With the launch of World of Warcraft’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion, we will be re-introduced to Azeroth’s very first hero class: the Death Knight. Over several years, the Death Knight has undergone a litany of changes, streamlining the class into a more comprehensive design that aligns more with the rest of the standard lineup.
For those who have become too accustomed to how today’s iteration handles or never played the original Death Knight class, here are some helpful tips to keep in mind when it comes to optimizing your role, stances, and more.
Death Knights explained
Death Knights start at level 55 with their own unique starting zone that introduces the lineage and importance of the Death Knights while also introducing you to the Lich King. Through this brief adventure, you’ll learn some of the very basic concepts that fuel the Death Knights.
Designed to encompass the aspects of the Lich King, Death Knights are built around three themes: Blood, Frost, and Unholy. This concept is going to repeat itself through the entire class from your abilities to talents and more. What makes the Death Knight truly unique is how you can outfit the class in a variety of ways that compliments your play style. Each theme allows you to focus on dealing damage or tank. With the addition of dual specialization, you can have two different builds for whatever scenario you find yourself in.
Resources
You have six Runes at your disposal, two of each representing Blood, Frost, and Unholy. Each attack you deal will cost several runes. When you use an ability it will put the respective rune on a cooldown, preventing you from using that rune until the cooldown has expired.
At first, your attacks such as Icy Touch might cost one Frost Rune with costs becoming more varied as you level up like Obliterate, which will require 1 Blood and 1 Unholy Rune. This makes you consider exactly where you put some abilities.
You also have Runic Power which is represented by a blue bar above your six runes. This fills up over time as you use certain abilities, and you can spend this resource on a range of other attacks as your runes refresh. Death Coil and Frost Strike each consume Runic Power and create that gap as you wait for your runes to recharge.
Balancing these two sets of resources can be difficult at times but once you reach level 75, you get access to an ability called Empower Rune Weapon which reactivates all your runes and gives you 25 Runic Power, making it an incredible lifesaver if you run out of these resources and need a boost in the heat of battle.
There is one additional resource that also makes playing as a Death Knight interesting, and that is diseases. While it isn’t as obvious as the runes and Runic Power, diseases are applied to the target and deal damage over time. Some abilities will deal more damage based on how many diseases are on the target or consume all diseases to increase damage. Obliterate will consume these diseases to deal more damage while Blood Strike stacks damage depending on how many diseases are applied.
Presences
While classes like the Warrior have stances, the Death Knight has something similar as well in the form of Presence. As the theming insists, there is a Blood, Frost, and Unholy stance, each one offering a passive boon to your abilities. Only one can remain active at a time, so you need to pick the one that best matches your situation.
In Blood Presence, all your attacks deal 15% more damage while also healing you by 4% of non-periodic damage dealt, making this incredibly useful for damage output. Unholy Presence increases your attack and movement speed by 15% while also reducing global cooldowns of all abilities by 0.5-seconds. For those who are tanking, Frost Presence is the way to go with an 8% increase to stamina, 60% additional contribution from armor, increases threat generation, and reduces damage by 8% making this the default presence for tanks.
Talent Trees
When it comes to talent trees, each one has a variety of useful active and passive abilities that can be attributed depending on if you rather focus on dealing damage or acting as the tank for the party. At the end of the introductory adventure, you will have a handful of points to spend on these abilities. While some of the options are clear, there are some key abilities you do not want to miss out on.
Focusing on each tree will offer various benefits that are entirely unique. Blood tends to focus on two-handed weapons and abilities that apply healing, Frost is all about dual-welding one-handed weapons, and Unholy revolves around spreading diseases and using your undead pet. You can also find a few talents that might be useful in other talent trees, making the Death Knight one of the most experimental classes in the history of World of Warcraft.
Blood Specialization
Blood has a focus on two-handed weapons and maintaining health when in combat. It is a useful talent tree for beginners and really helps you understand some of the basic concepts of the class. The opening adventure even rewards you with a two-handed weapon, giving you a solid build right out the gate. Here are a few key talents useful for each of the roles:
Damage
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization is a must have for those who are looking to use various two-handed weapons as it increases the damage you deal.
Death Rune Mastery is an interesting talent as it has a chance to turn your Frost and Unholy runes into Death Runes, which act as wildcards and can be used as any other rune. This only happens when you use either Death Strike or Obliterate.
Dark Conviction leads to Bloody Vengeance which applies a buff towards your critical strikes, essential for damage dealers.
Improved Death Strike is also a key talent that increases damage and critical strike chance of your Death Strike while also increasing your self-healing.
Heart Strike is a great talent that cleaves to nearby enemies, dealing a normal amount of damage to your main target, and reduced damage to a nearby foe. These targets also take additional damage depending on how many diseases are applied to them.
Tanking
Blade Barrier is a great first talent to max up on as it decreases damage when all your runes are on cooldown.
Rune Tap allows you to convert a Blood Rune into health, keeping you in the fight for longer. With Improved Rune Tap, healing is increased, and the cooldown of the ability is reduced.
Bloodworms is a good talent that has a chance to spawn bloodworms that deal damage while healing you.
Vampiric Blood is a great last-minute ability that grants temporary health while increasing healing towards you for 10-seconds. At the end of the timeframe, your temporary vanishes.
Frost Specialization
With a focus on dual-wielding one-handed weapons, the Frost talent tree gives you a ton of abilities designed around the raw damage output. Several talents are incredibly useful for maintaining constant damage output and increasing haste, which works very well with dual wielding. The only problem is that you need to find two one-handed weapons to properly utilize the tree with some incredibly useful talents. Let’s look at some of those here:
Damage
Nerves of Cold Steel increases one-handed weapon damage, a must have for dual welders.
Improved Icy Touch leads to Icy Talons which decreases an enemy’s attack speed while increasing yours when you use Icy Touch.
You also want to invest all your points into Annihilation, which prevents Obliterate from consuming your diseases when used. This is a key ability as Obliterate is a key ability within your rotation.
Killing Machine increases the chance that your next Howling Blast, Frost Strike, or Icy Touch a critical strike.
Rime increases critical strike chance of Icy Touch and Obliterate.
Threat of Thassarian, when maxed out, increases dual-wielding damage for your off-hand weapon by 100% when you use Death Strike, Obliterate, Plague Strike, Rune Strike, Blood Strike, and Frost Strike.
Frost Strike is important as it builds into the previous talents while also being your main source for Runic Power spending.
Tanking
Like the Blood talent tree, Toughness offers an increase to your armor while reducing the duration of all movement-imparting effects.
Lichborne is a 10-second buff that prevents you from being charmed, fear, and sleep effects.
Frigid Deathplate reduces the chance that melee attacks will hit you.
Unbreakable Armor is a talent that increases your armor and strength for 20 seconds, adding to your survivability.
Acclimation gives you a chance to bolster your resistance to a spell’s type of magic for 18-seconds and can stack up to three times.
Unholy Specialization
Taking a step away from raw damage output, the Unholy talent tree focuses on maintaining your undead pet and maintaining disease upkeep. While you can tank with this specialty, there are less abilities and damage mitigation abilities at your disposal. Most players tend to use this tree in most PvP battlegrounds rather than dungeons or raids. Let’s look:
Damage
Epidemic is a good start as it will increase the duration of your Blood Plague and Frost Fever diseases, dealing more damage over time.
Ravenous Dead is another good talent as it increases your strength and the damage output of your ghoul pet.
Night of the Dead is a key damage talent that you can use to reduce the cooldown of your Raise Dead and Army of the Dead abilities; ultimately it leads to Master of Ghouls which turns your temporary ghoul buddy into a permanent pet.
You will also want to take Dirge as it increases Runic Power when you use Death Strike, Plague Strike, and Scourge Strike.
Reaping is interesting as it turns your Blood Rune into a Death Rune when you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence.
Crypt Fever is a debuff that increases the damage of your diseases against your target and leads to Ebon Plaguebringer which increases magic damage dealt along with increasing your critical strike chance.
Scourge Strike deals a massive amount of damage plus bonus damage for every disease that is applied to your target.
Tanking
Morbidity increases the damage and healing of Death Coil while reducing the damage of Death and Decay, which is a key area of effect ability that will help maintain threat.
Magic Suppression reduces all damage taken while also adding an additional effect to your Anti-Magic Shell ability, absorbing more information before breaking. This also leads to Anti-Magic Zone which reduces magic damage in an area, giving your party and raid team a bit of a defensive boost for 10-seconds.
Bone Shield is an absolute must-have for Unholy tanks. It summons three bones that swirl around you and if you have at least one bone up, damage is reduced while you also deal more damage.
As Wrath of the Lich King begins to open up, you will gain access to a bunch of additional upgrades and skill points which you can use within other talent trees, giving you plenty of additional options if you feel like experimenting. Several additional online tools such as the Death Knight talent calculator over at WowHead.com can help you plan out your next talent point investment.
Now that you have a solid foundation to build your Death Knight on, which specialty will you choose?
Written by Steve Esposito on behalf of GLHF.
