WPF is neither dead nor dying. It will cease to exist when it is either replaced by a newer UI toolkit or when the desktop is completely replaced by Metro. And neither one of those two things are very likely to happen in the near future. And Microsoft hasn't stopped developing WPF. .NET 4.5 gave WPF a few additions and improvements. If you want to create Windows desktop applications WPF is still one of your best options.

We use C++/CLI here at work quite extensively, and it's still alive and being developed. Managed C++ is just an earlier version of the same thing.

WPF, DirectX? No...