2fps

In 3.2.2, Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor and Bone Shield are going back to a one minute cooldown. Icebound Fortitude will be (as it has for a little while now) on a two minute cooldown.

When the new patch changes were first leaked on mmochamp a day or two ago it wasn’t readily apparent that the cooldowns on the talented signature abilities had been reduced. All I saw was that they were reducing Vampiric Blood’s duration and hacking the bonus time that the glyph gave as well. I blanched, suffered an aneurysm, started rebuilding an Unholy spec and then fell into a childish, stubborn pout. I was quite relieved and a little surprised to see more of the picture. Two thumbs up on these changes.

This is how I always thought things should have been after the first time they nerfed the talented signature tanking cooldowns, i.e. Vampiric Blood, Unbreakable Armor and Bone Shield.

You see, once upon a time the signature tank cooldowns for Death Knights were all on a one minute cooldown. Icebound Fortitude, a baseline tank cooldown, was also on a one minute cooldown. This setup was deemed to be overpowered. The solution Blizzard chose was to double the length of the cooldown on the talented signature abilities and to leave Icebound Fortitude alone.

I facepalmed when that change was rolled out. It seemed fairly obvious to me that out of the four cooldowns it was Icebound Fortitude that was the most troublesome. The talented cooldowns are all very good yes, but they’re not as heavyhanded as a simple "You take half as much damage now" ability.

Vampiric Blood for instance boosts your health and increases the effectiveness of healing done to you. I like this concept. You’re still going to take just as much damage as you would have without the cooldown but your ability to handle that damage is greatly improved.

Unbreakable Armor is a Frost thing and therefore not something to be cared about. It wasn’t any good at the time anyway.

Bone Shield was a little iffy, I admit. With high avoidance levels it was potentially very powerful with a one minute cooldown. Get lucky enough and its uptime could be extremely high.

Then you have Icebound Fortitude. Something not spec-dependent and is simple, straightup damage reduction. A lot of damage reduction in fact.

I always said that the talented abilities should have kept their minute long cooldowns and Icebound Fortitude should be on a 2 minute cooldown.

Enter 3.2.2 and look what’s happening.

Yeah. I approve.