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  • Frost Rotation
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Death Knights

Disease & Rune System Combined

The Rune System: The resource mechanics for death knights are runes and runic power. A skilled death knight makes efficient, timely use of runes and runic power to maximize his or her damage-dealing or tanking abilities.

Runes: Every death knight ability requires runes, which come in three varieties: blood, frost, and unholy. Depending on the ability, it may require runes of a single type or a combination of types. When a rune is used, it has a cooldown period before it can be used again. Death knights always have two blood, two frost and two unholy runes and this is not able to be changed.

Runic Power: As rune abilities are used, the death knight also generates another resource called runic power. The death knight has certain abilities that consume runic power instead of runes. Similar to a warrior's rage, runic power decays over time if not spent.

This resource system is built around a basic spell rotation which uses up all the resources entirely each rotation. From this basic rotation other spells and abilities can easily be substituted for those that utilize the same resources.

Basic Rotation Explained

The basic rotation is as follows:

We can explain this spell rotation in two ways, both of which are important:

This spell rotation uses a frost rune, an unholy rune, a blood rune, a blood rune, a frost and unholy rune at the same time, then consumes the runic power that was produced from the blood/frost/unholy runes. This rotation uses all six of the runes and uses the runic power produced.

This spell rotation first applies the two main diseases to the enemy. Secondly, it then uses abilities that benefit from attacking diseased mobs. Thirdly, it uses an ability that consumes the diseases (before they expire on the enemy) for bonus damage.

From this base we can build up any spell rotation. The easiest to do is to swap out is Death Coil for any other spell or ability that consumes runic power. This can easily be done without affecting the rest of the spell rotation. As for the abilities using runes, these are usually changed in the spell rotation to others that are gained through talents. As such, each type of Death Knight has its own spell rotation.

 

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