How to be a Great DK

As DPS.

Because if you dont look like a bear, or have a shield, you shouldnt be a tank.  jk.


But really though, here are some things to always look out for when doing dps in five mans or whatevers.

1. Use Anti-Magic Shell. Often.
It absorbs magic damage around you and give you runic power in return (for more death coils, mind freezes, and gargoyles).  what's not to like about this ability?
It eases the strain on healers healing multiple people through magic AoE damage.  they'll really like you for it.  trust me i would.  unless they're bored.  yes, then they'd want everyone to take some damage so they can heal and act somewhat useful.
What else does it do?  it keeps you from having to run for your life in certain situations. Boss is casting an AoE blast (Loken, anyone?) what do you do?  run away?  no.  you cast anti-magic shell and anti-magic his ass. note, do this for the second blast, since the first one doesnt hit that hard. anyway, overall, this improves your dps.  you want that dont you?  go you.

2. Use Icebound Fortitude. Same reason above.
When things get hairy and the tank cant keep up with the 8th add to the pull, you IBF and tank it for him for a second.
When an "engineer" decides to toss you a land mine or bomb, or when mana wyrms blow up when they die, IBF. 
When a boss decides to whirlwind and you want to stand in it for an extra few seconds.  IBF.

3. Learn to Death Grip.
No i do not mean learn to press death grip when you see a mob.  anyone can do that.  what i mean is learn when you should use it. 
Use it to grip a caster the tank doesnt have aggro on.  stand close to the tank and deathgrip a caster.  if you place yourself right, the caster should be standing right in front of the tank.  of course, you'll grab aggro for a sec, but any smart tank can see you just did him a favor and will taunt it off you or hit it off you.  or mind freeze the caster and he will eventually fall to the tank's AoE attacks eventually anyway.  end result?  you look awesome.  healer doesnt get aggro. everyone thinks you're "pro". 
death grip a mob who's running to the healer (whose purpose is to bash said healer's face in, ofc). sometimes this saves your healer and will give your tank some valuable time to grab the mobs back.  always remember that you're using this spell to "guide" the mobs back to the tank. 
One thing to remember about death grip is that it interupts casting.  meaning, that healer who's about to heal the whole part is almost done casting Greater Super Prayer of Healing.  what do you do? you're too far away to do a mind freeze (more on this later), and you're out of runes.  Deathgrip will kill the cast. 

4. Mind Freeze Casters, especially healers
You can often tell when a mob is casting.  they have casting animations.  you can also tell, from experience, who the healers are in a group.  always save your runic power, at least 20, for situations like this where there are healers, or casters who casts mana burn, or casters who will do some AoE damage... oh and of course those casters who like to polymorph random party members.  Some even work on the boss. It doesnt hurt to try.  These interrupts can be a life saver.  sometimes, its just there to speed things up.  the less a mob healer heals their party, the less time you need to spend killing.  the less a mob casts mana burn, the less time you have to wait for the healer to drink.  see how that works?  When that first boss in Ramps yell, Heal Me!! Quickly!!  you turn to his lackeys and hit Mind Freeze.  no more heals. 
The above advice also works with Strangulate. It does the same thing but has two big differences.  one, it can be cast at range.  and two, it lasts for 5 seconds. oh and it costs 1 red rune instead of 20 runic power.

5. Use your Cooldowns.
Wait, dont you mean IBF and AMS? you already mentioned that in 1 and 2. 
No, i mean the other ones. Blood dps have Hysteria.  Use it on yourself, or the top dps to make his dps even more uber.  Frost Dps should all have unbreakable armor.  its has a strength boost similar to a trinket.  use it.  use it in conjunction with your trinkets.  use it in conjunction with Blood Lust.  Use it, use it, use it!  Unholy Dk's use your bone shield to gain more attack power, use your pet's frenzy if you have it. These are all spells used to increase dps.  use them!!

6. Use your Resets.
Most DK's only have two.  Rune Tap resets a blood rune one cooldown and makes it a death rune... to be used for ANYTHING.  if your spells dont work, its because all of your runes are on cooldown.  this spell will give you one rune back to be used for anything.  use it.
Empowered rune weapon.  this is even better.  it resets all your friggin runes. come on now.  whats not to like?

7. Use your Final Talent Tree Abilities.
Blood Dks have dancing rune weapon.  Unholys have a gargoyle.  Frost has... well nothing really.  but they're so awesome they dont need a stupid pet weapon killing things.
Anyway use those.  the talent points are spent, so use the abilities already. 


There.  Hopefully this list will help the OK DPS DK, doing uber dps and all, topping the charts dk , hopefully it will help him to actually learn to play his class.  hoepfully.

Death Knight DPS Spec vs. Tanking Spec

Here's why i am writing this post:

GF: Hey which DK spec is for tanking?
Me: All of them.
GF: ???   What about DPS?
Me: All of them.
GF: What?
Me: It depends on the talents within each spec. 


So here's a picture i stole somewhere on the internet. it shows the basic Unholy DK DPS build that many people have agreed as good.  Well, i took it a bit futher and put yellow boxes around the talents an Unholy DK would pick if he were to tank as Unholy.  Then i crossed out some of the talents that's blatantly for dps (as in, no respectable tank would ever pick these talents. although there's some talents in the blood tree that needs to be "wasted" to get to improved runetap). 

Click Pic to Enlarge

Note that this is the level 80, single target (ie. bosses) talent spec.  leveling spec would be a little different but very much the same.  also the only different between this spec and an AoE spec is the switching of two talents.  otherwise, everything's the same.  note that for tanking, you'll need talents from every tree.  note also that some of your fun dps talents are crossed out.  this is because no tank needs a ghoul, and no tank needs a gargoyle.  those are strictly for dps.  since this is an unholy spec, you're also giving up some nice dps talents from the blood tree as well.  you still want 2hand swords, but you're going to give up some in bladed armor to jump to blood tap and improved blood tap. 

I can do this for the Blood tree and the frost tree as well, but since my GF is Unholy, i fugred this is the best way to explain so she'll have some idea what im talking about.  unholy dps is really good with the AoE dps.  I also find that Frost dps is great as well.  Blood dps is solid, but rather boring.  tanking, however, is a totally different game and requires a familiarity with your buttons and surroundings that requires a good proficiency in one of the three specs.  what i mean to say is, get good with one spec before you plan on tanking in that spec. 

So to debunk some common misconceptions (pre-cata, ofc)...

1. All specs can tank.

2. The difference between dps and tank are the talent choices within their relative tree.

3. Frost is not THE tanking spec.

4. Unholy DPS is the highest dps spec, for you.  this means that if you spec into all three specs, assuming skill level is the same, you'll do more dps as unholy.  This does not mean that i wont come by in my frost dps spec (and since my skill > your skill) and decimate your dps.  again, assuming the same skill level, unholy will do more dps.

Death Knight Frost DPS (a quick guide to get started)

This post is specifically made for Kylie (and also Moz, since he's stated that blood dps is boring) who has just made a new troll dk and will be on my new server leveling up with me.


There are a few basic ideas that are very similar with their DKs. I know moz was blood and kylie was unholy and blood, so DK play isnt that new. but frost brings two things that you wont be able to get from the other two specs: dual wield and procs. All dk's start off with the basic (IT+PS) to start their diseases going. what they do from there depends on spec. even tanks often start off with IT+PS, or use IT+PS right after they drop their Death and Decay. This is the back bone of every DK. and like all backbones, it supports your other spells and attacks. you dont use your backbone when hitting someone, you use your arms, so the backbone only supports your arm. if you have a broken backbone, your arms do not swing for as high of damage as with a healthy backbone. sound like preaching, but IT+PS is not your damaging abilities. they are the backbone-- the backbone for all specs, for that matter.

One very important thing to watch out for is Death Runes. like unholy spec, frost spec'ed dk's produce deathrunes by using blood strike, blood boil, or pestilence. any of those spells will use up a blood rune and will cause the blood rune to refresh as a death rune (so you can use it for a better attack, like obliterate). managing deathrunes is another fun factor in playing a dk. first you have your basic runes, then you have your runic power, then you have this "deathrune" thing going. what more do you want to watch? well with frost spec dk's, you get to watch "killing machine" and "rime".
what the hell is that? Well killing machine is a talent in the frost tree that procs while you're attacking. when killing machine does proc, your next icy touch, frost strike or howling blast becomes a guaranteed critical hit. yep. sexy.

and rime? when this procs, you get a free howling blast (costs no runes, and cooldown resets so you can use it right away). and look at the killing machine description above, it says that if that procs, you get as one of three spells, howling blast, to proc. so rime+killing machine = USE HOWLING BLAST NAO!!!

There ya go. thats all there is to frost dps. yep. easy peasy lemon squeezy.


The Nitty:
Ok. to go a little futher into the art of frost dps. i've explained almost nothing above. except that you get two juicy spells to play react to. lets go and see what the differences are.

1. Frost uses Blood Strike to convert blood runes to death runes (Blood uses deathstrikes to convernt frost/unholy runes to death runes; Unholy uses blood strikes to convert blood runes to death runes).

2. Frost uses Frost strike as their primary rune dump spell (Blood and Unholy use Death Coil). as frost, use Frost strike always. Heck, take death coil off your bar and use it only during ranged encounters.

3. Use Howling Blast often when in AoE situations. Death and Decay is less of a factor in dps, so dont use it as often as you would if you were another spec. now if there were 4 mobs in a group... you may want to use it. but you have better aoe abilities with howling blast anyway, especially with the two procs going off at once. i am not saying do not use DnD. just saying that you have another option that's not so expensive.

4. Use two 1handers. two maces, swords or axes. do not use a 2-hander, even if it looks good. even if the stats are a lot better. the reason for this is that you have three or four different talents that buff up your dual wielding damage and also, you have the benefit of two runeforge enchants processing.

4a. In terms of weapons, use slow 1handers if you can. fast 1handers are fine if the dps increase on the weapon is significant (say, you're upgrading from a 90 dps mace to a 130 dps mace). try to avoid fast tanking weapons, as you're not only gimping your dps with the speed of the weapon, but also with the secondary stats the weapon may have (like +defense rating, +dodge, +shield block).

4b. In terms of stats, weapons with Agi are meant for hunters and rogues, but can be used by the DK as well. Agi will add to your physical crit rating but you will benefit less from that than if you picked a weapon with +Str. Most 1handed weapons, however, have +agi so go with that if there are no other alternatives. you can always get more weapons. Devyn has two Black Icicles from H. Halls of Reflection, which have +Agi. so although we prefer str, agi is fine.

5. Use Obliterate (Blood dks use Hearth Strike. Unholy dks use Scourge Strike) as your major attack. no folks, do not think that two icy touches and two plague strikes will equal two obliterates. They do not. Dont waste your time using icy touch or plague strike unless you're going to refresh your diseases. use it ONLY to refresh diseases. Use Obliterate. (blood strike to make death runes and then use the deathrunes to do more obliterates).
Note: if you're low on health, you can use deathstrike to regain health instead of using obliterate. you trade a little dps since deathstrike will do a lot less damage than obliterate. if you have runic power, summon your ghoul and kill it for about 50% health back to you. personally, i'll summon my ghoul and sacrifice it. its "cheaper" to me, ie. i'd rather use runic power than runes to regain health.

The Gritty:
Now that we understand a little bit of the differences between the three DK specs and what frost should be focusing on, lets move on to how a battle should be played out. There are always two types of battles. The multi-mob battles and the single-boss battles. Lets start with the single-boss variety.

---Single target stuffs in BLUE.
---Multi target stuffs in RED.

Single? Why hello nurse!! (single-mob)Every instance has boss encounters and most of them are basic tank-and-spank. some require a little running, but all will focus on you, the dk, dps-ing down a boss (not the orbs ala Toravon).

What to look for when encountering a boss:
1. Know your rotation. Know where your buttons are. Know where in your HUD your runes cooldowns/runic power displays are so you know what you will be needing to do next. Efficiency is key as a frost dk. so always be on the lookout.
2. Stay behind the boss. Always.
3. Stay out of flames, fires, ooze, void zones and other bad things. (Strafe left and right to avoid it, easy). 4. Watch for Killing Machine procs and Rime Procs. using Mik's or any other scrolling battle text addon really helps with this. Also, there's Quartz procs and Power Auras Classic. They do more than show procs. they will show procs as long as its active and give you a big fat icon covering everything until you use it up. So instead of looking at your fist for a white glow (killing machine) or at your character for small shiney rays of light (rime), you can have a more noticable message when your procs do proc. seriously, the in-game indicators that you have rime/killing machine processed is hard to see. and during any instance, i see my fists turn red, blue, yellow, orange, green, etc. so figuring out if the glow means "killing machine" is kinda tough. use addons for this.

Quadruple Grande Americano for Tri at the bar! (multi-mobs)
What i love about frost dps is that i get choices. choices to use DnD or Howling Blast, or if i should use howling blast without rime procs, or if i should spread diseases now, or refresh diseases on my main target, depending on remaining health, ofc.

When encountering multiple mobs, like say, four mobs. the priority shifts a little. of course, we'll always start out with the same, icy touch and plague strike. the rest is a big mess.

Again, always stand behind the mobs. and stand clear of bad things.
Since there isnt an obvious target, you'll have to target the same mob the tank is targeting. that's the best choice since you probably will not pull aggro if you attack the tank's mob. let the other three mobs get a pestilence, and maybe a blood boil or howling blast. if you get a killing machine proc, you can use howling blast, as this will cause more damage than an obliterate or frost strike. that's basically the only difference in rotation between a single target and multiple targets.


ROTATION:
(rotation is subject to priority. read this first, then read priorities. they'll make sense one day)
A-single. Always start out with Icy Touch and Plague Strike. (there are people who say do PS first, you get 10 more dps. gimme a break) But always start with those two. doesnt matter which comes first.
A-multi. Start with IT/PS. Then pestilence + Blood boil. then follow the rest.
B. Then use Obliterate.
C-single. Then use Blood Strike to use up your blood runes (to change them to death runes).C-multi. you should have already used your blood runes. skip C.
D. Use Frost Strike for your runic dump. never use deathcoil--it doesnt hit for that much anyway.
E-single. When "Killing Machine" procs, use frost strike as soon as you can. yes, delay your other attacks and just use frost strike to "use up" the proc. you want to use up the proc because you want it to proc again as soon as possible so you can do another juicy crit frost strike. saving it up makes no sense. just use it. you'll get it again later anyway.
E-multi. When "Killing Machine" procs, use Howling Blast if you have enough runes. sometimes its better to wait for the runes to cooldown and use howling blast than it is to use the KM proc on frost strike or icy touch. just wait it out. its only a few seconds anyway. when the mobs start to die off tho, like when you're down to two mobs, use the KM proc on a frost strike instead.
F. When "Rime" procs, use Howling Blast. This is a free attack. so use it even if howling blast is an AoE attack. It still does damage to one boss, and its free. do not use it if it will cost your runes (aka, no rime proc). use your runes for Obliterate. never use your runes for Howling Blast. always use your "Rime" for howling blast. get that? hope its not confusing.
G. Refresh Diseases. when your frost fever and plague strike nears its end, or ended, use icy touch and plague strike once again.


Rotation Priority:
1. STAY ALIVE (even if this means running away for a few seconds).
2. Always keep your Diseases up. unless your mob is almost dead.3. Rime (if you see it, use howling blast).
4. Killing Machine (if you see it, use Frost Strike/if you see it, use Howling Blast)
5. Obliterate
6. Blood Strike (to covert runes)
7. Frost Strike (without Killing Machine Procs)


Stat priorty:
Again from earlier on about the weapons, prioritize Strength above all else. gem for strength as much as you can. if you need to activate a meta gem, use a prismatic gem (it counts for all gem colors).
Primary Stat priority:
1. Strength
2. Agility
(stamina will come with just about everything. dont worry about it much. int will come with some gear, dont trash it, just evaluate if the STR or AGI will give you better results. same with armor, etc... in outland, i had some mail drops where i can gem that tripled by STR for that slot (gloves, helm, pants) and i used that instead. gear becomes more defined for classes in northrend, but in outland, its fine to use mail gear or paladin plate gear so long as the STR is higher, or that you can socket some bold bloodstones, bold scarlet rubies or whatevers)

Secondary Stat priority:
1. Hit to 8% at 80. if you're leveling, dont worry too much about this.
2. Attack power. its great to have. although str is preferred, attack power should never be scoffed at.
3a. Crit from crit rating. it is very important to understand that crit rating increases the critical strike percentage of your physical attacks and spells. Agility only increases the critical strike percentage of your physical attacks.
3b. Expertise to 26. I think its 26. but make sure you get that up at level 80. while leveling tho, dont worry about it; gem strength only.3c. Haste rating. although your attacks are dependent on your runes and not your global cooldown, having haste will help late in the game, when you're maxed out with Hit, Expertise, and ripping at the seams with crit.

One last thing to note... you're dual wielding. so each attack hits twice (hopefully). this means that for abilities that are actual attacks (plague strike, obliterate, frost strike) your recount will count each attack twice. one for the main hand, and one for the offhand. i do not know if there's a way to separate those. but when you look at totals, that's what you'll see... the offhand/mainhand attacks combined. for spells like icy touch and howling blast, these will be counted once since you're not using your weapons to apply these attacks. you're actually casting these. looking at your recount, to see if you're keeping your IT:PS at a 1 to 1 ratio (ie, you're doing it right), you should see twice as many plague strikes as icy touch. it's like that because recount will count your offhand as a separate attack. dont worry about this too much. if you do 50 icy touch, you should be doing 100 plagues strikes, according to recount. but in reality, its 50 icy touches and 50 plague strikes. to further pound this in: if in a boss fight you think you did 20 obliterates, recount will say you did 40. again, you're using two weapons. each weapon has its own "count" with recount.

One last last thing... about howling blast. It will apply damage to specific mobs individually. there is not "cap" i dont think, and the more mobs you have within range, the more damage you will do.
lets say you have three mobs and each howling blast you do will deal 2k damage to each mob. that means your howling blast will do 6k damage to three mobs. if its one mob, you only do 2k damage. lets say. what if you crit? you'll do 150% more damage. so that's 9k damage total, or 3k to each mob. now lets say you're killing those man crystals running around halls of stone. there's 10 of them, and you get a killing machine proc. 3k x 10 mobs = 30,000 damage.major dps boost there huh? probably. although i've only seen my crit howling blast do 30k damage at most (see ss above), im sure it can do more if you have enough mobs together in one place.

last last last note: runeforge the main hand with fallen crusader. if you dont have it yet, use cinderglacier. for the offhand, use razorice.


excited yet??? go respec already!! lol go leave me questions if you have any. hopefully i've explained enough to get you guys started. hope i was clear. sorry, no pictures. =[

Plans at 80 on Ysondre

My leveling days in Ysondre are coming to a close pretty soon. I started a few days before i started this blog and figured it would be something worth writing about. besides, there's so many tree healing blogs out there that anything you may get from me would probably be less valuable than the many other tree healing blogs out there. besides, they're all anticipating cata changes at the moment while im still QQ-ing about 5man loot. heroic, or whatevers.

So anyway, back to my two characters on Ysondre. I've past 10k gold in little time. all while leveling. i have my DK at 79, ready to hit 80. just 10% more on my experience bar and i'll be bathed in that goldeny swirl of light they call a ding. or something. My pala is 72 and will simply do daily randoms, do daily fishing, cooking and try his best to get into more outland dungeons (this is where he excels anyway, being level 72 and all). Not to mention, having Ingvar's axe, it makes dps a breeze. most of my other gear is really from TBC. maybe the rings are not. but my chest, shoulders, headpiece, gloves, boots, etc. my shoulders and headpiece are the pvp honored rep variety. still, i pull off over 1k dps in utgarde keep. i think its due to the bold bloodstones and bold scarlet rubies he has.

My plans for my DK, Krakkenskull is this: To have him run heroic dungeons to collect gear. he will have only gear from heroics. that's it. no triumph or t9 gear. what he gets he'll get from running heroics. but he can get a boost with ToC, FoS, PoS, and HoR. these isntances are higher tuned and will drop better gear. i am still wondering if i should equip any of the gear i get from these instances tho, since i really want Krakken to have only ilevel200 gear. i dont know why. just to see how well he can do in "crappy" gear vs people who have all i232 or i245 gear. i know my other dk, Devyn, has pretty decent gear. no icc gear tho, but still, triumph gear gets me icc ready correct? whatevers. people are in blues doing the first wing so let me see how well my i200 gear will hold up against better geared people. we'll see.

The other reason i am having krakken just run heroics for gear is because he's in a guild of about 12 toons. this means a few things actually. in terms of unique accounts, there's much less. im a "Lord" in the guild but i really do not know what that means. We are called Knights of the Round so i am assuming we're all kngihts and pretty "round" IRL. it also means that i usually see no one online. not a single soul. not for most of the times i've been on. i did see one other person online last night, for about two hours, but that was it. the other times i find that its really dull and boring. i guess i could recruit, but i really dont know any of the guildies well to even want to recruit for the guild. i do know one person in the guild. but she's off playing other toons on other servers. i think i will just drop guild one day. but not sure when. not sure if i should just keep krakken there to run randoms since, really, you dont need a guild for that. Sorry Manda, its really lonely.

My plans with Devynity is still to do the same as what im already doing. namely, to gain rep with outland factions, to collect more enchanting recipes, to get more outland gear and gem it with bold bloodstones, to fish, to cook and to make a killing off the AH. actually, i havent really made as much as i hoped. mainly because the JC market tanked and my initial plans backfired somewhat. now, i am going to go farm some mats (i know farming sucks, but hey, 50g for a stack of cobalts is nothing to scoff at) or something. my fishing is making some gold (glacial salmon, icefin angelfish, darkclaw lobsters), my scrolls are selling well and my gold is over 10k. hoping to double that once i get a footing on northrend JC and enchanting recipes. It will be a fun ride i hope, as this may be my final project playing wow. we'll see how that goes.

By the time Devynity hits 80 though, i hope he can raid with his guild (at least do the weekly as a raid). they have quite a few people with at least 20 on during the weekends. this leads to the possibility of raiding. we'll see. during the week though, there's maybe 10-15 on, but by the time im winding down for the day, there may be 2-5 people left (1am, pdt). Although the guild Devynity is in is more of a social/leveling/casual guild, there is still talk about raiding and doing content together. there will be odd "fun" things to do like the jenkins achievement or doing 5mans together. they also have a lottery/raffle we can join (although it does seem a bit skewed since alts join in too) on a weekly basis, with an entry of 5g. we usually get over 100g, with about 10-20% of the funds going to the guild bank (all of which i dont see... yet).

i am hoping this guild will do things together often. they have a decent player base and some showing of leadership. although i do not see much else happening in the guild, if enough people hit 80 with intentions of raiding, we may pull something off. we'll see. as far as i can tell though, we're not much more than a bunch of casuals who kinda know what they're doing. a lot of us are pretty smart and can do more than just spam a single spell. i've partied with a few and, although i do see some elitists in the guild, i do hope that they will be a bit more laid back even in raids.

Horribad DK

I know lots of people have experienced bad hunters, dks, paladins, etc. i'd like to contribute to the community with this useless post. So here. check out the lowest on dps. she was level 60 at the time. im not even gonna armory her. dont wanna know.

This was my first or second trip to Ramps, so i was level 59 for sure. But even at that level on my DK, i was doing 500+ dps.

So lets take a look at this DK's figures and see where she may have gone wrong.


1. Melee attacks (basically auto attack) make up the largest proportion of his damage at 37.8%. This is usually in line with that others do, although a little less, about 30% is good. Auto attack is one of my top three damage components, so seeing auto attack at the top is pretty common.

2. Second on this list is Death and Decay at 34.5%. DnD being the second highest amount of damage isnt all too bad, considering there are many AoE packs/groups in ramps, i can see the use of DnD being high. However, looking at her other attacks, heart strike in this case, i can tell she's a blood spec dk, meaning she should not have talents to improve DnD cooldown time. This means that DnD should not be, for the blood spec dk, the priority when it comes to AE/AoE damage.

3. Third on the list is Icy Touch, hit 23 times for 7.7% of the damage. While i dont see any problem with this by itself, i have a problem with it being third in damage (it should be much lower) and that it was used twice as much as plague strike (which is its partner in crime, and should be used in pairs, almost always, especially as blood spec). on any recount totals, i will know that a DK knows what they're doing by looking at the amount of times they hit these two keys. They should be, idealy, the same. If i see 23 icy touches, i should see 23 plague strikes, not 12. this girl had 12 plague strikes.

4. Frost Fever DoT makes up 5.8% of the total damage. Frost Fever and Blood Plague should always be below the top three or four attacks. Always. In this case, frost fever was fourth. blood plague was sixth. It should be Fourth and Fifth. And i think Frost Fever is 5th because of all of the Icy Touches that were used.

5. Fifth highest damage maker is Heart Strike. This is the bread and butter of blood spec, and its 5th in this case. sadness. this spell should be one of the top three. it hits TWO mobs, and its damage is increased if Frost Fever and Blood Plague are on the mob.


I dont want to break it down any more. but here's the basic idea of playing a Blood Spec DK in patch 3.3.3. bear with me as its not as simple as using icy touch over and over again. i swear, if it werent for the rune cooldowns, im sure many many people will be using icy touch over and over and over again, even though it does crap damage.

So here's the basic rule of thumb when playing a DK. Please understand that when you do play a dk, you're starting at level 55, and the main assumption here is that you've played the game before and have some high level character, so you understand the concept of the game and are able to read tooltips and can decide how best to use a spell based on what the tooltip says.

1. Icy Touch and Plague Strikes do crap damage. So why are they there? They're there to inflict Frost Fever and Blood Plague. That's it. use them for this and onlyt his. The idea is to keep Frost Fever and Blood Plague up constantly, or close to 100% of the time. Needless to say, using Icy touch again before Frost Fever falls off is a waste of an Icy Touch. same for Plague Strike/Blood Plague.

2. Special attacks do damage based on Frost Fever and Blood Plauge. let me rephrase that...
Special attacks do crap damage alone. Better damage with frost fever on the target. and much better damage wtih frost fever and blood plague. For those who have no idea what these "special" attacks are, let me list what i can remember: Heart Strike, Frost Strike, Scourge Strike, Obliterate and and Death Strike.

3. There are talents in every tree that will cause certain runes to change to Death Runes. These runes can be used as any type rune (frost, blood, or unholy runes) and should be utilized to use your "special" attacks more often. prioritize this please.

4. Every tree has a runic dump ability. Blood has deathcoil. The above dk did not use this, ever. Unholy has deathcoil as well. Frost DKs should use frost strike. Tanks will prioritize using Rune Strike, and dps should also consider using dancing rune weapon and gargoyle. Use your runic dumps please. its there for dps. its there for you to use when you're waiting on cooldowns, or when you're planning on using your extra special abilities, if you spec into them.

So basically, there's three things to watch for. Diseases, deathrunes, and runic power. thats really it. there isnt much else to keep your eye on besides your diseases, your runes and your runic power. Let me just lay out the main idea of a typical fight just so, if someone should happen to read this and also make a dk, would know what to do.

1. enter the fight using an icy touch and plague strike (and use Icy Touch and Plague Strike again only when Frost Fever and Blood Plague runs out). this puts a DEBUFF on the mob called Frost fever and Blood Plague. as long as these two debuffs are on, you will use your "special" attacks. Blood DKs use Heart Strikes. Frost DKs use Obliterate. Unholy DKs use Scourge stike. please. thats it. use those. nothing else.

2. Make yourself death runes during the fight. How? Blood DKs use Death Strike. Frost and Unholy DKs use Blood Strike. This changes runes to death runes. For blood dk's death runes will allow you to use frost/unholy runes for Heart Strikes. For frost Dks, this allows you to use blood runes for Obliterates and howling blasts. For unholy dk's this allows you to use blood runes for Scourge Strikes. its not really that complicated when you think about it. its complicated typing it out because there's three friggin specs to talk about all at once (its annoying. i should just make a guide for each spec, instead of one guide for all three specs).

3. When you start building runic power, dump it during rune cooldowns. or weave it into your rotations so you wont have to dump all 100 runic power at once (this is important for the frost dks with 130 runic power maximum and the glyph to lower runic power cost of your frost trike) (see how annoying it is trying to cater to three specs at once?).

4. are your diseases (Frost Fever/Blood Plague) gone? well reapply it with icy touch and plague strike. i know these two attacks do craptacular damage, but it makes everything else better. so use it now. yes, you should have this drilled in your head please. icy touch does crap damage. plague strike does crap damage. they're only useful for the dot/debuff on the targets. thats it. please think of it that way and you will definitely go on to doing much better damage.

5. What about Pestilence? Blood Boil? DnD? Yes. use them. but these spells are basically useless without the understanding that ICY TOUCH DOES CRAPTASTIC DAMAGE.


Thanks for listening.




So with all that said, what should the girl above be doing? *coughgrindingcough*
Sorry... had to say it.

So the girl in the example above should be doing several things differently. She should be running into the fight with the following spell choice: icy touch, plague strike, pestilence.
Then she should be using death strike. then two heart strikes. wait for her frost/unholy runes to activate again and do a death strike. while waiting, she should be using deathcoil. If there are four or more mobs in the group, she should be using blood boil instead of heart strike. if there are 1-3 mobs in the group, she should be using heart strikes. reapply diseases as necessary.

She can also weave in Death and Decay for groups. But since we were running with a warrior, i would wait until the warrior does his shockwave ability before dropping the high dps Death and Decay.

The Dk's top three attacks should be: Melee, Death and Decay and Heart Strike.
Her next three attacks should be: Blood Boil, death strike, and her diseases.
Icy touch and plague strike should be at the very bottom of the list.


In the next week i want to put up a DK guide for dps. I want to start with what i know best, frost dps, then move on to unholy and blood. I dont know if its worth doing a quick guide for blood, however, since blood will be changed into THE tanking spec come cataclysm. but until then, it will remain the boring spec we currently know it as, boring both in regards to tanking and dps. Please stay tuned as i go through a few major concepts in frost/blood/unholy dps. i may venture into tanking in those three specs, but again, come cata, these will be useless and we'll all have to tank in blood spec frost presence. So stay tuned for "something" if anything.