Acclimation

[Exiledshmoo]

Every time I look at the frost tree, I see that talent and just think, how much resist is it.

Obviously since it has a 30% proc rate, it requires you to be focused some degree for it to do anything. I imagine it could often proc against warlocks and mages due to dots on everything and aoe.

I am just curious if any of you have tested it to see how much resist it provides.

[Mekila]

Every time I look at the frost tree, I see that talent and just think, how much resist is it.

Obviously since it has a 30% proc rate, it requires you to be focused some degree for it to do anything. I imagine it could often proc against warlocks and mages due to dots on everything and aoe.

I am just curious if any of you have tested it to see how much resist it provides.

50 resist to whatever school you took damage from, so +150 resist at 3 stacks. In addition, Frost presence gives you +x resist to all, x being your current level.

I'm currently at level 71, so while in Frost presence my resist to all is 76 (+5 from BE racial). 3 stacks of acclimation to fire gives me 226 FR.

[Exiledshmoo]

So it is a flat 50 per stack and does not scale with level. Interesting ability.

[Mekila]

So it is a flat 50 per stack and does not scale with level. Interesting ability.

It helps a ton when you are grinding mobs that hit for elemetnal magic damage, like elementals.

[Steamboat]

its gonna be awesome for shadowplay like teams. theres gonna be a ton of Spriests and DK's and UA locks about sooo yeah.

[Vander]

Or when you get focussed by RMP and eat a few lances before the 1st shatter ;O

[Orgodemir]

curse of elements + 112 spell pen = -200 SR.... dont know if its gona be THAT amazing.

[Exiledshmoo]

Well the bonus will apply to the whole team, and you will not have CoE on your cc targets, so the shadow resist is helpful. A question would be whether it stacks with shadow protection, shadow res aura, etc. Also if you focus the death knight, he can go frost presence for an extra 80 res to all, not to mention anti magic shell.

What it means is that casters will rarely focus death knights, and against warlock teams, they may opt to just not dot the death knight at all since they risk acclimation going up for the whole team and resisting cc's.

[Mekila]

Somewhat related, just trained and tested Anti-magic Shell.

Instant, costs 1 unholy rune. 3s duration w/ 15s cooldown. Absorbs 75% of damage from magic damage and energizes you with runic power from the damage absorbed.

Its like mana shield for damage spells only that lasts 3 seconds and one spell. For one unholy rune its a bit expensive and I would only use it to stop a killing blow or an ap-pom-pyro.

Icebound fortitude is a much better reactionary damage mitigating ability just because it lasts a lot longer and uses runic energy to activate.

[Exiledshmoo]

In the next build, anti magic shell will not be dispel-able so that will be nice. I really just see it being used against burst, shatter combos, mb + swd combos, things like that. I think the simple threat of the anti magic shell (75% or 100% if talented) will be enough for casters not to focus you first.

Good luck mage/rogue killing you with ice bound fortitude up for 18 seconds (talented) and an anti magic shell for the shatter combo.

[Mekila]

In the next build, anti magic shell will not be dispel-able so that will be nice. I really just see it being used against burst, shatter combos, mb + swd combos, things like that. I think the simple threat of the anti magic shell (75% or 100% if talented) will be enough for casters not to focus you first.

Good luck mage/rogue killing you with ice bound fortitude up for 18 seconds (talented) and an anti magic shell for the shatter combo.

It only lasts 3 seconds so dispelling it is a waste of time. It needs to last longer, maybe 5 seconds like clos (and off the GCD if it isn't already) and cost runic power to activate. We are already starved for unholy runes (as any spec) as it is.

[Exiledshmoo]

Well I certainly would not complain about it costing runic power instead of runes, I do not think Blizzard is going to do that at this time. There have been some blue posts about tanking, and the gist of it is that they want death knights to choose between damage and taking less damage.

As far as it being a waste of time to dispel, if there is a felhunter on you with auto devour or a priest or shaman chain casting dispel, then it will be a waste of your unholy rune, thats for sure.
If timed well, 3 seconds can prevent a lot of damage. If they up it to 5 seconds, you are looking at 75% less magic damage 30% of the time or if unholy, 100% less.

[Mekila]

Well I certainly would not complain about it costing runic power instead of runes, I do not think Blizzard is going to do that at this time. There have been some blue posts about tanking, and the gist of it is that they want death knights to choose between damage and taking less damage.

As far as it being a waste of time to dispel, if there is a felhunter on you with auto devour or a priest or shaman chain casting dispel, then it will be a waste of your unholy rune, thats for sure.
If timed well, 3 seconds can prevent a lot of damage. If they up it to 5 seconds, you are looking at 75% less magic damage 30% of the time or if unholy, 100% less.

Saving a runes for a reactionary ability severely limits your arsenal. A lot of abilities require an unholy rune in addition to a blood/frost rune to cast. Not only that, it takes 10 seconds for that rune to come back. This means you have to be VERY efficient in managing rune usage, and use all your runes as fast as possible to minimize wasting a potential reactivation.

Saving an unholy rune over a minute's worth of time would result in wasting 6 potential unholy runes reactivated. You only get 36 potential runes in one minute time frame, so you are gimping yourself to 83% efficiency.

Lets say you are a rogue and save 25 energy to kick a spell. You regenerate energy 20 per two seconds. As long as you keep using energy you will keep ticking 20 energy per two seconds, regardless of saving 25. Total amount of energy gained over one minute is still 600, efficiency is still 100%.

The equivalent amount of efficiency lost (83%) by saving an unholy rune would be like having a rogue sit at 100 energy for 10 seconds and only autoattacking, wasting 5 ticks and 100 energy over a period of a minute.

Reactionary abilities need to be on runic power because of this, it is too devastating to save runes as a dk. It would be half decent if maybe they had it refund the unholy rune if it absorbs any damage, rather than generate the measley runic power.

[Exiledshmoo]

I certainly understand where you are coming from, and I do agree with you.

I was just stating that Blizzard has posted that they want Death knights to be forced to chose between tanking and dps.

As to your example of sitting on that rune all the time, that would not quite be the case. You could put your runes onto a rotation of using an unholy every 5 seconds, thus you should have an unholy rune or other reactionary ability as needed. Now this certainly will reduce your ideal rotation, but you are still making use of most of your runes, and you should be able to still anti magic shell as needed.

Strangulate costs a blood, so we may be sitting on that a lot, but a blood is not a big deal.

There really is not a reactionary ability that requires frost. There is chains of ice, but that is really just a root + snare, and of course that is reactionary, but you can plan for when you will need it.

The new plague strike also removes one hot, which is nice, that is a staple, so we really will not be sitting on that at all. It will be more of a "Cool, I just ate a hot when I did this staple move for dps," type of thing.

So you do make a valid point that anti magic shell is really the only reactionary tanking and pvp talent that requires us to sit on a valuable unholy rune.

[Krigare]

apparently plague/scourge strike can remove the whole stack of lifebloom without causing it to bloom

i like

[Mekila]

I certainly understand where you are coming from, and I do agree with you.

I was just stating that Blizzard has posted that they want Death knights to be forced to chose between tanking and dps.

As to your example of sitting on that rune all the time, that would not quite be the case. You could put your runes onto a rotation of using an unholy every 5 seconds, thus you should have an unholy rune or other reactionary ability as needed. Now this certainly will reduce your ideal rotation, but you are still making use of most of your runes, and you should be able to still anti magic shell as needed.

Strangulate costs a blood, so we may be sitting on that a lot, but a blood is not a big deal.

There really is not a reactionary ability that requires frost. There is chains of ice, but that is really just a root + snare, and of course that is reactionary, but you can plan for when you will need it.

The new plague strike also removes one hot, which is nice, that is a staple, so we really will not be sitting on that at all. It will be more of a "Cool, I just ate a hot when I did this staple move for dps," type of thing.

So you do make a valid point that anti magic shell is really the only reactionary tanking and pvp talent that requires us to sit on a valuable unholy rune.

If they changed the way runes activate to say, one rune type every 5 seconds as opposed to giving every rune a 10s cooldown after using it, saving one rune for a reactionary ability would be not as wasteful.

The only time I can see anti-magic shell being of good use is when I am rooted/snared out of range to d&d, have death grip on CD, strangulate is on CD, and I am about to eat a fireball/frostbolt/frostfire bolt.