Why would you go back to the big DK crits?

We debated long and hard about whether to change Fallen Crusader or MoM / GoG. We ended up changing both, but later decided that the big crits were one of the things that helped the DK feel more like a warrior (big numbers from slow swings) even though they actually play more like a rogue with regard to resource use and number of specials per second.

We did prune some of the abilities from the talents however.

If you have played a DK at all, you would have noticed that most of their strikes hit for relatively small numbers. Most of their attacks do less than 100% weapon damage. They get one big hit a cycle (modulo other talent effects). Getting lots of small hits led to feedback during beta that DKs felt more like rogues than warriors, while the expectation was warriors since both are usually portrayed swinging two-handed weapons. The big crit talents were designed to work around that somewhat.

If you have issues with warriors or any other class, I would suggest bringing them up in other threads and not trying to use your dissatisfaction to lobby for nerfs for other classes. That tends to make players mad. We have made a lot of warrior changes lately and more are on the way.

As players have pointed out, these changes help Blood and Frost DKs, which were not typically the specs dominating PvP. We have toned down the burst in lots of other ways, including the runeforge enchants and the 51-point talents.

We don't want Unholy DKs, or any DK spec, to be as dominant in arenas as they have been. Do keep in mind however that part of the DK popularity comes from them being new. I would not expect to see the number of DKs stomping around Northrend to drop anytime soon.

Q u o t e:
If only other classes would also get larger crits because of flavour or "expectations".

You may have noticed talents like Ruin and spells like Arcane Barrage (which has a higher than normal coefficient).

Q u o t e:
IT hits harder than most classes primary attacks, it certainly hits hard as full frost than a mortal strike or a stormstrike on most targets, because of this funny thing called armor, I know, weird huh?

Spells that are not mitigated by armor are balanced around that fact. In sustained damage, DKs are now below rogues and mages and close to warriors. It’s hard to interpret “sustained damage” in a PvP setting though.

Q u o t e:
Burst is too high for rogues and mages. But death knights need more to "feel" like a warrior.

Nobody seems too worried about warrior burst at the moment (at least post Sudden Death nerf), which is where I made my comparison. I understand if you are a little jumpy based on your experiences from DK burst in 3.0. We think we have toned it down for 3.1.

Q u o t e:
Hey GC, is Obliterate being phased out of Blood rotations? It is going to be hitting a heck of a lot weaker for Blood specs now. Are we supposed be using mass HS instead now perhaps? (Thanks to DRM.)

That is the idea. It also lets everyone avoid Annihilation except Frost who wants it anyway. (I know I said recently that we still wanted Blood to Obliterate, but we since soured on that idea.)

To answer a few questions, Frost and Unholy will probably both lose some Icy Touch damage when all is said and done. Not all of those changes are in yet. It's cool for Unholy to dip into Frost for some more damage, but it's degenerate (in the sense that the design collapses) for Unholy to do that just so it becomes a crazy Icy Touch spamming juggernaut.

Blood should be about Heart Strike, Death Strike and healing.
Frost should be about Obliterate, Frost Strike and some (key word) ranged Frost damage.
Unholy should be about Scourge Strike, diseases and minions.
A little crossover for hybrid builds is fine.