The question has been asked over and over again, but many players in Blizzard's World of Warcraft still seem clueless about the upcoming Death Knight class and how it'll change the game. Blue poster Tyren reconfirmed that the new hero class will be able to play as tank and dish good damage per second at the same time. Its goal? To reinforce the tank class.

Just like what Blizzard was willing to reveal before, Tyren said the Death Knight won't be just taking damage. It won't be omnipotent enough to render other classes obsolete, but it's going to be solid.

Here's the blue post:

The death knight will be a tank/dps class. Currently there is an under-representation of tank classes, so the decision was made add a tank class to balance the class representation.

A great quote that the dev team mentions is that the Death Knight is "epic but equal," meaning the experience is meant to be epic, but the death knight will be the equal of other classes. Otherwise there would be an over-representation of tanks and not enough healers and dps in the world.