Blood Death Knight Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Shadowlands 9.2.5
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Blood Death Knight, depending on the type of damage you will be tanking. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to maximize your survivability and DPS. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2.5.
Rotation for Blood Death Knights
Generally speaking, your goal during each fight is to use your resources (Runes and Runic Power) to generate threat and to stay alive. Blood Death Knight is very much a builder-spender spec, with a limited number of procs and interactions, and a number of ways in which you can get punished for losing your cool and deciding to use the wrong ability.
Easy Mode
If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.
Mythic+
The content on this page is meant for raiding content. While the basic rotation remains the same in Mythic+, some details such as cooldown usage, ability priorities and additional techniques such as effective kiting complicate matters a bit further.
We have highlighted such additional details on the dedicated Mythic+ page in order to keep this page as clear and concise as possible. You can find it here:
Opener for Blood Death Knight
The opener operates under the assumption you will be actively tanking on the
pull. If your co-tank will be tanking the only target, save
Dancing Rune Weapon for your first active tanking period and follow
the standard rotation.
- Use
Dark Command.
- Use
Blooddrinker (if talented) while closing with the boss.
- Use
Dancing Rune Weapon. It is worth noting that this does not cancel
Blooddrinker.
- Shortly before getting into melee range, use
Rune Tap. This is there to spend this Rune that would normally be lost to overcap otherwise!
- Use
Marrowrend to quickly get to 6 stacks of
Bone Shield. If using the
Blood DK 4-Piece set bonus, you will instead get 9!
- Use
Blood Boil to spend your first charge and get the charges rolling.
Standard Rotation
The rotations for single-target and AoE are extremely similar, so we have grouped them together. The recommended playstyle is based on the following priority of abilities.
- Use
Marrowrend if your
Bone Shield is close to expiring (3 seconds or less), or if you will not be in range of a target before your
Bone Shield will expire.
- Use
Tombstone (if talented), as long as the following conditions are true:
- You have
Crimson Rune Weapon equipped
- Using
Tombstone will leave you with at least 1
Bone Shield charge
Dancing Rune Weapon is on cooldown
- You have
- Use
Death Strike, if any of these conditions is true:
- Immediately after taking a threatening hit, or if you are in an optimal damage window to maximize its healing.
- Using your next rune spender will overcap your Runic Power.
- Use
Blooddrinker (if talented) when
Dancing Rune Weapon is not up. If Dancing Rune Weapon and Blooddrinker become available at the same time, use Blooddrinker first before activating Dancing Rune Weapon.
- Use
Blood Boil if any nearby enemies do not have your
Blood Plague disease, or purely for damage while making sure never to sit on charges of it.
- Use
Marrowrend if you have 7 or fewer stacks of
Bone Shield. You can let your stacks go as low as 5 without losing the buff from
Ossuary, but the longer you wait, the higher the chances are that you will drop below 5 stacks as you need to use
Death Strike.
- During
Dancing Rune Weapon, let your stacks drop to 4 before using
Marrowrend, to avoid wasting the bonus stacks of
Bone Shield provided by your rune weapon.
- During
- Dump runes to keep 3 runes on recharge at all times. Use the following
priority list any time you have 3 or more runes:
- Use
Death and Decay if it will hit 4 or more targets, and you will not need to move out of it.
- Use
Heart Strike. You can also use
Heart Strike even at 1-2 runes to quickly generate Runic Power for
Death Strike. Always make sure you do not leave yourself unable to use
Marrowrend to keep
Bone Shield from falling below 5 stacks.
- Use
- Use
Blood Boil if
Dancing Rune Weapon is up.
- Use
Death and Decay if you have a
Crimson Scourge proc.
- Use
Blood Boil.
Blood Death Knight 2-Piece Bonus and Its Impact on Your Rotation
Tombstone
As you may have seen from the rotation flowchart above, Tombstone
has gained significant value this patch. This is purely because our 2-piece
set bonus,
Blood DK 2-Piece, massively amplifies the value of
Dancing Rune Weapon and strongly rewards proper play during it.
If you have Crimson Rune Weapon equipped (which you should have),
using
Tombstone allows you to have more
Dancing Rune Weapon
casts. The addition of the 4-piece,
Blood DK 4-Piece, also makes
Bone Shield charges more plentiful (due to generating 9 from a
single
Marrowrend), lessening the cost of this talent.
Using Tombstone is very straightforward. You use it on cooldown
if the following are true:
Dancing Rune Weapon is still on cooldown.
- You have strictly more than 6
Bone Shield charges (it is a bigger loss to be on 0
Bone Shield charges for two GCDs, than it is to waste 3+ bones through a
Marrowrend during
Dancing Rune Weapon with the
Blood DK 4-Piece equipped)
The more Bone Shield charges you have left after
Tombstone,
the better — this means you will be able to
Heart Strike immediately
after to keep the
Blood DK 2-Piece bonus going instead of immediately having to
Marrowrend, but this comes down to proper play ahead of time.
Rotational Priorities: Single Target
Once you have the Blood DK 2-Piece equipped, your single-target rotation
priorities change slightly. You have a clear incentive to prioritize spending as
many Runes on
Heart Strike, and to spend the Runic Power acquired on
Death Strike, in this order.
Conversely, using Blood Boil on single-target is relatively weak: it is
less damage than
Heart Strike, does not interact with the 2-piece set bonus
(and, once you think about it, costs you a valuable amount of time) and generates no
meaningful resources. Its only saving grace is
Withering Plague, but this
means that your only real requirement is having
Blood Plague on your target.
Due to this, you will occasionally cap Blood Boil charges with proper play on
single-target. It will not be very often, but it is often enough, and impactful enough,
to mention it.
Rotational Priorities: AoE
AoE (specifically, 4 targets and above) spins the above on its head. in AoE,
Blood Boil is a much higher value button than
Death Strike: it does
more damage, applies
Blood Plague (for
Withering Plague) on everything,
and with
Dancing Rune Weapon being this frequently up, the need to Death Strike
defensively will be significantly lower.
As a result, in AoE, you de-prioritize spending Runic Power, and sometimes cap
Runic Power altogether. This is the reason for the recommendation to always pick Bonestorm in
Patch 9.2 — you would be wasting those resources otherwise (as keeping
Dancing Rune Weapon up for longer is more important, unless you die, of course),
and it turns out that spending 2.5 GCD's worth of RP in 1 GCD is an extremely efficient trade.
Blood DK 4-Piece Bonus and Its Impact on Your Rotation
The addition of Tier Sets in Patch 9.2 brings
back one of the many effects we lost at the end of Legion — when using
Dancing Rune Weapon with the 4-piece equipped, we gain access to a second
Dancing Rune Weapon again!
This sounds very boring, but it has some interesting caveats:
- Casting
Heart Strike (whether directly or thanks to the other part of the
Blood DK 4-Piece bonus) grants 10 bonus RP during
Dancing Rune Weapon
- Casting
Marrowrend during
Dancing Rune Weapon grants 9
Bone Shield charges
Both effects will subtly change your rotation, either by delaying the
time between Marrowrend further, or by making you rethink how much
the next Rune spender may bring in terms of Runic Power — a 5-target
Heart Strike cast in
Death and Decay with
Heartbreaker
selected is now 35 RP, or 5 short of a
Death Strike!
Covenant Abilities and When to Use Them
The good news about Covenants and Covenant abilities is that all four
choices are fully viable in Raids, and the difficulty comes from
knowing when to use them to their maximum potential. Encounter mechanics and
timings may cause their usage to vary slightly, and as a result,
we recommend you to check logs of players having killed the encounter
you are progressing on as your covenant to confirm when to use them
(particularly Abomination Limb if you are a Necrolord, as this
specific ability has play-making and play-breaking use in terms of the
ability to grip nearby targets).
If you wish to know more about Covenants, take a look at our Covenant guide. We have gone in more detail there about the additional options Covenants offer, particularly in terms of Soulbinds and Conduits.
Venthyr: Swarming Mist
The Venthyr ability Swarming Mist is one of the easiest abilities
that Death Knights can pick up: every minute, you should press it. It deals heavy
damage to nearby targets (up to 5, reduced slightly thereafter) over 8 seconds,
gives you a moderate chance to dodge melee attacks while it is up, and gives
you 3 RP per target hit per second for each tick (27-135RP total).
If the encounter you are fighting has adds, and you do not have to
delay Swarming Mist for more than 10 seconds to capitalize on them,
you absolutely should. However, this is a niche case; for the most part, you
can and should consider this one of your highest priority abilities, and
press it on cooldown.
With Patch 9.2 and the acquisition of Memory of Unity,
Venthyr players gain access to
Insatiable Hunger everywhere,
at least as long as your
Covenant Legendary is equipped. Unfortunately, this Legendary is probably the most
passive of the four Covenants, and will largely just function as an extra
pulse of damage and healing when
Swarming Mist ends. Gaming this effect
for more damage can be done, but is in general pretty risky, as it requires you to
spend much more Runic Power than you normally would want to.
Necrolord: Abomination Limb
Fitting a similar niche to the Venthyr ability, the Necrolord
ability also deals a large amount of upfront damage and provides the Death
Knight with resources: 3 stacks of Bone Shield on use, along with
another 3 6 seconds and 12 seconds into the spell duration.
Due to its longer cooldown (2 minutes), you can expect to use this
fewer times per fight. It makes for a great opening tool, as it allows
you to gain Bone Shield stacks before you actually get to the target
(the AoE range is about 10 yards).
As such, a typical Necrolord opener would be as follows. It assumes that you have at least the 2-piece set bonus and your Covenant Legendary equipped.
- Use
Abomination Limb just outside of melee range (it ticks instantly).
- Use
Blood Boil.
- Use
Dancing Rune Weapon.
- Use
Tombstone.
- Use
Heart Strike.
- Use
Heart Strike.
- Use
Bonestorm.
- Continue with your rotation.
For uses later on in the fight, make sure you use it when you are at 6 or fewer
Bone Shield charges without delaying it too much. Ideally, you should
aim to not
Marrowrend for ~10 seconds before it becomes available, if at all possible.
With Patch 9.2, Necrolord players will be able to equip a
second, Covenant-specific Legendary thanks to the Memory of Unity, and
will gain access to
Abomination's Frenzy.
This drastically increases the duration of
Abomination Limb and the number of
Bone Shield stacks you gain from it (15 stacks in total). It, however, does not
change the way you play at all: on pull, you will just gain more bones, leading to one less
Marrowrend at the end of
Dancing Rune Weapon. Every 2 minutes thereafter,
you still will not want to drop your Bone Shield charges too low (
Ossuary
takes precedence), and will instead just end up capping charges.
Kyrian: Shackle the Unworthy
The Kyrian ability strives in low target count environments, which makes
it ideal for raiding. As a DPS tool, it is magnificent: tons of damage, no real
gimmick, 5% DR on top, and it is hasted, which means you should absolutely make sure
you have it ready when Time Warp is being cast.
Similar to the Venthyr ability Swarming Mist, you should
aim to use this on cooldown, or at least not delay it by more than 5-10 seconds. It is a
high priority action in your rotation and the highest effective damage skill
you have in your spellbook.
The addition of Memory of Unity in Patch 9.2 grants you access
to the effect of
Final Sentence at all times and in all content while
equipped, which works as a simple stacking damage done multiplier, along with a
Rune each time
Shackle the Unworthy is applied to an enemy. It requires
very little change in playstyle; effectively, you only need to be aware that
you will get Rune refunds on pull a lot!
The real beauty of Kyrian is its Soulbind strength (Pelagos), and its
signature ability: Phial of Serenity. Once per fight, independent of
your regular potion cooldown, you can top yourself up with a 20% heal (or
55% Heal-over-Time) and clear every clearable debuff on you.
A number abilities have been whitelisted to not be purgeable by this, but some do remain — check the raid encounter tips for a list!
Night Fae: Death's Due
The most difficult Covenant ability to use in Raids, Death's Due,
replaces
Death and Decay, and causes each
Heart Strike while
you and your target are both in
Death's Due to afflict them with a
stacking 12-second debuff reducing their damage done to you by 2%, and granting
you a stacking 12-second buff increasing your strength by 2%.
Due to this pesky behavior, and the fact that it takes upwards of 15 seconds to recover the full 4 stacks should you have dropped them, your opener changes significantly.
- Use
Blooddrinker (if talented).
- Use
Marrowrend.
- Use
Death's Due.
- Use
Dancing Rune Weapon.
- Use
Heart Strike.
- Use
Blood Boil.
- Use
Marrowrend if you are not playing
Crimson Rune Weapon.
By the end of this opener, you should have three runes recharging and have
set up the main priority: your Bone Shield is ready, and every
rune thereafter for the next 6 seconds should be spent on
Heart Strike
to ramp up
Death's Due.
From there, the regular Blood Death Knight rotation follows, with the following caveats.
- Never let the
Death's Due stacks drop.
- Track the remaining time on
Death's Due (on the floor) and make sure to use
Heart Strike one last time before it disappears, to give you the full 12 seconds to get a
Crimson Scourge proc.
Due to all these modifications, we recommend you to get in the habit of
banking a rune — just in case you need it to hardcast Death's Due.
As a rule of thumb, you should not be spending all of your runes anyway (this is a
core misplay — you do not get any value for having more than 3 runes empty at any
given time), so, if you were playing optimally, this should not be much of an impact.
The addition of Memory of Unity in Patch 9.2 allows
Night Fae Death Knights to use
Rampant Transference at all times,
allowing them to have a significantly easier time with this Covenant
thanks to the 2 extra seconds it adds to the Strength buff. It
also turbocharges the Strength buff (up to 20%, from 8%) and allows you to
generate 20% more Runic Power while in
Death's Due. Overall, this is
probably the most impactful Covenant Legendary, and simplifies the management of
Death's Due.
Taunting
Dark Command is your main taunting ability. It works on a
single-target and has an 8-second cooldown.
Death Grip grabs your target and moves it to your location. It
also has the effect of taunting the target and interrupting spellcasting. The
movement effect does not work against most raid bosses.
Survival Cooldowns for Blood Death Knights
Below, we present the cooldowns at your disposal and quickly go over how they should be used. More information about each cooldown can be found in subsequent sections.
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.
Dancing Rune Weapon increases your chance to parry attacks by 40%. It also significantly increases your damage and resource generation and should be used in situations where you can benefit from both the offensive and defensive components of the ability.
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 for 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.
Optional Read: Mastering Your Blood Death Knight
While the information we gave in the previous sections will yield very good results, there are many things you should be aware of, in order to play your Blood Death Knight to its full potential. In particular, we explain in great detail how to properly use your various survival cooldowns.
Runes and Runic Power
Death Knights use a dual resource system of runes and Runic Power. While it is quite straightforward in how it works, we will explain it here for the sake of completion.
Runes
You have a total of 6 Runes, which are available by default. Some of your abilities have Rune costs, and whenever you use an ability that consumes one or more Runes, those Runes will immediately begin recharging. The exact amount of time it takes a Rune to recharge depends on how much Haste you have.
Whenever a Rune is consumed, you gain 10 Runic Power (more on that below).
At most, 3 of your runes can be charging up at the same time. It is therefore optimal to keep at least 3 runes on cooldown in order to maximise the recharge rate over the course of the fight.
Runic Power
Runic Power is a resource that resembles Rage, in the sense that it
decays when out of combat, but does not decay during combat. As mentioned
above, consuming Runes generates 10 Runic Power per Rune spent, and this is
the primary means of generating Runic Power, although some abilities also
help with this. You can have a maximum of
125 Runic Power, increased to 145 if using the Rune of Hysteria Runeforge.
Detailed Cooldown Usage
Anti-Magic Shell
Anti-Magic Shell's most powerful effect is its ability to prevent
the application of debuffs. If a magical ability would apply a debuff, and any
damage the ability causes is fully absorbed by
Anti-Magic Shell, the
debuff is not applied.
Timing the use of Anti-Magic Shell is critical, particularly when
you are taking magical damage from sources other than the ability you intend to
protect against. Heavy magic damage can easily eat through the shield before
the intended attack, leaving you vulnerable to the debuff.
Effects that increase you maximum health, to include Vampiric Blood,
will increase the value of your Anti-Magic Shell even after those abilities fade.
Planning around this can make the difference in Anti-Magic Shell being
able to completely absorb an attack, and therefore immune a debuff.
Anti-Magic Barrier can allow for more effective use of
Anti-Magic Shell in nearly every way, with a reduced cooldown,
increased size, and increased duration.
Dancing Rune Weapon
Dancing Rune Weapon grants you 40% chance to parry for 8 seconds.
Moreover, for the duration, there are several other benefits that you gain:
- Uses of
Heart Strike will cause your rune weapon to strike and grant 5 additional Runic Power.
- Uses of
Marrowrend will cause your rune weapon to stack
Bone Shield exactly like using your own Marrowrend, making Marrowrend during Dancing Rune Weapon yield 6 of Bone Shield. Avoid using
Marrowrend during
Dancing Rune Weapon until you drop to 4 stacks of
Bone Shield.
- Using
Blood Boil will leave an additional
Blood Plague debuff on your target. Your rune weapon's Blood Plague debuff is not attributed directly to you and does not heal you.
Your rune weapon's attacks deal approximately 33% of the damage you deal,
making Dancing Rune Weapon a potent DPS cooldown. On encounters with
burn phases where the boss takes additional damage, you should make sure you
have
Dancing Rune Weapon to line up with those phases, along with a
potion of some sort. Do not, however, sit on this cooldown for too long.
Avoid using Dancing Rune Weapon while not actively tanking, unless
you will have to hold its cooldown for more than 20 seconds — it is
generally not a DPS loss to hold it for your next period of active tanking, and
the 40% parry is a powerful overall reduction to damage taken.
Vampiric Blood
Vampiric Blood is your most versatile cooldown. It grants you
30% extra health for 10 seconds and increases your healing received (from all
sources, including self-heals) by 30%. It can be used reactively; however, you
will gain more benefit from using this proactively, and you should have a
specific plan for what abilities you will mitigate with it.
It is worth noting that this increased healing can be used to game certain abilities or mechanics. For instance, certain effects will be 30% larger even after Vampiric Blood fades.
Icebound Fortitude
Icebound Fortitude is a straightforward damage-reduction cooldown
that lasts for 8 seconds, reducing all damage taken by 30%. Generally, you
should use this when you are about to take high damage from pre-determined
boss abilities, or when you are otherwise vulnerable (because the healers
cannot reach you or because your other cooldowns are unavailable).
Icebound Fortitude also clears stuns and makes you immune to stun
effects for the duration of the buff. In encounters where stun effects are
applied to the tank, you should consider whether you can incorporate Icebound
Fortitude into your cooldown plan in a way that both mitigates threatening
damage while leveraging the stun immunity.
Blood Death Knights deal very poorly with abilities that take into account
raw damage amounts before absorbs and self-heals (given their low number of
damage reduction abilities). Abilities that mirror damage dealt to you onto
other players, or otherwise determine their effect based on how much damage you
take, can be particularly difficult for Blood Death Knights to manage;
Icebound Fortitude should be saved for those abilities in those
situations.
Lichborne
Lichborne is another tool in our
arsenal of situational defensives, granting 10% leech and total immunity to
Charm, Fear and Sleep effects for 10 seconds. An additional benefit of it is
the ability to use
Death Coil on yourself to give yourself a poor man's
AP-based heal, should nothing else be in range and should you be in immediate,
lethal danger.
This, overall, is worth using every now and then. There are some juicy situations in Mythic+ where those immunities would come in handy. Dazar, in King's Rest, will be the ideal testing ground for this ability ahead of the Shadowlands.
Tier 4 Talents
This talent row was shaken up a bit in Shadowlands — gone is
Rune Tap, and instead of it, a modified
Mark of Blood has shown
up on this row.
This change, however, is net zero. You will still be using
Will of the Necropolis, unless you happen to be in one of the niche
situations where
Anti-Magic Barrier has real value. If such situations
arise, they will be covered on the raid and M+ pages; we have also described
how to identify such a situation on the talents page.
Death Strike and Blood Shield
Death Strike is your most important self-healing ability. It is
also part of your regular ability rotation during combat. In order to make the
most out of Death Strike and of your Mastery (
Mastery: Blood Shield),
you cannot simply use Death Strike whenever it is available.
The most immediately apparent effect of Death Strike is that it heals you, so it is always well used after you have taken damage to heal yourself back up a bit and help the healers. Be smart about when you are using Death Strike. As it depends on your damage taken in the previous 5 seconds, it should be used after taking high damage. Of course, capping your Runic Power while not using Death Strike should also be avoided.
Generally, you should avoid trying to stack Blood Shield
proactively while actively tanking — using
Death Strike at full
health sacrifices as much as 85% of its value. While not actively tanking,
you will work to rebuild resources — to include Blood Shield
— for your next period of active tanking. Blood Shield has a
10-second duration; it can fall off between uses of
Death Strike if
you are not actively using your rotation during off-tanking periods.
Note that Mastery: Blood Shield only absorbs physical damage; do not rely
on it to mitigate a large magical attack.
Bone Shield
Your Marrowrend ability applies 3 stacks of
Bone Shield
each time you use it, up to a maximum of 10 stacks. As long as you have at
least 1 Bone Shield stack active, your Armor is increased by 40% of your
Strength and your Haste is increased by 10%. Each successful melee attack made
against you consumes a Bone Shield charge. Bone Shield has a duration of 30
seconds, after which the stacks simply drop off you. This is unlikely to occur
while actively tanking in a normal boss encounter, but you should take care to
watch the duration of your
Bone Shield buff on encounters with no
melee attacks, or with long periods of downtime.
There is an internal cooldown of 2.5 seconds for Bone Shield charges being consumed.
Keeping Bone Shield up is pivotal to playing Blood properly. The Haste
increase is essential for Rune regeneration and the damage reduction is
essential for survivability. Moreover, if you are above level 58 and have
Ossuary, then with 5 or more stacks of Bone Shield, the cost
of
Death Strike is reduced by 5 Runic Power, which allows you to use
it more frequently.
Effectively, you will always want to prioritize maintaining high amounts of
Bone Shield stacks; you should use
Marrowrend when you
have 7 or fewer stacks of Bone Shield, unless you need the additional Runic Power from
using
Heart Strike). Even then, you should immediately try to re-stack
Bone Shield.
Changelog
- 31 May 2022: Page reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 10 Apr. 2022: Added all information about Tombstone, its usage, the 2pc implications of the March hotfixes, and the considerations about when to use what. The Necrolord opener is reworked as a result.
- 20 Feb. 2022: Added information regarding Unity; streamlined rotation; described the impact of the 4p (2p unimpactful in terms of rotation beyond "more DRW").
- 01 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 29 Jun. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 24 Jan. 2021: Removed a Standard Rotation step.
- 14 Jan. 2021: Added covenant rotational tips.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Mandl and Panthea.
Mandl is one of Acherus' Useful Minions and Blood Death Knight theorycrafter.
Panthea raids in Catalyst and is the author of TankNotes. He plays all tanks and is a "Useful Minion" for the Acherus Death Knight Discord. You can follow him on Twitter.
- Wrath of the Lich King Classic Beta Development Notes: June 22nd
- Wrath of the Lich King Classic Closed Beta Now Live
- Halondrus Visuals Fixed, but Now the Ground Is Missing?
- What's Ahead for Wrath Classic (Developer Update)
- Putting a Plan Together Quest Currently Up on Live Servers
- Faction and Transfer Restrictions Lifted in Burning Crusade Classic
- Lil Ursoc Model and Emotes Preview
- Third Encrypted Dragonflight Alpha Build on WoW Dev Branch