Death Knight Blood Spec PvE Guide

Death Knight – Blood Talent Build:

Raid Tanking – click here to view
Two handed weapons only, with the 4.3 threat changes two-handers do far greater threat than dual wielding.

Glyphs:

Glyphs come in three varieties, Prime, Major and Minor.

Prime glyphs enhance core aspects of your class and generally provide the greatest benefit of the three types.
Major Glyphs, while not quite as powerful as Prime Glyphs, are still useful and continue to provide a myriad of benefits.
Minor Glyphs often times provide small quality of life improvements or visual changes, such as the Glyph of Horn of Winter, which increases the duration of your Horn of Winter ability.

Prime Glyphs:

Death Coil – Optimal
Heart Strike – Optimal
Rune Strike – Recommended
Death Strike – Can be utilized if you need higher DPS when a glyphed Rune Strike is unnecessary.

Major Glyphs:

Vampiric Blood – Recommended
Anti-Magic Shell
Rune Tap
Dancing Rune Weapon

Rotation:

Here are your highest priority abilities.

Outbreak – Use to apply Frost Fever and Blood Plague
Death Strike – Primary Survivability Mechanic
Heart Strike – Primary Attack
Rune Strike – Use with excess Runic Power or when runes are depleted
Horn of Winter – Used to generate runic power
Frost Fever – Applied via Icy Touch or Outbreak
Blood Plague – Applied via Plague Strike or Outbreak

You should begin pulls by using outbreak to apply diseases, followed by using Heart Strike to cement control over the mob. Death Strike is our survivability mechanic and should be used only after you’ve taken damage due to it scaling with damage taken in the last 5 seconds.

Maintain your diseases at all times, refreshing them using Outbreak unless it’s on Cooldown in which case you can use Plague Strike and Icy Touch.

As the fight progresses use Death Strike whenever possible as well as Heart Strike. Rune Strike should be used whenever your runes are depleted or when you’re nearly runic power capped.

Heart Strike and Rune Strike offer threat and damage, but Death Strike is a must use if you’re taking a large amount of damage. Finally, Horn of Winter can be used to immediately generate Runic Power.

AoE Rotation

Death and Decay – AoE Threat
Outbreak – To apply diseases
Pestilence – To spread Diseases
Heart Strike – Primary Attack
Blood Boil – When fighting 6+ Mobs

In multi-target situations Death and Decay should be dropped to start the fight. Diseases should be then applied by using Outbreak followed by Pestilence. Use Heart Strike to maintain agro if you’re fighting 4 – 5 mobs, or Blood Boil if fighting a larger group.
Otherwise use Death Strike and Rune Strike as part of your regular rotation.

Cooldowns

Horn of Winter
Raise Dead + Death Pact
Empower Rune Weapon
Vampiric Blood
Rune Tap
Icebound Fortitude
Lichborne
Dancing Rune Weapon
Anti-Magic Shell
Blood Tap

Stat Priorities:

Mastery > Stamina > Dodge = Parry > Expertise 26/26 => 8% Melee Hit

Mastery – Blood Shield: Blood Death Knight Mastery increases the amount of damage absorbed by Blood Shield.
Stamina increases maximum health and the effectiveness of Vengeance.
Dodge rating increases your chance to dodge attacks, a method of damage avoidance. Due to diminishing returns, it’s best to try and equalize your Dodge and Parry as much as possible.
Parry rating increases your chance to parry attacks, another method of damage avoidance. Due to diminishing returns, it’s best to try and equalize your Dodge and Parry as much as possible.
Expertise reduces the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried by enemies.
8% Melee Hit: Melee hit reduces the chance for your attacks to miss, 8% makes it so that your special attacks will never miss on an enemy.

Reforging

When reforging gear, it’s important that you look to reforge from your least effective stat into the most effective for whatever gear goal you are currently aiming for. See our stat priority list for more information.

Mastery > Dodge = Parry

Reforge the Crit and Haste from your gear into Mastery, if possible. If a piece of gear already possesses Mastery, reforge those stats to Parry or Dodge depending on how much you already have of either value. Since Strength adds to Parry your Parry rating will probably be much higher than your Dodge.

Gems:

Fine Lava Coral/Fine Ember Topaz
Keen Lava Coral/Keen Ember Topaz
Guardian’s Shadow Spinel/Guardian’s Demonseye

Blue

Puissant Elven Peridot/Puissant Dream Emerald
Solid Deepholm Iolite/Solid Ocean Sapphire

Yellow

Puissant Eleven Peridot/Puissant Dream Emerald
Fractured Lightstone/Fractured Amberjewel
Keen Lava Coral/Keen Ember Topaz
Fractured Chimera’s Eye (Jewelcrafting)

Meta

Austere Shadowspirit Diamond

Unless a socket bonus offers at least +20 Mastery, it’s more effective to gem for pure mastery and ignore the bonus.

If you have the gold to leveling it up and by epic gems then Blacksmithing will allow socketing of two more of the Epic gems, making it superior to other professions.

Enchantments:

Weapon: Swordshattering (Runeforging)
Helm: Arcanum of the Earthen Ring
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz
Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Protection
Chest: Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats
Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Dodge
Gloves: Enchant Gloves – Mighty Strength/Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery
Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
Leggings: Drakehide Leg Armor
Boots: Enchant Boots – Mastery/Enchant Boots Earthen Vitality