Quick Facts

Screenshots

Videos

Comments

Comment by d3nyd

This is an interesting ability... It increases spell crit damage, which essentially doubles whatever your spell crits are normally. This also appears to be trainable, NOT a talent, which means it applies for any spec. It certainly makes new new and improved Death Coil or Deathchill/Howling Blast more appealing.

Comment by Axelon9

i'm pretty sure its purpose is so that all your abilities do double damage when they crit, rather than spells doing 150% dmg and melee doing 200%
this makes comparing damage spells to melee strikes easier

Comment by 55524

Ghostcrawler just confirmed: this is a passive ability given to all DK's by default. It may or may not show in the spell book anywhere. Normally melee crits are 2x and spells are 1.5x, and anything beyond that you either get via talents or gear (ie: meta gem for 3% boost).

DK's are given this passive ability so that by default our spell crits are 2x bonus, the same as our melee skills are, since we also derive a fair portion of our damage from spells (particularly in frost spec and some unholy variations as well), and the devs were worried about scaling at high levels of gear with certain specs falling behind. As yet we are the only class like this.

Original post from GC:

Death knights now do double damage on melee and spell crits. Normally spell crits are only 1.5x damage.

This was an intended change. Death knights derive a lot of damage from spells, but not so much that it made sense to give them a talent to increase spell critical damage. It’s just a passive bonus for them.

We were worried about certain specs not scaling as well with high levels of gear.

Comment by Cross88

This appears as a passive ability in the Frost page of your spellbook. I wonder why it's uncategorized on Wowhead.

Comment by Diabolic

In 4.0.6 the tooltip changed as;

"Unlike most casters, a Death Knight's spells cause double damage on critical hits and their chance to hit is increased by 9%. Spells are all Death Knight abilities that are not direct weapon strikes."

Aw yeah!

Links

Runic Focus

Runic Focus

Unlike most casters, a Death Knight's spells cause double damage on critical hits and their chance to hit is increased by 9%. Spells are all Death Knight abilities that are not direct weapon strikes.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Modifies Critical Strike Damage (15)
Value: 100%
PVP Multiplier: 1
Affected Spells:

Icy Touch	Strangulate	Blood Boil
Pestilence	Frost Fever	Improved Rune Tap
Howling Blast	Improved Rune Tap	Improved Rune Tap

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Mod Spell Hit Chance %
Value: 9%
PVP Multiplier: 1

Flags

Is Ability
Passive spell
Cast time is hidden

Runic Focus

Buff

Spell Details

Related

Contribute