Hello friends! Korrah here, bringing to you the jivest DK FAQ ever written. Here you will find the knowledge that the best DK's ever have compiled JUST FOR YOU!

If you are new to the class and want an answer, please ask the question here! It should be as safe -- AKA "I will answer dumb questions."

DK FAQ in a Text File: http://deathknight.championdragonslayers.com/dkfaq.odt

Part One - Frequently Asked Questions - General & Bugs:

General:

Q: OK, I made a new Death Knight and I don't have any talent points! Where are they?
A: You initially start out with 0 talent points and as you complete quests in the starting area you are awarded them along with money/items. By the time you finish the Scarlet Enclave you will have the correct amount of talent points for your level.

Q: How is Dual Wielding?
A: Works for some builds, it probably won't get much better than it currently is due to how attack power scales with white damage and yellow damage. There are a lot of divided thoughts on this. Do what you like.

Q: What's the best spec for (tanking/DPS/PvP)?
A: Play the game, try things out, discuss. This is beta and this is a brand new class, there isn't four years of back theorycraft and empirical testing for this class. There isn't four seasons of previous arena history to base conjecture off of. There are a multitude of specs for blood, frost and unholy tanks, DPS and PvP!

Get out there and try it. :D

Q: Balance? HA! This class sucks, this game sucks, the designers suck, yadda yadda
A: Yet you still give them money each month... Read more, post less.

Q: Aren't we supposed to be overpowered? We are a hero class!
A: Death Knight as a "hero" class is in reference to the player and not the character. As far as game mechanics go, the Death Knight is just any other class in the game, albeit a new one. The "hero" qualification means that the class is more complex (not more powerful) than "standard" and you are beginning play later in the leveling curve. You have 25 levels to learn the inner workings of your class to play on a competitive level, every other class has already had 70 levels to learn. This requires a player comfortable with such a handicap placed upon them.

Q: Why do people knock haste for DKs?
A: Haste isn't useless, but it isn't as useful as other stats we could be getting. Haste will increase our swing speed, meaning our autoattack (white) damage will go up. This will benefit certain talents like Killing Machine, Blood-Caked Blade and Necrosis, which do better with more attacks. However, it will not affect things like Blood Plague, Icy Touch, Scourge Strike, Obliterate, Unholy Blight, Howling Blast, Frost Strike, Heart Strike, etc. which make up the larger portion of our damage. Haste also does not affect the global cooldown for us, or our rune refresh rate. Since most DK autoattack damage seems to come in at around 20-30%, haste would not really have as much of a solid benefit as a stat that takes all of our abilities into account (Attack Power, Hit rating, etc.)

Q: Why don't I start with professions besides first aid pre-leveled too?
A: People have been asking for this for a long, long time. Given how late in the dev cycle it is, It probably isn't going to happen. Just deal with it, and be glad you've got a 100% speed mount out of the gate to gather faster.

Q: I just had a great idea! The starter DK gear looks so good, why don't the devs make them heirloom items, or some other way to absorb or scale them to match our level?
A: You're not the first one to have this idea. You aren't remotely close to be the first to have this idea. These types of ideas have been kicked around since alpha, mostly because people don't like the "outland greens" look. It's nice that you appreciate the new art. It really is. However, it is also extremely unlikely to happen. Any sort of strange absorption/consumption of existing items, or model-changing for art's sake is unlikely to happen, since most (good) DKs I know keep more than one weapon around for different purposes. You can rally all you want, but given how close the game is to release, it is unlikely that anything like this will happen.

Bugs?

Q: Why doesn't Bladed Armor work with Frost Presence?
A: Bladed Armor has a 30-second pulse that it uses to periodically check armor changes. Wait a little bit and it will kick in.

Q: Necrosis is only doing 1 damage, is it bugged?
A: Nothing is wrong! Don't panic, it's just how necrosis works. Necrosis is based on the damage you do with your weapon. So if you hit a target dummy (it only has 1 hp) necrosis considers that a 1 damage attack and only hits for 1 damage as a result.

Q: I am STUCK on a HORSE! How do I turn it in?
A: Press 1.

Frequently Asked Questions - Abilities, Specs, & Endnote

Abilities:

Q: What is a rotation?
A: A rotation is an ability sequence that uses a full set of runes.

The most basic rotation is:
Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Blood Strike -> Blood Strike -> Obliterate

All six runes are used up, and you wait for the runes to cooldown so you can begin the rotation again.

Some sequences require two or more rotations to complete, an example for Unholy:

Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Scourge Strike -> Blood Boil/Pestilence -> Blood Boil -> Scourge Strike -> Scourge Strike -> Scourge Strike

The first rotation allows 2 death runes to be formed for the second rotation which enables the Unholy Death Knight to use Scourge Strike three times in a row.

Q: What's a death rune?
A: A death rune is a rune that can be used as either unholy, frost or blood. It has lower priority than your other runes, meaning that if you have a Frost rune and a Death Rune available and cast Icy Touch, it will choose your Frost Rune first.

Q: I got some talents that seem the same as abilities that I started with! What's up with that?
A: The way the Death Knight talent trees work is that you will gain abilities that are improvements over other abilities that you start with. These are meant to replace the starting abilities completely. For the Blood tree you gain Heart Strike which replaces Blood Strike. Frost gains Howling Blast which replaces Obliterate and Frost Strike which replaces Death Coil. Unholy gains Scourge Strike which replaces Obliterate and Unholy Blight which, some can argue, replaces Death Coil.

Q: I've decided I want to tank! Um, how do I do it?
A: I'm glad you asked! Vårheim compiled some good advice from helpful people in this post:
We have some good info compiled here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12666203350&postId=126598224400&sid=1#7
Sunny also wrote an excellent tanking thread here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12454667347&sid=1

Q: What presences do I want to use and when?
A: Generally speaking you'll want to be in Blood for PVE DPS, Frost for PVE tanking, and Unholy for PVP: the run speed lets you stay on your targets better, and the lower GCD lets you unload more attacks on them in the limited time you are in melee range. Your spec does not affect these, Blood, Unholy, and Frost Death Knights should all still tank in Frost and PVP in Unholy.

Q: Can DK's use maces?
A: Yes. You will need to train them. Yes, you will start with just 1 weapon skill.

Q: Some guy totally made his ghoul explode, but my ghoul pet bar doesn't have explode, what gives?
A: In order to make your ghoul explode, you need both the Master of Ghouls talent and Corpse Explosion. That will enable you to make your poor, innocent ghoul who implicitly trusts and loves you unconditionally, explode.

Q: Why does Summon Gargoyle suck?
A: It doesn't, but it isn't very useful when soloing and questing. The gargoyle has a fairly short cast time for its gargoyle strike; the spell hits about as hard as Death Coil, and happens every couple of seconds. It's terrific for extended DPS in instances and groups since you have a steady influx of runic power and don't have much down time. While you are questing, half the time is spent killing and the other half is spent running, which makes the gargoyle less useful.

Q: Why does Corpse Explosion suck?
A: It needs love, and will hopefully get it soon. Currently, it isn't worth using unless there are 6 or more targets in the area to explode.

Q: Why did Blizzard make _______ suck?
A: Blizzard's designers have budgets for everything. Sometimes they need to rein in the power in order to make things fit into the budget. It's a sort of behind-the-scenes method of homogenizing all of the classes, in order to ensure that some semblance of balance exists.

Q: Corpse dust sucks!!! It is too expensive and I hate it, will it ever go away?
A: No. Deal with it.

Specs:

Q: Okay! I'm ready to rock this puppy out, what are some good specs to try out?
A: Compton made up a thread with lots of different, popular specs. There are TONS out there that are all different, but viable. Feel free to swap points out and see what works for you, there are currently no "best" specs for anything.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10532281874&postId=106861007429&sid=2000#5

Endnote:

Q: I'm still all confused!
A: Read more, post less.

FAQ credits: Sunny, Ratri, Rabinahau, Barkek, Villaness

General Information:

What are the three trees and what do they do?

Blood:

Blood specs are mostly physical damage based. They mirror the retribution paladin tree fairly reasonably. A blood spec also excels at keeping him or herself high health, and is pretty much a grinding machine. They scale well with other physical DPS classes, and gain the most from physical damage debuffs like sunder armor, armor penetration, blood frenzy, etc. A blood spec typically provides Abomination's Rage to the group, granting +10% to attack power.

Frost:

Frost spec is the 'burst' spec. They play like a sort of hybrid to the unholy and blood styles. Unholy is much more heavily DoT based, and Blood is just about hitting hard and very little DoT at all. Frost is about finesse, setting up Frost Fever on your targets, and then hitting them much harder once you set it up. Frost also has the best mitigation talents, and is the dubious dual wield spec of choice. A frost spec will usually bring Improved Icy Talons, granting the team +20% to haste.

Unholy:

Unholy spec is the area effect spec. There are more pet options in the unholy tree, but it is not a pet spec. Unholy is best at getting a lot of diseases on a lot of creatures, and eating away at them. They have less burst than frost, since they only have one really heavy-hitting attack (Scourge Strike), but their DoT abilities and AE effectiveness makes up for it. An unholy DK is probably the most casterish of the three, bringing +13% to magic damage to the group on any enemy she drops a disease on.

Important Numbers:

Special Melee Attack hit cap: 9% (Strikes)
Two-hander melee hit cap vs. a boss: 9%
Dual wield melee hit cap vs. a boss: 28%
Spell hit cap vs. a boss: 17%

Hit rating for 1%:
Melee: 32.77 (295 for 9%)
Spell: 26.23 (447 for 17%)

This means that if you get 9% hit to ensure all of your melee attacks land you will still need 5.75% more hit or 151 more hit rating to reach the spell hit cap. If you are 2H capped and have Virulence, and a 3% hit debuff on the boss (Such as Misery or Imp. Faerie Fire) you will be spell hit capped as well.

Our melee attacks and spells have a critical damage bonus of 100%.

Hit rating does NOT increase the amount of critical strikes you will have on a target. It reduces the number of times that you will miss the boss.

It takes 45.91 critical strike rating to generate 1% melee or spell critical strike. The reason that hit is such a good stat until capped is because it is so much cheaper to hit 1% hit rating wise than 1% crit. Once you hit the two hander hit cap hit is no longer worth gemming or enchanting.

Haste rating does not reduce our GCD. Our GCD is only affected by Unholy Presence.

Our abilities scale with AP. Spell damage does nothing for us.

Runic Power Generation:

Any ability that consumes a single rune = 10 RP
2 rune ability = 15 RP
3 rune ability = 20 RP

Starter Tank Set Numbers (level 70ish):

Name 		| armor | str | sta | def

------------------------+-----+-----+-----

Cobalt helm 	| 1054 	| 33  | 51  | 50

Cobalt shoulder | 973 	| 33  | 36  | 30

Cobalt chest 	| 1297 	| 39  | 60  | 39

Cobalt bracers 	| 567 	| 25  | 25  | 45

Cobalt guantlet | 811 	| 37  | 39  | 25

Cobalt belt 	| 730 	| 25  | 39  | 37

Cobalt leggings | 1135 	| 40  | 66  | 32

Cobalt boots 	| 892 	| 29  | 44  | 30

----------------+-------+-----+-----+-----

Total :		| 7459 	| 261 | 360 | 288 

Credits: Mayong, Sunny, Integer

Common Death Knight Talent Specs

Blood:

51/18/2 PVE dps build. Good for the 20% haste buff in frost. Allows for using obliterate without clearing diseases off. Not my favorite but some may like it.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305021530003303231050013500000000000000000000000000000230210305003110000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

51/13/7 PVE dps build again. Good for the longer duration on diseases as well as top quality deathcoil damage and the ability to get 4x heartstrike rotations.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqh0IcfoxzAoG0x0hZfM

48/14/9 PVP/Arena build. Gives you the healing cooldowns in blood as well as nice dps with annihilation and epidemic. You also gain the -12 seconds off AMS cd, lichborne and reduced cooldown on deathgrip.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jf0GqI0IsbotuhZ0xxzhZfMM

53/0/18 PVP/Arena build. Gives you shadow of death and on a pale horse as well as dancing rune weapon. A lot of the early tier stuff is subjective and you may like different skills than what I chose but alot of them change every patch.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jf0GqI0IsbotuNoZfMMI0bo

56/5/10 Blood Tanking build. Again, I haven't done too much tanking at 80 but I like this build for tanking as blood. You get reduced cd on DnD, all of the first tier tank talents, and everything else is pretty much self explanatory.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jcvMVhhIsb0tuAo0xZcg

50/0/21 Blood PVE DPS Build
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jfVMqh0IsbRxzAZZfMhhhck

Blood tank spec-45/11/15
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=jcEMV0hIsboxzhZGx0zZfg0h

Frost:

14/50/7 PVE dps. Gives you longer diseases and buffs your crit/ap/obliterate with the blood talents. Pretty straightforward spec.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfV0mZG0xxIxdRhoV0sxfM

19/51/0 PVP/arena. Not much to say.. I'm not overly happy with this build but it's a decent starter template to get into frost pvp. I'll tweak this one a bit more when I have more time to do arena's as frost.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jf0GqcZMgxzhezMGRhost

10/54/7 Frost Tanking build.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020000000000000000000003250505130032112301005101350005200000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

Unholy:

5/11/55 PVP/Arena build. Only gonna do one of these because there are so many variations you could do. Basically you could choose to go for lichborne/black ice or go more blood for imp rune tap.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfZ0xxzZfMrI0bkxeqofsuz

21/0/50 PVP/Arena ok one more, basically you go for mark of blood in the blood tree and get imp rune tap for maximum survivability.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=jfzGqc00oZZfMrI0bkLeqofou

7/10/54 PVE Dps build Not really much to say about it. A few talents are still in flux as to how much dps increase they give and obviously could be moved around.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000230230303003115203150003133151&glyph=000000000000


5/11/55 Unholy Tanking build. Could probably go a few different ways with this one as well. I chose lichborne to get that fear break and another mitigation cooldown.
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=j0xZ0xxzZfg0cx0ogeoocsut

Credits: Compton, Darkcicle, Nyxia, Necrolytus

Offsite Resouces:

Mechanics
http://deathknight.info/wiki/index.php?title=Mechanics
http://wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Death_Knight#tab=Class_Mechanics

Death-Knight FAQ
http://wotlkwiki.info/forum/showthread.php?t=3497

Death knight tanking collection beta version!(I know finally)
http://wotlkwiki.info/forum/showthread.php?t=97

Terminology & Class Introduction
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9879678979&sid=2000

Not sure how this one made it in here :)
http://www.gcguild.net/blog/myrx

@Jayde
http://jadefury.blogspot.com

Elitist Jerks DPS Compendium:
http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t36303-dps_compendium/

Talent Coherency and Death Knight Tanking (lots of blue insight here, a must read):
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/18/8765776746-talent-coherency-and-death-knight-tanking.html

Credits: Integer, Jayde (hoho), Nephalem, Scatterkind

Yay korrah. =]

Edit: Wait a minute, you didn't include mine! You suck! :)

Death Knight Terminology
AMS - Anti-magic Shell
AMZ - Anti-magic Zone
AotD - Army of the Dead
B - Blood rune (1B = one blood rune, etc.)
BB - Blood Boil
BCB - Blood Caked Blade
BP - Blood Plague
BS - Blood Strike
BT - Blood Tap
CE - Corpse Explosion
CF - Crypt Fever
CoI - Chains of Ice
DnD - Death and Decay
DC - Death Coil
DK - Death Knight
DRM - Death Rune Mastery
DRW - Dancing Rune Weapon
EP - Ebon Plague, Ebon Plaguebringer
ERW - Empower Rune Weapon
F - Frost rune (1F = one frost rune, etc.)
FF - Frost Fever
FS - Frost Strike
FU - Rune combination that generally results in a strong rune attack.
GoG - Guile of Gorefiend
HB - Howling Blast
HC - Hungering Cold
HoW - Horn of Winter
HS - Heart Strike
IBF - Icebound Fortitude
IIT - Improved Icy Talons
IT - Icy Touch / Icy Talons (IT is usually icy touch when used in rotation layouts)
LB - Lichborne
MoB - Mark of Blood
MoM - Might of Mograine
OB - Obliterate
PS - Plague Strike
RoR - Rage of Rivendare
RP - Runic Power
RPM - Runic Power Mastery
RS - Rune Strike
RT - Rune Tap
SS/ScS - Scourge Strike (not to be confused with Sinister Strike, or Steady Shot)
U - Unholy rune (1U = one unholy rune, etc.)
UA - Unbreakable Armor
UB - Unholy Blight
VB - Vampiric Blood

Credits: Ghoulgrim

Torsain's Tanking Tips

As unholy what I generally do is drop a death and decay right in front of me just before I pull. I'll death grip my main target and disease them up. By the time the other mobs get to me they'll get a few ticks of death and decay for initial aggro, then I can spread the diseases from my first target with pestilence, and follow up with a blood boil. By then I've got enough RP to use unholy blight and I've pretty much got aggro in the bag and can focus on mitigation skills and death strike to help my healer out.

As frost, I'll generally pull with icy touch, then spread it with pestilence and use howling blast to get initial group aggro. If the mobs are at range, I might forgo pestilence and just IT+HB to get that initial aggro. After that its pretty much keeping diseases up, and using howling blast to keep group aggro whenever possible.

I find I switch targets more with frost tanking to spread out the aggro than I do with unholy. With unholy there's more aoe skills to keep aggro on me, and as long as my dps classes don't go nuts I can keep a whole group glued to me for the entire fight.

Maerok's Tanking Tips

For me, because I like to pull aggro in groups:

I usually end up pulling with Death Grip or Icy Touch, depending on how close the monster is. If he's within Melee, it'll be with Icy. Far away, Death Grip or Death Coil. After that, I go into a sort of attack rotation that consists of IT(If I didn't pull with it)->Plague->Blood->Blood->Obliterate->Frost Strike. Once I get my build done(http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0055020000000000000000000000250500133532100301203131350005200000000000000000000000000)
I would then rotate with an Obliterate->Obliterate->Obliterate, unloading Frost Strikes after. I would squeeze in any Freezing Fog procs (Freezing Fog is bugged ATM), and repeat the rotation. I'd squeee Icebound Fort and Unbreakable Armor in when needed, and Lichborne as well.

Myrx's Tanking Tips

I usually pull with Icy Touch, and then drop a Death and Decay to get some agro on everything before a HoT tick or small heal or something pulls. I follow the IT with a Plague Strike, and then I pestilence to the rest of the mobs. Next rotation I use my FU abilities on two different targets, and drop two Blood Boils. That pretty much covers 5 man tanking.

@Jayde

Hug your mom every day.

[Your Ad Here]

This is truly the best of all possible worlds.

Reported for Sticky.

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Q u o t e:
Reported for Sticky.

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Thanks! I appreciate it :)

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t36303-dps_compendium/
Currently one of the best resources for DK and DPS info.

Added, thanks!

/bump for awesome post.

Hey Korrah,

The specs in this post are rather old and may need some adjusting to reflect the current talents in game (for example, the unholy DPS build uses Black Ice which now only adds frost damage whereas before it added both Shadow and Frost which is why it was taken in that build).

Here is the unholy DPS build that is generally agreed upon I have seen:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000230230303003115203150003133151&glyph=000000000000

I also remember seeing a build similar to this posted by Khaene(sp?) for frost tanking. It allowed for a good amount of dps to still be done while still taking the necessary frost tanking talents:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020000000000000000000003250505130032112301005101350005200000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

Here is a Blood DPS build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305021530003303231050013500000000000000000000000000000230210305003110000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

I really appreciate all the beta testers did in helping blizzard make this a class well worth playing and thanks a lot for bringing this post over from the beta boards.

---

Q u o t e:
/bump for awesome post.

Hey Korrah,

The specs in this post are rather old and may need some adjusting to reflect the current talents in game (for example, the unholy DPS build uses Black Ice which now only adds frost damage whereas before it added both Shadow and Frost which is why it was taken in that build).

Here is the unholy DPS build that is generally agreed upon I have seen:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000230230303003115203150003133151&glyph=000000000000

I also remember seeing a build similar to this posted by Khaene(sp?) for frost tanking. It allowed for a good amount of dps to still be done while still taking the necessary frost tanking talents:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305020000000000000000000003250505130032112301005101350005200000000000000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

Here is a Blood DPS build:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=2305021530003303231050013500000000000000000000000000000230210305003110000000000000000&glyph=000000000000

I really appreciate all the beta testers did in helping blizzard make this a class well worth playing and thanks a lot for bringing this post over from the beta boards.

---

Awesome, thanks!

Some of the things are a little old, yeah. I haven't been able to go through everything yet (or verify it in game, for obvious reasons). Thanks again :D

Reported this for sticky! Thank you for transferring this over here from the beta forums!