World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Death Knights have three different talent schools, just the same as every other class. That’s where the similarities end though. With all other classes each talent school has a very specific use. As a Death Knight each talent tree has a little bit of focus, but does not lock you down to a specific function. Blizzard did a very good job at allowing you to play the talent spec you want as well as the play style.

In general Blood is viewed as the PvE and leveling talent tree due to its focus on self and group healing and buffs. Frost is viewed as a tanking tree due to its resistance bonuses and threat generation. Unholy gets the nod as the winner for PvP and for AoE damage. However, all three are viable trees for dealing damage or tanking.

Blood
Blood Build (51/2/18)

Blood is a standard talent build for both leveling and end game PvE content. While it does not put out the full run damage numbers that an Unholy spec does, it is able to keep going and going and going. Think of the Energizer Bunny crossed with a rabid pit bull ripping people apart and you are not far off. Blood has many talents that boost a Death Knight's self healing ability, grants healing to others, and boosts damage.

The build discussed here is an end game PvE build, aimed to get the most damage out against a single target as possible. While most of the points are spent in the Blood School, it does dip into Frost to gain more runic power, as well as the Unholy school for some additional damage.

Blood Aura – This talent grants you a permanent passive ability that affects all party or raid members within 45 yards and causes them to be healed by 2% of the damage they deal. While the percentage may be small, in a raid every little bit of passive healing helps. Combined with a Retribution Paladin and a Shadow Priest, these abilities grant a significant amount of health back to all players. The strain on healers that stacking these types of abilities alleviates should not be discounted.

Hysteria – This talent allows you to induce either yourself or a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 sec. While affected, it will increases the target's physical damage by 20%, but will cause them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their maximum health every second. This is a great DPS buff for yourself or any other player in your group. While soloing with Blood Presence active you will heal for more damage than it causes and it will allow you to down an opponent faster. In a raid situation if you are not the top DPS you can always buff someone else with this ability to increase their DPS significantly for a short period of time.

Morbidity – This talent ups the damage that you Death Coil will be doing to the enemy as well as reducing the cooldown on your Death and Decay. Since both are key elements of your attack rotations, this is a must have talent despite being in the Unholy tree.

Key Blood Talents
Talent		Advantages
	Two-Handed Weapon Specialization Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by up to 4%	Again extra damage is equal to extra threat. If you want to be viable when your DPS party members start to gear up, you need to cause as much damage as possible.
	Sudden Doom Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 15% chance launch a free Death Coil at your target.	Heart Strike is one of your standard attacks anyway, and this will allow it to create a free Death Coil. This is free extra damage. Extra damage that you don't have to do anything to cause, sign me up.
	Heart Strike Instantly strikes the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 368, total damage is increased by 10% for each of your diseases on the target.	This is a direct replacement for your Blood Strike that causes additional damage and has a cleave effect, hitting more than one target at a time.
	Abomination's Might Your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes have a 50% chance and your Obliterates have a 100% chance to increase the attack power by 10% of raid members within 45 yards for 10 seconds. Also increases your strength by 2%.	This provides a big reason for a Blood Death Knight to be invited to a raid. In most cases this will be active most of the time and provide a fairly constant 10% boost to the raid.
	Hysteria Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 secs. The target is Enraged, which increases their physical damage by 20%, but causes them to suffer damage equal to 1% of their maximum health every second.	Can be used on yourself or anyone else. Provides a huge DPS increase to anyone in your group. The damage that it causes back to yourself is very easily healed through, even just by your blood aura.
	Dancing Rune Weapon Unleashes all available runic power to summon a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 10 sec plus 1 sec per 5 additional runic power, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight.	This is the Blood talent school’s runic power dump. It uses up all of your current runic power to cause a significant amount of single target damage.

Frost
Frost Build (12/51/8)

Frost is the standard talent build that most players think of when they consider tanking as a Death Knight. It is not the only viable tanking build, but is the best for main tanking duties. Unholy may win out slightly in AoE situations due to its ability to do more AoE damage and hold threat against multiple targets slightly better. Frost tanks generate a significant amount of damage when compared to most other tanking classes and are a great choice as a tank for almost any situation.

The build discussed here is an end game tanking build. Its goal is to hold threat against a single target, or small group of targets, while your party kills the attacking creatures. Almost all of this build's talent points are put into frost to get all abilities that reduce incoming damage and increase threat or damage. It also dips into the Blood school to get a few talents that increase your damage output and avoidance, which also raises your threat generation. These talents include Blade Barrier and Two-Handed Weapon Specialization.  In Unholy you grab the must have tanking ability of Anticipation.

Frost Strike – This is an attack that hits for a large amount of damage and threat and as an added bonus it can not be dodged, blocked, or parried. Even better, it uses Runic Power instead of runes, so it will replace Death Coil as your method of burning off your runic power. This is one of your primary threat generators on a single target.

Howling Blast – This ability hits the target and all additional enemies within 10 yards for frost damage. Combined with Death and Decay this ability allows a Frost based Death Knight tank to effectively hold threat on multiple targets. You should rotate between using this and Death and Decay to hold threat on large groups.

Tundra Stalker – This talent allows you to do additional damage, and therefore cause more threat, to any enemy that is under the effects of frost fever. It also increases your expertise. Both of these benefits allow significant threat per second increases since most of the time frost fever will be up on a target, and expertise allows the target to succeed less at avoidance moves.

Key Frost Talents
Talent		Advantages
	Bladed Armor Increases your attack power by up to 5 for every 180 armor value you have.	As a Tank you will be getting a large amount of armor value. This turns that armor into additional damage and threat generation.
	Black Ice Increases your frost and shadow damage by 10%.	When tanking a large amount of your threat on secondary targets will come from your frost and shadow AOE effects. This extra 10% damage really helps you hold the additional enemies.
	Frigid Dreadplate Reduces the chance melee attacks will hit you by 3%.	3% may sound like a small amount, but it really means 3% less damage for 3 talent points. As a tank this is priceless. Think of bosses that hit for 15,000 damage or more, one additional miss means that much less healing need be done to you.
	Hungering Cold Purges the earth around the Death Knight of all heat. Enemies within 10 yards are trapped in ice, preventing them from performing any action for 10 sec and infecting them with Frost Fever. Enemies are considered Frozen, but any damage other than diseases will break the ice.	This AoE while useful to holding creatures in place for a short time, is really used more for the fact that it applies the frost fever disease to all opponents it catches in its area.

Unholy
Unholy Build (12/0/59)

Unholy is the build that most players think of for both PvP and AoE play styles. Even though it is mainly thought of for those two items, it has also become known as the DPS build for raid players. This is due to the fact that there are many AoE opportunities in raids and it allows them to increase their DPS numbers throughout the raid. Unholy has many different abilities that raises a player’s DPS for both single target and AOE damage. One of the bigger AoE upgrades offered in the Unholy tree is the ability to summon an undead Gargoyle to assist you.

This build is the standard “Nuke ‘em all to Hell” build, meant for maximum carnage and destruction in instances and raids. It can be used as well for soloing and PvP since its damage output is so high, however it would be better to tweak it for those situations. While almost all of your talent points end up in the Unholy school, you should grab several abilities in the Blood school as well. These talents include Bladed Armor and Two-Handed Weapon Specialization.

Summon Gargoyle – This talent summons a gargoyle that flies into the area and bombards the target with nature damage modified by the Death Knight’s attack power. The Gargoyle persists for 10 seconds plus 1 second per 3 runic power, up to a 40 second maximum. This talent provides a solid replacement as your runic power dumping ability, but only when there are many targets in the area. The Gargoyles damage hits everyone near the target as well, and can cause a significant amount in the time that it lasts. Due to the requirement to have many targets nearby to maximize its damage it is best to wait until the endgame (level 80) to grab this ability.

Crypt Fever / Ebon Plaguebringer – These talents combine and work together by applying Ebon Plague, which increases damage done by diseases by 30% , increases vulnerability to magic by 10% and increases your critical strike chance by 3%. The big bonus here is the increase of vulnerability to magic as it applies to all magic attacks to the target, not just yours. This is a very good replacement for a Warlock's Curse of Elements, as it has the same effect, but does not lower your DPS.
 
Master of Ghouls – As an Unholy Death Knight you can gain access to a permanent Ghoul. This ghoul is under your control and acts in many ways like a Hunter’s pet. Having a Ghoul up at all times allows you to do more damage, as you have a second part of your character attacking. It also allows you to tie an attacking creature up with the ghoul when you are being overwhelmed.

Key Unholy Talents
Talent		Advantages
	Ravenous Dead Increases the total Strength 3% and the contribution your Ghouls get from your Strength and Stamina by 60%.	Since you will have a ghoul up almost all the time, this ability adds a big amount of damage and survivability to your ghoul.
	Corpse Explosion Cause a corpse to explode for 166Shadow damage to all enemies within 20 yards. Will use a nearby corpse if the target is not a corpse. Does not affect mechanical or elemental corpses.	What better way to desecrate the dead, than blowing them up? Once you start killing opponents, you get to then use them to help kill even more opponents around you.
	Master of Ghouls The Ghoul summoned by your Raise Dead spell is considered a pet and is under your control. Unlike normal Death Knight Ghouls, your pet does not have a limited duration.	This is one of the defining Unholy talents. Being able to keep a Ghoul up all the time adds a lot of utility to an Unholy Death Knight.
	Night of the Dead Reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 90 seconds and the cooldown on Army of the Dead by 10 minutes. Also reduces the damage your pet takes from area of effect attacks by 70%.	This talent allows you to use your raise dead and Army of the Dead spells again much quicker. Both provide a good amount of damage and the more often you can use them, the better!
	Unholy Blight A vile swarm of unholy insects surrounds the Death Knight for a 10 yard radius. Enemies caught in the area take 21 Shadow damage per sec. Lasts 20 sec.	This is yet another of the Unholy Death Knight's AoE abilities. While it is not a huge amount of damage, it really adds up when you have a big number of opponents in the affected area.