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In the World of Warcraft, any classes can be boiled down to two characteristics; how much damage do they deal, and how much damage can they take/avoid/mitigate/heal. The Warrior deals a fair amount of damage and mitigates pretty well. The Mage and the Rogue deal more damage and aren't so good at taking damage, but they can attempt to avoid damage from stealth or range.
Definitely, The Death Knight is closest to the Warrior. At the moment, DK's appear to skew towards avoidance over mitigation due to the lack of a shield. In exchange, they seem to deal more damage than Warriors, despite substantially improved self-healing abilities compared to pure DPS classes. The DK has a few unique tricks, such as Death grip, which physically pulls casters right to you. Even without all its pets, the DK has a lot of tools to work with while solo.
That said, the class will not be largely successful at alleviating the tank shortage. You can get people to play a class that has the capacity to tank, but that doesn't give them the gear or skill needed to do so. Even though they're scattered over multiple trees to allow any spec to potentially be a tank, we suspect that other solo and DPS players will do the same.
Originally, hero classes were envisioned as an evolution of existing classes, but that option simply wasn't feasible this far out from launch. What would Blizzard tell people who picked the wrong base class for the hero they wanted sometime back in 2004? How would Blizzard simultaneously upgrade classes for every class? It did not make sense. The compromise was to make new classes and call them hero classes.
Starting the Death Knight at level 55 has several advantages. It allowed Blizzard to skip players past the less-impressive portions of the level 20-60 game, instead offering a new starting area with an impressive plotline that does its best to explain how Death Knights wound up in the Horde and the Alliance. We're sure Blizzard is also hoping that the higher starting level will encourage players who don't current have alts to try one out; there's less time investment, and, again, players get to bypass the least impressive content in the game.
We don't dispute that the higher starting level makes sense in the lore, or that it allows Blizzard to pace the acquisition of new abilities nicely over the 25 levels that Death Knights have to level 80. A new DK starts with excellent gear, solid weapon skills, all the flight paths in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, a good headstart on first aid and weapon skills, and an epic ground mount, on top of 54 free levels. That's a lot of bribes to pass up to start a new character at level 1. Between the head start and the strong solo capacity, there is no better choice for an alt to take up some misc tradeskills for you, or perhaps do daily quests if your main doesn't farm very well.
The Death Knight has a mix of complexity and rhythm. On one hand, the DK has a total of four different types of resources that dictate what abilities the DK can use, which compared to other classes. On the other hand, the need to wait for specific runes to regenerate means coming up with a rotation that uses all of your available runes, in the process greatly encourage hybrid talent specs. Despite the power level of dual specs, the DK talent trees each have their own strengths and feel. The Blood tree continues to offer up healing, the Unholy Tree turns the DK into a melee pet class.
All in all, the Death Knight still has some balancing issues to resolve; finding the right place DPS-wise in comparison to other classes and the Frost spec still needs a bit of work IMO, but overall the class is very well done. Blizzard has done a great job with the storyline, abilities, and general feel of the Death Knight.
Definitely, The Death Knight is closest to the Warrior. At the moment, DK's appear to skew towards avoidance over mitigation due to the lack of a shield. In exchange, they seem to deal more damage than Warriors, despite substantially improved self-healing abilities compared to pure DPS classes. The DK has a few unique tricks, such as Death grip, which physically pulls casters right to you. Even without all its pets, the DK has a lot of tools to work with while solo.
That said, the class will not be largely successful at alleviating the tank shortage. You can get people to play a class that has the capacity to tank, but that doesn't give them the gear or skill needed to do so. Even though they're scattered over multiple trees to allow any spec to potentially be a tank, we suspect that other solo and DPS players will do the same.
Originally, hero classes were envisioned as an evolution of existing classes, but that option simply wasn't feasible this far out from launch. What would Blizzard tell people who picked the wrong base class for the hero they wanted sometime back in 2004? How would Blizzard simultaneously upgrade classes for every class? It did not make sense. The compromise was to make new classes and call them hero classes.
Starting the Death Knight at level 55 has several advantages. It allowed Blizzard to skip players past the less-impressive portions of the level 20-60 game, instead offering a new starting area with an impressive plotline that does its best to explain how Death Knights wound up in the Horde and the Alliance. We're sure Blizzard is also hoping that the higher starting level will encourage players who don't current have alts to try one out; there's less time investment, and, again, players get to bypass the least impressive content in the game.
We don't dispute that the higher starting level makes sense in the lore, or that it allows Blizzard to pace the acquisition of new abilities nicely over the 25 levels that Death Knights have to level 80. A new DK starts with excellent gear, solid weapon skills, all the flight paths in the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, a good headstart on first aid and weapon skills, and an epic ground mount, on top of 54 free levels. That's a lot of bribes to pass up to start a new character at level 1. Between the head start and the strong solo capacity, there is no better choice for an alt to take up some misc tradeskills for you, or perhaps do daily quests if your main doesn't farm very well.
The Death Knight has a mix of complexity and rhythm. On one hand, the DK has a total of four different types of resources that dictate what abilities the DK can use, which compared to other classes. On the other hand, the need to wait for specific runes to regenerate means coming up with a rotation that uses all of your available runes, in the process greatly encourage hybrid talent specs. Despite the power level of dual specs, the DK talent trees each have their own strengths and feel. The Blood tree continues to offer up healing, the Unholy Tree turns the DK into a melee pet class.
All in all, the Death Knight still has some balancing issues to resolve; finding the right place DPS-wise in comparison to other classes and the Frost spec still needs a bit of work IMO, but overall the class is very well done. Blizzard has done a great job with the storyline, abilities, and general feel of the Death Knight.
