Death knight

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This article is about the hero class in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. For other uses see Death knight (disambiguation).

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Blizzard's original death knight concept was that of an undead spellcaster unit which made its initial appearance in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.^[1] This death knight could be more accurately described as a horseback-mounted lich rather than the traditional death knight commonly depicted in other fantasy games. Years later, Blizzard introduced a new death knight hero-class unit in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and this second rendition was revised to reflect the general characteristics of the more traditional death knight design. To understand the key differences between these two different generations of death knight, see the "Types of death knights" section located further down this page. ^[2] The death knight was later adapted as a prestige class within the Warcraft RPG and they were former paladin warriors.^{A&HC 24} It is the first hero class in World of Warcraft and was introduced in the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Talents

Main article: Death knight talents

Death knight talents are split into 3 trees, each of which is fully capable of supporting either a tanking or DPS melee role:

Blood: This tree primarily amplifies the death knight's melee spells, weapons, and abilities; and has a prominent health-regeneration theme.
Frost: This tree has many control elements, with a strong critical-strike/bonus-damage theme, as well as several talents that improve physical-damage mitigation.
Unholy: This tree has a heavy focus on diseases and related abilities, as well as improving summoned minions. Also has AoE, spell damage shielding, and mobility-improvement sub-themes.

Lore

Death knight is the name of a class shared by two separate organizations of powerful necromancers. These orders share a few things in common, including riding horses with horned skulls and many of the same abilities.

Shadows of Justice

Death Knight by Red Knuckle.

Dwarf death knight

Human death knight

Death knight as depicted in a teaser (very early concept).

Orgrim Doomhammer's first act as the new Warchief of the Horde was to crush the orc warlocks of the Shadow Council. He grudgingly spared the council's former master, Gul'dan, in exchange for the warlock's servitude; in turn Gul'dan promised to create a host of powerful new warriors to serve the Horde. After experimenting at length with the souls of the recently slain council members, Gul'dan successfully instilled the spirit of the necrolyte Teron Gorefiend into the corpse of a fallen knight of Stormwind. Thus, the first terrifying death knight was born. Gul'dan transformed his other council members as well, creating a vast legion of unholy warriors whom sowed chaos and fear throughout the land of Azeroth during the Second War.

Following Gul'dan's desertion and death, part of the Horde, including the death knights, retreated through the Dark Portal to Draenor. Most of the surviving death knights disappeared after Draenor's destruction, though some of these death knights, along with Ner'zhul's other prominent spell casters, were later captured by the Burning Legion and transformed into liches. These liches were stripped of their free will by the Demon Lord, Kil'jaeden and were reappointed into the service of his new pet, the Lich King, in order to better assist him with his task. These liches served as Scourge spell casting hero-class units in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

Blizzard eventually unveiled the whereabouts of a powerful death knight who had escaped the fate of his kin, Teron Gorefiend, a malevolent abomination whose restless and embittered form now resides in the Black Temple of Outland. In a quest chain beginning with: "Teron Gorefiend, I am...", he deceives players with a fabricated account of history that tricks them into assisting him, and thus the deception ultimately results in his release from eternal imprisonment. Based on the logic that his entire story was a nothing more then a ruse, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that there may be numerous first generation death knights, like Gorefiend, who escaped the legion's capture and still exist in their original form.

Champions of the Lich King

Years after the destruction of Draenor, the immensely powerful Lich King created a new breed of death knights: malevolent, rune-wielding warriors of the Scourge. The first and greatest of these was the Lich King's chosen champion, Prince Arthas Menethil, once a mighty paladin of the Silver Hand, who sacrificed his soul to claim the runeblade Frostmourne in a desperate bid to save his people.

Unlike Gul'dan's death knights, these dark champions do not possess free will and their minds are inexorably entwined with and dominated by the Lich King's vast consciousness. Despite the heavy costs of free will, some powerful mortals are intrigued by the promise of immortality and pledge their souls freely into the Lich King's service to achieve it. (Baron Rivendare is an example of this).

In the years since Arthas shattered the Frozen Throne and merged with the Lich King, the power and fury of the death knights has only grown. Now these unrelenting crusaders of the damned eagerly await the Lich King's command to unleash their fury on Azeroth once again.^[3]

The Ebon Blade

The Knights of the Ebon Blade is a faction consisting of the renegade death knights that broke free of the Lich King's control after the battle of Light's Hope Chapel (in other words, player-created death knights). Led by Highlord Darion Mograine, the Knights of the Ebon Blade have allied themselves with the Alliance and the Horde with the help of Highlord Tirion Fordring of the Knights of the Silver Hand, and have pledged to do their part in defeating their former master, the Lich King. Their main base is Acherus: The Ebon Hold, a former scourge necropolis in the Eastern Plaguelands. (It should be noted that the Knights of the Ebon Blade are not a separate player faction such as the Alliance and Horde. For the purposes of gameplay, player-created death knights still belong to either the Alliance or Horde depending on their race.)

Notable

Arthas Menethil (Now the Lich King)
Darion Mograine
Alexandros Mograine (Gone, freed from undeath by his son)
Teron Gorefiend (1st generation death knight)
Baron Rivendare

Types of Death Knights

1st Generation: Death Knights of the Old Horde

A first generation death knight was essentially the soul, knowledge, memory, and personality of an orc warlock that was imbued into the reanimated corpse of a fallen knight of Azeroth. Unlike modern death knights of the Scourge, these ghoulish fiends were not battle hardened warriors; they were insidious necromancers who possessed superior intellect and tremendous magical power. They often favored the use of terror tactics and reanimated the corpses of enemy soldiers who fell in battle to serve them as mindless undead minions. These skeletal soldiers served to shield the death knight from enemy attacks, allowing them to unleash their deadly eldritch sorcery from range.

2nd Generation: Death Knights of the Scourge

A second generation death knight were amongst a group of fallen paladins whose souls were twisted and bound to the will of the Frozen Throne ^[2]. Unlike death knights of the Old Horde, modern death knights are not limited to their use of ranged spell casting abilities. These former paladins are exceptionally skilled in the arts of physical combat. They retained the ability to cast death coil, increase allied movement, as well as raise the dead. They also gained the capacity to cast Death Pact to destroy a minion in return for health. In terms of relative strengths, modern Death Knights are more versatile than their first generation predecessors due to their ability to effectively engage enemies in the physical rigors of close quarters combat. However, both generations are equally destructive and terrifying to engage in the field of battle.

The will to fight against all odds

The third generation of Death Knights were part of a collaborated effort on the part of the Lich King to bolster Acherus: The Ebon Hold's legions before marching on New Avalon. However, these Death Knights only constituted a portion of the Death Knights under the Lich King's command. Knights of the Ebon Blade had the unique opportunity to assist in the culling of the Scarlet Crusade from the Plaguelands.

In Wrath of the Lich King expansion the death knights are freed from the will of the Lich King and ally themselves with their respective, former factions. Working closely under the guiding blade of Highlord Darion Mograine and the bolstered Argent Crusade, these freed death knights have begun their march to Northrend.

Death Knights in Wrath of the Lich King are a new class mirroring their previous incarnations. While boasting powerful melee abilities, as well as plate armor, these warriors supplement their strength with dark magic. Calling upon a rune system of magic, the death knight may summon unholy, blood, and frost spells.

Hero Class Overview

The criterion for creating a death knight is the existence of a level 55+ character^[4] on the player's account on any realm. The death knight combines martial prowess with dark, necromantic energies. Players might be familiar with the death knight from previously released Warcraft games — most recently, in the campaigns for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne expansion, the former paladin Arthas became a death knight and wrought havoc across Azeroth before fusing with the spirit of Ner'zhul to become the Lich King. It is important to note that these particular death knights are based upon those created by the Lich King in Warcraft III, not those of orcish origin as seen in Warcraft II.

Unlocking your Death Knight

Main article: Starting a death knight

The death knight is the first hero class in World of Warcraft. This is a separate character from other characters and can be created as soon as one of your existing characters on any given server reaches level 55. After making a death knight, you will not lose access to any of your existing characters. The death knight will start at level 55 in Acherus: The Ebon Hold over the Eastern Plaguelands, with multiple spells and abilities ready to use, and a set of uncommon gear. When you leave Ebon Hold, you will have a full set of rare gear ready for Outland. Through the Death-Knight-specific quests in this necropolis and the surrounding areas, the character learns to master the power of the death knight and learns to use this new power for the will of the Lich King. Quests will take them outside the necropolis and into an area within the Scarlet Enclave.

Players can create one death knight per realm, the player must have a Wrath of the Lich King account and a character of at least level 55 on their account in order to create a death knight. There are no racial limitations for creating your death knight, but PvP servers are still limited by faction (i.e., if you have an Alliance character on a PvP server, you cannot make a Horde death knight on that PvP server).

The Rune System

Runes as shown at BlizzCon 2007 (outdated).

The death knight uses a unique rune-based resource system to govern his spells and abilities. Three rune types exist: blood, frost, and unholy, each with an attached color and symbol. Using certain abilities exhausts one or more runes, starting a cooldown of 10 seconds. After the cooldown, the runes refresh. The death knight can use spells to turn a rune into a Death Rune, which can be used as a Blood, Frost, or Unholy rune. In addition, whenever the death knight uses a rune ability against a foe, it builds up a certain amount of Runic Power. This Runic Power is only used by few abilities.^[5] Certain abilities (such as Dancing Rune Weapon) completely drain all the Runic Power that has been accumulated. The more power stored, the more effective the ability. Most abilities that use Runic Power use a set amount, like Death Coil. Death knights cannot reallocate the number and type of runes - they are fixed to two runes of each type.^[6]

The original player frame for death knights shown at BlizzCon was changed as feedback showed it was not ideal for displaying rune power for players.

Runeforging is a profession available only to death knights, providing permanent weapon enchants. The enchants work just like the permanent weapon enchants provided by Enchanting, but are self-only and are designed specifically to benefit death knight class. These are independent of the rune resource system.

Character's Role

In general, the death knight can be considered a hybrid melee class that combines damage dealing and tanking, somewhat akin to Warriors. They wear plate armor and are able to dual-wield or use two-handed blade weapons (and maces, as revealed later). Like druids, they tank without shields. Their tanking mechanics involve high armor and a high chance to parry.^[7]

Like every other class, the death knight has three different talent trees that enhance certain aspects of his or her specialties. However, the differences between the trees are not as clear-cut as those of other classes, both for PvP and PvE environments.

Blood enhances the death knight's melee abilities and damage and vastly improves the ability to heal itself. As the name suggests, the special abilities it grants through talents are based on the Blood Runes. Blood also provides healing utility to party and raids and has some very useful buffs that the Death knight can cast on others, such as Hysteria and Mark of Blood.

Frost enhances melee abilities and focuses on increasing both AoE and single target damage. Its special abilities focus on the use of Frost Runes. Frost provides useful emergency physical damage mitigation spells like Lichborne and Unbreakable Armor and greatly enhances magical damage mitigation. Frost also provides some very powerful direct damage abilities like Frost Strike and Howling Blast, since Death Knights depend on high damage output to hold aggro instead of the spamming of high threat abilities (of which they are incapable). As such, the Frost tree is viable for solo questing. Parties and Raids benefit from this talent tree by gaining melee attack speed haste.

Unholy enhances the death knight's diseases and damage over time spells, making them effective at AoE DPS. It also provides the death knight with a ghoul who is a permanent pet, a gargoyle guardian he or she can summon, and some extra diseases. Raid and party utility is granted through the use of Anti-Magic Zone.

Runeforging

Main article: Runeforging

Runeforge

Runeforging allows the death knight to permanently enchant their weapon, and thus overwrites any weapon enchants from Enchanting. A player will have to be near a runeforge in order to forge a rune onto their weapon.

Concept artwork

Death knight concept art

Death knight art by Raneman

Patch changes

Patch 3.0.8 (2009-01-20): All multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power.

References

External links

Offical Wrath of the Lich King site Features - Death knight news, information, and more (US)

Offical Wrath of the Lich King site Death knight class Information

Offical Wrath of the Lich King site Death knight Interview (Design team: Q&A)

Offical Wrath of the Lich King site Death knight lore (Shadows of Justice, Champions of the Lich King)

The Ebon Hold The Ebon Hold. Death knight forums and news related to death knights.

Reave death knight leveling guide

Death Knight Tactics A death knight blog, focusing on raiding DPS.

Death knight builds Death knight talent tree information and lore.

Death knight Fanlisting Are you a fan of the Death Knigth class? Join the fanlisting for Death Knights.

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