Jan 11

Welcome to Part 5 of the “So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight” series. Today we will talk about the blood talent tree.
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The Blood Tree

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.

Blood DPS

Blood DPS is all about keeping your health high for Blood Gorged and pushing out tons of physical damage. Talents like Vendetta and Rune Tap make blood a great leveling or grinding spec, and the high amount of self-healing via Bloodworms, Mark of Blood, and Vampiric Blood lends itself to soloing group quests and elites. With talents such as Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, Dark Conviction, Bloody Vengence, Hysteria, and Dancing Rune Weapon, you will find that blood is a very strong single-target DPS tree, but a bit weak in AoE.

Blood DPS Specs

• 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.

Related posts:

1. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Frost Tree
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Unholy Tree
3. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: DPS
4. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Basics
5. Tanking as an Unholy Death Knight