Both of my mages are in Northrend, enjoying the scenery. They’re casting Improved Blizzard (despite yesterday’s nerf) on Shoveltusk herds to farm meat, and venturing into the dark troll lairs in Zul’Drak to face the Lich King’s undead minions. They’re having a great time doing the daily cooking quests in Dalaran, and driving siege engines into battle for Wintergrasp.
Unfortunately, this means that on a night like the last, when Northrend is crippled by bugs and everyone on the entire continent freezes every time the Wintergrasp timer runs down, that I can’t play either of my mages.
So, like any good WoW player, with my two highest toons out of commission for the night, I delved into my back log of old, forgotten characters who hadn’t quite made it out of the starting ring. And I pulled out the death knight who had been sitting, ever so patiently, waiting for me to return to her after freeing her from the Lich King’s grasp.
Normally, I hate melee fighting, which is the biggest reason I stayed away from death knights to begin with. I rolled a mage for many reasons, one of the first being that I like to hit my enemies from afar, and to do so much damage to them that they haven’t even figured out where the hits are coming from before they’ve become a pile of loot and goo at my feet.
One of my partners in crime feels the same way. He rolls hunters and warlocks, I roll mages, and together we traipse through Azeroth taking every mob fight at a distance. But on this last fateful evening, we decided to see what all the fuss was about, and start getting serious with our death knights. And we both figured we’d hate it, but hey – what’s a WoW addict to do when they can’t access their main toon?
Well, I have to confess... I liked it. I liked slapping my opponents with diseases and crippling them with massive melee crits. I liked yanking retreating foes back towards me with Death Grip, and summoning ghouls from their corpses. I had originally rolled a DK just to see the opening quests and to try out the phasing technology in the Lich King’s starting area. Hey, who doesn’t like riding on a massive frost wyrm, stealing horses, or routing the Scarlet Crusade?
But when I turned my sights towards the “real world” of Azeroth, I discovered something else. Death Knights are a whole lot of fun to play, both in PvP and PvE.
Death Knights Rock in PvP. As a mage, I’ve noticed that while the overall damage I deal in battlegrounds is high, my actual killing blows in PvP are minimal. Perhaps this is because when you’re spamming Blizzard on the crowds in
Whatever the reason, this has never stopped me from enjoying BGs as a mage. I love dealing massive amounts of damage to my enemies, or snaring them in place with my frost spells. And I love stealing flags, capturing bases, or weaseling out of the enemy’s grasp with the power of my arcane abilities to help gain a win.
But I discovered that as a death knight, and for the first time in my WoW career, I can top the kill charts, too. My enemies can’t run from me – I have a host of abilities to keep them where I want them, from Death Grip to Chains of Ice to Desecrated Ground to siccing my ghoul on them from afar. And they cannot hide, either. Many DK attacks are damage over time spells, so even if my foe gets away, they won’t be alive for long. Death knights are also able to heal themselves by doing damage. Like warriors, the longer we fight, the more abilities we have to play with via Runic Power, meaning that even when overwhelmed, our chances of taking down attacking foes is still high. And should I fall in battle, I will rise again as a ghoul, with renewed strength to get that killing blow. Yes, of course I spec’d Unholy.
Death Knights Rock in PvE. In PvE, I discovered that while most of the death knight’s abilities are for close-up combat, we, unlike many other melee fighters, do have some options for ranged combat. Should my target run away from me, or vault into the air to start pelting me from the sky, I can use Icy Touch or Death Coil on them to slow their attacks and deal damage. And who needs a crossbow (or for that matter a water elemental?) when I can summon a gargoyle to fight for me from the air?
While death knights usually have to fight targets one-on-one, the ability to spread diseases from one target to the next gives us a bit of AoE capacity, and Blood Boil is perfect for inflicting a great deal of damage on grouped mobs.
Ease of Play. After filling my screen with macros and dedicating hotbar after hotbar to the plethora of abilities facing the modern mage, I have to say that it’s refreshing to play a character who is just as powerful and capable, but who uses less actual abilities to deal damage. Spell rotation on a death knight is easy to manage. And hey, even autohits on a DK deal substantial amounts of damage! For me, coming from the fireworks-filled world of playing a mage, it also seems that death knight abilities have enough lively animation and an eldritch, almost arcane, spell-like quality to them that keep playing a melee fighter interesting.
Rich RP Options. I’m no longer on a role-playing server, but if I were to visit my old stomping grounds again, my heritage as a death knight and former servant of the Lich King would provide a rich furrow for my character’s back story, allowing me to flesh out tales about how she was first enlisted into Arthas’ service, what she did on his campaigns, when she first remembered her former life (the fact that my character is a Forsaken DK makes her story even more varied) and how it was when she finally broke free from Arthas’ grasp and tried to return to the world which had for so long been her enemy.
Given the abundance of avenues open for me and my new death knight, I have certainly solved the riddle of what to do when the world server is down and I can’t reach my Northrend characters. But I wouldn’t be surprised if leveling a death knight becomes more than just a side activity, too. Sorry, my dear mages, but you just haven’t got those cool, glowing blue eyes.
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