Death Knight Guide (Adventure)
Do you want to become Death itself? Do you want to leave a pile of corpses wherever you walk? Do you want to be what Swordmasters dream they could be? This is the guide for you!
Terminology
- Death Knight [DK]
- Soul Shroud [SS]
- Grasp of the Grave [GOTG]
Class Overview
You’re the PVE Reaper, the core gameplay loop is simple, you enter a room, activate SS and watch how everything dies… slowly
The starting weapons are a two handed sword and one handed sword + shield.
The two handed sword is all you need, USE the charge attack its your best move against any not small enemy. A charged attack will cause the enemy to stagger for a few seconds, giving you the opening to land a few more hits, with a full set of grey (rings and amulet) this combo will be more than enough to kill most enemies in easy adventures.
The DK has two skills Soul Shroud and Grasp of the Grave
SS is the bread and butter of the DK, this is your best skill, you press the skill button and an AOE aura will appear around you, this AOE will do damage to anything 360º of you, this skill also doesn’t have friendly fire you can use without being scared of hitting you teammates.
Activating SS will consume 5%-10% of your Soul meter, this is your “mana”, for every second SS is active it’ll continue to deplete your meter. You can deactivate SS at any moment, after that it’ll will have a short cooldown of 1-2 seconds and before you can active it again if you have enough Souls.
How to gain more Souls? Kill!
Killing an enemy will drop Souls, by walking over them the DK will automatically absorb them giving you back an small portion of your meter.
GOTG is a tricky skill to use, in simple words GOTG is a grab, you can pull enemies or allies towards you , if pulling an enemy it’ll do some damage, unlike other classes your won’t get a highlight of who is in range of GOTG so you gotta use the skill until you get a feeling of how far it can reach.
Why did I call GOTG a tricky skill?
Because it is inconsistent, sometimes you’d pull an enemy and they’ll immediately attack you and other times they’ll just stand there giving you an opening to land 2-3 hits.
Passives and Weapons
The DK Can Use:
- Two Handed Sword
- One Handed Sword
- Shield
- Crossbow
What’s the best weapon? What’s the best combination?
Everything is viable don’t be afraid of trying different combinations, but there’s a few things you should keep in mind…
Shields are too strong!
Your starting shield blocks 95% of the incoming damage, during your first adventures if you find yourself losing a lot of HP to PVE monsters, use the shield, you don’t know the enemy’s attack patter? block .
My personal favourite combination of weapons
- Two handed sword: This is your main weapon for anything above 6′, as a said before after a charged attack most enemies are staggered giving you an opening to land a few more strikes.
- Dual wielding of one handed swords: for anything bellow 5’11 you use these, small enemies are harder to hit with the two handed sword and the fast attack speed of dual wielding staggers most small enemies until they die.
Passives to prioritize early
You are losing too much HP? PVE is being hard to you?
- Get Life Steal
The Souls enemies drop when they die will heal you, it’s not a big amount but after killing a bunch of smaller enemies you’ll full HP again.
Want to become a PVE killing machine?
- Get Soul Explosion
This passive single handedly will wipe rooms of monsters, grab the room’s aggro, spin around enemies will throwing some M1, once your Souls meter reached 50%, turn off SS and watch how everything around you die.
Soul Reaper is also a good perk to get early since you only need 20 dex.
General Tips
This section while contain mainly PVE tips and advice, i’m from south America so my PVP experience with 200ms is quite different from yours.
Is the DK viable for solo and trio?
Yes, your skills not only don’t have friendly fire but you can also save a teammate with GOTG.
Don’t be greedy use your gold.
Buy some cheap rings and amulet, reaching 20 dex for Soul Reaper is an easy task, Life Steal and Soul Explosion might take some extra gear, but once you reach max level you can get all 3 fairly easy.
Clerics can’t heal you
Always keep this in mind for your team comp
Be smart about when to use GOTG.
As an exampledon’t pull a warrior towards you or your team, he’ll start spinning immediately, pay attentions to their CD, in my experience saving GOTG for the last part of the fight when everyone starts running away with low HP is the best play.
If you see someone interacting/opening a portal use GOTG, you can land some free hits and have the advantage.
Roll some good boots.
Boots come with a movement speed increase, try to roll boots with the maximum value since the DK doesn’t any mobility skills this is a vital part of your build.
The last hit of the one handed sword has RANGE.
The third hit of the sword can out range most enemies attacks if your positioning is right.
If you think a rogue is near you or in an small room pop SS.
If it hits, it’ll take them out of stealth.
Always bring some healing pots or bandages.
What did I say? Clerics can’t heal you, you’re on your own.
I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!
I appreciate the humor in the guide. My stack doesn’t run a DK but we considered it. If we had more time in the playtest maybe I would switch off Rogue to test it out once hitting 20. Do you run Hard Mode with your DK? If so have you managed to kill the Wendigo with it? I feel like lack of movement speed abilities would make it hard to kite its attacks.