The Death Knight

Do you like skulls on your armor? Do you enjoy spreading diseases? Did you root for Arthas in Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne? If so, you might enjoy playing a death knight.

Death knights are World of Warcraft’s first hero class. That is to say, they start not at lvl 1 but at lvl 55. Death knights were an integral part of the story in Wrath of the Lich King, which sent our heroes of the Horde and Alliance into the snowy continent of Northrend to confront Arthas, finally bringing Warcraft’s most iconic villain into our crosshairs.

While Arthas is easily the most iconic death knight in World of Warcraft, he is not the only one. Or even the first one.

Initially, death knights were created by the Horde during the Second War. The Shadow Council, the warlocks who led the Horde alongside the Warchief, had been mostly slaughtered by Ogrim Doomhammer when he seized control of the Horde after the sacking of Stormwind. The Shadow Council’s leader, Gul’dan, saved his own hide by offering Doomhammer powerful new soldiers. Gul’dan had the bodies of powerful Stormwind knights collected, and then channeled the life-forces of the Shadow Council members into these new bodies, creating the first death knights. The first of these death knights was Teron Gorefiend. 

These first death knights were not the unstoppable melee juggernauts of Arthas’ Scourge, they were instead vastly powerful spell-casters, wielding potent necromantic and elemental energies. They would raise undead when fighting their enemies, and operated as weapons of destruction and terror by the Horde. However, nearly all these first death knights were killed by the Alliance during the Second War, and the surviving ones were converted into liches by the Scourge in Lordaeron.

The second incarnation of death knights are the ones present in World of Warcraft as a class. The Lich King’s death knights were his elites, champions of undeath and commanders of the vast hosts of undead. These death knights lacked the free will of the first death knights, instead being part of the Lich King’s gestalt consciousness that permeated every undead in the Scourge.

Playable death knights all belong to the same regiment of the Lich King’s forces; the Knights of Acherus. The original death knights of Acherus were all stationed on the floating necropolis Acherus, or the Ebon Hold, as it’s also called, and dispatched to end the Scarlet Crusade and then the Argent Dawn paladins at Light’s Hope Chapel. However, the death knights learned that they were being sacrificed in an attempt to kill the Argent Dawn’s leader, the paladin Tirion Fordring. During the ensuing siege of the chapel, the Chapel itself, an important place for the Light as we’d find out in Legion, exuding a burst of Light energy that severed the hold the Lich King had on the death knights of Acherus. These death knights laid down their weapons and vowed to help the Argent Dawn fight against their former master, and marched with them and the Horde and Alliance forces into Northrend.

Since then death knights have fought alongside the heroes of Azeroth against all threats, including each other as death knights eventually repatriated back to their nations and took part in the Horde-Alliance conflicts. In the upcoming Shadowlands expansion, death knights and Acherus will play a central role as they will accompany the Horde and Alliance heroes as well as Bolvar Fordragon, the current Lich King, and the Knights of the Ebon Blade.

Death knights can play as damage dealers or tanks. They have two damage specializations and one tank specialization.

Frost - “An icy harbinger of doom, channeling runic power and delivering vicious weapon strikes.”

As the Horde sailors struggled to rescue stuck crewmembers after the ocean gave way, exposing the sea floor and surrounding the area with a wall of water, forcing the Horde and Alliance navies to plummet into the reefs, the second part of the naga’s attack began, as naga myrmidons began swarming the surviving sailors. Forsaken sailors and orc sea dogs alike fell prey to the naga’s attacks. But as the naga closed in for the slaughter, the myrmidon commander noticed the breath coming from his serpentine muzzle turning to frosty mist in the air. The damp, warm air quickly grew chilled as if the snap of a winter morning immediately set it. A naga siren erupted into a blast of frost and icy, falling to the ground. A lone figure began cutting a path through the naga. His form was hard to see, with the whipping frozen tempest raging around him. Eventually, the myrmidon commander made out the figure of a pale orc in the center of the maelstrom, icy swords in each hand, with howling winter winds screaming with each naga that fell. “Death knight!” the commander hissed out loud, but it was already too late, in a brutal sweeping motion, the death knight conjured a scythe of frozen ice, cleaving the last line of naga down. The myrmidon commander died screaming, but no one could hear his screams over the howling winds.

Frost specialization is the death knight damage specialization focusing on rapid strikes and dual-wielding. It plays on the frost aspect of death knights, coming from the frozen wastes of Northrend. These frigid bringers of death engulf themselves in freezing, whipping snowy winds that damage everything around them, as well as channeling frost damage into their strikes. All death knights have a damage-over-time (dot) effect they affect their enemies with. For frost, that is Frost Fever, applied with their Howling Blast strike, where a death knight blasts a target with icy energy, damaging everything around him. Frost relies on a number of procs, where their attacks are briefly empowered beyond their normal damage, such as Rime or Killing Machine. Frost is a solid damage choice, and great for solo play.

Unholy - “A master of death and decay, spreading infection and controlling undead minions to do their bidding.”

“For G’Huun!” the blood trolls screamed as they swarmed towards the Zandalari prelates. Dozens of the trollish cultists came out of their huts and pits, eager to capture more Zandalari for sacrifice to their blood god. The Zandalari warriors formed ranks, preparing to die outnumbered and alone in the Loa-forsaken swamps of Nazmir. But as the blood trolls closed, a lone ghoul leaped over the Zandalari line. And then another. And another. Out of the trees, a terrifying gargoyle swooped down and picked up two blood trolls. The ghouls began tearing and gnawing at anything in range. A skeletal archer and mage fell blood trolls in their tracks. The Zandalari, in just as much shock as the blood trolls, looked behind them and saw a lone Forsaken, clad in grim plate armor, trudging knee deep on swamp sludge. The death knight raised his weapon as he trundled by the Zandalari, and the nearest blood troll erupted in pustules and boils. As he choked on his own blood, similar boils and pustules began appearing on every blood troll nearby. As the very ground itself grew dark with a runic symbol of the Shadowlands, dark energy swirled around, afflicting every blood troll caught in its circle. The battle was short, and after the Zandalari helped finish the survivors, all that was left of the blood troll village was corpses being gnawed on by ghouls, and a Forsaken death knight grumbling about swamp water in his boots.

Unholy is a two-handed weapon damage specialization focusing on spreading diseases and area-of-effect damage, in addition to having combat pets; undead ghouls and the like who fight for the death knight. This specialization focuses on controlling and spreading the pestilence and disease that is synonymous with the Scourge. Unholy’s dot effect is Virulent Plague, spread via their Outbreak ability. When an enemy is hit with Outbreak, any enemy nearby will also contract Virulent Plague. In addition, their Festering Strike applies Festering Wounds to the targets, and when struck by Scourge Strike, a stack of Festering Wounds will erupt, doing damage to the target and all nearby targets. Unholy also has access to the Death & Decay attack where a patch of ground is desecrated with necromantic energy damaging all enemies within it. Unholy is a great choice for any fight that requires a lot of damage spread over multiple targets.

Blood - “A dark guardian who manipulates and corrupts life energy to sustain themselves in the face of an enemy onslaught.”

The pandaren villagers fled in terror. The sky had torn open with a deep purple hue, and great writhing worms had filled the sky. Polyps with eyes covered the mountains near the village, and chattering, chitinous, cackling monstrosities prowled the village edge. In desperation the mayor had told everyone to gather in the inn, the largest building, and await the arrival of the Shado-Pan or Golden Lotus to send aid. Little did the villagers know that the entire Vale of Eternal Blossoms faced an invasion from the Old God, N’zoth. Great obelisks float through the valley, and Faceless Ones sing vile songs to the coming of the Black Empire, and of how N’Zoth would open all eyes to the truth of the Void. The pandaren cowered in the inn, hearing the chattering wails and vile litanies of the monstrosities outside, until a loud bang on the door frightened everyone into silence. The door came down, and a Faceless One stood in the doorway. It slowly slumped to the side of the doorway, a great wound rending it’s back, as it’s blood boiled out of its injuries. Just beyond, in the inky darkness, a lone elf stood before the vile horrors arrayed against the village. One lowly elf was all that stood between the pandaren and an unimaginable fate. The monsters rushed at the blue-skinned elf. And he stood. The ground swelled with necromantic energy around him, and he afflicted the masses of monsters with a boil blood plague, changing their howls of victory to howls of pain. They came in waves, and fell in waves. His sweeping blows seem to reinvigorate him.  Swirling masses of bone circled him, ablating the blows of the gnashing teeth and tentacles. After the chaos and din of battle, as the sun came up, the mayor looked out the door. The beasts all lay dead. And he stood.

Blood is the tank specialization, focused on keeping the death knight alive while it taunts and keeps the attention of enemies, protecting the rest of the group. To that end, Blood death knights excel at using their dark magics to drain the life force of their opponents. In fact, one of their abilities for keeping themselves alive is called Vampiric Blood, and there is definitely a vampiric flavor to Blood, with its focus on sanguinary darkness and draining life. Blood death knights often find themselves surrounded by a host of foes, all eager for the death knight’s end. However, Blood’s dot effect Blood Plague, spread by the single target attack Death’s Caress and the aoe attack Blood Boil, slowly drains life from the target, and heals the death knight for the same amount. In addition, Blood death knights can desecrate the ground around them with Death and Decay, as Unholy can. Blood also has an attack that strikes multiple enemies at once, called Heartstrike. To help keep the death knight alive while tanking, Blood also has Marrowrend, a brutal melee strike that gives 3 charges of Bone Shield, a whirling shield of bones that lessen physical damage taken by the death knight. Rounding out blood’s arsenal is Death Strike, which all death knights have, granting the death knight 20% of the damage taken in the last 5 seconds as a heal. For Blood this effect is further increased by giving them a shield, where 12% of the amount healed is also applied as a shield around the death knight. Blood death knights are a great choice for tanking any content in World of Warcraft, from solo play, to 5-man dungeons and raids.

Death knights offer a number of different flavors on the death knight image, from the dark, vampiric juggernaut, to the insidious spreader of vile plagues and illness, to the unstoppable, icy cold bringer of death. So if you like your heroes on the edgy side, with plenty of anti-hero darkness mixed in, the death knight is a great choice!