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While talents play a huge part in how and what your Death Knight is capable of, many players seem to underestimate the impact that Glyphs have on their character. Death Knights are no different than every other class in that each build has several key glyphs that make a huge impact on their viability. What those glyphs are for each build is what is I look at in this article.
While Glyphs are not a complete make or break item for a talent build, they do add a significant amount to appropriate builds. As such you should always try to ensure you have valid glyphs in after you switch talent builds.
Blood DPS
As a Blood based DPS Death Knight there are four possible glyphs that you should be using. The three that you use will depend on how you spend your talent points. Some Blood based DPS Death Knights choose to go all the way down to the 51 point talent Dancing Rune Weapon (DRW), while others chose to forgo it to get to Unholy Blight (UB) in the Unholy talent tree. Either way works, DRW provides slightly higher overall DPS but in a very bursty way, which UB provides more sustained long term AOE DPS. Either way, use the appropriate Glyphs and the two other standard ones.
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Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon Increases the duration of Dancing Rune Weapon by 5 seconds. |
This adds a little over 15% to the length of your DRW. Since it can cause a significant burst to your DPS while active, any lengthening is valuable. |
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Glyph of Unholy Blight Increase the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 seconds. |
This adds 50% of the base spells up time. This is an amazing glyph that provides a huge boost in DPS since you do not have to use many Global Cooldowns (GCD) to keep it active. |
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Glyph of Death Strike Increases your Death Strikes damage by 2% for every 5 runic power you currently have (up to a maximum of 25%). The Runic power is not consumed by this effect. |
Since most of the time as a Blood Death Knight you will have way more Runic Power than you can possible spend, this raises your damage output by allowing your to DS for additional damage. |
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Glyph of Dark Death Increases the damage done by Death Coil by 15%. |
Death Coil is your standard Runic Power dump as a Death Knight. As a blood specced Death Knight with additional free Death Coils, it is an even more important ability. Adding 15% damage to each and every Death Coil is huge, and should never, ever be skipped. |
Unholy DPS
As an Unholy DPS Death Knight a good portion of your damage comes from your permanent Ghoul and from your viscous Scourge Strikes. To compliment these abilities there are two excellent glyphs that no Unholy DK should ever be without. In addition, since Death Coil is still a solid Runic Power dumping ability you should use its glyph as well.
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Glyph of Scourge Strike Your Scourge Strike has a 25% chance to cause Blood Plague and Frost Fever. |
This rune allows you to cause significantly more damage by lessening the times you need to refresh your diseases on targets. With any amount of luck on the procs from this rune you almost never need to stop your rotations to recast IT and PS. |
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Glyph of the Ghoul Your Ghoul receives an additional 40% of your Strength and Stamina. |
Since as an Unholy Death Knight your Ghoul is essentially up all the time, this adds a huge amount of damage and survivability to it. |
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Glyph of Dark Death Increases the damage done by Death Coil by 15%. |
Death Coil is your standard Runic Power dump as a Death Knight. Even as an Unholy specced Death Knight it is an important ability and used very often. Adding 15% damage to each and every Death Coil is big and can not be overlooked. |
Frost Tank
As a Frost based Death Knight tank your main concern is getting and keeping threat against the enemies you are trying to tank. To do this you need to cause as much damage as possible. The best glyphs to do this are as follows.
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Glyph of Frost Strike Reduces the cost of your Frost Strike by 8 runic energy. |
Since this ability is used so often, the lowering of it's runic power cost allows you to ensure you have runic power available all the time to use it or other abilities even more. Without it you could end up short on runic power when you need it. |
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Glyph of Obliterate Increases the damage of your Obliterate attack by 20%. |
This is your main single target attack and as such you will be using it every chance you get. A 20% boost to its damage is big, and adds up to a huge amount over the course of a long fight. |
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Glyph of Rune Strike Increases the critical strike chance of your Rune Strike by 10%. |
While tanking you will obviously be attacking your enemy from the front and therefore be subject to dodges, parries, opening up the chance to counter with a Rune Strike. The extra critical strike % is a great boost to your damage. |
Unholy Tank
While tanking using an Unholy build, your threat comes from your damage caused, in much the same way as a frost build. However your primary attack changes from Frost Strike to Scourge Strike, so your glyph needs to change as well. Also, since you will have Bone Shield to reduce incoming damage and increase outgoing damage, you should buff it with its glyph.
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Glyph of Scourge Strike Your Scourge Strike has a 25% chance to cause Blood Plague and Frost Fever. |
This rune allows you to cause significantly more damage by lessening the times you need to refresh your diseases on targets. With any amount of luck on the procs from this rune you almost never need to stop your rotations to recast IT and PS. |
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Glyph of Bone Shield Adds 2 additional charges to your Bone Shield. |
This adds additional uptime to your Bone Shield which both lowers the incoming damage you will take, and increase the damage you cause. Sounds like a win-win situation for a tank to me. |
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Glyph of Rune Strike Increases the critical strike chance of your Rune Strike by 10%. |
While tanking you will obviously be attacking your enemy from the front and therefore be subject to dodges, parries, opening up the chance to counter with a Rune Strike. The extra critical strike % is a great boost to your damage. |
Minor Glyphs
While there are several options for minor glyphs for Death Knights, most of them are not good options. Realistically, almost all Death Knights will have the three minor glyphs outlined below.
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Glyph of Raise Dead Your Raise Dead spell no longer requires a reagent. |
How many times have you gone to cast raise dead and either ran out of corpse dust or not had a handy humanoid corpse laying around? This happens way too often in my case. This minor glyph makes life so much easier for Death Knights, that no DK should be without it. |
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Glyph of Pestilence Pestilences range is extended by 5 yards. |
Pestilence is used to spread diseases to additional targets when you AoE so that your Blood Boil hits them for more damage. Ensuring that they spread to as many targets as possible is a good bonus, and this glyph helps with that tremendously. |
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Glyph of Horn of Winter Increases your Horn of Winters duration by 60 seconds. |
This glyph lengthens your group buff from 2 to 3 minutes. That change allows you to keep it up longer, easier, all while missing less GCDs while DPSing. Again a must have for any Death Knight. |
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