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World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
Someone over at MMO Champion has been digging through the data files and has found the current implementations for the tier 8 armor sets for several classes, and has created a nice high-def video on YouTube (is it just me or is using “high-def” and “YouTube” together strange?)
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
As I mentioned before, I recently (about a month ago) rerolled on a new server with some friends of mine. I started a character and leveled it to 55 so I could recreate my death knight tank, who is currently level 74.
I’m in my friend’s guild, and as folks have start to turn 80, talk of running Naxxramas has started to buzz around. The raid leader for my guild has posted minimum requirements for Naxx on our site, though I don’t think terribly many people are taking it seriously. It’s the same thing you see on the Internet: “Naxxramas is ez-mode,” “raids aren’t hard anymore,” “we’re doing Naxx in blues and taking people in greens,” etc etc.
But, besides making the content that much easier, gearing up for Naxxramas matters to me for one reason: it shows that you, as a guildmate, in a run with me, have taken the time to run heroics, get some emblem gear, enchant your nicer items, and so forth. If I’m leading a raid, and I have to put a team together, I’m far, far more likely to take the person who runs heroics every day, comes to me with questions about his spec and gear, makes an effort to get better, than the guy who turned eighty two months ago and has sat around complaing that people aren’t leveling fast enough to raid, but has no gear past what he had when he dinged.
Improving yourself shows that you care how the guild does, and that you’re willing to put forth a bit of effort to be a meaningful part of our team.
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
In my recent death knight series–specifically, the frost tree article–I mentioned that the cooldown for Howling Blast would be removed, likely shooting dual-wielding DPS death knights to the top of the charts in DPS when compared to other specs. Well, it appears that the devs agree, and a five-second cooldown has been reinstated for Howling Blast.
We knew there was a risk in taking the Howling Blast cooldown off. Unfortunately, we saw dual-wield DK numbers as high as ever even with the Killing Machine and Gargoyle nerfs. It typically only happened when the DK was fighting multiple targets, which suggests Howling Blast is the right thing to change.
In another blue post, Ghostcrawler reiterates that dual-wield is supposed to be “on par” with the other, 2H DK specs, which is a shift in thinking from every other class that can dual-wield. I find this particularly interesting–that is, I can’t help but wonder why they changed their thinking in this case. At any rate, I’m a fan of big two-handed weapons, so I’m relieved that dual-wielding–wich is only really viable with one spec–isn’t going to become the only respectible DPS build.
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
The unholy tree deals the most magic damage of any of the death knight trees. It focuses on improving the duration and strength of the death knight’s diseases, and also brings significant improvements to the death knight’s ghoul. Furthermore, unholy has arguably the best AoE damage of any death knight spec.
Death Runes
Each death knight talent tree has a talent that causes certain runes to become death runes after using certain abilities. For unholy, this talent is Reaping. This talent changes blood runes into death runes when using Blood Boil and Blood Strike.
Strike
Each death knight talent tree has a talent that gives you a new strike. For unholy, this ability is Scourge Strike.
Scourge Strike is a melee attack that deals its damage as shadow damage–which means that it ignores armor, a boon for both PvE and PvP.
Aura
Each death knight talent tree has a passive aura that affects your party or raid. For unholy, this aura is Unholy Aura, which boosts your raid’s run speed by 15%. There is a lot of disagreement about whether or not Unholy Aura is a good investment of two talent points for PvE raiding–my personal opinion is anything that gets folks out of the (insert random element here) is great, and the aura is a boon to leveling and grinding.
Runic Power Ability
Each death knight talent tree has an ability that uses runic power as it’s 51-point talent. For unholy, this ability is Unholy Blight. Although Unholy Blight isn’t as fun or as useful now as it was during beta, it is still a great spell (especially for 40 runic power come 3.0.8) that deals AoE damage over time to all enemies in range. Great for both AoE tanks and DPSers.
Unholy death knights also have the option of speccing into Summon Gargoyle. This commonly underrated spell does very good damage, and the developers have stated it will be nerfed.
After patch 3.0.8, the ability Corpse Explosion (which currently costs an unholy rune to cast) will cost only runic power, and will do significantly more damage than it does now.
Raid Buffs
Unholy’s most notable “buff” isn’t really a buff at all. Anti-Magic Zone places a stationary, translucent bubble on the ground, and spell damage taken is reduced for anyone inside the dome.
Furthermore, unholy death knights can spec into Ebon Plaguebringer. If they do so, when any of the death knight’s diseases are on a target, that target also takes additional spell damage from any source.
Unholy DPS
Unholy DPS depends heavily on diseases and other magic damage. Talents like Epidemic, Crypt Fever, Ebon Plaguebringer, Wandering Plauge, Rage of Rivendare and Unholy Blight improve disease damage and utility, as well as AoE damage. Unholy also receives a DPS and utilility boost in the form of Master of Ghouls, which causes a summoned ghoul to be treated like a controllable pet with no duration (it will last until it is killed or is dismissed). A MoG ghoul does quite a bit of damage, and should not be scoffed at.
Unholy Tanking
Unholy is a popular tanking spec. The general concensus is that (before patch 3.0.8), unholy is the better tanking tree after a death knight has enough avoidance to keep Bone Shield up for 30 seconds or longer. However, after patch 3.0.8, Bone Shield will only have 20% damage mitigation, instead of 40%, and it seems likely that, at least in theorycrafting, frost will come out ahead, although unholy will remain a solid tanking tree. The additional AoE damage brought by the tree makes it especially popular for AoE tanking 5-mans and heroics.
Unholy DPS Specs
17/0/54: Unholy DPS
This is the basis for most traditional unholy DPS specs. Some of the points are flexible. After patch 3.0.8 brings 70% passive AoE avoidance to ghouls via Night of the Dead, I suspect placing two points here from Desecration will be quite common.
Unholy Tank Specs
10/5/56: Tank
An unholy tank build, while keeping the staple five talent points from each tree, focuses on good AoE threat and additional magic avoidance via Magic Suppression and Anti-Magic Zone. Other points, such as those spent in On a Pale Horse, can be moved around in the talent tree per the tank’s preference. Bladed Armor from the blood tree is popular, as the AP gain from tank gear is quite significant.
Rotations
I will keep track of runic power, but only runic power generated by runic abilities, including the Glyph of Icy Touch. I will take Dirge into account. If you have more runic power during a section where you are dumping runic power, keep doing so until you cannot any longer.
While Death and Decay is our most efficient AoE spell, be sure to be careful with this ability while not tanking–don’t steal aggro!
DPS Rotation
1. Start by applying your diseases by using Icy Touch and Plague Strike:
2. In a single-target scenario, use your blood runes to Blood Strike twice; in an AoE situation, use Pestilence and then Blood Boil (the AoE situation steals a death rune from you, which causes you to miss out on a Plague Strike later–simpy replace it with Blood Strikes):
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World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
The frost tree is mistakenly referred to as both the “tank tree” and the “dual wield” tree. While there are talents in the frost tree that significantly boost dual-wielding ability and mitigation, none of the death knight’s trees are meant for any one role.
That being said, the frost tree is a very strong tanking tree, especially at lower-levels of avoidance (where a death knight tank wouldn’t have enough avoidance to keep Bone Shield up very long).
Death Runes
Each death knight talent tree has a talent that causes certain runes to become death runes after using certain abilities. For frost, this talent is Blood of the North. This talent changes blood runes into death runes when using Pestilence and Blood Strike.
Strike
Each death knight talent tree has a talent that gives you a new strike. For frost, this ability is Frost Strike.
Frost Strike is unique in that it costs runic power, rather than runes, to cast. The attack cannot be dodged, parried, or blocked, so is a reliable source of damage. Thus, frost death knights do not cast Death Coil as their runic power dump.
Frost also gets a second double-rune ability, called Howling Blast. More on this in the “Frost DPS” section, below.
Aura
Each death knight talent tree has a passive aura that affects your party or raid. For frost, this aura is Frost Aura, which boots your raid’s spell resistances by an amount equal to the death knight’s level–so, at level 80, every raid member would gain 80 spell resistance. This does not stack with a shaman’s totems or a paladin’s auras, but it does stack with the frost tree’s Acclimation.
It is common for frost DPS death knights to skip this talent, unless required by the fight or the raid leader.
Runic Power Ability
Each death knight talent tree has an ability that uses runic power as it’s 51-point talent. For frost, this ability is Hungering Cold. This ability is very situational, and seems to be most fitting for PvP, tanking, and “oh crap” moments. It does place Frost Fever on every mob in a 10 yard radius from the death knight, giving a boost to one of the frost death knight’s primary abilities–more on this later.
As mentioned above, frost death knights will find themselves casting Frost Strike as their primary runic power dump.
Raid Buffs
Frost death knights bring additional physical mitigation to the tank in the form of Improved Icy Touch–the slower the boss hits the tank, the less damage the tank takes. Furthermore, if specced into it, death knights bring melee haste in the form of Improved Icy Talons. This does not stack with a shaman’s Windfury Totem, though a shaman must spec into Improved Windfury Totem to match this death knight talent.
Frost DPS
Frost death knights will do most of their DPS via (gasp!) frost damage. This has the benefit of ignoring armor mitigation (since frost damage is magical). Frost has two double-rune abilities: Howling Blast, and (because Howling Blast has a cooldown), Obliterate. Annihilation, which allows Obliterate to deal damage without consuming diseases, is a must for this spec.
Frost is also the primarily the tree that makes dual-wielding death knights viable; we will discuss this later in the article.
After Patch 3.0.8
3.0.8 will be removing Howling Blast’s cooldown, which will likely make frost DPS even more reliant on magical damage, and will also likely increase the viability of the dual-wield spec.
17/54/0: Raid DPS
Almost all two-handed frost DPS specs will look like this. Dark Conviction in the blood tree serves to increase the proc rate of Killing Machine.
15/37/19: “Tri-Spec” Dual Wield
This is basically the only talent spec that makes dual-wielding death knights viable. You will want a slow main-hand weapon for larger ability hits and Blood-Caked Blade procs (when your offhand procs Blood-Caked Blade, it’s calculated from main-hand damage), and a fast offhand (combined with the haste) for more procs. Howling Blast is your primary double-rune ability, since it deals damage independently of weapon damage. The rotation is very simple because there are no death rune procs. After patch 3.0.8, the idea is to proc free Howling Blasts as often as possible.
Frost Tank Specs
11/53/7: Tank
Frost tanking specs vary, and there is a lot of debate about which is best here and there. I would go with something along the lines of this one; you get all of the strong mitigation talents (including the spell mitigation talents in deep frost) and Bladed Armor (because you will have a ton of armor).
Rotations
I will keep track of runic power (denoted by “X RP”), but only runic power generated by runic abilities, including the Glyph of Icy Touch. I will take Chill of the Grave into account. If you have more runic power during a section where you are dumping runic power, keep doing so until you cannot any longer.
Because of the skikey, proc-ish nature of the frost tree, you will have to determine the best time to use Howling Blast (on a six-second cooldown) instead of Obliterate. You will generally want to save them for Rime procs, except in AoE situations, as Obliterate does quite a bit of damage on its own. (Remember, after patch 3.0.8, this will not be a problem.)
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
The blood tree is full of talents to boost your single-target DPS and self healing. While blood is a very popular leveling spec, and will probably be a popular end-game DPS spec, it is currently a little weak in AoE and tanking–this issue has been spotted by the developers and they have indicated they are working on fixes.
Death Runes
Each death knight talent tree has a talent that causes certain runes to become death runes after using certain abilities. For blood, this talent is Death Rune Mastery. It is the only talent of its type that procs only from double-rune abilities (Death Strike and Obliterate). The blood tree has strong synergy with Annihilation, in the third-tier frost tree talents. Annihilation allows you to use Obliterate without consuming your diseases which alters the blood rotation a bit.
Strike
Each death knight talent tree has a talent that gives you a new strike. For blood, this ability is Heart Strike.
Heart Strike is an upgrade to Blood Strike. You can see that they each cost only one rune, and each do basically the same thing; Heart Strike simply has higher numbers and the added benefit of preventing haste effects on the target (after patch 3.0.8, Heart Strike will no longer prevent haste effects, and will instead strike an extra target, upping blood’s AoE potential). Because Heart Strike only costs one rune, blood specced death knights will focus on a high frequency of strikes, rather than a lower frequency of harder-hitting strikes (which is the norm for death knights). Blood specced DPSers will use Death Strike or Obliterate in conjunction with Death Rune Mastery to get multiple Heart Strikes out.
Aura
Each death knight talent tree has a passive aura that affects your party or raid. For blood, this aura is Blood Arua, causing each raid member to heal themselves for 2% (4% after patch 3.0.8) of the damage that person does.
Runic Power Ability
Each death knight talent tree has an ability that uses runic power as it’s 51-point talent. For blood, this ability is Dancing Rune Weapon. While on a longish cooldown, this ability does good DPS and scales very well with gear. Some death knights opt for Gargoyle in the unholy tree instead. (This will likely change once Gargoyle’s damage is brought down.)
Blood death knights will also find themselves casting Death Coil as a general purpose runic power dump due to the talent Sudden Doom.
Raid Buffs
Blood death knights bring a raid buff called Abomination’s Might. This is the same buff that is provided by a shaman’s Unleashed Rage.
51/13/7: Raid DPS w/ Annihilation
This spec includes Annihilation, from the frost tree, to allow you to use Obliterate without consuming your diseases. The downside is that you have to spend extra points in frost to get to it, as it’s on the third tier. However, I’ve taken Toughness on the first tier, to boost the AP gain from Bladed Armor.
50/0/21: Raid DPS w/ Gargoyle
This spec opts to use Gargoyle as a runic power dump instead of Dancing Rune Weapon. This spec benefits from the strength-increasing talents of unholy, but by leaving out Annihilation, Obliterate consumes your diseases, altering the blood rotation significantly.
Rotations
It should be noted that these rotations will not include your major runic focus dump (Dancing Rune Weapon or Gargoyle). Simply replace your Death Coil sections with your chosen ability, and do not use Death Coil (other than Sudden Doom procs) while the abilities are draining runic power.
I will keep track of runic power, but only runic power generated by runic abilities, including the Glyph of Icy Touch–talents such as Butchery will modify this value; simply Death Coil until you can’t anymore.
The blood DPS rotation depends rather heavily on whether or not you take Annihilation from the frost tree. This is because without it, Obliterate removes diseases, and you have to reapply them after the first part of the rotation. However, since only the second half of the rotation is different, we’ll split when we get there.
Both Specs
1. Start by applying your diseases by using Icy Touch and Plague Strike:
2. Heart Strike twice:
3. Obliterate, converting your unholy and frost runes into death runes:
4. Use a runic power ability until you can’t anymore–either Death Coil or your “big” runic power dump. For this example, we will assume a Sudden Death proc (for a free Death Coil) and then use 40 runic power on another one, using up two global cooldowns:
Here is where the rotation changes depending on your spec. If you took Annihilation, your diseases are still on the target, and you can continue to use your strikes; if you didn’t, you will need to reapply your diseases.
With Annihilation
5. Once your frost and unholy runes cool down…
… use Obliterate again, creating two more death runes:
6. Now use your blood runes and death runes to Heart Strike four times in a row:
Notice how, after the final Heart Strike shown above, the death rune (that changed back to unholy) didn’t get placed on its full 10 second cooldown; that is because it cooled down after using the second Heart Strike, and sat dormant during the 1.5 seconds we used to Heart Strike a third time, and thus gave us a 1.5 second bonus to cooldown time when used. See the basics article under “Basic Death Knight Combat”
7. Now you have 80 runic power, and possibly a Sudden Death proc, so Death Coil your heart out (assuming you’re not using one of your bigger runic power dumps).
8. Since that used up three global cooldowns (approximately), your runes should be about cooled down…
… and it’s time to start the rotation again. Use your death runes on Icy Touch and Plague Strike to rebuild your diseases, as in step one.
Without Annihilation
Here is where we left our runes in step four, above:
5. Since you don’t have Annihilation, you must reapply your diseases. Wait one second for your frost rune to cool, use Icy Touch, and immediately Plague Strike:
6. Now use both blood runes and both death runes for Heart Strike:
Notice again the 1.5 second cooldown on the last unholy rune, for the same reason as mentioned in the “With Annihilation” step six.
7. Since you had to Icy Touch again, you’ve got quite the store up of runic power; you should be able to Death Coil at least twice, probably three times due to Sudden Death. This uses three global cooldowns:
8. Now it’s time to Icy Touch and Plague Strike, reapplying your expiring diseases and starting the rotation again.
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
Tanking, at its most basic, has a basic goal (well, really two equally important goals combined into one): hold aggro of the mob(s) while staying alive. Like DPSing, these goals can be accomplished with an appropriate spec, gear, rotation, and some amount of skill.
Gear and Attributes
As mentioned earlier, tanking death knights will want to focus on several attributes.
Defense Rating (until capped at 689, or 540 defense skill)
Stamina, Armor, Dodge (and agility), and Parry (and strength)
“DPS focused” attributes (for threat)
One thing to keep closely in mind while gearing up is that death knights do not use a shield. They are designed to tank with a two-handed weapon, and a higher-than-average amount of avoidance. For this reason, you will want to avoid items with stats such as block rating and block value, and concentrate instead on parry or dodge. Note that strength increases parry indirectly, as does agility dodge, and with the baseline death knight ability Forceful Deflection, death knights get extra parry from strength (this is strength calculated after talents and buffs, so it is very nice).
Dual-Wield Tanking
Let’s get this out of the way: I’m not a fan of dual-wield tanking. A lot of people out there are bound and determined to make it work, and that’s fine, but don’t send me emails asking my opinion, because my outright answer will be that that’s not how the class was designed. Blue posters have gone so far as to literally say that they want both dual-wielding and two-handed weapon DPS specs to be viable, but are not designing the class to effectively tank by dual-wielding.
The main reason for this is the fact that, while dual-wielding, your hit chance goes through the floor. You have a much harder time hitting a boss mob, and many mobs have an increased swing speed after parrying an attack, meaning you take more damage more often. Making up your miss chance with hit rating means you’re spending your item points budget on hit rating instead of mitigation/avoidance attributes.
However, this topic leads us to our next point:
Two-Handed Tanking Weapons
Basically, there are none. By that, I mean there are no two-handed weapons in the game that focus on defense rating and stamina, except for this green quest reward. While it may be a decent weapon to hold you over until you can reach uncrittable by other armor alone, it will not hold out in the long run. Also keep in mind we can’t use a shield, making it even more difficult to reach the defense cap. These are things you should keep in mind while gearing up. (Being able to dual-wield two tanking weapons, which are all one-handed, is the primary reason for the idea of dual-wielding tanking in the first place.) In the meantime, try to find a nice weapon with good damage for threat, and as much stamina and other “tank-like attributes” as you can. PvP weapons may end up looking very good for death knight tanks, since resilience can effectively take the place of some defense rating for purposes of uncrittability.
Don’t be a n00b–remember to switch into your high-threat, high-mitigation, high-health Frost Presence before you start tanking! (I only say it that way because I tanked a few group quests in Unholy Presence…)
It should be noted that death knights have only two abilities that deal bonus threat–that is, threat above and beyond the normal threat done by damage. These abilities are Death and Decay and Rune Strike. So, the majority of your threat will come from high-damage abilities, which is then amplified by the Frost Presence threat modifier of 45%.
Rune Strike is an ability that only “lights up” after you dodge or parry an attack. It does a high amount of damage, and also, as mentioned, extra threat. However, once patch 3.0.8 hits, this spell will do less damage and more threat, as it was created as a tanking tool, and instead PvP death knights are using it to mow down dual-wielding classes in PvP.
Rune Strike is a “next melee” ability, meaning once you use the ability, your next regular white attack will be replaced with the Rune Strike.
Bonus Mitigation
Death knights have a nice ability to hit to keep the damage down a bit (and even more depending on talent spec! Again, more on those later). Icebound Fortitude is the spell to which I am referring. After patch 3.0.8, this ability will be weaker but scale with defense skill, making it more like a Shield Wall for death knight tanks and less like a Divine Shield in PvP.
Get Over Here!
In addition to a normal taunt, death knights have an ability called Death Grip. It basically pulls a mob to you (note that most boss type mobs are immune!) and forces it to attack you for three seconds, much like a warrior’s Mocking Blow. Note that this is not a taunt! After the three seconds are up, the mob will go right back to the character with the highest threat against it.
Be careful with death grip. Don’t use it to pull all the time just because it’s fun; remember, if you pull a mob to you, it will immediately start hitting you in the face, causing the healer to have to heal you before you can build threat on the other mobs in the pull–making for an unhappy, and quite possibly dead, healer. Pull with Icy Touch or some other ranged attack in these cases.
There are, however,some advanced tactics you can use with Death Grip, especially if you have a good, non-laggy Internet connection. One I use with one of my favorite mages is to select skull, queue up Death and Decay (see below) and target it, but don’t cast it yet. The mage will start polymorphing his target, and just as he starts I’ll click to cast Death and Decay and and Death Grip the primary mob to me before the polymorph lands. Now, the mob is sheeped in place, my primary target is hitting me (where I can build threat and prepare to spread diseases), and although the healer is forced to heal me, all the mobs have to run through my Death and Decay to get to him or her, so I’ll get aggro anyway.
Be careful, as if you have casters in your group of mobs, this may not work 100%, but you can pick and choose which mobs to death grip and crowd control for best results.
Oh No!
Death knights receive a very fun “Oh crap!” button at level 80: Army of the Dead. While fully channeling the spell, this ability summons several non-controllable ghouls that will, at its most basic, run amok and taunt things. This can be a great way to buy time for your party to battle rez and heal up, etc.
Tanking Rotations
Tanking rotations, like DPS rotations, depend heavily on talent spec, so see the related articles later in the series for more details.
Let’s take a look at a typical multi-mob pull. This also works very well for an AoE DPS rotation (just make sure you’re not in frost presence, and hold off on your high threat abilities until the tank has aggro).
1. Death knights have only two “high amount of threat” abilities, and one of them is Death and Decay. This ability is a targeted AoE attack, and is often compared to a paladin’s consecration. You will often open with this ability, either right away, or after using another pulling ability. Let’s start out with DnD (notice its expensive 3-rune cost):
(Also, if for a split second you thought I was talking about the other DnD… well, you’re as geeky as me!)
2. On a pull with multiple mobs, such as this one, you will want to get your diseases down quickly with Icy Touch and Plague Strike (costing a frost and an unholy)…
…and then spread them around with Pestilence (one blood), once all mobs are in range (Glyph of Pestilence helps here):
3. To help build even more AoE threat, assuming health is not an issue, I usually use Blood Tap here to get an instant any-purpose rune (remember, death runes count as any rune you need)…
… and hit Blood Boil to explode my diseases on every mob in range (should be all of them!)
(Note that your death rune will immediately switch back to a blood rune.)
4. If you have the runic power, you can use a runic power dump, such as Death Coil, to build threat here. Remember to keep looking for your Rune Strike!
5. From this point out, you can follow the steps outlined in the DPS article and use one of your double-rune abilities:
6. Before long your remaining unholy rune will be cooled, and you can use your double rune ability again.
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
The basic goal of any DPS character is always the same: to do the most damage possible without pulling aggro. With the proper spec (and we will discuss each in depth later), rotation, gear, and skill, a death knight is capable of putting out quite a bit of damage. So let’s jump right into it!
Gear and Attributes
As we discussed earlier, DPS death knights will want to focus on the following attributes, in order:
Hit rating (until you reach the raid cap of 295, assuming a two-handed weapon)
Strength/Attack Power (2 attack power per point of strength, strength scales w/ Blessing of Kings, etc.)
Agility/Crit Rating
These are the most beneficial attributes for a DPS death knight. Armor penetration and haste, while better than nothing, are not that great for death knights.
Buff Food
There are several types of buff food that are very beneficial for a DPS death knight. Level cooking, or make friends with a cook!
Icy Touch and Plague Strike both apply a disease to the target (Frost Fever and Blood Plague). The unholy talent Crypt Fever (and Ebon Plaguebringer) apply a third disease to the target whenever either of the other two are active. Keeping targets diseased is important, as they cause damage over time and amplify the damage of your strikes when active on a target. Pestilence is a great spell for AoE situations, when you want to get your diseases on all targets in range quickly.
Give it a Shout! … Sorta.
Death knights have an ability similar to a warrior’s shout, but not a shout, per se: Horn of Winter. It buffs you and your party’s/raid’s strength and agility. Right now it costs runic power to use, after patch 3.0.8, it will instead generate runic power and have a 30 second cooldown.
Ghouls
Death knights have an ability called Raise Dead. This ability will change in patch 3.0.8, but first let’s look at how it works now.
Before Patch 3.0.8
First, if you target an NPC humanoid corpse, or you have Corpse Dust (sold by reagent vendors) in your inventory, you can summon a non-controllable pet called a ghoul. This “default” ghoul works much like a druid’s treants used to, using it’s sometimes unpredictable AI brain to help you kill stuff. The ghoul will stick around for two minutes, at which time he will despawn (or, more accurately, fall apart). Three minutes later, when the cooldown on Raise Dead is over, you can do it again.
Second, if you instead target a dead party member (say, who died in an instance, etc), you can use Raise Dead to raise that player as a ghoul. Your five-minute cooldown will still trigger, but this ghoul will be controllable by the player you targeted! As a ghoul, the player will have access to abilities that depend on energy, like a rogue, including some basic attacks, a stun, and a “self-destruct button” that causes them to explode and do AoE damage.
Finally, if you spec unholy and take the talent Master of Ghouls, any ghoul raised from the corpse of an NPC of via Corpse Dust will be given a pet bar, be under your direct control, and will not have a limited duration. (If he dies, you still have to wait for the cooldown on Raise Dead.) Unholy ghouls, as they are referred to, can be very beneficial in both PvE and PvP, and put out a decent amount of DPS. This is part of the reason unholy is such a popular leveling spec–but that’s for a later article.
After patch 3.0.8
This spell will be split into two spells: Raise Dead, which will raise a pet for you like normal, and Raise Ally, which will only raise a fallen player character and has no reagent cost and a 4-minute duration. The cooldowns will be separate.
DPS Rotations
Though we will cover specific rotations for different talent specs later in the series, the basic attack pattern is still the same:
1. Use Icy Touch or Plague Strike to get one disease on the target, then use the other to get the other disease up. This uses up a frost rune and an unholy rune:
3. Do something with your blood runes. This depends heavily on talent spec, so for now we’ll stick with the basic Blood Strike (two of them in succession):
4. While waiting for your frost and unholy runes to come back, use one of your runic power dumps (we’ll stick with Death Coil here).
5. Once your runes are cooled down again…
…you will generally use your double-rune ability twice in a row (since your diseases are already on the target).
AoE Rotations
Death and Decay is one of the death knight’s strongest AoE spell–but be careful, it is also a high threat ability. Don’t pull aggro from the tank! We’ll talk about AoE strategies more in the talent spec articles, but take a look at the tanking article under “Tanking Rotations” to get a better idea of the abilities you’d use in an AoE situation (they are very similar).
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
Death knights are proficient in plate armor; that-is to say, they can wear any type of armor. Like DPS warriors, you may very well find mail or leather gear pieces that have better stats than available plate armor. Of course, if you are tanking, you will want plate armor.
Death knights are able to use several weapon types: 1H and 2H swords, 1H and 2H axes, 1H and 2H maces, and polearms. They may dual-wield one-handed weapons–we will discuss the pros and cons of doing this later.
Gear Attributes Overview
Attribute priorities are very similar for all death knights, though certain attributes will favor certain specs over others.
Strength/Attack Power: All death knight spells scale with attack power, even the ones that seem more “spell like,” such as Death Coil. Death knights gain 2 attack power for every point of strength, just like warriors. Strength will be your primary attribute. Strength for a death knight also increases parry chance more than normal.
Agility/Critical Strike Rating: A death knight requires 62.5 agility to gain 1% melee critical strike chance, but no spell critical strike chance from agility at all. Critical strike rating is good for any death knight, but is not as important as for other classes (for example, a feral druid). Death knights get extra critical strike damage on spell critical hits due to Runic Focus (this is baseline, not talented). Also, talents such as Wandering Plague make a higher critical strike chance attractive. Tanking death knights get dodge from agility.
If specced 5/5 into Bladed Armor, every 18 agility increases a death knight’s attack power by 1, due to gaining 2 armor per point of agility.
Hit Rating/Expertise: Like any DPS characters, DPS death knights will want to reach the hit cap. Expertise is also a good stat for both tanking and DPS death knights, as it reduces the chance for a mob to dodge (from behind or from in front) or parry (from in front only) an attack.
Haste: Haste rating directly increases how much of your DPS comes from normal (white) attacks. Death knights draw a smaller portion of total DPS from white attacks, so haste is not as strong for death knights as other classes. However, Necrosis, Blood Caked Blade, and Killing Machine make haste a bit more valuable to Unholy and Frost specced death knights. Dual-wielding death knights will always benefit more from haste.
However, haste also decreases the global cooldown time, allowing death knights a little leeway in their already very crowded rotations.
Stamina: Obviously as important to death knights as any other DPS/tank character.
Armor Penetration: Armor penetration is decent for some death knights, most notably those that are Blood specced. Blood’s specialty is physical DPS, so armor penetration helps quite a bit. Other specs, such as Unholy (with Scourge Strike) deal their damage as magic damage, which ignores armor anyway.
Caster Stats (Intellect, Spirit): As useless to death knights as they are to warriors–death knights gain no benefit from them.
So, in summary: DPS death knights should focus first on reaching the hit-rating cap (and what expertise is available), then on strength (or attack power), and finally critical strike rating. Tanking death knights will focus on capping defense rating first, then on the traditional tanking stats such as stamina and armor. Death knight tanks are a bit more reliable on avoidance than other tanks, but we’ll discuss this in the tanking article.
Dual-Wield vs. Two-Handed Weapons
There is a lot of discussion in the death knight community over whether dual-wielding is viable, or should even be allowed at all (for lore reasons). There is, however, a vocal minority of death knights that continue to use two one-handed weapons.
Blizzard’s stance is that they don’t want either choice to “win out” in the end; there are talents scattered about the death knight’s trees that benefit one system or the other. Dual-wielding helps build early threat while tanking due to faster swings, and allows a death knight to stack mitigation by using two tanking weapons, which are all one-handed. However, dual-wielding significantly decreases your chance to hit a mob, which is further complicated by the fact that most boss mobs do a “haste counterattack” when they parry a blow. Furthermore, since many death knight abilities are based on weapon damage, they will hit harder while using a two-handed weapon.
Dual-wielding for DPS, assuming the proper talent spec, is just as viable as two-handed specs. In the end, it is all a matter of taste and preference, though I have a feeling most death knights will stick to two-handed weapons for both DPS and tanking.
Recommended Glyphs
While certain glyphs definitely favor specific talent specs, most death knight glyphs are very good for any spec. We will cover the PvE focused ones here.
Major Glyphs
Glyph of Icy Touch: This glyph is great for any death knight. Generally, the DPS contribution of Icy Touch is very low, and the extra 10 runic power at the start of the fight lets you start unloading runic power dumps more quickly. Patch 3.0.8 will change this glyph to remove the damage penalty.
Glyph of Obliterate: Practically required for Frost right now (one of your primary double-rune abilities), and very, very good for Blood as well. Unholy death knights don’t use Obliterate. Patch 3.0.8 will remove the per disease damage penalty, and will also remove the Howling Blast cooldown, possibly rendering this glyph much less useful for frost.
Glyph of the Ghoul: Ghouls provide quite a bit of DPS while they’re up, and this glyph just bumps that number higher. This glyph is great for Unholy death knights with a permanent ghoul, and will become even better after patch 3.0.8.
Glyph of Bone Shield: Unholy death knights only. Extra mitigation for tanks, and another charge (two charges after 3.0.8!) means longer periods of increased DPS for DPS death knights.
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Pestilence: Manditory for all death knights. There are not very many good minor glyphs to choose from as a death knight. You will use Pestilence any time there are multiple mobs up, and this glyph saves you the hassle from reapplying your diseases when a mob is just a bit out of range.
Glyph of Horn of Winter: Currently lowers the cost of Horn of Winter, but in patch 3.0.8, Horn of Winter will have no cost, and this glyph will increase the duration of the buff for 60 seconds.
This post is more than a year old.
World of Warcraft is an ever-changing game. While reading this post, keep the date it was written in mind—changes
may have occurred since then!
Death Runes
Strike
Runic Power Ability
Raid Buffs
Death Runes
Strike
Runic Power Ability
Raid Buffs
Death Runes
Strike
Runic Power Ability
Raid Buffs
Death Knight Tanking
Two-Handed Tanking Weapons
Get Over Here!
Oh No!
Death Knight DPS
Buff Food
Death Knight Gear Proficiencies
Dual-Wield vs. Two-Handed Weapons
Recommended Glyphs
