In this Death Knight Guide in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic you experience:
- What abilities the death knight possesses
- What specialization do you level the fastest with?
- How you approach combat while leveling
There is still a lot more to do during the pre-patch. You can find out what these activities are in our 7 things to do during the Wotlk Classic pre-patch.
The first hero class: the death knight
The Death Knight (also known as Deathknight or DK) is a dark knight who can use both blood magic and the icy winds of Northrend and disgusting diseases against his enemies. He is equipped with thick plate armor and either a large two-handed weapon or two one-handed swords. Besides that he starts at level 55, which gives it an advantage over other classes.
The Death Knight’s starting area fits perfectly with the dark background of the class: you lead as Heralds of the Lich King war against the fanatical Scarlet Crusade. In the starting area you get the abilities of the undead fighter and a strong equipment set with which you quickly plow through the first levels. Once you’ve quested through the starting area, you’ll be released into the big world of World of Warcraft. At level 58 you set out for Outland.
Runes and runic power – this is how the death knight works
Your DK relies on a different resource system than the rest of the classes. for his attacks he uses runes. They are each divided into two blood, frost and unholy runes. In addition, he gets a second resource: runic power.
His abilities cost either runes or runic power to use. If you uses an attack that costs runes to generate some runic power. You then spend this on abilities that cost runic power. This creates an interplay between abilities that generate runic power and abilities that consume your runic power.
In addition, you use one of three different presences. These work similarly to Paladin auras:
- blood presence: increased damage and more self-healing
- frost presence: more stamina and armor
- unholy presence: Increased movement speed and faster rune cooldown
What specialization do I use for leveling?
First of all: All specializations of the death knight are suitable for leveling. However, if you value speed, I recommend the Unholy specialization. This offers you high area-of-effect damage, fast cooldowns and increased movement speed.
If you use the blood specialization, you will be a little slower. In return, you take significantly less damage from the talents in the blood tree and heal yourself for almost ridiculously large amounts. In order to You complete quests solo that are actually intended for multiple players. Blood is a great secondary spec, so grab the dual talent spec as early as possible.
Frost is a Death Knight damage specialization that specializes in direct damage from the Obliterate and Howling Blast abilities. You can also Frost through Thassarian’s Menace talent play with two one-handed weapons. As a result, the death knight has increased damage per second, but the burst damage is reduced. This is very good in the endgame, but during leveling Unholy has the edge.
What equipment should I use?
The Death Knight can wear plate armor – and you should use this one, too, because it grants you a lot of armor. This will help you survive enemy shackles and grant you additional attack power through the Bladed Armor talent. You only use chain or leather armor if it grants a significant bonus to your attributes.
Death Knight primary and secondary attributes
Your Main attribute is Strength. This grants you attack power that lets you hit harder with your melee attacks. Additionally, diseases and spells scale with attack power. Make sure each piece of gear has strength on it.
Let’s get to the secondary values: During the level phase and in the endgame speed the most important value because with it you strike faster and your runes are available again faster. As you move toward endgame, you should also collect the Hit Chance stat on your gear pieces. This means your attacks miss less often. Your stat priority while leveling is as follows:
Strength > tempo > hit chance (up to 289) > armor penetration > crit
With this you have your death knight perfectly under control:
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The Unholy Death Knight talent tree
In order for you to level up as efficiently as possible, distribute your points in the talent tree as shown in the screenshot. This distribution optimize your death knight for AoE damage. However, you are flexible here. For example, I like to take the Desecration talent with me and save points in Blood-Crusted Blade for it. As a result, the opponents do not run away from me so easily.
How do I play the Unholy Death Knight?
The gameplay of the Unholy Death Knight revolves around pulling together as many enemies as possible and to destroy with the high AoE damage. This works mainly through your strengthened diseases and the skills “corpse explosion” and “death and decay”. In between, you heal yourself with the ability “Death Blow”. This is how your rotation looks in detail:
- Before you pull, make sure that Bone Shield is active. Play in Blood Presence for more self-healing and more damage.
- Lures multiple enemies first with your mount – this will take less damage and allow enemies to gather in a larger area.
- Cast your Icy Touch and Plague Strike diseases on an enemy. Spreads the diseases using the ability “Pestilence”. on the enemies.
- works “Death and Decay” to the ground beneath enemies. Alternatively, you can create a macro that places “Death and Decay” directly below you (you can find the macro further down in the article).
- Uses “Death Blow” to heal you and as soon as the first enemy falls down, “Corpse Blast” to deal damage. Here you have to consider whether you have enough life points to hold out until the next “death blow”. If your health is dropping rapidly, play it safe and use Death Strike instead of Corpse Blast.
- Puts “Summon Gargoyle” in case you get into trouble or need to finish off a strong opponent.
If you’ve internalized your rotation, you can Weave in “boiling blood” between steps 2 and 3 and turn it into a death rune with Blood Walk. You then use it for other abilities. How to skip the cooldown of a rune and deal maximum damage.
Macro for “Death and Decay”
Enter this text in the macro menu (main menu > macros) and put it in yours instead of death and decay action bar:
#showtooltip
/cast [@Player] death and decay
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