Best DPS Build for Blood Spec Death Knight in patch 3.2
Posted on November 13th, 2009 by Bigtaker under Alliance, Blood Elf, Build, Death Knights, Dranei, Druid, Dwarf, Efficiency Tips, Expansion, General Tips, Gnome, Horde, Human, Low Level, Night Elf, Orc, PVE, Patch, Spec, Tauren, Troll, Undead, World of Warcraft, WotLKYou just can’t beat this spec when it comes to DPS in PvE content.
It is the most controversial, talked about, and argued about character to date in World of Warcraft. You either hate them or love them but either way, right now, they are Dominating in DPS … if played right. What we’ll show you over the next few days may be a cookie-cutter build you can find on several servers and websites but it still is, hands down, the best build for your DPS DK. While Blizzard has made been changing the DK since he was released a year ago, one thing has remained the same: The Blood DK is still the best DPS build for damage output … Period!
Over the next few days, I’ll show you the ins and outs of the Blood Spec DK.
Now I do have friends that are Unholy, and their DPS is reasonable, although I’m not sure if they’ll still be my friends after this
(Cheers! Anibow)

Talent Spec:
First off your build will be 51/00/20 and here is how you do it step by step. I will show you the link to get you started but in order to be very successful you have a few things to do.
See the complete Build here (Including Glyphs)
While leveling, the first 20 points will go into your Blood Tree like this:
Butchery – Rank 2/2
Whenever you kill an enemy that grants experience or honor, you generate up to 20 runic power. In addition, you generate 2 runic power per 5 sec while in combat.
Subversion – Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike chance of Blood Strike, Scourge Strike, Heart Strike and Obliterate by 9%, and reduces threat generated while in Blood or Unholy Presence by 25%.
Bladed Armor – Rank 5/5
Increases your attack power by 5 for every 180 armor value you have.
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization – Rank 2/2
Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 4%.
Dark Conviction – Rank 5/5
Increases your chance to critically hit with weapons, spells and abilities by 5%.
Death Rune Mastery – Rank 3/3
Whenever you hit with Death Strike or Obliterate there is a 100% chance that the Frost and Unholy Runes will become Death Runes when they activate. Death Runes count as a Blood, Frost or Unholy Rune.
While leveling, then you will put 13 points into the Unholy tree like this:
Vicious Strikes – Rank 2/2
Increases the critical strike chance by 6% and critical strike damage bonus by 30% of your Plague Strike and Scourge Strike.
Virulence – Rank 3/3
Increases your chance to hit with your spells by 3% and reduces the chance that your damage over time diseases can be cured by 30%.
Epidemic – Rank 2/2
Increases the duration of Blood Plague and Frost Fever by 6 sec.
Morbidity – Rank 3/3
Increases the damage and healing of Death Coil by 15% and reduces the cooldown on Death and Decay by 15 sec.
Ravenous Dead – Rank 3/3
Increases your total Strength by 3% and the contribution your Ghouls get from your Strength and Stamina by 60%
Then back to Blood to finish it out, then to Unholy to finish it.
Bloody Strikes – Rank 3/3
Increases the damage of Blood Strike by 15% and Heart Strike by 45%, and increases the damage of Blood Boil by 30%.
Veteran of the Third War – Rank 3/3
Increases your total Strength by 6%, your Stamina by 3%, and your expertise by 6.
Bloody Vengeance – Rank 3/3
Gives you a 3% bonus to physical damage you deal for 30 sec after dealing a critical strike from a weapon swing, spell, or ability. This effect stacks up to 3 times.
Abomination’s Might – Rank 2/2
Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 50% chance and your Death Strikes and Obliterates have a 100% chance to increase the attack power by 10% of raid members within 45 yards for 10 sec. Also increases your total Strength by 2%.
Bloodworms – Rank 3/3
Your weapon hits have a 9% chance to cause the target to spawn 2-4 Bloodworms. Bloodworms attack your enemies, healing you as they do damage for 20 sec or until killed.
Hysteria – Rank 1/1
Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 sec. The target is Enraged, which increases their physical damage by 20%, but causes them to lose health equal to 1% of their maximum health every second.
Improved Death Strike – Rank 2/2
Increases the damage of your Death Strike by 30%, increases its critical strike chance by 6%, and increases the healing granted by 50%.
Sudden Doom – Rank 3/3
Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 15% chance to launch a free Death Coil at your target.
Vampiric Blood – Rank 1/1
Temporarily grants the Death Knight 15% of maximum health and increases the amount of health generated through spells and effects by 35% for 10 sec. After the effect expires, the health is lost.
Heart Strike – Rank 1/1
Instantly strike the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 368 on the primary target, and 25% weapon damage plus 184 on the secondary target. Each target takes 10% additonal damage for each of your diseases active on that target.
Might of Mograine – Rank 3/3
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, and Heart Strike abilities by 45%.
Blood Gorged – Rank 5/5
When you are above 75% health, you deal 10% more damage. In addition, your attacks ignore up to 10% of your opponent’s armor at all times.
Dancing Rune Weapon – Rank 1/1
Summons a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 12 sec, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage.
Now you may be asking, Why do I need to build in this order? Why can’t I just go Blood all the way then do Unholy? The answer is pretty simple when you look at your rotation.
We will cover Rotation and Glyphs, gemming priorities, enchants as well as some explanation over the next few days.
… To Be Continued!


















Hmm…while I can see alot of similarities between your PVE build with my PVP build, I just cant’ agree with you on this one. I don’t think this would be the best dps output when it comes to raiding. I have been running frost spec in unholy presence while dual weilding for quite some time and have always been running in the top dps spot. Also, I am having trouble understanding your need to put two points into Ravenous Dead instead of Necrosis. Army of Dead is not always appreciated in raids when the little bastards run rampant and accidently taunt a mob off the tank. I would think the added shadow damage from Necrosis would be much more useful on a single point target.
Either way I reallllly look forward to your next installment of this article I have been waiting for some good DK coverage for quite some time
World of Weirdcraft.net your source or all things WOW
Great. Now why do we care about PvE builds? You can level a DK any spec you want, it hardly matters at all, and you can still level easily. What about a good raid spec for max dps? Also, the pet you miss by one point does a good deal of damage, is there anything in blood we could lose 1 point from in your mind, to gete the pet?
Are talking Master of Ghouls, because that is point #26 for an unholy guild, not 21
I think that the 21 point talent he was referring to might have been the Unholy Blight spell, which does a nice bit of damage on its own.
It’d be interesting to see the actual DPS difference between builds. I’ve personally run my DK (lvl 67) in Unholy spec for quite a while now and I couldn’t be happier with the resilience spec’ing Unholy provides. I think that Blood/Unholy would be a great balance for DualSpec’ing one.
I’m pretty excited to see what the rotation is gonna be and the dps output that could be potentially had. I’m still a lowby (lvl 68) but i’ve been switching spec’s a lot lately trying to find the best dps. I started Blood, but wanted more dps so went unholy for the ghoul, then that wasn’t doin it for me so i was frost for a while also.
Our top dps in our guild is always a rogue or mage. warlocks are up there but our dks are normally like 5-8 would say they are top dps.
wow this has gotten alot of chat pretty quick.
Tks for the post. I have very similar talent 51/3/17 and still lag behind mage and rogue in Heroic instance (with all ToC lvl200 blue/epic gear). On the other hand, I finish second on healing and almost never die.
I am also using a blood spec for tanking (slightly diff talents) and it works ok, good on boss, soso with lots of mobs.
I m waiting for rotation.
Another thing, I tried all 3 specs while leveling, they’re all good. Unholy is nice for multiple mobs + controlling the pet, Blood great with absolutely no downtime and health always full, even on 30k elite mobs, Frost ok, not as fun, but efficient too.
Currently leveling my mage (74), she kills like crazy, but dies too often…
Its an alright spec, however theres a few mistakes you have made. I see alot of dks take 3/3 morbidity which is arguable IF they use the glyph of dark death instead of disease. If using GoD instead of dark death i would recomend only spending two points in morbidity and placing your extra point in nercrosis. Alot of dks also go 5/5necro, just purely because of its easier than having to summon a pet and grants the same/ifnotbetter dps in some cases(if AoTD can not be used within 20min of each other due to instance encounters). Sorry to be a pain and make negative comments, i love your guides and always point my friends that just started playing here to get some nice tips and tricks etc :> keep up the good work
The comments by Norman make sense, so was wondering if you had an explanation on why you put the last 7 talents in Unholy as you did?
Thanks and love your guides