Wrath of The Lich King – Rune System

As the Wrath of the Lich King beta lives on, the world (and software behind it) is ever changing. Apparently, the rune system has changed a lot since its first inception. This requires a delicate balance, as the goal is a well rounded Death Knight class without epically overpowered features. Too much power and people will feel cheated while others feel overly destructive. End result, everyone would be a Death Knight.

The rune system that Blizzard has created is more straight forward than the initial system because it contains less variables. The Death Knight has a secondary bar, much like a Warrior, that starts empty and slowly climbs with “Runic Power,” an energy generated when you cast spells and expend rune energy. It works much like the warrior class, as it builds it will open up some abilities in your bar that were “grayed out” because they couldn’t be cast yet.

What the heck is a rune? Above your character profile you’ll have six little circles, called runes, these little guys work much like the rogues energy. The three styles of runes are: Blood, Frost and Unholy runes and they’re coordinated with your spells and sword strike abilities much like a paladin or warrior. Each rune “goes dark” when you expend its energy – this limits your access to use the Death Knights abilities much like expending all your rogues energy stops the rogue from using their neat features. However, once its energy is expended, it will grow your runic power a slight bit, “charging” it for later use.

To remove any additional confusion with the runes, runic power and all that craziness, Blizzard was kind enough to color code it all neatly for us. Blood rune abilities are red while Frost abilities are blue and Unholy abilities are green. So, when you break down the abilities on the bar, you’ll have them neatly colored for you!

Each time you cast a spell or use a strike-style ability you’ll use a number of “runes” from your profile image; they’ll go dark, in essence, disabled until they recharge (like rogues energy). This gives you the ability to utilize, perhaps, two frost attacks and then fire off two unholy attacks and end with two blood attacks without every stopping or resting your combat. Usually, once you’ve expended all your runes, the first ones you utilized with be recharged and ready to use.

Looking at the abilities listed above, you can see the quick key-2 is purple… it doesn’t fit the scheme we just mentioned at all! This isn’t a rune ability, but an “instant” that’s cast and has a longer cool down than typical abilities. Quick key-5, in our example, is disabled because it uses runic power (like rage) and does not require any specific rune to utilize, it just build as you battle. You’ll find runic power abilities fairly powerful, thus, they’ve been limited in execution time.

Abilities that use runic power can have varying degrees of power depending on how much runic power you’ve “charged” or stored up in your bar; beware, like rage it will drain slowly when out of combat. Each rune ability will list its required number of runes to utilize it, initially your starter abilities will all be “1 blood” or “1 unholy” or “1 frost” to fire off, giving you two hits before you’ll be holding out for that specific style of rune to recharge.

In most of my game play, thus far, I’ve relied heavily on Frost runes because the talent system works in conjunction with the rune styles. You’ll have a blood talent tree, frost talent tree and unholy talent tree to pick abilities out of and mine are primarily frost, so I rely heavily on my two frost runes (the second pair in the profile bar.)

What do the runes focus on? The three classes of runes each have their own primary focus and goals. The blood runes are focused on melee striking style attacks while the frost fit better with a damage per second (DPS) spell caster style and unholy works more like a necromancer.

You can mix your styles or try to generalize across the board, which usually leads to watered down character. A necromancer casting role may be great for high DPS damage with the ability to take a few shots in the field of battle so you may choose frost/unholy, or blood/unholy for more of a semi-tank necromancer. Some of the unholy abilities require close combat to infect enemies with plagues and pestilences so it may pair well with blood in some situations.

Overall, the system allows for a great variety of class builds and usefulness. Choosing your talents is just as important as ever and their new rune system for the Death Knight gives you a virtual unending ability to cast spells while not being too overpowered or dependent on a specific class of rune. The runic power gives you more abilities to surprise your target with strategy and entices the Death Knight class to continue battle without running away.

Paired with the ability to raise dead and form small temporary legions of death (and the cool ass sword) makes this class a worthwhile addition to the World of Warcraft environment.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 414: We’ve Done BetterEpisode 414: We’ve Done Better

This week’s podcast isn’t the best, but at least we tried, right? There’s a lot of chatter, and Scott gets really angry at people criticizing Star Wars.

This week’s news items includes:

  • Iranian state television mistakes Medal of Honor footage for reality
  • Street Fighter 5 Arcade Mode being considered
  • Experimental 5D data storage could store 360TB of games for 13.8 billion years
  • Ubisoft boasts about The Division beta’s huge numbers
  • HTC’s Vive VR Tech will launch in April priced at $799

This week’ Question of the Week: “When, if ever, will you be getting VR?”

Rock and a Hard Place: Sony’s Japanese DilemmaRock and a Hard Place: Sony’s Japanese Dilemma

What a dilemma it is, Sony’s PlayStation 3 isn’t as hot as the Nintendo Wii in Japan. Even the Xbox 360 has had some minor success stories in Japan while Sony sits back saying “wtf?”

President, SCE Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida is pointing the finger at the publishers saying, “What’s happening is that lack of support from the Japanese publishers – not necessarily from intentions but from development capabilities.” (kotaku) Why, though, would publishers push to produce games on the console that’s currently losing market share?

Sony’s position is very tough to deal with because they’re not market leader so publishers are looking for the biggest bang for their proverbial “buck” and that’s not the PS3 right now. You can produce an expensive game for an expensive console or a cheaper game for a cheaper console and make more money.

How, then, can Sony get out of this situation? They must find a way to promote an incentive for publishers to create Sony exclusives or, at least, a Sony “port” of a game to build up their library of must-have titles. Perhaps Sony’s punishment at the hands of Nintendo and Microsoft in the States has a bit to do with their global marketplace issues — they need to put a concerted effort into one of their regions and champion themselves in one realm before trying for all of them. Right now, they’re a watered down expensive console with very few exclusive titles.

Metal Gear Sold 4, Home and Little Big Planet are great reasons to own a PlayStation 3 if the price was a bit more reasonable. Looking at the future, we’ve got Resistance 2 and a few other titles that may make some waves in the industry, at least in the United States, but it’s going to be an uphill battle in which they are the second best this time.

It’s always easy when you’re on the top. PlayStation 3 is not on the top so it’s time to start struggling, cutting prices or enticing publishers to build good exclusive titles.

Sony Should Buy Ubisoft and Here is WhySony Should Buy Ubisoft and Here is Why

Sony’s been putting a lot of effort (read: money) into the PlayStation 3 product line with very little impact in the market. They’ve got this “10 year plan” but haven’t really executed a strong plan for their first two years of said plan. Sony’s plan seems to be “outlive the competition’s technology” while all of its competition stomps on their sales and market share with older and a bit “outdated” products.

Thus far there have been five spins of the PlayStation 3 hardware with price cuts only coming as a result of a “fire sale” of old hardware revisions. Sony, like many, believes the Nintendo Wii isn’t a direct competitor in their space; the outstanding sales of the Wii probably haven’t impacted the PlayStation 3 sales too much. The Xbox 360, however, has definitely cut them deep in all regions of sales.

Microsoft has built some unexpected momentum in Japan with Square-Enix making them a few console seller titles and the price cuts in Europe boosted sales over 200% all while the US continues to buy into the 360 hardware despite its most obvious red-ringing flaws. Microsoft has great partnerships with some fabulous companies, Bungie and Epic for instance, to build them exclusives that move even more 360 units.

Motorstorm is one of the PlayStation 3’s best games, selling over 3-million copies. While, as of January 2008, Halo 3 sold 8.1 million units for the Xbox 360. Now, Metal Gear Solid 4 has sold roughly 3.94 million copies since August of 2008 yet unsubstantiated rumors exist stating MGS4 could make its way to the 360. Combined awesome titles for the PlayStation 3 may not even exceed one of the competitors best selling products; where is the PS3 excitement?

(more…)