It is somewhat apropos that as I write this article, I am drinking a nice beer.    Yes, I’m talking about Dwarves, our miniature beer swilling buddies.    Unlike previous articles, where we’ve talked about healing or how to make a great UI, this time:   “I Know Kung-Fu”.

In Mists of Pandaria along with a new race, the Pandarens, we have a brand new class: The Monk.   Like Druids and Paladins, the Monks have a spec for DPS, Tanking and Healing.     In that respect, as a hybrid class, the Monk is not treading any new ground.  However, the Monk brings new mechanics to the game that are an appealing new twist to how the character is played.   Though many people will likely create a Panda Monk, I believe the Dwarf is the penultimate character race for the new Monk class….  Look at it this way. Dwarves like drinking, and are very capable with their fists.  Granted, their kicks may only reach the mid-section of other -taller-races, that in and of itself, is a bonus.  Leveling a Dwarven monk once Mists of Pandaria goes live will be one of my top priorities.    To that end, I wanted to get a feel for the class during the beta so I could make a more informed decision once Mists is released.

Initial Impressions

Leveling around Iron Forge as a Monk is somewhat different than I was expecting.  In the first few levels, you have only a few abilities available to kill the various mobs that inhabit Coldridge Valley.  At this point in your progression Jab is your primary talent.  Jab does a small amount of damage and also generates Chi, your critical resource for future abilities.   It also consumes “Energy” which is your primary resource.   As you use your abilities and attack your target you build up and use Chi for greater and more damaging attacks.   You can’t ignore your energy, of course, because without it you are unable to generate more chi.

Early Levels

The first level or two as I mentioned earlier you only have your “Jab” capability.  Granted, it doesn’t take much to get from level 1 to level 3, but without anything to really expend Chi on, it doesn’t feel as smooth as it should.   At level 3 you finally gain your first ability to use Chi: Tiger Palm.  NOW we’re talking.   With the Tiger Palm ability,  you are able to start taking down mobs quite quickly.   Tiger Palm damages the target for some amount, dependent upon your level, plus an additional amount if the target is over 50%.

But

That’s it.   No more abilities are added until level 7, when you get Blackout kick (an attack that is tuned to work with Tiger Palm,  as it’s only available when your target is at 35% or lower in health).     Essentially, the monk doesn’t feel like a complete class until you get blackout kick.   You can hit, you can roll (a nice ability, btw)…but that’s about it.   Once you hit level 7 you can punch and kick with the best of ‘em.   At that point, the leveling begins to be more interesting and you begin to feel…well, like a hero.

At level 7-10 you begin to see glimpses of what the Monk’s priority/rotation is going to be at end game.  My initial impression is that it will be halfway between a rogue (and their combo points) and a death knight (with runes).   Since you only have 4 Chi slots, the key will be rapidly building up to your full Chi and then expending it WISELY.

Wrap It Up, I’ll Take It!

The Monk class will be an interesting new experience within the game.   A new hybrid with DPS, Tanking and Healing ability and a new mechanic with which to initiate all sorts of finishing moves.  The Monk feels familiar, but at the same time, very, very different.

Pros:

• A New Resource: Chi.   Chi is somewhat like the  Death Knights rune system, but unlike the DK’s runes, Chi doesn’t seem to  dissapate over time.  Once you build  it up, you can save it for heavy hits at the beginning of the next fight.   The finishing moves that use Chi are unique and as far as I can tell right now, effective.

• I like how smoothly the  animations move from empty hand attacks (jab) to new attacks as you gain  various weapons (jab becomes sever once you have weapons in your  hands).   It feels natural.

Cons

• Early leveling (from 1-7)  feels incomplete from the perspective of power.   Up until level 7, you can basically  smack things with your hands.  At level 7, you can finally use your feet.   Based on my experience,  I would argue that Monks should get some sort of kicking attack earlier in leveling.

It’s still early in my leveling of my Dwarven monk, but it’s proving to be interesting..   Leveling on the older Cataclysm starting areas is not as smooth or as “peaceful” as leveling a Pandarian Monk, but it is proving to be interesting.    Stick with me as I continue to examine the early levels of Dwarven Monk Leveling.

So now that I have been able to get back to Unholy from my experiment with Frost, I felt it was time to update my old Unholy how to guide since the last I touched on it which was way back patch 4.0.6.

Since then a lot has happened, Unholy fell out of favor, with the raid DPS crowd in favor of Frost, so my transition to that spec provided the push to create a Frost DPS guide at that point.

Spec & Glyph

Your spec and glyphs haven’t changed too much but you really want to start off with the base 5/0/32 spec, Leaving you with 4 points to play around with.  For one option I highly recommend take 1/3 Runic Power Mastery, anymore than 1 point and you will not get much added value, as per your rotation you should be below 100 RP most of the time with the exception of when you are using your anti-magic shield and gain a sudden bump in your runic power.  Now I do recommend at minimum 2/3 into Magic Suppression, but going even further especially in Dragon Soul, I have found maxing it, along with picking up Anti Magic Zone is very beneficial in a lot of the fights where there is a lot of AoE magic damage.  Also your healers will like you a lot.  Your own real valid PVE option is to put points into Improved Blood Tap, while more runes are good, it can be hard to properly work blood tap into your rotation as unholy, but if you can more power to you.

For me personally I end up with the following spec: 5/1/35

For your glyphs there aren’t many options so you want to use the Prime glyphs of Glyph of Raise Dead, Glyph of Scourge Strike and Glyph of Death Coil.  For AoE you heavy fights you can replace DC and SS glyphs with Glyph of Death and Decay and Glyph of Icy Touch.

Your Major glyphs should be Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell, Glyph of Pestilence, Glyph of Blood Boil.  For these slots there really is no other solid option for us.

For your Minor glyphs, while working in Blood Tap is tough, the glyph can be helpful. I recommend using the Glyph of Blood Tap.  Two other minor glyphs I recommend are Glyph of Path of Frost and Glyph of Horn of Winter.  Glyph of Death Embrace can be useful if you find yourself healing your minion with death coil a bunch.  There aren’t many minor glyphs to choose from and these are just two that I use, but any you want are fine as they won’t noticeably impact your DPS.

Rotation

Gone are the days of follow this rotation, don’t deviate.  The Death Knight, especially the Unholy requires you to manage your resources and understand the priority of each ability so you know when to use it.

Single Target Priority

Make sure you are doing this priority rotation in Unholy Presence!

1. Get Your Diseases Up! – Use Outbreak to apply, and use it to reapply when its not on cooldown
2. Dark Transformation
3. Death and Decay/Scourge Strike (If Both Unholy Runes or Death Runes are up)
4. Festering Strike (If Both Blood Runes AND Both Frost Runes are up)
5. Death Coil (If Sudden Doom Procs or your Runic Power is high)
6. Death and Decay / Scourge Strike > Festering Strike > Horn of Winter

Why Death and Decay for single target?  Because it provides a great tick of damage, with the exception of high movement fights, and its easy to get it down on the ground when its not on cooldown to provide a nice damage increase.  Think of it almost like another disease you can apply.

Remember Scourge Strike is our main attack and should be used properly as much as possible.  However using Scourge Strike without diseases is a DPS loss, so make sure to get those diseases up and keep them up, keep the diseases up using Outbreak and Festering Strike.  Very rarely should you ever have to manually apply each disease.

AoE Priority

You will want to perform the below priority rotation in Frost Presence

1. Get those diseases up, then hit Pestilence
2. Dark Transformation
3. Death and Decay/Scourge Strike (If Both Unholy Runes or Death Runes are up)
4. Blood Boil (If Both Blood Runes AND Both Frost Runes are up)
5. Death Coil (If Sudden Doom Procs or your Runic Power is high)
6. Icy Touch (Burn those unused Frost Runes)

This set of priorities is mostly used just for trash packs or on bosses with a lot of adds.  Most times with a few adds, you will want to stick with the single target priority.

Stats, Gemming & Enchants

With patch 4.3 things are a bit different, but mostly the same below is the order for your stats.  As always though, use Ask Mr Robot to help automate your reforging decisions.

1. Strength
2. Hit to Cap (961 hit rating, 841 for Draenei)
3. Haste
4. Critical Strike
5. Mastery
6. Expertise to Cap
7. Attack Power

For 4 piece Tier 13 (ilvl 397, not LFR) and the 403 Gurthalak, stat weights are slightly different, but as always use Ask Mr Robot as a helpful guide in your reforging needs.

1. Hit to Cap
2. Strength
3. Haste
4. Mastery
5. Critical Strike
6. Expertise to Cap
7. Attack Power

Because of this you will mostly use a red gem Bold Inferno Ruby or the epic, Bold Queen’s Garnet.  If you are a jewelcrafter make use of the Bold Chimera’s Eye.  Now if the socket bonus is +20 strength or more that is where you will want to think about using another gem.  Your best options are in these cases are:

Yellow Slot: Fierce Ember Topaz or Fierce Lava Coral

Blue Slot: Etched Demonseye or Etched Shadow Spinel

For your Meta gem you should use Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond.

Now your enchants will mostly follow the below recommendations, however once again, these are the best of the best, if you don’t have access to them, find something similar and use Ask Mr Robot.

• Head – 60 Strength / 30 Mastery – Wildhammer/Dragonmaw reputation
• Cloak – 65 Critical Strike Rating
• Shoulder – 50 Strength / 25 Critical Strike Rating – Therazane reputation.  In you are a scribe use the scribe shoulder enchant.
• Chest – +20 Stats
• Bracers – +50 Strength
• Gloves – +50 strength
• Feet – +50 Haste
• Legs – +190 Attack Power +55 Critical Strike Rating – Dragonscale Leg Armor
• Belt – +1 Socket- Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
• Weapon – Runeforged with Rune of the Fallen Crusader

Managing Your Cooldowns

You have 7 main cooldowns

1. Empower Rune Weapon

The ability to activate all your runes can be very powerful in the right circumstances.  Where I like to use this is once I hit 2 Festering Strikes, thus turning both sets of my blood and frost runes into death runes, and both my unholy runes are down.  This lets me cast 6 Scourge Strikes in quick succession.  When would you do such a thing, well you need to time this up with a Heroism or Bloodlust AND after you blow through your runic power on Gargoyle and Death Coils to activate Dark Transformation (if available).

2. Blood Tap

The best time to use this, is in situations where you find yourself suddenly with an extra blood rune available, usually this will happen if you are in the middle of using Death and Decay or if your Festering Strike misses (which it shouldn’t) or you need to reapply diseases and your Outbreak is still on cooldown.  But as I mentioned earlier try to work this into your rotations where you can without sacrificing the priority order too much, could also be a good opportunity to use this right before a Heroism to have one more Scourge Strike to bump up runic power in order to prepare to summon Gargoyle

3. Outbreak

Outbreak instantly applies all your diseases to a mob.  This should be used beginning of the fight to get your diseases up immediately.  Also use this mid fight to refresh your diseases when they fall off.

4. Army of the Dead

This is a channeled spell so its best used before a boss fight starts.  If you aren’t able to cast it before the fight starts you want to try and cast it during phase transitions to limit your DPS downtime.  Remember while channeling the spell you do no DPS.  Also fear not the ghouls will only taunt adds and not bosses.  The summoned ghouls will taunt non-boss mobs, so be careful and mindful when using this.

5. Gargoyle

This spell will eat up 60 of your runic power and will take a snapshot of your Attack Power and Haste at the moment it was cast.  So its best to time this up with a heroism or bloodlust.  Know when that will happen because you will want to make sure you have the 60 runic power to cast this.

6. Unholy Frenzy

This is an enrage that grants 20% melee haste for 30 seconds.  Awesome stuff especially when used with Gargoyle.  However this does not stack with heroism or bloodlust, so use before or immediately after.  Also this will cause you to take damage, so be mindful of that especially of incoming damage during particular boss fights where there can be a lot of incoming damage.

7. Anti-Magic Shell

As Unholy you should have spec’d into Magic Suppression, thus allowing AMS to absorb more damage, and also converting it into Runic Power.  you want to use this as much as possible during times when you are about to take magic damage.  This will obviously provide you with more runic power to start dumping into death coil and ultimately getting Dark Transformation ready to go as well.  So before you use this, make sure you empty most of your runic power as to not let the RP you generate from using AMS to go to waste.

Useful Macros

Scourge Strike + Ghoul Claw

Because having claw on auto attack still doesn’t optimize the use of this ability for your Ghoul, macro’ing it to your Scourge Strike will improve its use and increase your pet’s DPS

#showtooltip Scourge Strike
/cast [target=pettarget,harm,nodead][] Claw
/cast Scourge Strike

Death Coil Modifier for Pet Heals

Replace your normal Death Coil with the following, so that you can sometimes heal your pet if need be.  This makes it that if you hit Death coil while holding your ctrl button down you will target your pet and heal him, else you will just cast Death Coil like normal.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:ctrl, @pet][] Death Coil

Unholy Frenzy + Gargoyle

This ties your Gargoyle to your unholy frenzy so it benefits from the extra haste if you cast it on yourself, as long as Bloodlust or Heroism wasn’t already cast.  Be mindful of the damage you do to yourself when hitting unholy frenzy.

#showtooltip Unholy Frenzy
/cast [nomodifier] Unholy Frenzy
/cast [nomodifier] Summon Gargoyle

Helpful Add-Ons

1. IceHud

IceHud will show you your health, runic power, your target’s health along with your buffs and debuffs.  It will also show your runes and the cooldowns of them.

2. NeedToKnow

NeedtoKnow is a buff and debuff timing mod.  I use it to track Blood Plague, Frost Fever and Ebon Plague on my target, and keep these bars front and center.  You can also use it to track your periodic buffs like Horn of Winter and Unholy Frenzy, to help with timing of gargoyle and army of the dead.

3. OmniCC

OmniCC is just a great little utility mod that works well with most addons to include a countdown timer on the spells and effects that are on cooldown.  It works great with IceHud and Bartender (both of which I use).

A while back I co-authored the Frost DK guide on my site.  Well most recently I have found that Unholy once again can be on top, all it took was the right gear.  So when I felt forced to go Frost I did so for the good of the raid team, but now I no longer have to make the sacrifice of playing the role I love vs what is good for the raid.  With that my DK has been reborn once more as an Unholy Death Knight, and I couldn’t be happier.

There is just something about the Unholy build that I have always liked, the control of the ghoul, the swinging of a big 2 handed weapon, the use of one of the most awesome debuffs in the games, Ebon Plaguebringer, the spreading of diseases, its just everything I picture a Death Knight to be.  Its a playstyle I have enjoyed since the DK first appeared in Wrath of the Lich King.  Shelving that playstyle all but made me think I should just go back to my Paladin, Frost while fun at first, became a boring playstyle for me.  I get how Frost works, and I executed that play style at a high level.  However Unholy is what I loved about it the class.  Its that awesome mixture of Melee and Warlock type abilities.  It feels dark and bordering on quasi evil.  Like you are always walking that line of am I doing the right thing with this evil power, and yes of course you were.

So once again I find myself fully enjoying playing my Death Knight again, as he was meant to be played, a disease spreading, 2 handed wielding, plated Juggernaut!  I find myself having to work a bit harder to be on top of the DPS charts, but still get there, which is OK in my book, because I get to play in the style I enjoy while being competitive.  Unholy is also much less RNG based than Frost in my opinion, but requires the player to keep an eye on diseases and manage rune refresh rate.  For the most part my old Unholy guide still holds up quite well, and being out of the Unholy game since the original tier of Cataclysm raiding I found that it was like riding a bicycle, you never really forget (as long as the style hasn’t changed of course).

In conclusion, my main character is back to Unholy.  I have found myself enjoying the game much more because of that.  Its amazing how playing a game the way you want to changes your enjoyment of it.  Thats exactly whats going on right now for me, a renewed love of playing my DK.

co-author: Ceraphus

Nerfed again!?!? That was my response to the news of the new 4.2 patch as well as many of you I bet.  Now that I have had a chance to mess around with the spec, and beat on some bosses, I am not too disappointed. Some things have changed, some priorities are different, and some things just seem to line up better for more button mashing melee fun!

I am always going to stress that you know all of the fight mechanics and all of your DK abilities.  KNOW THE FIGHTS GUYS!  Take the time to research what strategies your guild is using so you can position yourself to provide the most DPS as possible.  Being Frost dual wield, and geared in line with the rest of your raid group’s DPS, you should be fighting for the top spot in most of the encounters out there.

I am going to assume that you have gone to other forums and seen the smart thinkers and number grinders posts and know what buttons you should be pushing in general.  If you are not Dual Wielding in frost spec, go buy some Soul Blades for around 6K gold each, don’t overspend on these.  Frost 2H is basically dead, and coming in 3rd even behind Unholy.  The only nerf that directly impacts a dual wielding Frost DK is 10% damage reduction of Obliterate.  The second nerf only applies to 2H weapon damage, which you shouldn’t worry about.

What Presence?

Frost DPS in unholy presence?  This is one of those things that I fooled around with when Cata came out, but always felt like frost presence had the edge.  Well now the number crunchers have confirmed it, go Unholy Presence for Frost DPS!  Why?  Well now your off hand weapon can trigger Killing Machine, and that equals more Obliterates because your haste rating will be through the roof!  Sometimes I feel like I have won the jackpot on a slot machine with procs popping one after another.

The only dislike I have about Frost Dual Wield in Unholy presence is every so often I am waiting for a proc, completely locked out of all my runes and power for about 3-4 seconds, but it doesn’t take long for it to start rolling procs left and right again so it’s not that big of an issue.

So What About Rotation?

OK let’s go over some things that will set you up.  Your 3 buttons for DPS are going to be Frost Strike, Obliterate, and Howling Blast.  Remember you should ALWAYS have your diseases on your target.  Any simple timer mod, like ForteXorcist or Need to Know, will help you remember these and should not be hard to do.  Obliterate is your go to anytime its up button, followed by Rime (Free Howling Blast), then Frost Strike, then Howling Blast.  Try to follow this as much as possible even if you have to wait a second or two for your Obliterate to come off cooldown.  That’s pretty much the basics to it.  Really easy right?  Not so fast, like I always say, use all of your abilities Death Knights!

Don’t forget the Ghoul, the ability Raise Dead!  Remember your ghoul benefits from your stats when you summon him.  So pop Pillar of Frost before you summon your ghoul.  I like to spread out my “buffed up time” as much as possible so I pop the ghoul right about when my pillar is ready to expire.  By doing this I get the increase in damage from pillar, then when pillar is gone my ghoul is up and beating on the boss (with pillar buff) so my DPS remains really high.  Pillar of Frost only has a 1 minute CD so get that on a timer as well.  Once my ghoul disappears, Pillar is back up.  So again I am hitting extra hard that whole time.  There are some really helpful mods out there to help manage your cooldowns, CLC DK is a priority mod that I use that shows the little button you are supposed to hit, you can also modify the priorities to fit exactly what you want as well.

Another one we always forget to do is Army of the Dead.  They ALSO work off of our stats similar to the ghoul when they are summoned.  I try to time these guys with either the pillar of frost, or better yet, a Trinket Proc with Pillar to maximize their effectiveness.  Just always remember to watch the timing during the encounter.  Sometimes these little ghouls can make a mess of things with adds around the room.  Also you want to pop this when the action is low to continue to maximize your DPS, sometimes popping this without pillar before the start of an encounter is preferable.

The Talent Tree, Glyphs, Stats, Runeforging and more!

The base talent build you want to roll with is 4/31/3.  This leaves you with 3 points to spend how you wish.

There are 2 specialized builds you can go with depending on your playstyle.

Improved Blood Tap Build (7/31/3)

The plus side on this build is you will be generating more runic power.  However your diseases won’t last as long as the other specialized build.  To combat that you will need to use Outbreak, Rime procs, Howling Blast and Plague Strike to keep your diseases up.  You also need to keep Blood Tap on cooldown with this build, hence the name of the build.

Epidemic Build (4/31/6)

This build focuses on keeping your diseases up longer, which means more time focusing on pure raw DPS.  This is very helpful on multiple target fights, but the draw back is you will find yourself having more open global cooldowns, which can create more mistakes than the Improved Blood Tap build.

For your glyphs most choices are pretty obvious

Prime Glyphs

• Frost Strike
• Howling Blast
• Obliterate
• Icy Touch (for AoE over obliterate)

Major Glyphs

• Pestilence
• Anti-Magic Shell
• Hungering Cold
• Dark Succor

None are really necessary to increase your DPS, just have whatever floats your boat.

Minor Glyphs
The only raid effecting one is Glyph of Blood Tap.  If you are low on health (i.e. 1 hp) on Chimaeron, hitting Blood Tap can kill you if not glyphed.  I recommend Path of Frost and Horn of Winter as your last 2 glyphs, but its really up to you.

Stats/Gear Priorities

You want to get as much strength as possible, followed by the yellow hit cap (601 hit + nerves of cold steel), then expertise to cap (781 rating to avoid dodges from behind), then haste, mastery, and finally crit.  Crit is not important since you are going to be hitting your killing machine procs all the time which are guaranteed crits!  As you are getting Firelands gear you should start seeing 30-40K Crits flying around your screen all the time, and yes that is Dual Wielding.

Strength > Yellow Hit to Cap > Expertise to Cap > Haste > Mastery > Crit

Macros

Last but not least are the macros.  If you are using a trinket that has an on use ability, you HAVE TO either put it on your action bar and remember to use it OR bind this to a key you will be hitting at least once every 30 seconds.  If you do this, you will always have a free cooldown going every time it is up.  If you bind it though, make sure its a trinket that you can use anytime and doesn’t interfere with planned uses of bloodlust/heroism and that you will be able to use it during burn phases.  This is a huge difference since if it is not bound; you are most likely forgetting to use it.

Next is a good little pillar of frost/raise dead macro listed below.  It helps speed things along. I

#showtooltip Pillar of Frost
/cast Pillar of Frost
/cast Raise Dead

Runeforging, Gems & Enchants

In dual wield you will want to use Rune of Razorice on your main hand and Rune of the Fallen Crusader on your offhand.  On AoE type fights if you can have a 3rd weapon ready to go with Cinderglacier you will be very well off.

Mostly for Gems & Enchants I recommend you use Askmrrobot.com but the general principle for gems is always gem a Bold Inferno Ruby, except where the socket bonus is +20 strength or +30 of any secondary stat.  Your meta gem should be the Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond, which requires, only 3 red gems, how convenient!  Also NEVER gem straight hit, don’t be that Death Knight.

Enchants

There really isn’t much of an alternative, below are the best, if you don’t have the funds to get these get the next one lower, but these are what you should be aiming for

• Head: 60 Str / 30 Mastery
• Cape: 65 Crit
• Chest: 20 Stats
• Bracers: 50 Str
• Gloves: 50 Str
• Legs: 190 AP / 55 Crit
• Boots: 50 Haste

Conclusion

In conclusion the best DPS you will ever do is the fight you know the most about.  Also I really suggest that if you are using a mouse to click your buttons you switch over and use the keyboard buttons for fast reaction times to all the procs that will be lighting up your screen.  Don’t be a clicker.  Do the research fellow raiders, and you will be battling for top DPS spot as Dual Wield Frost.

co-authored with Ceraphus

This is a how to for Blood Death Knight tanking in patch 4.2.  We have many unique abilities compared to other tanks that make us superior in many fights.  I recommend taking some time to research the more in depth and smart WOW thinkers forums like elitist-jerks and other forums and learn as much as you can about how the DK works and what your gear priorities are to give you the best understanding of your class.  It is VERY important to understand each and every spell you have and how it is supposed to work and when you should use your abilities during the boss encounters.

Tanking is all about survival, and when it comes to what buttons to push to ensure survival, no one has more than the DK.  Lichborne / Death Coil, Icebound Fortitude (IBF), Vampiric Blood (VB), Dancing Rune Weapon (DRW), Raise Dead / Death Pact, Army of the Dead, Empowered Rune Weapon, Anti-Magic Shield and a passive damage reduction if hit below 35% HP.  This doesn’t take into account any on-use trinkets you may have as well.  That is a lot of mitigation my friends.  But how do you use all of this?  Where and when is the best way to hit all these in succession to ensure that you are not taking damage?  These are the questions you need to be asking yourself for each and every encounter that you are tanking.  If you are not, then rethink the way you tank as a DK.

Boss Encounters

For a standard boss encounter where there is no super hit/ability where you absolutely need to save a cooldown for, I highly recommend that you are rotating your cooldown abilities.  No longer are the days of stand and cast till the boss dies.  The new Firelands bosses are all about moving and surviving.  You need to be able to survive as long as possible with sometimes minimal healing will be done because the raid is mobile for a short time.  If you are tanking an instance, you had better know the fights inside and out.  I recommend tankspot and youtube for countless videos on boss encounters.  Use the new dungeon journal also to find out just how much damage is coming out of each ability the boss has so you can ensure that you are using all of your abilities to mitigate as much damage as you can.  As a tank that is your job.  If you are looking at a boss and do not know its abilities, you should not be tanking that fight.  You can agree/disagree with that all day long, it’s just my opinion.  So tanking tip number one, know the fight more than anyone else in the raid.

Talents, Glyphs, and Runeforging

Generally speaking there are 2 specs, one that is focused heavily on you as the DK doing most of the interrupts and the other where you are not.  Usually because of the spec where the DK focuses more on the interrupts, many call it the 10 man spec, because of the fact there are less people available to perform interrupts.

10 Man – DK improved interrupt spec

25 Man / DK without improved interrupt spec

Note: the extra point you can put anywhere you want but its recommended to put in Epidemic

The Glyphs you should be using are:

Prime: Death Coil, Rune Strike, Heart Strike

These 3 are ideal for the Lichborne spec.  If you decide you don’t need Lichborne for whatever reason, the Death Strike glyph can replace Death Coil.  Though it is recommended to stick with the recommended prime glyph combination.

Major: Bone Shield, Vampiric Blood

These 2 are the required ones, the first provides great introductory and periodic mobility, and t

he second gives a big 15% boost to healing done to you.  The 3rd one is up to you, Dancing Rune Weapon is decent but threat really isn’t an issue, Anti-Magic Shield is marginal, as extending the duration doesn’t increase the cap on damage it absorbs, Rune Tap is decent in situational fights with a lot of AoE damage.  So really this one is your choice.

Minor: These are totally your call, whatever you want

For runeforging you will want to add to your Two-Handed tanking weapon Rune of Swordshattering.  This adds additional damage avoidance, which is always a good thing.

Gear & Stat Requirements

There is a little bit of variance for gear and how you want to set up your gear.  You can either stack up the avoidance and let mastery be a little lower, or you can go crazy with mastery and let the avoidance stay in line.  I suggest you play around with these.  I spent a lot of time looking at logs from weeks on end to see what my mastery/avoidance numbers were at and how much damage I would take on the same boss encounters from week to week.  I find for myself, the sweet spot for mastery is a rating of 20.50 and an avoidance of about 33% with parry being 7% more than dodge. At that point, your Death Strike heal for approximately 127% of damage done and your bubbles start soaking a lot of damage.  This is my “sweet spot” I like to maintain for my gear.  I have tried stacking as much mastery as possible and found that I was getting hit more often so my bubbles would get eaten up too fast.  So yes while mastery is important I feel a good combination of the two is also helpful.

Long ago it used to be all about STAM STAM STAM.  There are always arguments and still research being done about how helpful stamina is compared to the other stats like mastery.  Basically this is how I feel about stamina, your gear is going to determine your main stamina level, and the way you gem.  I gem to the color of the socket, socket bonuses are nice so I find a mastery/stam, avoidance/stam gem to fit the particular socket.  I suggest doing this so you are working on both stats at the same time.  If you are a jewelcrafter, you need to have 67 Mastery Gems in 3 slots, these are a must.  If you are really hardcore, get Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting for the awesome gems and more gem slots.

Rotations, Rune & Cooldown Management

This is the nuts and bolts of tanking.  Everyone always looks for the perfect rotations or priority for every class.  Usually it depends on the play style and what works the best for you.  If you really want to use your DK to the fullest, take the time to read everything you can about your abilities.  I am still learning and finding new combo’s to mitigate damage every week.  OK here’s where I go into a little button pushing explanation.  By no means am I saying this is what you should do to open, or how it should be done, but this is what I do, and it works for me.  Try it out, practice, modify it so you are comfortable managing your runes/runic power.

Death Strike (DS) takes a Frost and Unholy rune, Heart Strike takes 1 Blood rune.  So if you swing 4 times with these two abilities right off the bat, you are locked out for 4 seconds.  At a point shortly into your boss fight, you will only be able to hit Death Strike once every 8-10 seconds depending on cooldowns running.  It is important to mention that you should always be keeping Blade Barrier up by keeping your blood runes on Cooldown. Death Strike also hits harder with the more runic power you have but only if you are using the Death Strike Prime Glyph.  I find 60 RP to be a good level to maintain to provide enough Rune Strikes (RS) in between your Death Strikes and Heart Strikes.  OK so I open with Outbreak as I move into range of the boss, use Horn of Winter for 10 runic power, having Bone Shield up and glyphed will also give you a speed boost.  I usually start with DS, then HS, then RS, then another DS.  Why don’t I just pile on the DS spam bubbles first?  It’s about rune management.  By spacing out your unholy/frost runes to exactly 50% of each cooldown, you will hit this more often and gain the most you can out of this ability.  The KEY to this is maintaining runic power.

The first cooldown I hit is Dancing Rune Weapon (DRW) and it is usually 10 seconds into the fight where I have my mitigation cooldowns started. You have a lot of cooldowns and if spread out properly you will have a cooldown rolling for most of a boss encounter. Vampiric Blood (VB) comes after the Dancing Rune Weapon usually for me.  I wait about 10-15 seconds between cooldowns just to spread them out over the fight.  Now if you are on a boss fight where you take an enrage, or super hit, obviously save of one or two of your abilities for this.  This rotation of mitigation cooldowns are for your standard bosses.  Where you go from here is up to you, usually I get my trinket CD going and then Icebound Fortitude, then VB again.

One really helpful damage reduction ability that is tough to use is Army of the Dead.  You get 5 seconds of damage reduction while you channel your army.  This take 3 runes to do so it should be used later in the fight well after you have a ton of threat.  Also the army is pretty dumb and will just go crazy on whatever is around, most bosses though the army will not taunt the boss off the tank.  Maloriak would not be the best place to pop this CD due to adds, but a 4 stack from the mind controls on Cho’Gall will be great.

Lichborne is a great cooldown which can be one of your big save your bacon cooldowns.  What you do is basically go undead, which makes you resistant to charm, fear and sleep.  But what happens is when you spam Death Coil on yourself after hitting this, you gain life, and can gain a good bit back.  Generally about 2 to 3 death coils will top you off after a big boss slam.  So be sure you have about 60-80 runic power before letting it go.  Also you will want to replace Lichborne on your action bar with the following macro, then just spam this button to ensure you get healed:

#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne;
/cast [@player] Death Coil

Death Runes will be popping up all the time so use those for extra Death Strikes when possible.  Again if you space them out over a few seconds you will reduce the time that you sit without a bubble on.  After that its up to you, just remember to keep the runic power high, while spacing out the Death Strikes, and rotating your cooldowns and you will be getting hails from your healers in no time.

Conclusion

Know your boss fights, know when you NEED to have mitigation and when you can control your cooldowns.  If you save ALL your cooldowns for 30 seconds of no damage, it really puts you at a disadvantage for the rest of the fight.

I am Megadéath on the Dalaran Server.  If you have questions or want some help with timing or are having problems tanking a boss and want some tips, contact me.  I am always willing to help a fellow DK.

4.0.6 has seen Death Knights change yet again.  So in 4.0.3 Unholy DKs saw themselves torn between dual wield and 2h viability.  In 4.0.6 that all changes.  Some changes to our mastery are also being factored in so with all these changes, what is a Death Knight to do?  Well so many folks have contacted me saying they enjoyed my 4.0.1 DK posting, that I decided to write up one focusing on Unholy DKs first since they have been modified to hell and back (yes that was meant to be a pun).

Spec & Glyphs

Some of the biggest changes to Death Knights are the reduction in damage of our pets and our Death Coil.  Our mastery was renamed Dreadblade and now increases shadow damage per point of mastery.  This actually makes mastery a viable stat for Unholy Death Knights now.  Dual Wielding is effectively dead now that Sudden Doom only procs off main hand attacks.

So what does all this mean for our spec?  Well you want to start with the base 5/0/32.  This is with 4 free talent points at level 85.  These 4 points realistically can be put just about anywhere without truly impacting your DPS.  But where should you put these points?  Well you have some front runners.  You can put 2 points into Magic Suppression, this provides only slightly more runic power generation, but does provide a lot more survivability.  With many magic AoE fights in the current tier of raiding this isn’t a bad idea to use 2 of your 4 points here.

Another option is in the Frost tree, to put points into Runic Power Mastery, its not a bad option to bank extra runic power, but in my opinion its not entirely necessary as you shouldn’t stay maxed at 100 RP for very long anyway.  However 1 point here could be beneficial to help you avoid being capped too often and give you more room in your rotation for some more flexibility.

In the Blood tree, another option is Improved Blood Tap, this while it looks good on paper as a DPS improvement, it can be hard to work into your rotations.  So while you can throw 2 points into this if you feel confident in being able to work it into your rotation but you may only want to put in 1 point, you know dip your toe in the water to see how it is before you fully commit.  If you are sold on this, I urge you to put in 1 point, but then make it a point to work it into your rotation.  If you do and do it well, you can reconsider adding in another point.

Your glyphs haven’t changed much from 4.0.3

Your Prime glyphs should be Glyph of Raise Dead, Glyph of Scourge Strike and Glyph of Death Coil.

Your Major glyphs should be Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell, Glyph of Pestilence, Glyph of Blood Boil.

Your Minor glyphs do not matter much, now if you did go with Improved Blood Tap I recommend you using the Glyph of Blood Tap.  Two other minor glyphs I recommend are Glyph of Path of Frost and Glyph of Horn of Winter.  There aren’t many minor glyphs to choose from and these are just two that I use, but any you want are fine as they won’t noticeably impact your DPS.

Here is the Spec + Glyphs I would recommend for the level 85 Unholy DK: 6/1/34

Rotation

The rotation for DKs still hasn’t changed since 4.0.1

Single Target Priority Rotation:

*This is done in Unholy Presence

1. Get your Diseases up, and keep them up
2. Activate Dark Transformation
3. Scourge Strike if both Unholy and/or Death Runes are up
4. Festering Strike if both pairs of Blood and Frost runes are up
5. Death Coil on Sudden Doom proc or at 100 runic power
6. Scourge Strike > Festering Strike > Death Coil > Horn of Winter

AoE Priority Rotation (3 or more mobs):

*This is done in Frost Presence

1. Get your Diseases up and spread them with Pestilence
2. Activate Dark Transformation
3. Death and Decay
4. Scourge Strike if both Unholy and/or Death Runes are up
5. Blood Boil + Icy Touch if both pairs of Blood and Frost are up
6. Death Coil on Sudden Doom proc
7. Scourge Strike >Blood Boil + Icy Touch > Death Coil > Horn of Winter

Stat Priority

With 4.0.6 stat priority has changed slightly

1. Strength
2. Hit to Cap
3. Haste
4. Mastery
5. Expertise to Cap
6. Critical Strike

Reforging is simply taking an item thats lower on the priority list and upgrading to a stat that is higher on the priority.  It is recomended you reforge for Hit if you are below the hit cap.  Do not gem for hit if you can help it, and that leads me into…

Gemming

The below are the gems you should be using.  However you should gem Bold Inferno Ruby in all gem slots unless the socket bonus is +20 strength or more.  Of course if you are a jewelcrafter, you will want to use the +strength epic JC gem that only JC can use.

Red: Bold Inferno Ruby

Yellow: Fierce Ember Topaz

Blue: Etched Demonseye

For your Meta gem you should use Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond, if this gem is not immediately available, the next best meta gem you should use Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond.

For assistance with gemming and reforging you can look to Ask Mr Robot, its a pretty solid tool to help you in some of your choices.

Enchanting

These are the best enchants per slot, if these are too expensive find something comparable

• Head – 60 Strength / 30 Mastery – Wildhammer/Dragonmaw reputation
• Cloak – 65 Critical Strike Rating
• Shoulder – 50 Strength / 25 Critical Strike Rating – Therazane reputation.  In you are a scribe use the scribe shoulder enchant.
• Chest – +20 Stats
• Bracers – +50 Strength
• Gloves – +50 strength
• Feet – +50 Haste
• Legs – +190 Attack Power +55 Critical Strike Rating – Dragonscale Leg Armor
• Belt – +1 Socket- Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
• Weapon – Runeforged with Rune of the Fallen Crusader

Managing Your Cooldowns

You have 6 main cooldowns

1. Empower Rune Weapon

The ability to activate all your runes can be very powerful in the right circumstances.  Where I like to use this is once I hit 2 Festering Strikes, thus turning both sets of my blood and frost runes into death runes, and both my unholy runes are down.  This lets me cast 6 Scourge Strikes in quick succession.  When would you do such a thing, well you need to time this up with a Heroism or Bloodlust AND after you blow through your runic power on Gargoyle and Death Coils to activate Dark Transformation (if available).

2. Blood Tap

The best time to use this, is in situations where you find yourself suddenly with an extra blood rune available, usually this will happen if you are in the middle of using Death and Decay or if your Festering Strike misses (which it shouldn’t) or you need to reapply diseases and your Outbreak is still on cooldown.  But as I mentioned earlier try to work this into your rotations where you can without sacrificing the priority order too much, could also be a good opportunity to use this right before a Heroism to have one more Scourge Strike to bump up runic power in order to prepare to summon Gargoyle

3. Outbreak

Outbreak instantly applies all your diseases to a mob.  This is so great, I can’t begin to tell you, especially on fights where you are constantly switching your targets, like Omnotron Defense System.  This should be used early in the fight, and whenever you need to reapply diseases if Festering Strike isn’t cutting it.  In some cases I have seen where Festering Strike while it hits, just based on timing the time on the diseases is just running out and may be better to just refresh them.

4. Army of the Dead

This is a channeled spell so its best used before a boss fight starts.  If you aren’t able to cast it before the fight starts you want to try and cast it during phase transitions to limit your DPS downtime.  Remember while channeling the spell you do no DPS.  Also fear not the ghouls will only taunt adds and not bosses.  The summoned ghouls will utilize your Attack Power, Haste and Hit at the time they are channeled, so if you have any buffs on you when summoned they will benefit from those (i.e. Heroism).

5. Gargoyle

This spell will eat up 60 of your runic power and will take a snapshot of your Attack Power and Haste at the moment it was cast.  So its best to time this up with a heroism or bloodlust.  Know when that will happen because you will want to make sure you have the 60 runic power to cast this.

6. Unholy Frenzy

This is an enrage that grants 20% melee haste for 30 seconds.  Awesome stuff especially when items like Gargoyle and Army of the Dead both work off of our Haste.  Something to keep in mind.  However because this is an enrage type spell, its actually best used on a Fury Warrior.  If there isn’t one in your group then you might as well as cast this on yourself.

Useful Macros

Some macros that I use greatly increase my effective DPS by helping to keep things timed and together.

1. Unholy Frenzy + Gargoyle

Replace “Warrior” with the name of your raid’s fury warrior to auto cast unholy frenzy on him/her when you hold down shift, if you do not have a fury warrior, the macro will cast this on you, then summon your Gargoyle.  This ties your Gargoyle to your unholy frenzy so it benefits from the extra haste if you cast it on yourself.

#showtooltip Unholy Frenzy
/cast [modifier:shift,target=Warrior] Unholy Frenzy
/cast [nomodifier] Unholy Frenzy
/cast [nomodifier] Summon Gargoyle

2. Scourge Strike + Ghoul Claw

Because having claw on auto attack still doesn’t optimize the use of this ability for your Ghoul, macro’ing it to your Scourge Strike will improve its use and increase your pet’s DPS

#showtooltip Scourge Strike
/cast [target=pettarget,harm,nodead][] Claw
/cast Scourge Strike

Helpful Add-Ons

1. IceHud

IceHud will show you your health, runic power, your target’s health along with your buffs and debuffs.  It will also show your runes and the cooldowns of them.

2. NeedToKnow

NeedtoKnow is a buff and debuff timing mod.  I use it to track Blood Plague, Frost Fever and Ebon Plague on my target, and keep these bars front and center.  You can also use it to track your periodic buffs like Horn of Winter and Unholy Frenzy, to help with timing of gargoyle and army of the dead.

3. OmniCC

OmniCC is just a great little utility mod that works well with most addons to include a countdown timer on the spells and effects that are on cooldown.  It works great with IceHud and Bartender (both of which I use).

So 4.0.1 patch is upon us.  All the class changes are being implemented in full force, leaving folks with the questions of what do I do next?  Well for Death Knights our talents and abilities have been changing it seems since every single patch, and 4.0.1 is no exception.

With a completed streamlined retooled talent tree, new mechanics and abilities it can be easy to feel lost.

Lets take a look at what specs, abilities and rotations we need to setup going into the new age.

4.0.1 Death Knight Changes

*Please note that only abilities available at level 80 and general changes I have listed below.

General

• Runes now refresh sequentially instead of concurrently.
• Haste now increases the rate at which runes regenerate.
• Haste now increases the rate at which Ghoul energy regenerates.
• Strength now provides parry instead of shield block value.
• Plate Specialization added; Increases your primary attribute by 5% while wearing Plate in all armor slots. Blood specialization grants Stamina, Frost specialization grants Strength, and Unholy specialization grants Strength.
• Ability queueing based on your latency now extends beyond actions with a cast time and to instants.
• There is no longer a small amount of unavoidable partial resists on boss level mobs.
• Relics are no longer class specific and can be used by any of the four hybrids not capable of wielding wands or ranged weapons.

Blood

• Blood Presence reworked; now reads “You assume the presence of Blood, increasing Stamina by 8%, armor contribution from cloth, leather, mail and plate items by 60%, and reducing damage taken by 8%. Increases threat generated. Only one Presence may be active at a time, and assuming a new Presence will consume any stored Runic Power.”
• Death Strike reworked; now reads “A deadly attack that deals X% weapon damage plus Y, healing you for 30% of the damage you have sustained during the preceding 5 sec (minimum of at least 10% of your maximum health).
• Pestilence-spread diseases now deal 50% of their damage, down from 100%.
• Blood Tap no longer generates runic power.
• Forceful Deflection removed.

Frost

• [New] Festering Strike: An instant attack that deals X% weapon damage plus Y and increases the duration of your Blood Plague, Frost Fever, and Chains of Ice effects on the target by up to 6 sec. Cost is one Blood rune and one Frost rune. Melee range. No cooldown. Trainable at level 64.
• [New] Runic Empowerment: When you use your Death Coil, Frost Strike, or Rune Strike ability, you have a 45% chance to activate a random fully depleted rune. Passive. No internal cooldown. Trainable at level 68.
• Frost Presence reworked; now reads “Strengthens you with the presence of Frost, increasing damage by 10% and increasing Runic Power generation by 10%. Only one Presence may be active at a time, and assuming a new Presence will consume any stored Runic Power.”
• Chains of Ice reworked; now reads “Shackles the target with frozen chains, reducing their movement by 60% for 8 sec. Also infects the target with Frost Fever.”
• Frost Fever now lasts for 21 seconds baseline, up from 15 seconds, snares attack speed by 20% baseline, up from 14%, and crits innately.
• Icebound Fortitude no longer increases its effect based on additional defense.
• Rune Strike is now on the GCD, instead of modifying your next auto-attack.

Unholy

• Unholy Presence reworked; now reads “You are infused with unholy fury, increasing attack speed and rune regeneration by 10%, and movement speed by 15%, and reducing the global cool down on your abilities by 0.5 sec. Only one Presence may be active at a time, and assuming a new Presence will consume any stored Runic Power.”
• Anti-Magic Shell no longer costs runic power and no longer generates runic power upon damage.
• Blood Plague now lasts for 21 seconds baseline, up from 15 seconds, and crits innately.
• Death and Decay now costs one Unholy rune, down from one Unholy, one Blood, and one Frost rune.

DPS

For DPS we have 2 options, Unholy and Frost.

Unholy

First comes first your talent specialization and glyphs at level 80 should be 4/0/32.

Please note that the prime glyphs suggested is for single target DPS.  If you play more of an AoE role you will want to swap out Scourge Strike and Death Coil glyphs and replace with Glyph of Death and Decay and Glyph of Icy Touch.  The minor glyphs are really up to you as they don’t provide any true DPS increases, but the ones listed in the build are the ones I would recommend for DPS minded Death Knights.

Rotations have moved more into a priority schema than the old fixed timing of abilities previous to patch 4.0.1.

Single Target Priority Rotation:

*This is done in Unholy Presence

1. Get your Diseases up, and keep them up
2. Activate Dark Transformation
3. Scourge Strike if both Unholy and/or Death Runes are up
4. Festering Strike if both pairs of Blood and Frost runes are up
5. Death Coil on Sudden Doom proc
6. Scourge Strike > Festering Strike > Death Coil > Horn of Winter

AoE Priority Rotation (3 or more mobs):

*This is done in Frost Presence

1. Get your Diseases up and spread them with Pestilence
2. Activate Dark Transformation
3. Death and Decay
4. Scourge Strike if both Unholy and/or Death Runes are up
5. Blood Boil + Icy Touch if both pairs of Blood and Frost are up
6. Death Coil on Sudden Doom proc
7. Scourge Strike >Blood Boil + Icy Touch > Death Coil > Horn of Winter

Stat Priority

1. Hit until cap
2. Strength
3. Haste
4. Crit
5. Mastery
6. Expertise until cap
7. Agility

Frost

There are 2 talent builds for Frost

Dual Wield 3/31/2 and 2H Frost Build

For both of these the Prime glyphs are set, there really is no solid choice for Major glyphs so pick what you want, for minor glyphs the recommended ones are in the above linked builds, similar to unholy.  Switch out Glyph of Obliterate for Glyph of Icy Touch for improved AoE.

Single Target Rotation:

*Dual Wield is performed in Frost Presence, 2H is performed in Unholy Presence

1. Diseases up (Frost Fever applied via Howling Blast)
2. Obliterate (if both Frost/Unholy pairs and/or both Death Runes are up, or if Killing Machine procs)
3. Blood Strike (if both Blood runes are up)
4. Frost Strike
5. Rime
6. Obliterate > Blood Strike > Horn of Winter

AoE Rotation:

*Always performed in Frost Presence, both dual wield and 2H

1. Howling Blast (if both Frost runes and/or both Death Runes are up, or if Killing Machine procs)
2. Death and Decay
3. Plague Strike (if both Unholy runes are up)
4. Frost Strike
5. Howling Blast > Blood Strike > Death and Decay > Plague Strike > Horn of Winter

Stat Priority:

Dual Wield

1. Hit until cap
2. Expertise until cap
3. Strength
4. Mastery
5. Crit
6. Haste
7. Agility
8. Hit until spell cap

2H

1. Hit until cap
2. Expertise until cap
3. Mastery
4. Strength
5. Haste
6. Crit
7. Agility
8. Hit until spell cap

So there are the basics of the DPS builds, rotations and stat priorities for the DPS builds.

Tanking

With 4.0.1 there is only 1 viable tank tree for Death Knights and that resides in the Blood tree.  Currently there is a debate about just how good bloodworms are for self healing, though they on the PTR they have shown to provide some substantial healing in just 5 mans.  Also there are questions out there on if Virulence should be taken in a tank build.  For now I will focus on a build without virulence.  Please keep in mind there is a lot of theory crafting currently on-going with blood tanking with 4.0.1 and what I am outlining below is simply a guideline and most likely will change.

Blood Tanking Build: 33/0/3

Currently the tanking aspect is very largely undefined.  However in an effort to provide some guidance.  All tanking is now done in Blood Presence.

Single Target Rotation

1. Get your diseases up
2. Rune Strike
3. Death Strike
4. If Scarlet Fever is not up – Plague Strike to get Crimson Scourge, then Blood Boil to apply Scarlet Fever
5. Heart Strike
6. Icy Touch if you have a spare Frost Rune

AoE Rotation

1. Death and Decay
2. Get your diseases up + Pestilence
3. If Scarlet Fever is not up – Plague Strike to get Crimson Scourge, then Blood Boil to apply Scarlet Fever
4. Death Strike
5. Blood Boil
6. Heart Strike
7. Rune Strike
8. Icy Touch if you have a spare Frost Rune

Stat Priority

Once again this is not well defined yet for tanks but with the removal of defense the following are some guidelines:

1. Stamina
2. Hit until cap
3. Avoidance stats (Dodge + Parry)
4. Strength
5. Mastery
6. Expertise

So many times I run across healers who are not confident in their abilities and they under perform, but those who are sure of themselves tend to heal better, that’s something I have been exploring and researching as of late.  What truly makes a great healer, is it skill, gear, or something else entirely?

This will be even more true in Cataclysm when cleansing will eat your mana if you do it at the wrong time, and heals are going to cost a lot more.  Which means skill will play a part in this, but having the confidence to do the right thing will make a healer a better player, and the gear will come in time.

For me I have an alt Paladin.  I play him on occasion, he is not well geared, he has some ilvl 232 gear, some ilvl 213 stuff, nothing spectacular, but I have successfully healed ICC25 and ToC25 runs.  Is it because I have the gear?  Clearly not.  Is it my skill?  Well if you call reading elitist jerks on healing, maybe.  But I think its when I go into an instance, I can size up the raid, know who I need to watch, and am confident I can pull out all the stops and keep people alive.

Having that confidence has gotten me invites to raids and groups that technically I have no place being if you listen to the Gear Score faithful, mind you I hate gear score and feel it has partially ruined WoW, I even wrote a little something on Gear Score a while back.  Back to the topic at hand, one doesn’t gain confidence over night, so how does one get it?  Well there are multiple ways to help build up your confidence with healing:

• Run your first heroics with only friends / guildies – they will support you and won’t sit there calling you a noob like a random PUG would
• Run the weekly raids, most of them are lower level raids now and many folks outgear them, so its a good way to get your feet wet and put yourself to the test
• Push yourself, run something that you haven’t before and step up and say who you are healing and what you will be doing, that command puts your abilities in your own hands
• Run battlegrounds and try to keep everyone alive, try to be the top healer in the battlground

I am sure there are many other ways you could gain confidence, having a great support network, a healing guru mentoring you, but in the end you need to rely on yourself and your abilities, because you are, as the healer, the last line of defense against a wipe.

Unholy death knights are largely misunderstood, their pet equates to as much as 15% of their damage,  unholy tanks don’t even use a ghoul.  Their single target DPS is second to Blood, the tanking threat generated by an unholy DK is mediocre at best.  So why would anyone want to spec into one as either DPS or Tanking?

DPS

Blood DKs have a superior single target DPS to Unholy its true, so to maximize your own dps, why would you even want to spec into Unholy, or as a raid leader bring an Unholy DK?

Why spec Unholy when you could go Blood for superior sustained single target dps, superior single target burst, Hysteria, Abomination’s Might, and simpler gearing options?

First off survivability, unholy DK’s get bone shield, so beyond a brief damage boost to all attacks while its up, you also take 20% less damage, healers love this.  This is by far the best option among all the trees for DK DPS, sure there are options in the others but they are more for tanks.

The next big plus is sustained AoE DPS.  The more mobs the higher the DPS for an unholy DK go.  Now this requires getting all diseases up, and passing them around via pestilence, proper use of blood boil and death and decay, but by using all of these properly on multiple mobs it’s hard for anyone, including casters to match the sustainable AoE DPS an unholy DK can put out.

Tanking

Unholy Tanking fills a solid void if you are missing a prot pally, as one of strengths is AoE tanking.  However where they may excel with that, they do lack in single target threat.  Frost and Blood seem to be a bit better in most other categories.  However Unholy does make up for in damage reduction with the use of bone shield and anti-magic zone.

Raid Utility as DPS or Tank

All these are well and good, but what is the one thing that makes you invaluable as either a tank or DPS that in a world of increased homogenization of characters makes you stand out.  2 words: Ebon Plague.

Ebon Plague does what no other character class or spec can do, it increases disease damage by 30% AND increases magic damage taken by 13% by whatever you put it on.  So what, Moonkin and Warlocks have the 13% increased magic damage also, yeah but neither can apply it as quickly or to as many enemies at one time without hurting their own dps in the process.  With an unholy DK, this debuff on mobs and bosses is pretty much automatic.  Shadow Priests love it since Devouring Plague is a big part of their overall damage, the disease portion of this spell helps them.

Unholy is worth the price of admission, you just need to understand its mechanics.

In the WotLK beta we saw the introduction of one of the most hyped changes to World of Warcraft, the introduction to a new character class, the Death Knight.  The first time in 4 years that a new class was being brought into the fold.  This brought a unique set of challenges to the blizzard developers I am sure, but now with each patch we see more and more changes to not only damage and mitigation but how the class even functions.

For example, in the beginning we saw Unholy Blight for the Unholy Death Knights not only act as a damage over time, but also as an extra disease which aided in Scourge Strike and other strike mechanics which takes advantage of that.  This was a unique mechanic in having to be in close range to keep up the DOT and use strikes to take full advantage of it.  Then it moved to simply a damage over time, and now in the latest (yet to be released patch) it will make your death coil add a DOT to your target, thus now removing strikes completely out of the equation.

Also with the goal of making each tree viable for dps and tanking, has brought more flexibility to users but also more challenges in keeping them balanced but offering a different playing experience.  Frost is one of those trees which is being updated to be more for dual wield, which opens up a ton of new dynamics and changes to many of the spells and abilities and how they interact with the weapons since now they can’t necessarily be based off the weapon as you have 2 of them instead of 1 big 2 handed weapon.

Essentially we are seeing the developers trying to catch up on 4 years of iteration they had with the other classes, but at the same time how is this affecting the players who love playing their Death Knight as is?  Are they gaining less enjoyment from all the changes?  Is there a sense of frustration players are seeing with watching their class change drastically from patch to patch.  I personally feel like I am playing a new class every patch and drastically changing my play style.  I feel I can’t get comfortable with the Death Knight, because the moment I do the mechanics are drastically changed.

I personally play as an Unholy Death Knight in the role of DPS, with Unholy Death Knight Tanking as my off-spec role.  I have watched my DPS rise and fall, now to a point where Blood DK’s easily can out damage me against single targets, my tanking is limited due to many physical tanking talents not in the tree, and magic tanking effectiveness reduced due to us being made too powerful for hard mode encounters.

Though on the reverse, a guildmate who has always been blood spec, is loving the recent changes and has loved the increase in his DPS and feels more useful in progression encounters.

I realize that the Death Knight has a lot of catching up to do, but at the same point I feel like there are changes happening that don’t need to be made or that change the class so drastically people may feel alienated from the class until it reaches a more stable point.

I will stick with my Death Knight and will stick with the Unholy side of things for as long as I can, because I love the style of the ghoul and strikes utilzing the different DOT mechanics, but I would be lying if I was not concerned with all the changes and it makes me want to play a class with a bit more stability every now and then.  I just wish I didn’t have to relearn my class and role every patch.