Manga: World of Warcraft: Death Knight
Story by: Dan Jolley
Art by: Rocio Zucchi
Publisher: Tokyopop
Age rating: T (Teen age 13+)
Genre: Action/Fantasy
May include: Mild violence & mild gore
Release date: December 2009

World of Warcraft: Death Knight is the story of a Lordaeron soldier, Thassarian, whose main goal has always been to honor his dead father’s memory.  However, no matter how dedicated he was, his superiors never thought he’d end up being anything BUT a regular soldier since he never showed much initiative and only seemed good at following orders.

One day his company is assigned to help Prince Arthas’ army fight against the Scourge… and that’s when all of his troubles start.

Thassarian in WoW

In this manga, you get to understand a bit better what happened to Prince Arthas after he loses his mind and sides with the Lich King.  You also learn how some of his men become Death Knights and how a few escape the Lich King’s control. But the story focuses mainly on who Thassarian is, where he came from and how he became the first death knight to ever rejoin the Alliance after being under the control of the Lich King. 

Some of you might actually have met Thassarian before.  He can be found in the World of Warcraft MMO and you are invited to help him fight the Lich King in a few quests.

Since the announcement of its release back in September, I’ve been very eager to read this manga.  I’ve always been a huge fan of the Warcraft lore which is why I wasn’t going to miss it.

As I expected, I was not disappointed. 

The artwork was beautiful despite being very gory and violent at times and the story was very well written. I have to admit, I read the whole thing so fast, I wish they had written more about what happen to Thassarian after he broke free from the Lich King.  

Hopefully they plan on writing more about this very courageous Death Knight in the future.

So how do you fight against this new class? A class with so many defensive mechanics yet at the same time can put out a beastly amount of dps on the battlefield. Since a majority of DK’s are unholy, I will give a more thorough aspect of the unholy DK powers…because if DK’s are any other spec you can just sit on them. There’s a few things you should learn when you face a DK. I will explain it from my point of view. Click “read full article” for the details.

-Bone Shield

Pro: I cast this right when I enter arena so the CD is up when the gates fall down. This will allow me to basically have 8 bones when I enter the battle because I can raise another set of bones when I want to.

Counter: I will try to auto swing and use all weak possible direct damage abilities I can to waste and consume the charge on the DK’s bone shield. This cannot be purged so if you have casters you can have them try to wand it/ice lance etc. This combined with IBF makes a DK very hard to take down. For mutilate rogues, don’t muta right after you stun, wait for your white hits to consume the bones then use muta. The muta is practically wasted when you muta against a charge of bone shield. 40% damage reduction is pretty big.

-Icebound Fortitude

Pro: I use this when heavy fire is coming towards me or when a rogue is trying to set up a devastating kidney shot. When a BM hunter uses Beast Within you should use this ability because he will try to burst you down when his pet stuns you with intimidate. Being able to be immune to the intimidate and cut his super saiyen power damage in half will save you from dying.

Counter: While the DK is immune to stun, he is not immune to other cc’s… remember DK’s are vulnerable to CC’s so blind, sheep, freeze, fear etc while you see IBF up. I know for me, it makes me angry when I’m cc’d while I have IBF up because when I have IBF I go very offensive because that’s when they also let down their guard to try to burst you down so their defense is open.

-Magic Supression

Pro: This will make you immune to magic damage while under the effect of anti magic shield… so from 75% -> 100% so even if the pom pyro was going to crit for 10k, it would initially hit you for 2.5k damage…but with this talent maxed out you are immune. You can use AMS instead of combining AMS and IBF to survive super spell damage.

Counter: there isn’t much you can do when a DK is running around with 10 second spell immunity unless you are physical DPS. Other than that, just try to heal up and keep topped off.

-Desecration

Pro: Usually I would throw out 2 icy chains and then plague strike 2 targets. Why? Because I snare them and I increase the area of slow, so instead of trying to scourge strike try to setup the field to your advantage. 50% slow is very nice because it’s like an on demand frost trap. And on top of that you do 5% more damage. Even a druid will hafta crawl through this aoe slow effect.

Counter: GET OUT OF IT! If you are in this that means the DK is landing a lot of hits and will boost his sustained damage by a lot. Disengage, blink out, or cc the DK and move. Try to keep your distance

-Gargoyle

Pro: This is when the DK dps shoot up the foot, basically a flying moonkin just spamming wrath on the DK’s target. A good DK would know how to use his garg. There are a few tactics, one where you just try to train 1 person down and go all out on it, or you can launch the garg at the DPS and work on the healer. The 2^nd tactic will put the healer in a tough spot because he needs to decide who to heal. The garg can hit from 1.5 to 3-4k per shot depending on the DK’s ap atm. To make this more potent, summon the garg out and if you have a shaman blood lusting it will yield an awesome result. Presences also have an effect on the gargoyles damage. With blood out it will shoot for 15% more damage and with unholy its normal damage but shoots 15% faster. But shooting faster also drains runic power at a faster rate.

Counter: Currently it is bugged and comes out with half health around 5.5k hp. If you are ranged then you should shoot it down asap to mitigate a lot of incoming damage. As a moonkin I turn around and throw a moonfire and 2 wraths and it’s dead. If you are melee then you are screwed and you will hafta live with the garg out shooting at you or your teammate for a minute. Or you can stall the DK long enough so he runs out of runic power.

-Anti-Magic Zone

Pro: I drop this around a pillar or on top of the teams healer. This helps the healer survive against current arena matches where mages do ridiculous damage etc.

Counter: Try to AoE the people inside because it only absorbs about 15k~ damage (10,000+ 2XAP). Or try to pull the playing field away from AMZ. If you are the other DK pull out the target that’s trying to turtle under the field and then commence your attack.

Misc.

Learning how to control your bone shield charges and cool down will greatly increase your chance to survive. Being able to feel and time the enemies big strikes like blade storm/execute/aimed shot/arcane barrage etc will keep you in the game longer. Night of the Dead will probably be a necessary talent later on because smart people will kill ghouls early on to avoid prolonged damage and well timed stuns.

New to playing a Death Knight? Need tips how to play one in PvE or PvP situations? Kai is your boy with all the answers.

• Death Knights Part 4 – Unholy Spec
• Death Knights Part 3
• Death Knights Part 2
• World of Death Knights (Part 1)

This spec deals mostly with diseases and magic. Very powerful in both pve and pvp currently the most favored spec. Has excellent AoE and single target dps.

Abilities:

Plague Strike - This instant strike causes blood plague…which is another disease that can boost scourge strike/blood strike/heart strike damage. But this isn’t where its potent…its ability to remove HoTs is what makes this super powerful. The word says REMOVE not DISPEL so it works 100% against dispel resistance mechanics…for example on a druid with 3 stacks of lifebloom…if he gets plague striked he will lose that stack of lifebloom and wont get the tick off. Crazy? Hell ya it is. But wait there more! Every time the blood plague ticks it will have a 25% chance to remove ANOTHER HoT.

Click “Read Full Article” to read up on other abilities and how to use them.

Death Coil – This ability is very optional because as unholy you will be spending your runic power on unholy blight and gargoyle. It does about 1k to about 3k damage and has a 30 yard range. It just helps you finish off people that try to run away to try to help push back a caster’s cast time.

Deathstrike – With max disease stacks (4) your dk can heal for 1.5-7k depending if your DS crits or not. This is spammed only when you are desperately trying to recover your hp back.

Scourge Strike – Shadow damage! Can you say ignore armor?! Haha this is where plate vs plate shines. This ability can hit really hard normally around 2k~ but can crit up for 5-6k maybe even higher with better gear.

Unholy Presence – This is soley a PvP talent…15% move speed if you can spare the points…especially if you play in 3’s or 5’s team it will help everyone move faster.

Unholy Blight – This can be used to pull rogues out of stealth because of its 10 yard aoe and stays up for 20 seconds. The damage is ghetto but adds up in AoE’s, good for another disease debuff.

Corpse Explosion – is just down right horrible right now but I guess you can try to lure rogues near a corpse and blow it up and pull the rogue out of stealth.

Death and Decay – Decent AoE and when glyphed it can be the gayest thing ever. Its cower or fear effect is bugged so you cannot ice block or bubble when cowered. The 2 second fear can make or break a game…every second and every global counts in s5+.

PvE 1 – Click here to view talent tree

This is the most ideal PvE spec because in decent gear this will put you over 30% crit easy. The attack power from the blood talents synergize and convert with the Impurity talent in the unholy tree allowing more spell power. The reason why I did not put points into Dirge is that runic power isn’t too gather. Runic power is mostly used for unholy blight and possible gargoyle. When unholy blight (and total of 4 diseases) and gargoyle & ghoul are all up on one target…that is when the DK’s dps is most potent. Anti Magic Field is not necessary for PvE (atleast not the moment unless you’re tank spec). I would recommend getting at least 9% hit and 6% expertise. Missing strikes means you are behind on your rotations and runic generation. My usual rotation is IT>PS>SS>BS>BS then Blood Tap if needed for the extra runic power to use Unholy Blight. The continue with the rotation and if you have good chain proc’s on scourge strike glyph you can keep scourge striking until the diseases fall off.

PvE 2 – Click here to view talent tree

This spec gives frost fever a huge boost in damage…I didn’t notice this until I saw another DK spec into this. The 30% from Black Ice and ebon plague will increase this substantially. Initially the damage from Necrosis or Blood Cake is very low…around 1-3%…but with attack speed boost it will definitely have more PPM. I believe Necrosis needs to be buffed…in beta it was decent at 25% but got knocked down to 10%…5 points for this is very mediocre but we are trying to maximize DPS over utility in PvE specs.

PvP - Click here to view talent tree

This spec gives a lot of survivability and still puts out good damage. Rune Tap can be a 5-6k heal every 30 seconds which is huge in arena. Along with the mark of blood up, a rogue will be healing their target 4% every hit, so with fast daggers or weapons they constantly heal their target up. It basically puts them out of the game for 20 seconds. Good thing its getting nerfed so it can be dispelled and has a limited number of heals.

Being able to micro the ghoul makes you one step ahead of other death knights. I have a macro for my ghoul: (press twice)

/cast leap

/cast gnaw

This allows me to interrupt casters and give me a stun on demand. A half a kidney shot on a 20 second timer is very nice.

Use the anti magic zone to protect your team, especially healers because they will get gibbed really fast in current arena situations. You can still get cc’d in here so don’t think you are immune to magic while in AMZ.

Next article will be more detailed on how to PvP AGAINST a death knight. I will reveal its strength and weaknesses.

Frost Spec

PvP: Click here for talent tree

After much debate and respec’ing…I felt the most comfortable build for PvP is this one…This gives me the most control and allows me to obtain up to 6 death runes. 6 death runes means that you can spam plenty of Chains of Ice(CoI) and Icy touches(IT). The extra 10 yards is amazing and makes it feel as if you are a mage in plate, even if people blink or intercept away, you are still able to hit them with you spells and kite them. It was really hard for me to decide whether I should get Chilbains vs Death Rune Mastery. After a bit of testing I concluded that the 30% wasn’t worth it…it was like half a daze…I’d rather be able to spam CoI on someone than have a ghetto 30% slow.

Click “Read full article” for more information
Another reason is that I like playing frost spec in Unholy Presence which allows me to chase people like a ret paly with 15% movespeed. In arena the DK will most likely be paired up with another toon that has better snare or slows so overlapping move impairment effects is not effective/needed. With multiple death runes up you can spam IT back to back resulting in massive DPS. IT can crit for 2k+ and spamming 6 in a row in 6 seconds can result in over 12k damage. While your GCD is much faster, your move speed and ASPD (attack speed) is also faster by 15% bringing your total aspd to 40% haste! I remember seeing my 3.5aspd 2h at around 2.6 or basically like a rogue weapon…faster attacks means more white hits and more white hits means more proc chances for Killing Machine(KM). Howling Blast(HB) itself does crappy damage if there is no Frost Fever disease on the target. Endless Winter allows CoI to give the debuff so you don’t need to cast IT and can go straight for HB. The reason why HB is so powerful is because of the multiplier from the talents. Glacial Rot (10%) + Black Ice (30%) + [if target is under 35% then Merciless Combat for 12%] + Guile of Gorefiend (45%)[if crit] + Tundra Stalker (10%) = 142% more damage + 200% damage from Runic Focus, which is a passive ability that gives DK spells a 2X multiplier instead of the 1.5X that casters receive. In my early stages of 80 (ghetto blues) I’ve crit up to 5k-6k. Another strong point of frost is that Frost Strike cannot be dodged, blocked, or parried. This is a major rogue killer effectively nullifying approximately 30-35% of a rogue’s mitigation. And what’s more awesome is that it counts as FROST damage…basically ignores armor much like scourge strike. Crits vary between 4-6k. A helpful macro for a defensive move/escape would be:

/cast Icebound Fortitude

/cast Unbreakable Armor

I keep Lichborne off for PvP purposes, there is a Lichborne macro so if you press it the 2nd time it will cancel the effect…why you ask? So you don’t eat anti-undead spells, but rather you used it effectively as a fear break.

an offensive macro I personally use as frost is:

/cast Howling Blast

/cast Rune Strike

This free’s up a button since HB is on a 6 second CD you can press this for RS. Usually you would want to press HB whenever it’s up so sometimes you can combo HB and RS in an instant.

Hungering cold is a powerful CC. Its like an AoE freeze trap

Not only do your disease do damage in the ice, and the target is considered frozen. I believe that even when blizzard tried to nerf the synergy between mage and DK they still left some room for some synergy. For example: Poly switch. When the mages target trinkets the poly the DK can unleash HB (assuming both targets are close or at least close to the target that trinketed) and attack the other one. Once the target is frozen allow the mage to charge up a Frostbolt/Ice Lance shatter combo on the target and then let the DK continually barrage on the target.

PvE: Click here for talent tree

The rotation should be quite simple: IT>PS>OB>BS>BS and the next round will set yourself up with 4 death runes and 2 frost OB(if frost fever is still applied on the target)>IT>HB>IT>IT>IT>IT>HB or slight variations off that. Blood Strike should only be used the convert blood runes into death runes.

This was an interesting bit…theory crafting with dual wield. Currently I believe that 2h’s benefit the DK a great amount due to the amount of instant strike abilities. But I’ve theory crafted with others that think that this spec could be viable:

PvE: (Dual Wield) Click here for talent tree | Click here for alternative talent tree

for more crit damage and RP dump

Notice how I didn’t go down past the 31 talents. When I spec’d to Unholy I couldn’t believe how much impurity mattered…it is great for spells…especially when you ride in over 3k AP self buffed easy. Much of the AP is converted to SP…25%!! And on top of that the blood tree for the bladed armor also offers around 360AP ish? 13,000/180X5=360~ And 25% of that gets converted into more SP = ~90 sp. Around 100~ if you were wearing all plate, I have a few pieces of hunter gear…(REVENGE! Haha jk) So a decently geared DK for example: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Executus&n=pudge (yum so sexy)

Can run around with over 1k SP not including the base ap=>sp conversions that the DK itself receives. I heard most of the damage is from spells and not of white damage, whereas other specs is the other way around.

Another reason for dual wield is because of the increased quantity of white attacks from both weapons, you will naturally have more crit procs in a fight whereas you would receive less crit procs from a 2h. Here is where it gets interesting, Killing Machine(KM) will proc frequently and most of your HB or IT will crit. Remember spell damage does not directly correlate with weapon damage at all. An interesting debunk is that +SP items/enchants don’t benefit the DK at all. I’m not to sure if this is entirely true because the amount of SP gear that a DK receives would be too little to gather a good amount of data…plus you will miss out a lot on raw AP from str/AP and crit/agi.

Just a few days after Wrath of the Lich King Launched, We have the first 80’s:

Dessembrae from Eternal Corpse Council (EU-Mazrigos) was the first Death Knight to reach level 80 in the world on November 15 at 19:00 CEST !

Essay (US-Tichondrius) was the first death knight to reach level 80 in the United States a few hours later, at 10:00PM server time.

via mmo-champion

Tomorrow night’s launch of the WoW expansion WOTLK is one of the most anticipated nights in this gaming calendar, with many people planning to line up for the midnight release at many gaming stores. As with the BC expansion, there are certainly many things to do the first day Wrath is released.

The race to level 80 will certainly be on many minds as people race to reach the level cap as fast as possible. Others will look to be the first to level up and master the new hero class Death Knight. The majority of people will probably take the time to enjoy the new scenery and instances; this, of course, is assuming they’ll be able to log on during the high-traffic and server-crashing days that are a certainty in the near future.

Personally, I’m ready to see the new battlegrounds and test out new compositions for arena. What are you most excited about?