Blood Death Knight Leveling Guide From 55 to 80 for WotLK Classic

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

Unlike other classes Death Knights start 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 the points much faster than other classes it is important to have an idea of how you should spend them to avoid having to respec to take an important talent you may have missed because of how quickly you acquired the points.

1. — 2 points in Butchery
2. — 3 points in Blade Barrier
3. — 2 points in Two-Handed Weapon Specialization
4. — 3 points in Bladed Armor
5. — 1 point in Rune Tap
6. — 2 points in Bladed Armor
7. — 2 points in Dark Conviction
8. — 3 points in Vendetta
9. — 2 points in Improved Rune Tap
10. — 3 points in Bloody Strikes
11. — 3 points in Veteran of the Third War
12. — 2 points in Abomination's Might
13. — 1 point in Improved Rune Tap
14. — 1 point in Dark Conviction
15. — 1 point in Unholy Frenzy
16. — 2 points in Dark Conviction
17. — 2 points in Blade Barrier
18. — 1 point in Vampiric Blood
19. — 2 points in Improved Death Strike
20. — 2 points in Death Rune Mastery
21. — 1 point in Heart Strike
22. — 3 points in Might of Mograine
23. — 1 point in Death Rune Mastery
24. — 5 points in Blood Gorged

The majority of your talents taken here are passive increases such as Two-Handed Weapon Specialization or Dark Conviction to maximize your ability to pull multiple mobs and sustain in combat while getting considerable benefits from killing enemies to keep you active and reduce downtime. Vendetta and Butchery are great for this. The only active abilities you will be adding are Rune Tap, which will act as a strong cooldown in a situation where you are taking a lot of damage and need a quick heal, Heart Strike, which will act as your primary spender of Blood Runes as it has a powerful cleave aspect built into it, Unholy Frenzy, which is a powerful cooldown that greatly increases your damage and has its negative effect of dealing damage to you largely mitigated by the massive amount of self healing you will be doing as Blood, and lastly Vampiric Blood, which is a massive personal defensive cooldown that will allow you to heal through situations you may not have otherwise been able to survive.

1. Level 60 — 1 point in Dancing Rune Weapon
2. Level 61 to 63 — 3 points in Improved Icy Touch
3. Level 64 to 65 — 2 points in Toughness
4. Level 66 to 69 — 4 points in Black Ice

While not a massive damage increase, Dancing Rune Weapon can oftentimes reduce kill time to the point where you may not have to wait for an additional set of Rune cooldowns, thus making it very worth the single point for the spell. Improved Icy Touch helps as it both increases damage and slightly reduces your incoming damage as well. Black Ice is just a flat damage increase, though extremely powerful for each point spent as a considerable amount of your damage is Frost and Shadow.

1. Level 70 — 1 point in Black Ice
2. Level 71 to 75 — 5 points in Icy Talons/
3. Level 76 to 77 — 2 points in Endless Winter
4. Level 77 to 80 — 3 points in Toughness

Finishing out the leveling tree you will pick up Icy Talons which is a massive personal DPS increase as well as grabbing Endless Winter which will make interrupting much easier in addition to giving you a considerable Strength bonus.

1. Apply and maintain diseases using Icy Touch and Plague Strike
2. Use Pestilence to spread your diseases in any situation you are fighting more than one target.
3. Use Heart Strike as your primary spender of Blood runes against up to two targets. When fighting more than two targets you should be using Blood Boil as your primary spender of Blood Runes.
4. 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.
5. cast Death and Decay when fighting 3+ mobs and you are confident they will survive most of its duration.
6. Make sure you are auto-attacking at all times.

It is important to buy all abilities as you level as they are cheap and Death Knights have quite a few abilities that are extremely powerful in certain situations; you never know when you will need them.

Setting up an user interface and macros early on you will greatly improve the quality of your leveling experience. Check out the Blood Death Knight Macros and Addons guides in the links below for the full list.

Once you achieve Level 80 we suggest you check out our Blood Death Knight Guide, which goes more in detail of how to play your Level 80 Blood Death Knight.

Some of the most relevant pages to dive deeper into are:

• The Blood Death Knight Talent builds guide offers a default build to maximize your threat and survivability as a Blood Death Knight;
• Our Blood Death Knight Rotation guide teaches you how to actually deal damage and survive in a variety of situations. It also includes tips on how to utilize your cooldowns and utility.
• Check out the Blood Death Knight Stats guide if you would like to learn how each stat effects your survivability and threat;
• The Gear guide for Blood Death Knight includes a list of gear to for you to acquire and where to find it;