How to DPS as a Death Knight While you'll find a number of "cookie-cutter" or standard rotations here in this thread for

each spec, it's important to keep in mind that these rotations are t heoretical-- they're what most people find to be the best for a fight under idea l conditions (i.e., Patchwerk-type dps tests). The key to maximizing your dps as a Death Knight is understanding what contributes most significantly to your dps , and what priorities you should follow when your circumstances deviate from the ideal. Whether it's a mobile encounter, or you miss an attack, or you need to r efresh Horn of Winter, or your timing just gets off over the duration of a fight -- it will happen. Here's a suggested priority list for single target dps: [1] Don't die. [2] Keep your diseases (Blood Plague, Frost Fever) up 100% of the time. Thes e boost your primary damage attacks significantly, and add a non-trivial amount to your dps themselves. Use a mod to track their remaining time (I use Elkano's Buff Bars, but there are lots of mods that can accomplish the same thing). [3] Use your highest damage-per-rune attack as much as possible, whenever it is available. Blood: Heart Strike, Frost 2h: Obliterate, Unholy: Scourge Strike . [4] Spend your runic power before it hits the maximum. There's a common misc onception that runic power is a secondary resource to runes. Your core RP abilit ies (Death Coil, Frost Strike, Unholy Blight) all do significant amounts of dama ge, and it's just as worthwhile to use an available global cooldown on one of th ese abilities as on a rune ability. Managing these can be tricky, especially in Blood spec when you have Sudden Doom procs to contend with also. Use the rune la tency coding to your advantage-- there's an extra GCD in there after a rune beco mes available (see: Rune Mechanics). When in doubt: as long as you are still not violating any of the previous three rules, dumping runic power will maximize yo ur dps. [5] Use your spec's secondary strikes, talented appropriately, to convert of f-spec runes into Death Runes. (Blood: Obliterate, Frost and Unholy: Blood Strik e). This is in support of rule #3. [6] Use your dps cooldowns appropriately to maximize their uptime. Know your rotations and how long the fight is, and judge accordingly. Note that cooldown use is an exception to rule #4: You'll want maximum runic power before using Gar goyle or Dancing Rune Weapon, for example. [7] Do anything necessary to increase your raid's dps. While seeing big numb ers fly by is fun, we have some abilities that may benefit the raid's overall da mage more than a selfish buff to ourselves. Remember, the boss falling down is t he ultimate goal. Use your discretion as to who in your raid might benefit most from Hysteria, a pure physical damage boost. Similarly, see the explanation of h ow Unholy Aura can benefit the raid significantly. If you're in charge of provid ing Abomination's Might (AP raid buff) or Imp. Icy Talons (haste raid buff), mak e sure they stay up. [top] Presences Presences are the Death Knight equivalent to a Warrior's Stances. There are thre e Presences total. Blood Presence: Commonly accepted as the Presence you will be DPSing in. Blood Presence just flat increases the damage from all your abilities by 15% whilst providing you with selfhealing. Frost Presence: Your tanking Presence. You can swap to this when you pull aggro or when you need to offtank, but ma ke sure to not try and DPS in this Presence as the Threat modifier is quite big. Unholy Presence: This Presence is commonly accepted as not being so useful,

for anything but PvP. Due to the fact this Presence grants Haste rather than the Damage % increase that Blood Presence grants it performs significantly worse. Haste is one of the worst Stats for a Death Knight. Unholy Presence also lowers your GCD by 0.5 seconds, which is not all that b ad but in a lot of specs you will not be bound by GCDs, but by Rune Regeneration time so again it loses some of it usefulness. On a side note, there are several talents that will look like they increase the effect of each specific Presence at first glance (and while that was true in the early stages of beta) but they are not linked to any Presence and are just like a Paladin's aura. Said Talents are Blood Aura, Frost Aura and Unholy Aura [top] Itemizing as a Death Knight Itemizing as a Death Knight is actually not that simple. There are a lot of vari ables which will increase or decrease the usefulness for a stat. One of the majo r variables being talent choices. We are a melee class, so like with every melee class you will have to assign sta t weights to each stat and make gear choices that way. As with every melee, the biggest DPS increasing upgrades are always weapons. [top] Stats choices While Death Knight theory crafting is still in its infancy, early modeling and t esting has produced normalized values for comparing dps gear. While many argue t hat these numbers are still premature, they do show many important trends in eac h of the talent trees These numbers are currently based on Naxx 25 man DPS gear. Base stats+Talents +Raid buffs Stat (rating) 1 AP 1.0000 1STR 2.4847 1HIT 2.4748 1APR 0.5447 1EXP 1.3914 1CRT 1.1240 1HASTE 0.6214 1DPS (wpn) Spec 17/0/54 DPS TOTAL Unholy 1.0000 2.5570 2.6609 1.0456 1.7023 1.1453 0.5640 7.5670 51/13/7 3114.42 Blood Frost 1.0000 2.3650 2.4046 0.7628 1.2453 1.1894 0.4978 8.9665 10.3610 17/54/0 3278.62 3152.79

Keep in mind this is vulnerable to change as we are still building up the theory craft around gearing a Death Knight. Use this as a guideline, rather than all-to -be-guide. [top] Attack Power and Strength Like Warriors we gain 2 AP per every point of Strength. In addition to the tradi tional 10% Blessing of Kings multiplier, Death Knights receive a number of other talented multipliers. Every one of our abilities have a modifier for attack power, increasing their da mage with more Attack Power, including Icy Touch and Howling Blast. Attack Power increases damage done by the Gargoyle and Dancing Rune Weapon (more on that in their respective sections).

Attack Power has an increased value for Unholy specs due to Impurity While Strength/AP certainly are important, I would suggest you browse past the o ther values before stacking it alone. [top] Attack Power Coefficients You can calculate how much damage your spells will be doing with a very simple e quation: B + (C * AP) = D With B being the base damage of the spell, C the attack power coefficient of the spell and AP being your attack power. D is the damage you will be doing. Example: Death Coil damage with 2000 AP: 443 + (2000*0.15) = 743 Attack Power Coefficients table: Ability Coefficient Blood Boil 0.04 Blood Plague 0.055 Bloodworms 0.006 Corpse Explosion 0.0475 Death and Decay 0.0475 Death Coil 0.15 Frost Fever 0.055 Howling Blast 0.1 Summon Gargoyle 0.4 Icy Touch 0.1 Pestilence 0.04 Strangulate 0.06 Unholy Blight 0.013 A few notes: Bloodworms' base damage at level 80 appears to be 50 average (2.0 attack spe ed) before armor mitigation, assuming the formula is D = base + C * AP where C i s the AP coefficient. Currently Corpse Explosion is bugged and the AP coefficient itself scales wi th Runic Power. On an empty RP bar the ability deals the base damage (220), and at 100 RP you get extra damage equal to 0.0475 * AP. Gargoyle Strike is the Gargoyle's only ability, which it spams continuously until it gets killed or the summon duration ends. The spell's base damage at lev el 80 appears to be 150, assuming the formula is D = B + (C * AP) where C is the AP coefficient. Pet's are affected by the Orc Racial, so you can add 5% to the pet coefficie nts if you're an Orc. F.ex Gargoyle: 0.4 + \frac {0.4*10}{100} = 0.42 [top] Hit Rating Despite the importance of Strength as a stat, hit rating (before the special cap ) can actually be a more important stat. There are a number of reasons for the i mportance of Hit Rating. First off a 1% increase in Hit Rating translates to a > 1% increase in dps (going from 90%-91% is 1.11% increase in damage). With the po

ssible exception of disease ticks, hit rating effects every dps attack a Death K night employs. While Hit rating contribution is not uniform across attacks, it d oes consistently provide at the > 1% rate. Because some Death Knight abilities a re still on a two roll system, the value of hit also increases the value of crit rating for abilities like Death Coil. Death Knights are based around a four resource system: Runes, Runic Power, Disea ses, and Time. Each of these resources changes differently based on a miss. A mi ss of a Rune does not cost that Rune (it regenerates in less than the minimum po ssible GCD). A miss of a Runic Power does cost that RP however. A miss of a Dise ase can not only cost that disease, but cost an additional amount as diseases ar e required, most of the time, for effective dps. Finally, a loss of the time to cast the spell, as well as additional time recasting. Because rotations are ofte n times dense and diseases can run out, this loss of time can have a heavy impac t on the Death Knight. Hit needed for special attack hit cap at level 80: 8% (special attack base misschance) needed or: 9 * 32.79 = 262.32 \text {rating} As for Spell to check if ell hit will [i]17% (base or: Hit, only Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Death Coil use Spell Hit cap they will miss or not. If you pick up Virulence from Unholy, the sp be attained by having 9% hit (assuming you have Misery) miss chance) - 3% (Misery) - 3% (Virulence) = 11% needed from gear

11 * 26.23 = 288.53 \text {rating} Virulence is worth 78.69 Hit. So you need 367.22 Hit rating to be capped with sp ells if you are not specced for Virulence. It's another 78.69 Hit if you are mis sing Misery. If you're guaranteed a Draenei in your group, you can gear/gem for 1% (32.79 Rat ing for melee, 26.23 Rating for Spells) less hit. [top] Expertise Rating Unlike Hit Rating, Expertise effects a smaller range of attacks. Because a large portion of Death Knight damage comes in the form of Diseases and RP dumps which cannot be dodged (Frost Strike, Death Coil, Unholy Blight), its value is dimini shed. While hitting the Expertise cap may not always be desirable, it is still one of the higher valued stats, and should not be avoided. Additionally, Blood spec in particular, due to its heavy reliance on physical based attacks, can benefit ver y well from this stat. Finally, Death Knights as tanks have a much higher benefi t from Expertise than those in traditional roles, so these values should not be used to make tanking threat decisions. Keep in mind, that each spec has innate expertise (11/5/5 B/F/U) as well as raci al bonuses (5/5/3 O/D/H). 1 Expertise Skill reduces the chance your attacks will be dodged/parried by 0.25% 32.79 Rating is equal to 1% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried. 8.20 Rating is equal to 0.25% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parrie d and thus is equal to 1 Expertise Skill.

Expertise needed to hit Dodge cap: Spec Blood Frost Unholy % 3.75 5.25 5.25 Rating 122.96 172.15 172.15 Skill 15 21 21

[top] Crit Rating Another traditional dps stat, Crit has less baring on Death Knights than many ot her classes. No core mechanics require Crit to drive them (though Blood does req uire a some Crit, and Frost does benefit the most). Additionally, the amount fou nd on gear is more than sufficient where necessary. Crit Rating affects both our melee and spell crits. You need 45.91 Crit Rating t o gain 1% melee and spell crit. All our abilities except Icy Touch, Howling Blas t and Death Coil use our melee crit chance. We are the only class that have a passive spell critical damage increase, under the form of Runic Focus granting us double damage on both melee and spell critic al hits. [top] Agility A Death Knight needs 62.5 Agility to Agility is strictly inferior to Crit does not grant us Spell Crit, while ou more Crit Chance than Agility for gain 1% Crit. Rating in nearly every situation as Agility Crit Rating does. Crit Rating also grants y the same item budget.

Agility also increases our armor by 2 armor per agility. As an interesting side effect from this, if specced for Bladed Armor Agility will indirectly increase y our Attack Power. Every point of Agility will increase your Attack Power by 1/18 or 18 Agility will increase your Attack Power by 1. [top] Armor Penetration Rating Armor Penetration Rating is a bit of an odd beast for us. It doesn't affect our damage from Diseases, Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Scourge St rike or Death Coil. This makes Armor Penetration have a reduced value for Unholy and Frost Specs. Blood however does have quite a lot of benefit from ArP Rating , due to the majority of it's damage being Physical. We need 15.39 Rating to ignore 1% armor on our target. [top] Haste Rating Haste Rating will directly increase the contribution of white swings to your DPS - 1% Haste will generate 1% more auto attack DPS. Unlike many other melee based classes, Death Knights draw a much smaller portion of their dps from White damage. As a result, Haste is a much less desirable sta t. As you can also see, the value of Haste is effected by the spec. Abilities li ke Necrosis and Blood Caked Blade allow for Unholy specs to gain much better dam age per Haste Rating. Additionally, Killing machine works similarly. While Haste is never a particularly desirable stat for Death Knights, we must re member how it effects their GCD. Because of dense rotations additional haste rat ing can reduce the strain on a player and allow for a larger margin of error. Ho wever, stacking too much of it is also not recommended, due to its low value. We require 32.79 Rating for 1% Haste.

[top] Spell Power Don't get it. None of our spells/abilities/diseases are affected by Spell Power. None. Nada. Nothing. [top] Dual Wield vs Two-Handed Everyone has the image of Death Knights wielding big Two Handers. Every single D K NPC pre-WOTLK only used Two-Handers. However, Blizzard changed that stance and will allow Death Knights to Dual Wield. Dual Wielding can however, work really well. DW has the downside of having a lot more misses, but has an increased portion of white damage, making haste more va luable. It relies on hitting a lot (and fast) to generate a lot of Killing Machi ne procs. It also uses Howling Blast or Icy Touch as it's primary source of dama ge, as it's independent of weapon damage. The ghoul does a big portion of the DP S in these builds. Next patch (3.0.8) will remove the cooldown on Howling Blast, significantly boos ting the DPS of a Howling Blast DW build. Death knight PvE abilites and raid utility Edit Death knights have 6 runes: 2 blood, 2 frost, and 2 unholy. Each has its own 10-second cooldown modified by Haste. Death knights provide several buffs or debuffs to a raid: All death knights provide Horn of Winter, a straight buff to strength an d agility. All death knights will often use Frost Fever, causing frost damage every 3 seconds and reducing the target's melee and ranged attack speed by 20% for 21 seconds. Blood death knights give Abomination's Might, increasingly raidwide atta ck power by 10%. Unholy death knights provide Ebon Plaguebringer, increasing all magic da mage done to the affected targets by 13%. Frost death knights [DPS] often have Improved Icy Talons which increases the melee and ranged attack speed of all party and raid members within 100 yard s by 10%, and their own attack speed by an additional 5%. Death knight PvE guide Edit Blood spec is the death knight tanking spec, while Frost spec and Unholy spec ar e the DPS specs. Death knights are able to dual wield and use two-handed weapons, however, this i s only advised for the properly spec'ed Frost death knights. It is advised to pu t your higher DPS weapon in the main hand to maximize damage output when possibl e. Death knight skills scale off Attack Power, not Spell Power. It is advised that talent points and glyph space be invested in abilities that h elp the entire group, and abilities that increase the generation of Death Runes. Blood Presence should ONLY be used if you are the tank. Even if you are specced in blood tree, use Frost Presence or Unholy Presence when you are DPS. However, it is advised that you do NOT DPS in blood spec as your DPS will be very low and you may accidentally pull the tank's agrro.

Do not Death Grip or Death and Decay in an instance while DPSing unless you know what you are doing. Death Grip taunts enemies, which isn't usually a good i dea unless the alternative is a clothie taking the hits. Death and Decay causes high aggro on the caster. Tanking Edit Only Blood specced death knights in Blood Presence should be used for tanking. Blood Presence is essential for tanking, as it increases your threat generation. It is possible to dual wield while tanking. Only the Frost tree is designed for dual-wielding, however, and other specs will have massively reduced threat gener ation if they do so. Death Grip is and out from t to pull the lling casters great for pulling casters. Use it to pull the caster into your AoE areas where he may aggro a patrol, but be sure to use Line of Sigh rest of the casters, too. Strangulate is another great means of pu when up.

Death Grip is not always the best pulling method, however, against melee opponen ts. Death Grip will cause the melee foe to begin attacking immediately (without having to run to you), without the damage mitigation of Frost Fever. In harder i nstances this added damage can force a healer to heal sooner then they would lik e, possible before you have had a chance to build much aggro against the rest of the group that were still running towards you. In addition if the healer (or ot hers) do get aggro you will have one of your taunts already on cooldown. Icy Tou ch is a convenient ranged alternative for pulling. Stats Edit A death knight's hit cap is 8%. With two-handed weapons at level 80, this is a h it rating of 262.[1] For Death Coil, Icy Touch and Howling Blast, the cap is 17% hit or 445.91 hit rating. This can be decreased with Virulence (a first-tier Un holy talent) by 3% or 78.69 hit rating, and again by Misery (from a Shadow Pries t) or Improved Faerie Fire (from a Balance Druid) by an additional 3%. Death kni ghts choosing to dual wield have an additional penalty of 19% (16% with talent) to hit with both weapons, but this only affects auto-attack damage. Special atta cks such as Blood Strike have the normal 8% cap. Raising hit over 8% is expensiv e, so ignoring the 19% miss and investing in other stats is the correct strategy . Block is useless to death knights as they lack the ability to use shields. Strength is a death knight's priority stat for DPS, and the key threat stat for tanking, as it increases attack power and parry rating. 4 STR = 1 parry rating. Although their item budget cost is the same, one point of strength is preferable to two points of attack power because several buffs and talents increase streng th directly by a percentage. Stamina provides 15 additional health per point, and is thus the key stat for ta nking. Blood Presence and several talents and buffs further increase stamina. Rune-based attacks generate Runic power. Attacks which require one rune generate 10 Runic power. Attacks which require two or three generate 15. Chill of the Gr ave and Dirge make specific attacks generate additional runic power. Dodge and Parry are important for tanking. Because of Diminishing returns and th e "free" Strength to Parry conversion, no death knight should ever gem for parry .

Agility boosts melee critical strike chance, and dodge chance. It is not an effi cient way of achieving any of these things, but not useless either. Intellect, spirit, spellpower, and spell penetration are absolutely worthless.