Mutant turtles are greater than boys in spandex

On this Monday morning I have come to realize one important thing: a picture is worth a thousand words.

Clearly, TMNT > Power Rangers. For shame Alex, for shame!

Romir asked...

"I just switched my off spec for my Death Knight to a tank spec. However I've never really tanked before, what would be the best heroic to go into to learn to tank? I have an uncrittable set I got from raids/off-spec rolls. I know most of the dungeons, I just need practice. Which would be best to start in?"

Please don't start in a heroic. You want to take baby steps. First, go out to someplace and see that you can successfully control multiple mobs. Make sure that you have the basic mechanics down. After you're confident you can keep things focused on you, then head into a low-80 non-heroic instance. Hell, you might even consider doing a few rounds of regular Violet Hold. Get to know what it's like to be a tank and have four other members not pay any attention to what you need to do.

After you've done some easy 80 tanking instances, head into regular CoT: Strat. Don't worry about doing a speed run in regular, just try to keep a brisk pace and don't die. You'll be challenged the first few times to keep the mobs away from your healer – but that's part of the game.

Once you have regular CoT: Strat under your belt to the point where you can run through it lightning fast, run your first heroic. Something like Utgarde Keep or Utgarde Pinnacle is good for a new tank. It's important to go with a guild group to your first few heroics, because you're going to wipe a lot as a new tank – no matter your gear.

Overall, just be calm and stay alert. You'll do great!

Popesicle asked...

"Is it possible to change our guild's name?"

Nope. Asking or expecting that this feature would be implemented is like expecting sliced bread out of a bag of bread.

A bunch of you asked...

"Where are the Wolvar and oracle orphans as data-mined by MMO Champion? Did they make an appearance anywhere?"

We haven't seen them, and have no idea where you can get them. As far as we can tell, no one else does either. Remember that data-mined data is just that, it's not necessarily a reflection of what is available in game.

Peacebone asked...

"Is there any particular reason why Blizzard and Wildstorm think we want to read about Varian every month in the Warcraft comics? When can I expect for the comics to become... you know... good?"

While I don't think the Blizzard based comic books are the pinnacle of comics, I don't think they're necessarily bad either. And as for why they keep talking about Varian, well, that's because you keep buying them.

(PS Alex: I'm not in Switzerland, I'm in Amsterdam.)

Lichborne: The Rise of Blood in 3.1

The Blood tree often gets a bad rap among those not in the know. It's a decent leveling tree, but it's generally considered not to have the tanking power or AoE DPS Potential of Unholy or Frost. By all indications, that has changed in 3.1, especially in the latest patch. Not only have many key Blood talents and skills received key buffs or changes, but the very nature of Armor Penetration has changed, with the 25% benefit buff making Blood's mostly physical damage dealing style well suited to take advantage of the change. This is quite a shift from just before 3.1, when many were afraid disease-less Blood would be wiped out and leave the tree with no viable hassle-free DPS specs.


Blood DPS

Blood DPS can now safely use Death Strike as their standard Frost/Unholy Rune dump thanks to the buff baseline buffs and the new Improved Death Strike talent, which in alone solves a lot of Blood DPS problems, since you're no longer locked into 13 points of Frost for Annihilation. This allows heading into the Unholy Tree, where one can pick up major useful talents such as Morbidity, Epidemic, and Master of Ghouls, resulting a build that might look a little like this. This build benefits from grabbing extra strength, Death Coil damage, disease duration, and spell hit in Unholy, which would be near impossible if Blood still had to grab Annihilation. Since Death Coil will be your main RP dump and you'll be shooting off free Death Coils due to sudden doom, you'll want the damage and the extra chance for them to hit.

Some people have been a bit concerned that the Tier 8 4-piece bonus doesn't cover Death Strike, but don't expect Blood to fall behind too much because of that, because it does apply to Heart Strikes. That's really the secret of the build. Death Strikes are just there to generate Death Runes for Heart Strikes -- or, if you're AEing large groups, Blood Boil.

The two major disadvantages kept by Blood DPS are needing to babysit the Ghoul (since you won't be able to afford Night of the Dead) and the tightness of their rotation, needing to spend as many runes as possible on Heart Strike before Frost Fever and Blood Plague fall off. The former problem - is the perma-ghoul worth it for Blood DPS when it will die so easily - is probably one that will need some further exploration, and the latter shouldn't be as much of a problem thanks to a few points spent in Epidemic and Death Strike not removing diseases like Obliterate did without Annihilation. Overall, if Blood goes live looking close to how it does now, it should be a very tempting tree for DPS.

Blood Tanking

One of Blood Tanking's major weaknesses has always been that it's the weakest AE tree. That is pretty much gone as a problem is 3.1. The new disease-less Blood Boil is actually working remarkably well as a snap AE aggro tool, enough so that you shouldn't really need to worry about heading 21 points into Unholy to grab Unholy Blight. A Tank build like this should work pretty well both for survivability and threat. If you have a Frost DPSer in your raid who can cast Improved Icy Touch, all the better, you just freed up 3 points.

Also nice for Blood Tanks is the new buff to Scent of Blood. The latest iteration gives 10 runic power per a charge and can be activated by dodging, parrying, or simply by taking damage. Preliminary tests on the PTR are placing it at almost always up in multi-mob situations, and up enough to provide 2-3 runic power per second on average on single target fights.

This should make it a lot easier for Blood Death Knights to keep chaining Rune Strike and cement their place as solid single-target aggro holders. Of course, Scent of Blood is also conveniently low enough in the tree that Frost and Unholy tanks can take it, but Blood will probably still find it the easiest to take, as they'll probably have 3 spare points on the way to getting Will of the Necropolis and Heart Strike easily.

Speaking of Heart Strike...

There are some Death Knights who are asking for a new secondary effective to Heart Strike now that Blood Boil is an effective AE damage and threat tool. There's certainly a good argument for the cleave being less useful than it once was, but it's also useful to keep in mind that it wouldn't be the first time Blizzard has left a strike without a useful secondary ability, such as when they removed the HoT removal from Plague Strike.

Overall, even with that less useful secondary mechanic, Heart Strike is still a very fine damage dealer. Blood is a tree that's currently headed into 3.1 stronger than ever, and if you haven't taken a look at it lately, you might want to strongly consider a second one now. I'm probably going to keep on with Unholy, but at the same time, all that health recovery and a Dancing Rune Weapon churning out Blood Boils is just looking way too juicy for words..

Oh me, oh my. Blizzard sure gets up to some weird stuff. Right now they are holding a theme park contest. Illustrate your own original Blizzard Entert

When the first set of 3.1 patch notes popped up, many Death Knights were surprised to see that their auras were being reworked into something that, well, just isn't an aura at all.

Instead, the effects are being rolled into talents so that, if talented, the Death Knight herself still gains the benefit, but does not extend it to party or raid members.

Although they will now be called, for example, Improved Blood Presence, the benefits will be applied regardless of the presence assumed by the character.

I have to admit that my first reaction to the change was a negative one. It feels weird to me switching from a Holy Paladin to a character that simply does not have a comparable range of buffs and auras to offer.

That's when my roomie and addict of WoW forums and websites, piped in with the why. Today, Ghostcrawler gives an official explanation.

Unholy Aura, which grants a 15% movement speed increase, was slowly "becoming mandatory as a raid buff." The ability is not only handy for long corpse runs, as well as fights where movement speed and reaction time are critical, but it seriously impacts the overall damage done by the meleeing crowd.

Melee characters spend an annoying amount of time backing out of range because of AoE or ground effects, running around the mobs to always stay behind them, following after a mobile tank, and the like. This disrupts their damage, and because this has always been the case, classes and encounters are balanced assuming that this is still going on.

Ghostcrawler also mentions that Blizzard "considered giving it to other classes" but, as you can imagine, that "would just be accepting all players moving faster all the time." If that were the case, many boot enchants would have to be reworked, and in fact, it would likely just be easier to increase everyone's base speed and call it a day.

So why not simply change Unholy Aura? Frost Aura was, to quote GC, "kind of lame", and I'd have to agree. Overall, "the [dk aura] mechanic was just a little awkward and hard to explain."

After all, it is a unique aura system. Paladins can toss up any aura, regardless of spec, while a raid would have to insist on an Unholy Death Knight for the speed boost benefit. Allowing this to continue would be contrary to the direction that Blizz has been taking raiding. They don't want any class and spec combo to get an automatic, necessitated, raid invitation.

Considering that Blizzard is also working to make Blood and Frost specs more appealing to entice more of the Death Knight population to let go of their Unholy ways, this change will not only be fairer to every class that wants a shot at a raid spot, it will also allow Death Knights to be accepted regardless of spec.

Arena players say they can't compete with Death Knights

A Korean Arena team named Kill e A has dropped out of the upcoming Extreme Masters tournament and claimed that they just can't compete with Death Knights in the Arenas. "Due to recent balance changes resulting from the 3.0.9 patch, we believe that it is no longer possible for the Mage and Rogue character classes to remain competitive in a high-level PvP setting," says the statement posted on the ESL's site. They go on to say that "our testing has shown that it is now impossible for other classes to compete effectively with the Death Knight." Since they don't have a DK player and their team's strategy is based around using a Mage and Rogue, they're out, and another team from SK Gaming is in. The SK Gaming team will be running with a DK, and they say they're certain they won't be the only ones.

And Kill e A isn't the only team dealing with the power of the Death Knight. Gotfrag has an interview up with Rumay "Hafu" Wang of Fnatic/Orz, winners of two big tournaments last year. She too says Death Knights are a force to be reckoned with, though the recent changes might bring them down a notch. Plague Strike, as even the NPC Death Knights say, is a Lifebloom-killer, and Hafu says that as a Resto Druid in the Arenas, she can't match them.

Blizzard will definitely be watching during the upcoming Arena tournament -- if Death Knights are as overpowered as these players claim they are, we might see some PvP-based nerfs in their future.

Engineering's BFG edition

Alex is out loading up his backpacks with all his gear, hopping on his Traveler's Tundra Mammoth and walking across Azeroth for a couple days. So until he's back to us full time I'm going to take a few more days this week of "Da Queue." Be sure to leave us your questions as a comment, or if you want to remain anonymous (because really, besides "Why can't Paladins tank?" there is no such thing as a dumb question) you can send us a tip on our tip line. Enough talk! Let us Queue!

Ava asked...

"Any word on when they're going to make engineers not useless in 3.1..."


Well... I gather the saving grace came today when Blizzard announced the removal of consumable ammunition won't be happening in 3.1. So you have a little longer to make things and sell them for a nice profit.

I think Engineering has always been a niche specialty. Obviously in BC it became a tad over powered with some of the helmets it could make, and of course there was the de-facto tanking gun up until the release of the Sunwell. Now it still has some of those features, but it's not as predominate as it once was.

But this is by design too.

Blizzard doesn't want the professions to be something that are so great they are essentially required for a given class. Remember Leatherworking in BC? Everyone who was a hard core Sunwell raider had to have Leatherworking for drums. It was really really really dumb to have Priests respec to Leatherworking just to get a continuous drum rotation going on. Blizzard knows this, and at BlizzCon last October Ghostcrawler made mention several times that they never want to return to that horror.

And truth be told, Engineering now is at least more useful/fun than it was four years ago.

Nicole asked...

"I've found that the Death Knight class is a fantastic way to explore the other faction and I was just wondering if you this was a popular thing to do?"

I really can't answer for other players, but I can defiantly speak for myself. I've got a 69 Blood Elf Death Knight that I've been having fun with now and then. All my mains are Alliance side (and yes, I've even got an Alliance Death Knight going on my second account), but my Hordie is quite fun to play.

I'm looking forward to running through the Wrath Gate quest line Horde side in a few levels, since I've done the Alliance one so many times now I practically have it memorized. It's also been fun to see the different angles on events as I leveled my way through Outland and into Northrend.

Are Death Knights autowin in PvP?

Here's a question I'm sure a lot of players have asked themselves when faced against those dreaded Death Knights. Critical QQ wrote an interesting post in his blog theorizing that the side with the most number of Death Knights will win. Think Ret Paladin during the first week or so of Patch 3.0. He posits that Death Knights are such a powerful PvP class that they tend to turn the tide of a battle. To a degree, it's actually true. The very first Arena Master was a Death Knight.

The blog post plays out several scenarios where Death Knights make a difference but doesn't get into too much detail. But the point he makes is clear, and some of you might have actually felt it whenever you played some Battlegrounds -- whichever side has the most Death Knights wins. I've never actually stopped to figure out the ratio of Death Knights in all my Battlegrounds games, but there's no question a Death Knight is a force to be reckoned with in PvP. But are they unbeatable?

The obvious answer, of course, is no. But they sure are damn hard to put down. Blizzard was aware of this and severely nerfed Unholy in Patch 3.0.8, cutting down the duration of Anti-Magic Zone, lowering the mitigation of Bone Shield and Icebound Fortitude, and putting an unnecessarily long cooldown on Shadow of Death as well as removed it from Arena play. The last change was needed, but the 15 minute cooldown is probably too long considering Blizzard also nerfed the duration to 25 seconds. They also toned down the class' burst damage somewhat, including the amazing Gargoyle talent.

The non-healer healing class
So how come Death Knights are still extremely powerful in PvP despite the mitigation nerfs? Have you ever fought a Death Knight and wondered to yourself why your health keeps getting low while theirs is getting high even after you've hit them with everything you've got? Something that's been overlooked for the most part in the spate of recent balance changes is the sheer awesomeness of Death Knight self-healing. Mitigation on separate cooldowns and a variety of self-heals make Death Knights one of the most resilient classes in the game.

As a baseline ability, Death Knights have Death Strike, a melee strike that heals them as long as they have stacks of diseases on their target. Once Death Knights have set up, it becomes very difficult to stop them because they'll wear you down while they pump themselves up. Then there's Death Pact, the legacy Warcraft III ability, that sacrifices an undead minion such as a ghoul or gargoyle in exchange for health. Note that Death Pact works off maximum health and not current health, which means it's an excellent ability to use when their pet is about to die.

Blood has access to Rune Tap, as well, which when improved can heal them for 20% of their health every 30 seconds. Prior to the nerf, the most popular PvP builds were a mix of Blood and Unholy which had access to frightening healing as well as mitigation. Blood / Unholy Death Knights will use either Scourge Strike or Death Strike depending on whether they need healing. Because both strikes use Unholy and Frost runes, this leaves a Blood rune or two for Rune Tap at a moment's notice. That's not even the best part. Rune Tap is off the GCD. Insane? Sure it is.

While not a popular build for PvP, some pick up talents like Bloodworms, Blood Aura, and Vampiric Blood, which add to self-healing. Vendetta is awesome for a continous grind -- not just for mobs, but in Battlegrounds PvP or Wintergrasp. Sure they'll need to land the killing blow to proc it, but they're Death Knights. Killing blows are second nature to them.

Now, although Unholy is still the PvP tree, it's now more common to complement it with Frost all the way up to Killing Machine. Players speccing Frost / Unholy pick up Lichborne along the way, which is an incredible anti-CC ability on a three minute cooldown. Aside from breaking Charm, Fear, and Sleep effects, it provides immunity to it for 15 seconds. Guess what? Just like Rune Tap, Lichborne is off the GCD, as well. Here's another Death Knight trick -- when under the effects of Lichborne, they can heal themselves with Death Coil. So you can add that to the list of effective self-heals.

Understand that these heals can tick for a lot. Death Strike can crit, which sometimes results in heals upwards of 5,000 hp. This means that while they're dealing damage, they're healing themselves at the same time. Because Unholy Presence cuts the GCD by .5 seconds, Death Knights can blow two Death Strikes in quick succession to heal themselves for a considerable amount. If they have a lot of diseases stacked, that's a lot of healing. Ten seconds later, they'll be able to do it again.

The best (or worst, if you're up against a Death Knight) part is, all of these heals are instant. None of them have a cast time. Rune Tap is an instant heal off the GCD on a thirty second cooldown. Death Strike is a heal that is part of an attack, usable twice in succession every ten seconds. Death Pact is instant on a three minute timer. Bloodworms just happen. All Death Knights will have access to Death Strike and Death Pact, while the others are talents. Instant, uninterruptible self-healing on one of the most devastating DPS classes is equal to PvP godhood.

Death Grip wormhole is a bad, bad thing

As much as we enjoyed watching what is arguably the most phenomenally fun bug ever, it should come as no surprise to anyone that exploiting it is a very bad thing. In particular, GMs have been alerted to the bug and are on a keen watch for players who attempt to do it. After Elizabeth Harper's experimentation -- all done in the name of journalistic investigation, we promise -- resident killer Rogue Chase Christian attempted it, too. He was very swiftly messaged by a Game Master informing him that he would be banned if he ever did it again.

The boys over at DeathKnight.info confirm the same thing, not only because it is under close watch by GMs, but because it has serious repercussions for players who are 'pulled' into the wormhole. Players with the temerity to try it out have reported getting stuck in limbo and had to submit tickets to get their characters unstuck. No doubt a deluge of tickets describing suspiciously similar circumstances was more than enough to raise alarms over at Blizzard. So while we enjoyed showing that video of the Death Grip bug, we hope you didn't follow such bad examples. I mean, you didn't, right? Of course not. Good boys and girls.

PvE Enchantments for Death Knights

Fresh on the heels of last week's gemming guide, we have an enchanting guide. Like gemming, enchanting is an easy way to go the extra mile to get your gear the best it can be so you can properly keep aggro without dying and/or top the damage meters in your next Naxxramas raid. Since there's so few enchants available, it's a lot less complicated than gemming too. DPS will just want hit to the cap and attack power (Sorry, there's not many strength enchants), while tanks will want defense to 540 and stamina.

It's also worth noting that almost every slot with an enchant has a weaker version and a more powerful version. Although it's usually frowned upon to go weak when can go strong, in the case of enchants, it's probably okay at the entry level to go with the weaker version of an enchant. The more powerful ones generally take Abyss Crystals and the like, and may be a bit steep. In addition, there's a few other quirks and special enchantments to watch out for. Let's take a look, by slot, at some of the best choices for enchanting for both DPS and Tanking.

Weapon

Runeforging is better than enchanting, just to get that out of the way. There's no use wasting shards and dust on a weapon enchant when a better one is just a Death Gate away. As far as which to get, though, let's look at the options.

For DPS, it's very hard to go wrong by just applying Rune of the Fallen Crusader. The health will help soak up environmental damage, and strength will translate to AP, which will translate to spellpower, which means a large overall boost to your damage. Even better is the fact that it scales, meaning the better your gear gets, the better the proc gets. If you're running a Howling Blast build, you might get away with Razorice, but otherwise, there shouldn't be any question in your mind that Fallen Crusader fits the bill.

Tanking has a choice between two enchants: Rune of Swordshattering and Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. If you haven't hit the 540 skill defense cap, take the gargoyle, no ifs, ands, or buts. Once you get past 540, there's some small amount of debate over which enchantment works best. 4% parry is a very nice chunk of avoidance. On the other hand, the 2% stamina on the gargoyle rune is still pretty nice, it works from all directions (whereas parry works only from the front) and even past 540 defense, you do get some avoidance. In general, if you feel like your stamina is a little low, or you want to unload some stamina for threat on your armor, you can use Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle to pick up some of the slack. Otherwise, that 4% parry will probably prove superior if you can keep your enemies in front of you.

Head

For your head, DPS will want to pick up the Arcanum of Torment from the Knights of the Ebon Blade. For Tanking, you'll need revered Argent Crusade reputation for the Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector. It's a nice and straightforward choice, which is always cool.

Shoulders

Much like the head, here's another straightforward choice. Grind Sons of Hodir reputation, and at honored you can grab the Lesser Inscriptions of the Axe or the Pinnacle, depending on your role. At exalted, grab the Greater versions. Of course, you can also level inscription and skip the whole mess altogether, but otherwise, it's definitely worth the grind.

Chest

For tanking, you can grab some quick and easy defense via the Greater Defense enchantment. DPS or tanks who don't need defense can grab Super Stats, or if they have the gold to spare, the more powerful Powerful Stats.

Bracer

For tanks, Major Stamina is amazing if you have the gold to spare. It's steep though, so if you can't afford it, you can probably get by with Greater Stats until you get more gold or some bracers worthy of Major Stamina. Of course, if you're desperate for a last few points of defense, you can track down a Burning Crusade era enchanter with the Major Defense enchant.

For DPS, you'll want to track down either Greater Assault or Striking, depending on how much gold you want to spare.

Gloves

Tanks will probably want to go for Armsman. The Eternal Earths really aren't that hard to come by, especially if you're a miner, and 2% threat and a bit of extra avoidance is hard to beat. Of course, if you're absolutely secure in your ability to keep threat, you could always grab Expertise to get closer to pushing parries and dodges off the table.

For DPS, you can use Precision to fill some of your hit rating needs. If you're fine on hit rating, go for Greater Assault or the more powerful (and still relatively affordable) Crusher for the attack power.

Belt

There's no enchantments for belts per se, but be sure to grab an Eternal Belt Buckle. It's perfect for, say, a Bold Scarlet Ruby if you're DPS, or a Solid Sky Sapphire if you're a Tank.

Legs

You'll need to seek out a leatherworker here. The epic leg armor used to be a clear choice, but now that it requires Frozen Orbs, you may want to just stick to the blue-quality stuff until you get Naxxramas level legs depending on your cash flow. For Tanks, you'll want epic Frosthide Leg Armor, or the cheaper Jormungar Leg Armor. Both provide plenty of stamina and some added agility for bonus avoidance. For DPS, you have the Icescale Leg Armor or the cheaper Nerubian Leg Armor.

Boots

Tanks here can pick up a nice chunk of health with a Greater Vitality enchant here. Of course, if you don't have Unholy Aura, you may also want to consider Tuskarr's Vitality. A bit of extra speed can help in wrangling and positioning mobs more than you might expect.

DPS can grab Icewalker here for a quick and easy hit rating boost. If you've hit 8% hit though, you're better off going for the attack power enchants. Greater Assault isn't too steep in price, but you can also get the Assault enchant for even cheaper.

Sartharion sings the blues

Once you start throwing multiple drakes into the mix, I love the Sartharion encounter. It's very frantic, and takes everyone performing. What I don't love is how hard it is to see the shadow fissures that spawn in the encounter when there's a lot going on. Red on red is awful, and then when you throw a Death Knight's Death and Decay into the mix if you're using one? It's pretty much an orgy of red, and you can't really tell which red is from what source.

I quite literally leapt for joy when Daelo, lead encounter designer, mentioned that they'll be turning blue in a future patch. It's a minor tweak to the encounter, but it will seriously help those moments when you have a void zone beneath a Death and Decay and you have a tank who is tanking loads of whelps and elementals which are already obscuring their vision. The hardest part of the fight isn't the movements, the hardest part is being able to see.

This does make me wonder what they'll do with future, similar things. The terrain alone makes the void zones hard to see during Sartharion, but the largest issue (I think) is Death and Decay. It's big, fluffy, and extremely red. Will they simply not be able to use red ground effects anymore? My raid doesn't do it, but there are raids out there that forbid Death Knights from using Death and Decay for the specific reason that it hides AOEs beneath it, so I have to wonder if there's a better solution to the problem than changing colors without removing the 'cool factor' of the DnD particle effect.

Death Knight class change analysis for patch 3.1

The next round of class changes for 3.1 has gone up, and Death Knights, of course, got a blurb of their own. The changes are probably slightly less sweeping than some other classes, but interesting all the same. Ghostcrawler's word on Death Knights lately has been that they're probably a bit high on DPS, and that they want to encourage more people to spec Blood and Frost over the overwhelmingly popular Unholy. I'm not sure these changes in particular did that, but one thing they did do is give a couple of nice potential buffs to Death Knight tanks. Let's look at them one by one.

Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle's damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.

So this first change actually looks a lot like the change a lot of people suggested back when Summon Gargoyle was first up on the nerf block. Just switch the talent points and leave Gargoyle untouched. I honestly doubt we'll see the Gargoyle return completely to the highest damage of its heyday, but hopefully it's a sizable rebuff. This change should do a lot toward putting 2-hand Unholy back up to par with dual wield frost/unholy builds. Of course, on the same token, Howling Blast builds will probably enjoy having an AE runic dump as well. It should be interesting see which spec benefits the most from this switch.

Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.

While I'm not sure that anyone predicted this outright, it's not a hard change to see either. Being able to both spread our diseases and cause massive damage was probably a bit much. In the end, it may be a slight nerf to AE damage, but not by much. Blood Boil will pick up most of the slack, and we'll just have use a couple extra cooldowns and wait for our blood runes to refresh before doing massive damage.

Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.

This could be nice if only because it means magic damage absorption as well as physical absorption. This also theoretically could make it a valid button to hit for a DPS DK taking environmental damage or even a PvP DK being focus fired, depending on the amount of absorption it grants. It's difficult to say too much more without solid numbers, but on the whole, I think I'm calling this a very likely buff to Frost DKs in general, and definitely to Frost Tanks.

The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.

Blizzard has said they want to let all trees participate in PvP among all classes, so while putting things like Endless Winter and Chillblains lower on the Frost tree might do that, I wonder why they're focused on PvP gains so much. While I've often wished I could feasibly grab things like chillblains and endless winter in an Unholy PvP build, I'm unsure we really need them. It's hard enough to escape from a Death Knight as it is.

On the PvE side, though, I've long though Frost could use some shuffling. One thing I am hoping is that Glacier Rot moves further down the tree. That skill mostly buffs deep frost talents, and yet it's nearly unavoidable if you're a Blood or Unholy DK trying to get the first tier or two of frost.

Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans' Lightning Overload.

This is a nice change that frees up your attention so you can focus on optimizing your rune spending without wasting a global cooldown on a random Death Coil. I think it's a positive change overall that should help Blood Death Knight DPSers keep their rotations tight and efficient.

Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.

Getting Magic Suppression or Blood of the North is always a bit of a struggle for Blood and Unholy Tanks, since it usually means giving up access to Lichborne or Improved Icy Touch in Frost or useful but not absolutely mandatory talents like Bladed Armor or Wandering Plague. Freeing up 2 extra talent points should actually make tank builds look a bit more elegant.

Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

This may be the most perplexing change. Armor Penetration, to put it lightly, sucks. While Blood Death Knights do do the most physical damage of the Death Knight trees on average, Armor Penetration is still not exactly desirable anymore. However, with the changes to Sunder Armor and Faerie Fire already announced, it may be that Armor Penetration is due for a larger overhaul that will make this change look better. It's also possible that Tier 8 Death Knight gear will have so much expertise on it, they're afraid of Blood DPS DKs hitting the expertise dodge cap too easily. We'll have to sit tight on this one, I think, before we can make a better judgement.

If all else fails, remember, these changes aren't comprehensive or final. We're likely still in for quite a ride on the way to 3.1 going live. Look forward to continuing coverage here on WoW Insider.

An Insight to a Death Knight

Most of the time when you hear a blood curdling scream followed by a froosh type sound, your guaranteed to have just heard a Death Knight casting his or her mount, and are likely to see them gallop through with no care to fence, gate or gnome they knock over in the process.

But what really makes a Death Knight? Is it that icy glare? The deep soulless voice? Or does it go deeper than this?

When starting a Death Knight there comes a mission that you have to kill a survivor in the jail; Now up to this point you have been slaughtering everything from cows to peasants that run directly at you (for some reason), without a care in the world, then this gets dropped in your lap and you think ‘cool more death!’. But as you reach the person you intended to kill, they recognise you, uttering the lines:-

Ellen Stanbridge says: Come to finish the job, have you?
Ellen Stanbridge
says: I'd like to stand for.....
Ellen Stanbridge says: {Name}
Ellen
Stanbridge says: {Name}, I'd recognize that face anywhere.... What..... What
have they done to you, ?
Ellen Stanbridge says: You don't remember me, do
you? Blasted Scourge.... They've tried to drain you of everything that made you
a righteous force of reckoning. Every last ounce of good... Everything that made
you a human!
Ellen Stanbridge says: Think, {Name}. Think back. Try and
remember the hills and valleys of Elwynn, where you were born. Remember the
splendor of life, {brother/sister}. You were a champion of the Alliance once!
This isn't you.
Ellen Stanbridge says: Listen to me, {Name}. You must fight
against the Lich King's control. He is a monster that wants to see this world -
our world - in ruin. Don't let him use you to accomplish his goals. You were
once a hero and you can be again. Fight, damn you! Fight his control!

Knight Commander Plaguefist yells: What's going in there? What's taking so long,
{Name}?

Ellen Stanbridge says: There... There's no more time for me. I'm
done for. Finish me off, {Name}. Do it or they'll kill us both. {Name} ...
Remember Elwynn. This world is worth saving...

Although this is different for each race, the effect would be the same. Now I got wondering about my Death Knight after that little speech; who was my Death Knight before he became what he now is? Did he have a family, were they alive, did he have any friends, how old actually was I, had I died during the second war fighting Arthas or did I die fighting beside him before he lost his mind?

With all these thoughts I set out to see if it was possible to understand the Death Knight more, as an actual character, even a person, so I had a long think about what just feels right with my Death Knight, that natural sense of what you should be doing.

With that I cast my Dread Steed, found Elwynn on the map and set off to find my place in the world………

Warrior and DK threat bug hotfixed

My own Death Knight is not quite up to raid tanking yet; I've got a few more levels to go on that one. However, some players have noticed that DK threat, especially on single targets, seems a bit low - significantly lower than the other three tank classes, to the extent that the tanks were having trouble keeping threat against high DPS.

It turns out that there was a slightly complicated bug involving Frost Presence, the foundation of DK tanking. It went like this:

• Some aspects of Frost Presence don't go away when you die, and some do (this is the bug).


• The threat boost, however, does go away when you die.


• When you res and come back without changing presences, the game doesn't reapply Frost Presence, because it sees that you already have some of the effects of it.


• However, you still don't have the threat boost.

So potentially, DKs who die and come back without switching to another presence (Blood or Unholy) and then back to Frost were missing out on the 45% threat that Frost Presence brings. This has been hotfixed now, so there is no further need to worry about it. If you saw your DK threat go up a lot yesterday, that's probably why.

Ghostcrawler adds that "it is likely" that Defensive Stance was also being affected by this bug, although I haven't seen any prot warriors complaining about their threat since 3.0 hit.

GamerDNA and Massively explore Death Knight demographics

Our friends at Massively and GamerDNA are at it again -- they're digging into their database of players, this time to determine some Death Knight demographics. They want to know what kinds of players are picking up the new Hero class. Unfortunately, their sample size is super small -- only 500, according to Sanya Weathers, which seems way too tiny to determine anything about the Death Knight class at large. But we'll go with it anyway, and see what we can get.

As you can see above, Blood Elves and Humans dominate the race choice in our little group, which seems about right, considering that those are the two most popular races overall. Death Knight players in this study generally tend to have reported themselves as male in real life. And GamerDNA also lays their Death Knights up against the Bartle test and while WoW players trend pretty well to the norm, Death Knights go way more towards the "Killer" and to a lesser extent the "Explorer" end of the scales.

So according to this little survey (and we'll remind you that this is 500 people, so there are plenty of exceptions out there), the average Death Knight is male, chooses whatever race is most familiar to them, and wants to go kill and do damage rather than worry about socializing or achieving. In other words, lots and lots of former Ret Paladins. It'll be interesting to see how this changes over time -- lots of these players are interested in the newest thing, obviously, since they've switched their mains to a new class at the first chance, but as things settle down and more people head back to get new alts, maybe we'll see a different crowd coming out of Acherus.

Roll a Death Knight anywhere in 3.0.8

Oh, you poor unfortunate souls! Forced by the cruel silver hand of fate to roll a Death Knight only on realms on which you already have a level 55 character. You've cried out in pain as the lashes of this restriction struck you, and through the anguish you've yelled "Yo Blizz! Lemme roll my DK anywhere, aight?"

Word. Big Blue's got your back.

Starting with the launch of 3.0.8, you'll be able to roll a new Death Knight on any realm as long as you have a level 55 character somewhere. The normal restrictions for character creation are still in place, though--can't make an opposite-faction DK on a PVP server, can't roll a DK on a server closed to transfers unless you've got a 55 there already, etc. All fair!

Before you ask why this feature wasn't implemented from the get-go, remember that it wasn't even very long ago that the developers were deciding "how is dk formed?" (though they did say that the restriction would be lifted soon after Wrath launched).

So fret not, ye oppressed. Soon, your chains (of ice) will be broken.

The 2008 Death Knight year in review

Welcome to 2009, which I am, completely arbitrarily, declaring the year of the Death Knight. Sure, Death Knights were first announced back in 2007, but 2008 was when they took shape and showed up in playable form, and 2009 will be the first full year that they've been on the live servers. Let's look back then, at 2008, and see some of the milestones in the creation of my favorite new class and yours.

Calm before the Storm

The first Death Knight article to be posted on WoW Insider in 2008 came on the first of January, dealt with the fear of many that Death Knights would be so awesome that everyone would roll one, and there'd be no-one to play the "normal" classes. Such a fear, I think, hasn't come to past. There are many like me who did shelve their old characters to play their Death Knight, of course, but I still see more than enough of most other classes in the game. Well, I could use a few more healers, but that's what the next expansion is for, right? Still, it's nice to see this fear finally laid to rest. There's plenty of room for all classes in WoW after all.

Coming a few months later was a gallery wrap up that showed what we knew about Death Knights so far. Interestingly enough, it's not as different from the final product as I might have though. Most of the basic mechanics are in place. Even Unholy Embrace at least got a cameo in the form of Plague Strike's ability to strip HoTs.

An Emerging Class

It was early May when the Death Knight news really started coming hot and heavy, with Blizzard's famous midnight meeting that revealed a ton of information about the Death Knight class. It seemed like almost everyone (with a few notable exceptions) was invited, so the news came out fast. From Various Death Knight write ups, we learned about Runic power, Ghoul pets, Army of the Dead, Death Coil, "Grip of Death," and many of the other signature abilities and calling cards of the Death Knight class. Some ideas from this time, though, never did make it even to the Beta, such as segregating trees by ability and allowing the swapping of the six runes to any type you want. If you really wanted to equip six frost runes and spam Icy touch, you could. The idea of a Death Knight being unlocked simply by having a level 55 character, while not new, was solidified as well.

This mini-conference also introduced the disease spreading system in a rudimentary form, leading to some speculation on how disease spreading Death Knights might change the face of PvP or nub it up and break your crowd control with DoTs. Of course, the fears about Death Knights taking everyone's jobs still continued, while others complained about the news that every race could be a Death Knight.

The Alpha Fail

The Friends and Family Alpha introduced the Death Knight class in a playable form to what was supposed to be secrecy, but if there's one thing the Internet's done, it's made it nigh impossible to keep a secret. Thus, if you knew where to look and managed to look before Blizzard started the damage control, you could get a basic idea of what the class looked like.

Perhaps in an effort to keep the non-Alpha'd information starved future Death Knight mobs at bay, Blizzard did update their Death Knight information page. This page, perhaps more than any other source, propagated the "You can't tank unless you're Frost" type myths that propagate today. Back then, Blizzard intended to separate the trees a bit more, and touted Blood as DPS, Frost as tanking, and Unholy as PvP and utility. While they've drastically changed the trees now so that DPS and tanking are possible for all three trees, many people still cling to the tree definitions presented on that page way back when -- this despite the fact that that page itself was changed to the more general description of the trees within a month.

But overall, the Alpha was just tight enough that we didn't get too much new Death Knight information (aside from the odd rumor that was generally not quite correct) until the Worldwide Invitational.

WWI 08

We might call the Worldwide Invitational the 2nd opening of the Death Knight floodgates. With playable Wrath of the Lich King and playable Death Knights available, we were able to get a lot of new information. In the panels, we heard about 10 second rune cool downs and some justification for making specs more general, as well as the idea of the "Northern Plaguelands" as a starting zone for all Death Knights.

Of course, we also got to sit down and play a Death Knight. Looking back at the setup, it's actually not that different from Death Knights of today, though you can tell we were trimmed back quite a bit. Nearly everything did slightly more damage back then. Corpse Explosion (which cost runic power much as it will in 3.0.8) and Unholy Blight caused extra diseases. Frost Strike had a chance to freeze the enemy. Heart Strike had the weird ability to shrink a monster's max HP by 20%.

They started with a suit of matching green gear that I'm sure almost every plate wearer is familiar with by now, as it's the same armor graphics that are on 90% of all level blue-quality plate-gear in Northrend. I still think it looks awesome though. There was no Ebon Hold in this play through either. Back then, you started in front of Tirion Fordring at his old farm, perhaps as a foreshadowing of the role he'd later play in releasing the Death Knights from their prison.

After the WWI, it was mostly time for speculation and theorizing about Death Knights, although we did get some leaks about Runeforging and the new Ebon Hold and Death Knight philosophy.

The Beta

Finally the Beta came, and while it was limited invitation, the NDAs were lifted, and the information began to flow freely. We got a much clearer look at Runeforging, which replaced swappable runes with ultra-powerful enchantments, and a chance to gush over the Death Knight starting zone and the Death Knight starting gear. We were also introduced to the gameplay of Death Knights via Jayde's videos of various Death Knight specs.

Death Knights, of course, got quite a bit of attention as the Beta wore on. They were a major subject of the First Ask A Beta Tester, a trend which only continued, much to the exasperation of some. The Lichborne column also debuted about this time with a State of the Death Knight address, in which I discussed some major changes to the Death Knights, such as the reduction of their total diseases to 2, with only a couple extra for Unholy Death Knights in the form of Ebon Plague and Unholy Blight and an overview of the trees.

Death Knights continued to get tweaks and revamps a plenty as the beta wore on, as the dev team tried to equalize the trees for tanking and DPS alike. Death Knights also received some nice cosmetic upgrades, with unique voices, glowing eyes, and unique skins available at character creation. Before Beta was even over, Death Knights were stretching their wings and testing their limits as well, and we soon heard word of Karazhan trios and Onyxia soloing.

Also, we Unholy Death Knights crashed the game by our very existence. Perhaps to appease us, Blizzard implemented unique ghoul permapet names soon after, and young beta-playing unholy Death Knights the world over began chain summoning Ghouls in hopes of getting the name "Bonemuncher."

In the meantime, even the live servers were preparing for the coming of the Death Knights, as Naxxramas moved back to Northrend and the Ebon Hold appeared behind Light's Hope Chapel, and on Beta, the "AWESOME SMALL TWEAKS" (and some not so small ones) continued as Death Knights were made ready for their debut.

Then came the big the day.

Live and Dangerous

The expansion opened first in Europe, and no-one wasted any time. We had a level 70 Death Knight within a day and level 80s a few days after that.

Most of us leveled a little slower, and started assimilating into the game and the community, finding our class niche. Of course, we haven't been without a few things that could be changed, and the dev team looks like they're getting on top of it. In the last big Death Knight story of the year, there's a bunch of very intriguing changes on the 3.0.8 PTR that could change the ways we tank and DPS in some pretty significant ways.

With these changes sure to go live sometime in January, we can expect Death Knights to get into a whole new paradigm here in the new year, for better for for worse (I'm leaning toward better). It's a perfect start to the 2009 year, either way, and as we go through Ulduar, Icecrown, and beyond, the Death Knight class is only going to get better as it asserts its place in PvE and PvP and in the WoW community. I hope to be there right along with the rest of you as we create the story of the live server Death Knight in this momentous year, and in another year, we'll all look back on this and be proud of what we've done.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Death Knight changes in Patch 3.0.8

Well, I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm certainly having fun playing my death knight. I can solo a lot of the more difficult quests in the game; my Blood self-healing along with my glyphed Death Strike keeps me topped off and out of danger almost all the time; and I bring desirable buffs to parties and raids.

I keep thinking to myself, "Something has to change! I can't have this much fun all the time!"

Well, guess what, WoW community? You've gone and done it. You've gotten us buffed. Great. Just great.

Of course, it's not all buffs we see in the 3.0.8 notes, but there's certainly a lot of them. Let's examine how 3.0.8 will affect you and your plate-armored dreadnaught.

Blood, buddy, step right up. Let's see what you've won!

• Blood Aura now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.


• Blood Presence now grants 2/4% instead of 1/2% healing.


• Bloody Strikes will receive extra bonus damage from Pestilence.


• Heart Strike no longer has a haste debuff but will now be able to strike two targets.


• Pestilence no longer has a 10 seconds cooldown.


• Vampiric Blood: In addition to its current effects, also adds 20% health temporarily.


• Will of the Necropolis will now reduce the damage of any attack that takes the DK below 35% health by 5 /10/15% instead of boosting armor when wounded,


• Dark Command: Range increased to 30 yards.


• Dancing Rune Weapon cost reduced to 40 RP from 60 RP.
  

So, first and foremost, the added healing to Blood Aura/Presence is good. I love self-healing, but the 2% healing was a little paltry, I thought. 4% is a nice number, and with the nerf to the Death Strike Glyph (d'oh) I'll take what I can get.

Heart Strike being changed to a cleave is a fantastic change. The current HS debuff just isn't terribly useful and, as Ghostcrawler said, it never even worked right in the first place. I've often lagged behind in DPS on AOE/trash pulls as Blood because of my lack of good AOE damage, so an on-demand cleave as well as the extra Pestilence damage should help out with that considerably. I'm pleased. Just be sure you're not that guy that breaks CC by spamming Heart Strike. You might want to put Blood Strike back on your bar for occasions that require some delicacy.

On the tank side of things, Vampiric Blood functioning like a latter-day Lifegiving Gem on top of its already-good original effect is wonderful, especially on a one-minute cooldown. I've never specced into Will of the Necropolis, it being more of a tank talent and me being a single-minded DPS fellow, but this new version seems like a draw.

Lastly, most every taunt in the game was changed to have a 30-yard range, so the change to Dark Command is expected and welcome. As if we needed another ranged pull, of course.

Frost, you lucky scamp. Come open door number two.

• Frost Presence: The bonus armor has been increased from 60 to 80% and magic damage reduction increased from 5 to 15%.


• Horn of Winter now has no cost and grants 10 runic power in addition to its stat buff, but has a 30 sec cooldown.


• Icebound Fortitude now reduces damage by 20% instead of 50%. The amount of damage reduced increases with bonus Defense (to about 35% for 540 Defense, but can go higher).


• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle (New, two-handed only) now grants 25 Defense and 2% Stamina.


• Rune Strike: Damage decreased from 200% to 150% but threat increased to 150% from 100%.


• Hungering Cold: cost reduced to 40 RP from 60 RP.
  

The change to Frost Presence increases our built-in mitigation considerably and brings us closer to other tanks in terms of armor. We have no block, for example, so we have to increase our mitigation in other ways (armor, parry, dodge, etc).

The Icebound Fortitude change is unfortunate but in line with Ghostcrawler's comments regarding reducing reliance on the ability (and the fact that it's horribly overpowered in PVP). I have to admit that I was pretty happy to have what amounted to Shield Wall on a one-minute cooldown, but this change is probably necessary for balance reasons.

Rune Strike's damage decrease was pretty expected; my Rune Strikes were hitting for 6-9k. That's great, but given Ghostcrawler's comments on how it was supposed to be a tanking tool, the damage decrease and threat increase is pretty fair.

Speaking of runes and tanking--a new tanking rune! Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle is perfect for tanks who want to free up some stat points that would've been allocated to defense, or for tanks who aren't quite capped yet. Yes, this is 25 skill, not 25 rating. It's a good rune.

The reduced cost of Hungering Cold means more room in DPS rotations if you so desire. I don't know of many tanks that use it, but the cost reduction is nice regardless.

And finally, Horn of Winter! What a great change. 10 runic power free in exchange for a GCD every 30 seconds, plus a buff? Maybe I'll actually remember to keep it up now.

Unholy, come on down!

• Anti-Magic Shell: The cooldown has been lowered to 45 sec from 60 sec.


• Bone Shield: The mitigation has been reduced from 40% to 20%.


• Corpse Explosion: Damage increased substantially, added 5 sec. cooldown, and changed cost to 40 runic power.


• Death Pact now grants 40% instead of 20% healing.


• Night of the Dead now grants 40/70% passive area spell avoidance to your pet in addition to its current effects.


• Outbreak will no longer receive bonus damage from Pestilence. The bonus from Plague Strike and Blood Boil has been increased slightly.


• Raise Dead has now been split into two spells:




• Raise Dead now raises a ghoul or pet ghoul (if talented). Requires corpse dust if no humanoid corpse is nearby.


• Raise Ally now raises a fallen party member as a ghoul and has no reagent. Available at level 72. This should now last for 4 minutes.




• Shadow of Death: The duration has been changed from 45 seconds to 25 seconds.


• Unholy Blight had had its cost reduced from 60 to 40 runic power.


• Wandering Plague will now properly reset after being cast

So, we've got some good buffs up there. A reduced cooldown on AMS is welcome, doubled Death Pact healing as well. Unholy Blight got a cost reduction too.

Corpse Explosion, I'm not sure how I feel about you. When I was Unholy, pretty much all of my RP was spoken for, and this change means that I need another few GCDs before I can use you. On the other hand, your damage was improved significantly. Sleep on the couch tonight and maybe we can work it out.

Unholy Blight's cost reduction means tanks (and DPSers!) can fit it into their rotations sooner, and that's a welcome change.

The Night of the Dead change brings the ghoul back in line with other summoned pets, which is important. Now your Glacierhammer or Ratface or Corpsethief can get right in the thick of things (not that they didn't before, of course, but if you had a really good name for them...)

The Raise Dead/Raise Ally split basically means you can summon an ally for twice as long as the normal untalented Raise Dead would allow, which would be great during long fights where you're low on battle rezzes.

And then a few unfortunate nerfs. Shadow of Death, I can live with. The Bone Shield change is probably the most painful one, though. Good death knight tanks realized that the bones only disintegrated with melee attacks, so it was possible to keep your mitigation up for a considerable amount of time against certain mobs/bosses. Sorry, tanks. It's probably for the best.

The pain from nerfs to the main Unholy and Frost tanking mitigators (IBF, Bone Shield) are lessened somewhat by the big mitigation boost from Frost Presence (which any respectable tank will be in to begin with). The change to Vampiric Blood and Heart Strike mean Blood tanking came out the best of the three where this patch's changes are concerned.

All in all, we made out pretty well. There were a few tanking nerfs, a few tanking buffs, and most everything else is of good-to-fantastic benefit to the class. It's a good time to be dead.

Death Knight solos (most of) AQ20

Felblood, the Death Knight who recently soloed Zul'Gurub, sent us news of a new accomplishment: he's finished off most of AQ20 as well. Kurinaxx's Mortal Strike-like debuff apparently didn't affect Death Strike, so he just had to dodge the sand there, and apparently Moam's mana drain doesn't work on Runic Power, so he was just a tank and spank. Ossirian and Buru were a little tougher, but eventually with a little practice, Felblood says he was able to keep up DPS on the bosses and move around to their eggs and crystals.

It's not a full clear, however, since Ayamiss didn't get killed -- Felblood didn't think of a way to get away from her sacrifice, since he'd have been the only raider in the instance. But an accomplishment nevertheless -- it's crazy to think of how long we banged our heads on Rajaxx and Ossirian when they've now been toppled by just one level 80 Death Knight.

So what's next -- are we going to see the old 40-man content soloed? Wouldn't be too surprising with Molten Core, as we've already seen it 3-manned at 70, but things might get tougher as you head to AQ40 (where Felblood said he could down some trash, but not much else) or even Blackwing Lair.

7 reasons to make a Death Knight

Many casual players have discovered the wonders of making a Death Knight since WotLK was released, but in case there are still some holdouts, here are some reasons why those of us with limited playtime should definitely give the class a try.

7. Gnomes.

Seriously. Widdle gnome Death Knights with pigtails destroying multiple mobs 10 times their size are worth the price of admission. The spousal unit and I went back to our neglected Alliance server just to make a gnome DK duo. Our guild there has long since dispersed and our friends are all on different servers, but who cares? It's all about fun and tiny agents of death = fun. Awww, dks in love.

6 more serious reasons for a casual player to make a Death Knight are after the break.

6. DKs make excellent alts.

Whether you use alts to maximize your rest (good idea), keep your WoW time fresh or escape from bad situations, it's good to have at least one playable alt around and Death Knights are an excellent choice. If you've been playing this game a while, you've probably done all the starting quests a few times and are tired of them. With a Death Knight, you hit the ground running at 55, the first three levels are done before you know it and you're ready to zip through the Burning Crusade.

5. DKs make excellent gatherers.

Though they hinted a couple BlizzCons ago that Death Knights wouldn't have to go back to Elwynn Forest to kill wolves or pick flowers in order to level their professions, nothing like that was ever implemented. So, it doesn't matter what professions you choose, you have to start right along with the level 5 characters. That having been said, the fact that you get an epic mount for free (well, you steal it) really helps catch up to your level -- at least in the gathering professions. The cost of leveling the crafting professions is rather prohibitive, but gathering is a quick and easy thing to do which adds useful abilities, feeds your other crafters and can net you lots of extra cash on the AH. I particularly recommend Herbalism and Skinning. You get a free heal and a crit buff, they are the quickest of the three to level and you don't have to switch your minimap find function.

4. Death Knights are EZ mode.

Maybe you haven't read about the best builds/gear/techniques for playing your Death Knight, but for leveling purposes, you don't need to read a thing. Just pick the talents that seem fun and start mowing through your opponents. They are a bit overpowered while leveling, allowing you to solo even elite mobs above your level and defend yourself against the DK hating gankers (of which there are a few on PvP servers). They are also really good at fighting multiple mobs at a time, making questing that much faster.

3. Warlocks in plate.

This is kind of a repeat of number 4, but soloability is important to those of us whose schedules don't allow for much grouping. If you go Unholy spec, you get a pet ghoul that obeys your commands and is ready to fight whenever you are. Well... a couple seconds after you are... he has to crawl out of the ground first. With very little effort, dying is a rare event and everything short of instances can be done by the two of you.

2. Desecration.

Having arms pop up out of the ground while you fight is delightfully creepy goodness. Yes, I am biased toward the Unholy spec.

And the number one reason to make a Death Knight, whether casual or hardcore or anywhere inbetween:

1. The starting quests.

The lore, the instanced world, the quest chains, Arthas whispering in your ear -- the starting DK quests are sheer gaming pleasure. I have never had such a hard time reconciling my personal ethics with what I was doing in-game (yes I did things the hard way -- the light side -- in KotOR) and I loved every minute of it. Even if you abandon your DK right after your walk of shame to Thrall or King Varian Wrynn, the first three levels of being a Death Knight is worth spending a few of your play sessions.

Many casual players have discovered the wonders of making a Death Knight since WotLK was released, but in case there are still some holdouts, here are some reasons why those of us with limited playtime should definitely give the class a try.

7. Gnomes.

Seriously. Widdle gnome Death Knights with pigtails destroying multiple mobs 10 times their size are worth the price of admission. The spousal unit and I went back to our neglected Alliance server just to make a gnome DK duo. Our guild there has long since dispersed and our friends are all on different servers, but who cares? It's all about fun and tiny agents of death = fun. Awww, dks in love.

6 more serious reasons for a casual player to make a Death Knight are after the break.

6. DKs make excellent alts.

Whether you use alts to maximize your rest (good idea), keep your WoW time fresh or escape from bad situations, it's good to have at least one playable alt around and Death Knights are an excellent choice. If you've been playing this game a while, you've probably done all the starting quests a few times and are tired of them. With a Death Knight, you hit the ground running at 55, the first three levels are done before you know it and you're ready to zip through the Burning Crusade.

5. DKs make excellent gatherers.

Though they hinted a couple BlizzCons ago that Death Knights wouldn't have to go back to Elwynn Forest to kill wolves or pick flowers in order to level their professions, nothing like that was ever implemented. So, it doesn't matter what professions you choose, you have to start right along with the level 5 characters. That having been said, the fact that you get an epic mount for free (well, you steal it) really helps catch up to your level -- at least in the gathering professions. The cost of leveling the crafting professions is rather prohibitive, but gathering is a quick and easy thing to do which adds useful abilities, feeds your other crafters and can net you lots of extra cash on the AH. I particularly recommend Herbalism and Skinning. You get a free heal and a crit buff, they are the quickest of the three to level and you don't have to switch your minimap find function.

4. Death Knights are EZ mode.

Maybe you haven't read about the best builds/gear/techniques for playing your Death Knight, but for leveling purposes, you don't need to read a thing. Just pick the talents that seem fun and start mowing through your opponents. They are a bit overpowered while leveling, allowing you to solo even elite mobs above your level and defend yourself against the DK hating gankers (of which there are a few on PvP servers). They are also really good at fighting multiple mobs at a time, making questing that much faster.

3. Warlocks in plate.

This is kind of a repeat of number 4, but soloability is important to those of us whose schedules don't allow for much grouping. If you go Unholy spec, you get a pet ghoul that obeys your commands and is ready to fight whenever you are. Well... a couple seconds after you are... he has to crawl out of the ground first. With very little effort, dying is a rare event and everything short of instances can be done by the two of you.

2. Desecration.

Having arms pop up out of the ground while you fight is delightfully creepy goodness. Yes, I am biased toward the Unholy spec.

And the number one reason to make a Death Knight, whether casual or hardcore or anywhere inbetween:

1. The starting quests.

The lore, the instanced world, the quest chains, Arthas whispering in your ear -- the starting DK quests are sheer gaming pleasure. I have never had such a hard time reconciling my personal ethics with what I was doing in-game (yes I did things the hard way -- the light side -- in KotOR) and I loved every minute of it. Even if you abandon your DK right after your walk of shame to Thrall or King Varian Wrynn, the first three levels of being a Death Knight is worth spending a few of your play sessions.

The Complete Death Knight Starting Guide

It’s a fact: the first thing most people will do once they get their hands on the expansion is create a Death Knight. We’ve all seen the screen shots, that huge Gothic-looking armor, all those new skills to try out and new areas to see. And everyone’s got questions: What will it be like starting at level 55, will Death Knights be over-powered, will there be 200 Death Knights in the starting area, will I have to fight over quest mobs with the opposing faction? With all this in mind, I checked out World of Warcraft’s very first Hero Class for myself.

Spoiler Alert! The following article is a complete and comprehensive description of the entire Death Knight “prequel”. If you want to leave yourself any surprises for the actual release, you’d be advised to skim the article, if not give it a miss completely!…

When the Death Knight creation page came up, I noticed one thing immediately - the Death Knight didn’t look like he did on the Alpha. Gone is the hulking spiked armor I’d seen at Blizzard back in May and at the WWI a month ago, and in its place are dark robes and a cowl covering the face. Determined not to be disappointed about something so trivial (!), I logged in.

Phase One

The starting introduction, like the ones we all get when we start new characters, explained that you gave your life to protect your people against the scourge, but you were killed and taken by the Lich King to serve him for eternity. When the short fly-over is done, you find your newly-created character on the highest level of the huge floating necropolis known as Acherus: The Ebon Hold, which is now hovering over the hills behind Light’s Hope Chapel. The first thing you see as a Death Knight is The Lich King, flanked by two ghostly Val’kyr Battle-Maidens. He informs you that as part of the scourge, you will wipe out the Scarlet Crusade and destroy the Argent Dawn at Light’s Hope Chapel. You must begin training immediately, so you are instructed to take a teleporter down to the 2nd floor of Acherus, and find Instructor Razuvious.

Blizzard have handled the Death Knight levelling area in a unique way; they have instanced sections of the progress through the campaign, so all the Death Knights on a particular phase are on the same level of progress. In this phase, everyone you see will have also just created their characters, and will be going through the same quests as you. However, Blizzard have clearly taken care to avoid the situation that arose in Hellfire Peninsula, where dozens of us had quests to kill the same mobs or named NPCs, creating queues of players waiting for their chance to collect their quest item. Horde and Alliance are also on seperate instance servers, on the beta anyway, so there is no trouble with PvP, although Archerus is a sanctuary zone like Shattrath anyway.

One nice touch about the Death Knight prequel is the buff that stays on you for the duration of the training before you hit the regular servers:

“Undying Resolve - Watched over and protected by the Lich King. Can only occur once every ten minutes.”

This means that if you die, you will be resurrected by one of the Lich King’s Val’kyr Battle-Maidens. As long as you don’t die again within 10 mins, you will be ressed on the spot, which is very handy when you’re starting out with a character.




Getting Your First Runeblade


Despite the appearance of your armor on the character selection screen, it is indeed all plate. The set you begin with is all green quality, including 2 rings and a necklace. All your weapon skills are 270/300 and so is your First Aid. You have no weapon yet, but Instructor Razuvious sets out to remedy that straight away. You are instructed to go and pick up a battle-worn sword from a nearby weapon rack, then take it to a runeforge. Using the blade there will transform it into a runebladed sword. Take this back to Instructor Razuvious, and he rewards you with your first weapon, a blue quality 2 handed sword, the Runed Soulblade. Razuvious also teaches you the art of runeforging when you hand this quest in, so take your new weapon straight back to the runeforge and chose a Rune “enchantment” to apply to it. You don’t need any reagents at this point, but that might change in the future. When handing this in, you are told to fight an NPC in the center of the room. This gives you a chance to try combat for the first time.




You have no talent points to spend yet, but that is about to change. As you complete certain quests in the Death Knight prequel, you are awarded talent points along with armor, weapons and experience.

The next quests you get allow you to see more of Archerus. Use the stairs and find Master Siegesmith Corvus, to obtain his Status Report. He is located on the North West side of the upper level. He sends to you Scourge Commander Thalanor, who is on the South East side. Once that’s been handed in, Thalanor orders you to go and speak to the Lich King again, at the top of Archerus. Get there by using one of the yellow transporters, located in each of the stairwells.

Keep An Eye Out!

On arrival at the top of Archerus, speak to the Lich King. He grants you the power to use the Eye of Archerus, which you must guide around the Scarlet Crusade’s town beneath the floating necropolis, to spy on four main places of interest; the Scarlet Hold, the Forge, Town Hall and the Chapel. Click the glowing portal near the Lich King, and you find yourself seeing the world from the eye’s point of view. You are taken down to the town below, and given control of the floating Eye of Archerus.






The places you need to gather information on are marked with the same hovering red arrow that the Hunter’s Mark uses. When you approach one of these arrows, the Scarlet Crusade gathered nearby begin ranged attack on you. You have four options when using the Eye:

Syphon of Acherus: Gathers tactical information on the nearby Scarlet structure

Summon Ghouls on the Scarlet Crusade: Calls on ghouls to attack the scarlet crusade aggressors, giving you time to get the Eye to safety.

Shroud: Shrouds the Eye from sight. Combat and actions break the shroud.

Recall Eye of Acherus: Returns the eye to Acherus.

The eye doesn’t have much health, so don’t hang around. Fly in above the building you need to analyse, summon ghouls, analyse quickly and be on your way, making sure to pause in between buildings to regenerate any lost HP if necessary. As soon as you’ve gathered data on all four buildings, use the recall option and you find yourself back on top on Acherus. Hand in the quest with the Lich King, nearby. He then gives you a quest to report to Darion Mograine. Reach him by using the central (purple) teleporter on the second level (the Runeforge room).

You arrive at the bottom level of Acherus, and behind you, overlooking the town below, is Darion Mograine and Baron Rivendare. When you hand in the quest with Mograine, you gain the buff “Dominion Over Acherus: While in Acherus the Death Knight is able to move 75% faster.”. This applies to every Death Knight when they are inside the Acherus, and is very useful because you may not use your mount inside the building.

Once you have completed this quest, you are permitted to use the lower central teleporter to continue the quest line, and go to speak with Prince Valanar at Death’s Breach, the Scourge’s base on land directly below the necropolis.

Note: Going through this teleporter moves you on to stage two of the Death Knight prequel, and once done, you can not go back to an earlier stage. However, the game will not permit you to go through the teleporter until you have completed all you need to do in that area, so don’t worry, you can’t miss anything important. If you have friends you wish to level alongside, you might want to wait until you are all at the same stage, because you will not be able to meet up otherwise.

Phase Two

Down at Death’s Breach, you are met with the sight of a battle staging area. Hand in your quest with the vampiric Prince Valanar and accept the next quest “If Chaos Drives, Let Suffering Hold the Reins”. For this quest, you must kill 10 Scarlet Crusaders and 10 Citizens of Havenshire. There are three other quests to collect here too:

Salanar the Horseman gives the you “Grand Theft Palamino” - rewards a mount.

Olrun the Battlecaller gives you “Death’s Challenge” - rewards blue quality PvP Trinket.

Orithos the Sky Darkener gives you “Tonight We Dine in Havenshire” - Rewards blue quality cloak.