Note – Cataclysm was released on Dec. 7

With the upcoming release of Cataclysm, some of the classes in World of Warcraft are getting major overhauls. Today we’ll take a look at what major changes Death Knights can expect.

Runes will now regenerate differently. Instead of each rune type regenerating at the same time, they will now regenerate in order. So instead of each rune regenerating as soon as you use them they will regenerate one at a time for each type. For example if you use two undead runes, the first one will regenerate fully before the second one starts to.

Death Knights now have a dedicated talent tree for tanking. The Blood tree is now your tanking tree, while the undead and frost trees are DPS. Hopefully this will allow Blizzard to add some cool DPS specializations to each of the DPS trees.

Runic Empowerment is a new mechanic which will allow runes on cooldown to instantly activate. It will be important to have all your runes on cooldown as much as possible so that when runic empowerment occurs you can take advantage of it.

Players will also see new spells added once Cataclysm launches with the new level cap of 85. At level 81 you can learn Outbreak, which allows you to infect a target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This will especially be useful for when you are switching targets or your diseases have been dispelled. Necrotic Strike becomes available at level 83. This attack does weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs healing done based on damage done. The last spell you get is Dark Simulacrum at level 85. When you hit a target with this spell you will apply a debuff that copies the next spell from the target and use it. Blizzard has stated that in most cases if you can reflect the spell then you can copy it.

That about does it for Death Knights, as you can see the class is changing substantially. The addition of a pure tanking tree and the new runic empowerment mechanic should be welcome additions to all Death Knights out there.