Death Knight basics

Hello and welcome to my little guide on Death Knights. This guide is for the beta of wrath of the lich king, otherwise known as just wrath, and thus bound to change. Note that as a beta guide, when wrath goes live, things are bound to change. The point of this guide is to bring all the death knight info out there and have it in one place in manageable sizes. In this guide, I’ll cover a few things.

1. The basics and starting out for a Death Knight
2. What makes a Death Knight, a Death Knight
3. Skills, what they are, and tips on how to use them

The legal stuff will be at the end, so, let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

Let’s start at the beginning, making a Death Knight. It’s really easy, have a character at level 55 or higher, that’s it. No quests, no having to give up a character. Just make a new character, and pick Death Knight as the class. Death Knights start at level 55, with a set of uncommon (green) gear, including a neck and rings, but no trinkets or weapons (yeah, you start with no weapon, go figure). The Death Knight starting zone is technically an instance, that is, its not part of the rest of WOW, (but hey, no worrying about getting ganked eh?), near the eastern plague lands, and there are two, one for horde, one for alliance. By the time you leave the starting zone (I’ve heard five hours to complete all the quests, but haven’t tested it, yeah, I’m not in the beta yet, bite me), you will have a blue set of gear (including: trinkets and a weapon, and a sigil; the Death Knight version of a libram/totem/idol) and be at or close to level 58, outlands ready (if not, well, always the plague lands, right?). Note, that while the Death Knight need not be on the same server as the level 55, the rules of a PVP (Player vs player) server remain, if you have a Horde on the server, you can’t make an Alliance Death Knight. You can also only have on one account one Death Knight per server.

Equipment is important for a Death Knight. Death Knights can wear all kinds of armor, but can’t use a shield. They can use two handed sword, axes, and maces. They can also use one handed swords, maces, and axes, and can dual wield. A Death Knight is a lot like a warrior when it comes to stats on gear, they look for stamina, strength, and agility. One (1) point of stamina is ten (10) points of health. One (1) point of strength is two (2) attack power, fourteen (14) attack power is one (1) damage per second (dps). Thus, seven (7) points of strength is one (1) dps. Because of the trait (for lack of better terms) forceful deflection, 25% of a Death Knight’s strength goes into his (or hers, Arthas is equal opportunity) parry rating. One point of agility is two (2) armor, and a little crit and dodge (for exact numbers, check out deathknight.info or elitistjerks.com).

For the most part, a Death Knight is considered a melee class. Most (if not all) of a Death Knight damage will be dealt in melee range. However, Death Knights, get a few skills that let them, reach out and touch somebody. So just because you’re at range, don’t think you’re safe, they can still get ya.

Ok, sounds pretty standard right? Well, that’s because it is. So, I bet you’re asking, “What makes a Death Knight so special, that is, what makes a Death Knight, a Death Knight?”

That’s simple, Death Knights are what they are for the use of runes, runic power, and diseases. Now, odds are you have heard of the runes. A Death Knight gets six of them, two (2) blood, two frost, and two unholy. There is a fourth rune, the death rune, that can count as blood, frost, or unholy for skills. Runes power most, but not all, of a Death Knights skills. Once used, a rune takes (at the time I’m writing this) 10 seconds to reactivate. The rest use runic power, which is generated by using rune based skills. Runic power degrades over time like a Warriors rage, at a similar pace.

Now, this is for all Death Knights, and this goes double for unholy Death Knights, you are a walking epidemic waiting to happen. Fight accordingly. A Death Knight can have up to three diseases, but standard issue, they only have two. An unholy Death Knight gets the last one. The first is frost fever, a disease that slows a targets melee down by 14% standard issue, can be raised by 6% with talents. This is caused standard issue by icy touch, but can extend to other skills with talents. The second disease is blood plague, a disease that deals shadow dmg over time. I don’t have exact numbers for the amount of dmg it deals. Standard issue, it’s caused by plague strike, but with talents a Death Kight can gain other skills that cause it. The unholy tree gets one more; the disease is called crypt fever, which improves the dmg other diseases by 20/40/60% based on the rank of the talent. Crypt fever morphs into ebon plague (again, with talents) to also include improved vulnerability to magic by 4/9/12% based on rank. As you can see, the unholy Death Knight brings more to combat disease wise.

Now that we got that out of the way, lets move on to Death Knights’ skills. Each Death Knight skill falls into one of three trees, blood, frost, or unholy. While I won’t go into the talent trees here, I’ll give a brief overview of what the trees build for. I’ll also cover each trees’ presence, an aura like effect a Death Knight can activate (but only one at a time). Each presence cost one rune of its type to activate. After that, I’ll go into and over the trained skills. Talent tree skills will be covered with the trees themselves. Also, unless noted otherwise, all Death Knight skills are instant.

The first tree up is the blood tree. The blood tree is straight forward, deal dmg, recover health, and stay alive. The blood tree, and the presence that goes with it, are shaping up to be the leveling set of choice, but, I’m going to tell you the real secret to leveling. Enjoy your spec and class. If you’re having fun, you will be more likely to play the character for longer and thus level faster. The blood presence gives the Death Knight a 15% speed boost to attacks, and heals the Death Knight 2% of all dmg dealt. While that sounds over powered, think of this. A 2k (2,000) dmg attack (or crit even) will only heal the Death Knight 40 health (10% of 2k is 200, 1% 20, 20 times 2, 40). It’s not much, but it can help keep downtime to a minimum.

The first blood skill is blood strike. This melee skill deals 50% weapon dmg plus a bonus based on the rank per disease the Death Knight has on a target. This means if a target has the two standard diseases, it will take the weapon dmg plus the bonus times two for both diseases. A useful skill that can be worked into a rotation for extra dmg. Blood strike cost one blood rune to use, has no cool down, and only works in melee range. Next up is pestilence. Pestilence deals shadow dmg based on ranked and modified by attack power. The skill also deals dmg to up to three (3) additional targets, and spreads any diseases to the other targets. Gets better the more mobs you fight; meaning this could be a tanking skill: Costs one blood rune, no cool down, melee range only. Next is blood boil, pestilences partner in crime if you will. Blood boil causes all diseases (from the Death Knight) to erupts painfully, causing dmg based on rank, modified by attack power. Very much a tanking skill, when used with pestilence, becomes a killer combo for dealing with many mobs. The skill has no cost to use, however it’s on a 15 second cool down, and affects any target within 10 yards. This next skill is one of three interrupts Death Knights get, strangulate. Yes, just like Vader, the Death Knight chokes the target, silencing them for up to 5 seconds (ok, Vader didn’t have a time limit, but it was a good reference), and deals shadow dmg based on rank at the end. Cost one blood rune, has a 30 second cool down, and has a range of 30 yards, so watch out casters. The last two blood spells are more for utility than dmg. Blood tap turns a blood rune into a death rune, at the cost of 15% of a Death Knights’ health. Has a one min cool down, and lasts for 20 seconds. Death pact deals with the ghoul, a minion that Death Knights can summon to fight for them. The spell costs 40 runic power, has a two min cool down, the ghoul needs to be with in 30 yards, and is sacrificed. This heals the Death Knight 20% max health. And that’s it for blood, now frost is up to show us what its got.

The frost tree is about control, name control over your foes. Whether it’s slowing them down, freezing them in place, or otherwise just making their day that much harder, frost has it covered. The frost presence increases armor from items by 45%, magic resistances by the characters level (ex, lvl 57, 57 magic resistance) and threat generated by 45%. This is the tanking presence, plan and simple.

The first (but by no means the least) of the frost skills is icy touch. It deals dmg based on rank, and infects a target with frost fever, which I’ve already explained. The skill is ranged, given only 20 yards but better than nothing, and thus often used as an opener. Costs one frost rune, and has no cool down. Next up is mind freeze, and no, it’s not drinking a cold drink too fast. This is an interrupt, and is best described as kick, Death Knight style: Costs 20 runic power, 10 second cool down, and melee range only. The next skill is chains of ice. This (pardon the pun) cool move will chill your foe, reducing movement speed to 0%, then your foe will regain his movement speed back 5% per second. Costs one frost rune, and has a range of 20 yards. The next skill is obliterate, a finishing move at deals 100% weapon dmg, plus dmg based on rank and 50% additional dmg for each disease on the target, but the diseases are consumed. At level 62 a Death Knight gets icebound fortitude, a skill that makes the Death Knight immune to stuns, and reduces all dmg by 50% for 12 seconds. Costs 20 runic power, and has a 2 min cool down. The last of the standard frost spells is empower rune weapon. This skill activates all runes and gives you 25 runic power instantly. This spell costs nothing, but has a five min cool down. Added shortly before upload, two new skills have been added to the frost tree. Path of frost freezes the water below the Death Knight, allowing them to walk on water: costs one frost rune to activate, lasts for 15 min, can be used while mounted. The other is rune strike, a reaction based skill. When a Death Knight has a crit, be is melee or spell, he can perform rune strike, which deals weapon damage: Costs 10 runic power, and has a 5 second cool down. That’s the last of the frost spells, now to the last tree, unholy.

The unholy tree is……different. With skills that lower spell dmg taken, to making ghouls last long and be more controllable, unholy is a different mix. The unholy presence speeds up attacks by 15 %, increases movement speed by 15% and reduces the global cool down for all spells by 0.5 seconds. It should be noted, unholy seems to have more skills then the other two trees.

The first of the unholy skills is plague strike. This deals 30% weapon dmg plus dmg based on rank and infects the target with blood plague, and removes one heal over time effect: Costs one unholy rune, melee range only. Death coil is next, and now might be a good time to mention, yes, there is a warlock spell by the same name, but this is more of a nuke. Deals dmg based on rank, or heals a friendly undead based on rank. 30 yard range, costs 40 runic power. The final interrupt also falls in the unholy tree, but this one as a fun twist to it. Death grip grabs a foe and yanks them to the Death Knight, forcing them to attack the Death Knight for 3 seconds. 30 yard range, no cost, but has a 35 second cool down. This next skill is, odd. Raise dead will raise a ghoul to fight by the Death Knight for 2 min, but it can’t be controlled directly without talents. It takes a humanoid corpse that yielded exp or honor. Skill is on a five min cool down, corpse need to be in 30 yards. Next up is a classic that some old school Warcraft players might know, death and decay. The best way to describe this is the evil version of consecrate, with a cower in fear effect added. The spell has a 30 second cool down, effects a range of 30 yards, and costs one blood, one frost, and one unholy rune. Death strike is next (anyone else notice that a lot of the unholy tree has death in the name?) deals 60% weapon dmg plus dmg based on rank, and heals the Death Knight for 100% dmg per disease or if the target is killed. This costs one unholy and one frost rune. Warning; Anti-magic shell, casters, start running. This skill reduces magic dmg by 75% for 5 seconds, has a 15 second cool down. The spell costs 20 runic power. The final offensive unholy power is the mover of all skills, army of the dead. This takes one of each rune, and is a channeled spell. Has a ten min cool down. This spell summons a legion of ghouls to fight for the player. You (the Death Knight) take less dmg equal to your dodge plus parry chance.

Now for the non-combat moves. Death gate lets you open a gate to Eon hold, the Death Knight home city if you will. The summon Death Charger is another spell that falls under unholy, and it’s your mount.

And that’s it, that’s all she wrote, or all he wrote in this case. This is a basic overview of the death knight class including a look at the spells. Info from wowhead, wowwiki, deathknight.info, elitiestjerks.com, and world of Warcraft.com. World of Warcraft is a registered trademark of the Blizzards corporation. All right reserved (always wanted to say that).