Death Knight Abilities And More WoTLK Info

I was just routinely looking around for things to write about today when I was shocked to see the latest news about the the Wrath Of The Lich King expansion. Today we finally get some answers to those nagging questions like “what level do Death Knights start”, “what abilities will Death Knights have?” and some more info on the mechanics of runes and even info about changes in raid dungeons.

Thanks to MMO-Champion, all this information has been summarized here and I’ll touch on a few points below.

All Raid Dungeons Will have both a 10 man and a 25 man version

It’s really been quite frustrating for me that I’ve never seen most of the 25 man content since I belong to a small guild. With this change, this will allow smaller guilds to have a chance to see all the raiding content even if it’s just the 10 man version. How I wish this were implemented now. I can’t help but think that my old guild, Thundercats, probably would still be active now if we had this option. Most of the guys wanted to raid especially the 25 mans like Tempest keep and Serpentshrine Cavern so they left for bigger guilds.

No more blues dropping from Heroics

Heroic Dungeons are getting some love in the expansion as well, and will be on their own tier of loot progression — meaning no more blues from Heroics — it’ll be similar to what’s seen in Magisters’ Terrace, added with the Fury of the Sunwell patch.source

Flying Mounts

Players will be able to unlock their flying mounts at level 77. I’m guessing this means the level you can use your flying mount in Northrend. Blizzard doesn’t want players to just fly over everything with our flying mounts so early in the WoTLK content. There’s just so much you’ll miss. So I guess it’s back to using our ground mounts until level 77. You’ll be able to use your Burning crusade flying mounts and there will be some new ones as well. Source

Death Knights!

I wouldn’t want to post the whole summary here or it will just be a bigger wall of text that it already is. To see the whole summary, please click here. I’ll touch on a few points that I find interesting below.

Before the abilities, here are the answers to the nagging questions:

The Death Knight will indeed be available to all races (gnome death knight!)

Death Knights will start at level 55.

Death Knight abilities:

Summon Charger

Summon Deathcharger — Allows the Death Knight to summon a Deathcharger mount. This mount is acquired through quests, similar to the Paladin and Warlock land mounts. source

I guess the Death Knight won’t be much of a hero class if they had to buy their own mount haha

Disease based spells

Death Knights will be the first class to use diseases as a source of damage, with abilities that become strong depending on how many diseases are already applied to the target. source

Finally a class that can cast disease based spells! I wonder if they’ll be able to cast other horror spells that have a horror effect too? Currently only the warlock’s deathcoil is the only horror spell. Speaking of disease, Death and decay is one of the Death Knight’s spells. It’s said to be a targeted aoe DoT that pulses like the paladin’s consecration and has the chance to fear anyone afflicted by it.

Raise dead

The Death Knight will be able to raise the fallen for 2 minutes whether friend or foe. The raised will take the form of a ghoul which will have several abilities. If a friendly player is raised, that player will have to option to accept and if he does he will be able to take the form of a ghoul and control it. This is a fun alternative to getting a battle rez from a druid I guess.

Presences

Presences are are powerful buffs Death Knights can give themselves.

Unholy presence – Increases Attack Speed and Movement speed by 15%. Only one presence can be active at any time.

Frost Presence – Increases Armor by 45% and allows the Death Knight to generate 25% more threat. Only one presence can be active at any time.

Since the DK can fulfill the role of tank or dps there’s a presence for each.

Tanking niche: Magic damage targets

The Death Knight’s particular niche will be in tanking magic-damage-dealing bosses. They will have an ability much like a banshee’s anti-magic shell, greatly diminishing the amount of incoming magic damage they’ll receive in combat. While the Death Knight should be able to capably fill in any sort of tanking role with some success, they should be ideal against bosses that primarily deal magic damage. source

Bosses that do a lot of high magic damage have been quite a problem since none of the current tanking classes really do this very well. Enter the death knight and these encounters should be much much easier. I’m guessing that this ability could give problems to classes like mages and warlocks in pvp as well.

There’s a lot more I didn’t list here so go check out the full summary here. Have fun reading the cool information!