Rune system



The rune system is the resource system used by death knights, much as mana, energy, or rage are used by other classes or focus is used by hunters and their pets. The death knight's rune system consists of two very distinct but complementary resources: runes and runic power. Some of the death knight's spells and abilities require spending runes; others require his or her having generated through battle a certain level of runic power. Every death knight who has not recently been in combat enters a fresh combat situation possessing six expendable runes but no runic power. Only by spending some of these runes (each of which regenerates after ten seconds) on battle spells may the death knight thereby acquire and incrementally build up for a short time runic power, which in turn he or she may draw on for other spells. The death knight's rune system thus combines characteristics of those classes relying for combat powers on depleting-but-renewable resources — such as mana (mages, warlocks) and energy (rogues) — with those classes relying for combat powers on resources generated solely through battle itself, such as rage (warriors).

Runes
The death knight has access to three different types of runes: Blood,  Frost, and  Unholy.

These three types of runes are also the names of the death knight's three respective talent trees.

Before casting any spells, the death knight has three pairs, totaling six runes. Different abilities and spells consume different types and amounts of runes and, when used, will place the corresponding rune on a 10 second cooldown (9 seconds if in Unholy Presence). Some abilities are able to refresh certain runes; Empower Rune Weapon will refresh all of them. Only one rune of each kind can be on cooldown simultaneously (i.e. if you activate a blood rune when you already have one cooling down, the rune you just activated will wait until the first blood rune is finished before starting to cooldown).

There is also a fourth type of rune, which acts as any of the main rune types, the Death Rune.

The death rune can be created by using the skill Blood Tap or through talent specialization:

Death runes will count as the runes they where converted from in regards to cooldown (a death rune converted from a frost rune will still cooldown as if it was a frost rune)
 * With the Blood talent specialization, Blood Rites causes Death Strike and Obliterate to convert the runes they use into Death Runes when they activate.
 * With the Frost talent specialization, Blood of the North permanently transforms the Blood Runes into Death Runes.
 * With the Unholy talent specialization, Reaping causes Blood Stike, Pestilence and Festering Strike to convert the runes they use into Death Runes when they activate.

Runic power
Runic power is an extra resource that builds up as the death knight uses his or her abilities, displayed as an empty bar that fills up with a light sky blue color similar to rage under the death knight's health bar. Generally, offensive single rune abilities generate 10 runic power and offensive multi-rune abilities generate 15 runic power. Additionally, Empower Rune Weapon and Horn of Winter generate runic power without costing runes. Talents can improve the runic power generation of some abilities and allow runic power to be generated in other ways. Death knights start with maximum 100 runic power but that can be increased up to 130 through Runic Power Mastery. As with rage, runic power gradually diminishes when not in combat.

It is possible for a death knight to generate a maximum of 35 runic power without any rune consumption: Horn of Winter generates 10, and Empower Rune Weapon generates 25, however, keep in mind that Horn of Winter is on the global cooldown, whereas and Empower Rune Weapon is not.

Cataclysm changes
Cost changes to existing abilities: New abilities:
 * Death and Decay: 1 Unholy
 * Howling Blast: 1 Frost
 * Scourge Strike: 1 Unholy
 * Necrotic Strike: 1 Unholy.
 * Pillar of Frost: 1 Frost.
 * Festering Strike: 1 Frost 1 Blood.

Origin and idea
Developers said at BlizzCon 2007 that they didn't want the new class to use the traditional resource systems because they wanted the death knight to have a different style of play. They stated their intention was for the death knight to use a mixture of spells and melee in close combat. Because of this, a system that didn't specifically rely on either mana or rage was more appropriate.

This is how the original icons looked:

During the 2008 WWI, it was noted that the original runes were replaced because they were too complex to show them refreshing inside the character's portrait bar.

This is how the replacement icons looked:

Patch changes


Sistema de runas