Rune system

For rune lore, see rune magic.

This article concerns content exclusive to Wrath of the Lich King.

The rune system is the resource system used by death knights, much as , , or are used by other classes or used by a hunter and their pets. The death knight's rune system consists of two very distinct but complementary resources: Runes and Runic Power.

Runes

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).

Rune regeneration time

• Ten seconds may sound like a lot, but it actually isn't. If you only use abilities that require only 1 rune, you will have approx. 2 seconds left when using up all runes, sometimes even less if you've acquired death runes, and after that you also have a good amount of runic power accumulated.

Rune abilities by cost

Single rune abilities

Rune	Blood	Frost	Unholy	Death
Universal	[Blood Boil] [Strangulate]	[Icy Touch] [Chains of Ice] [Path of Frost]	[Death Gate] [Plague Strike] [Death and Decay] [Control Undead]
Specialized	[Rune Tap] [Soul Reaper]	[Howling Blast] [Pillar of Frost] [Soul Reaper]	[Scourge Strike] [Dark Transformation] [Soul Reaper]
Talented			[Defile]	[Death Siphon]

Multi-rune abilities

Cost	Frost + Unholy		Blood + Frost + Unholy	Blood + Frost
Universal	[Death Strike]		[Army of the Dead]
Specialized	[Obliterate]			[Festering Strike]

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. As with rage, runic power gradually diminishes when not in combat.

Modified by

• Glyph of Runic Power

Talents

• Blood Tap
• Runic Empowerment
• Runic Corruption
• Conversion

Core abilities

• Frost Presence

Runic power abilities

Universal	Blood	Frost	Unholy	Talented
[Death Coil] [Raise Ally] [Dark Simulacrum]		[Frost Strike]		[Conversion] [Breath of Sindragosa]

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:

Media

Images

An outdated death knight character portrait, displaying a combination of six runes and the currently accumulated runic power.

The three different (now obsolete) rune types as revealed at BlizzCon 2007.

The death knight character portrait as seen in the Wrath of the Lich King beta.

The death knight character portrait, displaying his six runes. Shows empty runic power bar located below the health bar. (Pre-World of Warcraft: Legion)

Patch changes

• Patch 7.0.3 (19-Jul-2016): Runes are more straightforward by removing their division into separate Blood, Frost, and Unholy types. Death Knights now have six unified Runes to spend, with a maximum of three recharging at any one time.
  
•  Hotfix (2009-06-02): "Runic Power costs will no longer be lowered by abilities intended to lower mana costs."