Death Knight Talent Points

On this site, I will be collecting popular WOW Death Knight Builds and other resources on how to play a DK. As you may all know, Wrath of the Litch King expansion for World of Warcraft and the WOW Death Knight class is now active. This class is a damage dealer / tank hybrid. WOW Death Knights start at level 55 and is unlockable if you have level 55+ character on that realm. You can only have one Death Knight per server.

WOW Death Knights do not have shields, but do have good avoidance and powerful anti magic protection that have them being used as the main tanks against magic attack based bosses in raids. Currently they are a tank/damage hybrid and if spec'd right can make very good tanks. Don't think that because they do no use shields that they will not make effective tanks as they do make good tanks.

WOW Death Knights can dual wield or use 2-handed weapons. They use a unique rune system for their special skills so playing a Death Knight you will find you will be commonly be using combo rotations to maximize damage and agro.

Death Knight talents are split into 3 different trees:

• Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, healing, and strikes.
• Frost: Talents in this tree focus on armor, control, counters, and combos.
• Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, diseases, and AOE.

Updated on Dec 20th, 2008

Death Knight Builds

As I have people submit builds or I come across them myself I will be posting them here to share. I am just posting them as I find them right now, I know some are good and some are not so good. I am a little behind on posting new builds but I will be adding a lot soon, thanks for all of your submissions. Please feel free to email me about any of the below or any you wish to add. Please note the build type and number for ones you wish to comment on.

You can see the current trees at: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=j

Blood Builds 18 Builds currently listed

• 1 - 51/13/7 - Blood Tank - has an/ep
• 2 - 52/0/19 - Blood Unholy
• 3 - 51/13/7 - Blood DPS - very high DPS, has an/ep but also has healing skills
• 4 - 53/18/0 - Blood Leveling Spec - This is a 2h leveling build for a Death Knight. Hit Plague Strike first and Icy Touch second, getting the damage bonus to Icy Touch, to get your diseases on the Target, which increases your attack speed by 20% with this spec. Then hit obliterate with your remaining Frost and Unholy rune. This spec allows you to hit obliterate without consuming your diseases on the target. Use your unused blood runes on heart strikes. The mob should be dead by this point. You should heal through a lot of the damage you take with this spec, between Blood Worms, Blood Aura, and Vendetta. If you need to you can use Rune Tap but you should never need to use Death Strike for healing over Obliterate.
• 5 - 53/0/18 - DRW, shadow, and ghouls - party buffer while still putting out good threat.
• 6 - 51/0/20 - Blood Gorged Necrotic Corpse Detonator
• 7 - 45/0/26 - Ghoul Knight - A strong mix of Blood's soloing power and Unholy's Ghoul-strengthening and Shadow magic talents. The name of the build comes from the essential nature of the character type it creates- a standard hybrid fighter/caster plus strong companion/pet. Not a blood Knight, Frost Knight, nor Necromancer, but a Ghoul Knight.
• 8 - 56/15/0 - PVP Dual Weild Blood Build
• 9 - 45/26/0 - Bloody-Snowman - It's a Frost/Blood 2 Handed hybrid picking up talents like Improved Icy Talons, Deathchill, Lichborne, and Annihilation in Frost and Blood Strike, Hysteria, Vampiric Blood, Sudden Doom, Mark of Blood, Vendetta, and other talents I felt were good in Blood. You can switch some around if you like, like putting some in Rune Tap. This build is more PvE focused as a DPS/Support/Offtank but can also be good in PvP.
• 10 - 43/0/28 - Tedy's Unholy blood cursing - Leveling/PvP
• 11 - 52/12/7 - Minimual Downtime PVE build
• 12 - 51/20/0 - Blood Burst Dps (WrathKnight from realm Vashj)This talent build is primarily constant burst Dps. Depending on your gear, you can be doing on average about 4k-10k+ per hit, 10k+ being the crit damage of course. See bloodspec1 for more info.
• 13 - 47/21/3 - Bloody Burst pvp/dps Build - This build while giving you high dps it also gives you great survivability, Improved rune tap Lichborne + Deathcoil combo Higher armor Higher stamina Blood warms/Blood aura/Blood presence
• 14 - 28/43/0 - Bloody Obliteration Knight buildDPS for instances/raids OB-OB-BS-BS-DC-DC-OB-OB-OB is the basic rotation set up wasting runes on disease lowers your dps. This build is good but excels when having a DK tank and enhance shamans in grp/raid. Obliterate does over 50% of the dmg and crits over 50% of the time with this build, numbers improve with T7 set bonuses http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=792 and this sigil http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40207
• 15 - 51/13/7 - Pure PVE DPS #1
• 16 - 51/13/7 - Pure PVE DPS #2
• 17 - 53/0/18 - A Bloody Pale Horse
• 18 - 45/14/12 - Blood PVP Insane Regen Obliberate specIn this spec you use The usuall diseases, and pow pow with obliberate (massive dmg). and when u start to lose HP, just use your massive regen. Mark of blood, Rune Tap and vampiric blood.

Frost Builds 18 Builds currently listed

• 1 - 19/52/0 - Frost Blood
• 2 - 0/52/19 - Frost Unholy
• 3 - 0/60/11 - Frost Unholy PVP
• 4 - 8/56/7 - Frost Tanking build with Imp Icey Talons
• 5 - 14/50/7 - Chillrend's 'Glacial Resolve' - This build is meant for single target tanking, and should be considered by the Death Knight with MT aspirations. 'Glacial Resolve' is indeed similar to 'Death Rune Extreme' (as seen above), but with a few key differences. Both are versatile builds that use Death Rune Mastery and Blood of the North for easy rotation changes on the fly. Both builds rely on increasing avoidance stats through talents in all three trees. Both builds incorporate Rune Tap as a means of self-healing and tricky saves. One key difference between the two builds is that 'Glacial Resolve' sacrifices some of the *oomph offered by Black Ice in favor of better RP generation via Chill of the Grave, which, if nothing else, allows for more frequent use of abilities like Frost Strike. The extra couple of points go towards a guaranteed activation from Blood of the North, which should thereby improve the secondary avoidance provided by Blade Barrier, while at the same time improving the overall versatility of the build. One final difference between these builds is that 'Glacial Resolve' does not take Hungering Cold from the top of the Frost tree, seeing as how this ability eats up a good chunk of RP, is more likely useful for AoE tanking, and will probably be useless when fighting bosses that are immune to freezing effects (almost all of them). Instead, the last two points of this build are put into Unholy Command for the improved taunt, which is oh-so-crucial for effective MTs...
• 6 - 14/52/5 - Rcon's 'Death Rune Extreme'
• 7 - 12/51/8 - Animation's frost tanking - With current beta itemization and leveling, 2h weapons are your best be for effective tanking due to the lower hit rating cap and on higher %dmg dealing spells. Focuses on causing Death Runes which allow you to change your approach at any given time, even allowing up to 4 Death Strikes for burst healing. Life Tap for soloing and last minute saves. Lichborne and Unbreakable armor provide additional DPS and survival. Blade barrier offers a secondary (almost passive) avoidance stat, while Bladed Armor gives you more STR from the Armor you will be stacking naturally. Last but not least, Hungering Cold followed by a Death Chill / Howling Blast for burst AoE threat when needed most.
• 8 - 0/60/10 - PVP DPS Frost Spec
• 9 - 13/53/5 - Healing Frost Tank - A frost death knight build that provides tanking capabilities and can heal self with rune tap.
• 10 - 3/60/8 - Frost in Blood Presence for PvP - Major Glyphs: Icebound Fortitude, Glyph of Unbreakable Armor, Icy Touch, Blood Strike Maintain max distance from the opponent and use: Icy Touch >> Howling Blast >> Death Coil Enter melee combat and use: Plague Strike >> Blood Strike x 2 >> Obliterate x 2 Finish with Hungering Cold + Obliterate/Howling Blast or Unholy Presence and Frost Strike x 6.
• 11 - 5/56/10 - Frost Tank Build - Nice DK frost tank build with ep. The rotation as Frost with Epidemic is Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Blood Strikex2, Obliterate x4.
• 12 - 5/66/0 - Pure Frost Tank Build
• 13 - 11/53/7 - 2H Frost Tank Build - This build in my opinion is very forgiving if you mess up or casting rotation or have stun or silence get you. I have tanked with it as main tank and was able to keep good threat and damage up for long drawn out fights with end bosses.
• 14 - 21/50/0 - Frost PvP Healing build
• 15 - 20/51/0 - DK FROST BLOOD BUILD - PvE solo-ing and group tanking build. It gives you a VERY high armour raiting, (almost doubles), and amazingly high frost attack power and crit.
• 16 - 27/44/0 - A Frost spec made to Obliterate!A clearly PvE spec with Obliterate gaining an amazing 24%(+3%to all melee skills) critical just talent while it doesn't remove deceases, while incrises passively 8% Str and gain (for u and raid) 10% Attack Power every time u use Obliterate. Frost Strike which combines great with Obliterate since it doesn't need any runes and u just use one Icy Touch every 20 seconds just to gain(for u and raid) 20% melee haste then Blood Strike to make Blood rune Death Runes and then Obliterate and Frost Strike FTW!!!
• 17 - 0/51/20 - Hungering ShadowHeavy Tanking Ability, w/ some Solo or PVP functionality.
• 18 - 11/50/10 - Frost Tank buildIt's mainly a frost build with rune tap and epidemic for a last minute save and less reaplication of diseases. Morbidity for more use of Death and Decay the highest threat abilities that death knights have. All else should be self explained. Rotation would be IT>PS>BS>BS>OBL>FS or IT>PS>DnD>Pes for a group of targets.

Unholy Builds 20 Builds currently listed

• 1 - 3/14/54 - Unholy Frost
• 2 - 0/14/57 - Pure unholy PvP DPS, Diseases, AoE And summoning - Toughness in frost tree is for increased armor and stun effects (Frost Aura + Toughness is imba in Arena with a healer since the DK can shit out loads dps with Frost Aura on instead of Blood for example) Decreased Death Grip CD which makes it hard for people to run away once the fight begins. Kiting possible with chains of ice and talent desecration, scourge strike main attack ofc with obliterate, use plague strike, icy touch and unholy blight, but always keep plague strike up because it increases the damage from abilities and spell they receive by 10%. Imba spec for arena, outdoor pvp and bg's especially AV (death and decay aoe, corpse explosion, unholy blight..) some people want to exchange annihilation for wandering plague if the focus more on AV pvping since it's imba vs many targets
• 3 - 25/5/41 - Huogo's Unholy Rampage - Blood provides survivability in both tanking and pvp and unholy adds to the overall damaging ability with 5 points for inc armor, to my knowledge tanking as this would require some presence swapping between frost for aggro and blood to heal self; feedback on this spec from beta players would be much appreciated.
• 4 - 7/0/64 - Jaime's No Escape AoE tanking build - A DK AOE tanking build. End game stat building will focus more around being able to dodge and parry incoming attacks, rather than absorbing damage (Be aware of the lack of Toughness). Talents like Desecration will assist the tank in keeping crowd control over his victims as he mercilessly forces them to spread diseases between each other; they are your rats and you are the cage. There shouldn't be an excuse when it comes to Runic Power; spend your bar on Unholy Blight. The Morbidity talent early on is specifically for the Death and Decay cooldown reduction since you won't be using Death Coil. Go, Death Knight, and show them what it means to suffer!
• 5 - 0/20/51 - DW Unholy Build
• 6 - 17/13/41 - Mortician's Unholy Critter - Scourge Strike, but it goes into the blood and frost trees to get their critical strike bonuses and damage bonus. Well rounded tank/dps/pvp.
• 7 - 16/0/55 - Zephire's Deep Unholy DPS build - Maximizes Scourge, Death Strike, Ghouls and also uses Rune Tap for healing.
• 8 - 10/8/53 - Golgofa's DW dps Build - Unholy PVE dps build
• 9 - 7/11/53 - Unholy Summoning Tank
• 10 - 23/0/48 - Unholy Blood Damage/Healing Spec - A spell/2h damage dealing spec with some heals from blood to keep you going.
• 11 - 16/0/55 - Bart's Unholy Death Knight Build - Less healing than the above spec but should be a good damage spec.
• 12 - 18/0/53 - Unholy Avenger - Build to steal health and has gain heavy returns on runic power, as well as making minions and plagues.
• 13 - 15/5/51 - Unholy Palindrome - Attempts to maximize runic generation, DPS and DOT while utilizing the Ghoul benefits.
• 14 - 19/0/52 - PvP Unholy DK build - PVP spec/race based on the disadvantages that DKs have. Kiteable being one. Very deep in the unholy tree. Unholy is the best for this, while doing great burst dmg. Get unholy aura and stay in blood presence. mix that with escape artist, trinket, and set a macro up for your ghoul to leap and gnaw, got the talents that lower CD on ghoul summoning since they can be rather weak, they're purpose is purely stop your opponent in their tracks. Glyphs: Ice Bound fort, Anti Magic shell, and Death and Decay for the fear interrupthis down, and chains of ice your target leaving them helpless especially casters since you should have your AMS up. DPS wise, can you still dps with this spec if you want in heroics/25's with this spec 25man vault I'm pushing 2600+ dps, 286 hit, 30% to crit. Rotation: PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-DC-SS-SS-SS and DC till RP is gone, repeat process.
• 15 - 12/0/59 - Mr Snuggle's raid DPS build - WOW Death Knight DPS build that's great for raids with emphasis and maximization on multi-mob damage. High damage DK build.
• 16 - 10/10/51 - Darkfury's pure DPS build - This build maximizes your DPS. It uses the AP talent from blood for higher hits. Along with the Black Ice and Imp Icy Touch. While still maximizing the output from your diseases and from your ghoul. Careful not to pull aggro with this build or you could suffer.
• 17 - 17/0/54 - Death Knight Unholy DPS Raid Build - This is a Raid build that is used by many Death Knights on my server. This outputs, in my gear, hight end blues, and a couple heroic epics, about 2000 dps self buffed easily. Fully raid buffed, in Heroic Naxxramas, I was able to push 3500 DPS. It scales very well with strength and attack power buffs. And, as Unholy, with Wandering Plague, you are able to maintain high DPS on trash pulls.
• 18 - 7/5/59 - Unholy Destruction - This build is not intended with questing, or dps in mind this build is a AoE multi target tanking. Focus all your attention on dodge/parry (pure avoidance), stack strength/agility and gem accordingly and you should never lose threat.
• 19 - 17/0/54 - Unholy Raid DPS DK - This build is for DPS and a little raid support. Rotations: IT -> PS -> SS -> BS -> BS -> Dc -> SS -> SS-> BS -> BS->Dc -> IT -> PS -> Recycle
• 20 - 0/5/66 - Raid Tank - This is my current build as Lejend. I am a MT for my raid group. Took Magic Shielding as a raid tool as well as Unholy aura for raid movement. This spec as worked out so far as we are doing 25man Saratharion and Naxx on the regular.

Hybrid Builds 6 Builds currently listed

• 1 - 30/25/16 - Blood-Stealing Criticals - This spec is a great BG or Arena PvP Spec. Used with a 2h Weapon, Subversion, Dark Conviction, Annihilation, and Killing Machine greatly improve your melee and spell criticals. Butchery, Rune Tap, Runic Power Mastery, and Vendetta will regenerate your health and Runes for greater survivability, and Mark of Blood will heal any allies assisting you or yourself. Spell Deflection, Toughness, and Anticipation will allow you to survive longer against all classes. Shadow of Death is thrown in for Arena, AB, and AV so you can better defend bases and teammates. The rest of the talents are there to passively increase your damage total. As stated before, you should use a 2H weapon with this spec. Your main stat should be crit rating, followed by strength, resilience, attack power, stamina, and intellect in that order. This spec may also be viable for DPSing in instances where the enemy needs to be finished off quickly, yet hits hard. The spec will heal you and your group while dealing high amounts of burst melee damage. Resilience is not needed for instances.
• 2 - 20/14/37 - Hybrid Blood/Frost/Unholy Tank - Very tough but need a good healer.
• 3 - 39/14/18 - PVP/Small Raid Build - Build has very little points spent on white DPS talents most of the DK's damage is from abilities. Points in Frost are for to power DK's amor and the lower duration of slowing effects. This builds Rotation: PS-IT-BS-OB-DC
• 4 - 28/36/7 - Pure Physical Mitigation Build
• 5 - 34/18/19 - PVE DPS by WitheredSoul - A little information about this build: firstly, it is strictly for dual wield deathknights and more for races like orcs and humans with the extra weapon expertise from racials. The points are spent for pure dps in a pve environment. You still give blood aura and abomination's might as a group buff, but icy talons is only for yourself. While leveling, dump the blood points in quick then focus on frost and then unholy at the end. Itemization should be based primarily on hit/expertise and strength to take advantage of Veteran of the Third War and Ravenous Dead, with crit and armor penetration being secondary stats to look for. Standard rotation would be IT-PS-BS-BS-OB
• 6 - 26/40/5 - Hybrid Tank - defense and stacked stam/parry. This build is has a lot of healing and mitigation.