Talent Builds
None of the following talent trees are 100% correct for every scenario, but I will be doing my best to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of certain decisions.
The most common change you will see in the Mythic+ build will be swapping into Anti-Magic Zone. The point for this can come from Death Notes, Grip Of The Dead or Subduing Grasp. The recommendation here is to pull from Subduing Grasp until Midnight finally hits.
There is a lot of flexibility in the Raid version of our class tree, with the changeable points coming from:
Currently Deathbringer is recommended for both Mythic+ and Raid.
Deathbringer Mythic+ (Recommended)
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Deathbringer Raid (Recommended)
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San’layn Mythic+
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San’layn Raid
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Class Talents
The Class and Spec Tree both have some variation of choice pending raid and M+ content, and which hero talent structure you choose to follow in Deathbringer or San’layn.
Core Talents
We have a lot of flexible points within the Death Knight class tree - None of which have massive impacts on how you play, but instead they provide niche value in different situations.
Will Of The Necropolis remains as potent as ever, this effect allows you to dip below 30% without worry and provides as a safety net. It is worth noting that Gloom Ward does not affect it.
Anti-Magic Zone is a great raid cooldown that Death Knights bring to the table. 15% magic damage reduction is very strong on certain encounters to ensure the safety of your raid team. Sadly due to the changes in 11.2.5, it has reduced duration and effectiveness compared to what it used to be. This can be buffed further with an extra talent point via Assimilation, which should be done by default in raid. There is also an argument for AMZ and Assimilation in Mythic+, but it should be taken on a case-by-case scenario based on the dungeon you’re playing.
Permafrost provides potent absorbs due to interactions with Icy Talons, Gloom Ward, Sanguine Ground and Vampiric Blood. It becomes even stronger in the pre-patch with us having access to Frigid Resolve via the Deathbringer Hero Tree.
The decision between Asphyxiate and Death's Reach can be decided by the type of content you are doing. Asphyxiate allows you to lock down single mobs in Mythic+, while Death's Reach provides bigger value in Raids by making it easier to grip targets that spawn too far away.
Situational Talents
Blinding Sleet is very good for Blood. It’s an uncapped AoE stop that doesn’t share diminishing returns with many other stops. It’s relatively short cooldown of 1 minute and the 50% slow afterwards make it a very powerful tool for M+.
Grip Of The Dead is extremely valuable in Mythic+ as it allows you to kite better, and avoid unnecessary melee swings.
Coldthirst causes successful Mind Freeze interrupts to grant an additional 10 runic power and reduces Mind Freeze's cooldown by 3 seconds.
Assimilation finds itself useful when you need to reduce your Anti-Magic Zone to a 3 minute cooldown to fit a plan for an encounter.
Death's Echo is a very solid quality of life talent, it helps you maintain an incredibly high uptime on Death And Decay with minimal effort or proc reliance, whilst netting you an extra charge of Death Grip and Death's Advance on top.
Osmosis enables you to turn AMS into another increased healing cooldown. Its need will likely be very niche and not a common choice for people.
Subduing Grasp coupled with Death Grip, Gorefiend's Grasp or Abomination Limb, means that you have easy access to a small DR against grippable targets.
Spec Talents
Bloody Reflection is useful in the cutting-edge of content, but in anything less than that it’s just considered ‘extra damage’, for this reason it may be better to pick Relish In Blood, to help acquire Perseverance Of The Ebon Blade with our point from Lifeblood, which just provides bonus throughput when you’re executing regular rotation.
You may see people often switch to Umbilicus Eternus, using the point from Bloody Reflection, this will reduce overall survivability at the cutting edge range of Mythic+, and creating and sticking to a cooldown plan is likely more effective.
Umbilicus Eternus grants you an absorb shield equal to five times your Blood Plague damage during Vampiric Blood, but the shield is only applied after Vampiric Blood ends. By that point, we are usually stable and have managed to pool a significant Blood Shield to help us bridge the gap to our next active cooldown.
In practice, “UE” can be used as a method of patching up inconsistencies, but this comes with an inhibited learning curve, and a loss to overall performance. It is up to you to decide if it is a worthy trade, but for now the guide does not recommend it, and instead advocates for fundamental improvement.
Spec Tree Discussion
Lifeblood adds a bonus portion of Death Strike healing as a HoT over 5 seconds, this can be valuable when pushing into more difficult content, where healing between Death Strike casts becomes more relevant.
Coagulopathy is one of our maintenance buffs, it helps us deal more damage to targets afflicted with Blood Plague, and helps our plague do more damage as a result of stacking it up to 4, We are incentivized to carry this through downtime in Raids and different packs in Mythic+
Sanguine Ground is another reason to always be inside Death And Decay. This talent alone would be enough to warrant standing in Death And Decay as much as possible.
Red Thirst has always been a strong talent, and it will remain this way going into Midnight as a default option, it brings your total uptime of Vampiric Blood to around 45-50% making it our most frequently available cooldown.
Consumption was redesigned going into Midnight as an Empower Ability. It now consumes 25/50/75% of your Blood Plague. Whilst empowering it, your damage taken will be reduced by 5/10/15%, which will remain for an additional 8/4/2 seconds after finishing the empower.
Carnage is mainly used to compliment the offensive effects of Consumption, though this is a hard talent point to argue for, as the results are fairly random and our capstone points are very contested as-is. It is also bugged right now, offering no Blood Shield upon use.
Blood Mist helps to provide more RP towards the start of our Dancing Rune Weapon. When combined with the effects of Sanguinary Burst just one point away, it becomes a strong contender for capstone points in Mythic+.
Hero Talents
Hero Talents become available at level 71 and as you level you unlock each talent slot on the chosen trees. Blood Death Knights have a choice between San’layn and Deathbringer.
It’s important to highlight that unless you’re chasing the boundaries of cutting edge content in a raid environment or mythic+, both hero talents are viable and suitable for all available content.
Deathbringer
Deathbringer’s gameplay revolves around the talent Reaper's Mark, upon casting the spell your target is afflicted with a 12 second debuff. This debuff stacks to a maximum of 40, which then explodes for damage based on how many stacks you have accrued.
Reaper's Mark Stacks
Your stacks are generated via shadow damage, with shadowfrost damage netting you extra stacks. The Deathbringer talent tree arms you with a range of talents that make all of this very manageable just by executing your rotation. Here are a few examples:
- Bind In Darkness converts your Blood Boil’s damage to Shadowfrost, and causes all Shadowfrost damage to add 2 stacks to Reaper’s Mark, and 4 stacks when this damage critically strikes.
- Wither Away causes Blood Plague to tick every 1.5s, as opposed to 3s, leading to more stacks.
- Dark Talons causes your Death Strike to count as Shadowfrost damage, therefore increasing Reaper's Mark stacks with every cast. However, Death Strike still deals Physical damage.
- Death And Decay is also one of the biggest contributors to Reaper's Mark stacks.
Reaper’s Mark
From a rotational point of view, you should aim to never cast Reaper's Mark during Dancing Rune Weapon. This is because it is not a duplicated cast. You should also aim to get good value from Wave Of Souls, since it contributes to a large portion of your damage.
Due to the cooldown being so short, it’s not worth holding it for long periods on either bosses or in Mythic+, unless there’s a large pack with a priority target coming within a few seconds or a damage amp on a boss fight.
Upon expiration, Reaper's Mark will grant us 2 Exterminate Charges. These are empowered versions of Marrowrend, coming at a reduced cost of 1 Rune and summoning two scythes to strike at the targets.
- Scythe 1: Deals single-target Shadowfrost damage
- Scythe 2: Deals AOE Shadowfrost damage, reapplying Blood Plague to everything hit.
Exterminate
The goal with Exterminates is to never waste them whilst still casting them outside of your Dancing Rune Weapon duration. This is because much like Reaper’s Mark, these are not duplicated casts.
Reaper's Mark will always provide you with 2 Exterminates, and Dancing Rune Weapon will give you 1 via Echoing Fury.
There are a couple of things that you should avoid when looking to cast your Exterminate:
- Don’t cast them during Dancing Rune Weapon unless it’s necessary
- Exterminate only stacks to 2, so make sure to use your ‘Echoing Fury’ Exterminate if your Reaper’s Mark will explode in the next few seconds.
You can delay your second Reaper’s Mark Exterminate so that you need to refresh Bone Shield less often- Marrowrend by itself is a weak spell so any efficiency gained through better Exterminate usage always has a positive effect
The Deathbringer Hero Talents
Below is an example of optimal point-allocation going into patch 12.0, Due to the limited Hero Talent points, we have only one decision to make. Either you want slightly more survivability, or you want a lot more damage specifically on a single target.
At the moment the only real change that can happen from these choice nodes, is us swapping into ‘Reaper’s Onslaught’ from ‘Dark Talons’ upon obtaining the Season 3 Tier Set, this ensures that we get as many Exterminates as possible, since we will be reducing the cooldown on Reaper’s Mark, and always gaining two Exterminates when we press it.
Notable Deathbringer Talents
- Hitting as many targets as possible with this will net you huge amounts of damage by itself, and as an added bonus it will make all enemies struck take increased shadowfrost damage from you.
Dark Talons vs Rune Carved Plates
- Dark Talons brings more Single Target damage to Deathbringer, and causes Reaper's Mark to explode faster.
- Rune-Carved Plates gives a high uptime on both physical and magical DR, further emphasising the need to weave your spells, however rotational misplays will punish you in regards to the uptime.
Since Rune Carved Plates is not required in most content, the recommendation is to spec into Dark Talons. However for those progressing cutting-edge content, Rune-Carved Plates is a worthwhile pickup defensively.
San’layn
Since the introduction of the Season 3 Tier Sets, San’layn has maintained a height in popularity among players, but it is currently weaker in most cases than Deathbringer, and thematically has the potential to perfectly inhibit the essence of Blood DK.
San’layn revolves all around the use of Dancing Rune Weapon, and wanting to press it off cooldown. We’re also incentivized to better leverage Consumption rotationally.
The first talent on the talent tree is Vampiric Strike, this replaces your Heart Strike either when you get a proc via Death Strike (at a 35% chance baseline) or when Dancing Rune Weapon is active. The chance to get a Vampiric Strike can be increased by other talents in the Hero tree.
Essence of the Blood Queen
Each Vampiric Strike will grant you stacks of Essence Of The Blood Queen, these will last for 20 seconds and refresh every time you cast Vampiric Strike. Each of these stacks will give you 2% haste, stacking up to a max of 10%, 14% with Frenzied Bloodthirst. It is very important for San’layn users to maintain this buff through multiple combats in Mythic+, and even more important to maintain the buff on bosses, regardless of downtime. This becomes even more important with the addition of Thrill Of Blood going into Midnight.
Leveraging Consumption as San'layn
With the prepatch, we’re seeing a change to Consumption, and while the changes are meaningful, you will still use it to snapshot Blood Plague’s maximum damage potential.
Going forward, San'layn users will always empower Consumption to Rank III, this ensures that we get the most defensive and offensive value out of the cooldown.
During Dancing Rune Weapon we will be using Consumption in the last 3 Seconds, this ensures that we get maximum benefit from the ramped Blood Plague, and we will reapply Blood Plague soon after.
San'layn Hero Talents
Below is an example of San’layn’s talent point allocation; Much like Deathbringer, there is limited decision making because we don’t have as many talent points as we will have going into Midnight.
Notable San'layn Talents
- Visceral Strength gives you a window at the end of your Dancing Rune Weapon where it is worth pressing your Death and Decay again, for the strength bonus~ before you consume your Blood Plague via Consumption
- Frenzied Bloodthirst helps to make Death Strike even more powerful, in conjunction with Rune Of Sanguination, Hemostasis, Deadly Reach and Bloodshot.
Blood-Soaked Ground vs Desecrate
While this is a low-impact decision, there is still a choice to be made.
- Blood Soaked Ground has bonus DR with the added effect of an increased chance for a Vampiric Strike proc.
- Desecrate has a chance to deal all of its remaining damage, removing DnD from the ground but maintaining all buffs.* It also allows for you to ‘fish’ for more Crimson Scourge procs whenever DnD is not on the ground, giving you the potential to further benefit from Visceral Strength.
Desecrate also removes Grip Of The Dead from enemies, which can be lethal in Mythic+.