The World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic is about to enter the P4 phase. Today, let’s discuss a very niche DPS specialization in the level 80 version of World of Warcraft—output Blood Death Knight (DK). Some players, both domestic and international, have complained about it, calling it thefirst major pitfall of Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
At level 80, the Blood and Frost specialization of Death Knights is very confusing. In the game, Blood DKs are primarily tanks while Frost DKs are mainly DPS. However, the “red face” (Blood Aura) is for output, while the “ice face” (Frost Aura) is for defense. This “reverse design” was only corrected in the Cataclysm expansion. Many DKT players have complained thatonly the Will of the Graveyard among the last three rows of five deep talents in the Blood tree is a defensive talent. So the question arises: was Blizzard’s original intention to allow Blood talents to deal damage?
Veteran players of World of Warcraft at level 80 know that there was once a DPS DK playstyle called “Strength Shatter Blood,” which equipped similarly to Fury Warriors and Frost DKs, focusing on high armor penetration and critical strike. Graduating from 25H ICC with the orange axe, the output was extremely powerful, performing excellently in pure single-target fights like against Deathbringer Saurfang, even surpassing the output of Fury Warriors with the orange axe. After the release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic,the foreign DK streamer Sarthe released a video discussing the output prospects of Blood DKs during the mid-release of Ulduar.
At that time, the single-target damage of Blood DKs in Ulduar could only compete evenly with the lowest DPS Ice Mages, and was even lower than that of Arms Warriors. Sarthe stated in the video that the weak output of Blood DKs was partly because WCL did not count the Berserk skill as personal damage for Blood DK players, and partly due to a bug with the ultimate talent Rune Blade Dance!
According to Sarthe’s tests, the damage replication skill of the Rune Blade only dealt 25% of the damage, far from the intended 50%. For example, the replicated Death Coil dealt 300-600 damage and was not affected by equipment bonuses, making it feel like a replication ofbase damage. Moreover, the first hit damage of the Rune Blade is fixed and very low, and if the replicated disease expires, it will start to be resisted.
Sarthe stated that if Blizzard fixes these bugs, a Blood DK graduating from Ulduar could increase their damage by 350 DPS, a Blood DK graduating from TOC could increase their damage by 500 DPS, and a Blood DK graduating from ICC could increase their damage by 700 DPS. A TOC graduating Blood DK would only be 6% lower than a Frost DK in single-target damage, and after graduating from ICC, Blood DKs would surpass Frost and Unholy, becoming the strongest single-target DPS specialization for DKs.
Sarthe quickly drew Blizzard’s attention to this issue due to his influence among foreign players. Blizzard, at the same time as the TOC release,fixed a series of bugs related to Blood DKs, including that Death Coil only dealt base damage without equipment attribute bonuses, incorrect skill levels, low melee damage,not benefiting from the Death Strike glyph damage increase, not inheriting player weapon damage, and not benefiting from the Frost Touch talent etc.WCL, under the strong demand of Blood DK players both domestically and internationally, revised and modified the scoring rules for output Blood DKs, no longer excluding the damage increase from their own Berserk.
Unfortunately, even after being given various adjustments, the output Blood DK ultimately failed to deliver a satisfactory performance. After all the orange axes were purchased, it could only slightly surpass Unholy DKs and Frost DKs in a 3.5-minute (2 rounds of Berserk and 3 rounds of Rune Blade Dance) dummy boss fight during the mid-release of ICC. After a 30% buff, it could not compete with the same level Unholy DKs with orange axes, and it was a pipe dream to think it could defeat orange axe Fury Warriors and Retribution Paladins. This serves as a reminder to players on the domestic server: unless you are particularly interested, do not play orange axe Blood DK, as the cost-performance ratio is simply too low.
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