Spell Rotations

What your spell or ability rotation should be as a Death Knight is a daunting challenge. Here follows a guide so you can make the best of catching up to everyone else in Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK). For more specific and detailed rotations, visit the Specs page.

The Rune System: The resource mechanics for death knights are runes and runic power. A skilled death knight makes efficient, timely use of runes and runic power to maximize his or her damage-dealing or tanking abilities.

Runes: Every death knight ability requires runes, which come in three varieties: blood, frost, and unholy. Depending on the ability, it may require runes of a single type or a combination of types. When a rune is used, it has a cooldown period before it can be used again. Death knights always have two blood, two frost and two unholy runes and this is not able to be changed.

Runic Power: As rune abilities are used, the death knight also generates another resource called runic power. The death knight has certain abilities that consume runic power instead of runes. Similar to a warrior’s rage, runic power decays over time if not spent.

This resource system is built around a basic spell rotation which uses up all the resources entirely each rotation. From this basic rotation other spells and abilities can easily be substituted for those that utilise the same resources.

Damage Rotations

The basic rotation is as follows:

We can explain this spell rotation in two ways, both of which are important:

This spell rotation uses a frost rune, an unholy rune, a blood rune, a blood rune, a frost and unholy rune at the same time, then consumes the runic power that was produced from the blood/frost/unholy runes. This rotation uses all six of the runes and uses the runic power produced.

This spell rotation first applies the two main diseases to the enemy. Secondly, it then uses abilities that benefit from attacking diseased mobs. Thirdly, it uses an ability that consumes the diseases (before they expire on the enemy) for bonus damage.

From this base we can build up any spell rotation. The easiest to do is to swap out is Death Coil for any other spell or ability that consumes runic power. This can easily be done without affecting the rest of the spell rotation. As for the abilities using runes, these are usually changed in the spell rotation to others that are gained through talents. As such, each type of Death Knight has its own spell rotation.

Blood Death Knights

In this spell rotation, the Blood Strike ability has been replaced with Heart Strike which is gained through talents. It uses the same resources as Blood Strike and also benefits from diseases on the target, it is simply a stronger version (even without the anti-haste part of the ability, it will still out damage Blood Strike). As always, Death Coil can be replaced with any rune power using ability you desire.

Frost Death Knights

The Frost Death Knight's spell rotation is a little more complicated. By having specced for Annihilation the first half of the spell rotation ends with the diseases still applied to the enemy. This means that there is no need to reapply those diseases with Icy Touch and Plague Strike. Fortunately, the frost and unholy runes that become available are exactly what Obliterate needs, so it opens the second half of the spell rotation. Frost Strike now becomes the obvious choice for using your runic power, but you also gain Hungering Cold. As always, pick the ability of your choice to use your runic power, dependant upon the situation you are in - for pure damage however, Frost Strike now is the best option.

Unholy Death Knights

The Unholy Death Knight's spell rotation is similiar to the Frost Death Knight's in that the diseases are not consumed. This is achieved this time by Scourge Strike, which directly replaces Obliterate in your spell rotation and is basically a higher damaging version of Obliterate that does not consume the diseases - remember that Obliterate will only not consume the diseases with the talent Annihilation , but this talent is no longer needed as Scourge Strike replaces Obliterate. The second half of the spell rotation opens with Scourge Strike, since the diseases were not consumed and are still up. The Unholy Death Knight has two extra choices for using runic power. Summon Gargoyle and Death Coil can be used whenever your runes are on cooldown and you have runic power to use.

Tanking Rotations

Tanking is of course very different from a damage role and as such your spell rotation will look different. The problem is however, that every tanking situation is different and you will use many of your abilities in response to the mob you are tanking, so it is very hard to set up a rotation. As a tank you'll have two things to worry about. The first is surviving (passive and active defence abilities) and the second is ensuring you have the highest threat on all the emeny mobs (offenisve abilities). There are a few guidelines that should keep you alive and holding agro however:

Passive defensive abilities are ones that will always be up and you do not need to worry about:

Active defensive abilities are ones that are click on use that increase your survivability in some way and will need to be placed on your spell bar. It is hard to place these in a predetermined spell rotation as you will need to use them only when you are taking a lot of damage or can't be healed - a good tank helps the healers keep him/her alive - the cooldown on these spells prevents them being up all the time ( you will only have some of these depending on your spec):

Offenisve Abilities: As a tank you'll spend the majority of your runes and runic power on offensive spells in order to cause enough damage so that you hold agro. Single enemy tanking will be much like the spell rotations for damage that are listed at the top of this page. Where it gets complicated is when you are tanking multiple mobs. An explanation of the most handy spells for tanking will let you understand what you should use when:

After you have diseases on your main target from Icy Touch and Plague Strike, this is the ability to use. Death Knights achieve many bonuses from having diseases up on mobs, so it is important to keep them up on all the mobs you are tanking. The damage from them will also help generate agro to make them stay on you. A handy advantage is that the diseases are applied at full duration. This makes it useful as an aoe disease refresher as well - though because it does not apply to your target, you will need to change your target to reapply it to that one too.

Once you have spread your diseases around with Pestilence, you can now cause a lot of agro with this aoe attack that consumes those diseases. Make sure you reapply your diseases after using this ability.

This is in essence your taunt ability. Whenever you lose a mob this will put you back at the top of the threat list. Be sure to continue to build on that threat before the spell ends.

This ability is very handy when you are tanking caster mobs and need them to move to you. While they are casting, using this ability will mean that they will run to you to do melee. A bonus is the small amount of damage once the silence has ended, causing additional threat.

When mobs resist or dodge some of your abilities it has the effect of throwing off your rotation and limiting your threat generation due to runes being on cool down. This is always a problem but especially at the start when you are establishing initial threat. Rune Strike is the solution to this. As a cheap spell that is guaranteed to hit it is a good solid ability that you should be using whenever you can.

This ability is wonderful for multiple mob tanking, especially when combined with other aoe abilities. It is expensive to cast, but its 30sec cool down means you should be able to get a lot of other stuff done in between each cast.

This is a handy ability to pull with on a single target fight. On a multiple mob fight keep this ability free for whenever an enemy runs away from you. Returning the mob to you and being a taunt as well means it is very useful.

Being on a rather long cooldown you have to decide yourself when to use it. You can open early with this, applying Frost Fever to all the mobs and following up with a Howling Blast (which benefits from Frost Fever). Similarly, you can perform the same move but when you lose agro on more than one mob (Frost Death Knight only ability).

This is a great ability to generate a large amount of threat on many mobs. It is especially useful when used after Hungerig Cold (Frost Death Knight only ability).

Very handy for multiple mob tanking, it is an ability that you can keep up all the time. The diseases applied means other abilities are also buffed that benefit from diseased targets (Unholy Death Knight only ability).