DK Guidelines and FAQ 2026 for Warmane
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Table of Contents
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Spoiler:Show
1. Introduction
2. Guide Philosophy / Disclaimer
3. General DK Questions
- 3.1 What are logs and how can I know how well I am doing as a DPS?
- 3.2 Where can I see the BiS list that is relevant for me?
- 3.3 Are these BiS lists correct? What if I think there is a better item combination? Which set of items is optimal if I cannot get full BiS yet?
- 3.3.1 Quick guide to simming
- 3.3.2 Things to be aware of while using WotLK sim
- 3.4 What DK DPS spec should I play?
- 3.5 Which is better DPS: Frost or Unholy?
- 3.6 Is Blood DPS viable?
- 3.7 Dual-wield Unholy?!
- 3.8 What if you invented 2H Frost and have SM?
- 3.9 Which resource is more important runic power or runes?
- 3.10 What is Rune Grace?
- 3.11 What presence do I do X in?
- 3.12 My ghoul and my Gary are my frens. Info dump on pets, guardians, and summons.
- 3.12.1 Temporary ghoul and Army
- 3.12.2 Permanent ghoul
- 3.12.3 Blood Worms
- 3.12.4 Gary
- 3.13 What race do I go?
- 3.14 Which sigil should I use?
- 3.14.1 Unholy sigil ideas
- 3.14.2 FDK sigil ideas
- 3.14.3 BDK tank sigil ideas
- 3.15 Should I use Runeforges or regular weapon enchants?
- 3.15.1 Are there situations where regular weapon enchants can be useful?
- 3.16 Do I want fast or slow weapons?
- 3.17 How does Blood Tap work?
- 3.18 What professions are BiS? How much worse is it if I go with another profession?
- 3.19 What are stat weights, and what stats should I get?
- 3.20 What about caps? Shouldn’t I always gear to reach hit cap and expertise cap first?
4. FDK-Specific Questions
- 4.1 How much hit do I need as FDK?
- 4.1.1 Hit Types
- 4.1.2 Hit talents, buffs, and debuffs
- 4.1.3 Hit caps
- 4.1.4 Hit value
- 4.2 How valuable is expertise for Frost?
- 4.2.1 Main idea
- 4.2.2 Implications of expertise value
- 4.2.3 Human perspective versus numerical simulations
- 4.3 Do I need to care about crit cap for white autos?
- 4.4 How good is Armor Penetration for FDK?
- 4.5 Arp while gearing and arp soft cap?
- 4.6 UH subspec or BL subspec for FDK?
- 4.6.1 Advantages of sub-BL
- 4.6.2 Okay, what does it all mean for you when choosing which subspec to play?
5. Useful Resources
- 5.1 Which resources should I check?
- 5.2 Do you have VODs and video demos to recommend?
6. Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Greetings,
My name is Dzianis, although I am better known by the in-game DK names Lanausee or Yardenko. To keep it short, I hold rank 1 DPS records for most bosses on the Warmane Icecrown server, both as FDK and as DK overall, many of them by a significant margin of up to 15% over other FDK parses on Warmane Icecrown, and also substantially exceeding records from WotLK Classic or similar WotLK private servers, although such comparisons are not always exactly 1:1.
My second “speciality” is dual-wield Unholy, also known as Morb, which is also the preferred and superior way of playing Unholy DK before obtaining Shadowmourne (SM), as well as in earlier phases of WotLK on Warmane and at lower gear levels.
I have recently been asked many questions about DK in general and FDK in particular, so I decided to put together this FAQ in hopes of helping players who feel inspired to perform better on this exciting and powerful class and its specs. I will mainly focus on FDK, briefly touching on DW UHDK and some more general DK-related questions.
Since there are currently two states of WotLK on Warmane — Phase 5 for Icecrown and Lordaeron, and Phase 1 for Onyxia (state as of February 2026) — there are also differences in how DK, and FDK in particular, are played. These differences arise from the item level of gear, the amount and type of stats available on obtainable gear, tier bonuses, and the nature of encounters. You should therefore be aware that these differences exist. I will try to cover things as extensively as possible and differentiate where necessary, but it is still something to keep in mind while reading the guide.
2. Guide Philosophy / Disclaimer
This FAQ reflects my experience playing DK on Warmane and my interpretation of the theorycrafting I have read or performed myself. There are often multiple viable approaches that yield very similar results, and different raid environments may favor slightly different decisions.
This FAQ assumes that you already have some experience playing a Death Knight. You should know the names of your abilities, what they do, which resources they use, and how much those abilities cost. It also assumes that you understand the basic stats in the game and what they approximately provide to your character. Additionally, you should have read your talents and have at least some experience in raids or RDF on a DK, so that you are familiar with the existence of buffs and debuffs provided by other classes that affect your performance.
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3. General DK Questions
3.1 What are logs and how can I know how well I am doing as a DPS?
Spoiler:Show
Logs are records of combat events during a raid encounter. They track things such as damage dealt, abilities used, buffs, debuffs, deaths, and many other events that happen during the fight. By uploading these logs to a website, you can analyze your performance and compare it with other players.
For Warmane, the most commonly used logging website is:
https://uwu-logs.xyz
To create logs yourself, you need to enable combat logging in the game by typing the command:
This will create a file called WoWCombatLog.txt inside your World of Warcraft folder. After your raid, you can upload this file using the uploader on the UwU Logs website.Code:/combatlog
More info, together with a step-by-step guide and a combatlog WeakAura, can be found here:
https://uwu-logs.xyz/upload
Once uploaded, the log will appear on the browsing page and you can inspect your performance in detail.
3.2 Where can I see the BiS list that is relevant for me?
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WoWHead contains BiS lists for all DK specs, separated by phases and sometimes races:
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/guide/...ar-pve-phase-1
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/guide/...ar-pve-phase-1
3.3 Are these BiS lists correct? What if I think there is a better item combination? Which set of items is optimal if I cannot get full BiS yet?
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Looking into a similar issue for myself, I found that the best solution was to observe my current gear and any prospective gear that could replace it, and then run that gear in a simulation to determine which pieces would perform better on average. Often I come across a piece of gear that appears to be decent, but I cannot determine with intuition alone whether it is an upgrade, given the sum of all parts of my gear. Luckily, simulation has proven invaluable in determining differences in gear performance.
Essentially, what this simulation does is simulate fighting something 10,000 times so you can get a solid “average” figure for that specific setup. It is like a tool made to answer the question of “is Y better than X”, except nobody ever gives me any weird attitude when I ask the sim that question.
https://wowsims.github.io/wotlk/deathknight/
The same applies to gemming, enchants, and talent combinations.
3.3.1 Quick guide to simming
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STEP 1. Open UwU Logs https://uwu-logs.xyz or https://wow-logs.co.in, look up your character name, check for your usual raid group, and look up the kill times for the encounters you are interested in simming. Keep in mind that the sim assumes 100% uptime.
STEP 2. Go to the WotLK Death Knight Sim:
https://wowsims.github.io/wotlk/deathknight/
Click the cogwheel at the top right and click Restore Defaults. This ensures that cached values are not an issue. Now set your gear, talents, raid buffs, debuffs, and consumables. Set the encounter duration as you determined in the previous step. Try to match everything as much as possible to your realistic raid setting.
STEP 3. Your performance in game is heavily influenced by randomness from hit, crit, expertise, etc. The sim accounts for this, which makes for a realistic simulation, however it also means you need many iterations to ensure your results converge. I suggest setting the iteration number to something like 20,000 or 30,000 if you are attempting to compare items. Press Simulate and get a DPS value and a standard deviation value. The standard deviation indicates the range where 68% of simulations landed and should not be interpreted as an error estimate. You can look at the histogram the sim gives you to determine how much variance there is in your setup, typically low hit and expertise means more variance.
STEP 4. Click the reference pin under the DPS value so that you can easily compare different gear pieces you might be interested in. You can pick and choose, click Simulate, and get a DPS delta for that gear swap.
*adopted from the sim guide of the Blight Club.
3.3.2 Things to be aware of while using WotLK sim
There are differences between WotLK 3.3.5 on Warmane and WotLK Classic 3.4.x. That means that the simulation results will not 100% accurately depict the reality of Warmane. However, it is still much better than estimating stat value by eye or by feeling. Moreover, for Frost DK specifically, there are no substantial differences between Classic and 3.3.5 that would lead to a DPS difference of more than 1% between the two game versions.
Unholy, however, is substantially different between the two game iterations, and these discrepancies and what they mean are covered in the following sections of this FAQ.
There have also been community attempts to adapt WotLK simming more closely to the original 3.3.5 mechanics without the rebalancing introduced in WotLK Classic. One such project is currently under development and aims to better reflect the behaviour of multiple classes in a 3.3.5 environment such as Warmane. The project is still being refined and adjusted, but it already produces reasonable results and can be worth trying if you are interested in experimenting with a more 3.3.5-oriented simulation:
https://poli93.github.io/wotlk/deathknight/
3.4 What DK DPS spec should I play?
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Every raid wants one Unholy to spread Ebon Plague for % magic damage and 30% disease damage. The other two specs that can bring % magic damage must manually cast it on each target, and no other class brings % disease damage for spriest. Most raids want Improved Icy Talons from a DK, as the shaman equivalent requires them to lose points in a DPS talent. Double-buff Blood tank or Frost DPS can bring this.
After those are satisfied for your raid, the rest of the DPS should go whichever spec is better at the time for the goals of the raid. Conventionally, this is Frost for single target, while Unholy is always better at long-lived AoE.
3.5 Which is better DPS: Frost or Unholy?
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On Warmane, simplified, Frost DK brings superior single-target damage, while Unholy brings superior AoE. The difference is also affected by fight length and shifts in favor of FDK when fight lengths do not favor Unholy’s 3-minute Gargoyle cooldown.
However, the first thing you should look at when choosing your spec in a particular raid is the presence of all the buffs for the raid and for yourself. In other words, you should not play Frost DK in a 25-man raid without Unholy. It is both egoistic and unreasonable, as Frost DK loses a significant portion of damage, up to 4%, if the 30% disease damage of Crypt Fever together with the 13% magic AoE Ebon Plaguebringer debuffs are not present.
3.6 Is Blood DPS viable?
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Depends on your definition of viable. It can clear content, but it is at least 10% worse than Frost or Unholy. Be aware that the situation is slightly better, around 5% difference, at BiS gear levels, and it is not too bad with Shadowmourne (SM). That said, you should not even attempt to play Blood DPS without STS + DBW, 4T10 277, and most importantly SM.
3.7 Dual-wield Unholy?!
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Dual-wield Unholy beats 2-handed Unholy early in WotLK. The sim, WotLK Classic, Warmane Frostmourne, and Icecrown experience all show this to be true and project it to remain that way until, or unless, you are able to get Shadowmourne. Dual-wield rotation is covered in the Wowhead guide under “Morb”.
I can also recommend this ancient video from the legendary WhiteWolf himself, who is credited as the original author of Morb Unholy. Although the understanding of DW UHDK improved and advanced during WotLK Classic, most of the things he says are still highly relevant, and I think it is useful to hear and understand his perspective if you are interested in the spec and want to perform on it:
https://youtu.be/BXSbwqG1jE8
3.8 What if you invented 2H Frost and have SM?
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In short, it is just substantially worse than dual-wield Frost. It is so much worse that DW with 2x Caress of Insanity from Ulduar is better than 2H with Shadowmourne, which is the best 2H weapon of the expansion.
3.9 Which resource is more important runic power or runes?
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Runes are your most important resource, and in most situations you should prioritize spending runes over spending runic power if both are available at the same time. In simplified terms, the core abilities of every DK spec, the abilities that deal the majority of your damage, require runes. Runic power mainly serves to fill empty global cooldowns while your runes, and the abilities that consume them, are on cooldown.
For this reason you should generally avoid delaying rune usage in order to spend runic power, especially if doing so would cause you to exceed the Rune Grace window and drift rune cooldowns.
That said, runic power abilities are still an important part of your damage profile. Many talents and glyphs increase their effectiveness, and some runic power abilities also contribute to survivability, which is something Death Knights as a class are well known for.
Frost DK, however, uses runic power for damage more efficiently than the other DK specs. Its main runic power spender, Frost Strike (FS), costs less runic power when glyphed, deals more damage than Death Coil, and benefits from Killing Machine (KM) procs, which guarantee critical strikes. Because of this, runic power tends to have a higher effective value for Frost than it does for other DK specs.
As a result, Frost players must manage runic power more carefully. In particular, you should generally try to avoid overcapping runic power as Frost DK outside of the opener. Other DK specs can occasionally afford to overcap runic power with minimal loss, but Frost is punished more heavily for doing so.
Finally, because runic power plays a larger role in Frost’s damage profile, Chill of the Grave becomes a very strong talent and should generally be taken 2/2, unless you are optimizing for a specific encounter and know exactly what you are doing. In contrast, Dirge is a relatively weak talent and usually has better alternatives in terms of DPS per point, such as Unholy Blight or Ghoul Frenzy.
3.10 What is Rune Grace?
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Using a rune in combat puts that rune on a 10-second cooldown. Rune Grace is the time since the rune came off cooldown, up to 2.5 seconds. This means that as long as you spend your runes within 2.5 seconds of them coming off cooldown, you will use each rune “on cooldown” and never drift its cooldown. It will be ready 10 seconds after it was previously ready.
3.11 What presence do I do X in?
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Blood for DPS, Frost for tanking, Unholy for movement and snapshotting pets.
3.12 My ghoul and my Gary are my frens. Info dump on pets, guardians, and summons.
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3.12.1 Temporary ghoul and Army
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Guardian pets, ghoul without Master of Ghouls talent and Army of the Dead, snapshot your stats on summon, so you generally want to summon them with as many relevant buffs and procs active as possible. Guardians are not in your party, so Bloodlust or Heroism after they are summoned will not affect them. Targeted buffs like paladin buffs must be manually applied.
Army of the Dead is not used in combat by Frost DPS, as it has a long cast time that is not worth the DPS loss. You may use something like a Manual Crowd Pummeler (MCP) to haste them before pull. An important note is that Army does not scale very well from AP and STR on Warmane, but scales reasonably well from haste. That means trading the AP from your main weapons for 500 haste from MCP is a good deal. In terms of Army scaling weights, you would need around 2000 AP coming from the stats on your main weapon to provide the same damage for your Army ghouls as MCP does.
The same applies to other armor pieces, as you can get a haste set for Army consisting only of haste pieces and gems, leading to up to a 10k damage gain, although for quite substantial effort. You can also Chains of Ice the Dig Rat or Ogre Pinata to gain 20% haste pre-pull and boost your Army even more. Be aware, however, that Frost Fever ticks can proc your trinkets, so you would need to put them on cooldown for this maneuver. Finally, you can try to summon your Army in Unholy Presence and switch to Blood Presence before engaging the boss, giving it even more haste and increasing its damage even further. In turn, tanks may use Army for its conversion of physical avoidance into damage reduction to soak magic damage better.
Unholy DPS specs want to use Army of the Dead in combat during Bloodlust and with other procs to snapshot the maximum effect. There are, however, situations in which you should not use Army in combat. Firstly, if it can interfere with the strategy for the raid encounter, especially involving adds, and create utter chaos leading to a wipe and possibly your kick, not good. Secondly, after a certain gear level, the abilities you could have cast and the melee attacks you could have landed during the Army cast outweigh the benefit of a Bloodlust-hasted Army. You should not cast Army in combat if you have SM, but you can still consider doing it as a 5.5k GS DW UHDK, especially if you currently wear haste-proccing trinkets such as Comet Trail, Fetish of Volatile Power, Shard of the Crystal Heart, or Meteorite Whetstone.
Here are guidelines on whether it is safe to use Army on boss X in WotLK, plus a bonus section on AMS usage:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...and-AotD-guide
3.12.2 Permanent ghoul
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Master of Ghouls’ ghoul is considered a pet and receives Strength, not AP, from the player. Its stats dynamically update with the player as they gain STR procs, haste procs, and other temporary buffs. It receives group buffs like Kings and Might, and it does not snapshot.
Make sure to have your ghoul summoned during the full buff phase so it can receive those buffs. The pet ghoul is actually the simplest aspect of DK. You only need to do three things for it to perform optimally.
1) Disable Gnaw autocast by right-clicking it. It deals less damage than Claw and wastes energy.
2) Macro Claw into your abilities like this:
You should also make a separate macro for petattack:Code:#showtooltip Plague Strike
/cast Plague Strike
/cast Rune Strike
/startattack
/cast [@target,harm,nodead] Claw
3) Feed your ghoul Mammoth Treats.Code:#showtooltip
/petattack [target=pettarget,noexists]
/petfollow [target=pettarget,exists]
The pet ghoul also has one additional mechanic: Ghoul Frenzy. The ghoul gains 25% haste and some healing in exchange for an Unholy rune. It is a very strong buff and the respective talent should always be taken.
There are advanced techniques that involve desynced diseases to maintain nearly 100% uptime of this buff on the ghoul. This provides a reasonable DPS gain but requires significant effort and carries some risk. Here is a demonstration:
https://youtu.be/P4X1H3fQt_M?si=uxYYYTUW6vUg5tM-&t=45
However, for beginners, I recommend a simpler approach that still provides a DPS gain. In practice, there are three main opportunities to use Ghoul Frenzy.
1) 10–8 seconds before the pull. Make sure not to proc trinkets such as Darkmoon Card: Greatness with the healing the ghoul receives, as that would ruin your opener. One of the original methods was to /sit after casting Ghoul Frenzy to prevent Greatness from activating. Alternatively, you can simply unequip and re-equip your Greatness trinket to prevent it from proccing prematurely if your pull timers allow it.
2) With Blood Tap after using your Blood runes every minute.
3) During downtime, such as Sindragosa air phases, Lich King Remorseless Winter phases, Anub’arak burrow phase, Northrend Beasts roleplay transitions, and similar moments.
Great! Now you are truly a ghoul min-maxer.
3.12.3 Blood Worms
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Blood Worms suck. Their ICD is longer than their summon duration, so you can never have two sets up at the same time. A set is capped at four, and they do mediocre damage and trivial healing.
3.12.4 Gary
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On Warmane, Gargoyle snapshots hit, AP, and haste when summoned, including melee haste such as from Icy Talons and Improved Icy Talons. The Gargoyle will take approximately 2 to 3 seconds to spawn after it has been cast before it starts casting. It can crit, but has either 0 base crit or an extremely low base crit chance, and its crit chance can only be increased by crit debuffs on its target or buffs on itself like Focus Magic. It will ignore your crit from gear and buffs. Armor pen has no effect on it. Gargoyle does not snapshot or benefit dynamically from any targeted % damage buffs such as Blood Presence, Tricks, or Hysteria. However, it can benefit from such effects if they are provided by a ground effect, for example the Rune of Power during Iron Council or the haste from Starlight during Hodir.
Unholy Death Knights will focus on snapshotting AP and Strength trinkets together with haste effects and Fallen Crusader on their Gargoyle summon. Unlike Classic WotLK, our Warmane Gargoyle, Gary, snapshots haste but has a haste cap. That means it can fire no more than 30–31 Gary strikes. If you really attempt to stack haste and you also get Bloodlust plus the troll racial, you can get the 32nd shot off as well.
This has certain implications:
- Unlike in Classic WotLK and unlike some other WotLK private servers, you should pop your haste and drink potions before summoning Gary.
- Haste does not have such an insane stat value as WotLK sim will show you, because it has limited effect on Gary due to the haste cap. That said, it is still the best yellow stat for DW UHDK as well as for SM 2H UHDK unless you are very low on hit.
- Some haste trinkets might lose value as well, including DBW haste proc, since Gary effectively does not benefit from them fully as you are likely to reach the cap with engineering gloves + Bloodlust + potion.
- Troll is not a clear BiS race for UHDK, as Gary barely benefits from the racial snapshot, unlike in Classic WotLK.
- And finally, controversial take, you do not always have to summon Gary in Unholy Presence on Warmane, particularly if you do not plan to channel Army in combat right after. This is especially true if you decide to be a troll, have Bloodlust at the start, use haste potions every pull, and/or have a haste-proccing trinket equipped. The chances are that you are already at Gary’s haste cap with all of this. Starting in Unholy Presence therefore means that your abilities deal less damage, and you will need to waste one blood rune to return to Blood Presence.
This is something rather advanced and the gain is relatively small, because the additional Blood Strike you gain is not a very strong ability. Therefore, if you are not very experienced with DK or UHDK in particular, I would recommend doing the standard opener starting with UHP and only experimenting when you are very confident in your competence and your parses or numbers on bosses reflect that.
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With that, I conclude the frens section.
3.13 What race do I go?
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On Alliance, if you do not have a Draenei in every party, you should be a Draenei. Even if you can guarantee you will be in a group with one, you will see a higher personal DPS gain from a shorter kill time by giving other groups a buff than by going Human in a Draenei group and leaving a party goatless. Human is about +15 DPS in phase 1 due to expertise, and by phase 3 you will no longer see any DPS gain from being Human. For tanking, Dwarves have an armor cooldown and Night Elves have 2% unreduced avoidance.
For Horde, Blood Elf’s AoE silence is subjectively strong when tanking for collecting casters. Orc is strong all around and ultimately the best choice for gearing and progressing through the expansion. Troll is quite good for both FDK and UHDK in BiS due to the strong racial stacking very well with high melee damage from SM or 2 Havocs during Bloodlust and all trinket procs. The kill times and phases of specific encounters play a role here as well. Even though the troll racial is stronger in a vacuum at close-to-BiS levels, if it does not align with Bloodlust or you could have pressed the Orc racial twice during the fight due to having a 2-minute cooldown instead of Berserking’s 3-minute cooldown, Orc is very likely to come out on top.
Ultimately, all choices except Horde DPS between Orc and Troll are fairly negligible and subjective. For Orc vs Troll, I would stick to the rule that could be summarized as follows:
Use Orc on progression, during gearing, and on Onyxia. Orc is also more fitting if you want to play with expertise hard cap or be as close to it as possible. Consider swapping to Troll at close-to-WotLK-BiS levels if you have an expertise overcap as Orc and if you generally do not mind playing below 26 total expertise.
3.14 Which sigil should I use?
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The optimal sigil depends primarily on the spec you are playing and on which sigils are available in the current phase. All relevant sigils are part of the respective BiS sets and can therefore be found in the corresponding BiS lists on Wowhead for each phase.
3.14.1 Unholy sigil ideas
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This section is a good place to note that DW UHDK builds change depending on the availability of the ilvl 245 Sigil of Virulence. The logic behind this is that Scourge Strike is generally not a particularly strong ability for Unholy, and even less so when playing dual wield. Because of this, the ability is usually not talented during the Naxxramas and Ulduar phases.
Its damage is low enough that it does not warrant much attention outside of maintaining the Strength buff provided by the sigil, which becomes available in Phase 3, Trial of the Crusader. Starting from ToC, DW UHDK typically spends one point in Scourge Strike and integrates the ability into the rotation primarily to refresh the Strength buff granted by Sigil of Virulence.
Later in the expansion the Sigil of the Hanged Man becomes available. However, DW UHDK should continue using Sigil of Virulence. The reason is that Sigil of the Hanged Man requires stacking its buff with three consecutive Scourge Strike casts to reach full value, which is not particularly attractive for a dual wield Unholy rotation where Scourge Strike itself remains a relatively weak ability.
The ilvl 264 sigil can still become a DPS gain under certain conditions, particularly if you are using Shadowmourne and the encounter allows you to maintain the stacks consistently. If the fight includes mechanics that force downtime, causing the stacks to drop, the 245 Sigil of Virulence would be a better choice.
It is also worth noting that on short encounters, roughly under 100 secs, the ramp-up time of Sigil of the Hanged Man becomes a relevant downside even for an SM 2H UHDK. Because its full value is only reached after several Scourge Strike casts, the effective contribution during short fights can be lower, which often leads to the Hanged Man sigil simming slightly worse on average compared to Sigil of Virulence even with SM.
3.14.2 FDK sigil ideas
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In contrast to Unholy, Frost talent builds and rotations do not depend on which sigils are available. In fact, Frost receives its effective BiS sigil already in Phase 1: Sigil of Awareness.
This sigil is exceptionally strong because it affects both weapons, scales with Frost’s numerous percentage modifiers, including armor penetration, and also benefits from the Nerves of Cold Steel talent. Because of this, Sigil of Awareness remains the primary Frost sigil for the entire expansion despite its relatively low item level.
You can buy other sigils for gearscore purposes, if you are into that sort of thing, or if you need additional item level to queue for heroic RDF, but their practical usefulness is extremely limited. For instance, the next sigil, Sigil of Vengeful Heart, although possessing similar properties to Awareness in that it benefits from Frost’s % modifiers and dual wielding, is simply numerically worse. In practice it is more than three times weaker than Awareness and therefore not usable as a real DPS option.
Similarly to Unholy, things start looking slightly more interesting in Phase 3, Trial of the Crusader, where Sigil of Virulence becomes available. Awareness remains roughly twice as strong for single target and therefore stays your main sigil, but Virulence allows for a few niche tricks.
Since the sigil procs from Obliterate with an 80% chance, one option is to Obliterate a rat or piñata before the pull, obtain the Strength buff, snapshot it for your Army of the Dead, and then swap back to Awareness after casting Army. This also allows you to carry the buff into the beginning of the encounter, giving you several seconds of increased Strength for your opening burst.
Another option is to start the encounter with Sigil of Virulence equipped and fish for the proc with the first Obliterate, which has an 80% chance to activate it. After the proc you can immediately swap back to Awareness. This provides a marginal gain through a stronger ghoul snapshot and a slightly stronger first Unbreakable Armor.
This is obviously a trade-off, since the first Obliterate is weaker and the weapon or sigil swap cancels your melee swing and incurs the GCD, which can cost you auto attacks from both hands if mistimed. However, it can provide a DPS gain if done correctly.
If you are feeling particularly committed and adventurous, it is technically possible to maintain the Virulence buff throughout the encounter by repeatedly equipping and unequipping the sigil. This approach follows the same idea as the single swap strategy, but the execution difficulty is higher. The cost of mistakes increases significantly, while the additional DPS gain compared to the simpler single swap is relatively small.
Finally, you might think that Sigil of the Hanged Man could be suitable for similar manoeuvres as well. In practice it is much harder to justify. The buff lasts only 15 seconds and requires three Obliterate casts to fully stack. Each of those Obliterates deals less damage than it would with Awareness equipped, meaning the marginal Strength gain rarely compensates for the lost damage. Because of this, Hanged Man is effectively unusable for Frost outside of gearscore padding or occasional experimental pre-pull setups.
3.14.3 BDK tank sigil ideas
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For tanks the choice of sigil usually comes down to two scenarios. Either you are progressing an encounter and prioritizing survivability, or you are farming content and want more damage or threat generation.
For survivability you should simply use the dodge sigil available to you.
For damage, the already mentioned Sigil of Virulence is not a bad option. However, in order to activate it you need to include a Death Strike in your rotation, usually in the opener, to proc the Strength buff. Many advanced DK tanks omit Death Strike almost entirely and instead prioritize more Icy Touch casts for stronger snap aggro, which makes Virulence somewhat awkward to use.
A slightly lower damage option but often the best TPS choice is Sigil of the Frozen Conscience, which increases the damage of Icy Touch, your main threat ability. Because of this it provides the most reliable aggro generation among tank sigils. This is especially noticeable on fights with aggressive DPS openers where snap threat is more important than personal damage.
3.15 Should I use Runeforges or regular weapon enchants?
Spoiler:Show
First of all, the Runeforges available to Death Knights are generally superior to ordinary weapon enchants and should therefore be used in almost all situations.
For Frost, you want to use Razorice on the main hand and Fallen Crusader on the off-hand if you are not expertise capped. This is because if you hit Obliterate and it gets dodged, the dodge happens only on the main-hand part of the ability. This means that the off-hand portion of the ability will still hit even though you get your runes refunded. This increases the hit count of your off-hand weapon and results in more Fallen Crusader procs.
If you are expertise capped, then you should apply Fallen Crusader to whichever of your weapons is slowest and put Razorice on the other. PPM effects like Fallen Crusader are calculated based on weapon speed when determining their proc chance on instant attacks, meaning a slower weapon will have a higher chance to proc such effects.
For Unholy, you generally want to use Fallen Crusader in both hands if dual wielding, otherwise simply Fallen Crusader on a two-handed weapon.
3.15.1 Are there situations where regular weapon enchants can be useful for DK DPS?
Spoiler:Show
Both DK DPS specs may experiment with additional weapon enchants and occasionally obtain a DPS increase. The main candidates are Berserking and Black Magic. The highest DPS gains occur when these procs can be snapshotted into your summons together with your standard snapshot buffs. Similarly, having these enchants proc during Bloodlust significantly increases their value compared to having them proc on their own.
However, Rune of the Fallen Crusader remains significantly stronger than any of these enchants in a direct comparison. Therefore you should avoid sacrificing too much Fallen Crusader uptime when experimenting with additional enchanted weapons.
To achieve a DPS gain you need to maintain strong Fallen Crusader uptime while also gaining meaningful uptime from Black Magic or Berserking. Keep in mind that swapping weapons in combat incurs a GCD and resets your melee swings for both hands. Because of this, the technique is a trade-off and must be executed well in order to be worth it. In addition, Berserking has a relatively low PPM value, which makes it somewhat unreliable.
It is also worth noting that these weapon swap tricks tend to be relatively stronger at lower gear levels. When your character has fewer stats and weaker weapons, the damage lost from resetting auto attacks is smaller relative to the potential stat gain from additional enchant procs. As your gear improves and your weapons deal significantly more damage, the opportunity cost of losing melee swings increases, which makes such swaps less impactful overall.
The best options for tanking are Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle and Rune of the Nerubian Carapace due to their bonuses to stamina. However, if survivability is not an issue or you are playing in full BiS raids, Rune of Razorice can also be a strong option. It increases the damage of Icy Touch and therefore improves your threat generation, which can become important in raids where rogues prioritize their own damage and frequently trade Tricks of the Trade, potentially causing you to lose aggro.
3.16 Do I want fast or slow weapons?
Spoiler:Show
As Frost DPS, you want to use high-damage-range, slow, weapons. As dual-wield Unholy DPS, you want to use the weapons with the most DPS in either hand. If it is close, sim it.
3.17 How does Blood Tap work?
Spoiler:Show
Blood Tap is a somewhat unintuitive ability with several peculiar behaviors. It refreshes a blood rune and taps a blood rune into a death rune. These effects can occur on separate runes. For example, if your left death rune is on cooldown and your right rune is an active blood rune, using Blood Tap will refresh the left rune while converting the right rune into a death rune, resulting in two active death runes.
Once a blood rune is tapped, it will remain a death rune regardless of what it is used for until the duration of the Blood Tap buff ends, meaning you can use it as a death rune multiple times. When Blood Tap fades, it immediately converts the death rune back into a blood rune regardless of whether the last spell cast triggered Blood of the North or Reaping.
It is an important ability and can be used for several purposes, but usually:
Unholy uses BT to refresh Ghoul Frenzy, or to gain one additional Blood Strike, Pestilence, or Blood Boil. Additional BB and Pestilence can sometimes yield a lot of extra damage in AoE scenarios if you are temporarily out of runes.
Frost and all its subspecs use BT together with UA to avoid desynchronizing the green and blue runes, which should ideally be used for Obliterates. The two abilities have the same cooldown and are therefore typically used together. However, when Blood Tap expires it converts the death rune back into a blood rune, even if the rune originally came from Blood Strike or Pestilence. Because of this, it is important to cancel the Blood Tap buff before using blood rune abilities to not lose a future obliterate.
This cancels the Blood Tap effect and immediately reverts the rune back into a blood rune, which can then be converted into a death rune again by Blood Strike or Pestilence.Code:/cancelaura Blood Tap
3.18 What professions are BiS? How much worse is it if I go with another profession?
Spoiler:Show
Engineering and Jewelcrafting. Sim it.
The longer answer is that BS + JC together with non-profession enchants on feet, hands, and cloak might provide FDK at high GS with higher DPS on the target dummy with no downtime than ENG + JC. However, DK as a class is unplayable in a raid environment without Nitro Boots, as it has no natural mobility tools, making it impossible to do some raid mechanics without this engineering gadget. Additionally, Nitro Boots will allow you to play greedier, sometimes landing an extra 1 to 2 autos, which is enough to pull ENG + JC ahead of any other two professions. Not to mention that ENG gloves snapshot on ghoul for FDK and on Gargoyle for UHDK, which is very good and should always be tried.
Honorary mention is Tailoring + ENG, in case you do not have money for JC. It also works quite nicely if you decide to be a troll, since it allows you to stack your buffs finely and multiplicatively. Still worse than JC + ENG, even for troll.
Last note, the 23 haste enchant is significantly better than 23 agility, but if you think you need the parachute for your preferred way of playing the game, it is not the greatest of deals.
3.19 What are stat weights, and what stats should I get?
Spoiler:Show
Stat weights are a numerical comparison used to compare different stats like Strength and crit to each other and see how much each is worth. Stat weights are generally written as EP, equivalence points, with attack power set to 1 for melee as a comparison point. It is important to remember that stat weights will change depending on what stats you already have, and every time your stats change, for example when equipping a new item, your stat weights will also change a little. You can calculate your stat weights for any set of gear using the sim.
How to calculate Stat Weights / EPs
Follow steps 1 and 2 from the quick simming guide. Then set the iteration count quite high. I suggest 50k to 100k. This will be run per stat weight you are calculating, so if there are 10 relevant stats that means 500k to 1M iterations, which obviously takes a while. If you want to cut calculation time down significantly, I suggest running the binary version of the sim obtainable here:
https://github.com/wowsims/wotlk/releases
This is significantly faster.
Click the Stat Weights button and then the big Calculate button to obtain the Stat Weights / EP. There is a list you can select for which stats you are interested in. Once the calculation is done, you will see your resulting weights and a column with your current weights on the right. If you want to make the calculated EP your current EP, which helps sort gear more accurately, you can click the copy button.
Please remember that Stat Weights / EP are not a static function of your stats. They will change as your gear changes, and therefore you need to recalculate them once you are done making changes to your gear. Although for a quick comparison between two items, you do not need to overthink it.
*adopted from the sim guide of the Blight Club.
3.20 What about caps? Shouldn’t I always gear to reach hit cap and expertise cap first?
Spoiler:Show
Not necessarily. Stats with caps can also be calculated as stat weights and compared that way. The only difference is that the value of the stat changes depending on whether you are under or over its cap, and whether the cap is a hard or soft cap.
A soft cap is one that eliminates some of the value of a stat but not all. Soft hit cap, for example, is when your special attacks will not miss anymore. A hard cap is the point at which a stat no longer provides additional value. The hit hard cap when dual-wielding is higher than the soft cap and is the point at which your auto-attacks will not miss anymore. In practice, this means that hit below the soft cap will have a higher stat weight than hit above the soft cap.
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4. FDK-Specific Questions
I think that is a very nice entry point to shift our discussion to FDK specifically.
If you have not read the gnimo guide yet, I recommend reading it first and then coming back to this FDK-specific FAQ. The things he says, especially in the rotation part, are still very relevant, and I do not see the point of reformulating and putting on paper things he already said and covered.
https://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=349828
4.1 How much hit do I need as FDK?
Spoiler:Show
I would use this section to address multiple frequently asked questions on how much hit you need as FDK and to provide intuition for why the answer is the way it is, as well as some examples that may help explain why the caps are not always mandatory. However, to get an exact answer for your exact talents and gear, you should always use sim.
4.1.1 Hit Types
As FDK, you are interested in both spell hit and melee hit. These two hit types also have separate stat weights in sim even though they come from essentially the same stat on a gear piece. What makes it messy is that the two hit types require different amounts of hit rating, obtainable from gear or gems, to reach one percent of the respective hit type, and they affect different FDK abilities.
26.23 hit rating to get a 1% increased chance to hit with spells.
32.8 hit rating to get a 1% increased chance of melee hit.
4.1.2 Hit talents, buffs, and debuffs
Draenei’s Heroic Presence provides 1% bonus hit for both melee and spell hit.
Melee hit:
3/3 Nerves of Cold Steel gives 3% melee hit.
Spell hit:
3% from the Unholy talent Virulence.
3% from Shadow Priest Misery or Balance Druid Improved Faerie Fire.
4.1.3 Hit caps
Melee hit soft cap: 8% melee hit in total. Total means all gear, gems, food, talents, buffs, and debuffs added. This translates to 5% hit from gear and gems in the character tab for Horde and 4% hit in the character tab for Alliance, given a Draenei in party. Having 8% total melee hit will ensure that your yellow melee abilities do not miss.
Spell hit hard cap: 17% spell hit in total. This translates to 11% spell hit in the character tab if Virulence is taken, or 14% if you are playing sub-Blood FDK and Virulence is not taken. Having that much hit will ensure that none of your magic misses.
Melee hit hard cap: 27% melee hit in total. This translates to 24% melee hit in the character tab, as Nerves of Cold Steel is a core and mandatory talent for any FDK spec. 27% total melee hit means that none of your white swings will ever miss on a boss target.
4.1.4 Hit value
These caps are distributed relative to each other in the 1D space on the axis of total hit rating of the character in the following manner:
0 hit rating < 8% melee hit soft cap < 17% hard spell hit cap < 27% hard melee hit cap < 1000 hit rating
The value of hit along this axis changes as follows:
- 0–8m% -> extremely valuable
- 8m–17s% -> best secondary stat
- 17s–27m% -> worse value than other yellow stats
- 27m%+ -> useless
Below, you can find a more detailed explanation.
In the interval from 0 hit rating to the 8% melee hit soft cap, hit will likely be the best stat you can possibly get, even better than Strength. That means you should gem hit to achieve and exceed the melee hit soft cap in most cases. However, sometimes sim will suggest that you should be below 8% if it allows you to wear a very strong higher-item-level gear piece that gives a lot of alternative stats, and you should listen to sim in that case.
It is also not as detrimental for FDK to be below the soft hit cap as it is for other classes, because your missed melee abilities like Obliterate and Blood Strike do not consume runes if they miss, and a missed Frost Strike uses up only a fraction of its runic power, while all of them still deal damage with the left hand.
In the interval between 8% melee hit soft cap and 17% hard spell hit cap, hit is the best yellow stat you can get in the majority of cases. It means that it is worse than Strength and worse than ArP at high gear score, which are red stats because the gems providing them are red, but it is better than haste and crit, which are provided by yellow gems. The reason is that every point of hit we get has a combined stat value of both spell hit and melee hit, making its total stat weight only slightly below Strength. This interval is also where you should try to be with your hit on all gear levels in WotLK as FDK of any subspec.
Further increase of hit levels over 17% eliminates any DPS gain from spell hit, as spell hit is now hard capped, but still provides DPS through white melee attacks as we keep landing more of them up to the 27% hard cap of melee hit. Hit in this interval is usually worse than haste, which also boosts DPS from your melee attacks by increasing the number of attacks you perform, and worse than crit, which works for most of your damage including magic and special melee abilities and not only white swings.
Hit over the 27% hard cap of melee hit does not provide any DPS gain, is a dead stat, and should therefore be avoided.
To summarize, the optimal amount of hit rating for any FDK at any gear level and any subspec will, with high probability, lie in the interval between the 8% melee hit soft cap and the 17% hard spell hit cap after taking into account all talents, buffs, and debuffs. The exact number depends on dozens of parameters, which can only be properly accounted for by a long numerical simulation.
This rather ornately formulated conclusion can be simplified into a principle:
Keep your hit between 8% total melee and 17% total spell and you will be doing well.
4.2 How valuable is expertise for Frost?
Spoiler:Show
4.2.1 Main idea
Contrary to popular belief, expertise is not as valuable to Frost as it is to other melee DPS classes. This is due to the fact that runes are refunded on dodges, as well as the off-hand portions of special attacks still doing damage because of Threat of Thassarian.
Trust the sim when dropping expertise comes out as a DPS gain. If you really want to, you can gem for it, but it will be a DPS loss on average, as you are not really in trouble unless you start drifting runes outside of the Rune Grace period.
4.2.2 Implications of expertise value
The main implication of the low expertise stat weight estimated by sim is that gemming expertise as Frost DK is a DPS loss, regardless of subspec and gear level. Blood subspec has even lower expertise stat weight than Unholy subspec due to more flexible rune usage and lower reliance on white melee hit damage and the damage instances depending on it, such as Necrosis. Gemming expertise can be not a bad idea if you gain 2 points of expertise by using one 10 expertise rating / 10 hit rating Ametrine, but that is about as far as I would go.
The +15 expertise rating enchant on wrists competes with the 50 AP one, while expertise stat value will never exceed 3x that of AP, making it a DPS loss on average, though it can sometimes be the most efficient way to cap expertise if you desire to do so.
Another thing to consider is that the default sim setting is a dummy single-target fight with no downtime and no cleave. Expertise as a red stat directly competes with Strength and, while already losing in value on single target, becomes even worse when it comes to AoE, as expertise simply does not increase your cleave at all.
4.2.3 Human perspective versus numerical simulations
Even though sims show that playing slightly under spell hard hit cap or without expertise cap is the most efficient way to play FDK DPS on average, there are downsides to it. In fact, missing Pestilence feels really bad and can straight up destroy your pull. Melee dodges or Obliterate and Frost Strike dodges make you feel miserable and make your rotation super clunky, especially if they happen in quick succession.
Therefore, it is only natural to want to eliminate these terrible scenarios. In my opinion, it is much better to feel good on a spec, know what to expect, and be confident with your rotation than to get negative emotions, constantly expect your pull to be destroyed, or abandon the spec you were interested in. After all, the DPS cost of efficiently capping expertise is only around 0.5% single-target DPS loss in BiS and even less on Orc. Effectively capping spell hit in BiS would cost you another 0.5% DPS, but would eliminate all the misses of your Pestilence, Howling Blast, and Icy Touch, giving you a smooth rotation, which is important if you are getting familiar with the spec.
4.3 Do I need to care about crit cap for white autos?
Spoiler:Show
Basically irrelevant for FDK, since we do not have much raw crit stat or agi that would then translate into melee crit. A lot of crit for us comes from talents, which are directly applied to abilities.
However, at a certain point, you might be over crit cap if you have a trinket proccing crit rating like Dark Matter or DBW Dwarf and are somewhat low on hit. Most of the time it is not worth optimizing around this since the uptime of these trinkets is rather low. This contributes to the fact that the crit DBW proc is quite bad for us compared to haste or strength. Use sim to determine whether you are at the crit cap, whether you need to do anything about it, and what the gains are.
4.4 How good is Armor Penetration for FDK?
Spoiler:Show
Another stat and corresponding cap worth addressing is Armor Penetration rating, ArP for short.
ArP increases the physical damage you do by a percentage modifier. This means that the stat becomes stronger and stronger as you accumulate more and more stats that directly give you damage that can then be further increased by this modifier, such as Strength, crit, haste, and hit.
ArP has a limit to its usefulness and the hard cap on Warmane is between 1399 and 1400 ArP rating. After that it will not provide any additional DPS value and becomes a dead stat. Overcapping should be avoided.
Due to the formula ArP is calculated with, it gains more and more value the closer you are to the cap, or in other words, the more ArP you already have.
It is important to understand that ArP is a red stat and a direct competitor to Strength if gemmed for. A lot of FDK damage comes from magic or summons, which do not benefit from ArP at all. Additionally, your cleave and AoE are 100% magic and scale quite well from Strength, but are not affected by ArP.
Sub-UH FDK benefits more from ArP than sub-Blood FDK due to a higher number of Obliterates used per minute and because Necrosis and BCB also scale from ArP. However, for a full BiS WotLK sub-UH FDK the difference between full Strength and full ArP gemming is only around 1% DPS on Warmane. The gap gets even smaller when there is cleave involved and eventually disappears completely if the fight is heavily centered around AoE damage.
This basically brings us to the conclusion that you can clear all encounters in WotLK and deal 99% of the maximal possible damage for the spec while gemming exclusively Strength and hit. If you prefer to play sub-Blood FDK, you likely should never change from Strength gems, while sub-Unholy FDK can regem into ArP at close-to-BiS levels, with the breakpoint usually lying around 1100 ArP from gear alone.
While all of the above provides intuition about the value of ArP in relation to Strength, you should always use sim to determine whether in your particular case it is worth starting to gem ArP instead of Strength. One note on simming re-gemming is that you should not sim the value of ArP versus Strength while wearing full Strength gems. Instead, remove all red gems and let the sim estimate the stat value from there. Gem whichever sims higher. If they are equal or close to equal, gem Strength because of cleave.
4.5 Arp while gearing and arp soft cap?
Spoiler:Show
Lastly, I want to mention the preferred way to gear FDK in WotLK in the context of ArP, at least according to my experience and knowledge. It involves using the soft ArP cap, which gets the ArP value close to 1399 or fully capped through an ArP-proccing trinket. The first such trinket, Grim Toll, drops already in Naxxramas and is in the respective Phase 1 BiS as you could have guessed.
In Ulduar, FDK gets an absolutely wonderful trinket, Mjolnir Runestone, which works very well with our opener and also procs very easily from melee attacks with a 15% chance. You can also buy it for points on Warmane Icecrown. It also remains one of the BiS trinkets for phase 3 and early phase 4. That is the trinket you will likely be running until ICC or even RS, since the only good replacements for it are DBW, STS, and maybe WFS in some extreme cases.
Obviously, Mjolnir becomes worse if it overcaps your ArP beyond 1400, making part of its proc useless. However, you can gem around it until very high ICC gear to ensure Mjolnir always has full value. If for some reason you fail to do so, or you are simply very geared already, you may replace it with WFS or Death's Choice / Death's Verdict before getting the game BiS in the form of DBW + STS. However, always refer to sim to decide which trinket is better in combination with your other gear pieces.
This approach of the ArP cap with Mjolnir proc allows you to perform strong initial single-target burst with Obliterates and white swings while still gemming Strength and dealing good overall ST, AoE, and limited cleave damage throughout the fight.
Final note on this topic: you should not try to get Needle-Encrusted Scorpion if you already have Mjolnir Runestone. While it may seem at first glance that Scorpion provides a larger ArP proc, has higher item level and gear score, and should therefore be better, the opposite is true. The problem with Scorpion lies in its 50-second cooldown versus 45 for Mjolnir, as well as in the fact that it only procs on critical strikes while Mjolnir procs on hits as well. These factors combined make Scorpion proc very unreliable and result in Scorpion’s uptime being only around 60 to 70% of Mjolnir’s uptime. Do not buy Scorpion for points and do not use it if possible. This applies not only to FDK.
4.6 UH subspec or BL subspec for FDK?
Spoiler:Show
The general wisdom says that sub-BL is better in low gear while sub-UH is better in later phases. While that is not exactly false, there are layers to it.
In fact, if we simply sim different gear levels, we will find that sub-UH is only around 50 DPS behind sub-BL in Phase 1 BiS and then becomes superior for the rest of the expansion. Why then did people in WotLK Classic keep using sub-BL for ICC progression, in some cases even until the very end of Wrath?
The answer has to do with both the limitations of sims and the human factor. Sim by default assumes a dummy fight with no downtime, no mechanics, and a perfect rotation. The problem is that a real raid encounter is not like this. Even though WotLK mostly does not have very complex encounters, you are still required to move, change targets, and cleave at the very least, which is not accounted for in sims. In all these situations, sub-BL performs better than sub-UH.
4.6.1 Advantages of sub-BL
Spoiler:Show
Sub-BL has better passive cleave and an easier time target switching because it uses Pestilence every 10 seconds while sub-UH does it every 20. This means that if a cleave target or new priority target appears 5 seconds after you used your blood runes as sub-UH, you have no efficient way to put diseases on it and make the switch for the next 15 seconds.
Better passive cleave is further amplified by the fact that sub-BL plays with 5 out of 5 Black Ice and has more magical crit from the Blood tree, meaning that the same diseases, especially with 4T9, and the same Howling Blasts deal more damage.
Sub-BL also has better active cleave, since its Howling Blasts for runes deal more damage, while its rotation is not destroyed by using Death and Decay, whose opportunity cost for sub-UH is just too high, at least 2 Obliterates. The same applies to Blood Boil, which is never used by sub-UH but is slightly better than Blood Strike for sub-BL on 3 to 4 targets, and the gap only increases if the number of targets rises.
Sub-BL is much more merciful and tolerant of mistakes as a player, since your rune usage is much more flexible. To be precise, for sub-UH to be better than sub-BL, you should be playing without major mistakes or blunders throughout the encounter. That includes being able to perform UA in combat with any rune combination without losing an Obliterate, knowing when to cancel BT to not lose an Obliterate, and being very careful about rune drift, since even a fraction of a second of drift on Death Runes may lose you an Obliterate. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that sub-UH is more heavily punished by uptime loss due to raid mechanics and is more susceptible to DPS loss coming from ability dodges and Pestilence misses, which are generally not much of a problem for sub-BL.
Finally, the ghoul is an important part of sub-UH damage, and its ghoul is stronger than that of sub-BL due to points in Ravenous Dead. To make full use of the sub-UH potential, you should be able to perform a good snapshot, your timings should be on point, and the encounter should allow the ghoul to stay alive and maintain high uptime on the boss. Thus, if your ghoul dies as sub-UH, you lose more value than sub-BL.
4.6.2 Okay, what does it all mean for you when choosing which subspec to play?
If you care about progression pace and parsing, I would suggest following the flow of WotLK Classic and staying sub-Blood until ICC. The encounters of Ulduar and ToC simply do not favor sub-UH. There is a lot of cleave and target switching, and the ghoul often dies. Even in phase 4, sub-BL is better for progressing the most difficult ICC encounters such as LDW, PP, and the final boss, LK LoD. Sub-BL is remarkably good at dealing damage to Valks on LK progression, which are often the choke point for many guilds.
However, many other encounters in ICC are pure dummies. They are single-target fights with little to no movement, no switches, and almost no reasons for the ghoul to die, which is the perfect scenario for sub-UH. So essentially, it can make sense to have sub-UH as a second spec for these dummy bosses while still running a more flexible sub-BL for actually challenging progression encounters, eventually switching fully to sub-UH when you start farming ICC HC and no longer need the extra add damage on LDW, oozes are under control on PP, and Valks are no longer a problem on LK.
To summarize, the reason ICC is often mentioned and generally considered the breaking point where sub-UH becomes better than sub-BL is the result of two independent factors. First, the increased amount of stats and ArP on the gear makes the flat crit and AP bonuses from sub-BL less relevant while improving the value of the percentage modifiers and extra damage instances of sub-UH. Second, the nature of most ICC encounters no longer requires the flexibility, cleave, and target-switching ability of sub-BL, and you can essentially get away with tunneling the boss with nearly 100% uptime.
In the end, I want to mention that it is important to enjoy the way you are playing the game. You can run sub-UH in Phase 1 and still deal good damage, taking 99 to 100 parses in Naxxramas and Ulduar afterward, and there are examples of people doing so. Similarly, if you enjoy sub-BL, you can run it while having game BiS Phase 5 WotLK gear and also do very well. Try both and see what you cook best, since sim numbers and guides are only there to give you direction, while you are the true performer.
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5. Useful Resources
5.1 Which resources should I check?
Spoiler:Show
WowHead overviews: https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/guide/...pecializations
as well as specific guides for specs, keeping in mind the differences between warmane and WotLK classic:
UHDK rotation: https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/guide/...-abilities-pve
FDK rotaiton: https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/guide/...-abilities-pve
Wowsims: WotLK Death Knight Simulator
https://wowsims.github.io/wotlk/deathknight/
Wowsims Backport for 3.3.5:
https://poli93.github.io/wotlk/deathknight/
As already mentioned, I recommend reading gnimo’s guide to anyone interested in DK and FDK in particular:
https://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=349828
The same applies to WhiteWolf’s video about DW Unholy:
https://youtu.be/BXSbwqG1jE8?si=cOnkk9XQGcP2krSV
Logs from Warmane are to be uploaded and found here:
https://uwu-logs.xyz/
and partially here:
https://wow-logs.co.in/
5.2 Do you have VODs and video demos to recommend?
Spoiler:Show
If you are interested in mainly sub-UH FDK performance in a raid environment, here is the link to my YouTube channel where I post videos of how I think advanced FDK in 2026 on Warmane should be executed. I only recently started recording, so it might take some time to accumulate a significant number of videos, but I will get there:
https://www.youtube.com/@yardenkoyo
If you are interested in how a solid sub-BL FDK is played, I would recommend this channel. The author has quite a few recordings of sub-BL FDK gameplay from WotLK Classic and was among the top 1% of FDK players, despite not being in a parsing guild. Some of the videos are from Ulduar, others from ICC. Towards the end of ICC he also switched to sub-UH:
https://www.youtube.com/@Juicement/videos
https://youtu.be/2CmmX-O9vLg?si=hiLLWjnua0Ey41FC
If you are more of an Unholy enthusiast, I recommend watching the videos of Supremezz, arguably the best UHDK from WotLK Classic:
https://youtu.be/_zzcvQjVQwU?si=KGuNe3HLSjI4ZzlX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=figQ7xqk2-4
He has VODs from all raid tiers, starting with Naxxramas and finishing with Ruby Sanctum, although you will need to scroll a bit to find the older videos. Be aware, however, that much of what he demonstrates is very advanced. This includes things like evil face spec, which requires other Unholy DKs in the raid, desynced diseases, disease clipping, and BM weapon swapping in combat. Expect your first attempts at replicating these techniques to fail miserably.
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6. Acknowledgements
A lot of my knowledge comes from playing with SimCraft, looking at Classic and Warmane logs, and reading the DK Classic Discord, aka Blight Club. I would like to give a shout-out to people who contributed to the creation of these wonderful resources, as well as to the Blight Club dwellers Char, Glade, Altecks, and Deance, who was also writing and maintaining Wowhead guides and BiS lists, and last but not least, Bouk, whose FAQ I took as a starting point and adapted for Warmane, adding some more recent knowledge and my own findings while leaving some very well-written parts intact.
I would also like to say thank you to all the people who contributed to my improvement as a player, as well as to the guilds Dissolution, Devious Intentions, and Death and their GMs and RLs: Iqui, Nature, Belz, Framez, and Pangu, who gave me the training ground to test many of my ideas in a friendly but competitive environment and also provided the conditions to set many of my DPS records. It was great!
