So, I heard you like Death Knights…

For some reason unbeknownst to me, I get a lot of questions about Death Knights. What’s a good talent build? What’s with the skeletal mount? How bad does silence and kiting work on them? The list goes on. So I figured, “Hey. I have a website that gets a few people coming once in a month or so, let me post answers here!”

Now right now I give disclaimer, I am in no way the expert on Death Knights. Feel free to bust my ass apart in the comments as to how terribly wrong I am.

Talent Builds
I can’t give many examples because I honestly haven’t played a DK seriously since Beta. I hear 2H Blood and Unholy hybrids are all the rage. Personally, I love dual wielding. It’s unique and different and with the proper level of itemization just hands down wins in the DPS race for PVE. Also having 2 runeforge enchants is downright sexy.

Here’s the DW talent build one of my good friends uses and looking at it from an analytical standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfV0VZG0ethxdRhoZfM0hxco

Subversion and Butchery are pretty much duh talents that pretty much any DK would want to pickup. Bladed armor falls into that category as well, and Dark Conviction is pretty much a +5% to crit across the board since it encompasses all spells, melee swings, and special attacks. Crit is the emphasis on this spec, as well as expertise and hit (more expertise obviously to avoid parry and dodge after you reach the hit cap).

Frost is the majority of this build because you’re pushing the improved DW talent as well as Icy Talons. In Patch 3.0.8 Howling Blast is supposed to have it’s cooldown removed and with proper diseases up you’re looking at some very insane potential burst damage.

The remaining Unholy talents are there to augment your melee attacks as much as possible granting extra damage per hit with Necrosis and Blood Caked Blade and more raw damage through the bonus strength.

Rotations
This seems pretty standard depending on your fight, allow me to explain. On a single target you’re pretty much just going to start off with an Icy Touch (IT) then follow up with the standard Plague Strike (PS) and then drop 2 Blood Strikes (BS). At this point you can go on with a Death Strike or Obliterate (if you need heals or not). Working in Deathchill before the Obliterate can make for some very very nasty crit combos and with the longevity of your diseases you can probably work another Oblit/Howling hit in before they fade and you have to reapply.

If there’s more than 1 target you want to pretty much do the same thing only instead of using blood strikes you can slap on Pestilence instead to spread the frost fever and that will maximize your Howling Blast damage to the pack. Most of this is pretty common sense stuff but I still have to explain this sometims so might as well just cover bases.

Death Knight Flying Mount!
This isn’t nearly as complex as most people are thinking. Blizzard has introduced a new type of mount mechanic. It’s the case with the Blizzcon Mount (I love mine thank you very much) and the Zebra Mount for the RAF program. Same for the DK flying mount. You can buy the Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade for 1000g in the Ebon Hold over the EPL.

Only DKs can access this are and the mount itself. If you have the normal flying training then the mount will have that speed when used. Once you buy the epic flight training the mount will suddenly scale with the new max speed. As far as I know there is no way to revert and fly at a slow speed with that mount. That’s all there is to it.

Beating a Death Knight
A lot of folks are claiming the class to be overpowered, I won’t go that far but they do have some strengths that counter many classes. A good hunter and paladin can make short work of them. Basically you just have to become familiar with their reactive and their active attacks that can lock you down.

Expect a DK to silence you with strangulate, and interrupt your spells in melee with mind freeze. So watch out for your range when casting and understand you might have to already have some defensive spells in place to mitigate what you can during the time you spend silenced. Also know that most of the time, they’re going to open up with death grip. That’s the spell that yanks you into melee range. It has a long enough cooldown that a hunter can disengage AFTER and get back to safety. If you’re in melee range and not wearing plate you’re going to take more damage than you’re ready for, trinket out or blink, etc out of chains of ice when they cast it.

Stun locking a DK is tricky as well since icebound fortitude makes the DK immune to stuns but it does not break stuns. You just want to make sure that you count when they use this because they can easily use the trinket early, then tap IBF and become immune to anything else you will try to throw at them.

Lastly when they kick on Anti Magic Shell(AMS, the green glowing egg around them) expect them to be immune to much of your attacks. All the damage they absorb by the way translates to runic power for them so this has the potential of being very nasty for you if you’re dumping loads of damage when they have that shield up. Surrounds the Death Knight in an Anti-Magic Shell, absorbing 75% of the damage dealt by harmful spells and preventing application of harmful magical effects.  Damage absorbed by Anti-Magic Shell energizes the Death Knight with additional runic power.  Lasts 5 sec. That means if you’re applying new dots or what have you while he’s shielded you’re wasting mana.

That about sums it up really, you can choose to ignore the ghoul (if they’re unholy and have it out) or if you’re a paladin like me just fear it away, same for priests with shackle. You’d be surprised how much extra breathing room that gives you. Getting rid of the ghould as well means they cannot sacrifice it for HP if the fight goes your way.

So there you have it folks, the most popular questions I have been asked about Death Knights for Death Knights and those trying to kill Death Knights.