Death Knights: Not to be taken seriously.

Over the course of the past six months, I’ve had a lot of seat time with my favorite MMO – World of Warcraft, arguably one of the most addictive and well constructed PC games of its time, but  not all of the experiences have been rosy.  When I began playing WoW again after a year or so hiatus, I was initially thrilled to put on my winter wardrobe to battle the undead legions of the Lich King in the frozen wasteland of Northrend, but then I realized Blizzard made a critical expansion error.

Death Knights.

See, the balance of WoW has been kept in check by a variation of classes that are built from the ground up.  Starting at level 1, a paladin player will, presumably, learn the ropes on his/her way to the current level cap (as of now, 80).  This can be said for most classes, with the exception of Death Knights, who begin at level 55 and practically have everything handed to them, particularly the false ideal that they are good at everything because their starting armor is better than yours.  This has led to a whole new generation of frustration.

The problem with Death Knights is not simply limited to the fact that your kid can roll one on your account as long as you’ve gotten at least one character to level 55, thereby bypassing any knowledge of how to actually play in a massively populated online game, no.  In addition to that, DK’s are just not very balanced.  They are OP (overpowered) in their starting levels, but have a limited choice of spells and skills, making them utterly boring to play as.  A friend and I both made the decision within the past few days to delete our Death Knights because frankly, we agreed that they’re not very fun to play.  So basically, a Death Knight is Blizzard’s way of saying thank you to their loyal players over the years by introducing a class that a retard can have grouping with you in the Dungeon Finder within a day and in their off-time enjoys slamming square pegs into circular shaped holes while grunting.  Two of the most popular and well known DK’s on the server I play on are almost always in Trade chat, shooting the breeze, they’re that bored.

Pros of being a DK:  Plate armor

Cons of being a DK: Everything else

The worst part of all, however, is that even the experienced players who should know better will roll Death Knights to “try them on” (ie: myself) and then, miraculously attempt to tank with them (ie: can’t blame this one on me).  A character class that cannot equip shields but rather has a “frost presence” that adds defense points that most DK’s seem to forget they even have, is not someone I want keeping the attention of the mobs in this game.  In the actual content that high level players live for (Raids, Heroic dungeons), you rarely ever see a successful DK tank.  I know a few, but they’re good players all around.  The problem is when they think because they’re 80, they are equal in tanking skill to that of a Paladin or a Warrior as a general rule.  They’re not.  In fact, with the scant array of mostly disease-based attacks, they’re a joke.

While healing with my priest, I allowed for the law of averages to try and convince me that maybe things weren’t so bad.  This only ended in horror and disappointment.  90% of the time I random into a dungeon, it doesn’t matter how well I heal (and I’m damn good); it seems like the Death Knight forgot their pretty ornate armor at home and decided to tape cereal boxes to them instead and rush retardedly into oncoming, pissed off, demon traffic while holding a spoon.  You can’t do that and be taken seriously.  I have not once seen a DK taking main tank duty on a raid where the enemies have hundreds of thousands if not millions of health points and sometimes up to 40 people are involved.  I may have a dim view of the potential of humanity, but even those 39 other people don’t deserve such a fate.

The “best” experience I can recall in recent months was, while leveling my priest, I entered a dungeon to find myself standing in a group of 4 Death Knights and myself.  Wow.  I can not tell you how thrilled I was, but then the punchline hit me when one of them said: “Four DKs?  We’ll tear this shit up.”  If you guessed that we wiped 3 times because no one knew where they were going but me and I ended up leaving because they fell off of high places to their doom at least once, good guess, because that’s exactly what happened.  I now have a degree in teaching special Ed.

I don’t care how good one or two Death Knights may be in the grand scheme, your efforts will never be enough to eclipse the blatant fucktard antics of your fellows.  Do yourself a favor and just roll a real character, play the fucking game, and stop making everyone hate you.

Sadly, I did not create this image nor did it take very long to find it.

- Wells

This delightful nugget of information was brought to you by:  2nd in command, because it's all the power with less responsibility. Dispenser of verbal justice and handy with a game controller. More from this author

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