Welcome to yet another edition of our Death Knight ability previews. In this preview, we will cover the Blood Tree and some of its more prominent abilities. All of the Talents in this Tree are aimed so that you deal more damage and boost your own health, mainly, so it's natural to see moves that enhance both of these aspects of your character at some level.
If you want to see our other previews, select from the options below.
Part 3 (Control and Final Unholy Talents)
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Strangulate stops enemy casters for 5 seconds!
The Blood Abilities
These abilities will open themselves up to you mainly if you specialize deeply into the Blood Tree, albeit some of them are baseline and will be able to be trained regardless - these will be improved by talents if you so choose!
Strangulate - Strangulate an enemy, silencing them for a maximum of 5 seconds and deals 175 shadow damage at the end of the effect.
This ability is one of the first ones you gain as part of the blood ones, and will allow you to have your own makeshift kick/pummel/interrupt, with an added bonus of it lasting 5 seconds if lucky and adding some minor damage at the end of the effect. Still a really nice move to have as a Death Knight overall, and at the cost of 1 mere Blood Rune, it will be instantly cast and on a 30 second cooldown.
All in all, not a bad ability, and gives capable Death Knights yet another powerful counter to the current classes and their spellcasting.
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Blood Worms helping out the Death Knight in damage and healing.
Blood Worms - Your weapon hits have a 3%/6%/9% chance to cause the target to spawn 2-4 Blood Worms. Blood Worms attack your enemy, healing you as they do damage for 20 seconds or until killed.
This ability is one of the talents that has been reworked quite a bit from early beta to now, and has evolved a lot. Formerly allowing Death Knights to spawn a myriad Blood Worms, it is now less feasible to have a whole army of them fighting for you and making you near-invincible as you fight, and are now rightfully basic support and a small source of healing for you should you choose this talent.
If anyone is going to go deep into the Blood Tree, this Talent being maxed is a must as it will aid you in both damage and health returned! Worthy of noting is that currently you may spawn more Blood Worms should you be lucky enough, yet it is extremely rare for that to happen.
Sadly enough, it only triggers on melee weapon strikes, so spamming your abilities hoping to get some Blood Worms out will not be a good idea.
Hysteria - Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 seconds, increasing their physical damage by 20% but causing them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their total health every second
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Hysteria may be used on any friendlies for now to give them a good boost in melee attack power.
Hysteria is a very interesting and powerful ability Blood Death Knights will obtain along with Blood Worms. For 1 lone point, you get the ability to send anyone, including yourself, into a frenzy. While you have some drawbacks with the life loss, since this is a buff you can easily cancel it (for now), hence making it a win/win situation when fighting as a group when you need that little boost in DPS your group needs!
Just imagine popping Blood Lust along with any other trinket and Hysteria! The damage capabilities for this move are way too good to be ignored and will make Blood Death Knights desirable in groups for this buff in particular.
Worthy of mentioning, however, is the fact that you WILL lose 30% life should you not cancel this effect! This move has a short cooldown of 2 minutes and is at the same tier Blood Worms is at.
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2 Runeblades are better than one!
Dancing Rune Weapon (51-Point Talent) - Unleashes all available runic power to summon a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 10 seconds plus 1 second per 5 additional runic power, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight.
Dancing Rune Weapon is probably the coolest ability the Death Knight can get, as it spawns another RuneBlade to fight with you and mimic your movements while floating around the enemy. Think of it as Prince Malchezzar's move where he throws his axes at you, only it's working in your favor!
This move effectively doubles your damage output while it lasts, and while it costs 50 Runic Power to unleash, once you do it will be a great boon to your fighting, especially if soloing but complimenting your group as well if needed.
A worthy 51-point talent that has the added bonus of looking cool!
Tune in next time as we go over more Death Knight abilities and their visuals! Expect constant updates to this preview series.
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