Past Death Knight abilties you want in the expansionFollow

Obviously Death Knights have been part of Warcraft since the days of goblin sappers and Paladins. Blizzard has stated that they are really looking forward to reviewing past DK abilities and integrating them into the new hero class.

So I got to thinking what past deathknight abilities do you really want in the expansion? Which of the previous abilities are going to make an appearance and how might they be modified for the new class?

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Warcraft 2 Deathknights (info from wowwiki):

Death Coil (kills target unit, damages a neighboring unit and heals the caster)

Death and Decay (ranged channeled AoE damage)

Raise Dead (raises skeletons from corpses)

Haste (temporarily increases movement speed of target)

Unholy Armor (lowers target unit's HP and grants it temporary invincibility)

Whirlwind (summons a whirwind that moves around randomly to deal AoE damage)

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Warcraft 3 Deathknights (info from battlenet):

Death Coil (A coil of death that can damage an enemy living unit or heal a friendly undead unit)

Death Pact (Kills a target friendly unit, giving a percentage of its hit points to the Death Knight)

Unholy Aura (Increases the movement speed and life regeneration rate of nearby friendly units)

Animate Dead (Ultimate - Raises 6 dead units in an area to fight for the Death Knight. Animated units are invulnerable)

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You'll also notice that the Death Knights in both Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 are shown mounted. Noteworthy here if only to speculate if the death knights will have a summonable mount like Paladins and Warlocks.

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WoW NPC and Boss Deathknights... way too many different bosses and abilities to list here but feel free to add.

Edited, Apr 16th 2008 12:55am by Mehdik

true dat

Evil offensive auras would be really cool. I think another post has mentioned giving them the dreadlords life leech aura. Other things like the paly offensive auras from Diablo 2 would be a lot of fun too.

Rain of .kill

'Nuff said.

keep in mind that Death Knight is being designed to be a tanking class. That's right a Tanking class, sorry to all of you that were hoping for a plate wearing shadow dmg unholy death dealer, we need a new tank in this game anyway. Instead you'll be a plate wearing 2h weapon weilding tank. So i doubt there will be offensive versions of pally aura's for a tank.

I'm hoping Deathknights have several Animate Dead type abilities. One or several of them would be along the lines of what we've seen in the gameplay preview: a minion summoning spell not unlike the balance druids' treants. And one of them would be a combat rez with built-in limitations, something like the following:

Reanimate Ally
3 second cast. 10 minute cooldown (down to 6 min. cooldown talented)
Raises a raid member from the dead with 50% of normal hitpoints, damage and healing. This raid member will die again when the Deathknight leaves combat. The raid member will suffer no durability loss from dying during the course of this spell.

There is no such thing as a 'tanking class', there are classes that possess the ability to tank but no class is forced into that role. Warriors excel at tanking and DPS, Druids can basically do anything, and Paladins are solid tanks as well as excellent healers.

If DKs were a 'tanking class' they would have zero utility in PvP and, if the trend of Prot Warriors continues, suck at farming and other PvE tasks without support.

Moreover, why bother with three trees at all? If tanking is the only available role, what do the trees offer? "Hey look, be a Death Knight, you can tank with Blood, Frost OR Shadow! They're tank-tastic!"

To conclude, ********* They'll be DPS, Tank, and some kind of hybrid Shadow-Priesty-magicky thing that wont work most likely.

This is what I think the DK rez spell should look like:

Reanimate (Instant Cast): Bring a friendly player instantly back to life. Casting Reanimate on a player would cause a Reanimation debuff that lasts 30secs.
While this is up the affected player's stats slowly increase from 50% back to 100%, similar to Rez Sickness but not lasting as long. The debuff could also give the player an undead/skeleton look until it wears off.

The spell would be on a 1min cooldown allowing the Deathknight to Ressurect more than one target in a fight although initially they come back with less of an impact to avoid the spell being OP. It could be cast in battle and cost 10% of the Deathknight's Mana Pool.

What do you guys think?

Ogirinally, the Death Knight was the undead Paladin with variations of original Paladin abilities. I think this would fit into the scheme very well.

Death coil hasn't got to be the same spell as the Warlocks have. It could get a smaller cooldown, no fear effect, but some sort of debuff which heals the DK when he deals damage on the target. Like Judgement of Light...

Death and Decay would be the analogy to Consecration with shadow damage. This would be the base for aoe tanking.

Raise dead and death pact could be interesting for tanking purposes. The DK could use his pets to inflict damage to the Boss or to be sacrificed to gain health. This would be his life insurance.

Unholy Armor will probably be brought in as a "sunder armor" - spell for DK. Of course, it won't be necessary if the DK will tank with shadow damage, which doesn't care how much Armor the target has...


Since Death Knights are supposed to be undead paladins, they'll probably have some kind of evil, corrupted auras. Unholy aura for 5% haste for the group or a vampiric aura to become kind of a melee shadow priest would be nice.

DKs will tank with 2h weapons or double wield. I can't imagine them getting a damage reduction like a prot warrior with a shield, so they'll certainly recieve more damage. To build up threat and stay alive the Death Knight could use Vampiric abilities like Death Coils or a Vampiric Aura. The frost talents will probably have spells to slow the enemies like Thunder Clap.

Edited, Apr 28th 2008 3:29am by MyByte

Edited, Apr 28th 2008 3:31am by MyByte

I'd like if they would like.. Add a new spell or something.
Called the Dark Vortex or something.

Dark Vortex Ranks 1-6
Summons a Vortex above the enemy target and takes away 1k-5k mana from the target. In expense for 2,000 of your own. The mana taken deals shadow damage equal to 25% of the mana taken to the enemys health. Percentage goes up with ranks.

That would be a wicked cool spell. :O

I don't agree with that comment you said:

be a blood tank, a frost tank, or a shadow tank.


DK will be much like warriors, however having habilities to raise dead. There will be 3 presences and 3 trees has well: presences; unholy - increases your movement speed and your attack speed.
blood - increases the damage dealt.
frost - increase your amor value by x % and threat by 25%

Trees: Unholy - PvP
Blood - DPS
Frost - tanking

So, if DK were given Death Pact, maybe rogues would not be as hated?

Naw, rogues would still be hated. I would like to see Death and decay, especially if it could be used against building.

Well, it'd be fine if they got a little dialog box like the resurrection option when Death Pact is used;
Arthazzz wants to drain the very life essence from your frail mortal body, so that he may live on. Accept? [Y/N]