Jan 9

Welcome to Part 1 of the “So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight” series. Today we will talk about the very basics of the death knight.
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What is a Death Knight?

Death knights, as we think of them now, are warriors of the Scourge, tasked with serving the Lich King in battle. Player created death knights are death knights who have broken away from Arthas’ control at the battle of Light’s Hope Chapel. The in-game faction “Knights of the Ebon Blade” consist of Arthas’ former death knights.

Class Basics

Death knights…

• …are limited to one per server per account.
• …will not replace an existing character (you do not “transform” one character into a death knight).
• …will take up one of your 10 character slots per server.
• …can only be created if you have a level 55+ character already (patch 3.0.8 will allow you to create a death knight on any server if you have a level 55+ character anywhere, but for now you can only create one on a server where you have a level 55+ character).
• …start at level 55.
• …can be either faction (PvP realm rules still apply).
• …can be any race.
• …wear plate armor.
• …may wield 1H/2H swords, 1H/2H axes, 1H/2H maces, and polearms.
• …can dual-wield.
• …equip “Relics” in their ranged slots.
• …can not equip shields.
• …can tank and DPS.
• …do not have distinct tanking and DPS talent trees.

Starting a Death Knight

To create a death knight, you must have a character on your account that is level 55 or higher. At release, the death knight can only be created on a server where you have a level 55 character. This will change in patch 3.0.8. When you create a death knight, you may choose any race of any faction (but PvP realm rules still apply). You may only have one death knight per server, though a blue post recently revealed that they may remove this restriction in the future.

Your death knight will start at level 55 at a new starting area called Acherus: The Ebon Hold. Here, you will play through the story of how your death knight breaks free from the Lich King. At the end of it all, you will be about level 58 (I was able to go straight from the final quest to Outland in beta, though in live I leveled to 60 in the Plaguelands).

Your death knight is also “born” with a set of pretty good green quality gear. You start off with no talent points. As you complete quests to advance the story, you are awarded pieces of blue gear and talent points–a few at a time. This is nice, as it doesn’t force you to place all your talents at once, helping to keep you from being overwhelmed. However, it may be a good idea to decide which tree you want to go down ahead of time–we will discuss talents in depth in later articles.

Basic Death Knight Combat

Death knight combat is based on a new system which uses two types of resources: runes and runic power. I’ll cover the very basics here.

Death knights have six runes: two blood runes, two frost runes, and two unholy runes. Many of the death knight’s abilities cost runes to cast–some one rune, some two runes, and on very rare exceptions (I can only think of two) three runes. Before you start combat, all your runes are ready to go:

When you use a rune, it gets placed on cooldown. Normally, the time until you can use the rune again is 10 seconds; however, when a rune finishes cooling down, you have a two-second “grace period”–for example, if your rune finishes cooling down, and you wait one second to use it again, the rune will be placed on a nine second cooldown; if you waited two seconds, it would be on an eight second cooldown. Eight seconds is the shortest the cooldown will ever be, unless an attack doesn’t land, in which case the cooldown is only one second.

Here’s what it would look like if you used an ability, such as Plague Strike, that uses one unholy rune:

As soon as the ability is used, the rune starts counting from 10 seconds–after the 10 seconds are over, that particular rune is “cooled” and can be used again.

Certain talents (Death Rune Mastery, Blood of the North, and Reaping) allow you to transform certain runes into death runes when they activate. Death runes count as any type of rune, and add a level of complexity to death knight rotations. Say we had Reaping, shown above, and used Blood Boil, an ability that uses a blood rune. Because of Reaping, that blood rune will become a death rune. Also, keep in mind the unholy rune we used earlier has been cooling down.

Abilities that cost runes to cast generate runic power, or “RP”. Abilities that use one rune generate 10 runic power, abilities that use two runes generate 15 runic power, and abilities that use three runes generate 20 runic power. After patch 3.0.8, all abilities that use more than one rune will generate 15 runic power. You start off with zero runic power, and it builds until it hits the maximum of 100 (unless you have points in Runic Power Mastery). There are certain abilities that cost runic power to cast, including all the 51-point talents (Dancing Rune Weapon, Hungering Cold, and Unholy Blight). While not in combat, runic power slowly fades away, much like rage.

A couple death knight abilities cause a disease debuff. These diseases have different effects, but many death knight abilities scale off the number of diseases on your target–so, to get the most out of your abilities, make sure you’ve got your diseases on your target at all times.

We’ll talk about specific rotations to use while tanking and DPSing in later articles.

Presences

Death knights have three presences, which are similar to paladin’s auras, except they affect only the death knight. Switching to a presence costs one rune of the type that matches the presence’s name, so you won’t do it in combat very often.

Blood Presence is your traditional DPS presence, increasing damage done and healing you for a small amount of the damage you do.

Frost Presence is your tanking presence, giving you extra mitigation, health, and decreasing spell damage taken. This is also your presence for dealing extra threat. Death knights only have two abilities that deal “bonus threat,” so most of your threat comes from dealing high amounts of damage, amplified by Frost Presence.

Unholy Presence is primarily a PvP presence. Increased movement speed is, obviously, a boon in PvP, and the increased attack speed and global cooldown reduction allows you to frontload a lot of damage before a target can get away or start kiting you around.

Runeforging

Death knights get an additional skill known as Runeforging. This skill allows death knights to enchant their weapon with special, death knight only effects, but requires you to be near a Runeforge, which exist only in Acherus: The Ebon Hold and in the Shadow Vault in Icecrown. These enchants take the place of a regular weapon enchant, but tend to be better than their “normal” counterparts.

Death Knight Roles

Death knights can perform well in either a DPS or tanking role. The intent is for every tanking class to be able to main tank fights, and this includes the death knight. We will discuss tanking, DPSing, and decisions on gear and talents that affect a death knight’s ability to perform in these roles further in later articles.

Related posts:

1. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Frost Tree
3. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Blood Tree
4. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: DPS
5. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Tanking