As I break out of my personal reverie I catch sight of a looming giant of a man next to me.  Instinct drives me to my knees and I pay bowed homage to Arthas, the dark knight and my Master.  His voice is dark and booming as tells me of my early training to come in my new role, as a Death Knight in his legion.  Faint trails of memories of childhood and companionship in the woods of Elwyn flutter in the distance of my memories, before dissapearing… perhaps forever.

Without giving away too much of the start of things, let me say that they dealt with it really well.  A selection of quests, easily achievable in 2-3 hours, will introduce you to the lore of the Death Knight, while granting you access to talent points and also teaching you what the different talent trees do.   

At the end of this quest series, you will ding 58, be fully clad in a set of fine Death Knight Regalia blue items and be all set to head of to Outland to being your speed levelling towards 70 before you can embark on your journey to Northrend.   

So let’s see how these talent trees compare.  The Blood tree is your standard dps/levelling/utility tree.  Virtually everything you do heals you.  You can pull lots, hit lots, heal lots and there is next to no downtime.  It’s the ultimate grinding spec, you can just kill and move till you or the server drops.   

The Blood tree is a point hogging tree (a concept that seems a common design concept to all WOTLK class talent trees).  To really maximise on its use you need to invest a healthy amount of points into the tree while levelling, and you will wind up with a great party friendly character with awesome party and raid wide buffs and utility as well great survivability and medium dps. 

Bizarrely its the Frost tree, the tanking talent tree, that has thus far shown itself to be the most dps heavy tree.  Its much harder to play, you need to spec correctly, hit the right abilities at the right times, but once you have it mastered, expect the frost death knight to be one of those tanks that rank high up in overall damage in 5 man and 10 man runs - while tanking!

The dark form of the death knight Soros, stood tall against the red brick and shadows of the Hellfire Ramparts, as he blocked the path to his party of cahoots, grinning widely and taunting the Orcs on the bridge ahead.   

Soros blinked under his heavy helmet, and breathed a column of smoke into the cold air.  The two orcs ahead shifted from side to side and clutched at their heavy axes, trying to measure up if they were better served by running away and facing the wrath of Watchkeeper Gorgolmar or standing and fighting on the off chance they might win.   One of the Orcs, squinted past the large looming Knight at the group behind him.  He grunted in disgust as he caught sight of frail looking elf woman in some cloth armour and short one with a bow just barely clad in some mail joints and pieces and spare metal.  This knight didn’t even carry a shield, he turned to his watchmate and they came to their foolish conclusion in unison.   

Hefting heavy axes in a battle stance they charged the group.  A wry grin spread across Soros mouth under the helmet and he whipped out his two handed Runeblade in a dancing arc as tendrils of shadow pulled one of the charging Orcs unexpectedly closer.  The red Fel Orc, momentarily stunned that he had just been pulled over 40 yards, took a moment getting his bearings.  Those moments proved to be his last.

The Runeblade shone brightly in the night red sky as it arced into the Orc’s shoulder armour and bit deep.  Fuelled by the magic of the runes carved into the blade, the large sword bit through plate armour and severed the Orc’s shoulder.  A blood curdling yell of pain came from the salivating mouth, as the stealthed assasin emerged from the shadows and two glowing blades bit silently and deeply into the cracks of his armour.  Frost and fire danced in front of its eyes and as he breathed his last, his final thoughts were that his watchmate seemed strangely similar to a sheep… 

Now the weirdness with the Death Knight class begins and ends with the Unholy tree.  It’s very hard to spec, very hard to play and makes a constant use of the Death Knight ability to raise the dead (only of passing use in the other specialisations).  But once you get the hang of it, you do amazing aoe dps, assuming you can stay alive while all this is going on.  Which is doubtful.   

The Unholy Death Knight is the squishiest of them all, but I imagine will be giving warlocks a solid run for their money in raid dps tables.  And the spell effects of the Unholy tree talents and spells are second to none, they look totally lethally awesome!

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