“I wan level DK. Gimme best level spec plz! kthxbai!” -Random Forum Noob (Spelling intended)

I’ve seen those forum posts thousands of times.  Its not just specific to the Death Knight forums.  Its with all classes.  I challenge you now to visit the WoW Class Forums and not be able to identify at least one of these on the first page in each class forum.

My response for a question like this when pertaining to Death Knights is simple, “I don’t know”.

I’ve spent tons upon tons of gold in respecs on my DK and I can honestly tell you that no matter how you build your Death Knight you are going to have strength and weaknesses but it is all pretty viable.  I’m going to discuss the different options from a level 70 standpoint.  This is the point you should be now in Northrend and have began to understand the complexities of the your DK.

Lets continue after the break.

The First Spec we are going to look at is a pretty cookie cutter Blood Leveling spec. 53/8/0

This build is designed to allow you to spam Heart Strike that is where the majority of the damage in this spec will come from.  It self maintains you quite well through blood worms and gives you a quick heal with Rune Tap and Improved Rune Tap.  First thing you probably will ask yourself why didn’t I go ahead and pick up Vendetta?  Well Blood Worms combined with Blood Presence combined with Blood Aura do plenty of healing by themselves.

Also come next patch, Heart Strike will strike up to 2 targets at the same time even more increasing the viability of this spec.  I found the following rotation worked the most efficiently with this spec.

Plague Strike, Icy Touch, Heart Strike, Heart Strike, Obliterate, Death Coil, Plague Strike, Icy Touch,  Heart Strike(X4), Death Coil

By level 75 you can continue up the Frost tree to get Annihilation and your Obliterate will no longer consume diseases and you can replace the second set of IT/PS with another Obliterate.

This spec was extremely efficient in taking multiple mobs not because I could aoe all the mobs down quickly but because I could efficiently dps each target down without having to worry about health.  With Mark of Blood this spec actually allowed me to take several Elite Group quests and solo them effortlessly. This spec was also much more effective for being caught off-guard in World PVP.

At level 80 the spec’s natural progression would be: 53/18/0

Stat’s I would choose for a build of this nature in Order from most important to least important (remember we aren’t trying to hit cap this is just for leveling) Attack Power, Crit Rating, Strength, and Stamina.

This build actually became my personal preference at level 75.  I was ending up in several PUGs with sub-par healers and the Vampiric Blood / Rune Tap Combo saved us from several wipes while tanking. With the upcoming buffs in the next patch blood will be very impressive for heroic/raid tanking builds.  Only time and testing will tell for certain.

The next part will cover Frost Specs for leveling.  My personal Preference for it was Duel Wielding of all things.  But that’s best left discussed in another article.

‘Death Knight – Death and Decay is brought to you by Darkdeeds of http://www.of-2minds.com/ fame!’