Cataclysm Classic Blood Death Knight Leveling

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Unlike other classes, Death Knight starts at level 55, so they have a considerable amount of talent points unlocked as soon as you create your character and progress through the Death Knight starting area. While you gain your initial 26 talent points much faster than other classes, it is important to have an idea of how you should spend them to avoid having to respec.

The majority of points taken up to level 59 will act as passive increases to both your damage and survivability. Of the talents grabbed, the most important ones will be Abomination's Might, Improved Death Strike, and Butchery, but there are also some notable abilities gained. Bone Shield is a great way to mitigate incoming damage, but more importantly while leveling and paired with Glyph of Bone Shield, it gives a considerable movement speed increase. The single greatest weakness as a Death Knight leveling is mobility, so being able to add to your movement speed in any way will considerably increase your leveling speed. Vampiric Blood grants 15% maximum health for 10 seconds, but more importantly increases healing received by 25% for the duration as well making it an incredible tool when pulling large groups of enemies to be able to self sustain and maximize your uptime. Rune Tap is a great way to heal yourself in combat or out of combat to minimize the time you would spend eating, so just adding another button to keep you active is always beneficial.

Increasing the damage dealt by your Death Strike ability which acts as your primary spender of Frost and Unholy Runes as Blood. This is a great way to both kill enemies quicker and increase your uptime. Since enemies deal less damage to you, you'll be able to stay in combat longer.

Increasing the damage dealt by your Death Strike ability which acts as your primary spender of Frost and Unholy Runes as Blood. This is a great way to both kill enemies quicker and increase your uptime. Since enemies deal less damage to you, you'll be able to stay in combat longer. Crimson Scourge increases the damage of your Blood Boil ability by 40% which is one of the few spammable AoE damage buttons we receive, and as a Blood Death Knight there is little reason to only be fighting one enemy at a time. In addition to the flat damage increase, Crimson Scourge also gives a 10% chance on melee attacking a Blood Plague infected target to make your next Blood Boil free, freeing up a Blood Rune to cast another Blood Boil or Heart Strike.

Increasing the damage dealt by your Death Strike ability which acts as your primary spender of Frost and Unholy Runes as Blood. This is a great way to both kill enemies quicker and increase your uptime. Since enemies deal less damage to you, you'll be able to stay in combat longer. Crimson Scourge increases the damage of your Blood Boil ability by 40% which is one of the few spammable AoE damage buttons we receive, and as a Blood Death Knight there is little reason to only be fighting one enemy at a time. In addition to the flat damage increase, Crimson Scourge also gives a 10% chance on melee attacking a Blood Plague infected target to make your next Blood Boil free, freeing up a Blood Rune to cast another Blood Boil or Heart Strike. Dancing Rune Weapon is a great cooldown to both deal extra damage and mitigate incoming damage, as it increases your Parry rating by 20% while it is active.

Now that are finished with talents found in the Blood tree, we can begin to branch out into the Unholy tree where we will spend all but one of our remaining Talent points. Unholy Command is an incredible tool which reduces the cooldown of your Death Grip ability by ten seconds, but more importantly refreshes the cooldown any time you kill an enemy that yields Honor or Experience which we will constantly be doing while leveling.

Now that are finished with talents found in the Blood tree we can begin to branch out into the Unholy tree where we will spend all but one of our remaining Talent points. Unholy Command is an incredible tool which reduces the cooldown of your Death Grip ability by ten seconds but more importantly refreshes the cooldown any time you kill an enemy that yields Honor or Experience which we will constantly be doing while leveling. Epidemic allows us to focus on casting more Death Strikes as opposed to re-applying our diseases.

Now that are finished with talents found in the Blood tree we can begin to branch out into the Unholy tree where we will spend all but one of our remaining Talent points. Unholy Command is an incredible tool which reduces the cooldown of your Death Grip ability by ten seconds but more importantly refreshes the cooldown any time you kill an enemy that yields Honor or Experience which we will constantly be doing while leveling. Epidemic allows us to focus on casting more Death Strikes as opposed to re-applying our diseases. Morbidity greatly increases the damage dealt by our Death and Decay ability. Death and Decay deals a considerable amount of our damage in AoE situations so increasing its damage just makes your limited Runes more damage per Rune spent.

In your Prime Glyphs slots we recommend taking Glyph of Death Strike, Glyph of Heart Strike, and Glyph of Death and Decay. These all act as passive increases to your primary damage dealing abilities, the single largest limiting factor while leveling as a Death Knight is available Runes so getting the most out of each Rune spent will greatly increase your leveling speed.

For your Major Glyph slots we recommend Glyph of Bone Shield, Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon and Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell. The Bone Shield glyph will increase your movement speed allowing you to get from enemy to enemy quicker, Dancing Rune Weapon is really only beneficial in group/party content but the extra threat allows you to focus your attention elsewhere. Anti-Magic Shell is much more to avoid any debuffs being applied to you than actually stopping the incoming damage.

For your Minor Glyphs we recommend Glyph of Death Gate, Glyph of Horn of Winter, and Glyph of Resilient Grip. Glyph of Death Gate greatly reduces the cast time of your Death Gate ability which throughout the leveling process you will find yourself back in Ebon Hold several times. Horn of Winter glyph just maximizes the uptime of the buff you will already be maintaining and Resilient Grip just allows for more Death Grip casts in a situation where you may have otherwise wasted the cooldown on an immune target.

1. Make sure you are in Blood Presence.
2. Apply and maintain diseases using Icy Touch and Plague Strike.
3. Cast Death Grip to close the gap between you and enemies as often as possible to maximize uptime.
4. Use Pestilence to spread your diseases in any situation you are fighting more than one target.
5. Use Raise Dead if you are fighting a monster that will survive more than a few seconds but do not hesitate to save your Raise Dead cooldown to pair with Death Pact should you find yourself pulling large groups of mobs.
6. Use Heart Strike as your primary spender of Blood runes against up to two targets. When fighting more than three targets you should be using Blood Boil as your primary spender of Blood Runes.
7. Use Death Strike as your primary spender of Frost and Unholy runes. Make sure to constantly keep your Runes on cooldown to maximize your ability usage.
8. Use Death Coil to spend your Runic Power when Runes are unavailable.
9. Make sure you are auto-attacking at all times.
10. Use Mind Freeze to interrupt enemy spell casting as often as possible to mitigate incoming damage.
11. Use Strangulate as needed to interrupt enemy spell casting, as this is a blanket silencing effect it can be used preemptively to position enemy spell casters.
12. cast Death and Decay when fighting 3+ mobs and you are confident they will survive most of its duration.
13. In situations where you are pulling multiple mobs or expect to be taking high damage consider using Icebound Fortitude to help lessen incoming damage. This can also be used to avoid or free yourself from Stuns.
14. cast Blood Tap to refresh your dormant Blood Runes to further maximize your Death Strike casts as they are converted to Death Runes.
15. cast Horn of Winter on cooldown to maintain the Strength and Agility buffs which will increase your kill speed.
16. cast Rune Strike to spend your Runic Power when you have recently Dodged/Parried an attack and are able to, otherwise spend your Runic Power using Death Coil if you do not have active Runes.
17. cast Anti-Magic Shell to avoid incoming Magic damage or prevent yourself from being effected by incoming Magic effects like slows.
18. cast Empower Rune Weapon any time the majority of your Runes are inactive. Empower Rune Weapon instantly refresh them and allows you to deal more damage. While leveling DPS increasing cooldowns should be used early and often.

Congratulations on hitting Level 85 in Cataclysm! Now that your leveling process is over, you can learn more about Level 85 Blood Death Knight gameplay by reading our fully detailed guide below.