Spooncraft

So Wowinsider and a couple of other sites got slapped by Blizzard. Good for them, don’t fuck with the NDA dammit. Anyway good news is Blizzard has done some official announcements on their own site regarding th Death Knight gameplay and talents!

Class Roles

• Tank: The plate-wearing death knight is a capable tank for small groups as well as raids. His or her damage output while tanking will be respectable.
• DPS: The death knight can also spec and gear for a melee DPS role, which will draw upon many debilitating disease effects as well as direct damage and instant attacks.

Talent TreesDeath knight talent trees are complemented by Presences — self-only auras that benefit the death knight. Selecting the matching Presence for each tree augments the class abilities for that school of magic.

Blood: Talents in this tree focus on damage-dealing abilities. Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage.

Frost: Talents in this tree focus on tanking abilities. Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage.

Unholy: Talents in this tree have a variety of functions including summons, diseases, and PvP-focused abilities. Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities.

The Rune System

The resource mechanics for death knights are runes and runic power. A skilled death knight makes efficient, timely use of runes and runic power to maximize his or her damage-dealing or tanking abilities.

• Runes: Every death knight ability requires runes, which come in three varieties: blood, frost, and unholy. Depending on the ability, it may require runes of a single type or a combination of types. When a rune is used, it has a cooldown period before it can be used again. Death knights can customize which array of six runes to have available at a given time, which can aid their ability to perform certain roles. For example, a tanking death knight may wish to load his or her rune array with more Frost runes.
• Runic Power: As rune abilities are used, the death knight also generates another resource called runic power. The death knight will have certain abilities that consume all available runic power, with varying levels of effectiveness based on total runic power spent. Similar to a warrior’s rage, runic power decays over time if not spent.

Summoned Creatures

Creating minions from the ranks of the unliving is a core ability of the Death Knight.

• Raise Dead: The death knight can raise a ghoul companion from the corpses of fallen creatures, as well as those of both friendly and enemy players. If cast on a friendly player, that player will have the opportunity to actually play as the ghoul, controlling its movements and actions.
• Army of the Dead: This channeled spell raises a group of undead followers who will attack the death knight’s enemies but only exist very briefly before disintegrating.
• Summon Deathcharger: Every death knight can summon the level-40 version of a deathcharger land mount. At higher levels, they can complete a quest to learn the epic version.