Death Knight Tutorials – The Runic Power System

With the introduction of a completely new class to the game comes many questions and new game mechanics that can seem daunting; this Death Knight Tutorial series aims to enlighten players who may be interested in creating a Death Knight of their own as to how they play, while at the same time providing insight to other players as to the limitations of the class.

The first thing to get to grips with when playing a Death Knight is the runic system which consists of two separate components; runes and runic power.

A death knights runes come in three types, blood, frost and unholy. By default, every Death Knight has two of each rune type and this rune format cannot be changed. For most of the Death Knights abilities, runes of a specific type must be expended to successfully be used; once expended, runes go onto a cool down period where they can no longer be used though this cool down period can vary.

If the attack missed then any runes utilized will be placed on a short 1.5 second cool down, if it landed successfully then a 10 second cool down ensues. There is an exception to this rule however in that if a rune is consumed within 2 seconds of its cool down expiring; it will only be placed on an 8.5 second cool down period.

The trick to successfully utilizing the runic system is to use up all of your runes before the first runes have refreshed; this leads to Death Knight combat rotations being far more complex than the one button spamming of many other classes.

The big weakness of this system however is that it lacks flexibility; while other classes can rely on having an ability ready as long as it is not on cool down; a Death Knight must have the foresight to conserve his runes for special situations and must trade off the use of offensive abilities for the privilege. A good example of this is the Death Knight ability Strangulate, which is a 5 second duration silence that requires the use of a blood rune.

Since silences are generally used reactively to counter an opponent’s moves, a Death Knight must have great foresight and rune management to utilize Strangulate to maximum effect.

In addition to their runes, Death Knights also generate runic power as they consume runes. By default the runic power bar fills at a rate of 10 per single rune ability used and 15 per multi-rune ability used; this is then further increased by several talents.

Runic power is what gives the Death Knight a little flexibility; it is used in a similar manner to a rage bar in order to power a large amount of abilities that are more situational in nature; such as burst damage finishing moves or reactive defense tools. The big weakness of this is that it can take a while to generate sufficient runic power to activate vital defensive tools, making the Death Knight vulnerable to hard hitting ambushes.

Between making full use of your runes, planning for utility moves and trying to avoid wasting your runic power by capping it; the Death Knights runic system requires a lot of thought to get the most out of, allowing a great deal of a players skill to show through in their performance.