Enter the Death Knight
With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, World of Warcraft will introduce its first Hero Class, the Death Knight. Death Knights have been part of Warcraft lore since the real-time strategy game days, serving as powerful mounted necromancers who could command the armies of the Undead or engage in hand-to-hand combat behind the strength of their powerful vampiric runeblades. While the lore and reasoning behind playable Death Knights are still being finalized, we do know that Death Knight players are former servants of the Lich King who have broken away from the Scourge in order to join ranks with the Alliance or the Horde.
All players with a level 55 character will be able to create one Death Knight per realm, per account. There was no mention of the rumored character sacrifice or of a lengthy quest chain to unlock this character slot, so it should be as simple as that. You'll also be able to create a Death Knight belonging to any of the game's playable races. We expect pink-haired gnomish Death Knights with pigtails to be a particularly popular option.
Bonus: Getting to Skip Barrens Chat
A freshly minted Death Knight begins at level 55, and is presented with a series of quests that provide a back story, as well as initiating the player to the game mechanics behind the class. Blizzard's designers decided to start the class with a full complement of abilities right off the bat, figuring that any player that has advanced a character to level 55 would be able to learn to handle the new class with minimal difficulty. Getting around as a Death Knight will also be facilitated by their skeletal Deathcharger mount, summoned in a manner similar to a Paladin's charger.
Death Knights are a plate-wearing class that are envisioned as either a tank or a melee-based damage-dealing class. Their resource mechanic is the rune system, a significant departure from the familiar triumvirate of mana, rage and energy. A Death Knight's runes are slotted into their "blade," which lies underneath their health bar as a visual indicator of what resources are available to the player at any given moment. There are six slots in the blade, and the player is free to fill those slots with any given number of Blood, Unholy or Frost runes, these runes being the sources of a Death Knight's power. Spent runes automatically refresh after a set period of time, much like a Rogue's energy bar.
My Bloody Valentine
The three rune types serve as ways to define the role that Death Knights will carve out for themselves. Much like Paladin auras or Warrior stances, a Death Knight will be able to choose a Presence to activate. Presences are self-buffs with powerful effects, and you'll have a Presence suitable for tanking, one for damage-dealing, and presumably one that will be useful for pwning noobs.
A secondary resource called Runic Power is generated by using your rune abilities. Much like how a Warrior builds Rage the more they hit something, Runic Power will increase over the course of a fight; also like Rage, it will decay over time if not spent. In a fashion similar to the Execute ability, Death Knights will have a number of abilities that cost all available Runic Power, with varying levels of effectiveness based on total Runic Power spent. We anticipate that these will work like Rogue finishers, either to finish off an opponent or to provide a significant damage boost to keep the damage pouring out.
Ghouls' Night Out
Death Knights bring some unique abilities to the table, exploring avenues of combat that haven't been touched by other classes. Sure, their Death Coil ability isn't terribly different from the Warlock power of the same name (it lacks the fear component). But Death Knights will be the first class that utilizes disease as a source of damage, with abilities that become stronger with each disease's effects on their target.
Death Knights are also a pet class of sorts, but not in the traditional sense. They can channel an ability called Army of the Dead that spawns numerous undead minions that race out and attack nearby hostile targets. When these lesser peons aren't quite enough, the Death Knight can raise a fallen enemy (or ally) as a powerful ghoul which fights by their side. At first glance, the ghoul appears to offer as much utility and strength as a Hunter or Warlock pet, with its own special abilities like a disease-inflicting strike and a stun. Interestingly enough, when an ally is risen as a ghoul, a pop-up similar to that of a Warlock's soulstone appears, prompting the player to decide whether or not to control the ghoul. Considering the synergy that Death Knight abilities have with Undead allies, raising ghoul teammates in an arena environment should be interesting to say the least.
Something truly unique that Death Knights offer is their ability to lessen the global cooldown. Every other class in the game is limited to using abilities every second, but Death Knights may well be able to fire off more abilities in rapid succession. This potentially powerful ability will surely be looked at closely during the beta test period.
No Hiding Behind a Shield
Death Knights can fill two roles in your typical party or raid setup, that of a melee-damage-dealing DPS class or that of a tank. As a DPS class, you can expect them to fill a role similar to that of a Fury Warrior, Enhancement Shaman, or Cat-form Druid: capable, but not quite at the top end of the damage-dealing class scale.
One of the biggest questions players have regarding the Death Knight is how it will approach tanking. To give some perspective, Warriors tank by using a balanced mix of parry, block and armor mitigation, with abilities like Devastate and Shield Slam to generate threat. Paladins are great at area-effect tanking with an emphasis on blocking, while Feral Druids in Bear form can reach ludicrous heights in terms of armor and health, with an emphasis on dodging, or avoidance tanking. So where does this leave the Death Knight?
Death Knights don't use a shield, so their primary forms of mitigation will come in the form of Parrying, and the inherent power of their Presences and rune abilities. Blood runes are currently being billed as the primary tanking abilities, so to speak, while Frost is envisioned as more of a crowd-control type of rune. Choosing the right tools for the job will determine your success when tanking, like activating the Presence that increases the Death Knight's damage mitigation, as well as increasing the amount of threat that they generate.
Coming Out of Your Shell
The Death Knight's particular niche will be in tanking magic-damage-dealing bosses. They will have an ability much like a banshee's anti-magic shell, greatly diminishing the amount of incoming magic damage they'll receive in combat. While the Death Knight should be able to capably fill in any sort of tanking role with some success, they should be ideal against bosses that primarily deal magic damage.
Death Knights, despite their dark and brooding demeanor, are an exciting first step in Blizzard's introduction of Hero Classes to World of Warcraft. It's still too early to know whether or not players will cry foul at the powerful possibilities that this new class offers (actually, we're sure they will), or to predict what impact they'll have on the game's future. But for a game that's offered the same roles since 2004, a taste of something new is long overdue.
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