Death Knights

Let me introduce myself. I’m Kai, I have a level 70 Undead Rogue, Orc Rogue, Tauren Warrior, Orc Warlock, and Tauren Druid. After a lot of debating and theory crafting I decided to take my Druid to 80. When Blizzard announced that they would merge all the hit, crit, and spell power together I knew that hybrids would be the kings of this expansion. Pure classes would get shat on because hybrid DPS can pop out and heal just as well. So often times in BG’s my druid would be on the top of damage, heals, kills etc. So yes I do play a lot and I have gone over the 2000 arena ratings but today’s article will mainly focus on the new class Death Knight.

I will discuss the Strength and Weaknesses of Death Knights, PvP strategies, and Spec’s

I have a level 80 Death Knight so what? Currently it pwns A LOT of face. I played DK in beta and was quite fond of its unique playing style. Since I played warrior and rogue, I adapted very well and was quite pleased with the overall class. You combo different moves from runes like a rogue to generate runic power, then dump it like a warrior on different abilities. Note to readers: I am VERY PvP orientated so I created an Undead Death Knight. In beta everyone said that undead was retarded and WoTF wasn’t needed because Lichborne would replace it. WRONG these newbz know nothing of PvP. Once you’ve played a DK you know its weakness. I played Druid DK Warrior Rogue and Warlock on beta. And when I was on my Warlock (everyone had like 20k+ hp in savage gladiator gear) I could easily kill a DK without losing 20% of my hp. Fears and snares are the main weakness of a DK and perhaps silence and maaaybe disarm. Say you break a fear with Lichborne, you are still affected by Paladins and Priests as they stun/shackle/fear you because you turned undead. Lichborne should be used to mitigate heavy melee damage or fear break and then canceled right away. Snares? DK’s don’t have an intercept, they have a reversed intercept death grip but its on a waaay long CD. Imagine a warrior with a 35 second intercept lol o wait that’s a fury warrior lawl. SILENCE! Didn’t think it would affect DK’s but it does…if a DK is silenced he can only auto swing…GG so for mages I advise you to counter spell the DK right when he death grips you so you don’t eat a 5 second silence from strangulate. Disarm? eh

Let me go over a few core abilities you must watch out for:

-Death Grip: Everyone’s complaining how OP it is. In beta it was buggy lol let me give you an example: If you frost chain someone and death grip right away, they would slowly fly into the air like 60 yards, then if they leaped (as a ghoul) or heroic leap (the scrapped warrior fury ability) you would immediately be launched to the roof of the world and take like 2 minutes to fall back down. The range is quite long 35 yards? And with the upcoming patch, the glyph will reset its 35 second cooldown after every mob killed.

-Chains of Ice: In beta the reduction was 5% per second over 20…but it was way too ridiculous and got nerfed to 10% per second over 10. Its initial second roots the target completely so ZERO move speed then after 1 second 90% slowed then 80% etc. whats unique about it is that its kind of spammable but doesn’t count as a ‘root’ effect. That means warriors don’t gain second wind from it lol. As frost I will post a build where you can kill a warrior from 100-0 without even being near him, you can just chain cast from 30 yards and kite him forever.

-Icy Touch: Its like a fireblast from a mage, instant ranged but also give a DoT effect…this is actually quite a big chunk of DPS (atleast for unholy). Each disease makes certain strikes hit harder so you don’t want to have too many diseases stack up on you. For example my Unholy DK’s scourge strike crits for 2k with no diseases on the target…but with all my diseases up(4 for unholy 2 for other specs) I can crit over 5k. I will elaborate more on specs later on

-Plague Strike: This thing is the bane of druids. It REMOVES HoTs. You say “so what? It’ll just cause lifebloom to bloom at the end.” WRONG I had a DK test this out against my Druid…I stacked 3 Lifeblooms expecting it to just remove 1/3 and bloom on me…but nooo it removed ALL 3 stacks and didn’t BLOOM. Since it counts as a ‘removal’ and not a ‘dispel’ it made Lifebloom useless and the druid talent Subtlety (30% dispel resistance) retarded. BUT WAIT! THERES MORE! You should know that plague strike causes blood plague…which is another dot…now get this…each DoT tick from blood plague will have a 25% chance to remove another HoT. WTH!!! Wow so if I tossed lifebloom and a rejuv, theres a chance that I will lose the 2^nd hot within 3 seconds, not even allowing it to tick twice or even once. As I said before, this will be the bane of druids and this is Blizzards way of dethroning OP Resto Druids from arena.

-Scourge Strike: lol no longer removes a HoT so no more double HoT removals from plague->SS. But what makes this talent so strong? It completely ignores armor and its damage counts as shadow…I will elaborate more later on on how unholy spec blew my mind from frost.

-Anti Magic Shell: for normal DK’s without the talented spell resist in unholy, this little bugger creates a shield around the DK itself and reduces all incoming magic damage by 75%, yes even poison damages from rogues. Depending on the amount of damage, it can vary from gaining 1 runic power to 20. Lasts 5 seconds unglyphed but with the current game and glyph it lasted 10 seconds. It will be nerfed to 7 seconds glyphed and still have its CD increased by 15 seconds. When I was UH DK I was able to walk around with 100% immunity to magic for 10 seconds. Felt sooo good like a Cloak of Skill on crack.

-Ice Bound Fortitude: This ability made me raise my eyebrows. I was like “are you serious? A 1 minute shield wall? LOL” so of course everyone abused it in PVP as an offensive shield wall literally doubling your hp pool for 12 seconds (18 if frost talented)…AND! Makes you immune to stuns for its duration lol.so if I saw a stupid Retardin comings towards me I’d just pop IBF and continue to fight and lawl at the damage he does towards me and how he cant toss his hammer of gayness at me. In Beta ret pallies made everyone want to kill themselves…with HoJ lasting 7 seconds on a 20 second CD? Cant be dodged/blocked or parried because its considered as a magic effect? It was the gayest thing to fight cuz you would eat a repentance if you trinket and take a truck load of damage. Don’t get me wrong but Ret pallies still hurt. One of the few classes I’m still afraid of…Their judgment of blood or whatever can crit to 7k…my epicly geared DK Pudge of Executus (I know lame server, Tichondrius ftw!) had 19k hp in PLATE get taken down in 1 hammer of gayness…I was trying to cap the flag and then proceeded to get pwned in the bunghole for the whole 7 seconds. After I died I was like ‘lolwut’ FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU- so ya. With the new changes it will be mainly used to avoid stuns. Cheap shot>trinket>IBF>lol immune to kidney shot> and toss down a Death and Decay to where you think the rogue will vanish. Sadly this will get nerfed along with bone shield.

-Death Strike: Vampires anyone? In beta this sucked nuts because you would only get HP back if you killed the target with it…but now you can life leach from 2k to 7k per death strike LOL! So if you are ever in trouble just frost chain someone, and wait for your runes to come back then run up towards them and death strike a few times to gain like half your hp back.

-Strangulate: this use to be on a 45 second CD in beta…a 5 second silence with a ghetto damage at the last second. Its main attribute was the 5 second silence. This allows the DK to finish off casters or healers. If a mage blinks away simply death grip him back to you and strangulate so you don’t eat a frost nova, continue shoving your 2 hander up his arse and /dance when you win. Its now a 2 minute CD or 1 minute and 55 seconds if you have pvp gloves lol…5 seconds off strangulate…common blizzard at least give us 5 more yards on death grip or something…the glove effect is dumb…anywho its changing to ‘Chains of Ice converts a frost rune into a death rune’. As predicted it would change…and this is a very good change lol.

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Orcs look really cool and are the best DK race PvE wise.

But if you are a hardcore PvPer then Undead is the way to go.

THE NEXT ARTICLE will be about specs and gears, what stats important, what specs better for tanking/dps yadda yadda so tune in next time! (I Blog on Wednesdays and Saturdays!)