Last week we kicked off a PvP series on how to deal with specific classes starting with the druid. We featured those slippery shapeshifters mostly because I'm a doofus who thought they were first on the alphabetical list -- cut me some slack, though, since druids were first on the list for years before those upstart death knights came along. Of course, when the game's first hero class was introduced with Wrath of the Lich King, it was no coincidence that their popularity was directly proportional to their being completely imbalanced and overpowered. It was so broken that Arena Season 5 was dominated by death dnights and even unskilled keyboard turners and clickers could sometimes achieve gaudy rankings using the class.

While the class has been tuned down somewhat, this hasn't diminished their popularity and death knights remain formidable opponents in the Battlegrounds and world PvP. Today we'll take a look at the dreaded death knight and try to outline a few key points to remember when facing one. Just as with the first installment of this series, these articles are by no means an exhaustive and complete guide to fighting a particular class. PvP depends greatly on context, in part determined by your own class, your environment, your opponent's spec, and player skill among other things. With that disclaimer out of the way, let's take a quick overview of death knights just to give players a general idea of what to expect.

Dual resources
The main thing that separates death knights from other classes is that they operate using a completely different resource mechanic -- Runes and Runic Power. The three basic Runes -- Blood, Frost, and Unholy -- are a constantly regenerating or more appropriately, refreshing, resource that can be used to cast spells. Because they renew at a constant rate, the closest parallel resource to runes would probably be rogue Energy. On the other hand, Runic Power is generated when the death knight attacks or uses special abilities but decays over time through inactivity. In this way, one could imagine Runic Power being very similar to warrior Rage.

Death knights basically have two sets of spells that use two different resources. The advantage that death knights have over other classes is that Runic Power is the only one of the two resources visible to opponents, such that there's no way for players to know what Runes are off cooldown. Even if players were to memorize the Rune requirements of a spell, all three death knight trees have talents that can conditionally produce Death Runes which count as Blood, Frost, or Unholy Runes which complicates matters for those who like to keep track of these things.

Furthermore, death knights also have a few spells which require absolutely no resources such as Death Grip, a spell that very often sees use in PvP. Blood Tap is a spell that converts a Blood Rune into an active Death Rune and uses no resources, although demands 6% of the caster's base health. Then there's the Frost talent Lichborne, an extremely useful PvP talent, which doesn't use either Runes or Runic Power. As an added bonus, none of the aforementioned abilities trigger the global cooldown, which make them usable pretty much anytime.

It's very difficult to determine a death knight's full capabilities upon engagement solely on the basis of the available visible resource. As a general rule, death knights are at their most dangerous when they're loaded with Runic Power, although abilities have been rebalanced so as to no longer scale with it, such as Summon Gargoyle. A death knight with a lot of Runic Power can fire off two or even three Death Coils in quick succession, or use other abilities also popular in PvP, such as Icebound Fortitude and Mind Freeze. Because Runic Power decays, death knights often want to use abilities that use up Runic Power, so be wary. That said, even a death knight with 0 Runic Power can build it up relatively quickly.

A plateful of diseases
Another interesting feature of death knights is that they deal a mix of physical and magical damage, similar to retribution paladins. They also make use of a previously uncommon debuff type, Diseases, which plays a huge part in death knight damage -- or at least the unholy spec, which is popular in PvP. Classes able to remove diseases such as druids paladins (sorry, missed that one! thanks, folks!) and shamans have fair defense against them, and it's often a good strategy to spend some mana and a few global cooldowns removing their debuffs, which can prove fatal if allowed to stack and run their course.

Death knights are a plate-wearing class, which allows them to withstand a lot more physical damage. On top of that, they have a few healing abilities that allows them to heal themselves or their undead allies. Don't be surprised to have a death knight be low on life and suddenly be rejuvenated. Regardless of spec, a death knight can use Death Pact to sacrifice a minion such as a ghoul or gargoyle to regain 40% of the death knight's health, as well as use Death Strike to regain health while dealing damage. blood-specced opponents, in particular, can generate a lot of health using various tricks. We'll get to that when we take a look at each spec a little more closely.

Although most effective at close range, death knights have a few means by which to close the distance, most notably the fearsome Death Grip. A lot of less experienced death knight players will use this as an opener, which can work to your advantage as long as you are mindful of the ability's long cooldown of 35 seconds (or 25 with Unholy Command). Another important snare ability is Chains of Ice, which uses up a valuable Frost Rune. Dispelling the first Chains of Ice is a good way to waste a death knight's Frost Rune. It's a Magic effect, so classes that can dispel magic such as priests or paladins should do so instead of using a trinket or Hand of Freedom. Frost Runes are needed for some important strikes such as the unholy talent Scourge Strike or Obliterate, so many death knights will be judicious in their use of Chains of Ice, although they won't hesitate to use it often to keep enemies in place.

A note to casters
Death knights were designed to be the anti-caster class. Blizzard had initially envisioned death knights to fill the niche role of tanking caster bosses and gave them abilities that are excellent against casters such as Anti-Magic Shell and Anti-Magic Zone. They also have abilities such as Strangulate (1 Blood Rune, 2-minute cooldown) and Mind Freeze (20 Runic Power, 10-second cooldown) which can silence and lock-out casters from particular schools. They won't hesitate to use Strangulate and often use it early in the fight in order to gain the upper hand. On a good note, death knights have a particular weakness that can be exploited by smarter players...

Mobility
Aside from their ability to pull opponents and ensnare them, death knights have no natural way to remove snares. This makes them particularly vulnerable to kiting. They have no rush abilities such as a warrior's Intercept or fast-moving forms like a druid or shaman, so a slowed or snared death knight is vulnerable to ranged attacks. In PvP, death knights are often in Unholy Presence, which grants them improved mobility by 15% (as well as reduces the global cooldowns of all their abilities by 0.5 seconds). Death knights won't hesitate to use Anti-Magic Shell to shake off magical snares, but have nothing against physical snares such as Hamstring or poison effects such as Crippling Poison. This is one of their few pitfalls, and classes able to take advantage of this should find it a little easier to deal with death knights. Remember, however, that Death Coil is a ranged attack, so make sure to kite them when their Runic Power is low.

Identifying specs
Unlike last week's druids, identifying a death knight's spec isn't as simple as checking out their forms. However, unholy death knights are very easy to spot by virtue of the swirling bones around them and their having a permanent ghoul by their side. Those ghouls are named, too, as opposed to the generic type summoned by other death knights. Blood and frost-specced death knights are a little less obvious so it might take actual engagement to reveal their specs.

While death knight abilities seem formidable, not all specs have access to all their fearsome abilities. For example, a frost-specced death knight with access to Hungering Cold, arguably the best peeling ability in the game, won't be able to summon a gargoyle. An unholy-specced death knight -- a popular tree for PvP -- isn't likely to have the self-healing capabilities of a death knight specced deep into blood. An opponent that spawns Bloodworms with her strikes is likely to be deep in blood and won't have the deeper frost and unholy abilities. So on and so forth. What's important about identifying specs, as is true with all classes, is that it gives you an idea of what to expect.

Blood
It won't be easy to identify a blood-specced death knight right away. The most telling sign, perhaps, would be the Bloodworms that usually spawn when they start attacking. They will almost never use Dancing Rune Weapon unless their opponents are vulnerable and are at low health, so don't expect to see that ability until very late into the fight (hopefully never). Blood-specced death knights are a good counter against melee classes, as they can pop Mark of Blood against an opponent to heal themselves. They will usually do this against fast-hitting opponents such as rogues or Enhancement shamans. If you're a melee class and find yourself with a Mark of Blood, try to remove it or disengage until the duration of the debuff wears off. Barring that, turn off auto-attack and only use hard-hitting attacks. Smarter death knights will even apply Mark of Blood on pets, who have low damage but fast attacks. If you see the debuff on your pet, turn off its attack.

Blood-specced death knights can recover a lot of health in a very short time. They can activate Vampiric Blood and use Improved Rune Tap (1 Blood Rune) while spamming Death Strike (1 Unholy and 1 Frost Rune) to generate massive health very quickly. Because the blood spec doesn't rely on pets, some death knights will even Raise Dead and immediately follow it with a Death Pact in order to heal. The most you can do in this situation is to remove diseases because Death Strike will not heal at all if no diseases are on the target. Also remember that those low-health Bloodworms help heal the death knight, so eliminating them with a well-placed AoE should help you in that fight.

While blood-specced death knights have incredible durability and self-healing capabilities, they aren't known for dealing as much damage as the other two specs. Diseases won't be particularly strong and they won't have a ghoul to occasionally stun and pester. Fighting blood death knights is all about trying to keep their self-heals under control, so healing debuffs or Mortal Strike effects work particularly well here.

Frost
Frost death knights aren't easy to spot, either, but can sometimes be identifiable through dual-wielding and opening with an Icy Touch. Some will have the Chilblains talent, which should appear as a snare debuff, and this should tip you off. The surest but unfortunately most painful sign, of course, is when they finally unleash Howling Blast on you. One interesting point about frost-specced death knights is that they are more likely to use their Runic Power on Frost Strike rather than a weaker Death Coil, so try to kite them as much as possible.

Save your trinket for Hungering Cold, which they will pull off in order to escape or maneuver. They will try to deal as much damage as possible by using Obliterate and Howling Blast, which is a dangerous thing especially if Rime procs. Casters in particular should be wary of frost death knights, who might even pick up Acclimation, a deep Frost talent that boosts resistance to particular schools of magic. They are also able to cast Mind Freeze for free, essentially capable of interrupting spellcasting every 10 seconds without worrying about Runic Power.

Also noteworthy is that a lot of frost damage bypasses armor because, well, it's Frost and not Physical. This makes frost death knights pretty effective against other melee classes, especially considering they can also mitigate physical damage with Unbreakable Armor. Note that when death knights use Lichborne, they are considered undead and can therefore be Shackled or Turned. They are also able to heal themselves (a Runic Power intensive endeavor) using Death Coil.