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 plagues. They are incredibly tanky, having both a significant health pool as well as providing several tools to mitigate incoming damage, especially magic damage. Finally, Unholy Death Knight is a bit like a battle mage, having multiple tools that help them deal damage from range.

Unholy Death Knight is a relatively popular spec in a raiding environment. They do solid damage and can deal with mass spawning adds quite well, but the lack of a good raid buff tends to lower the population. Unless we are the absolute top DPS, we do not see a lot of representation. Furthermore, we sometimes see the Death Knight population priositing Frost Death Knights whenever they can do better DPS (which happens somewhat frequently).

In Mythic+, Unholy generally sees play right up towards the cutting edge of keys. Being incredibly tanky, in conjunction with having solid DPS throughput makes them desirable. However, like in raiding, Frost Death Knight are sometimes more popular and can take away quite a lot of the shine off Unholy.

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, 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 too 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 generally quite popular in raiding, owing to high overall numbers and an approachable gamestyle. Frost tends to fit bosses well as we often have high-priority damage couples with adds that need to be cleaved down.

Frost Death Knight is generally a good Mythic+ spec. We can run builds that bring good Single Target and AoE at the same time, but often need to sacrifice one for the other. Our high survivability brings a lot to any group as the healer need to focus on us significantly less. Still, we are highly reliant on bringing great DPS as our group utility is far lower than the average.

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.