Sidebar: Why I Think You Should Consider Blood Spec
Now, I won’t lie, Unholy has a lot of appeal to it. For one thing, Unholy is very AOE-heavy (Summon Gargoyle, for instance) and plays a lot like a pet class if you take Master of Ghouls. Frost has a few nice things to recommend it, but having tried it as well, I cannot recommend it for soloing (additionally, sinking a lot of talent points into the top of the tree gets you haste, which is… not that great for DKs, compared to other stats). Once you hit 70-ish and you can start tanking instances with worthwhile gear, fine, work some frost into your build.
However, while it’s not as OP as it once was, I fully recommend speccing Blood, especially if you’re new to the class, and double especially if you feel confused by the baseline set of Death Knight abilities. Here’s why.
- Blood offers the fewest new buttons to mash. I know that sounds weird as an advantage, but it’s true. If you go as deep into Blood as I have – and I recommend you do (at least 50 points, if not all 51) – you’ll end up with the highly-situational Hysteria, Heart Strike, the even-more-situational Mark of Blood, and the utterly delightful Dancing Rune Weapon.
- In contrast, however, Blood offers you a fantastic allotment of passive, on-hit, or on-using-some-other-ability boosts. This is where the true strength of the Blood spec shines. Just a short list (amazingly, not a complete list): Butchery, Bladed Armor, Dark Conviction, Veteran of the Third War, Bloody Strikes, Abomination’s Might, Might of Mograine, Bloodworms, and Blood Gorged. Holy crap!
- Lastly, let’s face it – no one really wants to be kicking around Outland with their Death Knight for long. This spec is designed to leave you with little to no downtime, lots of healing, plenty of damage, adorable pet worms, and to get you on to new content as fast as possible.
Now, the downside. Yes, your ghoul sucks. Most of the time you won’t bother with him but if you think of him as half a player, you can generally take on 2-person quests by yourself if you remember to summon him before the big bad boss. 1.5 is nearly 2, after all.
Yes, your AOE is not as great as an Unholy DK. For a Blood-spec DK, it pretty much consists of Pestilence + Blood Boil, and Death and Decay. This is okay! You’ll be healing yourself fast enough most of the time that you can use the tried and true method of killing one thing, then turning to the next one. Still, the occasional Pestilence + Blood Boil won’t hurt.
Yes, Unholy is the new hotness – but really, think about giving Blood a try, won’t you? It’s not as overpowered as it was in beta, but it’ll still plow through Outland with you.
Stop used to be a warlock, then he was a death knight; first he was Horde, then he was Alliance again, and now he's Horde again. For good this time. Lok'tar ogar! 
You, my good sir, are awesome. I have been looking for a beginners guide to play my Death Knight. Now I can finally stop mashing buttons.
OMG, you just posted what I’ve been screaming in my head to noobie death knights everywhere!
Too many players never graduate from “mashing buttons” to “mashing buttons with a purpose”.
This is a must read for every new DK.
Aurdons last blog post..Death Knight Outland Gear Guide: 64-65
Thank you!
Something to consider for Frost is that many times, (though not always), Howling blast is for all intents and purposes interchangable with Obliterate in their rotation. As well, in solo play, Death Strike is often used significantly more then obliterate for the self heal. Otherwise, good stuff.
Awesome post! I’m excited to try out your rotations. Thanks for adding mine!
AltoholicsAreUss last blog post..Style Changes
@Atros: I considered including that rotation, but IMO it tends to lower damage. At least, I never found Howling Blast to be doing more than a two-disease Obliterate would. It’s definitely an option to keep in mind for Frost-speccers, I’d say.
Very awesome guide. I’ve been looking for something like this because, just like your article stated, I just felt like I was mashing whatever wasn’t on a cooldown.
I’ve opted for Unholy but I’ll most likely be soloing my way to 70 so I think i’ll respec and give Blood a shot instead. Thanks again for the awesome article.
Fear.Wins last blog post..L2P – Gundrak
Great post, and what’s even more awesome is your DK is a female troll! (as is my Horde DK)
Mama Druids last blog post..The Best Spec for a Tank, Solo, or PvP Death Knight
Very nice guide. I will be making a death knight soon, just to experience the lore and history. More importantly, this helps me understand the mechanics of death knights to better counter them in PVP or perhaps even help them in groups.
Ayebas last blog post..Quick delivery, elemental buffed.
Great post! Totally consistent with my own observations overall.
Quick correction, because I was confused on this very point- Rune Strike activates when YOU dodge or parry an attack (like Revenge for Warriors), not when your attacks are dodged or parried (like Overpower). The niftiest thing about it (aside from the insane damage it does) is that it is off the GCD, and is used on your next melee auto attack (like Heroic Strike).
A personal preference thing, but I don’t see Death and Decay as all that good in AoE situations for DPSing in groups/soloing. Its costly to use, the damage is pretty unimpressive, and if you are a DPS in a group, it adds a lot of threat for relatively little return as well.
Use Pestilence and Blood Boil in place of Blood/Heart Strike, instead, otherwise keeping to the ability rotation you layed out above, and I’m willing to bet your DPS will be much better overall.
A quiet disagreement on your frost rotation:
If you’re going down the frost tree, Obliterate is /bad/, mmkay? (There /is/ a frost talent that makes it good again (you don’t consume diseases!) .. but I am assuming you’re not taking that one in favor of Other Stuff.)
If you’ve talented frost, then losing your diseases on the enemy absolutely cripples your Icy Touch… one of the very early frost talents gives you extra damage as long as your target has frost fever. Obliterating and then reapplying means you actually /miss/ this extra damage in every rotation, on top of having ticks where the diseases don’t apply damage.
Instead – with a deep frost build including Killing Machine and Blood of the North (two necessities, in my opinion) .. try the much more involved:
Icy Touch->Plague Strike->Blood Strike->Blood Strike->Icy Touch->Icy Touch->Icy Touch->Icy Touch->(repeat).
Toss in runic abilities if your runes are ever all on cooldown (filling in with Death Coil and Frost strike to wait on a rune keeps your damage high) and watch for the Rime procs to get in free howling blasts along with Killing Machine procs to get in guaranteed Icy Touch crits. In group fights, try the rotation:
Icy Touch->Plague Strike->Pestilence->Blood Boil->Howling BLast->Howling Blast (repeat).
Howling blast benefits dramatically from Frost Fever (doubling damage + your frost boosts /on top of that/) as well as from Killing Machine.
But obliterates just completely break the cycle and cripple your damage from Icy Touch in the rotation.
Grimm
@Grimm: Every frost leveling build I’ve ever seen, and even some that were NOT frost, took 3/3 Annihilation. I tend to operate under the assumption that everyone who bothers to take Frost as their primary tree takes Annihilation.
Thank you sir! You are a veritable senseii of button mashing, and i no longer have bruises from rolling my face on the keyboard.
Your second rotation is messed up. If you use PS, IT, IT, IT, IT then you are left with an extra Unholy rune. A better rotation would be:
PS, IT, BS, BS, HB
PS, IT, IT, IT, HB
I seem to go the other way in that I’ve spent most of my time as Frost spec, and although it seems counter-intuitive for anyone starting off as a Death Knight, once you have Obliterate and Frost Strike, you actually get more damage ignoring Plague Strike entirely. Using an IT-Ob-Ob-BS-DUmp runic power into Frost Strike, repeat until target is dead. You start the cycle by hitting Blood Tap, which gives you the Death Rune you need to run the first cycle.
Awesome guide, but your earlier statement about rolling a warlock if you want to roll your face over a keyboard… well it just pisses me off. Locks ftw
Well, y’know what? Welcome to my world. I play a class where the general impression of it is “lol so OP, just faceroll to victory,” and yet every day people bitch, moan, and complain about DKs that do 800 DPS in Naxx epics in a heroic.