Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
Blood Death Knight is heavily dependent on resource and buff management and as a result you should be optimizing your resource-spending as much as possible.
What does it mean to optimize resources?
- You should aim to never cap your Blood Boil charges.
- You should never overcap Runic Power.
- You should aim to have 3 Runes recharging as often as possible.
- Use your cooldowns as frequently and effectively as you can.
Currently San'layn is recommended for both Mythic+ and Raid.
Raid Opener
- Pre-cast Death's Caress
- Place Death And Decay
- Dancing Rune Weapon and Raise Dead with Combat Potion
- Blood Boil
- Vampiric Strike
- Vampiric Strike
- Death Strike
Proceed to Priority List
Mythic+ Opener
- Pre-cast Death's Caress for initial Bone Shield
- Generate RP via Heart Strike and Death And Decay if necessary
- Vampiric Blood with Death Strike to survive
- Weave Blood Boil for threat on new packs
Return to Raid Opener
San’layn revolves around the strength and uses of Dancing Rune Weapon, and wanting to use it off-cooldown whilst also keeping Consumption lined up with it if talented.
Inside Dancing Rune Weapon
- Death Strike to prevent death, or if you are above 75 RP
- Maintain at least 5 charges of Bone Shield
- Blood Boil once
- Death And Decay if you get a Crimson Scourge proc
- Vampiric Strike
- Blood Boil as a filler
Outside Dancing Rune Weapon
- Death Strike to prevent death, or if you are above 75 RP
- Maintain at least 5 Bone Shield charges via Marrowrend
- Empower Consumption to Rank III if you recently left a hard-cast
Dancing Rune Weapon, Empower to Rank I otherwise - Death And Decay, this should be considered a maintenance buff
- Blood Boil if you have a Boiling Point proc
- Vampiric Strike
- Blood Boil to prevent over-capping charges
- Heart Strike as a filler
Raid Opener
- Pre-cast Death's Caress
- Place Death And Decay
- Reaper's Mark with Raise Dead (Macro)
- Dancing Rune Weapon with Combat Potion
- Blood Boil
- Marrowrend to consume Exterminate
Proceed to Priority List
The Deathbringer opener prioritises Reaper's Mark before Dancing Rune Weapon, this is because the cooldowns should remain synced for the rest of the encounter and Reaper's Mark is not duplicated by Dancing Rune Weapon.
Mythic+ Opener
- Pre-cast Death's Caress for initial Bone Shield
- Generate RP via Heart Strike and Death And Decay if necessary
- Vampiric Blood with Death Strike to survive
- Weave Blood Boil for threat on new packs
- Reaper's Mark as you are reaching the plant point*
Return to Raid Opener
A plant point is where your gather should finish, and most movement stops.*
The damage from Wave Of Souls can be used to help with initial aggro if the gather is extensive.
- Death Strike to prevent death or if you are above 75 RP
- Maintain at least 5 charges of Bone Shield via Exterminate / Marrowrend
- Death And Decay, this should be considered a maintenance buff
- Reaper's Mark on cooldown
- Dancing Rune Weapon on cooldown
- Blood Boil to prevent overcapping charges, or to consumeBoiling Point
- Echoing Fury ‘s Exterminate charge before Reaper's Mark explodes
- Consumption once Dancing Rune Weapon ends, always empower to Rank I
- Blood Boil as a filler if you have remaining charges
- Heart Strike as a filler if you run out of Blood Boil charges
As Deathbringer we want to delay Exterminate casts, while still casting it to maintain Bone Shield and to not “waste” charges across an encounter.
Cooldowns and Defensive Usage
Defensively, I always recommend that Vampiric Blood takes precedent in a cooldown plan - it is the most frequently available cooldown with the most applications. Meaning that it is not only effective against one type of damage or damage type.
Dancing Rune Weapon will usually be sent on cooldown for damage purposes, but that doesn’t stop it from doubling as a defensive cooldown, which finds more usefulness in Mythic+ than it does Raid.
Empowering Consumption will always lead to massive intake of healing in AoE, with a substantial Blood Shield on top assuming you cast it at Rank III. The DR it provides can be paired with mechanics assuming the cooldown lines up- but generally it is not more valuable to hold this cooldown for defensive purposes.
Anti-Magic Shell usually takes priority whenever there are dangerous magic effects or damage, due to its short cooldown and bonus RP whenever it absorbs damage.
Icebound Fortitude is our cookie-cutter defensive cooldown. We should avoid overlapping it with other defensives, while still including it in all cooldown plans where necessary.
Lichborne can be used as a strong throughput cooldown during high damage output periods.