[Guide] 3.3.5 Blood DK PvP

1 - Introduction to 3.3.5 Blood DKs
Our beloved blood DKs in 3.3.5 are capable of dealing high damage bursts and big healing healing bursts just fine. We can either deal more healing than damage for a few seconds and stay alive against a burst, or burst them and quickly kill a healer. I'd say Blood is the strongest and most fun spec to play in PvP, but that's just an opinion.
Since blood has sustained healing on it's own, we'll be focusing on maximizing our damage in this guide.


2 - Presences
You will be choosing between Blood or Unholy presence. There's a talent tree for each presence, so make sure to take a look at it!
Unholy presence is very good for bursts and good against RDPS that kite you well, you cast things so fast you need to wait a few seconds until your runes recharge.
Blood presence gives more damage and more healings for yourself, but when doing ERW damage bursts you can't spend your runic power and you'll be losing a bit of DPS.

Blood Presence -- +15% damage and self heals per hit. This is the one I use.
Frost Presence -- +8% stamina +60% armor from equipment +8% damage reduction. You can use this against MDPS. Change before the fight to save the frost rune. If you change during the fight, then use a Blood Tap.
Note: You can still fight a MDPS at blood/UH presence, frost presence isn't a requirement.
Unholy Presence -- +15% movement speed +15% attack speed and reduces global cooldown by 0,5s. Great for ERW damage bursts, as you can spend even your runic power. May help a lot too against kiting classes.


3 - Talent Tree
(51/0/20) This is the one I use. You may take the path to Lichborne aswell but you'll be losing valuable DPS for that. This talent tree is for Blood Presence DKs.
http://i.imgur.com/AAdacTb.png

(51/17/3) This is a good talent tree for UH presence users, using the Lichborne path.
http://imgur.com/2e9LUfH

Keep in mind you can do your own talent tree, they aren't a rule! You can take the Lichborne path with a blood presence tree, and so on!
These are just my favorite talent trees.


4 - Stats Priority
ARP > STR > Hit/Expertise cap > Critical Strike > Resilience > Stamina > Avoidance > Haste


5 - Glyphs
5.1 - Major Glyphs
Glyph of Disease -- This is a requirement, you will need to refresh your diseases.
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon -- +5 seconds for the duration of DRW. This is another requirement, for your damage bursts.
Glyph of Death Strike -- Increases your Death Strike damage by 1% for each runic power you have, up to a 25% increasement. If you want to increase your DPS, this is a good option.
Glyph of Heart Strike -- After hitting your targets with Heart Strike, their movement will be reduced by 50% for 10 seconds. Take this if you have problems in keeping your enemies close.

You will be taking Disease and DRW. You will choose between Death Strike and Heart strike for your third glyph, both of them are good improvements.
To blood presence users I suggest Death Strike.


5.2 - Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Horn of Winter -- Increases the duration of Horn of Winter by 1 minute.
Glyph of Pestilience -- Increases the radius of pestilience by 5yd. Very good in massive BGs, you may spread diseases to everyone around you!
Glyph of Blood Tap -- Blood Tap will no longer damage you.

Note: If you went for the Lichborne path, you will replace either HoW or blood tap with Death's embrace.


6 - Enchanting
Remember there are professions that have enchant to your items. Read "7 - Professions" and "4 - Stats Priority" before you choose.
Head -- Arcanum of Torment - +50 AP +20 crit
Cloak -- Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed +23 haste
Chest -- Scroll of Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats + 10 all stats
Boots -- Scroll of Enchant Boots - Greater Assault + 32 attack power
Gloves -- Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Crusher + 44 attack power
Legs -- Icescale Leg Armor +75 attack power and + 22 critical strike
Shoulder -- Greater Inscription of the Axe +40 attack power + 15 crit rating
Bracer -- Scroll of Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault +50 attack power
Waist -- Eternal Belt Buckle + 1 socket
Weapon -- Rune of the Fallen Crusader


7 - Gems
Red slot -- +20 amor penetration
Blue slot -- +10 ARP and + 15 stamina
Yellow slot -- +10 STR and + 10 critical strike
Meta slot -- +21 critical strike and +3% damage on critical strikes


8 - Professions
Blacksmithing -- + 40ARP or +40STR or +60 stamina
Tailoring -- Cloak enchant to sometimes give 400 attack power for 15 seconds
Enchanting -- +80 AP or +60 stamina
Skinning -- +48 critical strike
Jewelcrafting -- +42ARP or +42STR or +61 stamina
Leatherworking -- +80 AP or +62 stamina
Mining -- +60stamina
Jewelcrafting -- +61 stamina
Engineering -- So many good stuff on it.

I have Tailoring and Engineering. Tailoring because my other option for cloak is +haste, and engineering because I wanted the movement boost.

9 - Race
Human is the best, for the free DPS trinket. Orcs are the horde option.

10 - Gear
Full PvP gear. You may spend coins on improving every single gear piece, but without resilience your self healings won't sustain you.
But, as for the weapon and trinket...

Weapon -- Shadowmourne (orly?)
Cast DRW = win, a floating shadowmourne chasing your enemies!
Rings -- Might of Blight. And the ICC rep ring.

Trinket -- Sharpened Twilight Scale. Best DPS trinket for blood DKs. If you're human and want another DPS trinket, then take DBW.



11 - Macros
In case you went for the Lichborne path, this macro is a need:

Quote:

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#showtooltip Death Coil
/cast Lichborne
/cast [target=player] Death Coil

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It heals you at the cost of runic power.

But drw is broken...

lol , these talent points... my eyes

The talents are completely fine, but as Feomatar mentioned atm DRW is utter crap doing 10% of damage instead of 50% so it's useless in pvp as for pve it's worth the useless puny extra damage

Why is the 2nd talent spec not taking Two-handed weapon specialization?

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Imho, this could be better:

50/0/21 with Unholy Blight for dispel protection
http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#jfVRqc0IsbofosxZfMGh0fz

Changes:
1/3 Scent of Blood for runic power.
0/2 Improved Blood Presence because the healing really isn't much.
3/3 Sudden Doom because free damage, why not?
1/1 Unholy Blight as many people are comfortable fighting Death Knights nowadays, and they will dispel/get dispelled from diseases. It's better to have them on than not, and thus I picked this up over DRW.

51/17/3
http://wotlk.openwow.com/talent#jfVRqc0Isbofost0gLzhMZc

2/2 Icy Reach, I maxed this as it's amazing catching kiters/catching people from range in BGs, especially when you don't have a shorter Death Grip CD in this spec. 1/2 just isn't enough, and it's also one of the talents we sub frost in the first place for, other than Lichborne.
2/2 Two Handed Weapon Specialization - I'm guessing OP probably overlooked it and made this mistake. It's maxed here.
Again, 2/2 Sudden Doom for more free damage and we keep 1/1 DRW as there's no where else to place points in.

(There's an option of going 0/1 DRW and 2/3 Virulence and going 2/2 Chill of the Grave for more runic power - a good opener from range as you can use Anti Magic Shell immediately after 1 chains of ice to stick to your target. If you really dislike DRW though, you can either max Black Ice or go 1/2 Chill of the Grave.)

EDIT:

Major Glyphs of Heart Strike, Anti-Magic Shell, Death Strike for both specs.

THIS http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00100000000000
any other build without unholy blight and pet is not good for pvp

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bigpunisher666

THIS http://rpgworld.altervista.org/335/d...00100000000000
any other build without unholy blight and pet is not good for pvp

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Why perma ghoul?
As blood DK u stack arp and ur pet doesn't benefit from that.
I would rather use a 50/00/21 spec. Blood Gorged gives significant more dmg than the additional points that u put in the UH tree.

When it comes to gearing I would use pretty much the same gear like a Arms warr. 5/5 PvP set and plate/leather offsets with ARP.

Why is it that nobody ever mentions the T9 and T10 bonuses? Getting 2 pieces of the tank T9 and the dps T10 sets gives a stacked 12% additional damage on your Heart Strike, you don't need that much stacked resilience as blood given your absurd amount of survivability already, what you want is damage, and Heart Strike is your main damage source after Death Strike.

Preferably, I would keep the PvP Gloves myself for its effect of increasing the Runic Power generated by Chains of Ice, and to mantain a certain range of resilience.

Edit: Also, you guys don't seem to understand the idea of Sudden Doom or how to exploit its power, the idea is that you get free Death Coils, so you should focus on making your Death Coils as strong as you can, thus you should get:
Major Glyph of Dark Death: Increases damage and healing of your Death Coil by 15%
Sigil of the Vengeful Heart: Increases the damage done by your Death Coil by 380 and by your Frost Strike ability by 113. Since we don't have Frost Strike we'll only focus on the 380 extra damage. Sure, 380 damage is laughable you say, but you need to take in consideration that it multiplies by all the multipliers we gave our Death Coil earlier, including strength, plus Death Knights deal x2 damage as spell critical strike, thus doubling that 380.

In short, with Sigil of the Vengeful Heart, you should expect a boost in your Death Coil of at least 900-1k crits

And lastly, you have the Unholy Talent Morbidity, which increases the damage of your Death Coil further by another 15%

That's how you take benefit of Sudden Doom, otherwise it's barely dealing enough damage to compensate for its investment. I've been told that Death Coil needs Dark Ice 5/5 to be truly powerful, but I myself prefer to get Unholy Blight before investing in the frost spec, because keeping your diseases up is way too important to consider it, and healers and priests are absolute ****s with dispelling, so you don't want to take that risk.

Here's my talent spec if you're curious.

https://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#jfV...fMGhhbz:zLpMm0

I invest 1/3 on Death Rune Mastery for the occasional Death Runes I can use for my Blood defensive CDs, or for bursting with a 6 combo Heart Strike in a row.

5% dmg increase on HS from TANK T9 wont make up for the stats you lose from those items.
T9 is overall bad, when compared to T10, for both PvP and PvE.

Talking of something bad, why would u ever go Blood in PvP?????

Prot Warrs who play PvP also pick two Tank T9 pieces for the Block Value, so I don't see the difference?

Why would you come to a Blood PvP Guide Thread to question people why are they playing as such? I think if we're here it's pretty clear we know the pros and cons for picking this spec so it's pointless to come and quetion that.
I picked blood personally because that's what I picked when I made a DK for the first time, without knowing anything about DK specs and their specializations, but by the time I realized that unholy is the talent venered for PvP, I had already made my mind on playing as Blood only, and thus I decided to master it at all costs. I don't care if I'm not yet another #6374025 unholy PvP DK with the same talents and gear, because that's what has killed the fun for me in WoW in a long time, and trying out underappreciated specs is what's made it interesting for me so far.

You cant compare the two T9 sets...
Warriors T9 has goodish stats in the items.
Block, which will, on top of T9 bonus, increase the DMG of Shield Slam.
Also, the main reason Prot War works in PvP (and Blood DK doesnt) is cos it actualy has a good burst with a 5+3sec stun, followed by a small silence with Shield Bash. And you can repeat this almost every 30sec (45 if you wait for trinket procs for higher burst).

Blood DK on the other hand has nothing that will kill a Healer (3min cd Hysteria lol).
Oh, one more thing, if you dont go for Death Rune Mastery, T9 has even less sence since you can do 2 HSs every 10sec. Its better to go more DPS stats to buff other things that happen in btwn, which will again buff HS aswell.
Also, if you do the math right, 3% all dmg increase is better than 5% HS dmg increase (4/5 T10 > 2/5 T9 and T10). Thats without taking into account extra Strength, Crit and Arp.

If you make a guide or a thread it does not make you immune when it comes to people questioning your ways.

Also, who knows, maybe a newb can come and see this guide thinking its actualy good.
I guess i want to save them some time... :D

P.S. there are many working classes and specs out there that can make your gameplay fun and successfull, a lot more than Blood ever will.

The T9 stats aren't that bad as you make them out to be, if you take for instance the head and shoulder pieces, you get a hit rating boost from both of them, saving you the trouble of having to get hit rating from any other gear/gem/enchant, allowing you to get more arp or any other stats you would pick instead. While the other stats they give are tank-related, they're still useful for a melee combat, and is a more or less simliar trade to getting resilience instead, also, T9 already gives strength on its own, so mentioning the strength difference with T10 is almost irrelevant to even consider it for that 3%.

And no, the 3% dmg from all sources isn't reliable, because it requires all of your runes to be on CD constantly just to mantain the buff, it's not a solid increase that would benefit you on a fight vs a class that relies on kiting you (How are you going to spend all of your CDs if you can't reach them?), I've even done the damage comparision before by testing both gear combinations, and yeah, while it would benefit you if you can constantly use all of your CDs, it's very situational and unreliable, you may have an easier time vs other DKs, warrs and paladins maybe, but not vs most other classes, especially because you would want to spam HS on kiters.

Also, while your point of Blood being helpeless vs healers is true, that doesn't make the spec any less worthwhile. Paladins face simliar issues too and yet you don't see people discouraging others from picking them (Hysteria/Avenging Wrath) (Strangulate/Hammer of Justice), if anything, DKs at least have two other means to interrupt spell cast (Death Grip + Mind Freeze), while paladins only have Repenteance at best.

My point is, not all classes and specs are meant to counter everything, that's what arena compositions are for, to compensate for the weakness in your class with another class combination.

Wow, you just compared a Ret paladin and Blood dk...

And no, again, Tank T9 is not worth, if you try and use logic.
If you are getting kited, Wrathful set is a better choice since it has both more stats and Resilience.
If you are against a melee class, T10 can be better since u wont have having problem spending your runes.

As for Hit...
81 AAfeet, 59 AshenRing, enchants: 20 hit on gloves, 12hit on feet.
You dont need more than this and you can focus more on ArP after that.

Fun fact, you CANT kite an Unholy DK that can kill a healer more often than a Blood DK, a lot more often.
Also, Frost DK has a lot better burst, which can happen more often. It will have less survability, but its more fun to kill or be killed, rather than beeing kited untill more people come to kill you.

But i guess thats just me...

P.S. there is nothing that can compensate for Bloods awfull PvP design.

Yeah I did, and you didn't bring any argument after that, shows me that you really don't have anything to say about it then, so unless you can prove me that a Ret paladin can solo a decent healer then I'll mantain my word.

That's a total of 172 Hit Rating, why do you need THAT much? shouldn't 4% suffice for melee attacks? Plus with Virulence 3/3 you make that a 7% for spells, but if you really need that extra 60, a Cloak of Victory can do the job, or well might as well just use the Ashen Ring since you'll likely keep it anyway, (Also seriously, never enchant feet with anything that isn't Tuskarr's Vitality, why would you let extra run speed go to waste? Unless you expect to stay at UH presence 24/7.

AA sucks, weren't you stacking arp and crit? Get Saronite Stompers or Hellfrozen Bonegrinders (latter preferred for the socket colors)

The resilience isn't going to help you vs a healer kiting you, but parry and defensive stats could help you to activate Rune Strike should you get targeted by a melee partner of theirs, so it's not all that useless, even the Dark Command CD reduction helps when taunting rogues/feral druids more often to prevent them from stealthing back.

Only reason why Frost has a better burst is because thei ultimate isn't bugged.

P.S. Blood's design isn't bad, it's not the design's fault that Warmane's DRW doesn't work as intended, otherwise that'd be an extra burst of just 1 min CD that lasts 12 seconds (17 with glyph), Summon Gargoyle is what? 3 minutes? So why did you laugh at Hysteria then? lol

Do you even know what a Ret Paladin brings to the table?
How can u compare a DPS only class like BDK with a class that can basicly DPS, Heal and Support others, while doing that same dps?
Also, Rets burst windows are closer, and Wings are a lot better than Hysteria.
There is a reason why Ret + Disc/Resto Sham works better than BDK + Disc/Resto Sham.

My god... AA is bad? Did you see the stats that item gives you? There is no other item, part from Ashen Ring, that will help you cap hit and give you so much stat in return.
But i guess im wasting my time here...

Its funny cos all those problems with kiting, not beeing able to kill, and rogues/ferals going stelth, instantly disapears when you go unholy.

Also, from what i know Blood talents are working properly. I even heard that DRW was doing more dmg than suposed to, but idk if that got fixed or anything...
Again, it was never meant to do EXACTLY 50% dmg of DK, so yea, its not bugged.
Even tho, considering how easy it is to kite a BDK, buffed DRW with Hysteria still ahouldnt be enough to kill anything...

On one hand you have such a unique spec like Unholy, which is on top of it all, Bane of all caster classes, and yet, Blood is the way to go... :D