by Zuggy

Macros for any class are going to be important, but for death knights they are absolutely vital. This death knight macro guide will help you implement key combination macros into your death knight’s arsenal. These macros will help you consolidate keybindings and quicken your overall rotation and hotkey speed. If you have a macro you think should be added to this death knight macro guide please leave a comment below and I’ll add it into the compiled death knight macros list.

Death Grip + Chains of Ice Snare Macro

/startattack
/cast Death Grip
/cast Chains of Ice

Will cast death grip first, if death grip is on cooldown will cast chains of ice instead.

Frost Panic Button

/cast Lichborne
/cast Unbreakable Armor
/cast Icebound Fortitude

Ranged Ghoul Stun

/castsequence Leap, Gnaw

Your ghoul will leap then stun, requires 2 clicks.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

This week, the subject is the loot in the final section of Icecrown Citadel, the Frostwing Halls. There’s only a few bosses here, but you’ll find some great off-spec pieces, a few best in slots items, and some interesting weapon choices.

Valithria Dreamwalker
10-Man

The Oxheart, overall, probably isn’t as great for most 2-hand wielding death knights as Ramaladni’s. It has less expertise, and critical strike rating instead of armor penetration. That said, if the Ramaladni’s just won’t drop for you, this is still a more than decent weapon.

Taiga Bindings are likely to be better than anything a 10-man raiding death knight is otherwise wearing, although the haste is a bit lackluster death knight DPS at the moment. The red gem socket makes up a bit for the less than optimal itemization, at least.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

1. What is unholy DPS?

Unholy DPS is one of the biggest roller coasters you can step on as a death knight DPSer, in that almost every major patch has bought huge changes to the tree, sometimes making it totally overpowered, sometimes slamming it down into the dirt, sometimes making a basic unholy spec look like a convoluted Escherian nightmare. In Patch 3.3, it’s leveled off into a solid, dominant powerhouse that combines stronger diseases and physical damage with the added bonuses of a cool pet and a very powerful magical debuff. It’s essentially the choice for any death knight DPSer who wants to maximize their DPS.

2. Unholy DPS benefits

• Ebon Plague, which counts as a 3rd disease and makes your diseases and the magical damage of your group and raid members hit for much more. It’s also superior to the warlock and moonkin versions in that it can easily be spread to other targets via Pestilence
• Since Patch 3.3, unholy offers competitive single target damage to blood, if not outright superior damage at high gear levels.
• Superior sustained AoE DPS. Despite the loss of the AoE version of Unholy Blight, unholy still brings enough toys that it easily out paces the other trees and many other classes to deal superior AoE damage.
• Permanent ghoul pet
• Bone Shield provides both DPS and survivability if you accidentally pull aggro

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

According to recent armory analysis, blood is the most popular death knight spec. It’s not hard to see why, it’s a simple yet robust tree that provides lots of power with a minimum of fuss. If you’re interested in getting in the DPS side of the tree but aren’t sure where to start, or if you’re just looking to brush up on the basics of the tree, this is the Lichborne for you. While this guide doesn’t necessarily cover some of the more advanced aspects of the tree, it does covers the basic ways to get the most out of your gear, rotation, and spec as a blood DPSer.

1. What is blood DPS?

Blood is the death knight tree that focuses the most on pure physical damage. It also has superior health regeneration. Like all three trees, it can be used for both tanking and DPS, but we’ll focus on DPS for this guide.

2. Blood DPS Benefits

• Superior single target damage.
• Superior self healing and health stealing abilities mean you probably die less and can survive through a less than stellar healer or tank more consistently than many other DPS.
• Some very nice group and raid melee buffs in the form of Hysteria and Abomination’s Might.

3. Blood DPS Drawbacks

• Not quite as much AoE potential as the other two trees.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

The Blood Princes

10-Man

The big thing the Battle-Maiden’s Legguards have over Scourgelord Legplates is one extra gem slot and haste instead of critical strike rating. However, the 4-piece bonus makes sure the tier 10 edges out anyway. Just stick with tier 10 and let some the tanks grab this for their off set, I’d say.

In other questions, what are the blood princes doing with legs belonging to a Battle Maiden? Have the Val’kyr been making booty calls? Man, girls and their vampires, I swear.

The big problem with the Thrice Fanged Ring is that haste and critical strike rating aren’t the most glamorous stats for us for DPSing anymore. There’s better than this ring to be found even in 10-mans for Death Knights. It’s not horrible, but there’s better. This will do in a pinch if you can’t find better in a ring though, or if all you can find is +hit or +expertise rings when you’re already capped.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

Festergut

10-man

The Cloak of Many Skins probably isn’t quite as good as the Sentinel’s Winter Cloak for tanking, at least in its non-heroic version, but it is better at pure avoidance for sure, and is a decent option until you have the emblems to spare for the Sentinel’s Winter Cloak, or if you just want more straight up avoidance.

The Festering Fingerguards are certainly a more than respectable pair of gloves. Not only do they have a good amount of hit and expertise, but yellow and red gemslots and a solid amount of strength. Interestingly enough, I’ve heard rumors of tanks spending points or rolling on these gloves, and I can’t say that’s completely out of left field either. If you’re already at the critical strike cap for defense, and you need more threat, these gloves are near tailor made for it thanks to the hit and expertise, and the two gem slots mean you won’t take quite as huge a hit to your stamina as you would otherwise. Besides, DPS can use their tier 10 gloves for the bonus anyway.

For dual wielding Death Knights, the Gutbuster comes out as a pretty decent side-grade or companion to the Frost Giant Cleaver from the Lower Spire, especially if you need hit rating. It also has more raw attack power than the Frost Giant Cleaver.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Zach Yonzon

Today we’ll take a look at the dreaded death knight and try to outline a few key points to remember when facing one. Just as with the first installment of this series, these articles are by no means an exhaustive and complete guide to fighting a particular class. PvP depends greatly on context, in part determined by your own class, your environment, your opponent’s spec, and player skill among other things. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s take a quick overview of death knights just to give players a general idea of what to expect.

Dual resources
The main thing that separates death knights from other classes is that they operate using a completely different resource mechanic — Runes and Runic Power. The three basic Runes — Blood, Frost, and Unholy — are a constantly regenerating or more appropriately, refreshing, resource that can be used to cast spells. Because they renew at a constant rate, the closest parallel resource to runes would probably be rogue Energy. On the other hand, Runic Power is generated when the death knight attacks or uses special abilities but decays over time through inactivity. In this way, one could imagine Runic Power being very similar to warrior Rage.

Death knights basically have two sets of spells that use two different resources. The advantage that death knights have over other classes is that Runic Power is the only one of the two resources visible to opponents, such that there’s no way for players to know what Runes are off cooldown. Even if players were to memorize the Rune requirements of a spell, all three death knight trees have talents that can conditionally produce Death Runes which count as Blood, Frost, or Unholy Runes which complicates matters for those who like to keep track of these things.

Furthermore, death knights also have a few spells which require absolutely no resources such as Death Grip, a spell that very often sees use in PvP. Blood Tap is a spell that converts a Blood Rune into an active Death Rune and uses no resources, although demands 6% of the caster’s base health. Then there’s the Frost talent Lichborne, an extremely useful PvP talent, which doesn’t use either Runes or Runic Power. As an added bonus, none of the aforementioned abilities trigger the global cooldown, which make them usable pretty much anytime.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

With Icecrown Citadel now properly breached, hopefully even some of the less uber among us are making our way into the breach to say hello to the father of all death knights, the Lich King himself. Of course, as we start upon the final leg of the journey that started so long ago at Light’s Hope Chapel, as we trudge ever closer to our destiny to the fight that will bring our story full circle, that may lead to our damnation or to a brighter new destiny, there’s certainly a question that’s on everyone’s minds: What about the loot?

It’s a good question. Let’s take a look at the loot from the first few bosses up in the citadel. Before we do, though, it’s a good idea to take a quicker refresher course in why we choose what we choose:

A note on deciding stats for DPS

Essentially, Weapon DPS and Strength are the most important stats for all three trees. Armor Penetration is next for Blood and Unholy, since they now do much of their damage physically. It’s a bit less important for Frost because of frost damage, but even then, you shouldn’t ignore it, since you’ll be using Obliterate on bosses. Crit rating isn’t amazing as it is for some classes, since we have fewer abilities that rely directly on critical strike, but it still has a place. Haste is back to the bottom of the barrel for just about everyone now that Unholy has Reaping back.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

Whether you’re a DPS DK considering going tank for shorter queue times, or a 5-man DK tank newbie looking to up their game, this column’s for you.

Talents and Specs

The death knight tanking spec in itself is a mysterious concept to many. There’s those who hold on to the outmoded pre-Beta idea that Frost is the only viable tanking tree. There’s those who assume that “DKs can tank in any tree” means they can tank in any spec. We know the truth. You can tank in any tree, but you really need a specific spec to tank.Luckily, dual speccing makes it much less painful for most of us to tank on a tanking spec (Sorry PvP and PvE DPS specced death knights, though, you need to make a choice).

The start to a good death knight tank spec is 5/5/5. That’s Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation. These are three basic defense skills that will start you off on the right foot to survival. Sure, every once in a while someone will put forth some esoteric spec that skips one or more of them for some strange reason, but those builds almost never last more than a patch, if at all. Besides, we’re just trying to get in shape to tank 5-man PUGs, not reinvent DK tanking, so let’s stick with the basics and start with 5/5/5.

Once you got that in place, move up the tree of your choice, grabbing the defensive talents and cool downs. Don’t forget a few DPS talents too, you’ll need to be able to hold threat. Of course, while basic tank builds, from my way of thinking, are pretty intuitive, it doesn’t hurt to spell it out too. Here’s a look at 3 possible builds, one for each tree.

This Blood tank spec gives you most of the bells and whistles of Blood, while also delving into Frost and Unholy for some extra slowing power on Icy Touch and a cool down reduction for Death and Decay. With this build, you’ll have solid single target threat, and Spell Deflection will let you laugh in the face of casters. You’ll be slightly weaker at AoE threat than the other two trees, but your Blood Boil and Death and Decay will still be potent. You’ll also have extra self-healing from using Death Strike as your main Frost/Unholy strike, which will help if you drew a lackluster healer. Of course, in return, you won’t have as much purely reactive damage soaking ability as the other two trees. Even Vampiric Blood requires you to be healed to reap the full benefits.

Read the rest of this entry »