I have just, in the space of about two days, gotten my freshly-85 second Death Knight, Lorconis, geared for Raid Finder. Now, I will admit that I cheated here, buying the blue-quality 377 pvp gear to inflate his item level to get into the Hour of Twilight heroics. That said, man do I like that you can gear up a guy fast if you want.
I love Death Knights. While Protection for Paladins is my favorite spec to play, and Enhancement is my favorite melee dps spec, over all I think the lore and the feel of Death Knights make them my favorite class. While I was never a goth as a kid, I was always a fan of Halloween and I would usually play black decks in Magic the Gathering (yes, I know, double nerd score here, WoW and Magic.)
Anyway, DKs are a very cool class, and they have a lot of very cool features, such as their unique starting area, the fact that they begin at level 55 (though, given the old-world revamp, this is probably more of a liability than a bonus now that most of the best questing is in EK and Kalimdor.) They have their unique face-styles (though I accidentally passed over that on Oterro, and Lorconis is already Undead, so there's no special face) and their glowing blue eyes (again, not so great for Oterro, as he's already a Draenei) and deep voice.
And then there's Runeforging, which is awesome mainly because you don't have to spend a copper on the most powerful weapon enchants in the game.
Yes, Runeforging is powerful, but something I find a bit disappointing is that there's not a lot of variety. In short, either Rune of the Fallen Crusader is too strong or the other runes are just too weak. Oterro is a tank, so I just go for Stoneskin Gargoyle like a good boy, but his DW Frost set has Razor Ice on his mainhand and Fallen Crusader on his off-hand. And then for Lorconis, who is Unholy/2h Frost, the only viable option is, again, Fallen Crusader.
Which is annoying, because there's a bunch of cool runes out there. Spell/Sword Shatter/Breaking are of course meant to tide you over while leveling to get Stoneskin Gargoyle, and thus have fairly simple effects, and Nerubian Carapace is a hold-over from when they wanted you to be able to tank while dual-wielding. But then we have Cinderglacier (which admittedly I think is sometimes used for AoE situations) and Lichbane, which theoretically should have been the ideal rune for Naxxramas and ICC, but wasn't even good there.
I think this represents a failure in the Runeforging system. It seem that, at the very least, there ought to be a different rune for each spec. Fallen Crusader could remain the Unholy option-of-choice, while 2-hand Frost could have something like "Rimeblade," causing your attacks to do additional Frost damage. DW could continue to use Razorice, but maybe use Cinderglacier in the off-hand.
Actually, I think it would be more interesting for all dps DKs to get rid of Fallen Crusader altogether. The strength buff is too attractive for DKs to want to drop it, so instead fold the occasional 15% strength in with the class, and give Unholy something Shadow-themed, like "Rotcurse," perhaps adding another disease or stacking a shadow-vulnerability debuff.
It then also strikes me that Frost Presence is sadly unused. Back when Blood and Frost were reversed, I believe that PvE dps DKs would use Blood Presence, and Unholy Presence could be used for the movement bonus or was sometimes useful in PvP. It seems wrong to me that every single dps spec uses Unholy Presence nowadays. I think a large part of it is Cataclysm's change to Rune Regeneration and the effect of haste. I'd like to see them rebalance this, like Runeforging, to make more options viable and interesting.
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