I'll post my Maximum DK DPS guide on this thread for people who deal with firewalls at the workplace. All the information on this guide has been updated as of patch 3.3. PLEASE be aware that for people who have never touched a DK before, much of what I have written won't make complete sense until you've gotten some experience with the class.

Also please be aware that this looks at DK's at the high-end (Experienced level 80 working on raid content) of DK performance. This will not be the absolute end-all when it comes to maximizing DPS in every single situation, but it has worked and I am confident in its reliability and applicability. This information is a composite of personal experiences, collaboration with other experienced DK's, extensive reading and learning from various other DK communities (Such as EJ), and so on. I would HIGHLY recommend that you feel free to experiment and try out each talent for yourself before you come back to this guide; try to make sense of the information I present from the perspective that you gain, NOT from what I simply tell you. You only get a new class once.

Cheers,
Kaeladin of Kirin Tor (Level 80 warrior)
Khaeladin of Kirin Tor (Level 80 DK)
Khaene of Northrend (Level 80 DK in Beta)

Maximum DK DPS Guide - By Khaeladin

Icecrown is here at least. As we work our way towards the inevitable conclusion of the Lich King saga, 3.3 provides substantial changes to the unholy talent tree (Very little changes to the blood/frost trees), and a whole slew of new gear to look forward to, including the legendary Shadowmourne! DW DK tanking is made a bit easier with the introduction of Rune of the Nerubian Carapace. As DPS'ers we currently see three viable DPS builds as of this testing (Blood 2-hander, Frost DW, Unholy 2-hander), giving us variety in terms of what flavor of slashing and gashing one wants to engage in. With all these choices, the class still occasionally frustrates some players with its moderate-high learning curves that stem from things such as reflexes, awareness, knowledge, and perception. While certain trees are capable of doing certain aspects of tanking more effectively than others, all specs can tank with a good point distribution + gearing. The same applies for DPS. Instead of trying to figure out what the "best" DPS spec, I'd encourage you to try them all out and expand your knowledge of the class as a whole. You are death knights, not just frost knights or blood knights or unholy knights. Learning about every aspect of one's class is, I think, a very important thing to becoming a good representative of one's class, and indeed one's prowess as a player.

With that said, the DK is a very complicated class to begin to master. There are several mechanics at work that make this class so.

1) It is a melee class. Generally speaking, it is more dangerous and harder on positioning for melee classes than for ranged classes. There are certainly some exceptions to this, but one cannot deny that there are more melee unfriendly fights than there are ranged unfriendly fights.

2) The class runs on two resource systems as opposed to one. Runic power's (RP) closest equivalent is rage, but even that is a limited comparison (RP is only generated from using rune moves, and does not generate from being hit or hitting something with auto-attacks). The rune system is somewhat similar to energy, except it is much more stringent and restrictive in terms of what you can use runes for (Death runes help to mitigate this a bit) and there are extremely few ways to refresh runes before their 10 second cooldown. This can be very attention-demanding for some players, especially also given the need to watch for melee dangers/repositioning.

3) The class also makes usage of a DoT's. These days, early refreshing on DoT's is fairly commonplace (Early meaning when it has about 1-2 seconds left), but maximizing the amount of time you spend to use your non-disease moves still remains an important practice for most DPS specs. For some specs, the DPS sequences come down to some fairly tight constraints in terms of GCD's.

4) The class makes use of arguably the most instant-attacks in the whole game in order to do the majority of its DPS. Most of the time, your usage of cooldowns will be fairly simple decisions (I have my diseases up and a frost/unholy rune combo is available, so I will burn it out my Scourge Strike/Obliterate. I have blood runes up, so I will blood strike/heart strike). But there are many decisions you make on a micro-level that are small at the moment, but overtime these decisions will ultimately decide just how much extra output you are squeezing out through your skill priorities (Do I sneak in a death coil or are your runes going to refresh too soon to make that GCD worthwhile? I'm sitting at 60 RP and I have a F/U move popping in 1 second, do I use a RP dump or wait and use the FU move?) This is a class where attention to detail makes a big difference, along with doing some mental math when monitoring your RP.

Perhaps there are more things to mention, but this is what I can think of at the moment. What I'm about to post is not for people who are just looking to play DK's in a very lackadaisical manner. These are things I have learned and experienced that I think may help you if you're looking to do your role as DK DPS'ers well, at least as far as my experiences with unholy, blood, and frost have been in raids.

Without further ado, let's get to the meat of what I hope will interest you. Please note this is primarily for the purposes of raiding and running instances, and I hope that the information here will prove to be of assistance in understanding and enjoying this great class.

1) The basics

- You are a melee class. Never attack from the front, ever (Unless told otherwise). If you attack from the front, the mob's parry rate will be another factor that will hurt your DPS. ATTACK FROM BEHIND.

- When in doubt, do anything you can to stay alive even if it means nerfing your DPS a little. If you have to use death strike, AMS, or IBF while the healers are struggling to keep the raid up through any of the multitude of AoE-heavy damage fights, do so. You have a self-heal strike, AMS, and icebound fortitude (IBF). You have quite a few tools to keep yourself alive with, so use them. We are very self-sufficient, and this is one of our greatest strengths as a class.

- When looking at your DPS, look at the situations in which you are fighting in before you make a judgment call about whether or not DK's can DPS well. Some fights are just bad for us do maximize our DPS, especially fights where there is a lot of distance put between us and what we're fighting. Party/raid buffs and boss debuffs are also a big thing; does your group/raid have more buffs for your spellcasters than physical DPS, or lacking crucial debuffs such as sunders/faerie fire? Then should it really surprise you if spellcasters out-damage you? Think about the context.

- Use your cooldowns. Every little bit counts. However, cooldown stacking is an important aspect of doing maximum DPS (Case in point: a heroism call prior to DRW/gargoyle increases the damage your DRW/gargoyle will do substantially), so you'll want to obtain a good understanding of how you want to use your cooldowns. In some cases, your cooldowns may even be better served for other purposes (I.E. If you're a blood DK running with a great feral druid DPS'er, it might be worth giving them hysteria instead of yourself due to a greater overall benefit).

2) Gearing/Gemming/Enchanting

- Get to 8% melee hit. For raid bosses, 8% melee hit is the cap to make your auto-attacks/non-spell attacks NOT MISS (This is different from getting dodged or parried, which hit does nothing for). This won't cap you for spell hit purposes, but you don't really have to worry about this for the most part since the majority of our damage can be accounted for with the 8% hit rule. Note that for DW builds, the hit cap for special attacks is only 5% instead of 8%. Also, if you're Alliance and you have a draenei in your party, you can lower this to 7%.

- Focus on strength over attack power (AP). 1 str = 2 AP unmodified. Strength also scales with kings, some of our talents, and one of our major DPS runeforge weapon enchants (Rune of the Fallen Crusader) gets drastically better the more strength you have. You can't go wrong with strength stacking. ALWAYS GET STRENGTH GEMS OVER ATTACK POWER GEMS.

- Armor Penetration (ArP) was recently changed so that you need higher quantities of ArP per % now than pre-3.2.2. This puts strength clearly at the top as far as DPS stats go for blood, frost, and unholy. However for blood and, interestingly enough, for unholy it is a great side-stat to aim for especially as you get increasing amounts of it. It becomes extremely powerful at high-end gear levels when you've got a large amount of ArP, not quite reaching the same value as strength but getting close.

- Expertise is a solid stat, although generally not the strongest one, with the cap being at 6.5% to remove dodges from the combat table when attacking from behind on a raid boss. This one is not quite as important as the hit requirement, but it helps the greater majority of our DPS (Not spells though). This will reduce the amount of dodges your attacks run into, to the point that you'll get maybe 1 or 2 dodges at most throughout the course of a boss fight if you have 6% expertise. But more importantly, it provides a smoother, more reliable "feel" to DPS'ing as a DK. Your mileage may vary here. Note that technically straight strength gemming will yield in a higher theoretical DPS, accounting for the dodges you'll run into. Expertise is nice to gear from gear, but not something to specifically sacrifice strength or possibly ArP for.

- Crit is generally a stat that comes with gear but is not something you focus on. All of our damage scales better with strength instead of crit. Don't purposely go out of your way to stack this. However, the value of crit increases a bit with the 4 piece T9 bonus (Which is based off of your melee crit), so keep that in mind. It will never exceed strength though for practical purposes.

- Haste. Again, it'll mostly come from your gear but it's not something to focus on. For any of the specs, it's another solid stat but never something to stack.

- Spell power. The Lich King pities the fool who stacks this.

Gemming: Use the stat priorities to figure out how you're going to gem (Generally strength, hit, sometimes strength/crit for good socket bonuses and if you're already hit-capped). One thing that bears special mention is the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond or Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. If you have an extremely good socket bonus that a str/stam gem can net you (+6 strength or something great) in addition to using a Nightmare Tear, use a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. Otherwise use one Nightmare Tear and nab a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond.

3) Priorities and things to do

DK DPS is all about adaptability. You CANNOT expect to output your best possible if you rigidly adhere to a set rotation(s) all the time, given that those strict rotations may get messed up by movement. It's important to understand a good rotation, but it's also important to understand when priorities take over in fights that won't allow you to remain relatively stationary. However, there are certain fundamentals that should be met.

- If you do not have your diseases up, apply/re-apply them immediately with plague strike and icy touch. Generally wait until the last second or so to refresh them, if possible.

- If you have a F/U rune combo available and your diseases are still ticking, use your primary F/U move of choice (Obliterate if frost, scourge strike/obliterate if unholy, death strike if blood).

- If you have blood runes, use blood strike (Or bloodboil if in a multi-target situation and you've already set up prior with pestilence) to convert those two runes into death runes (You did spec into Blood of the North/Reaping, right?).

- RP capping is a bit iffy these days. Unholy DK's do not really care so much about capping their RP given how much of a priority their scourge strikes and blood strikes take; death coil dumping only occurs when all runes are on cooldown. I will add more spec-specific suggestions for letting your RP cap in further sections.

Generally speaking, I observe these rules and output a very good amount of DPS. The trick is mostly in the execution, and this is where the largest variety in DK DPS'ers usage of moves happens. For example:

- How well can you calculate your RP to make sure you never cap, and that you dump your RP at the best times possible?

- How much time do you spend re-applying your diseases after you've let them run their course?

- Are you sneaking in frost strikes/death coils when most of your runes are on cooldown?

4) Attention/awareness/courtesy/and MODS!

No one can really teach you how to be alert and attentive to what is going on. But do not deny the importance of these attributes; you can have great gear and a good understanding of what you want to do for DPS purposes IN THEORY. But the moment your attention wanes and you die from fire, or you tunnel vision on your resource management and die from fire, or you stare at the debuffs running on the mob and you die from fire, the fact of the matter is that YOU ARE STILL DEAD FROM FIRE.

With that said, here's a couple of things you can do to alleviate your eye and brain stress.

- Grab a mod that will allow you to modify the displays of what you're fighting. I use X-perl unit frames (There are many different kinds, but I find X-perl easy to use), and the VERY large debuff icons that appear around the mob's portrait make it very easy for me to keep track of my DoT's. I also place my target frame next to my rune/RP bars so I have much less space to keep switching back and forth between.
- Grab a mod to change your runes/RP displays. I really dislike the Blizzard set-up, so I use Runewatch (Again one of many examples). With its customizable rune displays and the fact that I can place it anywhere I please, it has drastically increased my ability to attend to my rune cooldowns.
- Grab a mod that will allow you to keep track of your own DPS numbers. Mods such as Recount are reasonably accurate in keeping track of your own personal comparisons (Although Stasis and WWS are probably some of the best, if more complicated to use). It's good to have an actual DPS tracker to see what you're doing compared to your peers. You shouldn't really pay attention to it in the middle of a fight, but it is good for your own learning after a fight is done.
- Grab a mod that will allow you to keep track of your disease durations. I mentioned X-perl previously for my own example (Runewatch also has disease timers built into it), but there are a large number of mods out there that can also do the trick.

Conversely, shutdown any extraneous mods that may detract from your ability to see what is going on. If you cannot see half your screen and die from fire, then you are half-blind and DEAD. Do not try to make excuses for things that are within your control, such as screen visibility.

However, no mods can compensate for having a distracting environment and/or poor attention span. You need to stay focused, stop taking frequent AFK's, not get derailed from the main focus just because you saw something shiny on a random pillar nearby. You are engaging in a group-oriented, social task. Please treat it as such, meaning think about the people you are playing with.

5) Spec/Glyph/Rune for Success

This one should be obvious. Having a good talent spec is also very important for being able to output good DPS. Here are some sample builds for each tree as far as raid DPS goes. Note that some points are variable in a few places, but generally these will provide you with an effective foundation for DPS. I will add more as information gets updated. I have also provided some sample glyph set-up's that are commonly used, along with the rune enchant of choice for each spec.

Blood
51/0/20
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020530003303231023101351000000000000000000000000000002302303020032000000000000000000&glyph=060810000000&version=10192
Rune: Fallen Crusader
Glyphs: Dark Death, Dancing Rune Weapon, Death Strike.
Sigil: Virulence or Hanged Man (In theory Hanged Man yields more DPS on a straight-up fight, but on any fight with a large amount of mobility, Virulence is almost just as good).

Blood worms can be subbed in for blood tap and vampiric blood, but some people prefer the utility of the latter two. The points in unholy are still malleable; the idea of night of the dead is to have AotD available for every boss attempt (Wipe or not) and a short cooldown ghoul. As of 3.3, blood DK's are exactly the same as they've always been and still yield great DPS.

Frost

0/54/17 DW
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#flcRUwZk9al5AC,aIp,11159
Rune: Fallen Crusader main hand/Fallen Crusader or Razorice off-hand (FC for fights with lots of switches, RI for tank and spanks).
Glyphs: Obliterate, Frost Strike, Icy Touch
Sigil: Virulence or Hanged Man (Same explanation here as in the blood spec section)
If you're having threat issues, take points out of blood-caked blade and one in chill of the grave and put all three into subversion.

Unholy

14/0/57
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight#_CJEPiitNRrO0,HFp,11159
Rune: Fallen Crusader
Glyphs: Icy Touch, Dark Death, Ghoul
Sigil: Virulence or Hanged Man (Again, see explanation in the blood spec section)

Scourge-strike unholy is back! There's a few ways you can tweak the points; for maximum single-target DPS, takes the point out of morbidity and put it into necrosis. If you're using pre-T10 armor and weapons, specifically 4 piece T9, take points out of reaping and put it into dark conviction.

6) On blood vs. unholy presence

Currently blood presence is optimal for any of the DPS specs.

7) Things that will help you become a better player in general

- Be flexible, and stay out of fire.

- Never underestimate the power of preparation. Reading up on a fight and watching videos should be staples of raiders, but don't forget to enchant/gem/bring flasks and food buffs! "It's just +20 strength, what's the big deal?" should never be something that your fellow raiders should hear from you. It bolsters your raid group to see that you're putting in as much effort as you can, and eking out multiple small advantages can go a long way to being a better performer.

- Try to get a better understanding of how your fellow melee DPS'ers work. This helps as far as gearing is concerned; if you want to try and talk it over with your fellow plate wearers in terms of stats each of you may prioritize, and a certain piece of gear drops that has something like haste/ArP/crit/hit/or whatnot, it might be worth skipping a small upgrade in the short-term to someone else who can use it far more (Or for whom it may be a big upgrade) in favor of the later one. People's opinions on how to handle loot distribution will vary wildly of course, but it's at least a good idea to get a better understanding of how other classes or people within your role work.

- Don't take stupid risks. Dead DPS'ers are no help at all, and taking silly risks for small gains will only be more harmful than good in the long run.

8) Tricks of the Trade

Unholy: In addition to all the attention-hogging aspects already present as playing a DK DPS'er, pet control is another aspect you will want to become competent in. In order to maximize your DPS, you will want to make sure that you are controlling your ghoul properly and that you are not letting it die to completely avoidable situations. If you have had extensive experience playing a hunter, then you're in luck because your experiences with pet control will apply for unholy DK playstyles. Here are some things I have found useful:

- Bind your pet's attack/hold/return commands. I also bind my ghoul's stun in case I need another interrupt for heroic mobs. I personally use the F1-F4 keys to do so (F1 being attack, F2 being call back, etc), and find that when switching mobs I will usually just switch then press F1 to focus all my DPS on my new target. I find this to be very intuitive to use, but your mileage may vary.

- Your pet is virtually indestructible. But in the extremely unlikely event that it dies, bring it back out ASAP.

- One thing DK's can forget quite often is that using the raise dead ability when a dead player is nearby will cause that dead player to be a ghoul, so you (And your newly raised party member) may be both surprised when this suddenly happens. Call out if you are going to raise someone so that they know to be ready to throw in their extra DPS, no matter how little it may be. Also make sure not to do it when you know battle resses/ankhs are going to be burnt in a fight.

- Gargoyle maintenance is very simple now. Just point and push when you have enough RP (Preferably with some trinkets procced, and maybe a haste potion prior to the usage). The same applies for DRW; 60RP available means you can pop it at will. However, their optimal usage might depend on duration of the fight (Are you able to use them more than once in a fight? Pop it early, then pop it later after a heroism call with maybe an insane strength or haste pot.

- Don't forget about Army of the Dead on raid bosses. They cannot be taunted by the ghouls, and the extra DPS increase from having your own ghoul army is substantial. Note that there are some bosses in which this may not be a good idea, but generally AotD is a powerful cooldown that will yield in a big DPS increase. Generally the best time to pop them is just before the fight starts.

Reserved.

Reserved.

11) Priorities/rotations for each spec

Generally one will be better served utilizing a priorities system over a strict rotation; strict rotations can lead to a mindset in which one rigidly adheres to a certain sequence of attacks instead of injecting one's own breaks/pauses/GCD's to do other things before resuming. This will hopefully provide some guidelines as to what each spec's attack sequences will look like. I'll provide both a sequence then a priority list in order to highlight their similarities and differences.

Unholy

Rotation
1st round: Icy Touch - Plague Strike - Blood Strike - Scourge Strike - Blood Strike - RP Dump
2nd round: Scourge Strike - Scourge Strike - Scourge Strike - RP Dump

Priority list
1) Keep your diseases up. When they wear off, refresh them with plague strike and icy touch.
2) If both diseases are up, use scourge strike with F/U runes or death runes.
3) If you have blood runes, use blood strike.
4) RP dump with death coil during any time all your runes are on cooldown. RP capping is fine.
5) Use horn of winter if you have a free GCD.

For the unholy specs that don't take reaping, swap the a scourge strike with two blood strikes.

Blood

Rotation
1st round: Plague strike - icy touch - death strike- heart strike - heart strike - RP dump
2nd round: Death strike - heart strike - heart strike - heart strike - heart strike - RP dump

Priority List
1) Keep your diseases up. When they wear off or when they're about to wear off, refresh them with plague strike - icy touch.
2) Use death runes to heart strike when possible, and the same for blood runes.
3) If you do not need to refresh your diseases, use death strike with F/U rune combo's.
4) RP capping is not as major of an issue for blood DK's as it is for unholy. You will almost never have time to do more than two death coils during RP dump opportunities, and your rune moves take higher precedence than your death coils.
5) Try not to dip below 20-25RP if you can help it. Death strike glyph retains its full effectiveness as long as you maintain about 25RP.

Frost DW

Rotation
1st round: Icy Touch - Plague Strike - Blood Strike - Blood Strike - Obliterate - RP Dump
2nd round: Obliterate - Obliterate - Obliterate - RP Dump

Priority List
1) Keep your diseases up. When they wear off or when they're about to wear off, refresh them with icy touch - plague strike.
2) If F/U or two death runes are available use obliterate.
3) If blood runes are available, use blood strike.
4) RP moves take a lower priority than rune moves for this style. Use frost strikes when dump opportunities are possible (When all runes are on cooldown). Note that my personal experience with this entails me doing frost strikes in the middle of DPS sequences due to the spacing that point 5 will occasionally bring.
5) Try to save rime procs until killing machine procs, and then use howling blast. Note that this takes higher priority than everything except keeping up your two diseases.

12) The 3rd Resource System: Global Cooldowns

DK's can be a very GCD-starved class. Simply put, this means that there is a button to be pressed virtually every time the GCD allows. This may seem like something other DPS'ers also do frequently (In the case of warrior tanks, I know this is especially true), but in the case of DK's their sequence of abilities is a bit more complex than other classes. Also their DPS is very, very much affected by how well the player can make split-second decision-making in regards to "How much damage (Whether burst or over time) will I do with each button, and how will it affect me in the long term? Does the move eat up or generate RP, which runes are currently coming up to be used or are already up, and do I need to put up my diseases?" This is the reason why ROTATIONS are generally not the way to maximize DPS because while your string of attacks may be roughly similar in terms of rune moves, your runic power moves will not be used so steadily because how much RP you will have at any given time will change frequently and how you insert them will not be so clear-cut all the time. This is the reason why some experienced DK's prefer a priorities system, which I wrote about earlier in this guide. Please note this only really applies at the high-end of performance, and people can still do well even when sticking to a rotations-mindset (And in fact, some builds rely on straight rotations)

All of that split-second decision making is framed by the global cooldown, a 1.5 second "refresh" that occurs with the usage of any instant move (1.0 second if in unholy presence) in the DK's arsenal. Each tree has a unique style to deal with this timer; blood and unholy DK's utilize RP dumps when their runes are on cooldown (Or in the case of unholy, when they're in danger of capping their RP), while frost DK's of the dual-wield variety prioritize RP dumps that happen at irregular intervals, sometimes due to breaks that occur between their rune moves.

Practice, practice, practice. You can't get better unless you get out there and just fight.

This was a great read and has definitely earned the right to be stickied if Blue's could get around to it. Well done Kaeladin.

Oops. >> I'll add in something to that later. Sorry!

very informative

There's already a couple of intro-level DK FAQ's/guides that people are working on, which is great. On the other hand, make sure you've got your sources straight. There were a few guides written on the DK Beta forums in which well-intended yet misinformed players put up information that would not serve people in the long-term. There are a few good Beta DK's floating around on the forums though, assuming they stick around. You can post questions on this thread too and I'll try to answer what I can, even if in some cases the explanations might be prefaced by a "This will make sense if you just do it," comment.

Very good guide, thanks! Reported for sticky.

Please take a look at my guide and see if there are any BEGINNING things you want added.

Do you know where sunny and jayde are?

Jayde is banned from live forums and not sure about sunny.

The guide does a good breakdown though I wouldn't follow it 100% as there are some things again that are opinion based.