The Death Knight, Azeroth’s Overpowered Hero

The recently-released expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, had many new features.  A new continent featuring a new quest system (which I’ll get into in a later post), an achievement system, a hair salon, new abilities, etc etc.  But one of the biggest additions was Warcraft’s first ever Hero Class, the Death Knight.  And I have started one.  And it’s become my main.

The mechanics for the class has not only changed the way I played the game, but it’s made me pay more attention to what I’m doing.  Prior to starting my DK, I played a dwarf hunter almost all the time.  Excellent for soloing content and damage mitigation, playing the pet-focused class was just fun and easy.  But once I picked up the DK, the hunter suddenly became boring.  Here’s how the class works – imagine, if you will, a warlock (where most of the damage is over time) fusing with a paladin (an AOE plate wearer that heals itself when it does damage).  You apply diseases, spread the disease around multiple mobs using one ability, drop a few AOE attacks, pop some of your fun abilities and voila! Five to six (or even seven to eight) dead mobs at your feet.

There are three different specs, like with any class – Blood, Frost and unholy (my current spec).  Any of these can be used to tank or DPS depending on where you spend your talents, but all of them are fun.  Blood features mostly health-regeneration abilities, Frost is used for controlling mobs and features stronger critical damage, and Unholy (which I use) is focused on diseases and AOE.

Instead of rage (warriors) or mana (hunters, mages, warlocks), DKs use Runes for their abilities.  There are six runes, two for unholy/blood/frost, and a baseline unholy attack will spend one unholy rune.  Some attacks take one of each rune, so the class is a cooldown class.  On top of this, using rune abilities give you runic power, which you build as you use abilities.  Runic Abilities are like finishing moves, such as a high powered beam or exploding a thousand angry bee from your skin.

You can choose any race to play a Death Knight, so you spend your time looking at their racial abilities.  I personally chose a Draenei (one of the new races from the previous expansion) purely for the healing racial.  Also, you start at level 55 in a brand new starting zone.  And this is where things get interesting.

The starting zone is instanced.

As you progress though the quest lines, the zone around you changes.  It’s a new feature called “Phasing” which WOTLK features predominatley.  For the first time ever the world changes based one quests you’ve completed and you watch a small human village turn into an undead wonderland.  The quests are varied and fun and their rewards build you an Epic Blue Plate set.  You also receieve your talent points, so by the end of the quest line, you will be able to fully build your character’s spec.

Let’s talk perks.  For one, you get an epic riding mount from the get go for free, and it’s a Death Knight specific ground mount.  As I mentioned before, you start at level 55, so no more Stranglethorn Vale!  You also get First Aid at 270, which is a nice quick heal out of combat.  Ability perks are varied.  Some of my favorite abilities include Death Grip, which pulls a mob to you (a la Scorpion from Mortal Kombat), Path of Frost which allows for water walking (extremely helpful), and a portal only DKs have that let them get back to the starting zone, which is the only place you can train new abilities.  Another ability allows you to summon your own ghoul to fight with you (from a dead humanoid corpse or from thin air at the price of a reagent) and speccing unholy allows you to keep that ghoul up permanently.  You also can raise an ally to continue fighting, extremely helpful when you’ve got that boss down to 2%.  There is also a DK only enchantment called “Runeforging” which puts one of a kind enchantments onto your two handed (or duel wield) weapon for free.

By the time you’re done with the starting zone, you’re around level 58 and ready for Outlands.  Outlands is cake as a Dk.  Absolute cake.  You can solo almost everything, save for dungeon quests, and as long as the elite quest calls for 2-3 people, you can probably hand it yourself.  With the self-healing abilities all DKs get, staying alive is no problem.  The game becomes “how many Mobs can I round up and take down?” and it’s an absolute blast.

Some minor stuff that stinks, you really have to back track if you want to even attempt to do professions.  So heading back to the starter zones to get your mining up is a bother.  You also have to pay attention to a lot of things going on – diseases, runic power, your own runes, staying alive, etc and if you’re not keeping track, death is coming.  If you want to tank, it’s an uphill slope since your abilities are mostly reactionary – keeping threat may be a problem for someone unfamiliar with the abilities or tanking in general.

All in all, the class is a blast to play and I recommend everyone starting one if only to check out that fantastic starting zone.  The only requirement is having at least one character past level 55 and you can only create one per server.  At the moment you can only create the character where your level 55+ is located, but they plan to allow you to go to any server to create one, even if you have never made a character there.  Sounds like a great way for you to play with friends quickly.