Death Knights: The Dark Knights of Azeroth

Shrouded in mystery, the Death Knights--Blizzard's first World of Warcraft hero class--will be available to play in the upcoming Northrend expansion Wrath of the Lich King. And, like the superhero Batman, they will have endless utility while at the same time being as scary (and nutty) as grandma's fruit cake. Or, perhaps, grandma herself.

Ten Ton Hammer has a great article up about Death Knights which includes lots of details about this new class from Tom Chilton, aka Kalgan, Blizzard's co-lead designer.

Excerpts from the article:

• The Death Knight is an anti-caster tank. “They’ll be fully capable of tanking creatures on the more common level, like the heroic dungeons and five person instances,” Chilton said. “But where they’ll really shine in the raid scenario is in tanking casters.”
• Chilton said, "If you have a level 55 character on your account, it unlocks the ability to create a Death Knight.” Chilton also mentioned that the Death Knight can come from any of the races.... “You’ll be limited to one Death Knight per server that you play on,” Chilton stated. “Players will be able to make multiple Death Knights, but they’ll have to do so over multiple servers rather than just one."
• [Chilton said,] “You’ll start off in a new area created specifically for Death Knights. They’ll have their own quests and you’ll go through that quest line to learn how to play as the class along with picking up some early abilities, gear, and learn a bit of the storyline behind the class.”

More excerpts about Death Knight abilities:

• The vast majority of a Death Knight’s abilities use runes and are represented by the three pairs of colored symbols that have replaced the energy / rage / mana bar.... An example is the “Death Coil” ability (which Chilton described as iconic to the class), which requires runic power and unleashes it all causing up to 600 shadow damage to a non-undead enemy target or healing up to 900 damage on a friendly undead target.
• Another finishing move we saw...consumes all the runic power but grants the Death Knight immunity to stun effects and significantly increases their armor for 12 seconds.
• The Death Knight uses a rune to surround the Death Knight in an anti-magic shell, which absorbs 75% of the damage from the next spell and transfers that into runic power.
• The “Mind Freeze” ability...interrupts casting.
• A runic power ability called “Strangulate”...flushes all of the Death Knight’s runic power, silences an enemy for a maximum of five seconds...causing a bit of damage.
• The iconic “Death and Decay” ability...casts an area effect damage spell and his[sic] a chance to fear some of the targets within the area.
• The Grip of Death...pulled an opponent directly to the Death Knight, bringing him face to face with the horrid fighter.... “That Grip of Death ability is one of the Death Knight’s primary taunt mechanics,” Chilton said. “It will also be a lot of fun in arenas where you could pull a guy right into the middle of your gank squad.”[sic]
• Players will be able to use knockback maneuvers – along with pull maneuvers.
• The Death Knight can also root enemies in place using the “Chain of Ice” ability, which wraps his opponents in icy chains.
• Death Knights also have the ability to raise their own ghoul guardians to fight alongside them... So if a friendly player you’re grouped with dies, you can actually cast “Create Dead” on their corpse and that player will have the option to play as the Death Knight’s ghoul.... The Death Knight can also use the Death Pact ability to slaughter his own guardian and gain a bit of health back.
• The Death Knight can also summon their own “Death Charger” – a horse that functions similarly to the Warlock and Paladin abilities to summon mounts.
• Players will have three different “Presences” to choose from while they’re fighting: the Blood Presence for maximum DPS, the Frost Presence is the tanking aura, and the Unholy Presence for the PvP style of gameplay.

Go to Ten Ton Hammer to read the whole article because it's worth it. There are many more details there about Death Knights than in my outline here.

Warcraft players then assaulted the Blizzard forums over the weekend with countless posts about Death Knights. Beloved Blue Nethaera insists that Blizzard will "make sure the Death Knight is balanced in with everyone else," though these abilities do seem a bit overpowered (particularly the "arena ganking" one). Some players have been expressing concern that their characters are held up in too much crowd control lately--especially in arenas--so it's interesting to see Blizzard give this class even more abilities to make you lose control of your character. Also, I'm picturing the combination of Death Knight with certain racials to be arguably overpowered, like Blood Elf (racial aoe silence) , Night Elf (racial stealth), or Dwarf (racial stoneskin). Strange that you can be a death knight Dranei but not a warlock Dranei. I thought this was because the Dranei were so good that they could never be corrupted. Maybe that will be explained.

I don't mean to nitpick about a class that isn't even finished yet. Okay, I admit I'm still a little bitter that Blizzard took away never implemented priests' Summon Champion, yet they are giving Death Knights an ability to drag people to them. Perhaps Summon Champion will be in game for level 80's. Or perhaps I will be the only priest in a game full of Death Knights! I don't even want to think about that.

There's a lot of miscellaneous stuff that still has to be ironed out. No word yet on the fleshing out of the talent trees. No word yet on what level Death Knights will start with their professions. Nathaera explains: "At this point, we haven't shared what we may be doing with the Death Knight class in regard to how professions will be handled with them. When we have more information we can share on this, we will."