Blood Death Knight Tank Easy Mode — The War Within (11.1.7)

The following build has been designed to provide as simple a rotation as possible; it brings convenient choices at the loss of some throughput, all with the goal of making starting out as a Blood Death Knight more seamless.

It is technically also one of the core builds Blood Death Knights can use and is usually the most applicable to all content. As such, you will likely see top-end players also playing these same talents!

Use the 'Export Talents' on the calculator to easily copy the build in-game.

You can find more detailed information as to why these talents are taken, along with alternatives, on the talents page:

The Combat Assistant one-button rotation mode added with 11.1.7 is a significant downgrade over playing Blood Death Knight manually, even at a basic level.

Defensively, this mode does not cast Tombstone at any moment, and only casts Bonestorm in AoE. These significantly hamper your Dancing Rune Weapon uptime. It also wastes a large amount of Runic Power by having Death Strike as one of its lowest priorities, when it arguably should be one of the highest.

Offensively, these limitations cost it 40% damage as San'layn, and 35% as Deathbringer, along with roughly halving the amount of Runic Power a skilled player could generate and spending only ~75% of what it generates.

We recommend avoiding its use for now, and instead to follow the rotational advice present on this page.

The basic rotation as a Blood Death Knight is based on this priority. It includes both single-target and AoE recommendations. As usual, more information is available on the in-depth rotation page!

1. Use Death and Decay where you intend to fight; your goal is to keep both you and your enemies in it for as long as possible. Cast it on cooldown, but do not overlap them!
2. Cast Reaper's Mark, Abomination Limb and Dancing Rune Weapon on cooldown.
3. Cast Marrowrend on a target if you have any Exterminate procs left, as long as Coagulopathy will not drop if you do so.
4. Use Tombstone and Tombstone when you have at least 6 Bone Shield charges, you are within your own Death and Decay and Dancing Rune Weapon still is on cooldown.
5. Use Consumption. If Dancing Rune Weapon is about to become available, wait until it is available and use it as your first GCD in Dancing Rune Weapon instead.
6. Use Marrowrend (or Death's Caress if you are out of melee range) if your Bone Shield is about to expire.
7. Use Death Strike if your health is low or if you are above 75 Runic Power.
8. 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.
9. Use Marrowrend if you have 6 or fewer stacks of Bone Shield.
10. Use Heart Strike if you have 2 or more Runes.
11. Use Blood Boil.

You have two active mitigation abilities that you need to use to keep yourself alive, although simply making use of the above priority will ensure you are doing this to a great degree.

Death Strike is your primary means of keeping yourself alive, and you should use it whenever you can benefit from the healing it provides, particularly after you have sustained high damage (since its healing is based on the amount of damage taken in the preceding 5 seconds).

Bone Shield (applied by your Marrowrend) should be kept above 5 stacks at all times.

In addition to the active mitigation abilities, you must also use your defensive cooldowns as necessary:

• Anti-Magic Shell absorbs up to 30% of your maximum health in magic damage over 5 seconds, and should be used to mitigate magic damage and generate Runic Power.
• Vampiric Blood increases your maximum health and the amount of healing you receive by 30% for 10 seconds. It should be used either proactively in anticipation of high amounts of damage or reactively when low on health and in danger of dying.
• Icebound Fortitude reduces all damage taken by 30% for 8 seconds. It should mostly be used proactively when you anticipate taking high damage, such as from specific boss abilities.
• Lichborne reduces all damage taken by 15% for 10 seconds. It should mostly be used proactively when you anticipate taking high damage, such as from specific boss abilities.
• Dancing Rune Weapon increases your Parry chance by 35% and also increases your damage dealt and resource generation significantly. You should use it on the pull, and then generally as soon as it is available, as it doubles up as a resource-generation cooldown and also provides 5 Bone Shield charges

To get a better understanding of how the abilities mentioned above, as well as many more, work, you can look into the Spells Summary guide linked below.