PVE Blood Death Knight DPS Guide

Welcome to our PvE Blood Death Knight DPS guide for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King!

The WotLK expansion granted us a new class, the first Hero Class of the game — the Death Knight. They feature a hybrid playstyle, something between a melee class and a spellcaster. Their toolkit boasts of powerful diseases, crowd control and utility, strong AoE, and solid single-target damage. Blood Specialization can fully support two different roles, being capable of both tanking and dealing damage!

Malevolent and burdened by eternal hunger, Blood Death Knights engorge themselves in the blood of their enemies, crushing through both the armor and the body of any enemy they set their gaze upon. Vampiric in nature, they continuously heal any wound they sustain during battle, while their enemies suffer at their hands. Blood Death Knights that specialize as damage dealers can boast of having high survivability while still offering powerful burst damage.

This guide will teach you how a Blood Death Knight functions and what items, enchantments, gems, and consumables are going to give you best bonuses, as well as how your rotation and your mindset should work together to bring you to victory. (Use the menu on the top to navigate between the different sections.)

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

• High burst damage
  While Blood Death Knights are generally seen as tanks, the specialization itself can offer extreme amounts of damage in short burst windows. Your Dancing Rune Weapon along with your Unholy Frenzy, combined with trinket procs, can grant you a very powerful burst window!

• Simple rotation
  When played as a DPS specialization, Blood Death Knights have one of the easier rotations among the Death Knight Specializations. Unlike the other specs, which are more dynamic, Blood Death Knights actually spam just one ability consistently — the Heart Strike.

• High survivability
  Depending on how you build your specialization, Blood Death Knights have access to a large number of self-sustain tools that can keep them at high health throughout most encounters.

  Weaknesses

  • Highly reliant on gear
    Since Blood Death Knights rely heavily on Armor Penetration, they will require special equipment to maximize their damage output. This means that they will generally be weaker in the first two phases of the expansion, until armor penetration becomes more accessible.
  • Made fun of by the community
    Blood Death Knights are usually associated with the Tank role, seen as mighty behemoths that maintain the front line and feast on the blood of their enemies to sustain themselves. However, even when treated like a meme or just a troll move, Blood is a completely viable specialization for the DPS role!

  Blood Death Knight Utility

  • Abomination's Might
    Blood Death Knights have a very powerful raid-wide ability that enhances everyone’s attack power by 10% while also buffing you with 2% increased strength. This effect is extremely potent for heavy-melee comps, however, it can’t stack with an Enhancement Shaman’s Unleashed Rage.
  • Hysteria (Unholy Frenzy)
    Blood Death Knights have access to an insanely strong buff that they can give to any of their allies. In fact, Unholy Frenzy is the most powerful buff for physical damage dealers in the entire game, granting them a 20% increase in physical damage for 30 seconds. The only downside of this very powerful buff is that it drains the health of the target, draining up to 1% maximum health per second for 30 seconds.
  • Mark of Blood
    Mark of Blood can greatly aid Blood Death Knight’s tank allies. This ability allows them to debuff their target, forcing it to heal whoever it attacks by 4% with each swing, for a maximum of 20 swings or until the debuff expires.
  • Chains of Ice
    All Death Knights have access to a very powerful Slow that can be used on any add in dungeons or raids. It can slow a target up to 95%, gradually allowing the target to regain its movement speed while the debuff expires. This ability is extremely good for general crowd control!
  • Death Grip
    Death Knights have a very potent displacement ability — Death Grip. It can be used to reposition certain mobs during an encounter, or to directly aid your tank in dealing with pesky ranged mobs, helping them gain aggro.