Death Strike Hotfix:

This was entirely meant to make it so DKs were not unfairly punished on Alysrazor.

That's it. Don't read anymore into it.

Correct.

The Death Strike hotfix was intended as a buff to single target Blood DK damage. Normally it’s not a big deal if one tank class does slightly higher or lower damage than other tank classes (as long as threat isn’t a problem), but when you have mechanics that greatly inflate tank damage, then it can be a bigger problem.

We discussed buffing Heart Strike or other attacks, but one of the concerns we commonly hear from Blood DKs is they feel torn about spending runes on Death Strike versus other abilities, and we didn't want to change their rotation in the middle of a patch, just modestly buff their damage.

Critical Strike Bonus, however, is more vague. The only reference I've ever seen to such a wording for critical strike bonus is for the "bonus" damage done by critical strikes, ie the +100% damage (50% for spells).

Apologies for any confusion.

For clarification's sake, we intended to increase critical strike chance. Improved Death Strike was not changed, merely buffed.

The hotfix was applied quite recently, so those of you who did not notice the improvement last night are correct. You can see the updated hotfix note here:

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike now provides 40/80/120% bonus damage, up from 30/60/90%, and a 10/20/30% critical strike chance, up from 3/6/9%.

(http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3019413#blog)