WotLK Classic Death Knight Guide DEEP DIVE (Leveling, Professions, Talents & Weapon Progression)

death knights are easily one of the most fun classes to play because you embody an evil unholy warrior of death who can summon the dead spread pestilence and disease cast debilitating spells and also be a plate-wearing juggernaut who can cleave down multiple enemies at melee range death knights are a powerful new type of class a hero class starting at level 55 and possessing the ability to deal not only physical damage but also shadow and frost not only that but they have self-enhancing spells like horn of winter anti-magic shield and many more that make them a terror to spell casters and plate-wearing classes alike not only is the class fun to play but they are deathly powerful in both pve and pvp with the ability to be a top tier tank as blood specialization as well as a top tier dps in both unholy and frost specializations you can play any way you'd like as a death knight not only do death knights bring damage to a raid but they also have powerful raid wide buffs such as ebb and plague which grants 13 increased magic damage taken on targets and improved icy talons which grants 20 percent increased melee haste and your own haste by 5 top it all off with the ability to equip the new legendary and wrath of the lich king called shadow mourn and there are plenty of reasons to play a death knight in wrath of the lich king now that you're convinced death knights are a great choice for wrath of the lich king let's talk about what is the best race for death knights in wrath of the lich king now this question is frequently asked because any race can be a death knight in wrath of the lich king so you can feel as though you may have chains of ice paralyzing you from making a choice but fret not i will cast hand of freedom on you and tell you which is the best for both horde and alliance starting with horde for horde from a pve dps standpoint orc is the best they have five expertise with axes which shadow mourn is blood fury no longer gives you a healing debuff and it also grants attack power and spell damage command gives your pets five percent increased damage which means your ghoul your army of the dead as well as your gargoyle if you're unholy which is very powerful if you're thinking about pvp for horde your best bet is blood elf for the aoe silence or interrupt it's a close race in my opinion if you want the nerfed version of will of the forsaken with undead which only removes fear and sleep as well as charm but does not grant that five seconds of immunity or if you want the troll berserking which has been buffed along with davudu shuffle which reduces movement speed uh slows duration by 15 overall though i think blood elf wins for pvp where an interrupt at the right time in the right place and it's also aoe can win you the duel the arena the battleground etc now when it comes to alliance for pure pve dps i believe draenei is the best the one percent spell and melee hit rating hit chance for you and your party will be sought after and useful you'll want one draenei in each group human sword and mate specialization has been nerfed in wrath of the lich king and shadow mourn is an axe anyways no other race has any damage boosting racials now for pvp it's a totally different story human hands down is the best pvp race in wrath of the lich king for any class that can be human for every man for himself granting a free pvp trinket is simply the most powerful pvp racial in wrath of the lich king at the end of the day for both factions for pve the buffs honestly aren't game breaking so i'd recommend just go whichever race you think is the coolest if you're a serious pvper you're probably going to make a human death knight regardless now changing gears we're going to talk a little bit about leveling your new fresh death knight now we're gonna talk about gear to get while leveling and death knights are unique in that doing your starting series of quests gets you a full set of rares that frankly look amazing so when you head to outland to start leveling your gear is pretty decent and doesn't actually get replaced immediately even hell reaver the great two-handed pole arm from ramparts is only slightly an upgrade from your great sword or great axe of eben blade that you get from the starting series of quests if you can find a group while you're leveling doing the ring of blood will be well worth it you get lots of experience as well as you get the honed void axe which is a nice upgrade in raw damage and you also get 30 agility especially if your orc the five expertise can be nice at level 68 you can head to northrend where the new continent awaits and when it comes to getting good gear a lot of it honestly will come from dungeons and then heroics and then raids but while you're leveling a good weapon is something worth going out of your way for so we are going to talk about northrend weapon progression starting with two-handed axes so when you first land on outland the first item you should probably seek out is the acts of frozen death this is a level 68 quest reward in borean tundra called last rights if you're alliance or hellscreams champion if you're horde now obviously this definitely sort of shows my bias but for starting in berean tundra versus on the east side of northrend and the howling fjord but that's up to you i think the acts of frozen death is a great starter weapon the next weapon you could potentially get that's also an axe is captain carver's persuader this is a level 73 world drop boe so good luck finding it but if you want to go to the auction house and purchase one chances are you'll probably be able to find it and then after that we're going to talk about the honed cobalt cleaver this is also a level 73 boe blue however this is made from blacksmiths and it's really not that hard to make it just requires four saronite bars 12 cobalt bars and two crystallized fires so you could probably find that and then at level 75 there's the de-raged warax this is a quest reward from the amphitheater of anguish so just like ring of blood northrend has the amphitheater of anguish lots of experience and you get that nice good item at the end at level 78 there's the worm claw battle axe from the cache of erygos in the oculus and then from that point there's a lot of level 80 options you could uh potentially get the edge of oblivion which is level 80 from jedoga shadow seeker abbas and on cajet the old kingdom there's the colossal skull clad cleaver a level 80 purple from loken in the halls of lightning and those are all different axes i did forget to mention ingvar's monolithic cleaver this is actually a level 70 axe which drops from ingvar the plunderer and guard keep so there's also that option too moving on to two-handed maces which death knights can use in the wrath in wrath of lich king we have the petrified ironwood smasher this is a level 76 boe blue world drop again probably you're not going to find it but maybe on the auction house you might sauronite mind crusher this is actually a bop blacksmithing weapon so chances are you're not going to get this unless you already have all of the materials from an alt to level up blacksmithing on your definitely very quickly uh requires 20 saronite bars and two crystallized fire so not very hard to make there's der keys superstructure this is actually a level 80 mace that drops off a rare elite in the storm peaks so once you get max level you could go for it there's also the crimson cranium crusher which is a level 75 quest reward from the amphitheater of anguish if you're going for those two-handed maces moving on to two-handed swords the troll butcherer is a level 74 item that drops from troll gore in drac theron keep there is dreadlord's blade which is a level 78 item in the calling of strat stratholme there's also the sword of justice which any everyone always calls the tuning fork if you remember that's from the halls of stone it's level 80 item and there's also the rune blade of demonstrable power at level 80 requires revered with the knights of evan blade but can be bought from duchess minx moving on to paul arms our last item we have a banner slicer a level 75 world drop boe so check the auction house there's also the icier barbed spear which is a level 75 quest item from the amphitheater of anguish and the whale stick harpoon a level 78 item which requires revered with the kaluak sold by either callaway quartermaster and dragonblight or the howling fjord there is also the saliva corroded pike which is a level 80 item from morag in the violet hold and those are basically a lot of the entry level slash you just hit level 80 items that you can go for in northrend now next i want to talk about glyphs for death knights so glyphs are a new feature in wrath of the lich king which allow you to augment your spells and abilities with three major and three minor glyphs these are slowly unlocked as you level and at level 80 you'll have access to all six the best glyphs for you are going to depend on what specialization you are regardless if as if you're still leveling or if you're looking for end game best in slot glyphs for that reason we're going to go more in depth on glyphs when we get into each specialization section which we're actually going to do right now and unholy is up first if you're not interested in unholy feel free to skip around now the best glyphs for unholy for major we have the glyph of dark death this is going to increase the damage or healing done by death coil by 15 very nice there's the glyph of disease this is very important this causes your pestilence ability to now refresh disease durations uh and secondary effects of diseases on your primary target back to their maximum duration so this is uh very important because your two diseases that you want on every target are both frost fever and blood plague these are going to make all of your abilities do more damage not all of them but mainly the strikes like blood strike and plague strike death strike and in order to get those diseases on you have to cast icy touch for frost fever and you have to to cast plague strike for uh blood plague and so uh being able to use just one rune a blood rune to cast pestilence is much better than having to use two runes a frost rune and an unholy rune in order to refresh your diseases so the glyph of disease is very very good moving on to the glyph of icy touch your frost fever deals 20 additional damage this is very strong obviously it just is amazing you're doing 20 more damage with one of your dots when it comes to minor glyphs you're typically going to see things that are just small quality of life improvements but there is one that actually does make a bit of a difference and that one is the glyph of blood tap your blood tap no longer causes damage to you this is pretty nice because blood tap takes some of your health in order to convert a blood rune into a death rune a death rune can be a used as in a frost rune a unholy rune or a blood rune any of the three and then we have glyph of pestilence which increases the radius of your pestilence by five yards that's actually another good one and then we have glyph of raised dead where your raised dead spell no longer requires a reagent this is a just quality of life change obviously it's not game breaking because carrying around reagents with you isn't really that hard to do it's just inconvenient and that's uh where we're going to switch over to unholy leveling talent progression so while you're leveling a death knight you're going to unlock your talents pretty rapidly so i would say the talents don't matter too much because you're still in the death knight starting zone you're going to unlock a lot of your talents the order doesn't matter very much but i'm still going to give you my recommendations for unholy leveling talent progression so first up vicious strikes is amazing it's going to give you increased critical strike chance and increased critical strike damage bonus of your plague strike and scourge strike very very strong i love this talent we have virulence which increases your chance to hit with spells by three percent and reduces uh the chance your dots get removed or cured which is fine it's going to be good later if you're going for pvp now from this point i really like morbidity and i really like ravenous dead increasing your total strength by one percent as well as increasing the damage done and healing of death coil by five percent uh are both very strong i think ravenous dead is stronger just overall gaining that bonus strength is is great it's going to improve every single one of your abilities so i like to get ravenous dead and then i like to get morbidity uh so you can get that increased damage of death coil uh from there you can just get outbreak because it's very strong it increases the damage of your plague strike by 30 percent so you want to get this one asap from there actually epidemic helps a lot because you don't want to be refreshing your dots too frequently and this is going to increase the duration of blood plague and frost fever by six seconds so you can use your runes on more powerful things now from this point i really like blood caked blade this is very strong it gives your auto attacks a chance a 30 chance to cause a blood caked strike which hits for 25 percent weapon damage plus 12.5 percent for each of your diseases on your target so this is going to get more value the longer the fight is but obviously you're going to be doing lots of fighting because you're leveling so it's very very strong from there you could get knight of the dead if you're using your ghoul on cooldown if you've learned the spell i personally think necrosis is more consistent so i like to put five points into this now you might be wondering why am i not getting on a pal horse now honestly this is a favorite of mine i'm sure you love this talent too but to be honest just increasing your mount speed by 20 percent i feel like is not game breakingly good you already have an epic mount um i think a lot of people could make an argument for getting on a pale horse i just don't think it's necessary uh but that's just me personally from here you could definitely get impurity i think impurities very very strong and of course you do want to get knight of the dead and then you can unlock master of ghouls because once you have uh your ghoul out permanently that's going to be a very nice dps bonus from there i would go ahead and get desolation causes you to deal one percent additional damage with all attacks for the next uh 20 second when you use blood strike now there are a lot of talents here that are good that i'm skipping over unholy blight is pretty decent but it's kind of a pvp talent preventing your diseases from being dispelled if you are on a pvp server you might be getting different talents than this desecration is another very very powerful talent which basically gives you an aoe slow extremely powerful but again this is more of a pvp talent and we're going strictly for leveling assuming you know honestly that you can avoid pvp encounters like in a pve server bone shield is pretty strong it will fall off a lot because your ghoul does not necessarily have a taunt things are going to be on you all the time but getting that 20 percent less reduced damage from all sources is very strong and you're also going to do 2 more damage with all attacks so it's pretty good um crypt fever is actually very nice uh you're going to want to get this your diseases also cause crypt fever which increases disease damage taken by the target by 30 percent so that is super strong you're going to get scourge strike this is basically going to be one of the abilities you use all the time 70 of weapon damage is physical damage plus 238 and then you're also going to do an additional 12 percent of the physical damage done as shadow damage for each each of your diseases on your target so you can see having those diseases is extremely important scourge strike does some serious damage now also ebb and pig plague bringer is huge this one is going to give you that increased magic damage taken on your target by 13 it's also gonna improve your critical strike chance by weapons and spells by three percent all times so another really really strong talent now wandering plague is honestly one of the best talents in the unholy tree when it comes to doing aoe damage this is a reason why unholy is the king of aoe damage no other death knight spec comes close when your diseases damage an enemy which happens a lot there is a chance equal to your melee critical strike chance that they will cause 100 additional damage to the target and all enemies within eight yards ignores any target under the effect of a spell that is canceled by taking damage so it won't break cc wandering plague is extremely powerful makes unholy uh very very good at aoe damage granted depending on how you're leveling maybe if you're doing a lot of single target stuff then don't get wandering plague but if you're doing dungeons chances are your group is going to be pulling multiple mobs this is going to do a lot of damage for you rage of rivendare your spells and abilities deal 2 percent more damage to your targets infected with blood plague also increases expertise by one love this one it's very very strong 10 more damage and then summon gargoyle this is extremely powerful it's a good uh cooldown to pop when you're in a boss fight or if you're up against like an elite mob while you're questing things like that now when it comes to uh the next talents i like to move over to frost uh improved icy touch is incredibly powerful your icy touch does an additional 15 damage and your frost fever reduces mailing ranged attack speed by an additional six percent this is damage mitigation uh which also helps your sustain not that death knight struggle with sustained by any means and then uh we're going to get runic power mastery which increases your maximum runic power by 30. that's nice so that uh you don't have to stress out about getting too much runic power and then what's nice is black ice this is an extremely powerful talent you can just dump points into increases your frost and shadow damage by 10 percent straight forward very powerful and then we have icy talons five points in that you leach heat from victims of your frost fever so that when their melee attack speed is reduced yours increases by 20 for the next 20 seconds very very strong ability absolutely love it and then finally for our last two points we can put into endless winter your strength is increased by four percent and your mind freeze no longer cost runic power that's a very nice quality of life change for interrupting spells um and you also get that four percent strength and so this is the build that i recommend for pve dps as an unholy death knight you can follow this while you're leveling you can change points if you're on a pvp server like i said you might want something different but this is very strong and this is what many people call the cookie cutter unholy death knight pve build all right now that we have the glyphs and talents out of the way let's talk the unholy damage dance also known as the unholy rotation so you want to start every fight by using icy touch this is a ranged ability so it's very easy to use first while you're walking to the enemy and then by the time you arrive your gcd should be back your global cooldown and you can use plague strike and now both of your frost fever and blood plague diseases are now on the target and you can start using blood strike you'll use blood strike twice and then use scourge strike at this point you can pop your cooldowns and cast some in gargoyle now the gargoyle will get your stats at the time of casting so that's why you pop the cooldowns right before you summon your gargoyle there's a lot of great cooldowns that go well with summon gargoyle from there you'd use scourge strike again you could cast your empower rune weapon which refreshes all of your runes you can then use scourge strike again two more times go and use blood strike two times and then use a blood tap in order to convert a uh blood rune into a death rune and then use pestilence and then death coil three times to be that's a runic power dump and then cast horn of winter which actually generates 10 runic power and it's not just a buff it does generate 10 runic power and then after that opener which is like you know getting all those cooldowns out of the way it's a matter of just using uh two scourge strikes in a row followed by two death strikes followed by using up all your runic power on death coils and then use pestilence to refresh your diseases now it's very important to always leave a blood rune or blood tap on you ready to use to use to uh use on pestilence to refresh your diseases the reason is because you don't want to have to waste a frost and an unholy rune to refresh blood plague and frost fever when it can be done with one blood rune remember never use your last blood rune on blood strike if your diseases are about to expire that's worth saying again never use your last blood rune on blood strike if your diseases are about to expire it's it's so important that your diseases never expire because if they're gone and you use like a scourge strike on a target without diseases it's an absolute waste okay let's talk about unholy gems next exactly which gem sockets go where depends on what gear you have but generally death knights want strength crit haste and of course most important of all you need to be hit capped which is eight percent so for your meta you're gonna want chaotic skyfire diamond this will grant you 21 critical strike rating and three percent increased critical strike damage for your red socket you'll want the bold cardinal ruby this will grant this will grant you a flat 20 strength for your orange sockets you could use something like inscribed amitrin or fierce ametrines that's going to be 10 strength 10 crit strike rating or 10 strength 10 haste rating for your blue gems which you will need for your meta to be activated i like to use the sovereign dreadstone this is going to give you 10 strength and 15 stamina and then basically if you can afford it get the nightmare tier this matches any socket and it's a plus 10 to all stats um so yeah i like to use that one when it comes to unholy enchants you can put rune of the fallen crusader on your weapon that's just straightforward and easily the best in chant death knight only when it comes to your head socket use the arcanum of torment this is 50 attack power 20 crit you have to be revered with the knights of the ebb and blade for your shoulder get a greater inscription of the axe this is 40 attack power and 15 crit you have to be exalted with the sons of hodir for your cloak get the enchant cloak greater speed which gives you 23 haste or if you're a tailor the better option would be sword guard embroidery if you uh for your chest you want enchant chest powerful stats that's just 10 to all stats for your bracers 50 attack power that's called greater assault for your gloves 44 attack power that's called crusher or if you are an engineer go with the hyper speed accelerators that's very very nice for your belt go ahead and get that extra gem socket from an internal belt buckle blacksmiths can make this and also a frag belt if you're an engineer to throw cobalt bombs from it's actually really strong for your legs get the 75 attack power and 22 crit from the ice scale leg armor for your boots 32 attack power from the greater assault enchant or if you're an engineer get the nitro boosts it might be super helpful depending on the situation now we mentioned a lot of or if you have xyz profession uh go this so i think it is the perfect time to talk a little bit more in depth about professions uh the profession specific bonuses and which ones you should go as an unholy death knight so talking about unholy professions these we're going to talk about profession only bonuses in this section so when it comes to straight up stats which professions grant the most it would be a combination of jewelcrafting and blacksmithing now jewelcrafting you can equip three jewelcrafting only gems which if you're just doing strength it'll be a 39 strength bonus over similarly socketed gems so basically the drill crafting only gems uh give more stats than the non jewelcrafting only stats it'll be very very strong if you go jewelcrafting of course blacksmithing will provide two extra gem sockets in the glove and bracer for a total passive of 40 additional strength for example with those two extra gem sockets another good combination that many people like is the jewel crafting plus engineering engineering is ridiculously awesome in pve because of nitro boots on top of that haste from the gloves enchant works really really well with gargoyle haste is very strong with gargoyle tailoring again has that nice cloak enchant you can always change it um you know if you if you want to go jewelcrafting or or blacksmithing you know depending what profession you are you can drop tailoring leatherworking has 76 attack power from fur lining attack power inscription has 64 attack power from masters inscription of the axe which is better than the sons of how dear one enchanting has the ring in chance you can get 80 attack power total combined from both attack power enchants on both rings so i would say overall a lot of these professions are pretty equal blizzard did a very nice job balancing them in my opinion but i would say that jewelcrafting plus blacksmithing have the highest raw stats if you're literally made out of money because i'm telling you that's going to take a lot of gold to level those two up um without mining um but yeah i would say those two are probably best in slot but i would say jewelcrafting engineering a close second in my opinion okay moving on let's talk about unholy consumables what consumables would you want to bring to a raid you would want the flask of endless rage which increases attack power by 180 this is a battle and guardian elixir of course persisting to through death the potion of speed which increases haste reading by 500 for 15 seconds you might want to drink this right before you summon a gargoyle you've got the dragon fin filet for your food this will give you 40 strength 40 stamina for one hour once you eat it and then we cannot forget our pet food that's right unholy death knights ghouls are very very important damage dealers and we need to give them a buff and the food of choice is the spiced mammoth treats increasing strength and stamina of your pet by 30 for one hour now when it comes to best in slot for unholy i was doing a lot of thinking about doing abyss list for each of the specs but you know depending on how blizzard decides to release wrath of the lich king classic phases and the itemization that goes along with that this could change dramatically so i was thinking i'll either add it in the description when we're closer to the wrath of the lich king release date or i'll do it in a separate video but we're not going to do it for now now let's talk about the blood death knight next all right we're going to talk blood death knight starting with leveling talent progression what talents did you get you're a fresh dk you're in the starting zone let's talk about it well i actually think butchery's pretty nice after you kill an enemy that grants experience your honor you generate 20 runic power in addition you generate two runic power per five seconds while in combat also very good is subversion uh probably better than butchery but this is going to increase your critical strike chance with blood strike scourge strike heart strike and obliterate by nine percent else reduces your threat but that nine percent crit very nice can't go wrong with that i love two-handed weapon specialization just gives you a four percent damage all damage increase so that is super good get one point into scent of blood giving a 15 chance after dodging parrying or taking direct damage to gain scent of blood causing your next melee head to generate 10 runic powers so this is going to really help with your runic power generation kind of reminds me of like aspect improved aspect of the hawk for hunters it's like you don't want to put more than one point into it because um obviously it's just not worth it um from there bladed armor just put two points into it to unlock the next row it's gonna basically convert some of your armor into attack power uh what you really want in my opinion is dark conviction get your dark conviction man be convicted be have conviction about darkness it's gonna give you five percent crit uh it's very very good so highly recommend that one and then death rune mastery this is basically like reaping for unholy it's gonna give you a chance to um when you use death strike or obliterate a hundred percent chance that the frost and holy rooms become death runes which count as blood frost or unholy so that's very nice gives you that flexibility in your rotation now from here we're gonna get more bladed armor so that we can unlock bloody strikes now bloody strikes is amazing this increases the damage of blood strike by 15 and heart strike by 45 percent and increases the damage of blood boil by 30 i mean this is a bloody crazy talent this is super good try to get this talent as soon as you can you're also going to want veteran of the third war increasing strength stamina and expertise very nice talent bloody vengeance this is gonna give you a three percent uh bonus to physical damage after you deal a critical strike if you played a rhett paladin uh then this talent sounds very familiar uh it's basically the the death knight version also abominations might it's gonna give you uh two percent uh total strength also attack power to party and raid members people people like this buff hysteria very good induces a friendly into a killing frenzy for 30 seconds you're going to get physical damage improved by 20 percent but you're also gonna lose one percent of your max health every second three minute cooldown so it's actually quite nice blood worms this is pretty cool uh you're gonna have your weapon hits have a nine percent chance to cause the target to spawn two to four blood worms blood worms attack your enemies healing you as they do damage for 20 seconds or until killed now some of you might be wondering um why didn't we get vendetta which heals you for what six percent of your max health with three points in it after you kill a target with that yields experience or honor uh yes that is good but you know what it doesn't make you do any more damage and honestly i think it slows your leveling down to just get this purely talent but when there's plenty of sustain that also gives you damage at the same time like blood worms now another awesome ability at this point to get a sudden doom your blood strikes and heart strikes have a 15 chance to launch a free death coil at your target that's amazing uh those procs are super happy fun time doing extra damage also improved death strike this increases the damage of your death strike by thirty percent and increases its critical strike chance by six percent and increases the healing granted by fifty percent see there's there's plenty of healing available in the blood tree like you don't have to get vendetta so this is very very strong um another very very strong talent you should totally go out of your way to get and get heart strike as soon as you have those 40 points in blood because heart strike is amazing you're going to use this as part of your rotation all the time does 50 weapon damage to one target 25 weapon damage to another uh it's just very strong in general and then might of mograine is incredibly strong too it increases critical strike damage bonus of many of your abilities by 45 percent so you definitely want to get the might of mo grain as soon as you get a chance and then from there you need to top off bladed armor to five points in order to unlock blood gorged which will give you uh ten percent more damage and your attacks ignore up to ten percent of your opponent's armor at all times assuming you are above 75 percent health it's pretty pretty nice which you probably should be considering all of these abilities dancing rune weapon gonna be nice cool down to pop for maybe boss fights or whatever you pulled a lot of mobs um it summons a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 12 seconds doing the same attacks as the death knight but for 50 reduced damage with only a one minute cooldown so a nice uh helpful talent to help you do more damage now from here i like to go over to the unholy tree in order to finish out my leveling build vicious strikes giving you increased six percent crit chance and crit strike damage bonus for plague strike and scourge strike three points in virulence giving you that three percent additional hit uh from there getting that total strength increased by three percent also making your ghoul stronger uh in in in both strength and stamina epidemic is very important um so that you don't have to constantly be reapplying uh blood plague and frost fever morbidity is very powerful it's gonna increase the damage and healing of death coil by ten percent of course you're gonna be getting free death coils from sudden doom so morbidity is a nice talent there and then what's really strong is necrosis auto attacks deal additional 20 shadow damage i mean it's just straight extra damage you can talent into guaranteed assuming your auto attack hits auto attacking does lots of damage for death knights and then blood caked blade very very strong auto attacks have a 30 percent chance to cause a blood cake to strike which hits for 25 percent weapon damage plus 12.5 for each of your diseases on the target and this is the build that i would go if you are leveling uh as a blood death knight in wrath of the lich king and what's super great about this is that this is also your max level level 80 blood death knight specialization if you want to be a dps all right next we're going to talk about blood death knight tanking which is quite popular in wrath of lich king for the blood spec more popular than dps i would say and it is the best tanking specialization that uh death knights can actually go so for a blood death knight uh switching over to uh tanking we're just going to go through this pretty quickly so at max level you're not going to want butchery anymore um you're going to want blade barrier this is going to give you a 5 decrease on damage taken whenever your blood runes are on cooldown which is pretty nice uh scent of blood is pretty good as well giving you a 15 chance after dodging to make your next two melee hits generate 10 runic power that's nice two-handed weapon specialization doing more damage means more threat and that is always good dark convict conviction giving you that uh increased chance to critically hit with weapons spells and abilities by five percent which is quite good the death rune mastery will allow your deathstrike or obliterate to convert the frost and unholy ruins used into death runes which count as blood frost or unholy five points into bladed armor this can give you a bunch of attack power because you're going to have tons of armor as a plate wearing class veteran of the third war very very powerful it's going to give you nice stamina expertise and strength bloody strikes is incredible again this is one of the power house talents that is just so good increasing damage of blood strike and heart strike and blood boil believe it or not very very strong talent abominations might is very good uh as well as bloody vengeance uh giving you more physical damage bonus this is a nice raid wide buff increasing attack power by 10 percent uh so it's very nice also getting that increased strength hysteria is a very powerful buff improved death strike is incredibly powerful along with vampiric blood is a wonderful blood death knight cooldown to use in situations where you're being bursted or you're low health will of the necropolis is huge which is going to help you survive when you're low health it's going to reduce damage taken by 15 when you're below 35 health blood strike very very helpful for keeping aggro might of migraine is very powerful increasing critical strike damage bonuses of a lot of your abilities and then blood gorged is also very very good now other than these talents you might be wondering what else should we get well i personally highly recommend getting toughness increasing your armor value from items by ten percent uh introducing duration of all movement selling effects by thirty percent toughness is very good it's definitely going to um you know be helping with bladed armor increasing your armor value um and then also getting improved icy touch is very powerful um that's going to help with aggro generation icy touch is an ability that actually generates the highest amount of aggro so having it do even more damage is actually very important for that reason five points into anticipation for getting that increased avoidance five percent dodge chance is very helpful because if you dodge an attack that is great mitigation and then i also like to put two points into epidemic this is going to allow you to do your rotation without any snags uh it's gonna be very very nice to uh basically um have that increased duration on your on your diseases because if you look at the glyphs over here we're not getting uh the glyph of disease now the glyph of disease if you remember from the unholy death knight video it allows your pestilence to refresh the duration of blood fever in frost or blood plague and frost fever on the primary target very very powerful we don't get that there's better runes here glyph of rune strike glyph of vampiric blood i mean this is pretty powerful 10 increased critical strike chance improved vampiric blood uh is very strong because this is a very strong ability you want to improve it and then death strike glyph of death strike increases death strike damage by one percent for every one runic power you currently have up to a maximum of 25 percent and the runic power is not consumed by this effect so very strong uh major glyphs but again we're not going to have a glyph of disease so epidemic is even more valuable for that reason now we do have four points left uh and this is where uh there's sort of room for uh your own personalization of your tanking build now personally what i would do what i like to do is actually really like spell deflection you have a chance equal to your parry chance of taking 45 percent less damage from a direct damage spell now i think that's just super strong um you know this is just always on as a passive so it can be very very helpful in situations where you know you're you're you know up against a lot of spells being casted so personally i absolutely really like this ability um the last ability uh frankly could go you know one of many places like if you're not hit kept maybe you want to put it in virulence maybe you want to put one point into black ice just do more frost and shadow damage can't go wrong with that it's very powerful but generally speaking this is sort of the build that i would go i think this is a very powerful build um and will suit you very well for pve blood death night tanking all right now that we went through talents let's move on and talk about blood abilities and rotation so when it comes to a single target the rotation is icy touch plague strike and then heart strike heart strike heart strike now heart strike is a great damage ability hits up to two targets which is very nice as well does a percentage of weapon damage so it's very very nice and essentially that is uh on repeat you would just do that over and over when uh frost fever and blood play go down then reapply icy touch and plague strike and then go back to heart strike pretty straightforward if you are trying to hold threat on more than two targets where heart strike is no longer going to be enough then you're going to need to start using blood boil which is a nice aoe ability and helpful for generating threat on multiple targets once again icy touch does a great job generating aggro and it's also ranged so it's a great ability death strike is very very helpful as well as a self heal and actually does quite good damage so mixing in death strikes make blood uh do quite nice self heals in the scenario of multiple targets or aoe death and decay is a great ability for holding threat now on the war main private server it's bugged so many people don't think that blood death knights have great aoe uh threat generation simply not the case death and decay and blood boil are pretty good blood blood tanks are very strong i think uh they cover most bases but anyways that's aside the point death and decay uh is part of the rotation for multiple targets you can use death and decay icy touch plague strike pestilence so you can spread those diseases everywhere and then you will use blood boil doing tons of aoe damage you'll then use death strike as needed to keep yourself alive with self heals and more blood boils that's essentially the way to do it now when it comes to blood glyphs we did talk about this in the uh tanking talent section but you're going to want glyph of rune strike to get that 10 percent increased critical strike chance which is very strong glyph of vampiric blood to increase its duration because it's an excellent defensive cooldown and then glyph of blood strike is extremely powerful and you will be using deathstrike for self heals that does help a lot some of the minor glyphs horn of winter increases its duration glyph of ray's dead will make it so you no longer need corpse dust in order to raise your ghoul and then glyph of pestilence will increase the radius by five yards which is very nice for spreading those diseases all over the place up next let's talk about some gems for the blood death knight now of course your gemming situation will change based on your build your current equipment if you've reached certain caps for example so you know depending on what stage you're at it might change but generally speaking some of your caps are you're gonna want eight percent hit you're gonna want 26 expertise and if you are a tank you're going to want 540 defense to be defense capped when it comes to your metagem for tanking you'll want the austere earth siege diamond red gems generally speaking you'll want to use regal dreadstone you could also use a nightmare tier in this slot for blue gems you'll want the solid majestic zircon and for yellow you could also go with the solid majestic zircon for blood enchants you're going to want on your head the arcanum of the stalwart protector your shoulder the greater inscription of the gladiator on your back or your cloak you'll want titan weave or mighty armor for chest you'll want super health for bracers major stamina gloves you'll want armsmen on the waist you'll want to use the eternal belt buckle for an extra socket for your legs put on the frost hide leg armor for your boots put on tuscar's vitality and last for your weapon of course we're going to go with a rune blade enchant the rune of the stone skin gargoyle is best for tanking now it comes to blood professions i think that jewelcrafting is incredible you will get those three jewelcrafting only gems which are roughly 20 percent better than non-jewelcrafting only gems so something like 60 additional stamina if you go jewel crafting which is quite nice leather working you can get the fur lining if you this is profession specific right you can either get some extra 70 extra resistance of your choice or you can get about 62 stamina from the fur lining engineering has some nice bonuses as well the nitro boots you can also get the engineering belt which you can actually find quite useful i bet throwing the cobalt bomb for that aoe damage a blacksmithing allowing two extra sockets so that could be an additional 60 stamina uh potentially or you know depending on what gems you use so blacksmithing jewelcrafting very very good combination when it comes to mining it could also be a decent profession for a tank because it does grant you 60 stamina or sorry yeah something like that it gets you extra health um i think it's less than 60 stamina in wrath of the lich king so it's not the best but it's decent and you can also use it to gather materials for jewelcrafting and blacksmithing before you drop it and later swap to a different profession when it comes to blood consumables for tanking you're gonna want the flask of stone blood for food you want the rhinolicious worm steak or the snapper extreme or even the blackened dragon fin depends on the fight of course in all these different situations when it comes to potions you'll might likely be popping lots of indestructible potions but you'll also want some runic healing potions on you just in case and with all of that said let's move on to the third and final talent specialization for death knights frost all right moving on to frost we're gonna be talking about the frost death knight uh talent progression uh right when you're starting a new death knight you're in the definite starting zone getting lots of talents real fast it's a lot of fun you're gonna want that improved icy touch first 15 additional damage very very nice it's gonna give you some damage mitigation in the form of a reduced melee and ranged attack speed by six percent incredible and then you're going to get two points into runic power mastery increasing your maximum runic power by 30 which is very nice now uh from this point you're gonna have a two-hander right so you don't really want nerves of steel but you're going to want it later depending on when you get your two one-handers is when you decide to start putting points into this granted you can play frost without having uh two one-handers so perhaps you don't want this talent at all which is why i would then put points into black ice because it's incredibly powerful increasing frost and shadow damage by eight percent up to ten percent with five points uh so that's a great talent um indeed i'd also get icy talons immediately next this is going to reduce their melee attack speed um and it's also going to increase yours by 20 so when their attack speed is reduced yours will be increased by 20 that's really strong this is also incredibly strong annihilation increasing the critical strike chance of your melee special abilities by three percent so three percent crit in addition there's a 100 chance that your obliterate will do its damage without consuming diseases now that's incredibly important if you didn't know obliterate it's very powerful but it does take diseases off so this talent is super necessary for frost to be able to use obliterate repeatedly in a rotation without without excuse me without having to uh refresh uh frost fever and blood plague the two diseases that make it do so much more damage now from their killing machine is extremely powerful um melee attacks have a chance to make your next icy touch halloween blast or a frost drink a critical strike so that's super strong uh you're definitely gonna want that one uh chill of the grave is very good generating more runic power when using a chains of ice howling blast icy touch and obliterate uh i also really like endless winter just getting four percent increased strength can't go wrong with that glacier rot very powerful these enemies take 20 percent more damage from icy touch howling blast and frost strike so this is incredibly powerful you should definitely get this asap improved icy talons is very nice increasing the melee haste of all partying raid members within 100 yards by 20 and your haste by an additional 5 this is a very very good uh buff to provide to everyone people love you for it merciless combat your uh icy touch halloween blast obliterate and frost strike do an additional 12 damage when striking targets with less than 35 health so uh you're doing a ton more damage when uh targets are low health this is sort of like execute phase uh frost death knights do more uh against you know bosses makes them uh powerful in that situation uh but obviously this is gonna help with everything because everything is gonna be below 35 health before you kill it uh rhyme is also a very good talent increasing the critical strike chance of your icy touch and obliterate by 15 and casting obliterate has a 15 chance to reset the cooldown on howling blast and cause your next howling blast to consume no runes rhyme very powerful you're going to want to keep an eye on those procs so that you can use howling blast asap after you get that proc now from this point you're definitely going to want unbreakable armor this is an incredibly powerful cooldown you can pop with a one minute cooldown which reinforces your armor with a thick coat of ice increasing your armor by 25 and increasing your strength by 20 for 20 seconds 20 increased strength that's huge it's a massive cooldown that you're gonna want to pop um you know pretty much before you're popping all of your cooldowns to burst something down blood of the north is another really great talent increases blood strike and frost strike damage by ten percent in addition whenever you hit with blood strike or pestilence there is a 100 chance that the blood rune will become a death rune when it activates death runes count as blood frost or unholy now blood of the north is exactly the same as reaping as well as death rune mastery it's right here in the frosh tree it's always very helpful another talent you want to get right away is frost strike this is a uh strike that costs runic power 40 runic power instantly strike the enemy causing 55 weapon damage plus 48 as frost damage so this is why frost is very powerful a lot of their damage comes from frost so it's it's super powerful um definitely want to get frost strike as soon as you possibly can now guile of gorfind is another really really strong talent it's gonna increase the critical strike damage bonus of your blood strike frost strike howling blast and obliterate abilities by 45 which is super strong you also uh get an increased six second duration on ice bound fortitude which is a defensive cooldown uh that all death knights get so guile of gorfins very very good now threat of thesarian is a talent that you would get if you are dual wielding so if you are dual wielding uh this is going to give you um a 100 chance to also deal damage with your offhand weapon um so when you strike with death strike obliterate plague rune blood strike any of your strikes they'll also deal damage with your offhand weapon so in this current build we don't have nerves of cold steel uh but let's say you do get a two one-handers you're gonna want this talent you're gonna want both these talents if you're if you have two one-handers uh so keep that in mind but we're not doing two one-handers right now uh so once you're at this phase there are a couple different options you could get some damage mitigation from frigid dread plate if you're on a pvp server you might want lichborne draws upon unholy and energy to become undead for 10 seconds while undead you are immune to charm fear and sleep effects very very powerful as you can imagine um this of course you can be turned undead or turn undead as a paladin's spell they can fear you you can also be shackled by a priest so there's a number of uh potential bad side effects that can happen if you uh go lichborne but again this is all pvp scenario uh it's not too much of an issue in this particular scenario but the next talent that i would recommend for you is probably going either icy reach which will give you an increased range of your icy touch chains of ice and howling blast by 10 yards but you you'd only have to put one point into that you could also just put one point into litchbourne it's up to you i'd probably do lichborne just for that extra utility and then tundra stalker uh put five points into that your spells and abilities deal fifteen percent more damage to targets in fact with frost fever also increase your expertise by five and then go ahead and get howling blast now from that point um you could move over to blood get subversion nine percent crit is just so worth it like get that talent asap uh your obliterate getting that extra crit i mean all your strikes but nine percent crit is very very strong and then vicious strikes and virulence more critical strike chance um so that's super good and then you also want epidemic as well as ravenous dead and then you can finish off the build with five points into necrosis oh my goodness i have extra points um so at this point i would totally get blood kicked blade then the last two um so this is sort of the build you're gonna be doing tons of damage with it uh and again the build would be a little bit different so this is with a two-hander if you have two one-handers then you're gonna take some points out of here and take some points um out of where did i put this extra point right here actually we're going to put it into this nerves of steel nerves of steel is a super important for when you are dual wielding so you're going to want to do something like that and then uh yeah i would say if you are if you are dual wielding this is the build you're going to want to go with um in this situation i feel like i've misplaced a point somewhere uh where it shouldn't be but i'm not sure where it is but anyways if this is the two uh one handers i would go this build if you want to go to with a two-hander i would go the other build uh oh here this is the point there we go this is the one-hander build um this is what pve a dps frost death knights would use in a pve situation to maximize their damage when it comes to glyphs glyph of frost strike reduces the cost of frustrated by eight runic power when it comes to another major one obliterate glyph of obliterate is so good i remember back in the day it was just incredible increasing the damage of obliterate by 25 obliterate does so much damage and then a glyph of disease extremely important for dps this is going to save you a frost rune as well as an unholy rune from having to cast icy touch and plague strike instead you can just cast pestilence and that will refresh your diseases for you then of course the minor runes don't matter too much but you know pestilence increases the range which is that's notable but this is just no longer crying a reagent called corpse dust and increase the duration of horn of winter but you'll be using horn of winter uh much more frequently than two minutes which with this it'll be three minute cooldown or three minute duration but uh yes you'll be using it more frequently because it grants 10 runic power anyways this is the setup and it will serve you very well all right moving on from talents let's talk about frost abilities and rotation so as a dps you're going to want to start with icy touch to apply frost fever and then you're going to use plague strike to put on the blood plague and then you'll want to use obliterate which will do a ton of damage and because we have the annihilation talent obliterate will do its damage without consuming diseases so you can then go use frost strike and then blood strike and then cast pestilence because we have the glyph of disease and pestilence will refresh the uh duration of diseases on your target you can then use horn of winter for additional runic power and then cast another frost strike followed by two more obliterates and a frost strike and just repeat that cycle minus the icy touch and the plague strike because you already have frost fever in blood plague and all you have to do is use pestilence in order to get those diseases refreshed remember never use your last blood rune and if your diseases are about to expire you must save that for pestilence you don't want your diseases falling off now for gemming uh for the frost death knight you have a couple of options of course it's always going to depend on what stat you need but generally speaking you want you're going to want to go for a relentless earth siege diamond for your metagem for red gems generally speaking you're going to want bold cardinal rubies fractured cardinal rubies or etched amitrin if you're not hit capped for yellow fierce amaterin you're also going to want to look for rigid king's amber if you again if you're not hit capped for blue you could use the nightmare tier to fill that slot when it comes to enchants for your head slot you'll want the arcanum of torrent torment for the shoulder the greater inscription of the axe for the cloak the greater speed or major agility for your chest powerful stats for your bracers enchant bracers greater assault for your gloves enchant gloves crusher for your waist eternal belt buckle then we'll give you another socket for your legs you're going to want the ice scale leg armor and then for your boots you're going to want tuscar's vitality or greater salt now when it comes to your weapons rune of razor ice is great for your main hand and then for your offhand rune of the following crusader if you're using a two-hander use rune of the fallen crusader but i think generally it's accepted that if you're playing frost you're gonna have two one-handers when it comes to professions we're going to talk about strictly profession only bonuses i would say that jewelcrafting plus blacksmithing offers a lot of straight-up stats jewelcrafting gets 3x jewelcrafting only gems so you're going to have a bonus over similarly socketed gems something like a 20 bonus i think i did the math and it'll give you 39 bonus strength if you go jewelcrafting if you go blacksmithing you'll get two extra gem sockets so a total passive 40 strength for example from those extra sockets just regular uh cardinal rubies bold cardinal rubies jewelcrafting engineering is a wonderful profession because of the haste enchant on the gloves can only always be very helpful for death knights getting their runes back faster tailoring has a nice cloak enchant you can always get that one on your cloak which is very nice and then leather working you can either get 76 attack power from fur lining or you could get 70 resistance from fur lining so some nice options from leather working inscription has 64 attack power enchantment on the shoulder called masters inscription of the axe which is in fact better than the enchantment from the sons of oh dear uh getting exalted enchant so it's up to you whichever one you want to go with enchanting you can enchant rings you get about 80 attack power from both combined attack power enchants on each ring a lot of these professions in my opinion are very very equal blizzard did a wonderful job balancing them but i would say that jewelcrafting and blacksmithing have the highest raw stats so if you're made out of money and you can afford both professions i would go jewelcrafting plus black smithing now it comes to consumables for the frost death knight dps for the flask i would get the flask of endless rage you're going to want potions of speed you're going to want to eat hearty rhino which will help you with your armor penetration cap you could also get dragon fin filet which is plus 40 strength which is probably uh the best if you're looking for just you know strength build and and once again when it comes to best in slot for a frost death knight i would say it very much depends on how blizzard releases wrath of the lich king classic phases and itemization so i could put down some biss but it really is going to depend and could potentially change on what blizzard decides how they're going to do wrath of the lich king classic so i will either put it in the description when it's available and we know or i will make a separate video detailing what the best in slot items are now when it comes to death night add-ons i think there are a few things that are very important number one you're going to want something to help you with your rune tracking it's very important knowing when runes are available when they're about to be available the ui in the top left is so small and sort of out of the way that it's not super helpful so something to help with that you're also going to want some form of runic power bar that's much bigger so you know when you're close to max you don't want to sit at max it's very similar to rage you want to use it or you are being inefficient and then you also need to have some form of disease tracker to know when both frost fever and blood plague are on your target it's very important to always have those up so i would say weak auras can probably do that for you hopefully that add-on is still in existence by the time you're watching this but it's an excellent add-on to use now when it comes to death knight macros i'll just throw a bunch on the screen here there's a ton of them that are really cool there's a lot of pvp ones where you can throw your ghoul at a uh at your focus target and then he'll gnaw which is a stun there's a ton where you can build in your rune strike into all your other abilities there's another one where you can pop your all your cooldowns your trinkets pop a potion of speed and then summon your gargoyle so it does maximum damage there's a chains of ice focus macro and on and on and on there are tons so i'm gonna post these probably uh in like a google doc or something in the description so you can just copy paste and use at your convenience but that is it for this death knight guide i hope you enjoyed it it's a lot of information took me forever to make so if you liked it go ahead and hit this video up with a like and if you want more like it don't forget to subscribe my name is toy house and i will see you in the next video take care

Channel: Toyhouze

Views: 197,308

Keywords: wotlk, wotlk classic, wow classic, wotlk death knight guide, wotlk death knight tank guide, wotlk death knight pvp, wotlk death knight tank, wotlk death knight starting zone, wotlk death knight leveling, wotlk death knight dps, wotlk death knight pve, wotlk death knight leveling guide, wotlk death knight best dps spec, wotlk death knight talents, wotlk death knight abilities, wotlk death knight races, wow wotlk classic, unholy dk wotlk guide, wrath of the lich king, toyhouze

Id: V8kgjbjJ0vw

Length: 64min 14sec (3854 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 14 2022