The latest in-house developer Q&A from the World of Warcraft team centers on the Death Knight. Team member 'Ghostcrawler' takes on the questions. Keep reading!

What is it that makes them (Death Knights) unique compared to all other classes?

Ghostcrawler: Their resource system is very unique. It is impossible for death knights to ever run out of resources. Any kind of benefit that makes rune-based abilities cheaper or finish their cooldowns faster are generally useless to a death knight. In fact, the whole rotation risked being very regular and even boring until we came up with a strong role for the Death Runes.

The death knight can do excellent melee damage, but also better ranged damage than most melee classes, and all three specs deal a large amount of non-physical damage.

Death knights also have a lot of abilities with medium-length cooldowns. This means they can be used multiple times per fight, but aren't always there exactly when needed. A lot of the skill involved in playing a death knight, whether for PvP, tanking, or doing raid dps, involves using these at the right time.

Death knights also hybridize into a lot of different directions. What I mean is that they have surprisingly high area damage for a predominantly melee class. They have a pet. They have interrupts, (reverse) gap-closers, and strong snares. They are very well-rounded, which has been the cause of many of the balance problems we've had with them in PvP.

Death knights don't have a dedicated tanking tree. Blood, Frost or Unholy death knight tanks are all viable, and each one can be slightly more useful depending on the boss encounter.

And then there is the obvious: they start at high level, showered in blue gear and even a mount. They have some of the best quests in the entire game in their start zone, and their identity is stitched heavily into the story of Northrend and the Lich King specifically.

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