Death Knight

Death knights, often abbreviated to DK, are melee fighters that wield dark magic and runeforged weapons.

Death knights utilize enchanted rune weapons that enhance their abilities and are powerful foes on the battlefield. Like warriors, they deal large amounts of physical damage and are capable of withstanding large amounts of damage to protect their allies. Death knights spread infections and diseases among their enemies, and use dark magics to heal themselves in battle. Born of the frozen north, death knights can command the frost in their veins to freeze the hearts and minds of their enemies, or even turn the ground beneath their feet to ice. By their very nature, death knights are resistant to magic and have a number of abilities for defending against its use.

Character's role
In general, the death knight can be considered a hybrid melee class that combines damage dealing and tanking, somewhat akin to Warriors. They wear plate armor and are able to dual-wield or use two-handed weapons. Like druids, they tank without shields. Their tanking mechanics involve high armor and a high chance to dodge and parry. Death knight tanks depend on a combination of high damage abilities, in addition to high threat abilities, such as Death and Decay and  [Rune Strike], to generate and hold aggro.

Specializations
The three death knight specializations are Blood (tanking), Frost (melee DPS) and Unholy (melee DPS).

Runeforging
[Runeforging] allows the death knight to permanently enchant their weapon. These enchants act as a replacement for the stat enhancements provided by shields or ranged weapons, which death knights cannot wear.

A weapon can have an enchant from either runeforging or from Enchanting, but not both together (the runeforging enchants are usually considered better). A player will have to be near a Runeforge in order to forge a rune onto their weapon. Once a weapon has been engraved with a rune it is impossible for the rune to be removed, though it can be exchanged for a different rune. Like all weapons that have been modified, a runeforged weapon becomes soulbound to its death knight.