Death Knight Leveling and Playing Guide

Death Knights belong to the first, and for now, the only hero class in World of Warcraft introduced through the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. DK’s are fearsome fighters with unique mechanics. They were betrayed by the Lich King and so they pledged their allegiance to both Horde and Alliance factions.

Need to Knows about the Death Knight

Death knights, as the first hero class, are unique in every way. Their mechanics are different from anything that has been seen before. Runes and Runic power are at the core of their abilities. For some abilities you will need certain runes while some will require runic power, which is gained when the runes are used.

These three different presences are to certain extent similar to warrior’s stances.

DK’s are melee fighters who can do both physical and spell damage. They are able to use plate armor and dual wield one hand weapons (maces, swords, axes) and use two hand weapons such as swords, maces or axes.

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Death Knights as a Tanking Class

Death knights are a great tanking and dps class with some self healing capabilities. Unlike other hybrid classes they can use any of the three talent trees to tank or dps.

Blood, frost and unholy trees will allow you to dps and tank both with different talent usage in respective trees. DPS rotation is rather simple IT . PS . DS. HS.HS. DS. and so on.

Blood spec and abilities

The Blood tree is different from the other two talent trees. Blood spec-ed DPS Death Knight is pure physical dps class with a touch of spells. If fact the D  is a lot similar to a mix of a warrior and paladin.

This spec also provides rather high amount of burst dps and high self healing ratio. While dealing damage in blood spec, a Death Knight should use blood presence.

The most important attributes for blood spec are:

• Strength,
• Critical Strike Rating,
• Armor Penetration,
• Attack Power,
• Haste and Agility.

When you play blood, note that this spec is also very gear dependant especially in terms of weapons. High top damage weapons are a must for success in with this spec. Blood can also be used for tanking but it won’t produce as much threat as frost but it has other benefits which are really good like, as stated before, high amount of self healing. Blood on the other hand is not recommended for PvP as it lacks snare and cc abilities of other two trees.

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Frost spec and abilities – Spell Damage by the Death Knight

Frost on the other hand is more based on doing spell damage to the enemies. Damage of frost relies more on doing sustained damage with bursts from few talent procs. Very good AoE damage and good dps and little gear dependency as blood makes frost best spec for Death knights who have just leveled up.

PvP And Frost

Recent patches made dual wielding Death Knights popular again in frost spec. Very fun to play and rather good in PvP. Note that for PvP it is better to use a 2h weapon than dual wielding 1h.  Attributes for this spec are similar to blood with exception of armor penetration which doesn’t benefit much to your dps as you will be doing frost damage. From tanking perspective frost is the best spec for 90% of the encounters. High threat good survivability makes this spec a champion of tanking.

Unholy spec and abilities – The Best in PvP

Unholy is pure spell damage spec in which you will gain your ghoul as a pet like a hunter or warlock. Furthermore it provides a lot of snares and stuns from ghoul and extra burst with summon Gargoyle ability. Unholy is definitely the best PvP spec for Death Knights. Constant snare on your targets and shadow damage that you deal with three diseases up on the target is a very good combination which will allow you to have control over most situations.

Most Important Tip When Playing the Death Knight

What is important when playing a Death Knight in any spec is that you keep your diseases up at all times, because all of the main attacks will scale with number of diseases you got up, and thus produces more damage. Use your runes wisely and use them on cool down.

For tanking as Death Knight it is important to go for:

• Stamina,
• Defense,
• Dodge,
• Parry,
• Strength,
• Expertise and
• Hit to a certain extent.

Always keep your rune strike on cool down as it is a major help when building up threat.

Blood DPS spec should be – 51/0/20 (PvE)

Unholy DPS spec should be – 0/17/54 (PvP) or 17/0/54

Frost Tanking spec should be – 3/52/16

These are the most popular specs for Death Knights.