This spec deals mostly with diseases and magic. Very powerful in both pve and pvp currently the most favored spec. Has excellent AoE and single target dps.

Abilities:

Plague Strike - This instant strike causes blood plague…which is another disease that can boost scourge strike/blood strike/heart strike damage. But this isn’t where its potent…its ability to remove HoTs is what makes this super powerful. The word says REMOVE not DISPEL so it works 100% against dispel resistance mechanics…for example on a druid with 3 stacks of lifebloom…if he gets plague striked he will lose that stack of lifebloom and wont get the tick off. Crazy? Hell ya it is. But wait there more! Every time the blood plague ticks it will have a 25% chance to remove ANOTHER HoT.

Click “Read Full Article” to read up on other abilities and how to use them.

Death Coil – This ability is very optional because as unholy you will be spending your runic power on unholy blight and gargoyle. It does about 1k to about 3k damage and has a 30 yard range. It just helps you finish off people that try to run away to try to help push back a caster’s cast time.

Deathstrike – With max disease stacks (4) your dk can heal for 1.5-7k depending if your DS crits or not. This is spammed only when you are desperately trying to recover your hp back.

Scourge Strike – Shadow damage! Can you say ignore armor?! Haha this is where plate vs plate shines. This ability can hit really hard normally around 2k~ but can crit up for 5-6k maybe even higher with better gear.

Unholy Presence – This is soley a PvP talent…15% move speed if you can spare the points…especially if you play in 3’s or 5’s team it will help everyone move faster.

Unholy Blight – This can be used to pull rogues out of stealth because of its 10 yard aoe and stays up for 20 seconds. The damage is ghetto but adds up in AoE’s, good for another disease debuff.

Corpse Explosion – is just down right horrible right now but I guess you can try to lure rogues near a corpse and blow it up and pull the rogue out of stealth.

Death and Decay – Decent AoE and when glyphed it can be the gayest thing ever. Its cower or fear effect is bugged so you cannot ice block or bubble when cowered. The 2 second fear can make or break a game…every second and every global counts in s5+.

PvE 1 – Click here to view talent tree

This is the most ideal PvE spec because in decent gear this will put you over 30% crit easy. The attack power from the blood talents synergize and convert with the Impurity talent in the unholy tree allowing more spell power. The reason why I did not put points into Dirge is that runic power isn’t too gather. Runic power is mostly used for unholy blight and possible gargoyle. When unholy blight (and total of 4 diseases) and gargoyle & ghoul are all up on one target…that is when the DK’s dps is most potent. Anti Magic Field is not necessary for PvE (atleast not the moment unless you’re tank spec). I would recommend getting at least 9% hit and 6% expertise. Missing strikes means you are behind on your rotations and runic generation. My usual rotation is IT>PS>SS>BS>BS then Blood Tap if needed for the extra runic power to use Unholy Blight. The continue with the rotation and if you have good chain proc’s on scourge strike glyph you can keep scourge striking until the diseases fall off.

PvE 2 – Click here to view talent tree

This spec gives frost fever a huge boost in damage…I didn’t notice this until I saw another DK spec into this. The 30% from Black Ice and ebon plague will increase this substantially. Initially the damage from Necrosis or Blood Cake is very low…around 1-3%…but with attack speed boost it will definitely have more PPM. I believe Necrosis needs to be buffed…in beta it was decent at 25% but got knocked down to 10%…5 points for this is very mediocre but we are trying to maximize DPS over utility in PvE specs.

PvP - Click here to view talent tree

This spec gives a lot of survivability and still puts out good damage. Rune Tap can be a 5-6k heal every 30 seconds which is huge in arena. Along with the mark of blood up, a rogue will be healing their target 4% every hit, so with fast daggers or weapons they constantly heal their target up. It basically puts them out of the game for 20 seconds. Good thing its getting nerfed so it can be dispelled and has a limited number of heals.

Being able to micro the ghoul makes you one step ahead of other death knights. I have a macro for my ghoul: (press twice)

/cast leap

/cast gnaw

This allows me to interrupt casters and give me a stun on demand. A half a kidney shot on a 20 second timer is very nice.

Use the anti magic zone to protect your team, especially healers because they will get gibbed really fast in current arena situations. You can still get cc’d in here so don’t think you are immune to magic while in AMZ.

Next article will be more detailed on how to PvP AGAINST a death knight. I will reveal its strength and weaknesses.

Tags: Death Knight, pc games, world of warcraft