Death Knight

The new Death Knight class is unlike any other in WoW. The play style can seem similar to a mix of Rogues, Arms Warriors and Paladin tanks. The classes skills and abilities cost either Runes or Runic Power.

By default the Death Knight has two of each of the three runes: Blood, Frost and Unholy. Abilities can cost either a single rune or a mix of multiple types of runes. When a rune is used it goes on a six second cooldown and cannot be used again until the cooldown is finished, because of this rotations are a key to play a Death Knight successfully.

Through talents you can cause abilities to have a chance to turn the runes they use into Death Runes. These runes are unique as they can be used as any of the three runes.

Runic Power is generated when abilities that cost runes are used. The amount generated depends on the amount of runes spent on the ability.

• Abilities that require one Rune will generate 10 Runic Power.
• Abilities that require two Runes will generate 15 Runic Power.
• Abilities that require three Runes will generate 20 Runic Power.

Runic Power is spent on abilities dubbed “Runic Dumps”. These are skills which only cost runic power and which tend to be used either when all runes are on cooldown or when the Runic Power caps at 100.

Note: Runic Power generation is being changed in the next patch, three rune abilities will generate 15 RP instead of 20.

• Blood - This tree is mainly based on melee damage.
• Frost - One of the two main tanking trees, based on high frost damage.
• Unholy - The other main tanking tree, based around spell damage, DoT and AoE.

(Blood is having changes done to it in the next patch to make it more viable for tanking. This means that, in theory, all trees should be able to tank equally)

Whilst leveling the Death Knight will learn three “Presences”. Presences are similar to Warrior stances and Druid forms.

• Blood Presence - Increases damage done by 15% and heals the Death Knight for 2% of damage dealt.
• Frost Presence - Increases total health by 10%, armour contribution from items by 60% (being changed to 80% in next patch) and increases threat generated.
• Unholy Presence - Increases attack speed by 15%, movement speed by 15% and reduces the global cooldown on all abilities by 0.5 sec

Obviously Blood - DPS and Frost - Tanking but Unholy is still a bit of a unknown. It's most obvious use is in PvP for burst damage but some theory crafters suggest using it in place of Blood Presence in certain specs. From the testing I have done however it's best to stay in Blood Presence as in Unholy you will blow all the rune cooldowns and be left with a lot of downtime.

These are key to both DPS and TPS. If you have no rotation and just wildly smash skills as and when you fancy then your D/TPS will be much, much lower than it can be. Mess up your rune cooldowns and you could be standing doing nothing but auto attacking for 4-5 seconds without the RP to dump on other abilities. Due to this Death Knights will have lower dps on trash mobs than on bosses due to rotations tending to take +/- 20 seconds to complete. All specs can (and probably will) AoE on multi mob packs though, so it may not seem like they're not doing much.

Each spec has it's own rotation with it's trees unique abilities inserted, I'll write up an example rotation for each spec for people to check and work with whilst leveling/raiding.

PS = Plague Strike (DoT)
IT = Icy Touch (DoT)
HS = Heart Strike
OB = Obliterate
DC = Death Coil
HB = Howling Blast
FS = Frost Strike
SS = Scourge Strike
UB = Unholy Blight

Varies if you have the Annihilation talent. Four Heart Strikes in a row is possible because of the Death Rune Mastery talent which will turn the runes used by Obliterate into Death Runes.

50/0/21: (without)

PS → IT → HS → HS → OB → DC
PS → IT → HS → HS → HS → HS → DC

Reasoning: Without Annihilation Obliterate will remove your diseases on the current target, so it is placed at the end of the first part of the rotation before the RP dump and the disease reapplication.

51/13/7: (with)

PS → IT → HS → HS → OB → DC
OB → HS → HS → HS → HS → DC

Reasoning: Because of the Annihilation talent and the 7 points spent in unholy there is no reason to reapply the diseases during the rotation, instead using the runes for another Obliterate.

Unlike blood, there is primarily only one DPS spec used for deep Frost DPS builds.

PS → IT → BS → BS → OB → FS
PS → IT → OB → OB → FS

PS → IT → BS → BS → SS → UB
SS → SS → SS → DC

A common theme through out all of these specs (Especially with Unholy) is that after the first part of the rotation you will have 1-2 seconds to wait for rune cooldowns, when this happens cast an extra Death Coil if you have the spare RP.

Abomination's Might: This is the mirror ability to an Enhancement Shamans Unleashed Rage, buffs the group/raid's attack power by 10%

Hysteria: A buff cast on a single friendly target. Buffs their physical damage by 20% but damages them for 1% of their total health each second. Lasts 30 seconds.

Blood Aura: A passive aura which heals group members for 2% of the damage they deal.

Improved Icy Talons: This is the mirror ability to an Enhancement Shamans Windfury Totem, buffs the group/raids haste by 20%.

Frost Aura: Increases the group/raids Spell Resistance by 70 (However, this is usually left out of talent specs)

Ebon Plague: A disease which increases magic damage done to the target by 13%.

Unholy Aura: Increases the group/raids movement speed by up to 15%.

Horn Of Winter: Mirror of the Shamans Strength of Earth totem, increases Strength and Agility of the group/raid by 155.

Raise Ally: A battle-res…of sorts. Resurrects a dead group/raid member as a ghoul to keep fighting for 30 seconds.

The Ghoul

Untalented, this little bugger will be up for 2 minutes and the ability has a 5 minute cooldown. Through an Unholy talent (Master of Ghouls this pet can become a permanent one. Untalented you have no control over it's actions, talented you gain a pet bar with multiple abilities:

• Leap
• Claw
• Gnaw
• Huddle

Summon Gargoyle

Summon Gargoyle is a 21 point deep Unholy talent. Maximum duration 1 minute. The Gargoyle requires 50 Runic Power to be summoned and then 8 Runic Power for every second past that. So for it to last the whole full minute, you will need to generate 50 + 50 x 8 = 450 Runic Power over the duration of a minute.

Dancing Rune Weapon

DRW is the 51 point talent in Blood. It spawns a copy of your weapon, which copies your attacks. Maximum duration 20 seconds. Dancing Rune Weapon should ONLY be used when you have 100 Runic Power. Any number below that will make it a waste, significantly reducing it's uptime.

Army of the Dead

These are not really a pet, but rather minions. Army of the Dead is our level 80 ability and has a 20 minute cooldown. Army of the Dead is another “oh shit” spell which is a channeled spell that summons a ghoul for every second you channeled. The ghouls will swarm the area and taunt everything that moves. This spell is useful in situations where a wipe is imminent, as the ten (needs to be verified) ghouls are great cannon fodder, since they will taunt the boss and get killed, giving you time to breathe.