The Death Knight has introduced a new kind of resource that has to be managed by players in order to defeat their enemies: runes and runic power. Death Knights have 6 runes at their disposal which they can use to power their spells and abilities. They have two runes for each of their categories: blood, frost and undead. Some abilities and talents convert used runes into deathrunes. Deathrunes can be used in place of any other rune and thus offer a certain flexibility.

Just how does this work then? At the beginning of a fight every rune is available. If a certain strike requires a frost rune that rune is used up and takes ten seconds to refresh. The death knight can only use abilities that require other or no runes at all in the meantime. Several attacks and abilities require several different runes at once, so it takes some preparation and planning in order to be able to execute every strike at the right time.

Abilities that do not require runes, use up a certain amount of runic power. Runic power is generated whenever a rune is used for an ability, so it can be compared to the warrior's rage mechanic. Proper use of runic power increases a death knight's damage a lot and is a useful filler while waiting for runes to come off cooldown.