Death Knight Builds
by joshua laughlin, 8 hours ago
Death Knight talents are split into 3 different trees:
Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, healing, and strikes. A great tree to use initialy for leveling because of healing/damage.
Frost: Talents in this tree focus on armor, control, counters, and combos. Considered to be one of stongest trees for tanking but all trees can be used to tank.
Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, diseases, and AOE. One of the highest damage dealing trees and allows for a perma-ghoul pet.
A total of 33 builds are currently listed
Death Knight Builds
Blood Builds 13 Builds currently listed
DPS Builds
•1 - 50/0/21 - Blood/Unholy DPS -High DPS raiding spec using Death Strike. Rotation: PS>IT>HS>HS>DS>UB>(DC til rp is empty) HS>HS>HS>HS*(DS)HS>HS
•2 - 50/0/21 - Blood/Unholy DPS #2 -Also a high DPS raiding spec, all of the major damage traits are the same just some difference in survivability.
•3 - 44/0/27 - Blood Ghoul -High DPS raiding spec with perma ghoul, blood worms
•4 - 19/0/52 - Mujahadeen's Blood Raid DPS Survivabity -Went into blood to pick up the anti-threat stuff, improved rune tap and the increased crit chance. Skipped 2 hand weapon specialization because 4% white damage is not as important as increased crit chance in my opinion. Unlike most unholies, I skipped desecration totally because in most boss fights it doesn't work (bosses/adds move too quickly), skipped desecration because I'd rather blow my RP on death coil than on popping a disease, and skipped impurity because most DPS from a dk is from melee damage not spell damage. Instead I maxed out my ghoul, gargoyle, and the other disease-damage related abilities, and picked up corpse explosion for some burst AOE. I've found this spec maximizes my DPS and survivability in raid and PVP situations. My philosophy is: you can't DPS when you're dead.
•5 - 51/2/18 - Pure Raid DPS, Blood/Unholy -Please note you can replace glyph of Rune Tap with Dancing Rune Weapon to increase damage. Rotation: PS>IT>DS>HS>HS>Hyst>DRW>Refresh runes DS>HS>HS>HS>Blood tap>HS also helps to use that when your raid leader or party leader tells the shammy to use hero ive hit 4-5k easy in first 20 seconds of the fight after your initial burst its: PS>IT>DS>HS>HS>ONE DC (because your death strike will do more damage if you keep RP) Please note you can replace glyph of Rune Tap with Dancing Rune Weapon to increase damage.
Tank Builds
•6 - 50/14/7 - Standard (+3DS) -This build is excellent for tanking 3-drake Sarth, and doesn't require regular respecs to do it. Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-OB-HS-HS OB-HS-HS-HS-HS RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil Multi Target Rotation - DnD-IT-PS-Pest then TAB-HS/Pest/BloodBoil RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil
•7 - 45/5/21 - DPS Off Tank -It has the benefits of Bloods survivability / crits and the ability for good AOE control from Unholy.
•8 - 55/7/9 - Blood Tank Build -DS is used in the DK blood tank spec instead of oblit.
•9 - 55/8/8 - Self Healing Tank -This build centers around three aspects:1. Damage Reduction (Avoidance) 2. Heavy Agro Generation 3. No Fuss Self Healing
PVP Builds
•10 - 48/23/0 - Blood PVP build -This is a PVP build based on Lichborne/Death Coil Heal and Death Strike Heal. This is mostly a build with huge survivability and and avrage damage. Rotation: CI>>IT>>PS>>HS>>HS>>BT>>DS If low health drop HS and do VB>>RT If Blood Tap is on CD Drop CI If target has low health I recomend keeping HS>>HS and just do Lichborne/DCx3
Other Builds(Solo/Leveling/Utility)
•11 - 54/0/17 - Blood Leveling Build -Leveling build kinda similiar to "on a bloody pale horse".
•12 - 61/0/10 - Blood Leveling Build #2 -A blood build with good damage and survivability talents selected. You should be able to be constantly be killing without having to rest.
•13 - 53/18/0 - Bloodtalons (Blood/Frost dps) -rotation: IT, PS, HS, HS, Obliterate. HS, HS, HS, HS. then start over with IT, PS, HS, HS, Obliterate (^_^) pop the dancing runeblade as soon as you're at full runic power
Frost Builds 6 Builds currently listed
DPS Builds
•1 - 17/51/3 - 2H Frost -Glyphs: Frost Strike, Obliterate, Icy Touch. Gear Setup: 4pc T7 Rotation: PS > IT > BS > BS > OB dump OB > OB > OB > Dump, 3702.6 DPS
•2 - 0/51/20 - Duel weild Frost DPS spec -Modified from one of the Hybrid spec's (frost & Unholy) for DPS and I am still putting out between 6 and 7k dps. The rotation is IT, PS, HB, BS, BS (dump), IT, PS, HB, IT, IT, PS, HB, BS, BS (dump).
Tank Builds
•3 - 10/53/8 - Hadi's Frost tank -I hardly have any runic power talents at all, coz I personally never concider it an issue. Also, I play a human DK so the lichborne talent is pretty useless after they changed it. And since the duration of the diseases in patch 3.1 was lengthened to 15 seconds, I don't find it needed to have epidemic. but need to try it out a bit more before can be sure which is the best way to go
•4 - 20/51/0 - Bloody Snowman 3.1 -Raid DPS/Tank spec - the rotation is IT-PS-Pest-BS-OB-FS-FS then come back again with IT-PS-Pest-BS-HB-OB then RPDump with FS, rinse & repeat. I have popped Blood Boil a few times after the 2nd rotation just for added damage, but most of the time I see it as a waste of a rune. For single targets use IT-PS-BS-BS-OB-FS-OB-FS-OB-FS and repeat until you need to refresh diseases then repeat.
PVP Builds
•5 - 15/52/4 - Frostfan's Frost PVP Build -This build is made mainly for arena pvp, as the extra armor helps any clothys you might team with. There's no special rotation, just have to know when to use your spells at the right time. In other words dont rush in key-board smashin 'n useing up everything at once. Hungering Cold is optional, I like to keep it for the CC and with the new glyph its much easier to use.
•6 - 16/55/0 - DK Frost PVP -This build focuses on the snaring, dmg, and mitigation talents of the frost tree, while picking up a few more dps talents in the blood tree to include rune tap for a little healing. The rotation I use is everything gets icy touched, which gives them frost fever. From there it's blood strikes and death strikes to do dmg and get back hp, and then dumping RP with frost strike or death coil if they're ranged. Don't forget to use ur deathchill, or bind it to one of ur atk's, a free crit every 2 min's is great. Also, don't forget to put up ur icebound fortitude and use mind freeze and strangulate generously on casters.
Other Builds(Solo/Leveling/Utility)
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Unholy Builds 8 Builds currently listed
DPS Builds
•1 - 12/0/59 - Unholy / Blood Cookie Cutter Build -Similar to the pre 3.1 cookie cutter build this is supposedly the more effective build to start out with, and will phase out as you get Uldaur gear, however this is still up for debate so it's indisputable advantage is that you have threat reduction. Whether or not threat reduction is necessary is up for debate however.
•2 - 0/10/61 - Unholy / Frost Cookie Cutter Build -A build shown to scale with gear better than the Unholy / Blood counter part the lack of threat reduction is cause for concern. In regards to Ghoul Frenzy: You'll want to keep Ghoul Frenzy up at all times, you can do this several ways - After an SS pop blood tap and Ghoul Frenzy in order to keep yourself with your rotations while increasing your pet's haste by 25%.
•3 - 0/13/58
•4 - 2-13-56 - Unholy-Frost DPS -Blackhydra hit 6.5k dps with this unholy build, he hit 6.8k with the same build but took points out of imp unholy pre and put them into morbidity. priority: BloodPlague>FrostFever>ScourgeStrike>BloodTap>GhoulFrenzy>BloodStrike>UnholyBlig ht>DeathCoil>
•5 - 0/18/53 - Drajii's Raid DPS DW build -This is a unholy DW build really good dps almost as good as the 0/33/38 the old hybrid with HB i loved its åœ the rotation is IT,PS,SSx2,BS,UB also you want to use Ghoul frenzy as often as posable for the 25% haste and makes it hard to kill with its heal 60% of its health in 30 seconds.
•6 - 0/29/42 - DW Unholy/Frost -Dual-wielding Perma-ghoul spec; it is my fix to the loss of howling blast and the gargoyle from my pre-3.1 patch build.
Tank Builds
•7 - 12/5/54 - 2h AOE Tank Build
PVP Builds
•8 - 21/0/50 - beginner pvp build -Designed to maximize damage and survivability before you have the gear to goto an all out dps build. This build is not as gear dependent as full DPS builds. The healing of rune tap and mark of blood really increase survivability in arenas and BG's but mark of blood can be dropped for garg. plays like normal fully unholy so rotation would be along the lines of IT>>PS>>Pest>>BB>>UhB>>SS. The goal is to get diseases spread and keep pumping scourge strikes.
Other Builds(Solo/Leveling/Utility)
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Hybrid Builds 6 Build currently listed
DPS Builds
•1 - 15/18/38 - hybrid DPS -Thin is a hybrid DPS build that has done over 3.9k on 25 man os and naxx raids with some T-7 gear the rotation is up for debate
•2 - 0/34/37 - belly's DPS hybird build
Tanking Builds
•3 - 24/11/36 - 3DS Build -Single Target Rotation - IT-PS-BS-BS-IT-PS RPDUMP = RS/Deathcoil
•4 - 25/8/38 - DK Unholy/Frost/Blood Spell Mitigation TankThis build is focus'd on dealing with bosses with a high magic dmg output.
PVP Builds
•5 - 37/34/0 - Bloody Cold Obliterate -This build is a great pvp build. It gives you great survivability with Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, Vampiric Blood, Improved Blood Presence, Toughness, Improved Frost Presence and Hungering Cold, but this build doesn't stop at that. It allows Large burst damage, mainly from obliterate, and with Deathchill(auto crit), and Hysteria obliterate becomes deadly. Cast sequence should be IT or CoI, PS, BS, BS, Hysteria, Deathchill, OB.(feel free to pop Hysteria whenever you see fit)
•6 - 0/35/36 - Bone Chilling Cold -This build is simular to Bloody Cold Obliterate it just shifts its dps from two-handed melee damage to DW shadow damage. It retains survivabilty through Magic Suppression, Anti-Magic Zone, and Bone Sheild. Plus the same frost bonuses in the previous build. This build has more consistant dps between, DW, Disease and Shadow damage, and the benifits of having a perma ghoul to chase down any kiters. Also with Deathchill you still can have fun getting those big Obliterate crits.