World of Warcraft Wrath of The Lich King
The Death Knight is the first announced Hero class for World of Warcraft. Death Knights, according to Blizzard developers, are able to sufficiently fill the ‘tank’ and DPS (damage per second) roles. Death Knights can wear plate armor and wield weapons with rune engravings (enhancements), but they cannot use shields. A Death Knight’s summoned pet (ghoul) is temporary and only lasts a short amount of time; however Death Knights can choose to specialize to make the ghoul permanent and give them full control over it.
Players who upgrade their accounts with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion are able to create one level 55 Death Knight per realm (the character number limit still applies), on any realm, once they have a character on the same account of level 55 or higher. Newly created Death Knights begin with a larger set of spells and abilities than new characters of other classes, but they start with no talent points and must unlock available talent points for their level by completing quests in the Death Knight starting area in Eastern Plaguelands (called Plaguelands: The Scarlet Enclave).[12] Both the Alliance and Horde factions have access to the class, and Death Knights may be of any race.
Instead of utilizing rage, energy, or mana for combat resource systems, the Death Knight uses a new system; runes, which are displayed under the player portrait, and runic power, which is generated by using runes in other attacks.[13] The Death Knight has two of each type of rune available (blood, unholy, and frost) for use. After a rune is used it enters a (nominally) ten second ‘cooldown’ period before it can be used again. With specific talents, the Death Knight can also turn their runes into Death Runes, which can be used as any runes type. Additionally, runic power decays over time when the Death Knight is out of combat.
