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Death Knights

Blood Rotation

The main problem with rotations as a tank is that you need to develop a balance between threat generation and survivability. This is further complicated by each fight and indeed at different times within the same fight, demanding variations of this balance.

Below are two separate threat and survivability lists. Threat generation is more of a rotation and an on going action. Survivability is mainly about reacting in a timely manner to what is occuring to you and around you. It main seem obvious, but make sure you don´t forget to jump in to Blood Presence while tanking.

Threat

Main Threat Generating Abilities:

• Heart Strike
• Rune Strike
• Death Strike ; contains an element of survivability.
• Blood Boil ; will damage an unlimited number of targets and apply Scarlet Fever (if talented) but hits softer than Heart Strike.
• Death and Decay; 10 sec duration (15sec glyphed) with a 30 sec cooldown.
• Icy Touch / Plague Strike / Outbreak / Pestilence ; Application of Diseases. Disease debuffing is important to both Heart Strike and Blood Boil threat. Icy Touch and Plague Strike will apply diseases individually; the up front damage they deal however is not competitive compared to other abilities available to the Blood Death Knight. Outbreak will instantly apply both diseases at range and will save you resources rather than doing both Icy Touch and Plague Strike and will save you a global cooldwon, but will deal no up front damage.

Heart Strike has the best threat to resource cost ratio and you'll be spending all your Blood runes and Death runes on it. Death Strike is the best choice for using up your Frost and Unholy runes (it requires pairs). If you are taking massive amounts of damage you may want to sink your Death runes back in to Death Strike for increased survivability.

Rune Strike is the threat generator of choice for your Runic Power. Don't use Death Coil unless you are stuck at range and have too much Runic Power as it has twice the cost and generates half the amount of threat.

If you are on an AoE group then Death and Decay is your strongest threat generating ability and should be your main priority. You will only be able to keep it active for 50% of the time though, due to its cooldown. If you are having to move around with your mobs a lot, then the effectiveness of Death and Decay may be severely limited, so keep that in mind on fights where you need to stay mobile. Blood Boil is a strong compliment to Death and Decay, especially when you are talented for Crimson Scourge. If the AoE pack is too small then Heart Strike will be the better option on groups of 4 or less, but a degree of tab targeting will be required to ensure your threat is spread out well to all mobs.

Ideally you should apply your diseases early in the fight and keep them up at all times. The main benefit of the diseases is their buffs to your attacks as oppossed to the damage they do themselves so don't worry about refreshing diseases too early and clipping the DoT of the diseases. Outbreak is very handy to apply your diseases but the big concern here is using it on a pull as it will not generate any threat of its own.

Dark Simulacrum is a great ability and will be especially good at helping you get a bit of extra threat while you close the distance on a casting mob. Reaction time here is key and may take some time to get used to it.

Threat Simple Priorities:

Once the encounter has been engaged:

1. Apply diseases. Outbreak is the obvious choice here as it will leave you with a full bank of 6 unused runes, allowing you to spend them on your big hitters such as Heart Strike and Death Strike. On the pull make sure your group gives you an extra second or two so you can use Outbreak (which outside of the disease ticks, causes no damage nor threat). Always keep your diseases refreshed. The only ability you can get away with using without diseases up is Rune Strike as it does not benefit from a target being diseased.
2. If you are responsible for providing the Scarlet Fever debuff then use Blood Boil early and keep the damage reduction debuff active. This will however will result in a net loss of threat, so keep in mind your threat will be lower, though the survivability Scarlet Fever affords is considerable.
3. Heart Strike is your main go to ability. Its threat is very high and you'll want to spend both your Blood runes and Death runes on it.
4. Whenever you can't Heart Strike (no Blood runes nor Death runes), then use Death Strike once a Frost/Unholy pair of runes are available (in certain situations where you are in danger of dying you may want to prioritise Death Strike over Heart Strike, ie using Death runes on Death Strike, which means Death Strike whenever you can).
5. Use Death and Decay when you either have a group of mobs on you and you don't have to be mobile or when there is a stream of spawning mobs which will be tagged to you as soon as they hit the Death and Decay (your group/raid will need to be positioned so the mobs run to you and through your Death and Decay).
6. Blood Boil takes the place of Heart Strike on AoE packs of more than 4 mobs.
7. Dark Simulacrum should be used whenever a big cast is incoming that is targeting you.
8. Use Rune Strike as often as possible once your runes are depleted (you use Runic Power for this ability).
   

Survival

Main Survival Abilities:

• Icebound Fortitude ; when glyphed it becomes your strongest survival ability and has no resource cost.
• Vampiric Blood
• Bone Shield
• Dancing Rune Weapon ; if you glyph for it you will also gain a threat increase.
• Rune Tap ; this ability is off the global cooldown, so you can using it any time.
• Death Strike ; Blood Shield is an ongoing survival buff.
• Army of the Dead ; you can use this freely (in general) on raid bosses as you army will not attract the attention of raid bosses. On other encounters however, they will taunt the boss which can cause the mob to turn. This won't always be a concern, but certain bosses do require them to be faced a certain way. Since your army is taunting (and being killed) it will also mean you are taking less damage.

Surivability Simple Priorities:

1. Icebound Fortitude Keep as an Emergency button Use Icebound Fortitude whenever you are subjected to a heavy burst of damage. Learning the fights can often help you predict when a burst of damage is incoming and you can cast Icebound Fortitude to coincide with the start of the damage spike. It is not on the global cooldown and it is also resource free (if glyphed), so as long as it isn't on cooldown you don't need to worry about stopping use of other abilities to squeeze it in.
2. Vampiric Blood Keep as an Emergency button The best way to use Vampiric Blood is to put it next to Icebound Fortitude on your list of emergency buttons. The advantage of having more than one emergency button is that you can use one too soon/not when you should have and still have a back up. If you are in doubt about how much damage you are taking and are unsure of the risk of you dying, then use Vampiric Blood. If things get worse you always have your strongest survival ability to use as well, Icebound Fortitude.
3. Anti-Magic Shell Use as often as possible. Anti-Magic Shell should be used whenever you are going to take magic damage. The cooldown on this one is so short that you should really take advantage of it as often as you can. A bonus of this ability is that it will protection from magic debuffs being applied to you, so it is not just for preventing damage bursts.
4. Death StrikeUse as often as possible Death Strike will be part of your threat rotation so Blood Shield should be going up a lot anyway. You may want to reinvest your Death runes in Death Strike (rather than Heart Strike) if you are going through a period of increased damage taking. Blood Shields dont stack, so try to avoid consequtive Death Strikes, unless you are taking a lot of damage and the shield will be depleted within the global cooldown of 1.5seconds.
   
5. Rune Tap Use as often as possible Rune Tap as often as possible. With just a 30sec cooldown and not triggering a global cooldown, you can easily use this ability often. If a full heal from Rune Tap occurs (overhealing causes no threat) it will provide a comparable amount of threat as a Heart Strike would have during a single mob fight (nb threat from healing is divided and spread equally between all mobs, meaning it is less effective on AoE packs).
   
6. Bone Shield Keep as an Emergency button Bone Shield. Make sure you buff yourself with this before the fight as it will still be up and also be off cooldown when the fight starts if you time it correctly. You won't really want to use Bone Shield constantly. It is better to keep it in reserve and use it as an emergency ability during large spikes of damage, much in the same way that you would use Vampiric Blood.
7. Dancing Rune Weapon Keep as an Emergency button/Use as often as possible Dancing Rune Weapon is great but very expensive. As such, you might not always be able to afford it in an emergency. This means you have two choices of how to use it. Either you know when in a fight a large amount of burst damage is incoming and you save up your Runic Power, or you use your Dancing Rune Weapon whenever you have too much Runic Power. Though, you shouldn't often be maxing out your Runic Power as you really need to pour it in to Rune Strike (which has a chance of refreshing your runes).

 

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