Last night I was able to give my Death Knight a real workout. I started off gathering quests in and around Thrallmar. As expected, they were pretty similar to the Alliance versions, but with slight modifications. 
For example, the Alliance quest Fel Orc Scavengers has you kill 20 Bonechewer Orcs, while the corresponding Horde quest Bonechewer Blood has you collect blood from the orcs.
My minion and I headed out to finish up a couple of the quests I’d started the first night of my arrival in the Outlands. As I got into the swing of playing the class, the first thing I noticed was that my DPS was pretty darn close to that of my 65 rogue. I’d say I averaged about 350 DPS, sometimes getting up to 425, sometimes only pulling down 250. Enyx’s DPS averages around 425, but even still, this piddly little 58 Death Knight is closer than what I’d probably think he should be.
I chose Unholy for my Death Knight because I liked the performance of that talent spec in the beta. I may try Blood for a while, just to see how the DPS compares since I wasn’t able to in the beta.1
The minion, the centerpiece of the Unholy Death Knight’s talent tree in my humble opinion, is pretty strong. When I didn’t have any Corpse Dust, I had to slaughter an orc in order to raise another minion. Fighting solo, I did notice a sizeable drop, probably 30-35%, in my damage output. 
It took noticeably longer to defeat the orc, as well. The Death Knight’s minion is not as powerful as a Hunter’s pet, obviously, since Hunters get talents for their pets, but it’s definitely a nice little buddy to have following you around.
Unlike my mage and rogue, I haven’t developed a fighting technique with my Death Knight yet. With Enyx and Einz, there’s a certain order I’d cast spells or use abilities, depending on where in the fight I am and any other circumstances. With my Death Knight, however, I’ve just been mashing the Strikes for the most part. Other than pulling with Death Grip2 and slapping a Icy Touch on the target right away, there’s no method to the madness of my fights. I just swing away, smacking whichever Strike is available and throwing in a pinch of Death Coil to taste.
[Fast forward 24 hours...]
With a night of Unholy Death Knighting under my belt, I decided to give Blood a try. It took me a little while to get into the groove – or at least some semblance of a groove – but I managed to spend almost the whole night in that talent spec. The first thing I wanted to compare to Unholy was Blood’s DPS. I have to say I wasn’t all that impressed. I didn’t notice much difference on average, but it seemed like the spikes were a lot more extreme than with Unholy.
Another attraction of the Blood tree are the myriad self heals. The green numbers were flipping by quite a bit during fights, especially when accompanied by my posse of Bloodworms. But again, I didn’t really notice a difference on my health bar compared to when I was Unholy. With both specs, my health bar only ever went down when I was getting beat on by at least 3 creatures. I felt more comfortable as Unholy, and since there wasn’t a gross difference in performance between the two, I switched back to Unholy.
The Unholy Death Knight reminds me quite a bit of the Shadowknight class in the original Everquest. It was the my main character’s class, though I never got above level 53. Shadowknights were a hybrid class, a mix of a warrior and necromancer. They were tanks that used DoTs and a weak pet to offset their slightly reduced Armor Class. They were the anti-Paladin. Unlike Azeroth’s Death Knights, however, Shadowknights of Norrath could not stand toe-to-toe with adversaries that weren’t significantly less experience than they.3 To solo, the Shadowknight had to snare and fear their target and hack away at their backs like a despicable rogue, their pet not much more helpful than a mosquito.
The Death Knight, while reminiscent of the old days spent terrorizing Norrath, is much more powerful, much more independent. This jives better with the lore of the class and the overall feel one should have while playing it. The Death Knight sows fear and disgust, if not outright hate, everywhere he goes. It’s the same with the Shadowknight; yet how can you live up to this if you have to rely on groups or beating on fleeing creatures in order to gain experience?
The Death Knight feels like the new model of Shadowknight,4 version 2.0. It will take quite a bit of playing to really get into the groove, but I won’t mind.
I’m sure a vast number of people will tire of the new class, the new toy, and we’ll see the number of Death Knights taper off in the coming weeks and months. I don’t think I’ll be one of them.
1 Addons weren’t available in the beta. If they were, I was too lazy to install them, so I was never able to see my DPS before now
2 This is probably one of the most awesome spells in the game, especially against casters
3 That’s actually a universal truth of the entire game. The only classes that could solo effectively at higher levels must do it by kiting.
4 I’ve never played Everquest II, so I don’t know how the Shadowknight class plays in the sequel, so we’ll leave the comparison between EQ and WoW
The Kirin Tor
Somebody Likes Me
Lodi Dodi We Loves the Skadi
My Girl Loves to Skadi All the Time
The Incredible Hulk
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’d be curious to know what order you cast your abilities when attacking. I’ve got a new do and I have no idea as to what would be the best way to attack my enemies.
Thanks!
When I pull, it’s with Death Grip and Icy Touch. When the target arrives, I use this rotation: Heart Strike, Plague Strike, Heart Strike, Death Strike. Now if all hits have landed, I’m out of runes. I hit the target with Death Coil. By the time the global cooldown refreshes, my Frost rune is back up and I start the cycle all over again with a renewal of Icy Touch. Rinse and repeat.