Utility of a Death Knight

In case people are not very familier with what a Death Knight brings to a raid, I have put together a list of things and an explaination of how it helps the raid.

General DK
Death knights are a dps/tanking hybrid. As long as we have the tanking points in the first tier of every tree we can tank. Which means, every spec can tank, its just how they do it is a bit different.

Death Knights have fantastic survivablity while dpsing. They require less heals than most melee, as they can help out by healing themselves, without gimping their damage or rotation, plus help mitigate incoming damage via Death strike (heal based on damage), Icebound Fortitude (50% reduction to all damage and stun immunity lasts 12 seconds, going to be nerfed to 15% in dps gear with next patch), Bone Shield (40% damage reduction with 5 charges, dots do not affect charges, going to be nerfed to 20%), as well as anti-magic shield which reduces all magic by 75% (or 100% if unholy, which lasts 5 seconds. Next patch cooldown reduced to 45 seconds). Blood DKs have a ton of healing, and frost has an increase armor buff.

If the OT dies, a DK can switch to Frost presence and pick up the lose add and tank it, managing cooldowns to help with the extra healing needed.

They also can death grip a caster mob and drag it to the raid.

Horn of Winter is a 2 min buff (going to be 3 glyphed) that increases all raid members strenght and agility by 186

Icy Touch put a debuff similar to thunderclap on the target, and can be pestilienced to all nearby enemies.

Plague Strikes disease will remove a HoT on the target


Blood DK
In this spec they get a number of abilities that can help the raid. Abominations Might, which when procced with increase the raids AP by 10%.

There is the glyph of Rune tap which will heal the group for 10% and can be used every 30 seconds, as well as an ability(with a 3 min cooldown) that can be placed on a mob and will heal the tank for 3% of their health everytime they are hit, think it lasts 20 seconds.

The blood aura (which i believe is getting buffed from 2% to 4%) will heal for 2% of damage dealt (raid wide aura)



Frost DK

They give an ability called Icy Talons, which everytime we use Icy touch (which would be every 12 seconds for frost) will increase the haste rating of the entire raid by 20% (i think)

The Frost Aura will increase all raid members resistance by 86


Unholy DK

They can provide an anti-magic zone which decreases all damage by magical attacks for anyone in it by 75% (lasts 20 seconds or until it takes about 15k)

They can increase all magic damage taken by the target effected by ebon plague by 13% (refreshed everytime a dot is placed)

Unholy aura is a raid wide buff that increases all movement speed by 15% (no daze effect), this helps a great deal with movement fights where melee need to get in and out quickly, or the whole raid needs to move but has limited time (heigan etc.)


Thats really all I can think of for now. Just some info on the class that most of you probably didnt know, as it is a new class.