Spooncraft

The fearsome death knight, World of Warcraft’s first Hero class, is not your average adventurer seeking to prove his or her worth on Azeroth’s fields of battle. No longer servants of the Lich King, they begin their new calling as experienced, formidable adversaries, heavily armed and armored and possessing an arsenal of deadly and forbidden magic learned in the Lich King’s thrall.

Death Knights use an interesting hybrid of a warrior and rogue for it’s resource pool. There are 6 runes which refresh every 10 seconds, 2 for each tpye (blood, frost, and unholy) and when special attacks land, the death knight generate runic power (like rage) that can be used for other spells and abilities as well. Needless to say it’s a relatively advanced class and so the requirement of having at least one Lv. 55 character on the account to unlock the Death Knight class is justified. Detah Knights can also ressurect a ghoul to aid them in combat with various attacks, and they can also be sacrificed for HP to the death knight.

Death Knights are viable tanks as well as strong damage dealers. Their main source of damage is dealt through the various diseases and through the strength of powerful 2H bladed weapons (or 1H bladed weapons) through different strikes. Death Knights have very limited self healing abilities but can deal damage so efficiently while healing what little injury they do take, that they suffer almost no downtime while fighting. There are three specializations a death knight can take: Blood, Frost, and Unholy.

Blood: This tree is pretty much a solid single target damage tree. It’s blood presence causes a percentage of all damage caused to return as healing to the death knight, there’s heavy emphasis on 2H weapons in this tree, and the nature of the blood death knight itself is working with the health of himself and his enemies. A blood death knight can spawn maggots from an enemy’s body that will heal the death knight as they attack his target, he can also incite hysteria on a friendly target causing dmage over time to it but increasing all damage dealt by 20%. The final talent in the Blood tree grants the ability to summon a mirror copy of the death knight’s weapon that will copy every attack he deals at no cost.

Frost: Once though to be the “tanking tree”, frost is essentially the control tree for death knights. There’s a very substantial amount of burst damage talents in the tree and it allows more room for the use of two 1-handed weapons and dual-wielding. It has some powerful PVP abilities as well such as hungering cold and an aoe frost blast that can deal incredible damage to frozen or diseased targets. The niche strike gained by frost death knights (Frost Strike) is a powerful attack that uses runic power instead of a rune for it’s resource and ignores enemy armor as it deals frost damage, making it somewhat advantageoous against heavy plate wearing targets.

Unholy: Is by far one of the most fun spec of the death knight in my opinion. The unholy death knight is all about summoning legions of undead and manipulating vicious plagues and diseases to bring down his foes. An unholy death knight can summon a gargoyle to swoop into combat and harass enemy players. One of the most exciting aspects of the unholy death knight is the added control over the ghoul pet. All death knights can summon a ghoul to help them fight, but only unholy detah knights can actively control their ghoul like a pet. Also, when killed in battle the unholy death knight can come back right away to fight on as a ghoul himself until the last flicker of life runs out. Unholy death knights excel at desecrating the ground around them causing other players and enemies to be bogged down by the dark powers, and they can summon an unholy blight of insects to attack all nearby enemies. An unholy death knight’s diseases are the most powerful of all and can either augment their allies spell damage done ot a target or can virtually cripple it into impotence.

Wowhead has a really great talent calculator where you can experiment with new builds for your Death Knight.