This is a copy of the Death Knight FAQ which I had made on the EU beta forums, feel it's in a more suitable state to be placed on the WoW live forums now, feel free to pose questions which are not included, I'll answer and add them when I get to it.
Remember, FAQ puns are fun.

The editor is: In, but slacking.

Table of contents.

Section 1: Creation and General Features.
Section 2: Talents and Skills.
Section 3: Gear and Mechanics.
Section 4: Quests, lore and player interaction.
Section 5: Links.

Section 1- Creation of Death Knight and General Features.

Q: What do I need to do to create a Death Knight?
A: Simply install Wrath of the Lich King and have any character level 55 or above, there is no level 80 prerequisite quest, there is no option to sacrifice a character.

Q: Do I lose a character in order to make a Death Knight?
A: Only if your character slots are already full. You do NOT sacrifice a character.

Q: What races can be Death Knights?
A: All races can be Death Knights and are accommodated in the starting quests as such. (But I won't spoil that for you.)

Q: What do class based racials do for Death Knights?
A: A Draenei gets a 1% melee hit, an Orc gets 5% increased ghoul damage from command, a Blood Elf generates 15 runic power with Arcane Torrent.

Q: Do I need to level professions from zero?
A: Sadly, yes, besides first aid with which you start having the ability to make Heavy Runecloth Bandages.

Q: What features does the Death Knight class have?
A: Death Knights have many unique features, some of such being:
A jump start to level 55.
A unique and enjoyable starting area, with many amazing quests.


• Access to two class specific mounts, the Acherus Deathcharger and the Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade.
  
• Diseases as a primary damage source.
  
• Free weapon enchants that scale with your power.
  
• A diverse pool of anti-caster abilities.
  
• Unique appearance, both glowing blue eyes and class specific skin textures are available.
  
• A unique, chilling voice.
  
• An innovative energy system, expend your runes on strikes and spells, charge up runic power for devastating abilities!


Q: Can you tell me more of the mounts you mentioned?
A: The Acherus Death Charger is a quest reward which is at epic ground mount speed, which is acquired between levels 55 and 60. The winged Steed of the Ebon Blade is a mount which requires 225 mount skill and a base cost (before reputation) of 1000 gold to purchase, when at 225 skill it is a standard 60% speed flying mount, at 300 skill it is at the standard epic 280% speed, this mount requires level 60 to use.
Credit to Archael

Q: What weapons can a Death Knight use?
A: Death Knights can use; one and two handed swords, one and two handed axes, polearms, and with training; one and two handed maces.

Q: Where do I start off my unholy adventures?
A: You start in Acherus, The Ebon Hold, where the scourge is preparing an assault upon the Scarlet Crusade. This is an instanced starting zone where you are separated from the opposite faction and anybody who has completed the chain or is not a death night may not enter.
So no need to worry about gank fests besides falling off dragons.

Q: What is Runeforging?
A: Runeforging is a form of Death Knight personal weapon enchantment proffession, new spells are learnt off the class trainer every so often, the enchantments give benefits such as parry chance increase, on swing proccing frost and shadow damage increase, 15% strength increase, 2% stamina and defense skill increase.
These do not stack with enchants given by the enchanting proffession.

Section 2- Talents and Skills.

Q: Which tree is the Tanking tree?
A. All of them are intended to be, although blood is currently superior in most peoples opinions, unholy is moderately behind and frost is wavering about in the middle ground between the two.

Q: Which tree is the DPS tree?
A. All of them, all trees of the Death Knight are intended to be viable, competitive dps, the trees are about style preference and gimmicks, it is where you put the talents in the trees that decide your role, not which trees you put the talents in.

Q: Can a Death Knight summon a pet/minion?
A: Yes, but unless you put a point in master of ghouls (unholy talent) it will not be controllable and only available for a couple of minutes with a 3 minute cooldown. After putting a point in master of ghouls the pet is controllable and permanent unless it dies.
Credit to Andyishere

Q: How do i summon a ghoul?
A: You get to level 56 and learn the spell 'Raise Dead'. Once you have done that, you need to find a corpse that is within your level range (as in, if you killed it would give you XP etc) and a humanoid. Otherwise, you will need 'Corpse Dust' which can be bought from any reagent vendor.
Credit to Andyishere

Q: 3 minutes sounds like a long time for a pet summoning ability to cooldown?
A: Yes it is, hence the fact that the talents required to make the pet controllable reduce the cooldown to 30 seconds, starting from when the ghoul dies.

Q: What is Army of the Dead?
A: Army of the Dead is a somewhat hilarious answer to a tanking "OH GOD IT'S GONNA HUUUUURT!" cooldown. As warriors, paladins and druids will tell you, hunters that leave growl on in instances are really annoying, so our major "Oh crap." button is an Army of hunter pets with growl switched on and 3k hp, negating at least 8 direct melee swings that would otherwise be on the tank. While channelling this ability incoming damage is reduced by a percentage equal to your combined dodge and parry chance.
The ghouls do not taunt boss level enemies.

Section 3- Gear and Mechanics.

Q: What is this rune system I keep hearing of? It is strange and confusing to me!
A: The rune system is a rather confusing energy system by comparison to the already existing ones, as it stands you use your runes for initial strikes and spells, such as plague strike, blood strike, icy touch and obliterate, to name the staple tools of a rotation, some skills cost 2 runes, these being Scourge Strike, Obliterate, Death Strike and Howling Blast.
All abilities that require one rune generate 10 runic power on use, two rune abilities give 15 (some abilities will generate an extra 5 with talents.) Runic power is then used for secondary abilities.

Q: What is the cooldown on a rune?
A: A rune usually has a cooldown of 10 seconds, 9 seconds if taking advantage of the Improved Unholy Presence talent.

Q: What is a Death Rune?
A: A Death Rune is a blood tap triggered or talent triggered rune (with Death Rune mastery, Blood of the North and Reaping) that acts as any rune you need for an ability, these runes are put on a lower use priority than other runes.
Credit to Wormsborough

Q: Do Death Knights benefit from spell power?
A: Death Knights receive no benefit from the spell power stat.

Q: Should I use a Two Hander or Dual Wield?
A: Whichever you prefer, there is not one option intended to by far surpass the other, some would wish to argue that point, and in regards everybody has their points, but the design is intended that both are viable and competitive for dps within their respective trees.

Q: What are these presences I hear of?
A: Presences are unique death knight self buffs, akin to warrior stances in their role assosciation yet without restrictions or negative side effects. The presences are;
Blood- A 15% increase in damage dealt and 4% self heal from all damage.
Frost- A 60% armour increase, 45% threat increase, 6% stamina increase and 5% incoming damage decrease.
Unholy- A 15% run speed increase, 15% haste and 0.5 seconds knocked off the global cooldown.

Q: What kind of gear should I aim for?
A: A Death Knight will look for the same kind of gear Warriors and Paladins do. For damage you will want strength and critical strike rating as the most important stats and also expertise and hit rating. For tanking you will do the same as warriors, defense, raw armour and stamina being the most important ones while maintaining healthy levels of avoidance and accuracy, but steer clear of block rating and block value unless there is no better option.
Credit to Rumilus.

Q: Hold on, Death Knights cannot use shields and they obviously don't turn into bears, how do they tank?
A: Yes Death Knights are unable to equip shields, but they have plenty of capacity to compensate that.
All Death Knights have a baseline ability named Forceful Deflection in which 25% of our Strength is converted into parry rating, this gives death knights an avoidance capability from Strength. Death Knights are heavily balanced around cooldowns when it comes to tanking in order to stay alive, I dare say they are the most involved tank with self preservation.

Q: Do Death Knights get unique models and skin textures for gear?
A: Nope, sorry, outlands gear will make you look as much like a clown vomited on you as much as it did anybody else.

Q: Does Death Knight starting gear scale with level akin to the "Legacy" items?
A: Nope, they are stuck with those stats for as long as they exist, including the weapon.

Q: What does a Death Knight use in the ranged/relic slot?
A: A Death Knight uses a relic called a Sigil.

Section 4 - Quests, lore and player interaction.

Q: Why can all races be Death Knights and why are you accepted by your previous factions.
A: You fell during a battle against the Scourge and were raised with the power of necromancy to serve as the spearhead on the Lich King's assault against the Light's Hope Chapel. Without getting into too many spoilers, after the assault you are free of the Lich King's grasp and rally under your factions leader to attack him.
Credit to Tacitus

Q: Can Death Knights obtain mail before leaving Acherus?
A: Yes, a Death Knight may obtain mail at an early stage in their quest chain yet there is only one mail box which is constantly surrounded by hostile crusaders.

Q: Can a Death Knight join a guild before leaving Acherus?
A: Yes a Death Knight may join a guild before finishing their initial quest chain, please bare in mind that you will NOT encounter a charter vendor untill finishing.

Section 5: Links.

A collection of links for further reading on the class.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6104991838&sid=1
Wryxian's creation FAQ, it's another sticky, in the same forum.
But it appears nobody ever reads both of these threads.
I am not dedicating a whole post to something that's already up.

http://www.Deathknight.info
The general Death Knight fansite, almost everything is covered here already.

http://www.tankspot.com
Since time of writing, this website has become a general hub for raid stratagy and the like, although it is primarily for tank discussion still I believe.

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/
The death knight subsection of the ElitistJerks forums.

Reserved for if another section needs adding, feel free to post now.

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Q u o t e:
Reserved for if another section needs adding, feel free to post now.

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FIRST!

and also, please add as a sidenote there is currently a bug on beta that wont let you summon ghoul. (or wont let it live when summoned)

It had me confused for a good 5 levels atleast.

Nice Faq

Question for level 70, what do you think of the Cobalt set for death knights tanking in north. Worth it or better gear from other places?

I would suggest the cobalt set at level 70 when you first start tanking as there is a major lack of other viable tank gear at that level.
Although the instances at level 70 wrath are intended to be tankable by dps specs with rather poor quality tank gear.

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Q u o t e:
I would suggest the cobalt set at level 70 when you first start tanking as there is a major lack of other viable tank gear at that level.
Although the instances at level 70 wrath are intended to be tankable by dps specs with rather poor quality tank gear.

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Good to know :)

Sticky this Blizzard, we can avoid alot of ''alredy-asked-questions''.

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Q u o t e:
Sticky this Blizzard, we can avoid alot of ''alredy-asked-questions''.

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Ive already flagged the main section for a sticky request :)

I agree that this should be stickied. Blizz sticky now!

Bumping a (potential) sticky

Feel free to interogate me!

I took the liberty of copy/paste this on the guilds website (you are credited :) ) if thats ok. I ll keep an eye on this for updates.

cant wait to make my DK but il be doing that after ive levelled up my main dont want to fall behind and the server will probably lag with every1 wanting to create a dk

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Q u o t e:
I took the liberty of copy/paste this on the guilds website (you are credited :) ) if thats ok. I ll keep an eye on this for updates.

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Sure, I don't mind, the less questions that are answerable by spending 20 seconds reading the better.
I'll probably copy this over to the Death Knight forums when they are finally made, or ask for it to be moved over there.

isnt this already out of date? especially the DK creation information as the sticky FAQ states:

Q. What if I have a level 55 character on one realm but want to create a death knight on another realm to play with friends?
A. At the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, you will only be able to create a death knight on the same realm where you have an existing level 55 or higher character. In the future, we plan to allow the creation of a death knight on any realm (provided you have at least one level 55+ character).

Well seeing as the FAQ was made 3 weeks ago, and stuff does change frequently, yes it is out of date, and ahead of date on the whole "DK server limitation." but even so, it has alot of stuff covered than a FAQ solely for the creation, and most, if not all data is correct.

Whoops, I just happened to bump..!












Althou Blizz got a FAQ stickie up :/