Sep 18

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been playing a Death Knight and loving it. The resource system is extremely unique, and takes some planning and strategy to use effectively–face-rolling will severely gimp your DPS and/or tanking. I thought I’d take a bit of time to discuss Death Knight combat.

Runes and Runic Power

Death Knights use a unique system to activate their spells and abilities. This sytem consists of runes and runic power. Some abilities cost one or more runes to activate–these abilities generate runic power, which maxes out at 100 (without talents). Like rage, it begins to decrease when out of combat. Other abilities use up runic power.

Death Knights use three rune types–Blood, Frost, and Unholy. There are two of each rune type, as shown in the picture. When you use an ability that uses one or more runes (and it successfully lands), it places each of those runes on a 10-second cooldown. (If an ability does not successfully land, it gets placed on a shorter cooldown.)

Let’s take a look at some of the Death Knight’s abilities and their cost to cast.

Abilities that Cost Runes

Here are some of the abilities that you start off with as a level 55 Death Knight. You can mouse over them to see the entire spell, I will only list the rune cost and the major details.

Icy Touch (1 Frost) – 50-54 Frost Damage + Frost Fever (Disease)
Blood Strike (1 Blood) – 50% Weapon Damage + 23 + 11 * Number of Diseases
Plague Strike (1 Unholy) – 30% Weapon Damage + 10 + Blood Plague (Disease) + Removes one HoT from target

As you can see, the basic abilities cost one of its corresponding rune type, and do differing amounts of damage. Icy Touch and Plague Strike do less damage than Blood Strike, but are designed to get diseases on your target so you then get more damage out of Blood Strike.

Let’s take a look at a more advanced spell that you learn at level 56.

Death Strike (1 Unholy, 1 Frost) – 60% Weapon Damage + 67 + Heals the Death Knight for 100% Damage Done * Number of Diseases

Another strike that scales with your diseases. Starting to see a pattern here?

As you start to refine your talent spec, you’ll start noticing patterns, and eventually, a rotation will evolve. Let’s take a look at a few talents from Unholy, my favorite talent spec.

Epidemic, Outbreak, Reaping, Desecration, Crypt Fever, Ebon Plaguebringer, Wandering Plague, Rage of Rivendare

As you can see, Unholy focuses a lot on your diseases. But, take a very good look at Crypt Fever. “Your diseases also cause Crypt Fever, which increases the damage of other diseases on the target by 20%.” So, not only does it make the diseases already ticking away on your target stronger, but it also causes a new disease. Remember how Blood and Death Strike scale with additional diseases? Yep, this counts as another disease! That’s an extra 11.25 damage with Blood Strike, and another 100% damage done toward healing with Death Strike.

Also in the Unholy tree is a new strike.

Scourge Strike (1 Unholy 1 Frost) – 65% Weapon Damage as shadow damage + 84 + 42 * Number of Diseases

A few things about this ability: (1) it scales very well with your diseases (42 damage per, as opposed to 11 with Blood Strike), and (2) it does its damage as shadow damage, which means it is unmitigated by armor. Pretty nice huh?

Getting Your Diseases on a Target

So, as you can see, Unholy is all about your diseases. To get the most damage from Scourge Strike, or the most healing from Blood Strike, it is in your best interest to get your diseases on a target as early as possible. But, if you’re not careful about which abilities you use and in what order, you can find yourself without a rune that you really need. Let’s take a look at the beginning of a typical Unholy cast rotation

IT = Icy Touch
BS = Blood Strike
PS = Plague Strike
DS = Death Strike
SS = Scourge Strike
BB = Blood Boil (see below)
Numbers = Seconds/End of Global Cooldown
* = End of Global Cooldown
F/B/U = Frost, Blood, Unholy Runes (Dashes indicate cooldowns)

0  *  3  *  6  *  9  *  12 *  15 *  18 *  21
|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
IT PS SS BS BB
F-------------------F                          < Frost
      F------------------F                     < Frost
         B------------------B                  < Blood
            B------------------D               < Blood
   U------------------U                        < Unholy
      U------------------U                     < Unholy

So–we start off with Icy Touch at 0 seconds. We use Icy Touch because (1) it is a ranged attack, and (2) because it sets up two diseases on our target (Frost Fever and Crypt Fever). After that global cooldown is over, at 1.5 seconds, we cast Plague Strike, setting up Blood Plague. We now have 3 diseases on our target, so at 3 seconds we’ll cast Scourge Strike to deal a good amount of damage to the target.

Do you see what’s happened now? We’ve used both our Frost runes and both our Unholy runes. The earliest we’ll get another Frost is at 10 seconds. Since our only strike in the meantime is Blood Strike, we’ll use it at 4.5 seconds, again taking advantage of all our diseases, but not doing as much damage as Scourge Strike.

Next, I’ve decided to cast Blood Boil. Let’s take a look at Blood Boil (a level 58 ability).

Blood Boil (1 Blood) – 59-71 Shadow Damage * Number of Diseases (all enemies within 30 yards)

So, we do a decent amount of damage to our target–a minimum of 59 * 3, since we have 3 diseases on our target. But, remember that talent, Reaping? “Whenever you use Pestilence or Blood Boil, there is a 100% chance that the Blood Rune becomes a Death Rune when it activates.”

A Death Rune is a rune that can act as any other type of rune; if you need a certain rune type, and it is on cooldown, it will use your Death Rune instead. If can be useful for longer rotations or grindnig; by using Blood Boil and Pestilence now, I can have two Death runes up instead of Blood runes, giving me the ability to use them as Unholy and Frost for a Scourge Strike. I’ve marked it in red on the chart above.

In the meantime, these abilities have been generating runic power.

Runic Power

There are many abilities that use runic power. A few examples are Death Coil, Summon Gargoyle, and Unholy Blight. Notice that Unholy Blight is the bottom tier Unholy talent, and although it doesn’t actually add a disease to a target, any mobs within 10 yards of you are considered to have another disease on them, giving even more power to your strikes that stack with diseases.

Conclusion

I hope you can see now regarding what I meant when I said you couldn’t just spam/faceroll your way to the top of the charts with a Death Knight. As you gain levels, you will learn even more abilities to add another layer of complexity into your rotations, such as Blood Tap, Rune Strike, Death and Decay, and Obliterate (which by default consumes all diseases on a target, but does very good damage).

All in all, the Death Knight rune/runic power system is very engaging. I recommend everyone try it, even if they don’t plan on playing a Death Knight in the end.

Related posts:

1. Tanking as an Unholy Death Knight
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Unholy Tree
3. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Basics
4. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: DPS
5. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Blood Tree