Blood Death Knight Tank Mythic+ Tips — Season 4

Blood Death Knights have seen a very positive set of changes in Dragonflight, both in terms of baseline changes and in the massively increased freedom and depth of expression that the new talent trees brought to the game. With some pretty amazing opportunities to pick utility that was either unavailable to us previously ( Blinding Sleet), belonging to other specs ( Empower Rune Weapon) or preserving some of the most impactful covenant ability available in Shadowlands ( Abomination Limb), there is no shortage of appreciation for what the developers have done.

In addition to this, the talent trees feature a massive amount of defensive and offensive gains, ranging from a 12.5% cost reduction to Death Strike to a potential (and very easy pick) 20-second cooldown reduction to Anti-Magic Shell - which comes in super handy in Dragonflight dungeons, as there is no shortage of magic tankbusters and immunable debuffs!

Unfortunately, it is not all roses. Dragonflight Season 4 comes with no changes to the previous, threatening group affixes that we have no answer to, the most impactful being Afflicted. And, much to the chagrin of all other tanks, two of the dungeons in the set available for Season 4 contain pulls that are trivialized with Sigil of Silence. Fortunately, it is a significantly lower prevalence than in Season 3, but it is still something to be aware of.

If you want to learn more about Mythic+ during Dragonflight in general or Blood's place in the overall rankings, see our overviews below.

Your rotation in Mythic+ is unchanged from the rotation provided on our Blood Death Knight Rotation page. From a practical perspective, the biggest difference is the ability to carry over resources between pulls.

Bone Shield management gets a major shake-up in terms of priorities and tricks you can do to reduce the number of runes you spend on Bone Shield generators to a minimum:

• Before the key starts, you can use Abomination Limb and Empower Rune Weapon (since you have them macroed together). The charges of Bone Shield accumulated do not get removed by the instance bubble, and as a result, this allows you to go into the very first pull of any dungeon with 9 charges of Bone Shield and a modicum of Runic Power
• As a pull is about to end, cast Marrowrend on an enemy. This will refresh Bone Shield to its original 30-second duration, and give you three charges. If you have followed the rest of this guide, this guarantees an easy start to the next pull.
• Finally, as a pack is about to die, save some runic power. While your leftover Runic Power decays if you are not in combat, the decay rate is very slow. Doing this - ideally saving around 50 Runic Power - allows you to have a Death Strike in the tank to be used while gathering the next pull!

• Grips are a thematic core of Blood Death Knight utility and can be used for much more than just relocating enemies. A very large number of enemy casts in dungeons can be canceled by forced movement - we call this soft-looking. As Death's Echo is a baseline talent, and Abomination Limb is a de facto pick in Mythic+, you are guaranteed to be able to leverage 2 charges of Death Grip and Abomination Limb to do so!
  We will attempt to keep a list of all spells that can be soft-locked in keys, along with whether they recast or get put on cooldown when they are interrupted this way.
• Gorefiend's Grasp is a signature Blood Death Knight ability, although it is now significantly less appealing than before due to it costing a talent point. On a 2-minute cooldown and costing a full GCD, it will immediately pull all enemies within 15 yards of the target together. You will typically want to plan ahead of time where in a given dungeon you will want to use it. Gorefiend's Grasp is particularly strong for bringing loosely spread casters together to cleave, interrupting multiple dangerous channels or casts simultaneously, and positioning multiple high-priority targets together.
• Returning with Dragonflight is one of three AoE disorients in the game: Blinding Sleet. This is on its own DR chain and allows you to disorient all enemies in front of you in a 12-yard cone every minute. This is extremely powerful for Mythic+, particularly as a lot of casters cannot be kicked but can be disoriented. It is an easy and perfectly justifiable default pick on the talent tree.
• Mind Freeze is the Death Knight interrupt ability. It operates identically to other melee interrupts, such as Kick and Pummel, except that it has a 15-yard range. This allows Death Knights to interrupt casts when enemies are standing in zones that other melee cannot reach, helping to reposition them in a safer location.
• Asphyxiate is a 4-second, single-target stun on a 45-second cooldown. This is particularly useful for preventing uninterruptible casts or preventing enemies with movement abilities or that are coded to flee at low health from repositioning. As with Death Grip, be aware that enemies that are immune to stun effects will not be interrupted by Asphyxiate.
• Death and Decay, when paired with the Grip of the Dead talent becomes a highly effective tool for starting to kite as you head to the next pack. As with Bone Shield, be sure that Death and Decay is available to use when you are ready to move on to the next pack.
• Raise Ally is the Death Knight combat resurrection spell. While in a raid environment, you would not normally want to rely on the tank for combat resurrection, in a Mythic+ dungeon you may be the only player to bring this utility. Additionally, the instant-cast nature of Raise Ally will make it preferable to other combat resurrections in some circumstances, even considering the cost of Runic Power. If you need to resurrect an ally, be sure to consider both timing and positioning — avoid placing the newly resurrected player in the path of a dangerous boss cleave or immediately before a dungeon-wide damage event.
• The last and newest staple in our toolkit, Anti-Magic Zone, provides Death Knights with a way to help the group survive large bursts of magic damage, something which is very frequent in the new Dragonflight dungeons. Its range and duration are limited but can be increased if necessary with a Conduit.

Below you will find more granular talent strings to import for each dungeon. These pick certain niche utility talents in order to benefit your group:

• Ruby Life Pools - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJiISERiIhgkkEJAAAAAQikkDERSTISAAAhkkEAAAA
• Brackenhide Hollow - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• The Nokhud Offensive - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0SEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• Halls of Infusion - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJiISERiIhgkkEJAAAAAQikkDERSTISAAAhkkEAAAA
• Neltharus - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• The Azure Vault - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• Uldaman - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• Algeth'ar Academy - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA

If you prefer a generic talent loadout, the following build provides all of the core talents, and skips the niche utility in favor of a couple of quality of life for yourself. Be sure to use the 'Copy Export String' to import our build ingame!

On the class tree, we opted to pick up Anti-Magic Barrier and Blinding Sleet as default utility points. Our main choices of core talents are unchanged from the default AoE talent build; Abomination Limb and Empower Rune Weapon are much more appealing choices for Mythic+, especially as the former brings in massive utility on top of just damage.

On the class tree, on most of the builds, wherever we had additional points, all our builds feature Grip of the Dead. This is a fantastic value proposition, mainly because it can also be used easily step out of range of tankbusters on slowable enemies, even if they can move while casting. This is significantly more valuable than picking Asphyxiate, particularly as we have Blinding Sleet and two charges of Death Grip.

We have detailed all of the talent rows on the talents page; as such, we will only summarize the important differences in Mythic+. For more detailed info, the talents section is linked below:

Certain Mythic+ affixes will lead to significant differences in dungeon route and tempo. As a Blood Death Knight, this knowledge is something you will have to anticipate and manage for your group. We recommend paying particular attention to the following:

 
• Bolstering causes all Hostile enemies in combat to  gain a stacking 20% damage buff every time a nearby enemy dies, for 20 seconds.  Practically, this means that any pulls with a large number of low-health enemies  will cause the other enemies to suddenly deal significantly more damage - to you,  and to your group. Review your route to make sure that your group can survive this  sudden increase in group damage from mechanics happening while Bolstering  is up - and don't get caught out by getting complacent at the end of pulls!
 
• Bursting might look like a healer affix at first, but in reality,  as a tank, you can make a massive difference with routing. Bursting's tick period does  not reset when it is refreshed, and as a result, if it stacks all at once,  your group can very easily survive 10+ stacks. On the other hand, a slow ramp from  2 to 6 stacks, extending within the last 0.5s every time, tends to kill any group.  Pull to leverage this.

As playing around these affixes applies to more than just Blood Death Knight, feel free to consult our larger guides about Mythic+ and its affixes below. Within are also discussions about changes to how loot is acquired, changes to existing affixes, and even a few other new surprises.

Mythic+ is about more than picking the right talents and knowing the basics of your specialization, however. In the week following the launch of Season 4, when we have had a chance to verify that none of the encounter cast sequencing has changed, we will publish detailed cooldown plans here. Stay tuned!