This detailed guide will teach you everything you need to know about how playing a Blood Death Knight in a raid environment. A lot of the information contained herein will naturally also apply to heroic dungeons.

1. Introduction↑top

Blood Death Knights are quite different from the other three tanking classes, which share a lot of common elements. In current PvE content, Blood Death Knights are best suited for single target tanking.

Compared to the other 3 tanking classes, Blood Death Knights bring no useful raid buffs or cooldowns, and we feel that they take a lot more precision and skill to play to their maximum potential. The reason for this is that a large part of tanking as a Death Knight is done "manually", by the player, who has to constantly make game-influencing decisions regarding which abilities to use.

Note that this guide focuses on aspects that are specific to Blood Death Knights, and general tanking strategies are beyond its scope. If you wish to know more about the tanking role and what you can do to improve, we recommend that you read our tanking guide.

Before delving into the specific details of a Blood Death Knight, we feel a few important concepts require explanation.

1.1. Vengeance

Vengeance is a passive ability that you receive for choosing the Blood specialisation. Essentially, it increases your attack power for 5% of the damage you receive, up to a maximum of 10% of your maximum health. It is an essential mechanic in allowing you to maintain aggro of mobs.

1.2. Weapon Choice

The only viable weapon for a Blood Death Knight is one of the following:

• Two-Handed Axe;
• Two-Handed Sword;
• Two-Handed Mace.

Additionally, you will only want to use weapons with Strength as their primary statistic, due to the benefits granted by Forceful Deflection.

1.3. The Runic Resource System

Death Knights use a unique resource system. Because this system is quite intricate, we have written a separate, comprehensive guide dealing with it. We strongly advise you to read it, and familiarise yourself with the resource system, as it holds a central place in the Death Knight paradigm.

2. Talents↑top

2.1. Core Talents and Optional Talents

Blood Death Knights have a rather strict talent point distribution. There are very few optional talent points which can be invested in.

In the following image, the core talents have been hightlighted in green, while the optional talents have been hightlighted in red:

2.2. Variations

The only meaningful choice you will have to make, within the Blood specialisation, depends on whether you wish to pick up Crimson Scourge, for improved AoE tanking.

Additionally, you may choose not to take Abomination's Might, if the buff is provided by someone else in your raid (Paladins, Enhancement Shamans or Marksmanship Hunters). This situation is extremely unlikely to occur outside of 10-man raids, and even there it is exceptional.

Below, we present you with three recommended talent builds.

Single target specialisation:

AoE specialisation:

Single Target specialisation with Abomination's Might:

2.3. Core Talents Explained

A great many of the core talents are extremely straightforward, but we shall list them all for completeness' sake:

• 3/3 Blade Barrier: reduces damage taken by 6%.
• 3/3 Bladed Armor: this is a threat/DPS talent, which increases your attack power. There are no other survival alternatives.
• 2/2 Improved Blood Tap: reduces the cooldown of Blood Tap by 30 seconds.
• 2/2 Scarlet Fever: reduces the physical damage done by targets affected by Blood Plague. This effect does not stack with other tanks' similar effects such as Demoralizing Shout or Demoralizing Roar. This talent is listed as mandatory because you cannot reliably guarantee that other tanks will be able to maintain their equivalent debuff on the boss or adds the whole time.
• 1/1 Bone Shield: this is a self-buff with a 1 minute cooldown. It grants you a buff with 6 charges. Each time you receive a damaging attack, a charge is consumed. While at least 1 charge remains active, all damage taken is reduced by 20%, and all your damage dealt is increased by a very small amount (2%).
• 3/3 Toughness: increases the amount of armor you gain from items by 10%. This is a simple survival talent.
• 2/2 Sanguine Fortitude: increases the damage reduction from Icebound Fortitude by 30% and also makes Icebound Fortitude cost no runic power to use. This is especially useful as it allows you to use it exactly when needed without having to consider your resources.
• 2/2 Blood Parasite: gives your melee attacks a 10% chance to spawn a Bloodworm. Bloodworms attack your enemies and, after a varying amount of time (not longer than 20 seconds, though), explode. When they explode, the worms heal you and other raid members for a small amount.
• 2/2 Improved Blood Presence: increases your rune regeneration rate by 20% and grants you immunity against critical strikes, while in Blood Presence. This effectively allows you to tank.
• 1/1 Rune Tap: provides you with the Rune Tap ability, which converts a Blood rune into 10% of your maximum health.
• 3/3 Will of the Necropolis: each time (not more often than each 45 seconds, though) that your health drops below 30%, the cooldown of Rune Tap is reset and the next Rune Tap is free to cast. Additionally, when this effect occurs, all damage taken is reduced by 25% for 8 seconds.
• 1/1 Vampiric Blood: provides you with the Vampiric Blood ability. This increases your maximum health by 15% for 10 seconds, and also increases all healing you receive by 25% for the same amount of time.
• 3/3 Improved Death Strike: this talent greatly boosts your Death Strike. It increases its damage and critical strike chance, as well as the amount of healing that it does to you.
• 1/1 Dancing Rune Weapon: grants you the Dancing Rune Weapon ability, which increases your chance to parry by 20% for 12 seconds, in addition to dealing some damage to the boss.
• 3/3 Runic Power Mastery: increases the maximum capacity of your runic power by 30. This is a threat/DPS and a filler talent.
• 2/2 Icy Reach: increases the range of your Icy Touch and Chains of Ice abilities by 10 yards. It has some usefulness in certain encounters, but it is mostly a filler talent.
• 1/1 Lichborne: grants you the Lichborne ability. This is a self-buff with a 2 minute cooldown and 10 second duration. While this effect is active, you can heal yourself by casting Death Coil on yourself.
• 2/3 Epidemic: increases the duration of your diseases by 8 seconds, meaning that you need to worry about refreshing them less often.

2.4. Optional Talents Explained

As a Blood Death Knight, you have access to relatively few optional talents. Below, we list these talents and reasons for possibly choosing some of them.

• 1/3 Scent of Blood: gives you a small chance to generate extra runic power. This is a threat/DPS talent, for which there are no survival alternatives. You should choose this if you do not need to pick up either Abomination's Might or Crimson Scourge. We advise taking points in this talent over the less desirable Blood Caked Blade and Epidemic talents.
• 1/3, 2/3 or 3/3 Blood-Caked Blade: this is another threat/DPS talent, for which there are no survival alternatives. It gives your auto attacks a chance to cause another, relatively weak attack. You should take points in this talent if you do not need to take any points in Abomination's Might and Crimson Scourge, although Scent of Blood is a better alternative.
• 2/2 Abomination's Might: you should only take this talent if no one in your raid can provide the 10% increased attack power. Otherwise, this talent is not useful.
• 2/2 Crimson Scourge: increases the damage dealt by Blood Boil (your AoE ability) and gives you a chance to gain cost-free Blood Boils. This is an AoE enhancing talent and should not be taken if you do not need to improve this aspect of your tanking.
• 3/3 Epidemic: increases the duration of your diseases by 12 seconds (up from the 8 seconds granted by 2/3). This talent point simplifies your tanking somewhat.

3. Glyphs↑top

3.1. Prime Glyphs

• Glyph of Rune Strike: increased threat/DPS;
• Glyph of Heart Strike: increased threat/DPS;
• Glyph of Death Coil: increased healing from Death Coil through Lichborne.

It is possible to use Glyph of Death Strike instead of Glyph of Death Coil if, for some reason, you have not talented Lichborne. Note that the Glyph of Death Strike is simply a threat/DPS glyph, and it is surpassed by the glyphs of Rune Strike and Heart Strike.

Glyph of Death and Decay provides more AoE threat generation.

3.2. Major Glyphs

Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon (increased threat generation) is a mandatory Major Glyph. For the remaining two slots, you should choose, from the following glyphs, based on the circumstances of the encounter:

• Glyph of Rune Tap: heals your party for 5% of their maximum health each time you use Rune Tap;
• Glyph of Vampiric Blood: your Vampiric Blood no longer provides you with 15% health when used, but instead increases your healing received by a total of 40% (up from 25% unglyphed). This healing increase affects both self-heals and heals from other healers, and it is generally advised to use this glyph, as the total gain is much higher than 15% of your health. If you feel that you do need 15% extra health to simply survive a very large attack, however, do not to use this glyph.
• Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell: increases the duration of your Anti-Magic Shell by 2 seconds, making it easier for you to time using this ability for magic damaging attacks.

Glyph of Pestilence and Glyph of Blood Boil can make AoE tanking easier.

3.3. Minor Glyphs

• Glyph of Horn of Winter;
• Glyph of Blood Tap;
• Glyph of Resilient Grip.

4. Abilities and Playstyle↑top

Blood Death Knights have few abilities to use for doing damage and generating threat, while, by comparison, they have a large amount of short and medium cooldown abilities which are all part of their survival technique.

In this section, we will cover all of the important abilities which you should be familiar with, as a Blood Death Knight.

We will, then, look at the best way to use your abilities and defensive cooldowns in combat.

4.1. Important Abilities

In this section, we will list all of the important abilities that Blood Death Knights should use during fights, as well as giving some short descriptions of these abilities.

First, we will discuss threat generation abilities. Afterwards, we will list the many survival cooldowns.

4.1.1. DPS/Threat Abilities

The following abilities are important for single target DPS and threat generation:

• Icy Touch: this ability applies Frost Fever on the target, which deals some Frost damage over time and reduces the target's attack speed by 20%. It does not stack with other attack speed reducing abilities, such as Thunder Clap.
• Plague Strike: this ability applies Blood Plague on the target, which deals some Shadow damage over time. In turn, thanks to Scarlet Fever, Blood Plague applies Scarlet Fever on the target, reducing its physical damage done. This effect does not stack with similar effects such as Demoralizing Shout.
• Outbreak: this ability automatically afflicts the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague. This ability has a 30, and with talented Epidemic, your diseases have a 29 second duration, meaning that you can apply your diseases with this ability every time.
• Rune Strike: this ability costs runic power to use, and generates a high amount of threat. Additionally, thanks to Runic Empowerment, it has a 45% chance to instantly refresh one of your fully depleted runes.
• Death Strike: this ability costs 1 Frost and 1 Unholy rune to cast. It deals a very high amount of damage and generates a high amount of threat. It also heals you for 7% of your current health or 29% of the damage you took in the previous 5 seconds before using it (which ever of the two is highest). Additionally, thanks to Blood Shield, it places an absorption shield on you, for a base of 50% of the amount that Death Strike healed you for. Death Strike will heal you even if it misses or it is dodged or parried. Death Strike is an important part of your survival and self-healing, and its proper usage will be discussed in a section below.
• Heart Strike: this ability costs 1 Blood rune and deals a high amount of damage and threat to the target and two nearby enemies.

The following abilities are important for AoE DPS and threat generation:

• Pestilence: this ability spreads your Frost Fever and Blood Plague to all enemies within 10 yards of the main target. Only diseases present on the target will be spread to the surrounding enemies. Diseases spread through Pestilence deal only 50% of their normal damage.
• Blood Boil: this ability deals damage to all enemies within 10 yards. It deals additional damage if the targets are affected by Frost Fever or Blood Plague.
• Death and Decay: places a damaging effect on the ground, which deals damage to all enemies within it. This effect persists for 10 seconds.

4.1.2. Survival Cooldowns

In addition to the DPS/threat abilities mentioned above, which constitute the backbone of the Blood Death Knight combat "rotation", you will need to incorporate many of the following abilities into your regular rotation. This allows you to minimise the damage that you take, and make it easier for healers to keep you alive.

Proactive cooldowns (these should be used before the high damage spike occurs):

• Anti-Magic Shell: this ability's benefits are two-fold.
  • Firstly, it reduces all magic damage taken by 75% (up to maximum of 50% of your maximum health).
  • Secondly, it makes you immune to the application of most magic debuffs.
• Icebound Fortitude: grants you a 50% damage taken reduction.
• Dancing Rune Weapon: this ability grants you 20% chance to parry, while it is active. Additionally, with the appropriate glyph, it increases your threat generation by 50%.
• Army of the Dead: this ability has two survival benefits.
  • Firstly, while this ability is being channeled (4 seconds), all damage taken is reduced by the sum of your dodge and parry chances. Therefore, if you have a 15% chance to dodge and a 16% chance to parry, all damage taken will be reduced by 31%.
  • Secondly, the ghouls created by this spell will attempt to taunt enemies. Raid bosses cannot be taunted by them, but all other adds are susceptible to this.
• Bone Shield: this is a self-buff with a 1 minute cooldown. It grants you a buff with 6 charges. Each time you receive a damaging attack, a charge is consumed. While at least 1 charge remains active, all damage taken is reduced by 20%, and all your damage dealt is increased by a very small amount (2%).

Reactive cooldowns:

• Lichborne: this ability grants you a self-buff, which lasts for 10 seconds, during which time you can heal yourself by casting Death Coil on yourself. Death Coil only costs runic power.
• Death Pact: this sacrifices the life of your ghoul (which you can summon through Raise Dead), healing you for 25% of your maximum health. It is important to note that, should Raise Dead be on cooldown (it has a 3 minute cooldown, while Death Pact has a 2 minute cooldown), you can also sacrifice the life of one of the ghouls created by your Army of the Dead.
• Rune Tap: converts a Blood rune into 10% of your health. It is important to note that while this ability has a 30 second cooldown, you will have its cooldown reset each time you drop below 35% health, thanks to Will of the Necropolis (not more often than once ever 45 seconds, though).

The following cooldowns can be used either proactively or reactively, depending on the situation in the encounter:

• Death Strike: as explained above, this ability heals you and provides you with a damage absorption shield.
• Vampiric Blood: grants you 15% health and increases the healing you receive. Alternatively, if you use the appropriate glyph, you gain no health increase, but the healing you receive is increased by an additional 15%.
• Empower Rune Weapon: this ability instantly regenerates all of your runes and grants you 25 runic power. It is useful for giving you runes for extra Death Strikes or Blood Taps, as well as runic power to allow you to cast Death Pact or Death Coil.
• Blood Tap: instantly regenerates a Blood rune, and converts it into a Death Rune for the next 20 seconds. This is useful for giving you a Death rune, on demand, if you need to cast another Death Strike or to cast Rune Tap.

4.2. Ability Priority

Blood Death Knights take damage in a far more unpredictable manner, compared to the other tanking classes. This is due to the fact that the other tanking classes have passive abilities (block chance, in the case of Paladins and Warriors) that handle the mitigation of damage automatically.

Blood Death Knights, however, only have their dodge and parry chances, which are not very high (a combined total of around 30% is to be expected). This causes them to take fully unmitigated attacks far more often. To compensate for this, Death Knights have, as we have seen above, a very large number of survival cooldowns. In order to function properly during raids, Death Knight tanks will have to make extensive use of these cooldowns. Doing so well can have tremendously good results, while doing so poorly can make it seem like that Druid, Paladin or Warrior tanks are far easier to heal.

Below, we will present you with a simplified version of the ability priority that you should use during combat. This does not include most of the survival cooldowns, as their usage is heavily dependent on encounter mechanics and other factors. Afterwards, we will provide you with the best ways to use all of your defensive cooldowns.

4.2.1. Single Target Priority

Generally speaking, your goal during each fight is to use your resources (runes and runic power) to generate threat and to stay alive. This is the recommended way to use your abilities:

1. Apply and maintain Frost Fever and Blood Plague, either through Icy Touch and Plague Strike, or through Outbreak. If the debuffs provided by these abilities are already provided (attack speed reduction and physical damage reduction) by other tanks, you do not have to apply them.
2. Use your Frost and Unholy runes (including when they become Death runes) on Death Strike. This is detailed in a subsequent section.
3. Use your Blood runes on Heart Strike. Never use Heart Strike if both of your Blood runes are on cooldown, as this will use up a Death rune, which should be saved for Death Strike.
4. Use your runic power on Rune Strike to generate threat and dump runic power. Only use Rune Strike when at least one of your Frost or Unholy runes is fully depleted.

In case you wish to generate a very large amount of threat at the pull (when threat matters most), you can use Dancing Rune Weapon before pulling, provided that you are using Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon.

As you can see, this does not take into account the use of your many survival abilities. You will often find that you must mix these abilities with the above rotation in order to stay alive. Please refer to the sections below in order to better understand how to use all of your survival abilities.

4.2.2. AoE Priority

The other tanking classes are far better equipped in AoE situations. However, should you have to tank multiple enemies, you should do the following:

1. Use Death and Decay on cooldown.
2. Apply your Frost Fever and Blood Plague diseases and spread them to all targets with Pestilence.
3. Use Death Strike on any enemy, for the self-heal and Blood Shield benefits that it provides.
4. Use any Blood Boil procs from Crimson Scourge.
5. Use Heart Strike is you are fighting 3 or fewer enemies and use Blood Boil if you are fighting 4 or more enemies.
6. Use Rune Strike to dump runic power, when at least one of your runes is fully depleted.

4.3. How to Use Your Proactive Cooldowns

As a Blood Death Knight, you will have to regularly use your many cooldowns in order to provide a smooth damage intake and help your healers keep you alive.

There is no set order in which you should use your abilities. Rather, you should use some cooldowns (proactive ones) in anticipation for an event in the encounter, in order to be better prepared for when it occurs. Other cooldowns (reactive ones) should be used to better recover from an unfavourable situation. Finally, there are a number of cooldowns that can be used both reactively and proactively, depending on the situation.

In this section, we explain the ideal ways to use your proactive cooldowns.

4.3.1. Anti-Magic Shell

Anti-Magic Shell should be used whenever there is magic damage to mitigate (such as breath attacks, for example). The mitigation that it offers is very high. It has a short duration (5 seconds) so you will need to be quite accurate in timing it.

It also has the benefit of preventing the application of magical debuffs on you while it is active, and it can be used for this purpose, as well, depending on the encounter mechanics.

4.3.2. Icebound Fortitude

Icebound Fortitude is a only truly useful if it is used before you take a high amount of damage. It reduces all damage you take by 50% for 12 seconds, and it should always be used when you anticipate that you will take a lot of damage or that your healers will be unable to heal you.

4.3.3. Dancing Rune Weapon

Dancing Rune Weapon should be used before you take a high amount of physical attacks. It grants you 20% chance to parry for 12 seconds. It is, therefore, excellent against melee attacks and thus physical damage. It has a cost of 60 runic power, so using it will require a bit of planning and runic power pooling.

Note that it also has the benefit of boosting your threat generation by 50% with the Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon, and it can be used for this purpose, although this is not the recommended use. The best time to use it for threat generation is right at the pull, when your threat output is at its lowest. This will also increase the chances that it will be available later on in the encounter, when it is needed.

4.3.4. Army of the Dead

Army of the Dead has two survival benefits, and it is useful chiefly against magic damage.

Firstly, while the spell is being channeled, your damage taken is reduced by the sum of your dodge and parry chances. Note, however, that while you are channeling, you cannot dodge or parry (so you will be hit by every attack made against you). Therefore, this damage reduction aspect is most useful against magic damage.

Secondly, the ghouls will taunt any mobs that they can, with the exception of raid bosses. This allows you some time to breathe and recover, while the ghouls are dying. Note that this effect can cause problems if the adds require some specific placement or handling, though.

4.3.5. Bone Shield

Bone Shield offers you 20% damage reduction for however long the buff persists on you. The buff has 6 charges and each time you receive a damaging attack, a charge is lost. Damaging attacks cover both physical attacks as well as magic attacks. Damage from DoTs and ground based AoE abilities consumes a charge, although this is not always the case and it seems to depend from encounter to encounter.

Because this spell has a 1 minute cooldown and 5 minute duration (unless all charges are spent before that time), it is ideal to cast it on yourself before combat, so that it has time to cool down. This way, you can chain the effect twice as soon as you engage the boss.

4.4. How to Use Your Reactive Cooldowns

In this section, we explain the ideal ways to use your reactive cooldowns.

4.4.1. Lichborne

Lichborne has a 2 minute cooldown. For 10 seconds, it allows you to heal yourself with Death Coil. Casting Lichborne does not cost anything, but Death Coil costs 40 runic power to cast.

We recommend the following macro, which allows you to cast Lichborne and cast Death Coils on yourself with a single button:

• #showtooltip Lichborne
• /cast Lichborne
• /cast [target=player] Death Coil

4.4.2. Death Pact

Death Pact heals you for 25% of your maximum health, on a 2 minute cooldown. This is a very powerful heal (it cannot critically heal, though), so make sure that it does not end up overhealing you.

The ability itself costs 40 runic power to cast. Additionally, it requires you to have an active ghoul to sacrifice, either from Raise Dead or from Army of the Dead.

You should aim to have your ghoul out before you anticipate that you will require the healing, so that you do not waste any time in casting Death Pact.

4.4.3. Rune Tap

Rune Tap is on a 30 second cooldown and it heals you for 10% of your maximum health. It costs 1 Blood rune to cast. Basically, you want to use this ability more or less on cooldown, as long as it does not overheal you. In case you know for certain that a big amount of damage is incoming, you should save it for this time.

Also, you should not try to save this ability specifically for when you drop to a low health percentage. This is because each time you drop below 35% health (not more often than once every 45 seconds, however), Will of the Necropolis will reset the cooldown of Rune Tap and make it free of cost. Additionally, each time Will of the Necropolis procs, you will gain a 25% damage reduction for 8 seconds.

If you are in the process of taking a lot of damage, you should try to use Rune Tap normally, before you drop below 35% health, so that you can then use it again.

Finally, Blood Tap can be used to instantly restore a depleted Blood rune (allowing you to use Rune Tap, provided that it is not on its 30 second cooldown).

4.5. How to Use Your Mixed (Proactive and Reactive) Cooldowns

In this section, we explain the ideal ways to use cooldowns that can be used both proactively and reactively.

4.5.1. Death Strike

Death Strike is your most important self-healing ability. It is also part of your regular ability rotation during combat. In order to make the most out of Death Strike and of your Mastery ( Blood Shield), you cannot simply use Death Strike whenever it is available.

There are two main things to keep in mind when using Death Strike:

• Always try to use Death Strike after you have received one or more damaging attacks in a short space of time (5 seconds). This is because Death Strike's self-healing component is based on how much damage you have taken in the 5 seconds prior to using it. As such, the more damage you have taken just before using Death Strike, the bigger the self-heal and the resulting Blood Shield will be. Additionally, this ensures that the self-heal will not overheal you, as you have just taken damage.
• If you are not the main tank, and you are preparing to taunt the boss or to pick up a newly spawned add, you should try to stack as high a Blood Shield as you can (note that Blood Shield's value is limited to your maximum health) by using Death Strike repeatedly on the boss prior to taunting it.

For tracking the amount of damage you have taken in the last 5 seconds, and thus the potential efficiency of your Death Strike's self-heal and of your Blood Shield, we recommend the Blood Shield Tracker add-on.

4.5.2. Vampiric Blood

Vampiric Blood is one of your most powerful cooldowns. If unglyphed, it will grant you 15% extra health for 10 seconds, and increase your healing received (from all sources, including self-heals) by 25%. It can be used both reactively and in ancitipation.

For most encounters, we recommend that you use the Glyph of Vampiric Blood. This will cause the ability to not grant you any health, but increase all healing received by 40%. This makes it an amazingly potent cooldown for when you expect to require a lot of healing or that you will be taking a lot of damage. It can also be used reactively, if you couple it with some of your self-heals to raise your health up in a very short amount of time.

4.5.3. Empower Rune Weapon

Empower Rune Weapon does not provide any survival effects on its own. It resets instantly activates all of your runes and granting you 25 runic power. It is very useful for providing you with extra resources when you need to use your survival abilities that have rune or runic power costs.

Its cooldown is quite long, so make sure to use it wisely.

4.6. Other Abilities

In addition to the important abilities listed above, you also have a variety of abilities that can be very useful in certain situations:

• Dark Command: this is a single target taunt.
• Death Grip: this ability grabs the target and moves it to your location. It also has the effect of taunting the target and interrupting spellcasting. The movement effect does not work against most raid bosses.
• Dark Simulacrum: places a debuff on the target, which causes you to mimic their next spell cast that costs mana to use. This grants you the ability (it will replace Dark Simulacrum on your bars) for a short amount of time. Using this mimicked ability can be very beneficial (even exploitative) on some encounters. Note that Dark Simulacrum does not work, most times, in PvE.
• Horn of Winter: provides your raid with 549 Strength and Agility, and grants you 10 runic power. This buff does not stack with many other similar buffs. It can be used to generate some extra runic power each time your runes are on cooldown and you are not at maximum runic power.
• Chains of Ice: applies a single target slow to an enemy.
• Mind Freeze: this is a single target melee range interrupt that also silences the target's spellcasting for 4 seconds.
• Strangulate: this is a ranged interrupt and silence.
• Raise Ally: this is a combat resurrection ability. It is not preferable to a Druid's Rebirth, as the raised raid member will only come back to life with 25% health (and thus risk dying again to environmental damage).

5. Statistics↑top

In terms of survival, which should be your main priority at all times as a Blood Death Knight, your gearing goals are as follows (and this is reflected in all choices you make in regards to priority, gemming, reforging and enchanting):

1. Have sufficient health to survive any unavoidable (and unmitigatable) attacks.
2. Prioritise Mastery Rating.
3. Maintain a suitable balance between Dodge Rating and Parry Rating.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that Mastery ( Blood Shield) only protects you from physical attacks, and not from magic damage. So, if you find yourself progressing on an encounter with particularly high amounts of magic damage, you may be better off aiming for a higher amount of Stamina.

Note that this does not take into account any kind of threat statistics, as we do not recommend going out of your way to obtain any of these. Generating sufficient threat should be possible entirely through proper use of your abilities.

Lastly, keep in mind that it is viable to prioritise avoidance (dodge/parry) over Mastery. This may result in overall less damage taken, but the damage intake will be far less predictable than with Mastery. Therefore, we do not recommend this gearing path.

5.1. Priority

The statistic priority, for Blood Death Knights, is as follows:

1. Stamina (until you have about 8,000);
2. Mastery Rating;
3. Dodge Rating;
4. Parry Rating.

You should have enough Stamina to allow you to survive any unavoidable and unmitigatable attacks (mostly magic attacks). Before any raid buffs or consumables, 8,000 Stamina is sufficient for this, in most cases. This means that, at any decent (epic) gear level, you will not have to go out of your way to get Stamina. The Stamina which is present on your gear, and that which you gain through Stamina enchants (which have no other viable alternative), should be sufficient.

Mastery Rating is the best statistic, after Stamina, for a Blood Death Knight. You will want to get as much of it as possible, on all of your pieces of gear, as well as through gems, enchants and reforging. It provides you with larger shields from your Mastery, which in turn translates into more absorbed damage and a smoother damage intake.

Dodge Rating should be prioritised slightly over Parry Rating, due to the fact that you innately gain more chance to parry from your Strength, thanks to the Forceful Deflection passive ability.

5.2. Reforging

The various combinations of gear are too vast to cover here, so we simply leave with these guidelines:

1. Make sure that every piece of gear has Mastery Rating on it, reforging out of the least desirable statistic first (DPS statistics > threat statistics > Parry Rating).
2. Once you have Mastery Rating on your gear, keep a balance between Parry Rating and Dodge Rating, while prioritising Dodge Rating slightly.

5.3. Socketing

Your gemming should also follow the same pattern of trying to gain as much Mastery Rating as possible. In most cases, it is worth forsaking the socket bonuses, unless it is extremely potent (30 Stamina, for example), and simply using pure Mastery Rating gems.

• Meta gem socket: Austere Shadowspirit Diamond;
• Yellow sockets: Fractured Amberjewel;
• Blue sockets: Fractured Amberjewel or Puissant Dream Emerald;
• Red sockets: Fractured Amberjewel or Fine Ember Topaz.

6. Loot Competition↑top

Blood Death Knights use Plate Armor with Strength and Stamina as their main stats. Additionally, they prefer Mastery Rating, Dodge Rating and Parry Rating over Critical Strike Rating and Haste Rating. Apart from other Blood Death Knights, they will also be competing:

• for Plate items with Protection Paladins and Protection Warriors;
• for Cloaks, Neck items and Rings with Protection Paladins and Protection Warriors;
• for Trinkets with Feral Druid Tanks, Protection Paladins and Protection Warriors;
• for Two-Handed Swords, Maces and Axes with Frost/Unholy Death Knights, Retribution Paladins and Arms/Fury Warriors.

Keep in mind that, in certain situations, pieces of gear originally designed for DPS players may be the best choice for Blood Death Knights (such as items with Critical Strike Rating and Mastery Rating, where the Critical Strike may be reforged to something else that is of use).

Moreover, items with (for example) Mastery Rating and Hit Rating or Expertise Rating, unless affected by a differentiating set bonus (Strength vs Stamina) can work equally well for Blood Death Knights or other DPS plate classes.

7. Item Enhancement↑top

7.1. Generic Enchants

The item enchants do not provide you with a lot of choice. The few Mastery Rating enchants which you can obtain are must-haves, while others simply have no better equivalent.

• Head: Arcanum of the Earthen Ring;
• Shoulder: Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz;
• Back: Enchant Cloak - Protection;
• Chest: Enchant Chest - Greater Stamina;
• Wrist: Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina or Enchant Bracer - Dodge;
• Hands: Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery;
• Waist: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle;
• Legs: Drakehide Leg Armor;
• Feet: Enchant Boots - Lavawalker;
• Weapon: Rune of Swordshattering or Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle. Check the Runeforging section for more details.

7.2. Runeforging

Runeforging allows you to enchant your weapons with a variety of Death Knight specific enchants. Most of these have an emphasis on PvP or are simply not very useful.

Keep in mind, however, that you should always use a Runeforge, instead of a regular enchant. You should choose one of the following two Runeforges:

• Rune of Swordshattering: grants 4% chance to parry. This is preferable for most encounters;
• Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: grants 4% armor and 2% Stamina. This Runeforge may be preferable for encounters with heavy magic damage, where the Stamina is more useful than the extra avoidance offered by Rune of Swordshattering.

7.3. Profession-enabled Enchants

As Mastery Rating is preferred over Stamina, in most cases, you should aim to use professions which provide Mastery Rating bonuses (Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing). Indeed, Jewelecrafting and Blacksmithing are excellent professions, as they allow for the highest degree of customisation. Engineering can also be extremely useful, as you can use the armor-increasing hand-enchant when it is most needed.

• Jewelcrafting: provides a 123 Stamina gain through the ability to use 3 Solid Chimera's Eye, or 81 Mastery Rating gain through the ability to use 3 Fractured Chimera's Eye.
• Blacksmithing: provides a 120 Stamina or 80 Mastery Rating gain through two extra sockets: Socket Bracer and Socket Gloves.
• Engineering: provides a 1500 armor bonus for 12 seconds, on a 1 minute cooldown, in the form of a glove enchant (which stacks with other glove enchants), Quickflip Deflection Plates. Also allows you to craft Reinforced Bio-Optic Killshades and gem them with a Fractured Cogwheel and either a Flashing Cogwheel or a Subtle Cogwheel.
• Mining: provides a 120 Stamina gain, through Toughness.
• Inscription: provides a 120 Stamina gain through Inscription of the Earth Prince. It also saves you from the trouble of farming reputation with Therazane to get the usual enchantment.
• Leatherworking: provides a 155 Stamina gain through Draconic Embossment - Stamina. Also provides you with a Leatherworking-only version of the Drakehide Leg Armor, which is considerably cheaper to craft (Drakehide Leg Reinforcements).
• Enchanting: provides a 120 Stamina gain through Enchant Ring - Greater Stamina.
• Alchemy: provides a 191 Stamina gain to your flask through Mixology. Alchemy also provides Lifebound Alchemist Stone, an item level 359 trinket, which also increases the healing you receive from Mythical Healing Potions.
• Tailoring: no useful benefit.
• Skinning: no useful benefit.
• Herbalism: no useful benefit.

7.4. Consumables

Depending on your preference in statistics, you should choose between the following foods:

• Lavascale Minestrone: 90 Mastery Rating;
• Blackbelly Sushi: 90 Parry Rating;
• Mushroom Sauce Mudfish: 90 Dodge Rating.

For a flask, you should use Flask of Steelskin.

As far as potions go, your best choices are:

• Earthen Potion a few seconds before the pull;
• Mythical Healing Potion or Earthen Potion (again) during the encounter.

8. Conclusions↑top

This concludes the Death Knight tanking guide. While playing a Blood Death Knight may appear an easy task, it is crucial to understand the importance of regularly using survival cooldowns during combat, without hesitation.

The other 3 tanking classes are able to simply rely on healers for their survival (with the few occasions where they need to use their big defensive cooldowns). As a Blood Death Knight, if you do not use your many abilities to supplement the healing you receive, you will find it much harder to survive.