In this article, we list your Blood Death Knight (WoW MoP 5.3) core abilities and how they should be used together (rotation). We also explain when to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that playing a Blood Death Knight will face you with.

The other articles of our Blood Death Knight guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Reniat, the author of the Blood Death Knight guides on the Official Forums and MMO-Champion.

1. Single Target Rotation↑top

Generally speaking, your goal during each fight is to use your resources (runes and runic power) to generate threat and to stay alive. This is the recommended way to use your abilities:

1. Apply and maintain your diseases on the target
   • Initially, apply them with Outbreak.
   • After that, always refresh them with Blood Boil (thanks to Scarlet Fever). This will also keep up the Weakened Blows debuff.
   • In case your diseases fall off and Outbreak is on cooldown, re-apply them using Unholy Blight (if you have taken this talent), or with Icy Touch and Plague Strike otherwise.
2. Use your Frost, Unholy, and Death runes on Death Strike.
3. Use your Blood runes on Heart Strike. Never use Heart Strike if you have no Blood runes, as this will cause Heart Strike to consume a Death rune, which should be saved for Death Strike.
4. Use your runic power on Rune Strike to generate threat and dump runic power.
5. Use Horn of Winter when nothing else is available, in order to generate runic power.
6. Use your Crimson Scourge procs (free Blood Boil or Death and Decay) as follows.
   1. Use Death and Decay if available and if the target will remain in the area of Death and Decay for the whole duration.
   2. If Death and Decay is on cooldown or the target is likely to move, use Blood Boil.

If you have chosen the Blood Tap talent as part of your tier 5 talent choice, you should read this section to see how to maximise the benefit of this talent.

As you can see, this rotation does not take into account the use of your many survival abilities. You will often find that you must mix these abilities with the above rotation in order to stay alive. Please refer to the sections below in order to better understand how to use all of your survival abilities.

2. Multiple Target Rotation↑top

When tanking 2 or 3 enemies, your go-to ability will be Heart Strike. Against 4 or more enemies, you will want to switch to Blood Boil. Keep in mind that Blood Boil scales much better with your gear and stats than Heart Strike, so you should check the damage of these abilities to see which one is best to use in your particular case.

Additionally, you will want to use Death and Decay on cooldown, placing it under the targets you are tanking.

You will, of course, still use Death Strike on any enemy, for the self-heal and Mastery: Blood Shield benefits that it provides. You will dump your runic power with Rune Strike.

As in the case of the single target rotation, Crimson Scourge procs should be used firstly on Death and Decay, if available, and after that on Blood Boil.

3. Taunting↑top

Dark Command is your main taunting ability. It only works on a single target and has an 8-second cooldown.

Death Grip grabs your target and moves it to your location. It also has the effect of taunting the target and interrupting spellcasting. The movement effect does not work against most raid bosses.

4. Presence↑top

You should always be in Blood Presence. There is no exception to this.

5. Survival Cooldowns↑top

As a tank, you have many survival cooldowns that you need to often insert into your rotation to survive the various abilities that your enemies will throw at you. There are 3 kinds of cooldowns: proactive cooldowns (to protect yourself before high damage spikes occur), reactive cooldowns (to heal yourself after taking damage), and cooldowns that are both proactive or reactive (meaning that you can use them however you want).

Below, we present all the cooldowns at your disposal, with a short explanation of what they do. More information about each cooldown can be found in subsequent sections.

Proactive Cooldowns
Anti-Magic Shell	Reduces all magic damage taken by 75% (up to a maximum of 50% of your maximum health) Prevents most magic debuffs from being applied on you
Icebound Fortitude	Grants you a 50% damage taken reduction
Dancing Rune Weapon	Grants +20% chance to parry (also increases threat generation with Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon)
Army of the Dead	While this ability is being channeled (4 seconds), all damage taken is reduced by the sum of your dodge and parry chances (for example, if you have a 15% chance to dodge and a 16% chance to parry, all damage taken will be reduced by 31%) The ghouls created by this spell will attempt to taunt enemies (with the exception of raid bosses)
Bone Shield	Reduces all damage taken by 20% Remains active until you receive 6 damaging attacks.
Reactive cooldowns
Rune Tap	Converts a Blood rune into 10% of your health (remember that the 30-second cooldown of Rune Tap is sometimes reset by Will of the Necropolis when your health drops below 30%)
Mixed (Proactive or Reactive) Cooldowns
Death Strike	Heals you for 20% of the damage you have sustained in the previous 5 seconds (a minimum of 7% of your maximum health) Protects you with a damage absorption shield (thanks to Mastery: Blood Shield)
Vampiric Blood	Grants you 15% additional health Increases the healing you receive With Glyph of Vampiric Blood, you gain no health but the healing you receive is increased by an additional 15%
Empower Rune Weapon	Instantly regenerates all runes and grants 25 Runic Power (very useful for casting Death Strike or Blood Tap)

6. Optional Read: Mastering Your Blood Death Knight↑top

While the information we gave in the previous sections will yield very good results, there are many things you should be aware of, in order to play your Blood Death Knight to its full potential. In particular, we explain in great detail how to properly use your various survival cooldowns.

6.1. Vengeance

Vengeance is a passive ability which you receive for choosing the Blood specialisation. Essentially, it increases your attack power for 2% of the unmitigated damage you receive. It takes the form of a 20-second buff, which you should have no problem maintaining 100% uptime on.

6.2. Soul Reaper

Soul Reaper is a damaging, execute-like ability that should be used when the target is below 35% health.

6.3. Dark Simulacrum

Dark Simulacrum is a very special ability. It places a debuff on the target, which causes you to mimic their next spell cast that costs mana to use. This grants you the ability (it will replace Dark Simulacrum on your bars) for a short amount of time. Using this mimicked ability can be very beneficial (even exploitative) on some encounters.

Note that Dark Simulacrum does not work, most times, in PvE.

6.4. Generalities On Survival Cooldown Usage

Blood Death Knights take damage in a far more unpredictable manner, compared to the other tanking classes. This is due to the fact that the other tanking classes have passive abilities (block chance, in the case of Paladins and Warriors) that handle the mitigation of damage automatically.

Blood Death Knights, however, only have their dodge and parry chances. This causes them to take fully unmitigated attacks far more often. To compensate for this, Death Knights have, as we have seen above, a very large number of survival cooldowns. In order to function properly during raids, Death Knight tanks will have to make extensive use of these cooldowns. Doing so well can have tremendously good results, while doing so poorly can make it seem like other tanks are far easier to heal.

There is no set order in which you should use your abilities. Rather, you should use some cooldowns (proactive ones) in anticipation for an event in the encounter, in order to be better prepared for when it occurs. Other cooldowns (reactive ones) should be used to better recover from an unfavourable situation. Finally, there are a number of cooldowns that can be used both reactively and proactively, depending on the situation.

In the following sections, we go through all your survival cooldowns and explain how and when to use them.

6.5. Detailed Cooldown Usage

6.5.1. Anti-Magic Shell

Anti-Magic Shell should be used whenever there is magic damage to mitigate (such as breath attacks, for example). The mitigation that it offers is very high. It has a short duration (5 seconds) so you will need to be quite accurate in timing it.

It also has the benefit of preventing the application of magical debuffs on you while it is active, and it can be used for this purpose, as well, depending on the encounter mechanics.

6.5.2. Icebound Fortitude

Icebound Fortitude is only truly useful if it is used before you take a high amount of damage. It reduces all damage you take by 50% for 12 seconds, and it should always be used when you anticipate that you will take a lot of damage or that your healers will be unable to heal you.

6.5.3. Dancing Rune Weapon

Dancing Rune Weapon should be used before you take a high amount of physical attacks. It grants you 20% chance to parry for 12 seconds. It is, therefore, excellent against melee attacks and thus physical damage. It has a cost of 60 runic power, so using it will require a bit of planning and runic power pooling.

6.5.4. Army of the Dead

Army of the Dead has two survival benefits. As we will see, it is more potent when you are trying to reduce magic damage, but it works well against Physical damage as well.

The first benefit is the damage reduction that it provides. While the spell is being channeled, your damage taken is reduced by the sum of your dodge and parry chances. As such, this cooldown provides a sizable damage reduction for a short amount of time. Note, however, that while you are channeling, you cannot dodge or parry, so you will be hit by every attack made against you, which works to counter the damage reduction that you gain, to some extent. So, when used against Physical damage, it is best to use it when unavoidable abilities are cast at you, but at any rate, it remains beneficial to use against practically anything.

The second benefit is that the ghouls will taunt any mobs that they can, with the exception of raid bosses. This allows you some time to breathe and recover, while the ghouls are dying. Note that this effect can cause problems if the adds require some specific placement or handling, though.

6.5.5. Vampiric Blood

Vampiric Blood is one of your most powerful cooldowns. If unglyphed, it will grant you 15% extra health for 10 seconds, and increase your healing received (from all sources, including self-heals) by 25%. It can be used both reactively and in ancitipation.

For most encounters, we recommend that you use the Glyph of Vampiric Blood. This will cause the ability to not grant you any health, but increase all healing received by 40%. This makes it an amazingly potent cooldown for when you expect to require a lot of healing or that you will be taking a lot of damage. It can also be used reactively, if you couple it with some of your self-heals to raise your health up in a very short amount of time.

6.5.6. Empower Rune Weapon

Empower Rune Weapon does not provide any survival effects on its own. It instantly activates all of your runes and grants you 25 runic power. It is very useful for providing you with extra resources when you need to use your survival abilities that have rune or runic power costs.

Its cooldown is quite long, so make sure to use it wisely.

6.5.7. Bone Shield

Bone Shield offers you 20% damage reduction for however long the buff persists on you. The buff has 6 charges and each time you receive a damaging attack, a charge is lost. Damaging attacks cover both physical attacks as well as magic attacks. Damage from DoTs and ground based AoE abilities consumes a charge, although this is not always the case and it seems to depend from encounter to encounter.

Because this spell has a 1 minute cooldown and 5 minute duration (unless all charges are spent before that time), it is ideal to cast it on yourself before combat, so that it has time to cool down. This way, you can chain the effect twice as soon as you engage the boss.

6.5.8. Rune Tap

Rune Tap is on a 30-second cooldown and it heals you for 10% of your maximum health. It costs 1 Blood rune to cast. Basically, you want to use this ability more or less on cooldown, as long as it does not overheal you. In case you know for certain that a big amount of damage is incoming, you should save it for this time.

Also, you should not try to save this ability specifically for when you drop to a low health percentage. This is because each time you drop below 30% health (not more often than once every 45 seconds, however), Will of the Necropolis will reset the cooldown of Rune Tap and make it free of cost. Additionally, each time Will of the Necropolis procs, you will gain a 25% damage reduction for 8 seconds.

If you are in the process of taking a lot of damage, you should try to use Rune Tap normally, before you drop below 30% health, so that you can then use it again.

Note that the Tier 15 Set 2-piece Bonus provides a 10-second reduction to the cooldown of Rune Tap, and makes it free of cost.

6.5.9. Tier 1 Talents

Unholy Blight is an excellent way to apply diseases to newly-spawned adds. You can simply turn it on and run through/into the adds. Alternatively, you can turn it on and apply diseases to a newly spawned single target.

Roiling Blood should be used to simply spread your diseases to any new targets that have entered the fight. Just use Blood Boil whenever you want to spread the disease, but try to only do so when you have Crimson Scourge procs in order to avoid spending runes.

Plague Leech should be used just as your diseases are about to expire, each time that you can refresh them right away with Outbreak. The reason for this is simple. You can keep your diseases running indefinitely, by refreshing them with Blood Boil (thanks to the Scarlet Fever passive ability). In this case, consuming your diseases with Plague Leech is detrimental, as you will have to spend runes and global cooldowns re-applying them with Icy Touch and Plague Strike. However, if Outbreak is available, you can immediately re-apply the diseases with a single global cooldown and no cost. This, therefore, is the ideal time to consume them with Plague Leech.

6.5.10. Tier 2 Talents

Lichborne should be used whenever you are low on health, or you just want to supplement the healing that your healers are doing. Simply cast Lichborne and then spam Death Coil on yourself. You will find this macro useful.

Anti-Magic Zone is a raid cooldown, and you should consult with your raid leader and the healers in order to determine the best time to use it.

Purgatory will act passively, saving your life. You should try to use as many self-healing abilities as you can, as soon as Purgatory procs, so that you can get rid of the healing absorption effect that it applies before it wears off, as this causes you to die. Remember that you can (at least in theory) use Purgatory to bypass otherwise deadly encounter mechanics.

6.5.11. Tier 4 Talents

Death Pact heals you for 50% of your maximum health, on a 2 minute cooldown. This is a very powerful heal, so make sure that it does not end up overhealing you.

Death Pact requires that you have an active ghoul to sacrifice, either from Raise Dead or from Army of the Dead. Undead minions controlled through Control Undead do not count.

We recommend this macro to summon a ghoul and use Death Pact at the same time.

Death Siphon and Conversion are currently so undesirable for a Blood Death Knight, that we do not believe you should ever take them.

6.5.12. Tier 5 Talents

If you have chosen Blood Tap, you should use it with the following guidelines in mind.

• Never cap your Blood Charges. You can have a maximum of 12 charges, so you should make sure not to cap your charges and waste additional ones (unless you really need to have 12 charges stored up for a very damaging burst of damage that is coming up).
• Store up Blood Charges in preparation for damage spikes against which you wish to use multiple Death Strikes.
• Remember that you need 5 Blood Charges to use Blood Tap once (which will grant you one Death rune), and that you need 2 Death runes to use a Death Strike.
• Blood Tap only refreshes fully depleted runes. So, in order to get two Death runes, you will have to first use up your current Death runes.

Even though there are suggestions of using a macro to automatically cast Blood Tap (it is off the global cooldown), such as macroing Blood Tap together with Rune Strike, we do not advise using these, as they take away all the control that makes Blood Tap so great.

There is one macro, however, that is very useful for Blood Tap, and we talk about it on the macros page.

So, by just using Blood Tap based on the above suggestions, you will get a pretty solid benefit from it. However, there is a more advanced way of using it, which will yield better results. Since this is directly tied to Death Strike usage, we explain it in the next section.

If you chose Runic Corruption, you do not have much to worry about, since its effect is passive.

Finally, if you chose Runic Empowerment, the best way to get as many Death Strikes as possible is to always keep a Blood rune active at all times, so that Runic Empowerment always refreshes a Frost or an Unholy rune.

6.6. Death Strike and Blood Shield

Death Strike is your most important self-healing ability. It is also part of your regular ability rotation during combat. In order to make the most out of Death Strike and of your Mastery ( Mastery: Blood Shield), you cannot simply use Death Strike whenever it is available.

There are three main things to keep in mind when using Death Strike.

• One way of using Death Strike is to use it after you have received one or more damaging attacks in a short space of time (5 seconds). This is because Death Strike's self-healing component is based on how much damage you have taken in the 5 seconds prior to using it. As such, the more damage you have taken just before using Death Strike, the bigger the self-heal and the resulting Blood Shield will be. Additionally, this ensures that the self-heal will not overheal you, as you have just taken damage.
• Another way of using Death Strike is to use it several times right before you receive a large amount of damage, since this will stack your Blood Shield up and cause you to take less damage.
• Finally, if you are not the main tank, and you are preparing to taunt the boss or to pick up a newly spawned add, you should try to stack as high a Blood Shield as you can (note that Blood Shield's value is limited to your maximum health) by using Death Strike repeatedly on the boss prior to taunting it.

For tracking the amount of damage you have taken in the last 5 seconds, and thus the potential efficiency of your Death Strike's self-heal and of your Blood Shield, we recommend the Blood Shield Tracker add-on.

Finally, regarding your Mastery, it is important to remember that the shields provided by Death Strike only protect against Physical damage.

6.6.1. Advanced Death Strike and Blood Tap Usage

As we mentioned above, there is a way to get more out of your Death Strike usage, if you have the Blood Tap talent. Note that this is an advanced (and rather cumbersome) technique, and you need to have a very solid grasp on your gameplay to be able to apply it.

Let us first consider a few things.

• Whether you are using Death Strike to heal yourself after having taken damage, or using it to shield yourself before taking damage, you always want to be ready for using Death Strike at a moment's notice.
• You should never have two runes of one type active, because if you are doing this, then they are not recharging and you are wasting their cooldowns.
• You should never have a Blood rune active, unless you are saving it to use Blood Boil soon for AoE threat reasons, since Blood runes cannot be used on Death Strike.

The result of this is that your ideal stance while tanking should be one of the following two options.

• One Frost rune and one Unholy rune active, and all other runes depleted.
• One Death rune (in the place of a Blood rune), one Frost rune, and one Unholy rune active, and all other runes depleted.

In the first scenario, using Death Strike will consume your current Frost/Unholy pair, leaving you with no runes active, and a double Blood Tap will give you another Death Strike, with more runes coming off cooldown soon. In the second scenario, it will leave you with one Death rune active, and one Blood Tap will allow you to use Death Strike again, leaving you with more Blood Tap charges (assuming you had pooled them), and with more runes coming off cooldown soon.

6.6.2. Scent of Blood Procs

Each time you perform a successful melee attack, you gain a stack of Scent of Blood, up to a maximum of 5. Each stack increases the healing and minimum healing of your next Death Strike by 20%. Additionally, each time the effect procs, you gain 10 runic power.

Clearly, the more stacks you have of Scent of Blood, the more powerful your Death Strike's healing will be. In normal fight conditions, there is little to gain from monitoring the stacks closely, and you can use Death Strike quite loosely.

7. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: nothing to change.
• 31 Mar. 2013: Performed several updates to the page.
  • Added mention of using Unholy Blight to apply diseases to a single target if Outbreak is unavailable.
  • Added mention of using Crimson Scourge procs primarily on Death and Decay, even against a single target.
  • Improved the explanation of Army of the Dead.
  • Added mention of the benefits of the Tier 15 Set 2-piece Bonus to Rune Tap.
  • Updated the Tier 1 and Tier 5 talent sections to reflect the altered priority of these talents, based on the changes we operated on the Talents page of this guide.
  • Added advanced usage tactics for Blood Tap, as well as a useful Blood Tap macro.
  • Removed a paragraph that recommended saving Scent of Blood stacks in preparation for taking damage.