With the expansion nearing and me still bored at work, I’ve thought some about how I will spec my Death Knight. This has proved more difficult than I originally anticipated…there is so much synergy, so much hybridity between the three Death Knight trees that I’m really not sure which I will end up picking. I may have to pick based on thematics, for goodness’ evil’s sake. And then it’s still a tough decision.
So far as I can tell, all three trees sound quite fun based on tooltips alone. Not to rehash information you might find in a million other places on the internet, but what you have is a melee class that relies quite heavily on disease debuffs. It tanks without a shield, like a druid, using the Parry mechanic more than Dodge. It uses two different types of resources for funding its abilities, the first being Runes which operate vaguely like a Rogue’s energy, and the second being Runic Power, which behaves similarly to a Warrior’s/Bear Druid’s rage.
Each tree has a different “Strike” ability associated with it at 41 points. Heart, Frost, and Scourge, for the Blood, Frost, and Unholy trees, respectively. Each tree is also quite heftily loaded with one-point on-use abilities as well as a host of other passives, much like the trees for the other classes. The difference between the Death Knight trees and the trees for said other classes, though, is just how good almost every single talent in every tree sounds. It’s hard to say for sure how good these talents are having not yet played one…but I don’t recall any talents in any of the trees I would call “pointless.” Not that any talent is completely pointless, but Booming Voice for instance, for Warriors, is as close as you can get, in my opinion (have it increase the radius of Piercing Howl, and then maybe we’ll see if I put it in any of my warrior builds).
If you glance over the Death Knight talents, you notice a lot of what Blizzard learned concerning talents for their classes. In almost every passive talent you can see the word “and,” or the phrase “in addition.” This may not sound like much, but what this means is you have a class where your talents are far less situational, affecting more than one of your abilities or having multiple effects.
Unfortunately, the more I think about it, it seems like this all really boils down to a difference based largely on thematics. You have Blood for melee dps, Frost for control/tanking, and Unholy for spell dps, but only vaguely. In every tree there is at least one hybrid talent for one of those other roles. For instance, Unholy has Magic Suppression and Anti-Magic Zone, two abilities which would be great for the Death Knight tank’s supposed niche role in tanking mobs/bosses that deal hefty amounts of magic damage. In Frost, sure you have a lot of survivability talents, but you also can provide a group buff that increases attack speed. The hybridity is excellent. I hope it works out well.
Now they just need to work this in to the other classes. It would be more difficult in the triple- (or quadruple-, you poor druids) role hybrid classes we have, especially the healers. Basically, what I see in the Death Knight trees is what I see in other talent trees, and that is playstyle based on talent build. However, there’s enough hybridity in each that the build is not so limiting.
This is almost a separate rant, but wouldn’t it be nice if Beacon of Light had some dps utility of some kind, without making it overpowered? How about Riptide, Wild Growth and Guardian Spirit? Do you see Penance? Yeah, kinda like that. All I know is that soloing as a Holy Paladin is boring as hell. We gave tanks increased damage, can we do the same for healers, maybe?
Back to Death Knights, and the one I will be making… it’s going to be Luthehza. I kind of want to look at it from a roleplaying perspective and take into account what I think she would be. As someone once a warrior, Blood makes some sense. However, she’s to have changed, I think. Given (warning, fanfic link here) where she last left off, Frost almost makes some sense. Or perhaps the transition to evil would make Unholy viable.
In short, I don’t know. XD
