How It Feels
Blood is the vampire among tanks. The more damage you take, the harder you heal. Instead of just blocking hits, you drain the life of your enemies and turn their attacks into your healing. It feels like a duel in which you only seem to be on the defensive.
Add a strong image: an undead knight in heavy plate, surrounded by whirling bones, with a rune weapon that dances at your side in an emergency. Blood is calmer and heavier than most tanks, but very self-sufficient.
How Blood Works
The Death Knight uses two resources: runes, which recharge over time, and Runic Power, which you generate with rune abilities.
- Keep Bone Shield up: Marrowrend generates Bone Shield charges. It raises your armor, and every melee hit against you consumes a charge.
- Build Runic Power: Heart Strike hits your target and one more enemy and generates Runic Power. Blood Boil infects all nearby enemies with Blood Plague.
- Death Strike: if you just took a lot of damage, Death Strike heals you for part of it. The timing decides how good a Blood Death Knight is.
- Emergencies: Vampiric Blood raises your health and the healing you receive. Dancing Rune Weapon summons a weapon that mirrors your attacks and raises your parry chance.
Key Abilities
- Marrowrend: a heavy strike that recharges your Bone Shield.
- Heart Strike: your standard attack against up to two enemies, generates Runic Power.
- Death Strike: the heart of the spec, heals you for part of the damage you recently took.
- Blood Boil: hits all nearby enemies and infects them with Blood Plague.
- Vampiric Blood: more maximum health and more healing received for a few seconds.
- Dancing Rune Weapon: a rune weapon fights at your side, mirrors your attacks and raises your parry chance.
Lore: The Knights of the Ebon Blade
Death Knights were once the elite warriors of the Scourge, raised by the Lich King Arthas to conquer Azeroth in his name. After breaking free of him at the Battle for Light's Hope Chapel, they founded the Knights of the Ebon Blade under Darion Mograine, based in the necropolis Acherus.
Blood draws on the vampiric side of the undead. It recalls the San'layn, the vampire princes of the Scourge such as Prince Keleseth and Prince Valanar, who served Arthas in Icecrown. A Blood Death Knight feeds on the life of its enemies to keep fighting.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
- huge self-healing, very independent of healers,
- one of the strongest solo specs in the game,
- good control over enemies, for example by pulling them in with Death Grip,
- plate armor and strong cooldowns.
Weaknesses
- little mobility compared to Demon Hunters or Monks,
- a badly timed Death Strike wastes a lot of healing,
- runes recharge slowly, so resource mistakes are felt right away.
Who Is the Blood Death Knight For?
A good fit if you …
- want a self-sufficient tank that relies little on healers,
- want to be as safe as possible solo,
- love the dark, vampiric fantasy.
Probably not if you …
- want a very mobile tank, in which case the Vengeance Demon Hunter fits better,
- prefer blocking with a shield, for example as a Protection Warrior.
Blood, Frost or Unholy?
The Death Knight can tank or deal melee damage. Frost strikes fast and directly with icy weapons, Unholy commands ghouls and plagues.
More about the class on the Death Knight in WoW Midnight page. Which classes are best on their own is covered in the best WoW class for solo guide.
Images: © Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Source: worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com
