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Dwarf Death Knight

While at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris June 28th and 29th, I was able to sit down and get some hands on play time with the Death Knight in the latest test build. The build is still not complete for Death Knights as their proper starting area was not yet implemented, nor where all their quests. Also, I was unsure if it was intended or not, but they started with no talent points even though they start at level 55. This may be tied to a quest that is not yet implemented or you may not get your points for the first 55 levels until you level to 56.

The first thing you notice when you play a Death Knight is the health bar area. It's different. Next to your characters image there is a large sword blade that contains your health bar, runes, and runic power information. The default was 2 Blood runes, 2 Unholy runes, and 2 Frost runes. While it has been mentioned that you will be able to change your runes to suit your play style, it appears to not be an option yet (or I just couldn't find it).

Gear

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No discrimination here... Even the vertically challenged Gnomes can be Death Knights

Having a character that starts at level 55 is something very new to all of us. One of the things that interested me was what type of gear will you start with. The character started with all green quality items other than his sword which was a fairly good blue quality item. All of the gear was itemized in much the same way a DPS Warrior or Retribution Paladin would be, with strength and stamina being key. Obviously if you were going to try to tank you may want to focus more one stamina and defensive stats, but Blizzard only provides a DPS set when the character is created. This is probably a pretty safe thing though as I can not imagine you would want to level as anything other than DPS, even though tanking DPS should be high on a Death Knight.

Abilities

To start off with I had a very limited set of spells to use. They are probably your core DPS spells though and you could get into a decent rotation with them. They included:

• Blood Strike - Uses 1 Blood Rune, is an instant and causes 60% of weapon damage plus additional damage per disease on the target.
• Icy Touch - Uses 1 Frost Rune, is an instant ranged spell that deals frost damage modified by attack power and reduces the targets speed for a short time.
• Death Grip - Uses 1 Unholy Rune, is a ranged instant on a 30 second cooldown, that taunts the target into attacking you for a short time.
• Plague Strike - Uses 1 Blood Rune and 1 Unholy Rune, is an instant melee attack that deals weapon damage and places a DoT on the target.
• Death Coil - Uses your Runic Power, is a ranged instant that damages the target and is modified by attack power.

As you can see, +Spell Damage does not seem to play an effect on a Death Knight. Their abilities are modified by their attack power or weapon damage even when they are spells. This should make gearing less complicated as you will have fewer stats to worry about.

One interesting thing to note was that you started with 270/300 in first aid. Yet when I went to learn fishing it started at 0. It may just not be decided yet at what level professions will start at when you pick your professions. Blizzard hinted in one of the discussion panels that they did not want players to have to go back to starting zones to level up professions, but so far that is what appears will happen.

Rune Management and Runic Power

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Orc Death Knight Casting

The first thing I found when playing the class is how it initially feels the same as a melee character but then starts feeling like something is wrong. You use an ability, watch for its cooldown and then try to use it again, yet it won't work. It doesn't because of the cooldown on the runes.You need to have runes available to consume as well as the ability being off of cooldown. Each rune has a separate 10 second cooldown from the time it is used. This means in theory you need to manage all of your spell cooldown's and 6 additional rune cooldown's.

It felt like having three separate rage or energy pools to work with, and it took a little while to get used to it. Timing of abilities and rotating through different spell types became critical to getting the most damage out of the Death Knight.

To make it even more complicated, you also have to manage your runic power. Runic power is generated as you use abilities that consume runes. As you do you earn runic power, and then any or all is used when you activate an ability that uses runic power. It is almost like a rogue or druids combo points.

Messiah's Take on the Death Knight Class

The class overall is pretty easy to get into, I mean who doesn't want to be a psychotic plate and spike covered killing machine? The spells and abilities all look very cool and have nice animations and graphics to go with them. An issue with them will be that they are so cool looking and acting that initially almost everyone will have a Death Knight. This means that it will be hard to get groups with them, at least initially.

I only had a chance to try DPS'ing with the class and since no U.I. mods were on the PC I can not tell you what the dps was. However it felt similar to a feral druid in damage that I had just leveled past 55, maybe a bit less. When in combat I was able to move non-stop from one fight to another against MOBs my level. The damage and flow was very good.

The biggest issue I had was that I kept looking to use another ability but not having the runes to use it. I can see managing all three rune types and your runic power. While not hugely complicated it will take some time for players to get used to managing several different energy sources. I think that this alone will discourage many players from playing a Death Knight in the long term, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The class, at least initially, feels like a class that is very easy to play, but requires some serious skill to play at the top level. Managing all of your runes, powers and abilities properly will mage a big difference in your damage or tanking ability. It's no so hard that players can not manage it, but a good player will be MUCH better at this class than an average or poor player. That will push those normal players back to their old classes, and after a while I believe it will restore the class balance.