by SnowflakeWith the changes in Cataclysm, Death Knight leveling has changed significantly.
Blood dps while leveling is now much closer, meaning that a blood DK is viable for a leveling spec, but does not become the most optimal until you hit level 80 and get mastery. At that point, you will want to respec to gain advantage of Blood Shield
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Talents/Glyphs
- Rotations?
- Last Comments
Introduction
This guide is meant to use leveling tools most efficiently.
To put it simply, any spec is viable for leveling in Cata, unlike in Wrath where unholy was the clear leader. This simply suggests a talent spec that is easiest and most efficient to level with in my opinion. This spec is frost, simply because of its simplicity and, of course On a Pale Horse. Frost has the second most OMG buttons of any spec (only blood has more, but that will be discussed later), namely Pillar of Frost and Hungering Cold in addition to all the other DK OMG buttons.
As I said, all specs are viable, and I will be posting a link to a finished leveling spec of each tree, but frost is in the lead up until level 80 by a long shot.
You may remember the days of unholy leveling reigning supreme, but those days are over. Unholy plays more like a raiding spec (and pvp once you hit high enough gear levels) as its damage is built up over time because of Shadow Infusion, which builds up like a combo point system.
Blood does not hit its peak until level 80 and Blood Shield. This allows the blood DK to charge on (almost) heedless to health as you get healed, and then get a shield, reducing incoming damage as you fight your way through packs of mobs. Until then, blood lags behind due to the naturally decreased damage of a tanking tree.
Talents/Glyphs
When you exit the DK starting zone, you will be level 58 and will have the effective talents of such. You will be wielding a 2-handed weapon, which is no problem, but if you prefer to dual-wield, you can do that as well with a little movement of talent points.
Up to 80
- 2-handed weapons
- Dual-Wield
- Alternate Specs80-85
Blood
2-Handed Weapons
The finished talent spec will look like this:5/31/0
For simplicities sake, I will be putting points in order rather than at specific levels, as DKs do not gain talent points the normal way.
- Runic Power Mastery 3/3
- Icy Reach 2/2
- On a Pale Horse 2/2
- Annihilation 3/3
- Killing Machine 3/3
- Merciless Combat 2/2
- Pillar of Frost 1/1
- Improved Icy Talons 1/1
- Brittle Bones 2/2
- Rime 1/3
- Hungering Cold 1/1
- Improved Frost Presence 2/2
- Rime 3/3
- Might of the Frozen Wastes 2/2
- Chill of the Grave 2/2
- Howling Blast 1/1
- Blade Barrier 3/3
- Bladed Armor 2/3
At this point, you will be level 79. Once you hit 80, it becomes time to respec to Blood
Glyphs
Prime
Major
Minor
In reality, Glyph of Path of Frost can be replaced with anything, it’s just the one I like best.
Dual Wielding
The finished talent spec will look like this:5/31/0
For simplicities sake, I will be putting points in order rather than at specific levels, as DKs do not gain talent points the normal
way.
- Nerves of Cold Steel 3/3
- Runic Power Mastery 2/3
- On a Pale Horse 2/2
- Annihilation 3/3
- Killing Machine 3/3
- Merciless Combat 2/2
- Pillar of Frost 1/1
- Improved Icy Talons 1/1
- Brittle Bones 2/2
- Rime 1/3
- Hungering Cold 1/1
- Improved Frost Presence 2/2
- Rime 3/3
- Threat of Thassarian 3/3
- Chill of the Grave 2/2
- Howling Blast 1/1
- Blade Barrier 3/3
- Bladed Armor 2/3
At this point, you will be level 79. Once you hit 80, it becomes time to respec to Blood
Glyphs
Prime
Major
Minor
In reality, Glyph of Path of Frost can be replaced with anything, it’s just the one I like best.
Alternate Specs
While these specs are not optimal for leveling, they are viable. As pointed out in the introduction all talent trees are viable, but Frost is superior up to level 80. Out of the two alternate specs, I would recommend Blood more as it does not have the lack of burst damage that weakens the unholy tree in terms of leveling.
Blood: 34/2/0
Unholy:
0/1/35
Blood (80-85)
At level 80, go respec at Acherus to Blood. The reason behind this is explained in the introduction. Set up the following spec: 34/2/0 and then continue to add points as you go in the following order:
Finished spec looks like this: 34/3/4.
Glyphs
Prime
Major
Minor
Rotations?
With Cataclysm, leveling has changed drastically. Rotations as we know them no longer exist for DKs, either in a raiding environment or in the leveling experience. Raiding has been replaced entirely with a priority system, which is for another guide, and leveling has proven to go faster without diseases.
Frost
The goal of Frost is to get as many Obliterates out as possible, as it is your highest damaging attack. REMEMBER: If you
are low on health at any point, cast Death Strike to heal yourself. Frost now works on a priority system as follows:
- If you have Freezing Fog and Killing Machine both up, use Howling Blast
- If Killing Machine only is up, use Obliterate
- If your RP is full, use Frost Strike
- Use Obliterate
- Use Frost Strike
- Use Blood Strike
- Use Plague Strike or Howling Blast to use runes generated through Runic Empowerment
Blood
Like frost, Blood DKs now work on a priority system, but a much simpler one. The object of blood is to take as little damage as possible, and often times in one on one fights with mobs you will end the fight with greater than 95% of your maximum health remaining. The true priority system for blood is as follows:
- Maximize uptime of Blood Shield
- Maximize uptime of Blade Barrier
- Use Plague Strike or Icy Touch to use runes generated through Runic Empowerment
- Use Death Coil
To put it simply, cast Death Strike and Heart Strike as much as possible while casting Death Coil in times between your runes being active. Then whenever a random frost or unholy rune is generated, if it is a death rune use Heart Strike if not, use Plague Strike or Icy Touch.
Last Comments
Death Knights have been drastically changed with the cataclysm, with a new rune system overhaul and many new abilities and a change from rotations to priorities. We have seen the removal of the “Death Knight Experiment” with all three trees being able to tank and dps, to having a dedicated tanking tree in Cata. Death Knights have been through thick and thin so far, and hopefully this guide can help new or returning DKs to level as quickly as possible.
Its actually fairly commonIts actually fairly common now to see tanking specs used as leveling specs past 85. This is due to vengance, a new mechanic that increases the attack power of tanks. Blood as a leveling spec is very useful because it suffers almost no damage, which is why I suggest it.
Ok, I see.Ok, I see.
It is for tanking. HeIt is for tanking. He mentions at the beginning something about blood DPS being better, and one could infer that this somewhat “untraditional” approach is due to the survivability of blood spec.Still, a bit more explanation would be welcome. I plan to level my DK blood anyway just because I want to tank with her 😉
Hah, well I dunno whatHah, well I dunno what happened then. But when I edited it it’s definitely shoping the html code for angle brakets in the code, instead of actual angle brackets. What a pain! Regardless, looking good now!
Just out of curiosity, but IJust out of curiosity, but I thought Blood spec was for tanking now?
Ok, well, I had the rt editorOk, well, I had the rt editor off, but ill change it. It could be fun
The guide looks awesome,The guide looks awesome, thanks for all the hard work! To fix the tags – unfortunately the rich text editor thought it was smarter than you and thought you wanted to actually display the angle brackets, so it replaced them with the html code for angle bracket. Use a text editor to find/replace all of those with actual angle brackets and copy back into the guide WITHOUT rich text on, this should fix your issue. The rich text editor is nice enough, but it can be a hindrance for people who actually like to fully customize their guides using code!
Did you disable Rich Text? IDid you disable Rich Text? I had to in order to get them to work on the Troubleshooting Guide. If that’s not it, I have no idea. lol. *edit Only scanned, haven’t had time to read the whole thing, but one of your links isn’t showing up. Under Blood #2 for Blade Barrier. Looks great! Can’t wait for some time to check it out thoroughly.
Anchor TagsWell, my anchor tags dont seem to be working, and I don’t have enough time to fix them right now, Ill get on it in a bit, if anyone mods know how and would like to, be my guest, just also let me know how you did it so I can in future guides. Thanks