WoW Reviews & Guides

Shadows of Justice

Orgrim Doomhammer’s first act as warchief of the Horde was to crush the orc warlocks of the Shadow Council. He grudgingly spared the council’s former master, Gul’dan, in exchange for the warlock’s servitude; in turn Gul’dan promised to create a host of powerful new warriors to serve the Horde. After experimenting at length with the souls of the recently slain council members, Gul’dan successfully instilled the spirit of the necrolyte Teron Gorefiend into the corpse of a fallen knight of Stormwind. Thus, the first terrifying death knight was born. Gul’dan transformed other council members as well, creating unholy warriors who sowed chaos and fear throughout the land of Azeroth during the Second War.

Following Gul’dan’s desertion and death, part of the Horde, including the death knights, retreated through the Dark Portal to Draenor. Most of the surviving death knights disappeared after Draenor’s destruction, with the exception of Teron Gorefiend, whose restless and embittered form resides now in the Black Temple of Outland.

Champions of the Lich King

Years after the destruction of Draenor, the immensely powerful Lich King created a new breed of death knights: malevolent, rune-wielding warriors
of the Scourge. The first and greatest of these was Prince Arthas Menethil, once a mighty paladin of the Silver Hand, who sacrificed his soul to claim the runeblade Frostmourne in a desperate bid to save his people.

Unlike Gul’dan’s death knights, modern death knights consist mainly of paladins who lost their faith and pledged their souls to the Lich King in exchange for the promise of immortality. Death knights who fall in battle are soon raised again to continue in their master’s service.

Blizzard’s original death knight concept was that of an undead spellcaster unit which made its initial appearance in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. This death knight could be more accurately described as a horseback-mounted lich rather than the traditional death knight commonly depicted in other fantasy games. Years later, Blizzard introduced a new death knight hero-class unit in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and this second rendition was revised to reflect the general characteristics of the more traditional death knight design. To understand the key differences between these two different generations of death knight, see the “Types of death knights” section located further down this page.  The death knight was later adapted as a prestige class within the Warcraft RPG and they were former paladin warriors. It is the first hero class in World of Warcraft and was introduced in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Unlocking your death knight

The death knight is the first hero class in World of Warcraft. This is a separate character from other characters and can be created as soon as one of your existing characters on any given server reaches level 55. After making a death knight, you will not lose access to any of your existing characters. The death knight will start at level 55 in Acherus: The Ebon Hold over the Eastern Plaguelands, with multiple spells and abilities ready to use, and a set of uncommon gear. When you leave Ebon Hold, you will have a full set of rare gear ready for Outland. Through the death knight-specific quests in this necropolis and the surrounding areas, the character learns to master the power of the death knight and learns to use this new power for the will of the Lich King. Quests will take them outside the necropolis and into an area within the Scarlet Enclave.

Players can create one death knight per realm, the player must have a Wrath of the Lich King account and a character of at least level 55 on their account in order to create a death knight. There are no racial limitations for creating your death knight.

Talents

Death knight talents are split into 3 trees, each of which is fully capable of supporting either a tanking or DPS melee role:

• Blood: This tree primarily amplifies the death knight’s melee spells, weapons, and abilities; and has a prominent health-regeneration theme.
• Frost: This tree has many control elements, with a strong critical-strike/bonus-damage theme, as well as several talents that improve physical-damage mitigation.
• Unholy: This tree has a heavy focus on diseases and related abilities, as well as improving summoned minions. Also has AoE, spell damage shielding, and mobility-improvement sub-themes.

Runeforging

Runeforging allows the death knight to permanently enchant their weapon. These enchants act as a replacement for the stat enhancements provided by shields or ranged weapons, which death knights cannot wear.

A weapon can have an enchant from either runeforging or from Enchanting, but not both together (the runeforging enchants are always better). A player will have to be near a runeforge in order to forge a rune onto their weapon.

The Rune System

The death knight uses a unique rune-based resource system to govern his spells and abilities. Three rune types exist: blood, frost, and unholy, each with an attached color and symbol. Using certain abilities exhausts one or more runes, starting a cooldown of 10 seconds. After the cooldown, the runes refresh. The death knight can use spells to turn a rune into a Death Rune, which can be used as a Blood, Frost, or Unholy rune. In addition, whenever the death knight uses a rune ability against a foe, it builds up a certain amount of Runic Power. This Runic Power is only used by few abilities.Certain abilities (such as Dancing Rune Weapon) completely drain all the Runic Power that has been accumulated. The more power stored, the more effective the ability. Most abilities that use Runic Power use a set amount, like Death Coil. Death knights cannot reallocate the number and type of runes – they are fixed to two runes of each type.

The original player frame for death knights shown at BlizzCon was changed as feedback showed it was not ideal for displaying rune power for players.

Runeforging is a profession available only to death knights, providing permanent weapon enchants. The enchants work just like the permanent weapon enchants provided by Enchanting, but are self-only and are designed specifically to benefit death knight class. These are independent of the rune resource system.

Character’s Role

In general, the death knight can be considered a hybrid melee class that combines damage dealing and tanking, somewhat akin to Warriors. They wear plate armor and are able to dual-wield or use two-handed blade weapons (and maces, as revealed later). Like druids, they tank without shields. Their tanking mechanics involve high armor and a high chance to parry.Death knights tanks depend on damage output to hold aggro instead of the spamming of high threat abilities.

Like every other class, the death knight has three different talent trees that enhance certain aspects of his or her specialties. However, the differences between the trees are not as clear-cut as those of other classes, both for PvP and PvE environments. Notably, death knights can tank or deal damage regardless in which talent tree they specialize, although a careful talent selection is still required to bolster their preferred role.