Death knight PvE guide
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| Class races: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
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| Starting a: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| PvE: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| PvP: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Useful macros: | Dk | Dr | Hu | Ma | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
Contents |
Death knight PvE abilites and raid utility
- Death knights have 6 runes: 2 blood, 2 frost, and 2 unholy. Each has its own 10-second cooldown.
- Death knights provide three buffs or debuffs to a raid but depending on their spec one of these will change. If the death knight is specced into Blood ,they provide a buff called Abomination's Might which is a 10% increase in Attack Power. If they are specced into Frost, they provide a buff called Icy Talons which is a 20% increase in Melee Haste. If they are specced into Unholy, they provide a debuff called Ebon Plaguebringer which is a 13% increase in magic damage and disease taken.
Death knight PvE guide
All death knight trees are viable for PvP DPS, PvE DPS, and tanking.
Death knights are able to dual wield and use two-handed weapons.
Death knight skills scale off Attack Power, not Spell Power.
Placing talent points in talents which create Death runes are advised to increase both Threat and DPS. The following talents can create Death runes: Death Rune Mastery from the Blood tree, Blood of the North from the Frost tree and Reaping from the Unholy tree.
Frost Presence should ONLY be used if you are the tank. Even if you are specced in Frost tree, use Blood Presence or Unholy Presence when you are DPS.
- Do not Death Grip or Death and Decay in an instance while DPSing unless you know what you are doing. Generally if you're in Blood Presence and the tank has sufficient AOE aggro it should be safe to use Death and Decay, but be cautious because it causes extra threat. Death Grip taunts enemies, which isn't usually a good idea unless the alternative is a clothie taking the hits.
Tanking
Each death knight talent tree is viable for tanking. Some talents, however, are better for tanking than others. Each tree has solid early tanking talents, such as Blade Barrier, Anticipation, and Toughness. Other recommended tanking talents are Vampiric Blood, Bone Shield, or Unbreakable Armor.
Frost Presence is essential for tanking, as it increases your threat generation.
Tanking, especially for Frost specced tanks, relies on Frost Fever being on an entire group. Try not to let it wear off on the group for a long time period. A healer will not be prepared for an unanticipated increase of 15-20% extra damage from a melee group in the middle of a fight. This could lead to them wasting a cooldown or even letting you die if happening at a bad moment. You are most vulnerable during your initial pull when no opponents have Frost Fever, especially with a druid healer who won't have all their HoT's active on you yet. For a difficult fight this is generally the best time to use defensive abilities like Vampiric Blood, Bone Shield, or Unbreakable Armor.
It is possible to dual wield while tanking, though generally unadvised. One reason is that mobs have a higher chance to parry your attacks, therefore increasing their attack speed (and thus damage) for the next swing. Furthermore, many death knight abilities are instant attacks based on main hand weapon damage, which will be much greater with a two-handed weapon. One reason for dual-wielding would be higher avoidance granted by using two tanking weapons.
Death Grip is great for pulling casters. Use it to pull the caster into your AoE and out from areas where he may aggro a patrol, but be sure to use Line of Sight to pull the rest of the casters, too. Strangulate is another great means of pulling casters when up.
Death Grip is not always the best pulling method, however, against melee opponents. Death Grip will cause the melee foe to begin attacking immediately (without having to run to you), without the damage mitigation of Frost Fever. In harder instances this added damage can force a healer to heal sooner then they would like, possible before you have had a chance to build much aggro against the rest of the group that were still running towards you. In addition if the healer (or others) do get aggro you will have one of your taunts already on cooldown. Icy Touch is a convenient ranged alternative for pulling.
Stats
A death knight's hit cap is 8%. With two-handed weapons at level 80, this is a hit rating of 262.[1] For Death Coil, Icy Touch and Howling Blast, the cap is 17% hit or 445.91 hit rating. This can be decreased with Virulence (2nd tier Unholy talent) by 3% or 78.69 hit rating, and again by Misery a Shadow Priest debuff by an additional 3%. Death knights choosing to dual wield have an additional penalty of 19% (16% with talent) to hit with both weapons, but this only affects auto-attack damage. Special attacks such as Blood Strike have the normal 8% cap. Raising hit over 8% is expensive, so ignoring the 19% miss and investing in other stats may be the correct strategy.
Block is useless to death knights as they lack the ability to use shields.
Strength is a death knight's priority stat as it increases attack power and parry rating. 4 STR = 1 parry rating.
Rune-based attacks generate Runic power. Attacks which require one rune generate 10 Runic power, 2 runes for 15 and 3 runes for 20.
Defense minimum to be uncrittable by raid bosses is 540 at level 80.
Expertise cap at level 80 for Death knights is 60 or 15% for tanks and 26 or 6.5% for DPS.
Expertise Conversion
- At lv60: 2.5 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise
- At lv70: 3.92 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise
- At lv80: 8.195 Expertise Rating = 1 Expertise
- 1 Expertise = 0.25% chance that your attack will not be dodged/parried.
General tips
Death knight
Mage
Mages are squishy like all cloth wearers. You can help them out the most by keeping the mobs away from them, by using Death Grip, Chains of Ice, or even by taking aggro off the mage using Dark Command if necessary. Frost Death Knights can make use of frost mages spells to increase DPS
Rogue
Rogues are the premier melee damage dealers and they excel in forms of crowd control. Unlike you, however, he only has leather armor to protect him from damage. Because of this, you should take the aggro and allow him to go all out on his damage. Allow him to sap/blind/gouge to take care of any unwanted extra attention from mobs.
Hunter
As a death knight, you have several abilities that can compliment a hunter's ranged attacks well. Using Death Grip will keep runners away from the hunter and allow them to DPS more consistently, as well as Chains of Ice as a way to slow mobs. As a plate wearer, you can easily be a strong tank and thus be ideal for keeping pace with a Hunter's purely ranged attacks.
When specced Unholy, the Master of Ghouls capabilities allows you to have a constant pet just like a hunter, making a formidable combination. While specced frost, you can take advantage of the Hunter's freezing trap to freeze targets, empowering your spells like Howling Blast. Overall, a death knight is an excellent partner to a Hunter.
Paladin
Both of you are very durable classes with plate armor, great burst and sustained damage abilities, and you have some abilities to heal yourself, whereas the paladin's healing abilities greatly surpass yours. Be sure to get Blessing of Might from him at all times, as it will increase your melee damage.
Overall, you are both very similar; heavily armored melee attackers with lots of utility. The single largest difference is that the paladin has no ranged attacks unless he is speced deep Protection or Holy.
Warrior
A plate-wearing class much like yourself, warriors are dps/tanking hybrids. If they are Protection spec, allow them to take aggro as you both break down your foes. If he is speced Arms or Fury, you may be the better tank, depending on your talents. Let whoever has a more tanking-oriented spec take the damage.
Warlock
Warlocks are much like Mages, in that they have the least armor available of all classes, being cloth only wearers. To make up for this however, they come with awesome damage and their own pocket pet to either contribute to their damage, assist in crowd control, or to be their personal tank. Regardless, you should never allow a mob to directly hit the warlock, you or his pet should have aggro at all times.
Priest
Priests are also squashies, and as such you should keep mobs off them as much as possible. Priests come in 2 varieties: healing oriented (a Holy build) or dps/pvp build (Discipline or Shadow). Shadow priests deal damage much like yourself, and Discipline has talents more focused on pvp utility and survivability. Hold aggro as much as possible and have the priest heal you when necessary.
Druid
Druids have a large range of squishiness, depending on their shapeshift form. For simplicity, you should probably consider everything except Bear Form somewhat squishy. You'll want to keep mobs away from caster druids, and allow melee druids (cat and bear) to stay on the mob.
Shaman
The shaman will be wondering which totems he should drop. If you have Icy Talons, make sure to tell him not to bother with Windfury. If you're tanking and the shaman is healing, he probably has Earth Shield which is a reactive healing shield that he can put on you. Remember to speak to the Shaman about not placing Strength of Earth Totem as you will be using Horn of Winter as both of these provide the same buff and can not stack. It is better they place a different Earth totem such as Stoneskin or Earthbind.
See also
References
- ^ Death Knight Builds - Stat Cap Information. Death Knight Builds. Retrieved on 2009-03-13.
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