Similar to a question I’ve had about the Warlocks’ magics recently on the forums, I’d like to inquire.
How do Death Knights use their frost, unholy and blood magics?
Is their frost arcane in nature?
And how do they heal themselves with blood magic? Or is it akin to the Blood Trolls’ magic?
I wonder this since I can notice a large plethora of magics used by them(in comparison to most other classes):
How do they use this magic reliably?
Afaik it’s all sub-branches of necromancy. Much in the same way that Evocation/Conjuration contain all ‘arcane/fire/frost’ spells for mages. Most of their power is channeled through their rune weapons, if seperated from their rune weapon they become much weaker, though still formidible. I’m not a DK lore expert but that’s my rough understanding.
It’s all from the runes of their runeblades, which are vrykul runemagic
Vrykul runemagic itself is complicated,seems it has soul magic, arcane, death and other stuff…
Death knights’ is from them, and with the runes’ power, they channel blood, frost, unholy/death and shadow magic
Although some say the runes are of the magic type, like frost rune, blood rune and unholy rune
And the blood is basically drawing the life force of each being to heal themselves i guess
Good luck
With runes, as stated above.
No, I don’t think it is.
I see it this way: They shape blood magic to form whatever you happen to have lost.
Not their brains LOL ![:joy:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")
![:ok_hand:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/ok_hand.png?v=6" ":ok_hand:")
![:100:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/100.png?v=6" ":100:")
Thanks all ![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Just want to gather more knowledge about the classes in WoW I don’t know much about overall.
First of all I would take a look at wow.gamepedia and search for Magic. I would post a link but I’m an untrustworthy scoundrel as far as the forum is concerned. Perhaps the best part of that page, however, is the image which comes from the Chronicles books. It breaks the magic down into a diagram of sorts.
Death Knights are made from necromancy, and so it can be assumed most of their magic comes from the sphere of Death and necromancy as shown in Chronicles.
How does a vague force of ‘Death’ give them powers of frost? I would look to mages. Mages use the arcane to bring about frost, and I believe Death Knights use ‘death magic’ to bring about the same. Here is a quote from Blizzard regarding their Frost spec:
Combining martial prowess with supernatural cold, frost death knights leave their enemies chilled to the bone—and broken of the will to fight. Unlike mages who learn to harness frost magic to great effect, these death knights are born of it, rime gripping their decaying hearts. These frozen undead warriors wield dual blades to strike with ferocity and inflict deathly cold upon anyone who would stand against them.
While vague, this does explain that their ice magic is innate from their condition as a Death Knight, and so harkens back to Death/Necromancy.
There are also quotes for the other specializations of a Death Knight that are worth reading:
In undeath, some death knights find a special affinity for the blood and bone of the living. They carve into their enemies, sustaining themselves with deadly sanguine strikes, while using the bloody, shattered remains of the dead to fortify their own defenses. These crimson-soaked knights bend the very rules of mortality to control the frontlines of the battlefield.
While free from the Lich King’s grasp, some death knights still embody the ever-corrupting nature of the Scourge plague that once threatened to consume Azeroth. No matter their allegiance or cause, they remain defilers of life; and nowhere is their callousness more on display than when threatened. Inflictors of the most aggressive of diseases—and masters of raising unhallowed minions from the ground—these unholy death knights are vicious melee combatants, capable of striking with the force of an undead legion and unleashing pestilence that would bring their foes to ruin.
As we can see here, their powers are mentioned to come from the remains of their enemies or the Plague of Undeath that began in Warcraft 3 - all to do with Death once again.
Are their blood powers similar to trolls? Probably, I would say there is at least some overlap. Death, fel, and life magic all comes from the power or consumption of life to some extent, and life is of course found within blood. The boundaries between magics and different spellcasters often blur in places - a definite example is that some spells that belonged to Death Knights in WC3 have ended up with Warlocks in WoW.
Back to Death Knights - I do not believe they truly use Shadow at all in the current version of the lore, and while their spells often deal shadow damage, I believe that is just a damage type for most dark/‘unholy’ spells in WoW. Looking at that image from Chronicles, we can see even the SHADOWlands are now closer to Death/Decay than Shadow/Void, at least if we are to take that image at face value - given how the Emerald Dream is placed with Life/Spirit, I believe it is an accurate assumption.
Ultimately however, Blizzard are inconsistent with Warcraft lore, particularly magic. There are dozens of complications and contradictions among every sphere of magic, and in my opinion while it’s fun to debate, it’s ultimately best not to dwell on it too much.
When all else fails, remember that magic is MAGIC. It is a mystical force that defies the laws of physics, and can work in seemingly infinite ways. Perhaps some things are simply above our comprehension, and cannot be neatly broken down into categories.
Thank you kindly!
Said picture, just to help:
That’s the one, thanks!
You could also argue that some Death Knight powers come from ‘Decay’, although Decay as told by Chronicles is rather limited in its scope. However, when you have an ability called Death and Decay - and a bunch of disease-based sorcery - I think it’s reasonable to assume some overlap there.
Decay is an element though, used by Dark shamans to bind elements to their own will, but not impossible 
I wont touch on the powers of second generation death knights whose powers usually stem from their runeblades. However, for third gens:
Despite Decay and Death occupying different places on that popularly used image, their function appears to be exactly the same, and their names are often flung about interchangeably. They are used by warlocks, cultists, dark shamans, and of course necromancers, as well as others. This form of magic is sourced and drawn from the Shadowlands.
They, or one of the two, are responsible for one form of necromancy, in which a soul is bound to a body through death/decay, which doubles as a bit of a dark buffer between them which causes an undead to be less able to feel positive emotions (which is why sentient undead hit by the light are not just pained, but are able to be a bit happier for a while) as well as granting powerful undead the death-specific abilities such as death grip, strangulate, access to death gates into and through the shadowlands, etc.
These abilities are shown with different animations throughout Death Knight quests, sometimes they are used by hand, and sometimes through a weapon, so I’m not sure if a rune weapon is required for a DK to use these, but players certainly don’t need one. Generally, since this power comes from the energy that keeps them alive, I assume they don’t require one, especially since these abilities don’t require any kind of runes. I know much of that assumption draws on game mechanics, but I think it’s accurate, and haven’t seen anything to the contrary except for a singular instance of strangulate being channeled through an axe by one of the horsemen in the Legion campaign.
Death Knights, as you probably know, make use further of three more kinds of magic. Blood, unholy, and frost. As far as I’m aware, they don’t actually use shadow magic as a class (exceptions are of course allowed, I’m sure some of them know how to use the void), but rather magic that looks like it. This is usually unholy or the death magic I’ve written about above.
The frost magic of third generation death knights is a power that is sort of understood, but the method through which the runes function is not. The method for using them, however, is of course runeforging their runes upon their weapons, specifically frost runes, and invoking these frost runes upon their weapons (Although there is no reason these runes can’t be elsewhere, including upon armour, stitched into cloaks and tattooed upon their bodies, according to one of the unholy artifact weapon’s traits, but their weapons is the go-to location.) It should be noted that the runes of Death Knights (third generation) are stated to originate from the Northrend Vrykul, and that nobody outside of those Vrykul, including the Scourge and Ebon Blade itself, understand how they actually work. However, as we know, DKs do know how to craft and use them.
The frost magic of Death Knights, given the magic that those Vrykul use, is most likely the same kind of frost magic that the undead typically use, which is to say, death magic employed to lower temperatures, as you can see done commonly by Liches. Powerful Death Knights (and of course Liches) are able to use a more powerful form of this magic called Shadowfrost (not to be confused with Shadowfrost, which is a new frost which uses the same method, but is done with void magic instead of death magic. This is never explained outside of the tooltip for a velf racial, and is highly irritating.)
The shadowfrost of the Ebon Blade and Scourge is said to be similar to regular frost magic, however it is more powerful and able to suck the life from it’s victims. As if being frozen wasn’t bad enough.
The unholy magic DKs used was previously stated to be a merging of Death and Fel which was first invented by the Nathrezim (Dreadlords, the big demons with wings.) thousands of years ago and employed by the Scourge after it’s creation at the Legion’s hand. I think this may or may not have been retconned at some point however, I don’t remember. It does make sense, though, as the vampiric runeblades forged by the Nathrezim and given to 2nd generation Death Knights empowered them with unholy abilities. It should be noted that both Fel and Death have been shown to be able to raise the undead as skeletons and beyond, so it is not surprising that this form of magic is used by the necromancy inclined DKs, and is particularly toxic to the living and the origin of many nasty diseases transmitted through all kinds of methods, including everything from airborne miasmas, soil-infesting terraforming cauldrons converting entire regions into nightmarish horror zones, and even bug stings.
The Blood magic used by Death Knights is the magic that from what I’ve read, is the least understood. I have seen many theorise that it’s origins stem from the San’layn, elves raised by the Scourge and created with inherent hemomancy abilities, as you’ve probably seen if you’ve farmed ICC for those sweet sweet transmogs. I don’t know too much about it beyond that, except for hemomancy being used by many other groups across Azeroth. It is not surprising, however, that the highly durable Death Knights, encased in saronite armour and absolutely untouched by fatigue, mental deterioration through shadow or often pain itself, would choose this method of combat. I’d talk about it more, but their gameplay speaks for itself.
I hope that helps, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things that I’ll curse myself about later, as usual, but that’s my understanding of the DK magics after hours and hours of reading Wowpedia and maining a DK for RP between WOTLK and the middle of MOP.
Sorry for the wall of text, I tend to ramble on and sometimes press enter to create the illusion of structure through paragraphs, heh.
Edit: And of course I was right. I forgot to mention, regarding Death/Decay, that it’s source is the shadowlands. I’ve added that tidbit to the second paragraph. You can read about the shadowlands on wowpedia quite easily. I too, cannot use links, I don’t think.
They confirmed this over twitter while Chronicles 1 was about to be published, with them contrasting blood magic specifically as one of the prime examples of opposites to Life magics. Death magics by current definition encompasses magics that create twisted reflections of Nature. (Blood, undead, dark shamanism/decay druidism).
There’s also the fact that Blood Trolls practice direct necromancy via blood magic in Nazmir, using it to raise corpses.
Its arcane, but its a very rare way of the arcane that they learned from Vrykuls. called rune magic.
I don’t think many more had access to learning this besides the scourge.
In the dk starting zone you’re basically told that for 3rd gen dk’s to use their magic they need a runeblade, otherwise all they got is their super strength.
“ The runeblade is an extension of your being. A death knight cannot battle without a runeblade.
Koltira does have runic tattoos, my headcanon is that runic power-based spells do not need a runeblade, but generating runic power in the first place does
Runic tattoos are a weird thing since we don’t really see anyone else with them/ they aren’t really brought up anywhere except in that one artifact trait back in Legion which was an unholy trait or maybe frost i’m not sure.
A lot of the new animations added to dk’s when casting spells show them using their weapons when casting death coil or howling blast so i think it reinforces the idea that they rely greatly on their runeblades.
They rely on their runeblades to channel their power through them, but the runic tattoos can help amplify the DK’s own power as well. It’s like runemasters but DK edition.
So yes, DKs need their runeblades to channel most of their spells, but runes and runic tattoos are power amplifiers. Each type of runes empowers specific aspect of DK’s power, whether it is unholy, frost or blood magic.
And tbf, Runemasters, Monk and Necromancers were the runner ups for the Hero Class for Wrath, until they decided on Death Knight, which basically combined Necri and Runemasters together in their own unique way.
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