Death Knight Nerd-Craft, MoB Gaming Commercial Round 2

After spending most of Thursday playing Deathknight, I have to say it's definitely looking to be an incredibly fun class to play, but also a lot more complex than some of the classes currently in the game. When many of Blizzards current classes, such as Warrior, are completely designed in a very minimalistic sort of way, the real only opportunity to separate yourself from other players in terms of talent, is to focus on the very small meta game aspects of battle to set the bar higher - such as keeping hamstring on every opponent and using intercept to control another Warrior after he/she uses theirs. With the current angle in which DK's are being designed, albeit still quite early in creation, I feel the class will allow for a much higher skill cap than what players are currently used to seeing.

The Rune System/Runic Power

If I were to compare the current Rune/Ruinic power system of DK's to any current classes, I, much like Slappywag, would consider it to be a hybrid of Warriors and Rogues. You have 2 available runes of Blood, Unholy and Frost, each with their respective refresh time close to that of a tic of Rogue energy or slightly longer. Most of the basic abilities require 1 rune, or 1 rune of each, such as the following:

Chains of Ice: Freezes the target in place for 3 sec. The target regains 10% of their movement speed each second after breaking free of the chains. (Rank 1) (Instant, 20 yd range)

Requires 1 Frost Rune, 1 Unholy

Then you consider the following:

Obliterate: A brutal instant attack that deals 100% of weapon damage plus 494 and 183 additional damage for each of your diseases on the target, but consumes the diseases.

Requires 1 Frost, 1 Blood

After using those two abilities you now have zero frost, 1 blood and 2 Unholy for until your runes recharge about 5-7 seconds later, one at a time.

A good death knight player will have to remain calm and focused pretty much for the entire duration of a fight in order to predict each unique battle far enough ahead of time to know which kind of runes will be necessary for abilities needed against the specific class they're fighting. Unlike Rogues, all of your abilities won't be based on one element (so to speak, AKA Energy) but multiple.

For example, if you run into a caster you might start the fight as so (assuming you're talented into the Blood tree)

2 Blood/Unholy/Frost Runes.

Open with: Mark of Blood - Place a Mark of Blood on an enemy. Whenever the marked enemy deals damage to a target, you are healed for 2% of your maximum health. Lasts for 30 sec. (Talent: Blood: Tier 5) (Instant, 30 yd range)

Cost: 1 Blood, 1 unholy ( 1 blood, 1 unholy, 2 Frost Remaining)

Followed by: Hysteria - Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 sec, increasing their physical damage by 20%, but causing them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their total health every second.(Talent: Blood: Tier 7) (Instant, 30 yd range)

Cost: 1 Blood, 1 Unholy ( 0 Blood, 0 Unholy, 2 Frost Remaining)

With reading the description, you'd assume this only works on friendly targets, but from my testing you can actually use it on yourself. This in combination with the Blood Presence - one of the three "presences" which are exactly like stances (except they don't have an affect on which abilities you can use), the - 1% health aspect of Hysteria can be negated.

- Blood Presence: Increases damage done by 15% and returns back 4% of the damage done as health.

 - Frost Presence: Increases armor by 45% and threat generated by 25%.

 - Unholy Presence: Increases attack speed by 15% and lowers the global cooldown by 0.5 seconds.

So now you have 15% extra damage from blood presence, 20% more from Hysteria, and some health drain + regen effects from your abilities - but now you also have zero blood and unholy runes, and will only regenerate 1 of each after 5-7 seconds (I'll get the exact cooldown time the next time I play) without using the small available abilities that give you instant runes.

So with you're remaining frost runes, it's up to you as to whether or not you read the battle correctly and decided to go offensive or defensive to prolong your death as runes regenerate.

Icebound Fortitude: The Death Knight freezes their blood to become immune to Stun effects and reduce all damage by 50% for 12 sec. Does not remove existing Stun effects.(Rank 1) (Instant)

Cost: 1 Frost Rune

Howling Blast: Blast the target with a frigid wind dealing 777 to 843 Frost damage to all enemies within 10 yards. Deals triple damage to frozen targets.(Talent: Frost: Tier 7) (Rank 5) (Instant, 20 yd range)

Cost: 1 Frost Rune

If you happen to take a different route and have a couple of Unholy runes, you could use Anti-Magic Shell to give you protection while you're waiting for other runes to come back up for damage abilities.

Anti-Magic Shell: Surrounds the Death Knight in an Anti-Magic Shell, absorbing 75% of the damage dealt by harmful spells. Damage absorbed by Anti-Magic Shell energizes the Death Knight with additional runic power. Lasts 3 sec.(Rank 1) (Instant)

Cost: 1 Unholy Rune

Or if you're looking to stay offensive, you could use Death and Decay, or Degeneration if the caster is of the healing type.

Death and Decay: Corrupts the ground targeted by the death knight, causing 241 Shadow damage modified by attack power every second that any target remains in the affected area. Targets are also diseased for 6 sec and have a chance to cower in fear for 2 sec. The ground remains corrupted for 10 sec.(Rank 4) (1.5 sec cast, 30 yd range)

Cost: 2 Unholy Runes

Degeneration: Instantly attack the target, dealing 60% weapon damage and inflicting a disease dealing 182 over 21 sec. Any existing heal over time spells on the target become corrupted, dramatically increasing the damage done by the disease and removing the healing effect. Stacks up to 3 times.(Rank 3) (Instant, 5 yd range)

As you can see ( and this is only a small sample - more options open up with talents etc.) there are a ton of options and alternatives as to how you can operate and plan you're attack. Feasibly much more diverse than a lot of classes currently in the game. That's not all either - you might be wondering where the Warrior part comes in.

Death Knights also have something called Runic Power which develops much like rage, where in many of the above abilities will give you a set amount of Runic power (usually 10-30) granting you access to abilities like those listed below that cannot be used otherwise.

Deathchill: When activated, increases your critical strike chance with Frost spells and abilities by 100% for the next 6 sec. (Talent: Frost: Tier 5) (Rank 1) (Instant)

This in combination with Howling Blast could yield some huge numbers.

Mind Freeze: Strike the target's mind with cold, dealing 200 Frost Damage modified by attack power and interrupting spellcasting while also preventing any spell in that school from being cast up to a maximum of 4 sec.
(Rank 4) (Instant, 5 yd range)

MMMmm Counterspell with damage.

You get the idea. As I said above, there's just many many directions a DK can tread with their directions in attack, and these are when you don't even take the talent trees into consideration (for the most part). As I explore the class more as I level up, I'll continue to nerd-craft and analyze what kinds of combinations work in PVP.

MoB-Gaming Commercial Strikes Again



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