Death Knights and You, Part 1

Again, it's been quite a while since I last updated, but as before, I was avoiding the shit out of the Beta in preparation for the launch of Wrath. As fun as it was to test out the new content, find bugs, experiment with new abilities, and see shiny new shit, I don't especially want to sleepwalk my way through the all the new content because HO HUM I've seen it all already.

That said, one thing I did do a lot of recently was run the Death Knight starting area in preparation for getting out of the gates as fast as possible on the 13th. As cool as Acherus and questing in Havenshire are, I really don't want to be stuck with a million other Death Knight rerollers fighting over Hellfire Peninsula spawns. I'm not gunning to be the first 80 DK on the server, or even among the first dozen; I just want to get ahead of the pack and then cruise comfortably.


Death Knights get lots of toys.

One thing that occured to me this morning as I gulped down coffee, however, was that there are probably quite a few people out there who have no clue about what the deal is with Death Knights. Either they have no interest beyond rolling an alt to play around with, or they've been keeping themselves in the dark about Wrath, or whatever. There's a lot of misinformation (and disinformation) floating around about the class, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to clear the air a bit.

So, this'll be Part 1 of 2 in taking a look at this potentially confusing new class. Not interested? Here's a political discussion thread on the Maelstrom realm forums to keep you entertained.


Ok so, first things first, what are Death Knights exactly? In the simplest terms, they are a melee DPS/tank hybrid, very similar to a warrior. In fact, in terms of basic mechanics and feel, they're probably most similar to a warrior, so if nothing else, consider them as able to fill that gap in your 5-man and PvP groups. Obviously, it's more complicated than this, but like I said, simplest terms.

One major difference between warriors (and, really, all other classes) and death knights is how their talent trees are structured. For warriors, you have Arms, Fury, and Protection. Arms and Fury are both DPS trees - if you spec primarily down either one, you're doing so with the intention of doing damage, either in PvE or PvP. Conversely, if you dump your points into Protection, you're looking to tank.

Not so with Death Knights! Obviously, they have three talent trees as well: Blood, Frost, and Unholy. However, none of them are strictly DPS or tanking trees. Instead, all three trees have a mix of DPS, tanking, utility, and all-purpose talents. Thus, you can't specifically say, "Oh, we need a tank, let's find a Frost DK." You might end up with a Frost DK who's specced for DPS. That means, for all intents and purposes, that you have to at least glance at a DK player's talent choices to see if they're telling the truth about whether they tank or DPS. Actually, that's not all that different from any other class anyway.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the three DK trees. I'll give a short explanation of each tree, and also list off some talents that will generally (not always) give an indication of which of these two roles an individual player is focused on.

Blood

The Blood tree is the most straightforward tree of the three. A Blood-specced DK will rely primarily on doing Physical melee damage, and many talents in the tree give bonuses most will be familiar with, such as bonus damage when wielding a 2-handed weapon or a stacking damage bonus based off of critical strikes. Blood also excels at self-healing, with abilities such Rune Tap, Vampiric Blood, and Mark of Blood being particularly noteworthy.
Tank talents to watch for: Blade Barrier, Spell Deflection, Will of the Necropolis


Frost

Frost Death Knights are a bit more like spellcasters. They combine elements of frost mages (SHOCKING) and both shockadins and Ret paladins in varying amounts. As you'd suspect, a great deal of what this spec relies on for damage is Frost-based, which means they'll do more damage against higher armor targets, as they'll be ignoring that armor with abilities like Frost Strike and Howling Blast. In PvP, Frost DKs, like Frost mages, are about control - slows, freezes, shatter combos, etc.
Tank talents to watch for: Toughness, Unbreakable Armor, Frigid Dreadplate, Acclimation


Unholy

An Unholy Death Knight feels like what would happen if old Firestone warlocks weren't stupid and laughable - melee based, with elements of both Demonology and Affliction. Like Frost, they do a great deal of their damage as magic, in this case Shadow. They tend to rely on Diseases much more than the other two, and they're the only spec that uses a Ghoul as a permanent pet, rather than a temporary, uncontrollable minion. They also tend to be very good at AoE, with Unholy Blight and Corpse Explosion providing an added boost to the baseline Bloodboil and Pestilence in that department. They also make the best magic-based tanks of the three specialties.
Tank talents to watch for: Anticipation, Magic Suppression, Anti-Magic Zone

That's all for this entry. In Part 2, which should be posted in a couple days rather than in a MONTH (I'm awesome at this bog thing), I'll cover what you should expect from a DK that you're grouping with - what abilities to watch for and what they mean, what buffs you should be giving them, and why you should be booting the retard that rolls on spell damage plate from your party.

Read more!