Are DKs Poised to Take Over the World?

It’s been three months since the release of Wrath, and the ripple effect of Death Knights is still being felt all over Azeroth. The first Death Knights have made it to 80, and are starting to make names for themselves running Heroics, making their mark in arenas, and tanking raids.

As the first “hero class” of WoW, it’s certainly to be expected that DKs would make a mark on the game – after all, they’re completely distinctive in being the only class which starts at level 55, in being able to tank in all three talent trees, and in having fewer abilities to master at the outset, but ultimately requiring management of abilities previously unseen in the game – Rune Energy is like a cross between rage and mana, and the runes themselves are in a class all of their own.

There’s no doubt that DKs have made their mark on PvP. At last count, Death Knights were the second most popular class, after Retadins, in arena. WoW forums and blogs are filled with complaints of Death Knights being OP, unbalanced, and a threat to every other class trying to make a name for itself in arena. DKs are just as big a threat to other players in battlegrounds, especially in the 50-59 bracket: unlike every other class they get a fast land mount at level 58, and they enter battlegrounds with a matching set of blue gear. I personally noticed that when I joined battlegrounds on my DK I was topping the kill charts for the very first time in my WoW career.

But when you broaden the question to the impact DKs have had in the game as a whole, the camps are divided.

Some believe that DKs have no defining role or purpose in the grand scheme of PvE content in WoW. In his recent monologue on the subject, Totalbiscuit claimed that they’re not needed as a tanking class because they don’t have effective talent specs for tanking in raids. And, he notes, most DKs he meets don’t want to tank anyway – they’re in the game to DPS. And as DPS, he says they don’t top DPS meters either. And even if they did, do we really need yet another tanking or DPS class? He therefore questions whether Death Knights have any distinctive role in the game, and a number of his respondents agree with him.

But I have personally noticed that many formerly-ranged DPS-ers have abandoned their former toons to adopt the quick damage, versatile play style, and high survivability available to a plate-wearing class. In fact, it's a running joke that all those who used to play warlocks have converted to join the Lich King, what with both PvP and PvE content in game being so based on AoE instead of DoT combat. It's happened in my guild (our hunter class leader just rerolled a Frost tanking DK). Heck, it's even happened to me - it's pretty likely that I'll ding 80 on my DK before I do on my mage.

Truth be told, I think death knights are special. Sure, they tank, and many classes tank, and sure, they do melee DPS, which isn’t unique. But they do have some other tricks up their sleeve:

• Universal Tanking: DKs are the only class which can tank in any of its three trees. This means that literally any DK can tank if they want to. All they have to do is change stances. No other class can say that.
• Anti-Magic Class: DKs have two silence spells, multiple spell interrupts, both a self- and group anti-magic shield, the ability to heal in combat by doing damage, and an instant-cast immunity to fear, charm, and mind control. Death Grip removes the need for line-of-sight pulling in dungeons, and on top of it all, DKs have multiple ranged abilities should the mob/boss/enemy player get out of melee range, as slippery casters are known to do.
  
• Self-Heal: While not a healing class, DKs can heal themselves, again, by utilizing a baseline ability available to characters in every single tree.
  
• I Wear My Undeath on My Sleeve: Ok, DKs may fight like other classes on paper, but are you seriously telling me that there's another class out there with abilities like Summon Gargoyle, Army of the Dead, Pestilence, and Blood Boil? Death Knight combat abilities are macabre, eldritch, and grisly, because DKs are the most anguished, emo, and, in my opinion, badass class in the game. Everything about DKs screams Death and Decay.
  
• Ghouls: Maybe it’s because I’m Unholy spec’d but there’s something absolutely awesome about being the only melee class with a pet.
• I Have Three Professions: Runeforging is kind of like a cross between inscription and enchanting, and it's available only to DKs. There's a rune for every weapon and every situation, and managing them all could be considered an occupation in and of itself.
  
• The Cool Factor: DKs are the first class to get their own starting area. They have their own city, and hey, let’s face it, they’ve been by the big guy Arthas’ side for much of the game, which is incredibly neat. They have cooler voices, cooler eyes, and cooler abilities than most other classes.
• Easy to Play, Hard to Master: I firmly believe that anyone can pick up a death knight, and by now, everyone should at least have tried to take their DK through the incredibly cool phased starting area. But while it seems simple, being a DK comes down to management of many different factors, and players can play around for a long time finding that perfect rotation which optimizes the cooldown of every single rune, the best way to set up diseases on every target, and the optimum use of their Runic Power.

If you look around Outland and Northrend it becomes immediately apparent that the legions of DKs have not subsided, and that many of those who signed up "just to take a look" at the class haven't gotten sick of their DKs yet. Forget the supposed tanking shortage, after five dungeons run with a total of 20 other DKs, I firmly believe that the healer shortage is far more serious. After all, many DKs are capable of tanking on the fly even if they’re DPS spec’d before level 80.

In a previous post I outlined some of the reasons I personally enjoy playing a death knight. To sum up, I play my DK because she’s versatile, great at PvP, and has fewer abilities to manage than my old hotbar- and macro-heavy mage. I wouldn’t necessarily call DKs a hybrid class – after all they tank by doing DPS and they… uh, DPS by doing DPS too. But there is clearly still some appeal to the approachability of the Death Knight which has galvanized a strong contingent of followers who haven’t yet gone back to their old characters, who stick around with their icy-blue-eyed friends because they like the ease of play, the newness, or just the plain old mystique that death knights have to offer. If we're not taking over the world, we're at least carving our niche in it.