In Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft will meet its first hero class, the Death Knight. Many players are eager to play this new melee/cast hybrid class and experiment with the new talent tree. The class should be interesting to play as it offers several different gameplay options, including tankiness, support, and even some healing.

The Blood talent tree focuses on physical damage dealing abilities and is well suited for tanking and sustained DPS on single targets. The Death Knight’s self-heal also helps minimize downtime, making it popular for leveling up. At higher levels, this build will allow for various options in raids such as a secondary role or DPS.

The Frost talent tree is used for critical burst damage and focuses on spells and control. There are no dedicated Frost builds that truly take advantage of everything the build has to offer, and most builds include a mix of Blood or Unholy Talents. A mix of Frost and Unholy talents works well for PvP, while those looking to tank should stick with a mix of Frost and Blood talents.

The Unholy Tree focuses on spells, summons, and diseases, as well as PvP-focused abilities. These also make for decent tanking qualities and hybridization for DPS builds.

The Death Knight should prove to be not only a powerful opponent, but also a very adaptable party member. Once the expansion has been around for a while and players have had a chance to play around with different builds for various situations, we should start to see some standardized builds.