Blood Death Knight Shadowlands Leveling Guide From 8 to 60

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level. The only exception to this rule is if you have a Ring or Necklace with a slightly lower item level, but 2 secondary stats on it instead of 1.

Your goal is, evidently, to go as quickly as possible throughout the zones and levels, and the best way to do this is to get the best possible gear without getting out of your way while doing so.

Move the slider below to make the guide update to your level!

Until level 10, if you are an old-school race, your Heart Strike will be replaced by its generic alternative, Rune Strike.

Your talent set up should be as follows.

• Level 15: Heartbreaker
• Level 25: Hemostasis
• Level 30: Relish in Blood
• Level 35: Will of the Necropolis
• Level 40: Wraith Walk
• Level 45: Bloodworms
• Level 50: Purgatory

1. You start with access to Rune Strike, acting as your main Rune spender, and Death Strike and Death Coil acting as your main Runic Power spenders. Death and Decay is also available for large groups of enemies, although Rune Strike does not cleaver while inside it.
   Simply burn Runes with Rune Strike and Runic Power with Death Coil (or, for a bit of healing at a cost of some damage, Death Strike)
2. Pick Blood! This will turn Rune Strike into Heart Strike, along with allowing you to benefit from a couple of enhancements and your mastery, Mastery: Blood Shield. This is also coupled with a +132% damage increase on Death Strike — as a result, you should unbind Death Coil altogether, as you will no longer be using it.
3. Use Heart Strike as your filler, and Death Strike as your RP spender. Along with the spec-specific increase to its damage, you also get the benefit of Mastery: Blood Shield!
4. Marrowrend is your Active Mitigation ability. It is not very active, but that is down to terminology. Pressing it grants you 3 Bone Shield stacks; you lose a charge per melee hit taken, at a maximum of once per 2.5 seconds. You should ideally never cap those, and aim to be around 5-7 instead.
5. Your first DPS cooldown, albeit minor, is Raise Dead. Do not hesitate to summon Timmy early, and to summon Timmy often. He actually does quite a bit of damage.
6. Dark Command is your single-target taunt. This one, unlike Death Grip, is off the global cooldown. You now have almost every element of your toolkit to be able to effectively tank dungeons.
7. With the first talent point, the dungeon finder also unlocks.
8. Blood Boil is your AoE threat/DPS ability. Keep its charges rolling, even on single-target! At level 25, you will pick up Hemostasis to also have it provide defensive utility.
9. The levels 29 to 40 reinforce your utility and defensive toolkit, with the addition of four defensives ( Vampiric Blood, Dancing Rune Weapon, Lichborne and Icebound Fortitude), along with two utility spells: an undead crowd-control spell ( Control Undead) and a combat resurrection ( Raise Ally). At this point, your spec toolkit is complete.
10. You can now sacrifice your Raise Dead with Sacrificial Pact for additional burst DPS as it is about to expire.

In addition to these baseline abilities, there are a number of passive effects that you unlock throughout the leveling process that are worth knowing about:

• Crimson Scourge allows you to gain free casts of Death and Decay; this is a 25% chance every time you melee a target affected by Blood Plague, as long as you do not currently have a Death and Decay active.
• Veteran of the Third War grants you a flat 30% extra Stamina.
• Heart Strike Rank 3 is unlocked, which increases the damage of it by 20%.
• Vampiric Blood Rank 2 is unlocked, which increases the healing received by 5% and the duration by 2 seconds.
• Ossuary is unlocked, which reduces the cost of Death Strike when you are above 5 charges of Bone Shield.

Congratulations on reaching Level 60! Now that you have hit Level 60, we recommend looking at our Easy mode page and Talents section to learn how to play at max level.