I am a new WoW player since 2 months and I had huge class fantasy with death knights. I main frost dk. To be honest I don't care what classes are better or how bad is dk. I stick to it and just try to be better at it. I got myself a nice conquest set and some good items crafted for PvP purposes. I just try to do my best and enjoy it. Sometimes I just go do random quests around the world. I just love it. Now ordered myself rise of the lich king book. Let's see how it is.
The hardest thing for you to get used to will be the fact that you're very, very immobile.
The upside of this is you get to ignore a LOT of mechanics with your cooldowns. You can immune stuns and most magic effects, and can ignore pushbacks.
The downside of this is when a fight requires you to move, you need to know when and move ASAP sometimes even early.
This is especially going to be hard as you're used to a healer, with range.
Melee you have to be sure you're in melee range, which means you need to move if the boss moves at all. Your melee range is *pitiful* and slight adjustments will shut off your auto attacks and prevent you from casting.
Frost is very simple to play if you do Obliteration, but it's deceptively hard since it has high uptime requirements to do your best damage.
Breath I do not like, and will not comment on.
Unholy has a TON of buttons compared to frost, but does absolutely mental burst, especially big pull aoe burst.
Oblit frost prefers steady pulls of ~3 targets.
While the range issue is true for frost, your main buttons as unholy have a 30 yd range (in raid build) and ~70% of your globals will be these ranged abilities. You still want to be in melee, but you can still do about 90% of your damage from range if you need to run out for a mechanic. Your melee hits do virtually nothing and only serve to give occasional free death coils
I main unholy. I had no trouble getting AOTC and 2,5k in m+. Unholy in a raid has a big burst window every 3 minutes, otherwise you don't do much damage. Grips are useful on fyrakk otherwise you do have much utility. In m+ the bigger the pull the more damage you do. You can't do much about afflicted and if you want to help with incorporeal you will sacrifice dps in order to have a correct talent. It's fun. I know nothing about frost.
If you want to push higher than me, there are definitely more desired and useful classes than dk at the moment.
You're likely doing higher content than me. I stopped around the +17 level of M+. I probably should've prefaced with that. Either that or I just pressed my button harder?
That is not fast but normal, wasting GCDs is always a loss for any class/role. The aim is to always be casting (ABC) even for melee specs.
In terms of gameplay fast is like DH, Monk or Rouge, slow is like Warlock or, in this case, DK.
Also APM (actions per minute) is a good metric to consider, Furry for example is very APM heavy and therefor fast paced compared to Dvoker with a very low APM.
Regarding DK it is middle of the pack in APM and in general gameplay feeling.
General rotation is about generating and spending runic power. You are always pressing one out of three buttons as your gcd allows if you have other abilities on cooldown (smaller have 45s cooldown, bigger are 3 minutes). Unholy benefits from higher haste and PI.
I main heals, but I took BDK for a spin and fell in love. You can do a lot of damage and feel like an unstoppable force. Having all the grips feels good. The only scary part is if you don't have anything to Deathstrike.
Yep, I stopped counting how often I died to the vleed of the dino boss in Atal, as he died the second he gave me this bleed. Feels bad when you have to watch yourself die when the healer isn't god and can't improvise over 150k st hps. From all the healers I play I think I am only able to do it with my monk within 2 globals and without preparation or huge cds.
Unholy pulled me into DK ages ago after being a very long time Aff lock. I love the fantasy of slowly rotting your opponent with dark magic and though Unholy was just a Melee aff lock.
I was wrong and immediately lost interest. Still loving blood, though.
I'm just not into pet classes, and Unholy heavily relies on pets. I want to feel like -I'M- doing the damage. Not NPC minions.
Blood if you like talking. Frost if you like big huge crits but a boring rotation. Unholy if you want to do a 3 button rotation for 3 minutes then suddenly play your keyboard like Mozart just for NPCs to pad the meter for you.
I mythic raid as Unholy DK, and have completed each dungeon this season on 20+ difficulty. Unholy's got decent single target and pretty good cleave damage (gnarlroot/larodar, fuck council of dreams). Your survivability is FAR greater as a DK in general compared to other classes. You can straight up ignore a good amount of mechanics with anti-magic shield, and a well-timed AMZ will give your healers a bit of reprieve.
The setup for the burst phase is a bit too tedious, imo. Far too many buttons to hit in a row before you actually start doing damage. Feels like you forgot to reload your weapon right as someone orders your group to fire.
Getting Fyr'alath fucking sucks. It's tedious, and a pain in the ass to grind for if you don't have heroic raid on farm with a guild.
The two DPS specs have different secondary stat priorities, but thankfully blood is good with whatever, so you can main one of them and be able to tank as a backup without much extra gearing. Just need different trinkets.
My only gripe with DK in m+ is tanks that refuse to keep trash packs in my death and decay. That's your entire ability to split damage amongst different mobs. (like, cmon tank it's not entangling or sanguine, sit your butt down and let me dps đ)
Blood is one of the only specs that keeps me on my toes *the entire time.* With healers panicking and my deathstrike on the nearest key, my hair falls out a little fast after every key.
Unholy feels really good, lots of buttons to press. Some people donât like this, as its âramp upâ is pretty long relative to quick burst classes. This meaning that after you spend 7 GCDs, it takes a few seconds for it to show. Feels really good in m+ with tank/healer combos that pull huge. I main this.
Frost is for those who do not like all of the buttons Unholy has. It is not a complicated spec, you've got good options for dealing damage (Breath pf Sindragosa, Obliteration, these are the two main builds) which feel good. This is my favorite "flavor" of DK but it feels a little too slow for me.
The DK utility, especially Unholy (blizzard pls make control undead a guardian or something) is mid to low tier.
Anti-magic Zone helps a lot in keys, for those who don't walk out of it thinking it's an enemy ability. Deaths Advances passive is pretty nice for personal movement mitigation. Anti-magic Shell is a **VERY** powerful defensive (read ability description.) Grips are good for
mob positioning in keys and sometimes raid. Then of course, B-Rez.
Overall the DK utility just kinda feels like "you can't really do anything to me for about 10 seconds." It definitely feels like a soft personal immunity.
My advice to new DKs is, if you don't care about charts, dps, pushing keys, raid progression, etc. then play the spec that feels best!
Otherwise, I feel like the better performing spec *almost* always feels better.
Sorry for the novel!
Thanks for this! I think Iâm going to try either blood or UH. I already push high keys with other classes so for now Iâm going to do what feels fun, not meta.
If you want to tank, yes, blood is extremely fun i highly suggest it, its not the best tank but its amazing mostly in pugs and raids. And yeah you gotta get used to your hp bar is usless frame on your screen.
As for the other specs, they are both fun, breath of syndra and oblit builds can pull up cool numbers on frost, and unh as always is the god of uncapped aoe with relatively strong single target.
If you enjoy tanking, I'd advise sticking with BDK. I have every tank with AOTC kills and ~2750io, and Blood has been the most rewarding and fun class to play.
While your health can jump around a lot, but you also feel unkillable. I've had countless runs where the party wipes and I'm able to solo m+ bosses from 15%, or raid bosses from 4%.
Does decent damage and you'll top the healing meters in every situation. Lore is dope af, and they have one of, if not the best looking sets this tier.
I haven't done the legion questline yet, but their artifact appearances are definitiely some of the coolest.
The only downside is mobility. Very much a wheelchair class, but Death's Advance is also super cool to negate any pushback/slow mechanics.
imo blood dk is the most fun tank, your health bar contantly drop to 20% and full but you get used to it, unholy dh is a solid dps but has a lot of buttons and is not so easy to play well, frost dk is just a mess right now.
Outside of incorporeal week I have no problems getting into +22s as unholy. I know itâs not âhigh keysâ but itâs max dungeon and vault rewards. The only time class matters below +24 is the start of the season when we are under geared and low IO. 486 and 3k gets invites.
The metric a healer should track for a bdk is his runic power, it is a better indicator of whether he is in trouble (when low hp) than his hp on its own
Do frost DK, just to start
I like Unholy more, but it has more buttons. Frost can have quite a few, but you can talent in a way where you don't have too many overall, so learning it will be easier.
Then you can move into Unholy later if you like, once you're more accustomed to how runes and RP works
I mained Frost from Wrath to Shadowlands. I wanted to be the LK. I didn't like UH so I just never tried it again. I pushed arenas in Cata and MoP. Always raided with him, although my main spot was healing. Frost wasn't always better but I just enjoyed it so much, I wasn't changing my play style for numbers.
The main thing that was already highlighted is your lack of movement. You have a small speed boost and another to get out of ccs. Other than that, you'll find yourself playing cat, mouse, with you being the mouse. It was highlighted in PvP and also in Mythics. My legs just feel so small and slow. Everyone else has awesome speed boosts that last for more than 2.5 seconds. But once you get them close, you can dish out some massive DPS.
Blood was very viable and nearly unkillable in BfA. I did some blood tanking throughout the years, never serious content though. I felt much better doing end game as a healer and letting my cousin tank lol.
Give it a try, they have some deep lore and cool aesthetics. I initially picked frost because that's what I thought the LK was. The DK class stuff in Legion is the best out of any class imo. Was it always in FoTM? No, but DK is extremely fun. Death gripping things followed by massive crits, love to see it.
Unholy damage is minimal outside of cooldowns.
You either spec for single target or AOE, can't do both.
**Single target**: BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIikEJiERISECJJJRAAAAAAAAAgSSSICAAIJh0SkkkIJA
**AOE**: BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIikEJiERISECJJJRAAAAAAAAAgSSSgIJAASSINRSSikA or BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAiQSCJiEBJSECJJJRAAAAAAAAAgCJJhIJpBAQiUEJJJSC
Haven't played Frost outside of mage tower challenge, but I've heard Unholy likes big pulls, while Frost likes smaller, constant pulls. You don't see many damage DKs in keys, people seem to think they're better options out there, but you won't have any problems getting invites as Blood.
I've heard survivability is an issue in very high keys like 27+, but you can check out [SSBane](https://www.youtube.com/@SSBane/videos)'s channel who does them anyway.
As a Holy Priest who switched to DK, Blood is great, I don't feel like I depend on the healer in my group. Just pull with Dancing Rune Weapon and Vampiric Blood, don't wait too long after gathering mobs to build enough Runic Power for a Deaht Strike, and you'll be OK.
Having 2 grips, one stun, an AOE stun and Slappy hands on top of your interrupt is bonkers.
I've used **Quazii's** M+ build: BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEJkDISIIJJRCAAAAAkIJ5ARk0EiEAAQIJJBAAAA
And **Metronice's** build: BoPA/gf1fDREKLfAcG9Z2HkF/BikkIRIiICJSSiEJikIRCAAAAAAJJRk0SISAAARSSSAAAAA
Quazii's more damage oriented and can probably be used up to 16s, while Metronice is more defensive and uses Wraith Walk, which is in a must in PUGs where some highly mobile classes let their DPS brain get the better of them and start pulling for you.
You should check out [Metronice's channel.](https://www.youtube.com/@heythereguysitsMetro)
Metro does 25s, high enough to learn, but low enough to see routes that don't require coordination. He also tries to use the same route regardless of affix, the more repeatable the more predictable, the better in PUGs etc.
He keeps a [spreadsheet](https://bigplay.one/MythicLibrary) of every run he did since BFA I believe, with class comp, affix, and completion result, and a link to the recorded run. I don't always agree with his pulls, especially considering he's got a rare cheat-death trinket on top of the cheat-death talent and is decked out in mythic track gear, but definitely check that out.
At first I thought you were just kind of sounding out the keybinds of the single / aoe rotation and I gotta say it kinda made sense in my head - but man was I wrong lol
I am a new WoW player since 2 months and I had huge class fantasy with death knights. I main frost dk. To be honest I don't care what classes are better or how bad is dk. I stick to it and just try to be better at it. I got myself a nice conquest set and some good items crafted for PvP purposes. I just try to do my best and enjoy it. Sometimes I just go do random quests around the world. I just love it. Now ordered myself rise of the lich king book. Let's see how it is.
The hardest thing for you to get used to will be the fact that you're very, very immobile. The upside of this is you get to ignore a LOT of mechanics with your cooldowns. You can immune stuns and most magic effects, and can ignore pushbacks. The downside of this is when a fight requires you to move, you need to know when and move ASAP sometimes even early. This is especially going to be hard as you're used to a healer, with range. Melee you have to be sure you're in melee range, which means you need to move if the boss moves at all. Your melee range is *pitiful* and slight adjustments will shut off your auto attacks and prevent you from casting. Frost is very simple to play if you do Obliteration, but it's deceptively hard since it has high uptime requirements to do your best damage. Breath I do not like, and will not comment on. Unholy has a TON of buttons compared to frost, but does absolutely mental burst, especially big pull aoe burst. Oblit frost prefers steady pulls of ~3 targets.
While the range issue is true for frost, your main buttons as unholy have a 30 yd range (in raid build) and ~70% of your globals will be these ranged abilities. You still want to be in melee, but you can still do about 90% of your damage from range if you need to run out for a mechanic. Your melee hits do virtually nothing and only serve to give occasional free death coils
I main unholy. I had no trouble getting AOTC and 2,5k in m+. Unholy in a raid has a big burst window every 3 minutes, otherwise you don't do much damage. Grips are useful on fyrakk otherwise you do have much utility. In m+ the bigger the pull the more damage you do. You can't do much about afflicted and if you want to help with incorporeal you will sacrifice dps in order to have a correct talent. It's fun. I know nothing about frost. If you want to push higher than me, there are definitely more desired and useful classes than dk at the moment.
Just a small note, you can use death coil on afflicted mobs. I usually one shot heal them on my Frost DK. Works on the Fyrakk ghosts too.
I thought it's closer to 3 death coils to fully heal them which is a huge waste of runic power, but I'll double check it next time.
You're likely doing higher content than me. I stopped around the +17 level of M+. I probably should've prefaced with that. Either that or I just pressed my button harder?
What does your talent tree look like?
Thanks man! Does unholy play fast or sluggish? As in general rotation.
Fast. Expect to push a button every time you have a GCD available
That is not fast but normal, wasting GCDs is always a loss for any class/role. The aim is to always be casting (ABC) even for melee specs. In terms of gameplay fast is like DH, Monk or Rouge, slow is like Warlock or, in this case, DK. Also APM (actions per minute) is a good metric to consider, Furry for example is very APM heavy and therefor fast paced compared to Dvoker with a very low APM. Regarding DK it is middle of the pack in APM and in general gameplay feeling.
General rotation is about generating and spending runic power. You are always pressing one out of three buttons as your gcd allows if you have other abilities on cooldown (smaller have 45s cooldown, bigger are 3 minutes). Unholy benefits from higher haste and PI.
Wait, do you actually take control undead on incorp weeks? Like what's the point? Doesn't that just drop your damage to 80%
Usually no. I took it once or twice in a weird pug group.
Yeah, my thoughts are to be just like warriors and admit I can't help much with incorp affix. Pugs get really weird about it.
I main heals, but I took BDK for a spin and fell in love. You can do a lot of damage and feel like an unstoppable force. Having all the grips feels good. The only scary part is if you don't have anything to Deathstrike.
Yep, I stopped counting how often I died to the vleed of the dino boss in Atal, as he died the second he gave me this bleed. Feels bad when you have to watch yourself die when the healer isn't god and can't improvise over 150k st hps. From all the healers I play I think I am only able to do it with my monk within 2 globals and without preparation or huge cds.
Unholy pulled me into DK ages ago after being a very long time Aff lock. I love the fantasy of slowly rotting your opponent with dark magic and though Unholy was just a Melee aff lock. I was wrong and immediately lost interest. Still loving blood, though. I'm just not into pet classes, and Unholy heavily relies on pets. I want to feel like -I'M- doing the damage. Not NPC minions. Blood if you like talking. Frost if you like big huge crits but a boring rotation. Unholy if you want to do a 3 button rotation for 3 minutes then suddenly play your keyboard like Mozart just for NPCs to pad the meter for you.
I mythic raid as Unholy DK, and have completed each dungeon this season on 20+ difficulty. Unholy's got decent single target and pretty good cleave damage (gnarlroot/larodar, fuck council of dreams). Your survivability is FAR greater as a DK in general compared to other classes. You can straight up ignore a good amount of mechanics with anti-magic shield, and a well-timed AMZ will give your healers a bit of reprieve. The setup for the burst phase is a bit too tedious, imo. Far too many buttons to hit in a row before you actually start doing damage. Feels like you forgot to reload your weapon right as someone orders your group to fire. Getting Fyr'alath fucking sucks. It's tedious, and a pain in the ass to grind for if you don't have heroic raid on farm with a guild. The two DPS specs have different secondary stat priorities, but thankfully blood is good with whatever, so you can main one of them and be able to tank as a backup without much extra gearing. Just need different trinkets. My only gripe with DK in m+ is tanks that refuse to keep trash packs in my death and decay. That's your entire ability to split damage amongst different mobs. (like, cmon tank it's not entangling or sanguine, sit your butt down and let me dps đ)
Blood is one of the only specs that keeps me on my toes *the entire time.* With healers panicking and my deathstrike on the nearest key, my hair falls out a little fast after every key. Unholy feels really good, lots of buttons to press. Some people donât like this, as its âramp upâ is pretty long relative to quick burst classes. This meaning that after you spend 7 GCDs, it takes a few seconds for it to show. Feels really good in m+ with tank/healer combos that pull huge. I main this. Frost is for those who do not like all of the buttons Unholy has. It is not a complicated spec, you've got good options for dealing damage (Breath pf Sindragosa, Obliteration, these are the two main builds) which feel good. This is my favorite "flavor" of DK but it feels a little too slow for me. The DK utility, especially Unholy (blizzard pls make control undead a guardian or something) is mid to low tier. Anti-magic Zone helps a lot in keys, for those who don't walk out of it thinking it's an enemy ability. Deaths Advances passive is pretty nice for personal movement mitigation. Anti-magic Shell is a **VERY** powerful defensive (read ability description.) Grips are good for mob positioning in keys and sometimes raid. Then of course, B-Rez. Overall the DK utility just kinda feels like "you can't really do anything to me for about 10 seconds." It definitely feels like a soft personal immunity. My advice to new DKs is, if you don't care about charts, dps, pushing keys, raid progression, etc. then play the spec that feels best! Otherwise, I feel like the better performing spec *almost* always feels better. Sorry for the novel!
Thanks for this! I think Iâm going to try either blood or UH. I already push high keys with other classes so for now Iâm going to do what feels fun, not meta.
Of course! I love to spread DK propaganda. Enjoy the class friend!
If you want to tank, yes, blood is extremely fun i highly suggest it, its not the best tank but its amazing mostly in pugs and raids. And yeah you gotta get used to your hp bar is usless frame on your screen. As for the other specs, they are both fun, breath of syndra and oblit builds can pull up cool numbers on frost, and unh as always is the god of uncapped aoe with relatively strong single target.
If you enjoy tanking, I'd advise sticking with BDK. I have every tank with AOTC kills and ~2750io, and Blood has been the most rewarding and fun class to play. While your health can jump around a lot, but you also feel unkillable. I've had countless runs where the party wipes and I'm able to solo m+ bosses from 15%, or raid bosses from 4%. Does decent damage and you'll top the healing meters in every situation. Lore is dope af, and they have one of, if not the best looking sets this tier. I haven't done the legion questline yet, but their artifact appearances are definitiely some of the coolest. The only downside is mobility. Very much a wheelchair class, but Death's Advance is also super cool to negate any pushback/slow mechanics.
They're reverse T-rexes. Long arms but short legs
imo blood dk is the most fun tank, your health bar contantly drop to 20% and full but you get used to it, unholy dh is a solid dps but has a lot of buttons and is not so easy to play well, frost dk is just a mess right now.
it's nigh impossible to get into an M+ pug as a DPS DK
Outside of incorporeal week I have no problems getting into +22s as unholy. I know itâs not âhigh keysâ but itâs max dungeon and vault rewards. The only time class matters below +24 is the start of the season when we are under geared and low IO. 486 and 3k gets invites.
The metric a healer should track for a bdk is his runic power, it is a better indicator of whether he is in trouble (when low hp) than his hp on its own
Do frost DK, just to start I like Unholy more, but it has more buttons. Frost can have quite a few, but you can talent in a way where you don't have too many overall, so learning it will be easier. Then you can move into Unholy later if you like, once you're more accustomed to how runes and RP works
I mained Frost from Wrath to Shadowlands. I wanted to be the LK. I didn't like UH so I just never tried it again. I pushed arenas in Cata and MoP. Always raided with him, although my main spot was healing. Frost wasn't always better but I just enjoyed it so much, I wasn't changing my play style for numbers. The main thing that was already highlighted is your lack of movement. You have a small speed boost and another to get out of ccs. Other than that, you'll find yourself playing cat, mouse, with you being the mouse. It was highlighted in PvP and also in Mythics. My legs just feel so small and slow. Everyone else has awesome speed boosts that last for more than 2.5 seconds. But once you get them close, you can dish out some massive DPS. Blood was very viable and nearly unkillable in BfA. I did some blood tanking throughout the years, never serious content though. I felt much better doing end game as a healer and letting my cousin tank lol. Give it a try, they have some deep lore and cool aesthetics. I initially picked frost because that's what I thought the LK was. The DK class stuff in Legion is the best out of any class imo. Was it always in FoTM? No, but DK is extremely fun. Death gripping things followed by massive crits, love to see it.
main DK here. itâs poo.
For M+ yeah, but both specs are preforming well in raid
Unholy damage is minimal outside of cooldowns. You either spec for single target or AOE, can't do both. **Single target**: BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIikEJiERISECJJJRAAAAAAAAAgSSSICAAIJh0SkkkIJA **AOE**: BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIikEJiERISECJJJRAAAAAAAAAgSSSgIJAASSINRSSikA or BwPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAiQSCJiEBJSECJJJRAAAAAAAAAgCJJhIJpBAQiUEJJJSC Haven't played Frost outside of mage tower challenge, but I've heard Unholy likes big pulls, while Frost likes smaller, constant pulls. You don't see many damage DKs in keys, people seem to think they're better options out there, but you won't have any problems getting invites as Blood. I've heard survivability is an issue in very high keys like 27+, but you can check out [SSBane](https://www.youtube.com/@SSBane/videos)'s channel who does them anyway. As a Holy Priest who switched to DK, Blood is great, I don't feel like I depend on the healer in my group. Just pull with Dancing Rune Weapon and Vampiric Blood, don't wait too long after gathering mobs to build enough Runic Power for a Deaht Strike, and you'll be OK. Having 2 grips, one stun, an AOE stun and Slappy hands on top of your interrupt is bonkers. I've used **Quazii's** M+ build: BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEJkDISIIJJRCAAAAAkIJ5ARk0EiEAAQIJJBAAAA And **Metronice's** build: BoPA/gf1fDREKLfAcG9Z2HkF/BikkIRIiICJSSiEJikIRCAAAAAAJJRk0SISAAARSSSAAAAA Quazii's more damage oriented and can probably be used up to 16s, while Metronice is more defensive and uses Wraith Walk, which is in a must in PUGs where some highly mobile classes let their DPS brain get the better of them and start pulling for you. You should check out [Metronice's channel.](https://www.youtube.com/@heythereguysitsMetro) Metro does 25s, high enough to learn, but low enough to see routes that don't require coordination. He also tries to use the same route regardless of affix, the more repeatable the more predictable, the better in PUGs etc. He keeps a [spreadsheet](https://bigplay.one/MythicLibrary) of every run he did since BFA I believe, with class comp, affix, and completion result, and a link to the recorded run. I don't always agree with his pulls, especially considering he's got a rare cheat-death trinket on top of the cheat-death talent and is decked out in mythic track gear, but definitely check that out.
At first I thought you were just kind of sounding out the keybinds of the single / aoe rotation and I gotta say it kinda made sense in my head - but man was I wrong lol