Best DPS Build for Blood Spec Death Knight in patch 3.2: The Rotation
Posted on November 14th, 2009 by Bigtaker under Alliance, Blood Elf, Build, Death Knights, Dranei, Dwarf, Efficiency Tips, Exploits, Faster Leveling, General Tips, Gnome, Horde, Human, Night Elf, Orc, PVE, Patch, Spec, Tauren, Troll, Worgen, WotLKWelcome back to the second installment of the DK series. Today, we’ll cover Glyphs and Rotation.
Glyphs are pretty straight forwards; you saw them in the link to the build on Yesterday’s article. The only argument I see is for Glyph of Icy Touch instead of Glyph of Disease. And after field testing it in multiple scenarios, based on my play style and rotation I just prefer the Glyph of Disease because of the instant refresh of all diseases. After all the less time I spend refreshing a DoT, the more time I can spend DPSing.
Glyph of Death Strike- Major
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon-Major
Glyph of Disease- Major
Glyph of Horn of Winter-Minor
Glyph of Pestilence-Minor
Glyph of Raise Dead- Minor
When it comes to rotation, some classes have a fixed rotation (Prot Paladins) while other classes have a priority-based rotation (Feral Druids). Death Knights can, ironically put out more damage with the simplest of rotations. It’s probably why we’re accused of “Face Rolling”, but every DK knows that’s just plain Jealousy, even if no other class will admit it!
Step1: Put up your Diseases
Plague Strike(Puts: Blood Plague) and Icy Touch (to put Frost Fever on your target)
Once those are up you can forget about them for the rest of the fight and as long as you remember to keep them up with Pestilence, you’re golden. Remember, Pestilence is a top priority before your diseases run out, It’s far less “expensive” to keep them up than it is to renew them if they fall off.
Step 2: Do your thing!
Death Strike, Heart Strike (x2), Death Coil (Runic Power Dump),
Death Strike, Heart Strike (x3), Dancing Rune Weapon
Rince and repeat.
It’s preferable to wait for the second time through your rotation to ensure that you have all 4 Blood Worms up before you call your DRW, but if you already have 4 Blood Worms, you can go ahead and pop DRW on that first pass. With the glyph, your DRW is up for 17 seconds and will spend the next 73 seconds on cool down. During that time Death Strike and Heart Strike are pretty much all you need, as long as you remember to keep up Pestilence before your diseases run out.
Now this may sound a little simplistic and too good to be true, but on the PTR I’ve personally done 8.4K DPS and after enchanting and gemming up the gear, I brought that up to a staggering 10,200 DPS. (Ok, it’s in full T9 and 245 Epics, but still …)
This just proves that a rotation doesn’t have to be complicated to generate results and that some times, the simplest way is the best way.
Next time we’ll cover Gemming and Enchanting as well as some base stats and their importance to a DK.
… To Be Continued
I disagree with the rotation using deathstrikes before your Runicpower is built up, it should be icytouch,plaguestrike,heartstrike,heartstrike, deathstrike, deathcoil, heartstrike,heartstrike,heartstrike,heartstrike,deathstrike,deathcoil
keeping diseases up, actual priority is on heartstrikes , For AOE once your diseases are up you spam deathstrike and bloodboil , easy 6500-7500+ dps on onyxia whelps
all i can say is..whoa. thats huge dps. im currently frost and while i can rival a feral druid in aoe dps single target it falls apart. i may have to change to blood after seeing this. i have dabbled in all 3 trees before and i really like frost so i may keep it for a secondary spec, but even unholy these days is making a comeback. im seeing like 6.7k dps single target out of unholy dks :S makes it hard to keep playing the class how i wanna play it
yea that dps is sick my dk can pull around 6k with my blood spec I might try this new spec out and see how it holds up. I really wanna see some stuff about rogue specs gear and all that to maybe.
What about dps rotation for a fury warrior? Last night I was in Uld 10 and was getting over 8k dps thru the first 4 bosses…..then went down to 5k….guessing becuse of damage to armor……was I seeing this correctly? Could it have been buffs or is my guy rocking finally……I am slinky, alexstrasza, 80 night elf warrior……..thanx
Hey slinky, just saying… probably not a chance you were doing 8 thousand dps unless you left your damage from leviathan on your meters and never reset it which would explain the large number and your dps dropping significantly over the next few bosses. With your gear if you can pull 8k dps consistently you should have some sort of award. I’d understand if you were far more geared and like cleave spamming on razorscale trash or something but…otherwise I can’t see how this would be possible.
Next on the list I agree somewhat with NeiX’s post, however if you’ve got certain things going for you as I do (greatness card, runeforged weapon, the sigil that procs for 200 more str, 2 piece tier 9 for 180 more str, and orc racial) my rotation would be hs,hs,ds,(pop orc racial, by this time the rest will be active) drw, it, ps (this way your initial diseases go up x2 since your drw mimics what you do) hs,hs,hs,hs,ds,erw,pt,hs,hs,ds,hs,hs,hs,hs etc.
anyways the point of this all is that by putting up your diseases when you’ve got all of these strength attributes up they will hit a hell of a lot harder, next by having the glyph to make pestilence(pt) refresh your diseases you will always be able to keep your strong diseases on the target as it refreshes the diseases at their original full strength. e.g. if you have 6k ap normally and with all of this you’re at 9k the diseases will tick as if you always have 9k ap even after the str buffs fall off.
Therefore proc strength buffs then apply diseases and refresh with pt its better. If you don’t have any of the above than a standard easy to follow rotation is something along the lines of it,ps,hs,hs,ds,hs,hs,hs,hs,ds,drw, etc as NeiX mentioned.
Sincerely, The Fonz.
thanks thats a great help now you know why i call you the Fonz