Hey guys, enjoy this exclusive free death knight leveling guide that I wrote up. I have leveled several death knights and this is, in my opinion, the best way to level them.
TALENT SPEC
While this is often a matter of preference, my personal preference is for blood. Why? Simply because it is very efficient for both soloing and as either a dps or tank in dungeons. Late game, as a death knight tank, the best spec is blood. Sure you can use any of them, but blood has the strongest cool downs and gives death knights what is known as the highest effective hit points. While you’re in lower level dungeons, your DPS does not have to be amazing — just enough to get through the dungeons really and blood spec does a plenty fine job at that. As far as soloing goes, unholy might be the fastest because of the increased movement speed from On a Pale Horse. However, blood is probably the next best choice with the amount of self-healing that it offers. It is quite easy to solo kill, or aoe kill groups of mobs. Also, blood is the highest single target DPS spec because of the Blood Gorged talent which gives you a damage increase above 75% health.
For these reasons, it is my strong personal opinion that you level as blood — here are some key talents to consider while spec’ing
Butchery
Subversion
2 hand weapon Specialization
Bladed Armor
Conviction
Death Rune Mastery
Bloody Strikes
Bloody Vengeance
Veteran of the Third War
Abominations Might
Hysteria
Improved Death Strike
Sudden Doom
Heart Strike
Might of Mograine
Blood Gorged
Dancing Rune Weapon
Vicious Strikes (unholy)
Virulence (unholy)
Morbidity (unholy)
Ravenous Dead (unholy)
Necrosis (unholy)
Blood Caked Blade(unholy)
Here are a few talents you’ll specifically want to avoid:
Mark of Blood
Will of the Necropolis
Blade Barrier
Vampiric Blood
ROTATIONS
Single target — Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Death Strike, Heart Strike, Heart Strike with death coils used as a runic power dump.
Multiple targets (AOE) –Death and Decay, Icy Touch, Plague Strike, Pestilence. If you have two targets, use heart strikes — if more than two targets, use blood boil. Again, use death coil as a runic power dump.
GLYPHS
Glyph of Dark Death, and then either Glyph of Death Strike or Glyph of Death Grip…depending on your playstyle.
RUNEFORGING AND WEAPONS
Firstly, I strongly suggest that you always use a 2 hander. It is just much, much easier before you hit 80. As far as rune forging goes…before level 70, use cingerglacier or razor ice. After level 70, use Rune of the Fallen Crusader.
TANKING WHILE LEVELING
With the new dungeon finder system, tanking is one of the quickest ways to level. You will, generally speaking, get into dungeons instantly if you queue as a tank. Therefore, it is strongly suggested that you tank while leveling. Tanking is fairly straight forward with death knights. You will want to lay down Death and Decay, get your diseases up, and then pestilence. Make sure that all of your diseases stay on all of your targets. Death Knights have insanely strong cooldowns for tanking, especially as blood — so be sure to use them!
However, if you’re partial to DPS, I would encourage you to quest instead. Check out our recommended leveling guides for more information about useful questing guides.