Blood Death Knight Tank Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.0.2

Blood Death Knights have seen a very positive set of changes in Dragonflight, both in terms of baseline changes and in the massively increased freedom and depth of expression that the new talent trees brought to the game. With some pretty amazing opportunities to pick utility that was either unavailable to us previously ( Blinding Sleet), belonging to other specs ( Empower Rune Weapon) or preserving some of the most impactful covenant ability available in Shadowlands ( Abomination Limb), there is no shortage of appreciation for what the developers have done.

In addition to this, the talent trees feature a massive amount of defensive and offensive gains, ranging from a 12.5% cost reduction to Death Strike to a potential (and very easy pick) 20-second cooldown reduction to Anti-Magic Shell - which comes in super handy in Dragonflight dungeons, as there is no shortage of magic tankbusters and immunable debuffs!

Overall, Blood is shaping up to be a formidable juggernaut in Dragonflight Season 1, now more than ever. We have rarely had such a good, well-rounded start to an expansion, and we hope this stays true throughout the expansion!

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our dedicated Mythic+ page below.

Your rotation in Mythic+ is unchanged from the rotation provided on our Blood Death Knight Rotation page. From a practical perspective, the biggest difference in the feel of the rotation will be ensuring that Bone Shield will not expire between pulls — it will be important to keep at least one rune available to refresh it with a Death's Caress at the end of a pull, to guarantee that you will not need to care about it for 30 seconds - enough to go to the next pull, area or boss!

Runic Power also has a small difference or two, as Mythic+ largely can be seen as a collection of encounters where resources do not reset. As a result, a common thing to keep in mind is that there is no reason to come out of a pack with zero runic power. Banking, foresight, and proper planning are key to the life of a Death Knight in Mythic+, more so now than ever due to the way the dungeons have been designed.

• Grips are a thematic core of Blood Death Knight utility and can be used for much more than just relocating enemies. A very large number of enemy casts in dungeons can be canceled by forced movement - we call this soft-looking. As Death's Echo is a baseline talent, and Abomination Limb is a de facto pick in Mythic+, you are guaranteed to be able to leverage 2 charges of Death Grip and Abomination Limb to do so!
  We will attempt to keep a list of all spells that can be soft-locked in keys, along with whether they recast or get put on cooldown when they are interrupted this way.
• Gorefiend's Grasp is a signature Blood Death Knight ability, although it is now significantly less appealing than before due to it costing a talent point. On a 2-minute cooldown and costing a full GCD, it will immediately pull all enemies within 15 yards of the target together. You will typically want to plan ahead of time where in a given dungeon you will want to use it. Gorefiend's Grasp is particularly strong for bringing loosely-spread casters together to cleave, interrupting multiple dangerous channels or casts simultaneously, and positioning multiple high-priority targets together.
• Returning with Dragonflight is one of three AoE disorients in the game: Blinding Sleet. This is on its own DR chain and allows you to disorient all enemies in front of you in a 12-yard cone every minute. This is extremely powerful for Mythic+, particularly as a lot of casters cannot be kicked but can be disoriented. It is an easy and perfectly justifiable default pick on the talent tree.
• Mind Freeze is the Death Knight interrupt ability. It operates identically to other melee interrupts such as Kick and Pummel, except that it has a 15-yard range. This allows Death Knights to interrupt casts when enemies are standing in zones that other melee cannot reach, helping to reposition them in a safer location.
• Asphyxiate is a 4-second, single-target stun on a 45-second cooldown. This is particularly useful for preventing uninterruptible casts or preventing enemies with movement abilities or that are coded to flee at low health from repositioning. As with Death Grip, be aware that enemies that are immune to stun effects will not be interrupted by Asphyxiate.
• Death and Decay, when paired with the Grip of the Dead talent becomes a highly effective tool for starting to kite as you head to the next pack. As with Bone Shield, be sure that Death and Decay is available to use when you are ready to move on to the next pack.
• Raise Ally is the Death Knight combat resurrection spell. While in a raid environment, you would not normally want to rely on the tank for combat resurrection, in a Mythic+ dungeon you may be the only player to bring this utility. Additionally, the instant-cast nature of Raise Ally will make it preferable to other combat resurrections in some circumstances, even considering the cost of Runic Power. If you need to resurrect an ally, be sure to consider both timing and positioning — avoid placing the newly-resurrected player in the path of a dangerous boss cleave or immediately before a dungeon-wide damage event.
• The last and newest staple in our toolkit, Anti-Magic Zone, provides Death Knights with a way to help the group survive large bursts of magic damage, something which is very frequent in the new Dragonflight dungeons. Its range and duration are limited but can be increased if necessary with a Conduit.

We have designed a versatile yet strong loadout for Dragonflight. It is available below:

Be sure to use the 'Copy Export String' to import our build ingame!

On the class tree, we opted to pick up Asphyxiate, Anti-Magic Barrier and Blinding Sleet as optional utility points. Our main choices of core talents are unchanged from the default AoE talent build - Abomination Limb and Empower Rune Weapon are much more appealing choices for Mythic+, especially as the former brings in massive utility on top of just damage.

On the class tree, we simply picked all the throughput gains, defensively and offensively. Should you wish to do so, you can relocate the point in Bloodworms in order to pick Gorefiend's Grasp, but this comes at a severe DPS and HPS cost and its value is significantly lower than in Shadowlands due to the massively increased amount of ways we can grip enemies.

Another consideration is kiting. Due to the relatively different dungeon design Dragonflight is shipping with, we opted against picking Grip of the Dead on the default build. However, you can easily pick it by unselecting Asphyxiate (it is the weakest of our three utility points).

We have detailed all of the talent rows on the talents page; as such, we will only summarize the important differences in Mythic+. For more detailed info, the talents section is linked below:

Every Mythic+ season of Dragonflight will once again include a unique Seasonal Affix; Dragonflight Mythic+ Season 1's special affix is Thundering.

Throughout the dungeon a thunderstorm will trigger. This creates small lightning impact spots nearby which you should avoid and every player in the party will have a debuff applied to them. This debuff increases your damage and healing done by 30% whilst it is active. This debuff can be removed by running into a player with the opposite debuff.

If this debuff is not removed in 15 seconds you will be stunned and take a large amount of Nature damage.

Since there are five players and only two pairs of debuffs able to be cleared, one player is allowed to keep their remaining debuff (and its increased damage/healing) for the entire time. Because you are a tank, this should rarely, if ever, be you. This is even more true if you keep yours, a single failure from the rest of the group will see you incapacitated for 8 seconds, and, very likely, die.

Focus on clearing your debuff as soon as safely possible, and allowing the strongest DPS in your party to keep theirs.

As playing around these seasonal affixes applies to more than just Blood

As playing around these seasonal affixes applies to more than just Blood Death Knight, please feel free to consult our larger guides about Mythic+ and its affixes below. Within are also discussions about changes to how loot is acquired, changes to existing affixes, and even a few other new surprises.