Death Knight: The first post.

Well, I said I'd do it, so here goes. Yes, I, like almost everyone else in Beta, have started a Death Knight, and I think I like them.

I named him Graysun (using the name of my original Paladin alt from September 2006) and I decided to make him Human. My original idea was to make a Pink-haired Gnome Deathknight, but I quickly realised that joke would get old all too soon. Humans may be bland, but with +5 Expertise with Maces and Swords and +10% Reputation gained from quests, they seemed like the best choice.

Because the Death Knight is a hero class, you start off at level 55. What worried me going in was "am I going to be overwhelmed with the need to spend 46 Talent points and master a few dozen skills straight away?"

Thankfully the answer is "no". You start play with no talent points and about half-a-dozen skills. You're wearing a suit of matched, green-quality armor with no trinkets, relic or weapon. The first quests you do give you your weapon and teach you about Runeforging, which allow you to enchant your weapon with a variety of special effects.

This is Graysun in his starter armor shortly after acquiring his Runeblade:



(I've hidden his helm in those shots, but it looks like a hood covering the upper part of his face in the same style as the rest of his armor. The death knights themselves look like normal examples of their race, with the addition of glowing blue eyes.)

After you've gotten your blade, you're set loose on the Scarlet Crusade! Most of the quests give blue rewards to replace your starter greens, and they too form a matched set of gear.



Also, most of the quests give you some talent points as additional rewards, allowing you to get used to your character and spend your talent points as you go.

After only a cursory look at the talents, I decided to focus on the Blood tree, which seems to focus on 2-handed DPS and life-draining. There's a few talents that remind me strongly of Retribution paladins, which smacks a little of laziness, but I guess they're aiming both trees for the same role: heavy 2-handed DPS with the ability to convert some of the damage done to healing for the group. The healing component of a Blood-spec seems to be higher than that of a Retadin, but I suspect that's to make up for the Death Knight's lack of direct heals.

The Death Knight seems to be everything I wanted the Dark Templar in Age of Conan to be, a tank that does damage and uses that damage to heal himself. I suspect the healing component may even be enough to make up for not using a shield in certain situations. I genuinely tempted to make one as my DPS toon in Wrath live, since I have very little desire to level Wulf these days.