Blood Death Knight Tank Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within Pre-Patch

This build leverages all of the tools available at our disposal while trading no survivability in the process. Thanks to Soul Reaper and the rest of the usual trademark tools brought by Blood as a specialization, you can deal a significant chunk of damage while not falling over.

Bonestorm might look like a mistake in this build, but - it now provides 50 seconds of cooldown reduction on Dancing Rune Weapon every time it is used. Its value in any build cannot be overstated.

Due to a pre-patch specific bug, we picked Consumption here as well. In The War Within, this will be swapped to Blooddrinker, but as long as Consumption incorrectly increases Blood Plague's tick rate by 100% instead of 30%, Consumption is by far better even on single-target.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import these talents directly into your game!

This build simply trades Blooddrinker for Consumption, while all other talents remain exactly the same. Thanks to the relative flexibility in utility points, you can decide to spend the points in Enfeeble and March of Darkness (and technically Soul Reaper if your content is so trivial you do not get a proper execute phase) on more situational utility, such as Asphyxiate or Wraith Walk.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import these talents directly into your game!

Mythic+ relies a lot more on group utility and, specifically, the ability to soft-interrupt targets. To that extent, we sacrificed Hemostasis to pick up Gorefiend's Grasp, while leveraging the full strength of the rest of the kit.

Unfortunately, there are not enough points below the second gate to pick up Carnage now that Bonestorm was buffed to provide cooldown reduction on Dancing Rune Weapon. As a result, you will have to make do without it in all situations.

Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import these talents directly into your game!

The advent of The War Within has consolidated and streamlined the Blood talent tree, on both the class and specialization sides. While a lot of the talent choices before were a matter of pathing or oppressive strength, the new talent tree has pushed some of the worst-tuned contenders out of the way of the main path.

As such, we will cover some of the more favored talents that you will want to prioritize most of the time from the top of each tree on down, followed by mentioning some of the bigger niche talents that are likely only rarely useful. If you would like to see a list of every single talent's effect, as well as the abbreviations they are often known by in the community, please consult our Spell List and Glossary section instead.

These talents give you the core identity of being a Death Knight. You will find a good mix of Utility, Offensive, and Defensive options here.

Talent	Description/Effect
Death Strike	Your main Runic Power spender and does not cost any talent points for Blood Death Knights. When cast, you will heal for 25% of all of the damage taken in the past 5 seconds, or whenever you last used Death Strike, whichever time is shorter.
Raise Dead	Summon a pet ghoul for 1 minute. It deals damage to your current target, but can be enhanced with Enfeeble to reduce the damage the target deals to you.
Heart Strike	Your main Runic Power builder. Additionally Heart Strike generates 15 Runic Power for a single rune spent (other spells generate 10 Runic Power per Rune spent). The amount of Runic Power generated can be increased more with Heartbreaker.
Mind Freeze	Mind Freeze is your interrupt; as a melee interrupt with a 15 yard range, it is particularly strong. You can grab Coldthirst to reduce its cooldown to 12 seconds and grant you 10 Runic Power when you successfully interrupt a target.
Anti-Magic Shell	Can prevent magic debuffs from being applied and also acts as a magic damage absorb shield.
Blood Boil	Mainly used as your AoE threat generation tool, it also applies Blood Plague to all targets hit. This talent can be enhanced further with Hemostasis to increase the power of your Death Strike.
Runic Attenuation	For a single talent point, this gives you a large amount of Runic Power. It works out to a neat 50RP (+ haste) per minute in completely free, no-strings-attached, bonus Runic Power.
Anti-Magic Barrier	This both increases the amount of damage that Anti-Magic Shell can absorb and reduces the cooldown of it by 20 seconds. If you do not need the size or frequency increases, then skip this talent.
Vampiric Blood	When used, this will increase your maximum health by 30% and increase all of your healing and absorbs received by 30%. This will start as a 1.5-minute cooldown, but it can be reduced with Red Thirst.
Veteran of the Third War	What was once a Death Knight passive effect is now a talent. This increases your stamina by 20% and should not be skipped.
Icebound Fortitude	30% damage reduction on use as well as a stun immunity. It can also be used to remove stuns after you have been stunned.
Ossuary	This talent makes Bone Shield management important as whilst you are above 5 stacks of Bone Shield the cost of your Death Strike will be reduced.
Death's Caress	One of very few ranged spells for Blood Death Knights. It costs 1 Rune, generates 2 charges of Bone Shield. This will be used quite rarely but it is your only efficient spell option to use when you are not in melee range.

Talent	When to Consider
Blinding Sleet	This spell was previously only available for Frost Death Knights, but now, it's available for all 3 specs. It disorients and soft-interrupts all targets in a 12-yard cone in front of you for up to 5 seconds. As one of three such disorients in the game ( Dragon's Breath and Blinding Light being the other two), its usefulness cannot be understated.
Control Undead	Unfortunately, this talent may not see much play in Dragonflight as there are fewer Undead enemies present. However, when there are Undead enemies it can prove to be useful as you can make them your temporary pet and use their abilities.

This area of the tree is where you will find most of the core cooldowns and strong passives.

Talent	Description/Effect
Icy Talons	This increases your auto-attack speed. We take it primarily to get access to Empower Rune Weapon, but it has value on its own, it is a 9% buff to Permafrost and additional statistical chances to get Runic Attenuation procs.
Anti-Magic Zone	Your big raid cooldown. You will likely only pick this in raiding scenarios, but it is a very powerful defensive cooldown for the Raid.
Soul Reaper	This is a powerful single-target execute ability. This should only be used on targets below 35% HP, and when it expires, it will deal a large amount of damage to the target. If the target dies with Soul Reaper, you will be given the Runic Corruption buff (However, this buff is heavily reduced for Blood).
Dancing Rune Weapon	This gives you 40% Parry and spawns an additional weapon which copies your attacks. The copied attacks also provide you with benefits. Marrowrend and Death's Caress generate Bone Shield charges for you, Heart Strike generates Runic Power for you, and Blood Boil applies additional Blood Plague's to the target.
Hemostasis	When you cast Blood Boil, each target hit will give you 1 stack of this buff. Each stack will increase the damage and healing of your next Death Strike by 8% (up to 40%).
Gloom Ward	This buffs all absorbs you generate and receive by 15%. This works out to an effective 15% buff to Mastery: Blood Shield, Tombstone, Anti-Magic Shell, Anti-Magic Zone and Permafrost. It is probably the strongest talent point in our entire tree.
Unholy Endurance	This modifies Lichborne to significantly extend its duration, and also turns it into a damage reduction cooldown. It is now even more worth pressing than before!
Improved Bone Shield	10% Haste whilst you have Bone Shield active.
Unholy Ground	This modifies Death and Decay. While you are in your own Death and Decay, you gain 5% haste. It is one of the three individual multipliers that cause us to hardcast Death and Decay even on single-target in Dragonflight.
Insatiable Blade	This makes Dancing Rune Weapon both more frequent and more rotationally powerful. 5 Bone Shield charges are generated when you cast Dancing Rune Weapon and when a Bone Shield charge is consumed, the cooldown of Dancing Rune Weapon is reduced by 5 seconds. This talent has great synergy with Tombstone.
Everlasting Bond	This summons a second Rune Weapon and increases the duration of Dancing Rune Weapon to a total of 14 seconds. As with the main rune \ weapon, this will also replicate your attacks and give you the benefits.
Coagulopathy	One of two new buffs to manage as a Blood Death Knight. Every time you Death Strike, you gain a stack of Coagulopathy, which lasts for 8 seconds. Each stack increases the damage of your Blood Plague by 30%.

Talent	When to Consider
Gorefiend's Grasp	If you need additional grip utility.
Asphyxiate	If you are interested in Mythic+ and need the specific utility, you can grab Asphyxiate to gain a stun on a short cooldown. Its value is significantly reduced compared to Shadowlands, as you will have two charges of Death Grip baseline.
Grip of the Dead	If you are looking for a potent snare, Grip of the Dead is available. Much like the Shadowlands version, any enemy that steps into Death and Decay is snared by 90%, decaying by 10% every second.
Acclimation	60s cooldown reduction on Icebound Fortitude.
Blood Tap	This gives you the ability to generate 1 Rune on demand. The biggest issue with this talent is its placement on the spec tree.

This area of the talent tree rounds off your character and makes the spec feel more complete.

Talent	Description/Effect
Insidious Chill	This slows the auto-attack speed of enemies that you auto-attack. Insidious Chill will stack and total a 20% attack speed reduction on whatever you auto-attack, which, if they are a melee, implies a 20% statistical damage taken reduction for you and whoever else happens to be tanking!
Will of the Necropolis	Will of the Necropolis is returning in a slightly buffed version for Dragonflight. At rank 2, it is a 35% pseudo-damage reduction, up from 20%.
Tombstone	This allows you to gain a massive amount of cooldown reduction on Dancing Rune Weapon. It also provides a surprisingly large amount of damage through Shattering Bone.
Sanguine Ground	5% healing and damage is just too good to pass up, and it also is the only way towards Iron Heart and Red Thirst.
Unholy Bond	This amplifies the effect of your runeforges.
Shattering Bone	This passive effect will do 10-15% of your damage in all content, and the main condition of it (being in Death and Decay is already fulfilled rotationally!)
Iron Heart	This increases the duration of your Blood Shield by 2 seconds and increases the amount it absorbs by 20%. Very powerful talent and it only costs 1 point!
Red Thirst	You essentially always take this, unless the content you are doing is so trivial that Vampiric Blood uptime can be traded for even more raw damage. This effectively reduces Vampiric Blood's cooldown to 30-35 seconds under proper play.
Abomination Limb	This will deal AoE damage, grip targets towards you, and generate Bone Shield charges per tick. In total, you will get one Bone Shield charge every time it attempts to grip a target. Abomination Limb should be used as close to on cooldown as possible.
Bloodshot	This will provide you with a boost to your Physical damage whilst you have Blood Shield active (Mastery).
Bonestorm	This has been changed to consume all your current Bone Shield charges instead of all your Runic Power. Every second thereafter, it refunds a bone to you. This deals a large amount of periodic damage, does a decent amount of healing in AoE, triggers Shattering Bone and grants cooldown reduction on Dancing Rune Weapon as if all Bone Shield charges were properly consumed, making it a 60 second cooldown reduction on Dancing Rune Weapon every minute when played properly.

Talent	When to Consider
Death's Echo	Death's Echo has lost a significant chunk of its value after the changes to Cleaving Strikes. As it is now possible to gain 14 seconds of uptime on Death and Decay from a single cast, and you can proc Crimson Scourge during the last 4 seconds of that, chaining Death and Decay using the 2-charge rolling system that this talent provided is no longer that valuable. Instead, the bulk of its value is now for Mythic+, where the second charge on Death Grip is extremely valuable to soft-lock enemies.
Purgatory	If you need a Cheat Death for safety on Progression Raid Encounters or high end Mythic+ Key Pushing.
Umbilicus Eternus	On high target count scenarios where you need additional survival.
Vestigial Shell	A pretty good talent point, but by far not a core or necessary one. Every time you use Anti-Magic Shell, your two nearest allies get a Lesser Anti-Magic Shell that absorbs 425% of your AP in damage. While it holds, any magic debuff applied to them has its maximum duration halved.
Unyielding Will	This talent is, to put it simply, bait of the highest order. In any theoretical case where the debuff cleanse would be worthwhile, the added 20-second cooldown on Anti-Magic Shell means that you could have just used Anti-Magic Shell instead. It also does not apply to any Lesser Anti-Magic Shell applied by Vestigial Shell
Carnage	This talent provides ~1.4 resets per minute on either Consumption or Blooddrinker, and all of the damage dealt by both of these spells counts for Mastery: Blood Shield. It is the victim of talent point scarcity past the third gate. If you decide to still pick this, do not play this with Blooddrinker!