I think everyone knows there isn't alot of time left in Beta, and many people think the Death Knight class

is lacking in some areas and it seems we can't get to those issues because the GCD capped issue and the

Rune Empowerment issue continues to derail most topcis relating to the class.

I think the main issue is there is a disagreement on what being GCD capped actually means. So that is

pretty much what this topic is here try to find out.

Since the only two melee classes I have experience with in pve are Death Knights and Ret Paladins I am

going to make the comparison between these two classes.

GCD Capped What Does That Mean??

I think some people have a different idea of what this actually means. Here is where the Ret vs. DK

comparison comes in.

Retribution is a spec that isn't considered to be GCD capped since everything they do is on a cooldown so

it's more of a priority system. You never see threads of "omg i am GCD capped as ret and it sucks". On my

ret paladin with 4pc t10 in ICC depending on 4pc10 divine storm procs (we are going to use that proc as a

direct comparison to Rune Empowerment) there are many times where I have no time to spend all my resources

(There are times do to t10procs that i will go long periods of time without being able to fit in Crusader

Strike for example). If you get a lucky string of procs and it happens often especially during herosim

phase I will go 2-3 rotation intervals where I just couldn't get to everything before something else came

off cooldown.

Is this a bad model? This is exactly how DKs function in Beta and I do not consider that to be GCD capped,

because it's very different then the way DKs are GCD capped on live. On live I feel as though I have to

follow a strict rotation or I lose massive amounts of DPS. This never happens to me as Ret, this also

doesn't happen to me in beta as a DK.

I also find that in beta I am able to for the most part keep my runes on cooldown far easier then on live.

On live GCD limited me from doing this alot of times but I find that it's much easier to do in beta. So

does the GCD issue you talked about in the DK preview relate to runes only? If so that makes alot of

sense. Do you care that we have extra RP that is difficult to spend depending on rune priority which puts

us in the situation of Ret on live. I always envisioned RP to be a secondary resource system and always

second to the main rune resource.

Rune Empowerment

This question won't be nearly as detailed because it's pretty straight forward. RE IMO is fun because it

makes it so I have to make decisions on the fly. The major question is did you guys intend Rune

Empowerment to be something we could "Sit on" or not use until optimal such as waiting to pair runes

ect... Or was this designed to be like rime or sudden doom where we use it immediately. There seems to be

some DKs that think RE is a failure because if we don't use it right away we lost damage (something I am

not seeing from all the test i have run in beta), or the argument of why have it if we can just ignore the

proc for awhile sometimes.

If you can shed some light on this subject I think it could help the community alot. Right now Frost is in

really bad shape and we need to get some good feedback on that spec but we can't until some issues with RE

and the GCD issue are cleared up.