Mists of Pandaria Classic Blood Death Knight Guide

Blood Death Knight remains one of the most self-sufficient tanks in Mists of Pandaria. The largest change in Mists of Pandaria is Blood Death Knight is now capable of dealing absolutely massive amounts of damage and in some cases even being the highest DPS depending on the encounter thanks to Vengeance and the scaling of many of our abilities like Death Siphon. Blood not only incredible amounts of self-sustian and damage it also provides a ton of utility in the form of abilities like Gorefiend's Grasp, Raise Ally, and Anti-Magic Zone.

Yes! Blood Death Knight remains one of the premier tanks in Mists of Pandaria. Blood has a unique play style compared to other tanks as your active mitigation is focused almost entirely on reacting to damage taken. Understanding how to properly utilize your Runes and timing the perfect Death Strike can be the difference between life and death so if you are interested in a new challenge that will test your ability to react to constantly changing events Blood Death Knight is a great choice for any type of PvE content.

Strengths

• Incredibly self-sufficient thanks to abilities like Death Strike.
• Great utility with abilities like Gorefiend's Grasp.
• Can handle any type of incoming damage.
• Very powerful defensive cooldowns like Icebound Fortitude.

Weaknesses

• Very limited mobility.
• Gear depedent.
• Self-sustain scales poorly with Vengeance.

As Horde, you can be any race but Pandaren as a Death Knight. The two races that will consistently perform the best are Orcs and Trolls with Orc having a slight advantage. Blood Fury is a great way to not only increase your damage done but also increase your survivability. Often times you will use Blood Fury to increase the effectiveness of your diseases but you can also pair it with your Death Siphon ability for an even larger self-heal. Command also increases the damage done by your raised ghoul and Army of the Dead. Troll is another great choice thanks to Berserking which increases our Melee Haste by 20% for 10 seconds, As Blood this can be a bit difficult to utilize in any situation other than trying to maximize our damage done so it struggles to compete with Blood Fury. Troll also provides Beast Slaying, this increased damage done to Beasts which are quite prevalent throughout Mists of Pandaria can also increase your survivability as abilities like Death Siphon will heal more based off of the damage it deals.

As Alliance, you can also be any race but Pandaren for your Death Knight. There is one clear winner when it comes to racials on Alliance and that is Worgen. Even with changes to Death's Advance Death Knight can struggle with mobility so having access to Darkflight helps considerably. The bonus Critical Strike from Viciousness is also a nice bonus.

1. Engineering — Engineering will is a default choice as a Death Knight largely thanks to Nitro Boosts. As highlighted above mobility will be your single largest limiting factor so adding an extra button to be able to reposition mobs more quickly is a great choice. Synapse Springs are also a massive increase to our damage and pairs incredibly with any of our DPS cooldowns and allows you to snapshot even stronger diseases with Outbreak.
2. Blacksmithing — allows us to add extra sockets to our bracers and gloves, these extra sockets provide a considerable amount of extra stats. As a Tank these static stat increases will often yield the best result compared to procs that may occur at an inopportune time.

Addons and Macros can greatly improve your quality of life during Mists of Pandaria. Listed below are some of our recommendations on Addons and Macros to help get the most out of your time playing the game.