Death Knight Hero Talents — The War Within (Season 1)

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. If you want to learn more about the best regular talents for Blood Death Knight, check out our Talents page:

Deathbringer is the strongest hero talent for raiding, as it provides the most offensive and defensive benefits. However, the defensive benefits are all dependent on managing your runes well and playing optimally.

San'layn's is simpler to play as it does not give you an extra ability to manage and has a very predictable rotation. However, San'layn provides significantly less DPS than Deathbringer and requires you to use Vampiric Blood rotationally.

Deathbringer is the strongest hero talent for Mythic+ as it provides the most offensive and defensive benefits. However, the defensive benefits are all dependent on managing your runes well and playing optimally.

Reaper's Mark travels to a nearby enemy after it explodes ( Exterminate), allowing you to have multiple active at once. Additionally, you have a 30% chance after it explodes (40 stacks or expiry) for your Marrowrend to apply Reaper's Mark. Finally, when Reaper's Mark explodes, it applies a 5% physical damage reduction to targets ( Soul Rupture), and has a chance to make enemies take more damage (if Wave of Souls crits). The AoE potential is huge!

San'layn's is simpler to play as it does not give you an extra ability to manage and has a very predictable rotation. However, San'layn provides significantly less DPS than Deathbringer and requires you to use Vampiric Blood rotationally.

2.

Best Hero Talent Builds for Blood Death Knight

Deathbringer Raiding Build Deathbringer Mythic+ Build San'layn Raiding Build San'layn Mythic+ Build

Deathbringer adds Reaper's Mark to your toolkit. There are three methods in which Reaper's Mark can be applied to a target:

• Casting Reaper's Mark on the target.
• When Reaper's Mark explodes, it can travel to a nearby enemy, which is currently not affected by Reaper's Mark.
• Casting Marrowrend (with Exterminate stacks) has a 30% chance to apply Reaper's Mark to the target.

Your goal is to have as many Reaper's Mark's active as possible to increase the damage potential of the explosions from Exterminate and Wave of Souls uptime. You will also get higher uptimes on Soul Rupture which will reduce your physical damage taken.

Reaper's Mark will last on the target for 12 seconds before exploding and triggering Exterminate. However, you can detonate it early by dealing shadow or frost damage 40 times, these stacks can be applied by a myriad of abilities.

San'layn has no real impact on your rotation. The only change of note is that you want to cast Vampiric Blood on cooldown to change Heart Strike into Vampiric Strike.

Vampiric Strike will give you a stacking haste buff ( Essence of the Blood Queen). This buff refreshes in duration when a new stack is added and is the core gameplay loop of San'layn.

Additionally each cast of Death Strike has a 10% chance to to change Heart Strike into Vampiric Strike for one cast.

Before you cast Vampiric Blood, you will need to ensure you have 2-3 runes available and as little runic power as possible. This will let you maintain Coagulopathy during the Vampiric Blood window, as whilst Vampiric Blood is active you will want to get as many stacks of Essence of the Blood Queen as possible, this will be done by primarily using Vampiric Strike ( Heart Strike) and only using Death Strike to maintain Coagulopathy (or restore health if necessary).

After Vampiric Blood ends, this is where you will start to gamble for procs of Vampiric Strike to prolong Essence of the Blood Queen.

For a summarised version of the rotation changes:

• Vampiric Blood changes Heart Strike into Vampiric Strike for its duration
• Death Strike has a 10% chance to change Heart Strike into Vampiric Strike
• Essence of the Blood Queen is a stacking haste buff, and a new stack is applied with each cast of Vampiric Strike.