WOTLK Death Knight Abilities and Talents Guide

Death Knight's Rune System
The death knight uses a unique rune-based resource system to govern his spells and abilities. There are three rune types: blood, frost, and unholy, each with an attached color and symbol (listed directly under your character portrait). As you use these abilities, the runes will become exhausted. After a period of time (10 seconds) the runes will refresh. The Death Knight will be able to use spells to turn a rune into a Death Rune, which can be used as a Blood/Frost/Unholy rune. In addition, whenever the Death Knight uses a rune ability against a foe, it will build up a certain amount of Runic Power (the light-blue bar where mana or energy would be for other classes). This Runic Power is only used by few abilities. Certain abilities (such as Dancing Rune Blade) will completely drain all the Runic Power that has been accumulated. The more power stored, the more effective the ability. Most abilities that use Runic Power use a set amount, like Death Coil.

Death knights will not be able to reallocate the number and type of runes - they're fixed to 2 runes of each type. Runeforging will still be available, but it will only provide permanent weapon enchants. The enchants work just like the permanent weapon enchants provided by Enchanting, but are self-only and are supposed to be better for the death knight than the Enchanting ones.

Here are the possible Enchants you will have to work with:

Spell	LVL	Description
Rune of Cinderglacier	55	Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to increase your Frost and Shadow spell damage by 10% for 15 sec. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold. 5 sec cast
Rune of Razorice	55	Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that causes 2% extra weapon damage as Frost damage and has a chance to increase Frost vulnerability.  Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
Rune of Spellbreaking	57	Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that deflects 5% of all spell damage. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold. 5 sec cast
Rune of Spellshattering	57	Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that deflects 4% of all spell damage and reduces the duration of Silence effects by 50%.  Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
Rune of Lichbane	60	Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to strike undead for extra Fire damage and stun them for 5 sec. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold. 5 sec cast
Rune of Swordbreaking	63	Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 3%. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold. 5 sec cast
Rune of Swordshattering	63	Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 4% and reduces the duration of Disarm effects by 50%.  Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.
Rune of the Fallen Crusader	65	Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase total Strength by 30% for 15 sec.  Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.

 

Death Knight's Runeforging

Death Knights have a unique enchant-like system called Runeforging. Death Knights will learn Runeforging right from their first couple of quests in the starting area of Ebon Hold. Runeforging is just like enchanting (but only for Death Knights). When near a Runeforge you will be able to click a spell in your spell book, just like enchanting, and then choose an "enchant" to perform on the weapon. Runeforging will overwrites previous enchants.

Currently there are 8 different 'enchants' you can place on your weapon.

• Rune of Cinderglacier: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to increase the damage by 20% for your next 2 attacks that deal Frost or Shadow damage.
• Rune of Lichbane: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that adds 2% extra weapon damage as Fire damage or 4% versus Undead targets.
• Rune of Razorice: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that adds 2% extra weapon damage as Frost damage and has a chance to increase Frost vulnerability.
• Rune of Spellbreaking: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that deflects 2% of all spell damage and reduces the duration of Silence effects by 50%.
• Rune of Spellshattering: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that deflects 4% of all spell damage and reduces the duration of Silence effects by 50%.
• Rune of Swordbreaking: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 2% and reduces the duration of Disarm effects by 50%.
• Rune of Swordshattering: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 4% and reduces the duration of Disarm effects by 50%.
• Rune of the Fallen Crusader: Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that has a chance to heal you for 3% and increase total strength by 15% for 15 sec.

Death Knight's Presences

You will come across 3 types of presences that Death Knight's have, here is a quick rundown of each:

• Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage and restores a percentage of damage dealt as health.
• Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage.
• Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities.

Talents

Here is a quick rundown of the Death Knight's talents:

• Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, healing, and strikes.
• Frost: Talents in this tree focus on armor, control, counters, and combos.
• Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, diseases, and AOE.

Good Talent Specs

Here are some very good specs for leveling fast:

This is a good Blood Talent Spec (Good for Starting Zone leveling)

This is a good Unholy Talent Spec (Fastest Overall)

Blood spec allows for reduced downtime, more uptime, more killing = faster XP! (this follows as long as it isn't too gimp over the other specs, which it is not).  I also noticed soloing Elites was much easier going Blood Spec.

From my experience Unholy works the best for me overall when it comes to fast leveling, but it requires a little more attention on your part. In which you got to try and kill multiple mobs at once continuously (hence the AoE abilities of the Unholy talents and abilities).

However, Unholy spec (as noted above), can work better for AOE grinding (that is killing multiple mobs at once). Your XP per hour can be better if you manage to gather 2 mobs to kill at a time. However when questing, a lot of the time you are only facing one mob at a time, in which case a good Blood spec is your better option. Unholy is slower than Blood when facing one mob at a time.

End game PvP Build

For end game PVP, this is a very good build.

Death Knight Tanks

Death knights are a very unique class in which they can be used as very effective tanks as well!

Death Knight's tank by chaining cooldowns together, they don't have anywhere near the level of passive or rotational defense as the other tanks.

This causes them to have excellent defenses in PvP without the requirement of giving up offense. However, as they're more of an outlast class, as they're a pure (or, as pure as Priest, Warrior, etc) without any traditional PvP boons like Drains, Healing Debuffs or Crowd Control.

For a more in-depth guide at Death Knight tanking you can check out BlizzardGuides.com Death Knight Taking Guide.

 

Gameplay Strategy

General Combat Sequence:

With your early starting DK's your usual combat sequence usually looks something like this:  Raise Dead (if you do not have a ghoul), Death Grip (if your target is further away), Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Blood Strike, Pestilence, (Oblit / Heart Strike), Death Coil.

TIP:  You are better off spamming your abilities than not using abilities at all, as this continuously raises your runic power, which allows you to use abilities such as Death Coil.

For a Blood Death Knight, a rather effective combo for fighting and putting use to your Blood Strike is the current order of spells:

• Plague Strike
• Blood Strike
• Death Strike

When doing this order, give the Plague Strike's disease at least 10 seconds before you use a Death Strike. When you use Death Strike it will heal you for the damage the disease did.

Also, another useful thing about this combination is the Death Trance talent, allowing you to cast a free / guaranteed crit Death Coil.

Dual Wield or Two-Handed weapons?

Dual Wield can't really compete competitively with 2h in tier 7, but it is possible it'll catch up in the future. It's impossible to say for sure, but dual wield white damage scales faster than 2h white damage, but you do lose damage on weapon based abilities, so it is possible it'll never even out. Even if it does, it'll be a very specialized build to make dual wield competitive, you won't have the versatility that 2h gets where every tree is viable to spec into.

DW seems to be more of an extra they gave us rather than something the class is designed around. There's even been blue posts suggesting that if DW is clearly better than 2h that it'll likely be changed in some way, although I'm guessing if they turn out about equal they'd be fine with it.

They have said that they test at a variety of gear ranges and not just what is going to be available right away, so I think it is likely DW will catch up to 2h for DPS, otherwise I don't see why they'd make it a class ability if it is always intended to be worse.

Some useful UI Mods for the Death Knight:
RuneWatch - RuneWatch is a RuneFrame Replacement Addon which has slowly evolved into a UnitFrame for DeathKnights. The Mod tracks your runes, thier cooldowns and also visually represents your Runic Power.

The aim of RuneWatch is to make your DeathKnight specific statistics more visually appealing and noticeable. In addition to this, RuneWatch is highly customizable and allows you to change a number of aspects of both it's Appearance and Behavior.

MoveAnything - This mod allows you to move your run bar around and allows you to enlarge it.  So get this if you would rather have a better visual for your run bar.

And you can also view my Speed Leveling Addons Guide for more.

 

Starting Skill Strategy:

55:  When starting a Death Knight (at level 55) you have the following abilities to work with:

• Death Grip - I like to think of this skill as the Mortal Kombat's "Get Over Here!" spell!  This is a taunt ability that grabs mobs from a distance and then forces that mob to attack you for 3 seconds.  It has a 35 second cooldown, so you can't use it too often.  There are some talents that can bring this cooldown further.
• Icy Touch - This is an instant cast ice spell, Chills the target for 127 to 137 Frost damage and infects them with Frost Fever, a disease that reduces melee and ranged attack speed by 14% for 15 sec.  This is an instant cast ability that requires 1 frost rune.
• Plague Strike - A vicious strike that deals 30% weapon damage plus 37.5 and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time. This is an Instant cast and requires 1Unholy rune.  This is an important DK ability, since it puts up a disease for your Blood Strikes to do more damage.
• Blood Strike - Instantly strike the enemy, causing 50% weapon damage plus 191, and an additional 95.5 bonus damage per disease.
• Death Coil - Fire a blast of unholy energy, causing 167 Shadow damage to an enemy target or healing 250.5 damage from a friendly Undead target.  This is an instant cast spell that requires 40 runic power.  You can use this ability on your enemies to damage them, or use it on friendly undead units to heal them.  Remember you can use this ability to heal your ghouls, or other friendly Death Knights!
• Blood Presence - This is the first presence you start off with, since this is the only one you start off with, you cannot switch over to other ones until you get the frost and unholy presence.  This presence strengthens the Death Knight with the presence of blood, increasing damage by 15% and healing the Death Knight by 2% of damage dealt. Only damage dealt to targets that grant experience or honor can trigger this heal. Only one Presence may be active at a time.

56:  Once you turn level 56, you can get the following new abilities:

• Raise Dead - Raises a Ghoul to fight by your side. If no humanoid corpse that yields experience or honor is available, you must supply Corpse Dust to complete the spell. If the corpses of friendly players are raised, they will have control over the Ghoul. You can have a maximum of one Ghoul at a time. Lasts 2 min.  The ghoul acts like a normal pet and it has a decent duration (1 minute) if not Unholy, and it lasts until it dies if you are Unholy. That said, it's really not that cumbersome to try to find a corpse. If all else fails, corpse dust is super cheap.
• Death Strike - (Requires Melee Weapon)
  A deadly attack that deals 75% weapon damage plus 67.2 and heals the Death Knight for a percent of damage done for each of <his/her> diseases on the target.  This is one of the Death Knight's most famous abilities, I love it :)
• Pestilence - Causes no damage to the target, but all targets within 10 yards will spread any diseases on the target to the additional targets.  TIP:  Using this spell along with the Blood Boil ability provides a great AoE tank synergy.

57:  Once you turn level 57, you can get the following new abilities:

• Frost Presence - (one of the 3 presences) The death knight takes on the presence of frost, increasing total health by 10%, armor contribution from items by 60%, and reducing spell damage taken by 5%. Increases threat generated. Only one Presence may be active at a time.
• Mind Freeze - Smash the target's mind with cold, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec.  This is an instant cast that requires 10 runic power.  This ability works in much the same way as pummel and kick.  The major difference however is that this is considered frost and therefore will ignore physical immunities such as Hand of Protection.

58:  Once you turn level 58, you can get the following new abilities:

• Blood Boil - Causes any of the Death Knight's diseases on the target, and all enemies within 30 yards of the target, to painfully erupt, dealing shadow damage.  This spell is meant to be used in conjunction with the Pestilence ability.  What I do is I would mount up and run through 3 melee mobs, Icy Touch a further 4th melee mob, and then Death Grip a 5th mob to me. Once I've Death Grip'd the 5th mob I turn back to the 4th mob that already has Frost Fever on him and I Plague Strike him. Now he has 2 diseases and so I Pestilence to spread the diseases and drop Death and Decay. Now I decide whether heals are important (usually that aren't needed) and either Blood Boil immediately or wait until after I Death Strike. You can usually finish the rest off with auto attacks at that point or get another Death Strike or two in before the mobs are all gone so you can be close to full HP if not maxed and be ready to start the next pull.
  
  In instance AoE tanking, can rinse and repeat the Icy Touch=>Plague Strike=>Petilence=>Blood Boil as needed to help keep aggro off healers on the nonskull marked target.
• Chains of Ice - Instant attack that requires 1 frost rune.  Shackles the target with frozen chains, reducing their movement to zero. The target regains 10% of their movement each second for 10 sec.  This is a great PvP spell.
  

59:  Once you turn level 59, you can get the following new ability:

• Strangulate - Instant cast that requires one blood rune.  Strangulates an enemy, silencing them for 5 sec.  This is similar to Mind Freeze except this is a straight-up silence for 5 seconds, requires a Blood rune instead of Runic Power, and has a 30 yard range.  Mind Freeze uses Runic Power, is melee range only, and is an interrupt, not a 'silence', per say.  In PvP this is great for silencing healers from a distance.
  

60:  Once you turn level 60, you can get the following new ability:

• Death and Decay - Instant cast that requires 1 blood rune, 1 unholy rune, and 1 frost rune.  Corrupts the ground targeted by the Death Knight, causing 26 Shadow damage every sec that targets remain in the area for 10 sec. This ability produces a high amount of threat.  I consider this ability more of an aggro spell than a damage doer.  You can combine this ability with the +40% threat from the Frost Presence and you have a very useful tool for AoE tanking as a Death Knight.
  

61:  Once you turn level 61, you can get the following new abilities:

• Obliterate - Instant cast, requires 1 unholy and 1 frost rune.  A brutal instant attack that deals 100% weapon damage plus an additional percent, and an additional 62 bonus damage per disease, but consumes the diseases.  NOTE:  Death Knight abilities that deal "x damage per disease" only take into account the diseases applied by the death knight using the ability. Diseases from other sources including mobs, consumables, priests and other death knights are NOT factored into the multiplier.  NOTE:  Death Knight abilities that deal "x damage per disease" only take into account the diseases applied by the death knight using the ability. Diseases from other sources including mobs, consumables, priests and other death knights are NOT factored into the multiplier.  At the time of this writing all DKs can apply two diseases (Frost Fever and Blood Plague). Deep Unholy DKs can apply a third disease in the form of Crypt Fever.
• Path of Frost - Instant cast requires 1 frost rune.  The Death Knight's freezing aura creates ice beneath <his/her> feet, allowing <him/her> and <his/her> party or raid to walk on water for 10 min. Works while mounted. Any damage will cancel the effect.  This skill is both very fun and very useful. In Borean Tundra especially, there are Tuskaar and pirate quests that take place near and over water. You can traverse the water easily, and get there quicker than any other class by far.
  

62:  Once you turn level 62, you can get the following new ability:

• Icebound Fortitude - Instant cast, 1 min. cooldown, requires 20 runic power.  The Death Knight freezes <his/her> blood to become immune to Stun effects and reduce all damage taken by 50% for 12 sec. Does not remove existing Stun effects.
  

64:  Once you turn level 64, you can get the following new ability:

• Blood Tap - Instant cast, 1 min. cooldown, requires 6% of your base health.  Immediately activates a Blood Rune and temporarily converts it into a Death Rune. This rune counts as a Blood, Unholy, or Frost Rune. Lasts 20 sec.  Keep in mind it not only converts a blood rune into a death rune, but it also activates one.
  

65:  Once you turn level 65, you can get the following new ability:

• Dark Command - 20 yd range, instant cast, 8 sec cooldown.  Commands the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you.

66:  Once you turn level 66, you can get the following new ability:

• Death Pact - Instant cast, 2 min. cooldown, requires 40 runic power.  Sacrifices an undead minion, healing the Death Knight for 20% of <his/her> maximum health.  This is a useful ability, and note that it can work on Gargoyles too.
  

67:  Once you turn level 67, you can get the following new ability:

• Rune Strike - Requires Melee Weapon and 20 runic power.  Strike the target for 200% weapon damage plus [200 * AP * 10 / 10000]. Only usable after an attack is dodged or parried. Can't be dodged, blocked, or parried.
  

68:  Once you turn level 68, you can get the following new ability:

• Anti-Magic Shell - Instant cast, 1 min. cooldown, requires 20 runic power.  Surrounds the Death Knight in an Anti-Magic Shell, absorbing 50% of the damage dealt by harmful spells and preventing application of harmful magical effects. Damage absorbed by Anti-Magic Shell energizes the Death Knight with additional runic power. Lasts 5 sec.  Keep in mind this only blocks magic, it does not block curses, poisons and diseases.  And it doesn't remove current magical debuffs, it just prevents new ones from occurring for the duration of the shield.
  

69:  Once you turn level 69, you can get the following new ability:

• Eye of Acherus - Instant cast, requires 1 frost rune, 10 second cooldown.  Summons the Eye of Acherus with 100 health 5 min that allows vision of nearby area and warns of enemies that attack it. Right-Click on buff to switch back and forth between Eye of Acherus and normal vision.  I've personally never been able to figure out how to get this ability, I'm not sure where you can learn this from, anyone know?
  

70:  Once you turn level 70, you can get the following new ability:

• Unholy Presence - Instant cast, 1 second cooldown, requires 1 unholy rune.  Infuses the death knight with unholy fury, increasing attack speed by 15%, movement speed by 15% and reducing the global cooldown on all abilities by 0.5 sec. Only one Presence may be active at a time.  As a speed runner I am always for faster movement speed, so I was very happy to see this implemented for the DK.  This is also very useful for PvP, since you attack faster (more burst), less GCD (so you can use your abilities quickly) and some amount of run speed (so you don't get kited as much).
  

75:  Once you turn level 75, you can get the following new ability:

• Empower Rune Weapon - Instant cast, 5 min. cooldown.  Empower your rune weapon, immediately activating all your runes and generating 25 runic power.  What this does is it totally replenishes all your runes back and gives you 25 runic power, but you can only use it every 5 minutes.  This is very useful, remember to use this once your runes have been nearly all exhausted to get them back!
  

80:  Once you turn level 80, you can get the following new ability:

• Army of the Dead - Requires 1 blood, unholy, and frost rune.  This is a channeled ability that has a 20 minute cooldown.  Summons an entire legion of Ghouls to fight for the Death Knight. The Ghouls will swarm the area, taunting and fighting anything they can. While channelling Army of the Dead, the Death Knight takes less damage equal to <his/her> Dodge plus Parry chance.  I haven't really found too many uses for this ability.  It doesn't work too good for PvP since it can be easily interrupted. Not that great for soloing mobs either.  The best use is really crowd control during dungeon fights with a group.
  

Other skills you can get:

 Here are the other skills you can obtain from either doing quest or from talents:

• Corpse Explosion - Instant cast, Cause a corpse to explode for Shadow damage modified by attack power to all enemies within 10 yards. Will use a nearby corpse if none is targeted. Does not affect mechanical or elemental corpses.  This spell is just like the necromancer corpse explsion skill from Diablo2, it can be a very effecitve AoE ability.
• On a Pale Horse - Instant cast, You become as hard to stop as death itself. The duration of all Stun and Fear effects used against you is reduced by 10%, and your mounted speed is increased by 10%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.  Can be a good to get for PvP.
• Unholy Blight - Instant cast, A vile swarm of unholy insects surrounds the Death Knight for a 10 yard radius.  Enemies caught in the area take 21 Shadow damage per sec.  Lasts 20 sec.  When leveling, you don't use Unholy Blight that often, because you fight a lot of single targets, Unholy Blight still is very useful for AoE'ing though.
  

Abbreviations
While playing a DK, you may come across someone using abbreviations for their abilities/spells.  Here is a list of those abbreviations so you know what they stand for.  You should memorize these as it might come in handy:

PS = Plauge Strike
SS = Scourge Strike
DnD = Death and Decay
BB = Blood Boil
DG = Death Grip
CE = Corpse Explosion
FF = Frost Fever
BP = Blood Plauge
DS = Death Strike
DC = Death Coil
BP = Blood Presence
IT = Icy Touch
OB = Obliterate
BT = Blood Tap
SG = Strangulate
DP = Death Pact
Pest = Pestilence
CoI = Chains of Ice
BS = Blood Strike
HS = Heart Strike
RS = Rune Strike
AMS = Anti-Magic Shell
UB = Unholy Blight
HoW =  Horn of Winter
HB = Howling Blast
AotD = Army of the Dead
AMZ = Anti Magic Zone

Useful Macros:  After you play the Death Knight for awhile and get used to their spells/abilities, you can then refer to this advance macro section for using macros to make your life easier.

• The following is a very useful macro for healing your ghoul, it quickly targets your ghoul, throws a death coil at him, then quickly switches back to your previous target.  This is great for someone using an Unholy Spec.

/target pet /cast Death Coil /targetlasttarget

 

• If you do not have a pet, this will raise the dead.

#showtooltip /cast [pet] Death Pact; Raise Dead(Rank 1)

 

• If you are in melee range you will use Dark Command, however if you are not in range, you will cast Death Grip.

#showtooltip Death Grip /cast Dark Command /cast Death Grip

 

• This macro will cast Hysteria on:
  1. Yourself if you aren't in a group
  2. Yourself if you are pressing alt
  3. Your target's target if they are an enemy
  4. Attempt to cast it normally

/cast [nogroup:raid,target=player] [mod:alt,target=player] [harm,target=targettarget] [] Hysteria

 

• PVP Macro: This is a good PVP macro that when you see your ghoul take a lot of damage and he could die, quickly use this macro to cause your ghoul to explode with the Corpse Explosion ability to cause a quick "nuke". This can also be used in PVE.

/target <ghouls name> /cast Corpse Explosion /targetlasttarget OR a leap before the explode: #showtooltip /cast [target=mouseover] Leap /cast [target=pet,exists] Corpse Explosion;Corpse Explosion

 

Quickly Power Level Your Death Knight With Items
If you have access to plenty of gold on the realm you will be playing your Death Knight on you can purchase the following items down below from the AH or farm them with your high level character and then my step-by-step Death Knight leveling guide will tell you when to turn these items in for easy quick XP.

300 Runecloth 300 Mageweave 300 Silk 300 Wool 6 Blasted Boar Lung 6 Scorpok Pincer 11 Basilisk Brain 14 Vulture Gizzard 5 Snickerfang Jowl 1 Imperfect Draenethyst Fragment 1 Flawless Draenethyst Sphere 30 Core of Elements 30 Crypt Fiend Parts 30 Bone fragments 30 Savage Frond 30 Dark Iron Scraps 2 Thorium Bar

1 Golden Rod 8 Hi-Explosive Bombs 8 Unstable Triggers 360 Unidentified Plant Parts 6 Bog Lord Tendrils 10 Mature Spore Sac 10 Glowcap 6 Fertile Spores 5 Sanguine Hibiscus 30 Arakkoa Feathers 3 Pair of Ivory Tusks 10 Mark of Kiljaeden 10 Mark of Sargeras 1 Fel Armament 10 Firewing Signet 10 Sunfury Signet 1 Arcane Tome

Death Knight Abilites/Prep

 

- Submit Guide Bug (or Suggestions) -

 

 

Starting Zones

 1-12 Durotar
 1-12 Mulgore
 1-12 Tirisfal Glades

Starting Zones

 1-13 Elwynn Forest
 1-12 Teldrassil
 1-12 Dun Morogh

Starting Zone

 1-12 Eversong Woods
 12-20 Ghostlands

Starting Zone

 1-12 Azuremyst Isle
 12-20 Bloodmyst Isle

Starting Zones

 Death Knight Guide

 70-72 Borean Tundra
             OR
 70-72 Howling Fjord

Starting Zones

 Death Knight Guide

 70-72 Borean Tundra
             OR
 70-72 Howling Fjord

About   |  Disclaimer  |  Credits  |  Members  |  Affiliates  |  Contact