I, for one, am a very happy 5m instance tank with the changes introduced in 3.3. Yeah, this is kinda old news for the world, but after being offline, the changes have fun for me to mess around with. The biggest uptick? The Icy Touch attack.

From the patch notes:

• Icy Touch: This ability now causes a very high amount of threat while the death knight is in Frost Presence.
• Icy Talons: The personal haste benefit provided by this talent is no longer exclusive with other sources of melee haste. This will allow death knights to always swing 4/8/12/16/20% faster when Frost Fever is applied.
• Improved Icy Talons: This effect is now passive instead of being a proc. The self haste buff remains unchanged.

“BFD dude, all you did was quote patch notes”.

True that… but consider: I avoided Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons in my old talent builds for the simple reason that if I ever got another instance member with haste buffs my talent points were wasted… I’d rather use those talents for other points. Now, no matter if I’m buffing my group (I don’t raid) or the shaman is buffing the group, I will ALWAYS have haste whenever frost fever is applied. And because its now passive instead of proc based, all I gotta do is toss on an Icy Touch, which is ingrained in my opening sequence anyways.
AND…
Now that Icy Touch causes a butt load of threat while in frost presence, somebody in that pack of mobs is always gonna have frost fever… I like permanent haste!

I’ve swapped around my talent tree to a 15 | 51 | 5 build that takes advantage of the changes to Improved Icy Talons.

This also means I’ve abandoned the Dual Wield Experiment for the time being, but after just now re-reading:

• Rune of Razorice: Now stacks 5 stacks of 2% Frost Vulnerability instead of 10 stacks of 1% Frost Vulnerability. Proc chance changed to 100%.
• Nerves of Cold Steel: Now increases off-hand damage by 8/16/25%, up from 5/10/15%.

I may have to reconsider a dual wield with the new Razorice! But, another time…

Hoping all are having fun with 3.3!