Blood Death Knight Leveling Guide from 8 to 80 — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0.1)

When leveling up, you should always choose the piece of loot with the highest item level.

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 build is the following:

Most of these talent points will be gradually available as you level; we will only note down the active abilities in the guide below, along with the most important talents to pick up. Throughout the leveling process, you will also pick up a variety of passive damage increases to other abilities.

The basic rotation as a Blood Death Knight is based on this priority. We have shown/hidden elements based on the level at which you acquire them; please use the slider at the very top of the page to select what level you are at.

1. Use Death and Decay where you intend to fight, and refresh it when the buff it applies to you when standing in it fades. Do not get fooled by its visual presence, as Cleaving Strikes causes the buff from it to last four seconds longer.
2. Use Death Strike if your health is low or if you are above 75 Runic Power.
3. Use Blood Boil if any nearby enemies do not have your Blood Plague disease, or you are close to having 2 charges of Blood Boil.
4. If Reaper's Mark is available, cast it on any nearby enemy.
5. Spend Exterminate charges by casting Marrowrend.
6. Use Dancing Rune Weapon on cooldown.
7. Use Marrowrend (or Death's Caress if you are out of melee range) if your Bone Shield is about to expire.
8. Use Marrowrend if you have 6 or fewer stacks of Bone Shield.
9. Use Heart Strike if you have 2 or more Runes.
10. Use Blood Boil.

We have highlighted the most impactful talents that you will be picking up as you level. These either impact your rotation directly, or are so powerful they are worth knowing about.

1. You start with access to Rune Strike, acting as your main Rune spender, and Death Coil acting as your main Runic Power spender. Death and Decay is also available for large groups of enemies, although Rune Strike does not cleave while inside it. Simply burn Runes with Rune Strike and Runic Power with Death Coil.
2. Pick Blood! This provides two different bonuses:
   • You also gain access to Death Strike, a very powerful Runic Power spender that also heals you for 25% of all the damage you took over the past 5 seconds. A portion of this healing is also duplicated as an absorption effect through your mastery Mastery: Blood Shield.
   • You also gain a hidden effect called your "spec aura", which buffs a number of things — the most important one to know about is a 100% damage increase to Death Strike. From this point on, you will no longer use Death Coil.
3. Pick Heart Strike on your specialization tree; this turns Rune Strike into Heart Strike, a more efficient Rune spender.
4. 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!
5. Pick Icebound Fortitude. This is one of your most powerful defensive cooldowns: it reduces all damage taken by 30% for 8 seconds on a 2-minute cooldown.
6. Pick Blood Boil on your specialization tree; this is your main AoE damage ability. It also applies Blood Plague on all targets hit by it.
7. Pick Raise Dead on the class talent tree. This grants you access to your ghoul — it functions as a damage cooldown, and you can simply press it when it is available.
8. Pick Marrowrend on your specialization tree; 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 stacks instead.
9. Pick Vampiric Blood - this functions as your second major defensive cooldown and increases your maximum Health and all healing received by 30%.
10. Pick Mind Freeze. The reason we put your interrupt this late in the leveling tree is that very few casts specifically need an interrupt while below level 20.
11. Pick Dancing Rune Weapon. This is your first offensive cooldown, but it also has major defensive benefits. While it is up, you gain 40% parry; it also doubles the number of Bone Shield charges generated by Marrowrend and grants you 5 bonus Runic Power every time you cast Heart Strike. This should be cast as close to on cooldown as possible, as it is a major DPS and survival increase.
12. Pick Gorefiend's Grasp on the spec talent tree. This allows you to mass-grip enemies near a target, and silences them for 3 seconds. Thanks to Bone Collector, each target gripped also grants you one charge of Bone Shield.
13. Pick Deathbringer as your hero talent. With it, you gain access to Reaper's Mark. You should cast this on cooldown.