than straight up buffs or nerfs. We also got a handful of Glyph changes and even a sneak peak at our tier bonuses. Let's look at the changes after the break, courtesy of MMO-Champion:

Welcome to Lichborne, where Daniel Whitcomb is ready to help you roll with the punches (and Death Knight changes) coming from the PTR.

We had a new build hit the PTR this week, and with a week gone by, now's a good time to take a deep, focused look at the changes and see how they're shaking down. They're mostly pretty solid nerfs, and a lot of Death Knights aren't too happy about them. Still, beyond people concern about the fact that they are nerfs, the question remains: Were they merited, and where do they leave us? Let's discuss.

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we examine the roots of the uproar over the proposed Heart of the Wild nerf, and also ask ourselves if it wouldn't just be easier to reroll a Death Knight and have done with it.

"Why would you title the column this way?" you ask, as you reach for your "Please fire _______ from WoW Insider" form letter. "Crushing blows are out of the game, dipwad."

Well, yes. The crushing blow is technically out of the game, but another and worse mechanic has taken its place.

In this article I'm going to try to explain the source of "shield tank" frustration over health pools -- and why they are correct to see it as a problem -- and the Druid tank's unhappiness over the nerfing of Heart of the Wild -- and why Druids are also correct to see it as a problem.

Why the crushing blow was important

One of the biggest differences between pre-Wrath and Wrath tanking is the absence of the crushing blow. If you're unfamiliar with the term, then as a very simple explanation: any given raid boss had a 15% chance per melee hit to perform a 150% damage attack, which was also known as the crushing blow. It was typically a big damage spike and could lead to a wipe on progression content, with healers struggling to compensate in the small window of time before the boss' next attack landed. Burst damage is very unwelcome as it's often the greatest contributing factor to tank death. This is why reaching crit immunity is still so important to all tanks, and why the ability to avoid or absorb crushing blows was a fundamental part of pre-Wrath tanking mechanics.

With the details about dual speccing becoming clearer, it's probably about time to start thinking about how it will affect Death Knights. We're probably a little luckier than many classes in that all of our trees are pretty solid for either tanking or DPS, but at the same time, some trees are better than others for certain roles, and you're definitely going to want to switch out some talent points for optimal performance in either role. Some Death Knights have actually been experimenting with "hybrid" DPS/Tank builds up until now, but with dual specs, it'll be a lot easier to just dedicate your time to one or another and go from there.

Essentially, There's 3 major ways I see most people going with dual specs: Tank/PvE DPS, Tank/PvP DPS, and PvE DPS/PvP DPS, depending on their interests. The complications will probably come in deciding which combination is right for you and your raid, and which trees to focus on.

Fresh on the heels of last week's gemming guide, we have an enchanting guide. Like gemming, enchanting is an easy way to go the extra mile to get your gear the best it can be so you can properly keep aggro without dying and/or top the damage meters in your next Naxxramas raid. Since there's so few enchants available, it's a lot less complicated than gemming too. DPS will just want hit to the cap and attack power (Sorry, there's not many strength enchants), while tanks will want defense to 540 and stamina.

It's also worth noting that almost every slot with an enchant has a weaker version and a more powerful version. Although it's usually frowned upon to go weak when can go strong, in the case of enchants, it's probably okay at the entry level to go with the weaker version of an enchant. The more powerful ones generally take Abyss Crystals and the like, and may be a bit steep. In addition, there's a few other quirks and special enchantments to watch out for. Let's take a look, by slot, at some of the best choices for enchanting for both DPS and Tanking.

When Blizzard first introduced the idea of the role forums, players were generally unenthusiastic because the original plan was to dissolve the cherished class forums as well. People warmed up to the idea once Blizzard decided to keep the class forums intact while still warning that they would probably devote a lot more developer attention to the role forums. With the addition of a new class, that made sense; being able to give more attention to just 3 forums is a lot more efficient than trying to spread individual replies around 10.

I genuinely like the Tanking forums. Many of the people posting are sincerely helpful, and take the time to answer questions posed by people new to the job and nervous about their performance. There have also been a number of interesting threads sparked by changes to general tanking practices, what tanks hate most, the ongoing debate concerning Blessing of Sanctuary and Druid AoE threat, Warrior viability on a 3D Sartharion, and concerns over Death Knight tanking weapons. The forum is usually a pleasure to read even if a few threads are kind of off-base, and I think the back-and-forth between four different tanking classes serves to take the edge off concerns that players might otherwise have been convinced were unique to their class (which, let's be honest, is probably one of the effects Blizzard wanted).

I don't spend as much time on the Damage Dealing and Healing forums because my main spends most of her time tanking, and things are a little more volatile over there (mostly because of current PvP concerns). Were the role forums ultimately a good idea? Are they -- shall we say -- working as intended?

So by now, I'm sure many of you Death Knights have managed to follow our last tanking gear guide and have put together a pretty decent tank set that's gotten them through a few heroics, but now it's time for the next step: Getting ready to tank Naxxramas. You'll find that while a lot of your gear is probably "good enough," you'll still want to look for a few important upgrades to kick you up another notch so you can be at your best coming into Naxxramas to tank. Let's look at a few heroic upgrades that you can grab to be the best tank you can be heading into 10 man Naxxramas content.

Before we start, there's two things you should remember: One, I'm pretty much following the logic I laid down in the Death Knight statistics primer a few weeks back, so if you want to know why I picked a certain item, the answer is probably there, and two, whatever you do, remember to hit 540 defense skill. You'll need that to survive against the bosses.

My own Death Knight is not quite up to raid tanking yet; I've got a few more levels to go on that one. However, some players have noticed that DK threat, especially on single targets, seems a bit low - significantly lower than the other three tank classes, to the extent that the tanks were having trouble keeping threat against high DPS.

It turns out that there was a slightly complicated bug involving Frost Presence, the foundation of DK tanking. It went like this:

• Some aspects of Frost Presence don't go away when you die, and some do (this is the bug).
• Part of the threat boost, however, does go away when you die.
• When you res and come back without changing presences, the game doesn't reapply Frost Presence, because it sees that you already have some of the effects of it.
• However, you still don't have all of the threat boost.

So potentially, DKs who die and come back without switching to another presence (Blood or Unholy) and then back to Frost were missing out on 15% of the 45% threat that Frost Presence brings. This has been hotfixed now, so there is no further need to worry about it. If you saw your DK threat go up a lot yesterday, that's probably why.

Ghostcrawler adds that "it is likely" that Defensive Stance was also being affected by this bug, although I haven't seen any prot warriors complaining about their threat since 3.0 hit.

One of the blogs I frequest most beyond our own WoW Insider is DeathKnight.info. They have a fun little community on their forums, and their front page highlights most of the really cool stuff that happens to come out of it. The bulk of it is, of course, Death Knight news, but it also shows off a lot of the really random things WoW players do.

Magtheridon, once one of the hardest raid encounters in the game (depending on who you talk to), has been 4-manned by an Unholy Death Knight (who you may have read about previously), a Retribution Paladin, a Restoration Druid and a Holy Priest. If you've done the fight before, you might be thinking to yourself, "That's not possible. You need more people than that just to click the cubes!" Apparently that is not the case. They didn't bother with the cubes, they just healed through the damage.

Welcome to Lichborne, WoW Insider's weekly Death Knight column.

Yeah, I definitely have to put out a mea culpa here. Alas, Lichborne is a little bit late again. I have a valid excuse, I swear. It involved a flaming plum pudding, a flailing geist, and a sudden snowstorm at the Shadow Vault over in Icecrown. But after an emergency eye transplant by a Forsaken Death Knight who used to be a member of the RAS, I'm back in the saddle and this week's column is only a few days late.

Anyhow, this week I thought I'd take a look at the deeper implications and meanings behind some of the Death Knight changes coming our way in 3.0.8. Our newest Mike has summarized and analysed quite a few of them, but I have just a few more things I want to say, especially about a new change that was added in a recent PTR update.

Welcome to another edition of Lichborne, which this week is so epic, so mind-blowing, that we just couldn't release on a lazy day like Sunday, which is why it is a day late. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

So you're level 80 and you want to respec to a tank build and head straight into tanking 5-mans. In order to be the best tank you can be, there's a very definite first step you should take, which we have discussed before, but which bears repeating: Get 540 Defense. This will make you immune to critical strikes from level 83 mobs, making it much easier to heal you in pretty much every situation, and it's really a prerequisite for serious tanking before any other stat.

Unfortunately, Death Knights are at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to getting maximum defense. We don't get to wear shields, block rating gear is right out useless for us, and two-handed weapons aren't itemized for defense. Still, it's possible to hit that magic number, even without dual wielding tanking weapons.

This week's Lichborne is meant to showcase a variety of defensive options for Death Knights that require a minimum of dungeon grinding to get. By picking and choosing from this list, you should be able to get that 540 defense skill cap, and hopefully then be able to tank a few of the more difficult normals and beginning heroic dungeons on your own.

As a reminder, defense skill is not the same as defense rating. Rather, you need defense rating to get defense skill. Specifically, you will need approximately 690 defense rating to gain the 540 defense skill you need to gain critical strike immunity against level 83 mobs.