Death Knight Guide

Unholy Death Knights are the masters of death and decay, summoning undead minions to do their bidding, as well as infecting their enemies with powerful diseases. They are the kings of AoE scaling, dealing insane damage at large target counts. They are also incredibly tanky, having both a significant health pool as well as providing several tools to mitigate incoming damage, especially magic damage. Finally, the Unholy Death Knight is a bit like a battle mage, having multiple tools that help them deal damage from range.

The Unholy Death Knight is not among the most popular specs in a raiding environment at the moment. They do solid damage and can deal with spawning adds quite well. However, the lack of a good raid buff as well as the relatively high popularity of Frost Death Knights mean that in terms of popularity, Unholy is at the bottom third of all specs.

In Mythic+, Unholy sees play right up towards the cutting edge of keys. Being incredibly tanky, in conjunction with having among the highest AoE DPS throughputs in the game makes them highly desirable. However, like in raiding, Frost Death Knight is very popular and take away quite a lot of the shine off Unholy. When looking at total number of keys done, Frost sits at roughly 4 times as many compared to Unholy.

The Frost Death Knight is the player-controlled embodiment of The Lich King, sharing the frost and death theme to obliterate their enemies with powerful physical and magical attacks. Wielders of both two-handed and one-handed weapons, the Frost Death Knight uses spells like Obliterate, Frost Strike and Howling Blast in conjunction with proc-based gameplay to create an interactive and fun rotation.

Frost also has a lot of depth in its rotation, whether its the optimization of Breath of Sindragosa uptime, tracking buff, or its resource management. The rotation seems simple at a glance but in reality has a lot of complexity that can make a great player excel. It is also very satisfying with its damage numbers - and who does not enjoy hitting massive Obliterates?

Frost's strength comes from it's high cleave damage, dealing huge damage to any adds that spawn, without losing much priority DPS. Furthermore, we are incredibly tanky with a number of tools to both increase our health, as well as mitigate incoming damage, especially magic damage. Frost is currently Meta in both Raid and Mythic+ and one of the most popular melee specs!

Frost Death Knight is really quite popular in raiding, having seen play in the Race to World First on the majority of bosses. In terms of number of parses, we are the fourth most popular spec and the third most popular melee (coming after Retribution and Fury), with just a small difference between them. Frost fits the bosses really well with its high priority damage and great cleave potential. It does really well on certain raid bosses like Ulgrax the Devourer, Broodtwister Ovi'nax and Silken Court.

Frost Death Knight is currently the meta DPS spec of Mythic+. Running the Breath of Sindragosa build which provides an insane amount of AoE burst every 2 minutes, can provide extremely good DPS in a coordinated group. We also do not need to sacrifice any single-target DPS to achieve this, simply running our best raiding single-target build in Mythic+ as well! Combine this with being the most tanky spec in the game as well as having some solid group utility, combines it all into an exceptional choice for Mythic+.

Blood Death knight harness and corrupt life energy to sustain themselves while dealing damage to those around them. The centerpiece of their toolkit is Death Strike, which allows them to heal back up for a portion of the damage they have recently taken, granting them a physical absorption shield in the process. A large number of short-duration cooldown abilities support this key mechanic, allowing Blood Death Knights to truly control the flow of combat while effortlessly healing their wounds.

In addition to this, Blood Death Knights have access to Anti-Magic Shell, Death Grip, Gorefiend's Grasp and Death's Advance, to name a few points of utility. All four of these abilities have been used to devastating effects in both Raiding and Mythic+ to trivialize encounters, allowing Blood Death Knights to truly turn the flow of battle in their and their teammates' advantage.

The devastating combination of reactive self-healing, unique utility and the frequent possibility to immune entire mechanics with Anti-Magic Shell makes Blood Death Knight a prime spec for Raiding. Very few encounters have historically tested Blood Death Knight to the level where the proverbial wheels fell off; its popularity was only hampered when a raid buff or debuff was missing because the non-tank specs on their respective classes were too weak to be brought.

In recent World of Warcraft history, Death Grip alone has featured as a centerpiece counter to at least one mechanic every tier. Death's Advance's knockback and pushback immunity has also featured prominently, and its very short cooldown only amplified this. Plus, they are the only specialization in the game able to bring Gorefiend's Grasp to an encounter.

In Mythic+, Blood Death Knight is one of the most forgiving tanks to start tanking on. Its evident self-sustain, large amount of cooldowns and enemy control with Death Grip, Blinding Sleet, Asphyxiate and the snare effect from Grip of the Dead provide an answer to almost anything dungeons can throw at you.

On the higher end, the variety and subtle differences between cooldowns in the kit allow skilled players to truly shine, and its viability in high-end groups tends to come down to its relative damage output and survivability relative to other tank specializations.

Ultimately, tanks almost never struggle to find a group due to the inherent imbalance of role populations, so even if Blood Death Knight ends up not being the single best tank for any dungeon, you will still have no trouble finding a group whenever you want to dungeneer a little.