Meet Cheerydeth, Beta Gnome Death Knight

My Characters: Let Me Show You Them, Part 6


Blog, meet Cheerydeth. Cheerydeth, please don't kill the blog to spawn ghouls, corpse worms, etc from it. :)

A few months back, I won a Blizzcon'07 card via a contest at Escapist Magazine. I didn't say a word about it to almost anyone for fear of jinxing it, but I was very hopeful that the "future beta code" that came with said prize was for Wrath. Well, yesterday the Blizzard beta fairy came through, and today I have a Death Knight. I've previously posted about what I'd do if I got into the beta, and I'm sticking to my guns and running with a Death Knight, even though it seems that most of the bloggers in the beta are doing the same thing. I'm looking at some free time until my new job starts up, so I've got a relatively unique opportunity to actually try out the Death Knight in its beta form.

A few early observations:

This is a beta and there are various bugs.
Case in point, the Death Knight Relic (which occupies the ranged slot, but does not actually work as a ranged weapon, much as the Pally/Shammy/Druid ranged items do) thinks it's a wand, and emerges in a big blue box of missing graphic glory when unsheathed. Other fun bugs include the Deeprun Tram running sideways instead of down its track (it literally emerges from the wall and then runs back into the same wall instead of taking you to the other city), the lack of a ramp for the boat dock in Stormwind, causing would-be visitors to Northrend to fall into the water, and some quests that have definite interface issues.


Nerf Death Knights?
I'm suspicious that blood spec DK's have a nerf coming. You get, in no particular order, a talent that regenerates runic power when you kill something, another talent that regenerates health when you kill stuff, a talent that lets you heal yourself in exchange for using a blood rune (think a Rogue's energy bar), another talent that spawns blood worms that do massive damage and heal you for that damage, another talent that lets you proc more healing, a debuff that makes enemies heal whatever target they attack, and passive regeneration from your damage aura. If that sounds like a lot of healing, well, it is. I don't think I've had to use any food/potions/bandages once I got the full assortment of talents. That's probably a bit too good. (These are things you get to experience during testing.)

Novel mechanics
The Death Knight training area is a necropolis. It's indoors, so you don't get to mount, but you get the next best thing; a runspeed buff as an early quest reward, that only functions in your base. DK's also get their 100% ground mount early (a level 55 quest), and a teleport back to their base where their trainers live. (Unfortunately, said base is a bit of a run from Light's Hope Chapel, which is a few zones away from anything useful for the Horde and way the heck on the other side of the continent for the Alliance, so plan on taking Engineering and/or saving your hearth cooldown for after you train.) There are some novel mechanics in early quests that still have some bugs to work out, but one neat thing is that the starter DK quests award talent points. I'd been wondering how they were going to handle the 45 talent points that a level 55 character gets when you don't even know what your abilities are yet, so they award them during various starter quests, such that you're up to par by the time you're released from the starter area.



Anyway, more detail to come, but in the mean time I'm off to go pick low level herbs. DK's start with 270/275 skill in all their potential weapons (thank you Blizzard!) as well as 270 First Aid skill (and get the 100% ground mount skill for free, another factor that's going to make them very very popular alts), but they don't get any advantages over anyone else with professions. I spent a solid hour combing Elwynn Forest and Redridge for low level herbs, and more herbs are to follow....