Skill Mastery: Army of the Dead
Ever since we first heard about the spell, I have been without a doubt drooling over Army of the Dead. This level 80 Death Knight spell allows you to summon an army to your beck and call. In specific, it's a 6 second channel spell that summons several weak undead to taunt and fight your enemies. In addition, you take less damage equal to your dodge plus parry chance. It costs one of each basic rune type, and has a 10 minute 20 minute cooldown (You see how swiftly things change in the Beta?).
You can see the spell in action above (video found on Deathknight.info). You may notice some problems. For example, some the ghouls stand around and do nothing. In addition, the damage reduction on channeling does not seem to be working. Still, it's pretty cool seeing all those ghouls decend on the enemy, even if they are lowbie scarlets.
The question, though, remains: What will we use this spell for when all is said and done and it works well? For now, it looks like it's going to be mostly a panic button. As a tank, that six second channeling session is problematic because it's six seconds in which your DPS can outpace you on threat. If your DPS is already running or can be coerced into dialing back, however, that reduced damage could be nice for weathering a hairy spot.
DPS can probably use it a bit more freely for emergencies. If the tank looks harried, see if some taunting ghouls can help out. Since they stick around after the channeling for a bit, they may even bolster your personal DPS, depending on how much they do.
Army of the Dead overall, though, is probably going to need to find a niche. It's an awesome high-concept spell, but it may still need some work on paper, or else it will end up a novelty spell like a Warlock's inferno, primilary trotted out for novelty or to wreak havoc in mass PvP. A start would probably be to remove the channeling (so it doesn't interfere with the Death Knight's tanking or DPS duties) and upping the HP on the ghouls so they aren't so easily and immediately taken out by AE attacks.
It's still a very cool spell regardless, and I hope to see it find some use once it gets debugged and tweaked a bit
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
8-28-2008 @ 1:07PM
danglewood said...
was this video recorded from a zeppelin? Where the hell is madden to tell me what was going on?
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8-28-2008 @ 1:07PM
Jewbanks said...
uh not into dk but that looks baller
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8-28-2008 @ 1:08PM
video_game_master91 said...
On the tool-tip it says it has a 20 minute cooldown, but you wrote 10 minutes.
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8-28-2008 @ 1:22PM
bugmaster said...
video isn't up to date (not saying the skill isnt broken anymore, but it's not up to date :P)
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8-28-2008 @ 2:00PM
Darthregis said...
I can see this as being useful for mob-summoning bosses...
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8-28-2008 @ 2:02PM
kabshiel said...
At the moment, Army of the Dead is not a good skill. Blizzard doesn't seem to know what they want to do with it. Is it a DPS skill? Then stop the ghouls from stealing aggro from the tank and spinning the mob like crazy so you can't even stand behind your target. Is it a tanking skill? Then again, you probably don't want the ghouls stealing your aggro or attacking the mob from the front and causing huge amounts of parry haste. The fact that it's a channeled spell is problematic for both of those roles.
At the moment, the skill really only has use in soloing (if they fix the bug with the ghouls standing around doing nothing) and BG PvP. It'd be great for Arena, if they lowered the cooldown and made it useable there. All in all, it needs a lot of work.
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8-28-2008 @ 2:02PM
tchernobyl1 said...
I've actually had a 80 dk in one of my COT: stratholme groups.. using army of the dead, the first boss (who hits very hard and stuns healers frequently) becomes a cakewalk. I don't have actual numbers but it seemed to do at the very least a quarter or more of the boss' hp :P
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8-28-2008 @ 2:51PM
Raygor said...
Side note...does anyone know which mod is making the health/mana bars to be centered on the screen, curved like that. I've seen that in videos and wanted to try it, but can't figure out the name of the mod.
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8-28-2008 @ 3:17PM
sephirah said...
You can search the word "hud" on the various addon sites.
8-28-2008 @ 3:54PM
Brasson said...
Looks like a HUD. Something that fades out when not in combat, has your health on the left side and enemy stats and cast bar on the right. Kinda neat.
8-28-2008 @ 4:07PM
Narlic said...
IceHUD can do that. There are a few other Heads-up Display addons like that as well.
8-28-2008 @ 4:54PM
Raygor said...
I've done a search on huds in curse, but there are so many it's hard to find that specific one, thanks for the hud name, Icehud looks like it will do what I want.
8-28-2008 @ 3:07PM
Radiophonic said...
AOE grinding never looked so fun.
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8-28-2008 @ 3:53PM
Jaynitan said...
AOE grinding . . . .
So what are you gonna do for the other 19 min 54 seconds?
Methinks this is an offtank or dps raid saver idea.
Based on the 20 minute cooldown, most things with 20-30 mintues are things like soulstones, battlerezzes and shamman ressurect.
This might be the "OMG 2% left use Army!!!"
A little less "OMG 1% Rogue -evasion tank!!!"
8-28-2008 @ 3:39PM
Kalabus said...
why is it that everyvideo I see in wow is from a mile away...... am I the only one who doesnt play in that far out view... yeeeesh but cool vid.
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8-28-2008 @ 4:23PM
ScorchHellfire said...
i like to be zoomed in on my char too but i think thats just so you can see everything... and geez how many ghouls does that guy summon? like 12? damn... i wants it... i wants it precious!...
8-28-2008 @ 3:56PM
hpavc said...
The 'army' was way to slow to engage, non-pet mobs that 'fight at your side' suck in this respect. They have some sort of summoning sickness.
Here the DK summoned the mobs they are there, and the DK is getting whaled on and the army is just looking left and right for multiple seconds.
Though no doubt the duration is ticking away nicely.
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8-28-2008 @ 4:00PM
Jewbanks said...
nice to whip out if an add fight i getting the better of you... think morogrim and your pally tank goes down when your almost done.. whip out these crazy things for a distraction so you can brez your add tank.. or perhaps your healers were overzealous and got aggro on adds before off tank could... well theyd be dead by the time these things came out but you know
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8-28-2008 @ 7:55PM
Aerei said...
Considering parries and dodges are negated while channeling, I don't see how this improves the ability to weather physical damage while tanking meaningfully, but it will mess up your threat and likely leave you not taking damage because the ghouls will be taking it for six seconds, and then your party thereafter until you regain aggro. It helps against casters, sure, but death knights are already overloaded with caster defense to the point where this is pretty meaningless for that too. >|
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8-29-2008 @ 12:23AM
dattonex said...
so how does nite of the dead affect this spell...since its 20 mins instead of 10 does that mean u lower it to 10 mins with 10 plague or scourge strikes...
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