World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: The Death Knight

Now that Wrath of the Lich King is becoming such a popular expansion pack in the World of Warcraft and nearly all players are purchasing the expansion, the Death Knight hero class is becoming extremely popular, and more and more Death Knights are being created. There definitely are advantages to being a death knight, and I assume this is why so many players are creating this class of character.

Some of the many advantages of Death Knights are: Free epic mount, free blues and starting gear, fun quests that level you from 55-58 in a hurry, fun ganking abilities, and much more.

However, you're still going to need to know how to use, spec, and gear your Death Knight properly if you wish to continue using him.

Specing
When it comes to specing your character, there are definitely some factors to take into deep consideration. The great thing about specing a Death Knight though is that if you ever wish to change your spec, you won't have to worry much about changing gear, maybe weapons at most.

Blood: Blood is definitely a fun spec, in this spec you're going to get tons of abilities that give you back health while in combat, and your survivability is going to be excellent, because you can heal yourself even while fighting and doing damage. Moves like blood worms, blood tap, etc. make it quite easy to stay alive.

Frost: I would say frost is a mix between a dps and a tank spec, leaning towards the tank. Many of the abilities in the frost tree are for tanking, some are for dps, however. The frost presence makes any player an excellent tank because it nearly doubles their armor based on gear and stats.

Unholy: This is my current spec, and I would definitely say that this is a fun spec tree to go down. In this spec, you get a ghoul summon that actually stays with you the entire time, as a pet would. Your diseases are going to do more damage, and you have a few abilities which allow you to take some more damage. Later on, Unholy Aura makes putting out some serious dps very easy. In PvP most Death Knights go unholy because they can gain health from their ghoul, and the ghoul also has its own stunning effect.

Gearing
Gear for the Death Knight isn't really all that hard to come by. Strength is the stat that will raise your dps, parry rate, and attack power. This is going to overall make you hit harder. Agility will raise your critical strike rate, and is probably nowhere near as important as stamina, which will up your amount of health. Try and keep your strength and stamina quite up there, agility can come after these two.

If you're Blood or Unholy, use 2 handed weapons that are extremely slow, these will greatly increase the damage of your special abilities. If you're frost, tank specced, you're going to want faster weapons that allow you to dish out more threat in a faster manner, and they also help with some abilities.

Use
You'll learn how to use your Death Knight as you go through the levels, but one of the key concepts to playing a Death Knight class character is to keep diseases on your targets at all times. Open up with plague strike and icy touch, and follow through with attacks that magnify the effects of these diseases, based on your own personal choice. Other than that, just play, and you'll learn what works best for you personally.