In a recent post on WoW Insider, Matthew Rossi quotes a post from Ghostcrawler about Blizzard’s past and future stances on killing/changing certain specs/rotations. I, of course, was waiting for a mention of the once-great 32/39 spec (I’ve tried in vain to find a screenshot of an old talent calc, but to no avail).
The post focused on diseaseless Blood tanking rotations in 4.0.1. Ghostcrawler said: “It doesn’t bother us unless ignoring diseases becomes the only reasonable way to play.” In the past, Blizz has killed a few specs. Notably diseaseless Blood and 32/39. 32/39 did some funny things, like focus on Howling Blast, Icy Touch, and Gargoyle instead of using Obliterate. Diseaseless Blood similarly did funny things; both specs were head and shoulders above the alternatives.
And while GC couches this in terms of making changes because some spec or rotation didn’t match up with the core values of the class, I can’t help but see it as quashing innovation in favour of keeping us tight to Blizzard’s vision for us. The example GC uses, of Rogues becoming ranged DPSers, is far more extreme than anything that’s ever happened to DKs. Yes, we’ve sometimes used abilities where clearly we weren’t intended to (for example, the phase where Unholy used Obliterate instead of SS), but we never changed the way the class played in a way that would affect more than our own DPS, as Blizzard suggests ranged Rogues would.
NO 32/39 ALLOWED
The Great Innovator
I imagine that at some point in Cataclysm, DKs will start doing something odd again. We’ve had a lot of stuff changed in 4.0.1, and probably a lot more to come in major patches in Cataclysm. And I hope that Blizzard won’t feel the need to stomp on really cool things like the 32/39 spec. They didn’t just nerf it down to acceptable numbers, remember (it was definitely OP). They completely destroyed the spec that the rotation was built on by moving Gargoyle and Howling Blast deeper into their respective trees. Because in their minds, the spec was wrong. Similar things happened to builds that spammed Icy Touch, which I thought were also cool.
This has been something of a windy post, but my main point is that I hope we continue to innovate and do really cool, interesting things with our DPS rotations as Cataclysm matures, patch by patch. And I hope Blizzard takes a cue from this GC post and let’s us roll with our weird, non-intuitive rotations, because that’s part of what makes Death Knights interesting.
Runeforge Gossip 
While I’m not one for change, I have somewhat enjoyed redoing my DK and relearning about things. As for tanking…disease-less tanking makes me feel…dirty and unclean. Of course, as an undead death knight I am inherently dirty and unclean.
Honestly, right now. I feel like death knights are pretty versatile and playable. I mean I understand people wanting uniquness and being able to go outside of cookie cutter builds but let’s be real for a minute. The more of that there is, the more patches and changes that are going to happen. I mean learning a spec and playing it for a month to have the idea changed because someone wanted to do something that wasn’t intended is slightly rediculous. For Death Knights, they are an extremely strong class that can do so much. In summary, there should never be a do it all class, (outside of druids) just take what your good at and roll with it. Good information on this site man. Thanks.
But what I’m hoping for in the future is that when we do go outside of Blizzard’s box–and I’m almost certain that at some point we will–Blizzard won’t feel it’s necessary to stamp out innovation as long as it’s not a complete violation of the way the class plays (i.e. the equivalent of turning a Mage into a melee class).
To that i’ll agree. For your average player…(I’ll say an average player is rare in this regard sadly enough…) That know’s how to specifically play their class. (Correct talent build with in reason…not the all talents in all trees or all talents in one…) that inovation is an amazing thing. It was fun plugging in diffrent talents to be more useful or feel more useful depends on the situation. Not to mention being able to play a less specific roation. Cheers man.