• Army of the Dead: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Army Ghoul damage dropped by 50%. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Ok now this change seems like nothing really happened, if you consider what they really did. The main thing I see with it though is it means Army of the Dead will be ready for every boss in a dungeon or raid when combined with Night of the Dead.

• Raise Ally: The cooldown on this ability has been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas. Has anyone ever used this besides me?

When I used it, the player got so angry with me I thought he was going to hunt me down and hurt me. He cursed so much and so loud I think I actually heard him from hundreds of miles away. Also make sure that the person you use it on knows what is going to happen.

• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.

Finally Blizzard has listened and helped the Death Knights that want to tank. The added defence and Stamina will help alot.

• Rune Strike: Threat generated by this ability increased by approximately 17%.

Now this also will help the tanking ability and improve the ability to hold aggro.

Talent Changes
Unholy

• Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 2/4 minutes, down from 5/10 minutes.

This will definitly be a help to the unholy build.

• Scourge Strike: Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done.

It  was needed to boost Unholy build to the level of the Blood build.  With this change it is like Heart Strike for the Unholy build causing lots of damage.

• Unholy Blight: This talent now deals only 10% of Death Coil damage as a damage-over-time effect on the target.

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later another nerf but at least this one isn’t to bad.

Glyph Changes

• Glyph of Icy Touch: Instead of granting additional runic power, this glyph now causes Frost Fever to deal 20% additional damage.

This is the best change of all on the DK changes. An Additional 20% is huge!!

Glyph Fixes

These are some minor fixes to some known to exist bugs and nothing is changed  that affects build.

• Glyph of Bone Shield: Now updates the number of charges in the Bone Shield tooltip.
  Glyph of Dark Death: Now updates the tooltip on Death Coil. In addition, its own tooltip has been clarified to indicate it also applies to healing from Death Coil.
  Glyph of Death’s Embrace: Now updates the tooltip on Death Coil to indicate runic power is refunded.
  Glyph of Heart Strike: Now updates the tooltip on Heart Strike to indicate Heart Strike applies a movement snare.
  Glyph of Icebound Fortitude: Now updates the tooltip on Icebound Fortitude to show increased damage reduction.
  Glyph of Plague Strike: Now updates the damage shown in Plague Strike’s tooltip.
  Glyph of Unbreakable Armor: Now updates the tooltip on Unbreakable Armor. Tooltip on glyph modified to make its effect more clear as well.

Class Changes Mainly just corrections and do not affect gameplay.

• Bloody Strikes: Now properly increases the damage displayed in the tooltips of Blood Strike and Heart Strike.
• Bone Shield: Tooltip corrected to indicate the player has the correct number of bones.
• Chains of Ice: This ability will no longer appear to land on targets which are immune.
• Desecration: The debuff from this ability will no longer sometimes appear as if it were cast by someone else. In addition, the visual and snare from this ability will now both dissipate at the same time. Further, this talent will now respect snare immunities, and no longer sometimes snare immune targets.
• Frost Presence: The animation for activating this presence will no longer also have the animation for Blood Presence played at the same time.
• Master of Ghouls: Tooltip typo corrected.
• Night of the Dead: Tooltip typo corrected.
• Obliterate: This ability will no longer sometimes fail to do additional damage based on diseases on the target.
• Raise Ally: While this spell is active on a target, they will not be sent to the graveyard, prematurely ending the spell.
• Strangulate: Updated tooltip to include the functionality that this ability also interrupts spellcasting on NPCs.
• Taste of Blood: Corrected inaccurate information in combat log tooltip.
• Unholy Presence: The animation for activating this presence will no longer also have the animation for Blood Presence played at the same time.

Bottom line here folks, Unholy is getting a big buff, big enough that it just may rival Blood in terms of DPS and  possibly  Frost for Tanking. All this while blood retains the status quo. Blizzard made great efforts to balance the trees out in one of the biggest updates any class has ever received in a single patch.

The basic principle of account security is this:  the ne’er do well individuals want what is inside of your account and they don’t want to go through all the trouble of getting it. Often times their plans are extremely transparent and its up to you to stop them in their tracks. With a few various added practices you can prevent most every form of account security problems. You can’t prevent them all though and this guide can’t act as a complete shield for them all but you can make the chance so small you cant see it.

Account security comes in three phases. Your primary line of defense is your Email and Password. Second is your security question and making sure your Email account and your WoW account passwords are not the same really helps.  Third is your CD key and any other information that can be used to verify its your account.

If you do get hacked though Blizzard’s top notch customer service is there to help out. They can restore your account and give you a new password. They can even restore any goods stolen. ( see more on this later). Although, its best never to let someone up to no good get that far in the first place.

A secure email/password combo starts with having a unique email address and password.

The following is from Microsoft and can greatly benefit your password security.

6 steps to build a strong password

The strongest passwords look like a random string of characters to attackers. But random strings of characters are hard to remember.

Make a random string of characters based on a sentence that is memorable to you but is difficult for others to guess.

1. Think of a sentence that you will remember
   Example: “My son Aiden is three years old.”
2. Turn your sentence into a password
   Use the first letter of each word of your memorable sentence to create a string, in this case: “msaityo”.
3. Add complexity to your password or pass phrase
   Mix uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. Introduce intentional misspellings.
   For example, in the sentence above, you might substitute the number 3 for the word “three”, so a password might be “MsAi3yo”.
4. Substitute some special characters
   Use symbols that look like letters, combine words, or replace letters with numbers to make the password complex.
   Using these strategies, you might end up with the password “M$8ni3y0.”
5. Test your new password with Password Checker
   Microsoft Password Checker evaluates your password’s strength as you type.
6. Keep your password a secret
   Treat your passwords with as much care as the information that they protect.

Blizzard to the rescue: Blizzard Authenticator.

The Battle.net Authenticator is (but shouldn’t be) an optional tool that offers Battle.net account users an additional layer of security to help prevent unauthorized account access. This includes World of Warcraft players who log in to the game using a Battle.net account.  The Authenticator application itself is a small program that you install and access on your cell phone or mobile device. For the complete Q&A go to the  Official Blizzard Q&A.

Speaking from personal experience here, having this little thing on my accounts (yes, plural) I can certainly vouch for the security. As a matter of fact it’s a pain in the glutius maximus (anatomical body part) to have to re-type the randomly changing numbers whenever you get disconnected from the server. But if it’s that big of a pain for you, think of how much of a pain it’s going to be for the “hacker”

The concept is really sound, most companies actually force their users to go through some similar hoops, RSA security cards etc. The Blizzard (Mobile) Authenticator uses much the same technology.

Blizzard Authenticator

The Mobile Authenticator can be downloaded Here for your iPhone or other hand held device follow the link for the list of supported units. and is free (I am certain it’s free for iPhone and iPod touch, not sure about other versions)

The Key-chain Authenticator can be purchased from these Official Blizzard web sites:

• Here (US only)
• Here (Canada, Australia, NZ and Latin America)
• Here (Europe)
• Here (Korea)

Certainly a worth while investment if you’re still willing to pay a monthly fee to play the game, paying a fraction of that montly fee one-time to protect all you’ve acomplished sounds like a no-brainer to me

Another problem these days are the people who go to websites spammed in trade chat. These include gold buying sites and “your a winner of a new mount from Blizzard.” Don’t fall for these things as you can be hacked very easily by doing so. So if you want to protect your toons, like your 10k DPS specialist or the Tank that can’t be killed follow simple common sense practices and enjoy your new found security.

The Death Knight starts with some pretty decent gear for all intents and purposes and it can get you far into the game towards level 80. Some quests give you some gear that may provide a boost in stats and that’s fine and dandy. But when do you need a major overhaul in gear? Your fist and most important gear set will be when you are level 78 when you will want a full set of

Savage Saronite Battlegear

• Savage Saronite Bracers
• Savage Saronite Gauntlets
• Savage Saronite Hauberk
• Savage Saronite Legplates
• Savage Saronite Pauldrons
• Savage Saronite Skullshield
• Savage Saronite Waistguard
• Savage Saronite Walkers

If you notice there is a repeating theme in these items. Firstly, Strength and Stamina and Secondly Critical Strike Rating and Resilience. These are really good stats for your Death Knight at this time and can get you running regular Dungeons and once you get to Level 80, running Heroics.  Even if this set is more for PvP, it can certainly boost your gear beyond the Quest greens you picked up alongside the BoE blues. There are a few items you can get to compliment your build even better.

Lvl 80 Crafted gear:

Icebane gear is a nice choice but you may ask why. They have uses down the line that can benefit you more than you might know. The best feature about these 3 pieces of gear is that they are highly customizable since you don’t really care about the socket bonus. You could for example fill all 7 available sockets with 20 str gems for a total of 140str.

• Icebane Girdle
• Icebane Treads
• Icebane Chestguard

Couple the Icebane set with these 2 crafted items (possibly replacing the boots):

• Spiked Titansteel Helm
• Spiked Titansteel Treads

Regular and Heroic Trial of the Champion

In Regular ToC, you can enter the dungeon as of level 75. You won’t be able to equip the loot in there until level 80 but the XP is good and if you can get carried (Yes, carried!) through it often enough you can certainly have a decent set of gear when you hit 80 (enchanted and gemmed).

• Banner of Victory
• Breastplate of Imperial Joust
• Drape of the Undefeated
• Gauntlets of the Stouthearted Crusader
• Girdle of Arrogant Downfall
• Helm of the Violent Fray
• Uruka’s Band of Zeal

Conversly as soon as you hit 80 you can start doing the Heroic version of the dungeon once every day to obtain the following gear:

• Ancient Pendant of Arathor
• Legplates of Relentless Onslaught
• Majestic Silversmith Shoulderplates
• Plated Greaves of Providence
• Vambraces of Unholy Command

Weapons:

Two hand weapons or our thing and anything that adds Strength and Stamina are great such as your first weapon once you hit level 80,  the Titansteel Destroyer. This weapon is a weapon of choice because of its stats. You cant get much better until you run some heroics and get a nice drop. Keep in mind the stats you have learned to look for and you should do just fine.

A weapon to look for that is far superior is Edge of Ruin and can be found only in Heroic ToC.

Next thing your working toward on gear of course is Raid gear. You know that gear that is all pretty with the purple name tags and lots of gem slots and stats that make you drool that the other person is wearing and you think must be hacked because you have never ever seen anything like that before so it just cant be real…Oh its real…and you can get it. Even if you only play one hour a day you can get the gear for raiding.

Emblem Gear

Gear can also be attained by using Emblem of Conquest and Emblem of Triumph. This is the gear of champions. This is the gear that gets you invited to raids. Keep in mind you must know your role and how to play your character but the gear helps.

Emblem of  Conquest gear:

2-piece T8.5

• Conqueror’s Darkruned Helmet
• Conqueror’s Darkruned Battleplate

5 other pieces of gear that are of interest to DKs:

• Belt of the Singing Blade
• Bladebreaker Gauntlets
• Sigil of the Vengeful Heart (The Emblem of Triumph one is FAR better)
• Legplates of the Violet Champion
• Spiked Battleguard Choker

Emblem Of Triumph Gear:

When it come to Emblems of Triumph, Blizzard changed the rules for Tier 9. There are 3 versions of every one of the tier 9 pieces of gear that share a common set bonus. Let’s refer to them as 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3 for simplicity. the last set (9.3) can only be obtained from Heroic Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-H. ToC) token drop. and a single token can purchase any of the 5 pieces available. Gone are the days of running an instance 10 times to get the one piece of Tier gear you actually want.

The two other tiers 9.1 and 9.2 can be purchased with Emblems of Triumph: 9.1 requires only the emblems themselves where as the 9.2 set requires 1.5x more emblems as well as a Trophy of the crusade. On a side note the 2 and 4-piece bonuses of T9.x are way better then the T8.x equivalent.

Here is the complete list of items that are of interest to you:

• Bloodshed Band
• Faceplate of Thunderous Rampage
• Shoulderplates of Trembling Rage
• Mark of Supremacy
• Sigil of Virulence (This should be your FIRST PRIORITY)

Tier 9.1

• Koltira’s Battleplate of Conquest
• Koltira’s Gauntlets of Conquest
• Koltira’s Helmet of Conquest
• Koltira’s Legplates of Conquest
• Koltira’s Shoulderplates of Conquest

Tier 9.2

• Koltira’s Battleplate of Triumph
• Koltira’s Gauntlets of Triumph
• Koltira’s Helmet of Triumph
• Koltira’s Legplates of Triumph
• Koltira’s Shoulderplates of Triumph

You should note that if you are inclined to PvP there are complete sets available for purchase with both Conquest and Triumph emblems. For more information about gearing up to Raid, check out  Agorg’s Quick Gearing Guide for the Want to be Raider

Follow that guide and you’ll be raiding in no time flat, and Dominating the DPS meter in the process.

I hope you have enjoyed yourself on our DK tour of The Best DPS build for Blood Spec Death Knight in patch 3.2 and may your DPS meters hit the roof.

On a personal note. I don’t claim to have all the answers to all the questions about the Death Knight but it is my favorite class. I play the DPS DK exclusively and study and test it all the time. I have several lvl 80 DKs on different realms for testing and one I play on. I will get you up to speed on the upcoming changes as best I can for patch 3.3 and thank you for all your input.

In this installment we’ll cover the little things that are important to know while playing your DK, some are common sense and some you might already know, but a quick recap never hurt anyone.

Keep in mind: your DK is a 2-Hand weapon specialist. Gearing up will be our next part of the series so I won’t go into details here.

What other skills will I need to use?  

Pestilence:

Is very useful for multi-mob as it puts your PS and IT on all causing damage to every mob. If you’re soloing, it works out just fine but in a group it can cause problems. In a group (5-10-25 man), the tank gets aggro on the first mob and you hit the main target right after. The tank in the meantime is making sure he has aggro on all the mobs in the group. If you hit Pestilence before he does get aggro on the group you could pull threat off the tank … and that is not good. Timing is very important. While you heal yourself for the most part, if you get aggro you will not be able to heal yourself fast enough causing your healer to start healing you as well as the tank. FYI If the healer has to make a choice between healing a Silly DK who pulled threat and the Tank that will keep the rest of the group alive, do you want to guess who’s getting the heal?

For the most part you should be able to keep yourself healed up without any help and sometimes….you get a healer that refuses to heal DK’s and up-time is critical for the success of any group.

Death and Decay:

D&D is not one of your very useful skills for a Blood build but it does have its uses.

Trash mobs! Now in Culling of Strath there are a few times to use it on the little turned humans being sure to get all your runes back up and ready for the next fight. Again this takes practice and there are a few dungeons you can use it but not many. It works alright when soloing a bit but again it’s not a skill used much for this build.

Chains of Ice:

Chains of Ice is mostly used as Crowd Control in PVP and does have its uses while soloing but rarely will you ever use it in a dungeon. All bosses are immune to CC and you want the tanks to keep the trash mobs busy. While soloing, you could be questing along just fine and fighting solo mobs that tend to run away when one gets away and brings back his friends en mass. OOPS!! This is about the only time it’s a very useful thing to use. It’s nice to have be be aware of it’s limitations: CC

The Pet:

Your Pet Ghoul (summoned from Raise Dead ability) and your Dancing Rune Weapon. These guys can boost your DPS quite a bit to the point of amazement. There are a few tricks however to using them that will help you get the most out of them you can:

• Make sure your Ghoul is ready for every boss. Summoning him is on a 3 minute cool-down and your Dancing Rune Weapon has a 1- ½ minutes. So this also takes practice and timing. Make sure both are off CD for every boss, (ie. Don’t click “Ready” on the ready check if you’re not ready!)

• Whatever you do, make sure you have your pet out on every fight and Keep control of your pet at all times. It should be attacking the same target you are. It won’t change target unless the target it’s attacking is dead. If it isn’t, command it to do so using the Gnaw ability or  Ctrl-1 to force your pet to attack a new target.

• If you control your pet in this way there is absolutely no reason to ever take your pet off of Passive mode, that way it can attack the Boss while you’re kiting some trash (Gluth fight).
• Keeping your pet on passive will allow him to attack a target that you death grip much faster. Otherwise your pet jumps 20 yds. to your target and is stuck running back to you at a leisurely pace, by which time your target is most likely dead anyway.

• If the pet is low on health, you can ask your healers to throw a little love(Heals) it’s way. Certainly not at the expense of the tanks, of course, but you can remind your healers that pets need health too.

• When all else fails and your health is really low, remember that you can sack your pet for the health benefit of Death Pact. Yet another “Oh, $H1T!” button at your disposal.

• Unless you’re Tanking yourself, don’t use the Dark Command ability (Taunt), every tank will be grateful, and so will you. The days of Crowd Control seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur with Wrath but thankfully, Blizzard has specifically stated they were bring it back “in the near future”, whatever that means.

Maybe by then the DKs will have to learn to use their pets again and so will Hunters. CC some mobs, protect the healer, even back-up tank (Yes, Hunter Pets used to be quasi-acceptable tanks back in the day). Until that day, focus on what you do best: DPS.

So there it is, mass destruction is a Death Knights purpose and it is key that when you’re playing one in DPS that you should do just that. Enjoy your Death Knight and remember practice and timing are your best friends.

The next, final, installment of the DK series will cover Gear.

… To be continued.

Professions:

JewelCrafting and Blacksmithing are you two top choices when it comes to professions for a DK. They combine the most Raid-Benefits to your character than any other professions. They are also the most expensive.
If you choose Jewelcrafting as one of your trade skills then you’re in for a treat. Jewelers’ Gems will be your best friends. You can have 3 of these unique Gems on your equipment with stats like 34 to Hit Rating or 34 to Strength and even 34 to Expertise that can produce results.
As a Blacksmith you’ll get two extra sockets to put those bad boys into.
One way to mitigate that expense, is to level Mining first while picking up twice as much ore as you really need. Get JC up and then drop Mining to pick up BS and use the remainder of your mats for that one.
If gold has always been an issue for you, feel free to pick up Gavin’s AH Mastery Guide

Your gemming priority is as follows:

1. Hit Rating
2. Strength,
3. Expertise / Armor Pen
4. Critical Strike

Enchants:

1. Strength
2. Attack Power
3. Critical Strike
4. Haste

Some Stats to make the above make sense

Hit Rating:

DKs and all melee classes share the same 8% cap on that, until you get 8% hit rating (263 Hit rating) this stat is your top priority. As long as your are not Hit capped you should be trying to get there. This is especially important when using a 2-H weapon, after all, every swing you miss is damage that you’re NOT doing.
Once you are Hit capped, Strength: you can never have enough Strength. For a DK 1 Strenght = 2 Attack power. Attack power directly translates into DPS …

Now the following comes from the guys at ElitistJerks.com. These guys really know the math.

Expertise vs. Armor Pen

Expertise
•1 Expertise Skill reduces the chance your attacks will be dodged/parried by 0.25%
•32.79 Rating is equal to 1% less chance your attacks will be dodged/parried.
•8.20 Rating is equal to 0.25% less chance your attacks will be dodged and parried (each) and thus is equal to 1 Expertise Skill.

Armor Penetration Rating
It doesn’t affect our damage from Diseases, Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Scourge Strike or Death Coil. This makes Armor Penetration have a reduced value for Unholy and Frost Specs. Blood however does have quite a lot of benefit from ArP Rating, due to the majority of its damage being Physical.
We need 15.39 Rating to ignore 1% armor on our target.

So although ArPen is cheaper to get (15.39 = 1% armor ignore) the Expertise affects both Dodged hits and parries which redure your DPS significantly. Bottom line, for a DK they are relatively equivalent because we use a slow 2-H weapon and Strength is always more valueable anyway, so gemming and enchanting for those stats may not be so wise. Don’t forget that most of your gear will naturally come with some of those stats

“What  do I need to upgrade first?”

Just remember, you will never be taken seriously as a player, for end-game content, if you don’t enchant and socket your gear.

WoW-Heroes.com

WoWHead.com/profiles

Both have a fantastic tool to look at yourself in the mirror so to speak. Using those web sites you can see, at a glance, what your character has equipped, what he is missing, what upgrades are available and where to find them.

That’s it for this installment of the DK series, tomorrow we’ll cover the finer points and before we’re done we’ll have gone over the gear as well .

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

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!

Some people never join any guild, others change every other week, so what makes people change? Here’s what our reporter “in the field” has come up with:

Time to Switch Guilds or Guild Hopping

We all know someone or we are someone that looks for that perfect guild to fit our personal definition of the perfect guild. For me, it has been a long road to where I am now in DYS. This is a sore topic for some and a joke to others, but, finding where you want to be is very important to your gaming fun.

This is a topic that I just had to write about. It is one that many players either struggle with at some emotional level or take far too casually.  While not getting teary over the changing of guilds, it is something that I take very seriously and do not enter into lightly.

Your guild is your in game family and deserves some respect because of it. In general guilds help each other and jointly progress through the game.  If you’re like me, you want to spend more time questing, adventuring and gearing up with these players than anyone else. If they are so important, why would you want to change?

To me there are a few very solid reasons to change, although I still don’t recommend doing so without considering it fully.  The main reasons are:

Behavioral or Political Differences – This is a big one for me, I have joined a few guilds with characters only to find out that guild chat is full of swearing, trash talking, degrading people because of where they live, religion, politics or some other crazy thing.  To me, I play the game to get away from real life concerns and childish behavior, not to put up with it in yet another location.  So if the guild won’t address these players, its time to leave for a new guild. I can only put up with this for so long before leaving.

Difference in Play Times or Play Styles – Sometimes it happens that you join a guild and it or you evolve to a different play-style.  You could join a guild to level and quest and then the guild decides to do mainly PvP.  Or you could be online from 5-9 Pacific Time and everyone else in the guild is on at 5-9 eastern, so you never see each other. Some people change their lifestyle to play at times when everyone else is playing but some people can’t do that.

Guild Rules – Some guilds run very loose, some very tight and militaristic.  If the style of the guild you’re in does not suit your style, switch.  I have been in a high level raiding guild that dictated builds, gear, and play times to a strict degree (this guild folded after only 3 months).  If it’s all about progression for you that may be ok.  If you want to have some fun and choices, then it’s probably not your cup of tea.

Level Differences – If you join a guild of like level players and then they all zoom to 80 while you’re still at 25 and can never find a group, it may be time to switch guilds.  This happens all the time, and some guilds are very cool about helping out their low level players, while in others you may as well not exist.

Size / Progression – This is the weakest of the reasons to leave, but still valid.  Sometimes guilds just get stuck at a point where they will not get any further in the game.  It could be due to not enough players, not the right classes, or any other number of things.  If you have done everything in the game to progress, and have nothing left to do without switching to a larger guild, it can be valid.

There are also some lame reasons to change guilds that I see way to often:

I don’t like player X – Personality conflicts happen all the time.  You’re an adult either fix it or ignore them.  If it’s one person out of 100 in a guild, don’t let them spoil your fun and leave the guild.

Loot arguments –Sometimes arguments happen over loot.  I see many players run from a guild over one argument.  Sure, we all want that shiny new item, but look at it objectively.  Why did someone else get it? Was it fair (even though you didn’t like it)? Was there a reason that makes sense for the guild (if it was not purely fair)?  If the leaders are all friends and everything goes to them it may be a real issue, but my experience is that that is rarely the case, and its generally greed getting in peoples eyes.

X Guild is further in Y Raid – So? Work at it.  If the guild is further it’s because they have more experience and time into the event.  You will get there if everyone sticks with it and doesn’t bail.  The other guild was at the same point you where at one point in time.

I switched my current favorite toon due to the Size / Progression issue. While I loved playing with the few people in the guild that were level 80, we never had enough on to do normal instance runs, and they really didn’t want to progress further into the game like I did. I waited a long time since Dominate mentioned starting an Alliance guild, and the guild I left fully knew about it long before it happened.

In conclusion, find where you want to be, and stay there as long as you can because a guild you fit in is rare. I am where I want to be and have no plans on leaving for any of the above reasons.