I believe a big reason why Blood's leveling speed is on-par with Unholy is being missed here. Being able to spam blood boils and not "losing DPS" while doing your Death Strikes. The big draw for Unholy is on a pale horse for the 20% mounted speed as you go from place to place. Making your reduced kill times matter less because you take 1-2 minutes less going from quest to quest. Blood, especially once it has unholy presence at 70, can churn out blood boils rapidly with ease while staying easily above 75% HP via their much stronger death strikes they lose nothing by performing. You also pull many mobs so your rune strikes are constantly pumping because you have Butchery and Scent of Blood basically flooding you with Runic power at all times. You also don't need 3 whole points in Scent of Blood. Just 1 or 2 is fine. Unholy with a full set of runes can only blood boil twice, but blood can do it 6 times consecutively while their death strikes hit far harder than Unholy's. Also since death strike is part of your core rotation and not just for survival as blood, you are kept constantly healthy, which keeps blood gorged running (10% extra damage and armor penetration). You don't need the healing from blood presence to offset the damage taken. You can stay in Unholy presence which lets you run around and chain pull faster while pumping out more blood boils. These blood boils are also much stronger than the ones Unholy does because of Blood's DPS talents. What's more it's just an AoE around yourself so you can just keep running around while you do it for no big DPS loss. The sustain of a death knight isn't in question here. Every DK can spam death strike and survive, especially if they're in frost presence. The reason why blood excels with it is because you have a pile of talents that enhance it's damage by a ton. So instead of being a survival move, it's one of your main DPS moves. As a result you can safely do very large pulls and do death and decay into blood boils after applying diseases and such. I mean here's what a blood pull looks like when running up to an area for the first time: - Run around while mounted for a bit to get like 3-4+ guys. - Jump away from the pack and keep moving while you mouse turn back to attack. Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Pestilence -> Death Strike -> Blood Boil - Gather up more guys from further away as you have damage the mobs now. Dark command and death grip are of course the best for this, which is shown a little in the video too. Mobs that are damaged follow you farther so you can get bigger pulls by dismounting first and dealing some damage. - Throw down death and decay while everything is piling in on you, death strike again and throw out another pestilence once they're grouped up. You can now unload upwards of 6 blood boils in a row via death runes and spam Rune strikes and Corpse Explosions while killing everything. Hit rune tap/blood tap as needed to get 20% of your max HP back to keep yourself above 75% HP. - Mobs are dead because you just blood boiled them 6 times in a row while they sat in a death and decay while hitting Corpse Explosion after you see a health bar disappear, move onto the next pack, mount if needed. - If the mobs somehow survived, feel free to throw out some more Corpse Explosions on the ones that did die while you start walking away. - Rinse and repeat. Blood Boil for Blood hits so much harder than Unholy, and you can do it many more times. And Blood can easily get Corpse explosion at 71, so that also isn't a real detriment as you'll have it for a vast majority of Northrend questing, assuming you start it at 70. The reason why Blood is considered to be the best leveling spec comes down to a combination of factors, but I would point mainly to the fact that it's pretty much idiot-proof. Unless you are literally trying to die or fall off a cliff, you should be basically immortal while still doing your top DPS. You can also solo every quest in the game so long as you are of equal level or greater than it. And really that last part only applies to 5 man group quests. Gearing up for Blood is also idiot proof. Is it plate with strength? Yoink. Does it have hit and expertise? You probably need it. Does it have crit/agility? Awesome. Armor penetration? Bonus. That's really about it. Also, every time you dual spec swap to blood is like 10 seconds lost and your resources get wiped out. Which isn't terrible but it is noteworthy. I won't knock anyone for wanting to level as Unholy, everyone can play however they want, but the pros and cons of each DK spec should be properly stated. For example I think Unholy is by far the best dungeon spam leveling spec out of the 3 DKs. As one final note, Blood has the best open world PvP out of all the DK specs thanks to Mark of Blood. Hate rogues? Mark of blood basically reads "Run away, you are going to heal the target for more damage than you deal" and once again they're pumping out Death Strikes with full damage going. Warriors instantly fold to Blood DKs, Rogues have to run away once they realize they're Blood spec, and most casters don't have the damage to get through your health bar reasonably. It is genuinely a waste of time trying to fight a Blood DK because they're just gonna kill you via attrition. Every melee loses to you and every caster hates you because they can't kill you in a single CC burst (then you AMS yourself and butcher them back or make them run away).
From what I've seen, unholy's been decimating blood and frost for multi-target solo leveling. The mount speed is a nice bonus, but that's hardly the main draw. Blood and frost still have scenarios where there better, but overall, I believe unholy is the way to go.
Most of the aoe for unholy isn’t even in blood boil, it’s just keeping diseases up and spamming death and decay off cooldown. Like blood boil ideally isn’t even part of their rotation unless the monsters would die before you could get the next death and decay off
@@twitchmania7614 They both have their strengths for leveling. Don't act like one is just blanket BETTER, come on now. I do prefer unholy myself but there's a reason people do level as blood.
Little tips when pulling mobs, you can basically use your pet, to taunt every mob you want to pack, and you don't get hit till you start to hit, so you don't take the first 10hits, it can help for real :)
Icebound fortitude is key to survival as well as frost presence, if you pulled more than you can chew. If you keep the diseases up and manage your runes to be able to death strike when needed, you should be fine, no matter the spec. Keep in mind, you only heal if you actually hit, so make sure you have the specs needed to hit your targets. I recommend rune tap if you have points to spare.
Many death knights will also be spamming dungeons, even though they’re not actually preferable for a strategy like the karazan spider cleave it’s such good experience that they will just do it along with tons of other people. Unless blizzard nerfs it.
I don't know. My blood DK soloed every group quest in Outlands. At 68 i got to Howling Fjord and i'm pulling packs with no problem. The sustain and survivability are of the charts. i do not mind if i kill a pack some seconds slower.
If you're using Ghoul Frenzy, Glyph of the Ghoul is amazing. At 66, my Ghoul has more HP than I do and often does more melee damage than I do on big pulls since I'm swapping targets and doing other stuff. I can see Glyph of Death Strike as a solid third major glyph for grinding, but I don't think it's worth dropping Glyph of the Ghoul for.
Sorry but this one got a bit long... 15:50 I like the out of the box thinking here; more DS dmg = more dmg but most importantly faster first kill for earlier corpse explosion.... HOWEVER, you are missing the hidden strength of Unholy AOE leveling, which is using Corpse Explosion on your Ghoul, which unlike enemy corpses which is AP based, it does a whopping 28% of his HP as aoe damage -- this is 5-10 times more damage than enemy corpses. (And because you can use it immediately, the cooldown will be up by the time any thing dies anyways, so no cooldown lost) OK so, the Glyph of the Ghoul increases his HP by a lot (because it only gains a base 30% of your stamina plus 18% from talent), meaning the glyph is a 30-50% increase to his HP, thus a 30%-50% increase to the dmg his explode does. That alone is like doing 1-2 extra normal corpse explosions, and with a super short 30s cooldown on Raise Ghoul you can use it every pull. I just tested it on PTR at lvl 61 with tutorial gear: - CE using enemy corpse = 430 dmg - CE on ghoul without glyph = 1508 dmg - CE on ghoul with glyph = 1951 dmg And that dmg is going to keep scaling up as your DK gets stamina, much faster than enemy CE because you need roughly 25 AP for each 10 stamina for enemy CE to scale as well as ghoul CE.
i don't disagree with that you said about unholy being a better leveling spec because imo it is, however death strke heals for maximum % health, you're getting 3% stamina from blood talents + 15% with vamp blood active. So a blood death strike heals more than unholy, which it should.
The passive healing bonuses you get from blood talent also should not be overlooked... on the beta playing as blood I just never really get low on health.. plus you get big damage bonuses when you are above 75% health, which I almost always am. If you plan on pulling 2-3 mobs at a time I think blood is faster.. if you find a spot to get 5-6 at a time maybe unholy killing speed makes up for it, but the healing just wasn't there for me.
@@bryane1097 yup, and a blood DS is hitting much harder. So, if you are only killing 2-3 mobs, then it should be obvious which is killing faster. And let's be real, these leveling areas are going to be packed! So, unless you are trying to find some remote spot to grind to max level, you probably won't be aoe'ing a lot.
The reason blood is so op is because you can solo any elite quest even the 5 man ones at level. No other spec can do that. Also I’d like to see the spec you made for blood, it definitely does a bit less damage but if you play it right it still shreds, plus you can pull 10 mobs instead of 4-5. And tank dungeons easily.
10:50 I think you’re spot on with blood boil being better since it’s multi target dps. I don’t think blood strike is worth it since it’s single target dps.
Blood Boil is 100% better on 2 or more targets - 3 if you have heart strike, which basically replaces blood strike if you have it. Blood Strike is there for bosses and single target. It all depends on the fight your in at that moment. No matter how much you buff blood boil, its not better when fighting a boss, unless there are adds. Using blood boil when fighting a boss with no adds is a loss of dps, other than if you have the talent(Maybe rune?) that lets you refresh your diseases by using blood boil. Even then, you ONLY use it to refresh diseases, then go right back to blood strike.
If you're using a two hander, blood strike is better single target DPS, raid specs are using blood boil on single targets since they're dual wielding. With all the other AoE damage you have, a harder hitting blood strike that increases everything else by 5% probably works out to the same or faster kill time as a blood boil.
I started WoW at the beginning of wotlk and went DK as soon as I hit 50 on my first char. I went unholy and holy shit the end game dps was insane. With the right rotation and timing unholy will top all other dps by a huge amount. I pissed off a lot of tanks drawing aggro by accident but we could do some massive pulls since I could just melt mobs. I had so much fun with it. Even used it in arena, its the ultimate cloth killer. You have at least 3 different spell interrupts including you're pets ability. Once you shut down a caster you can quickly take them down. You're just not very good at much else. In BGs you're not as effective but in 3v3 where killing the healer is the most important you shine. Frost with its crits was beast in BGs.
This has one giant weakness, other players. If you cant do this pulls because most mobs are dead then your mass kill speed means nothing. Looks realy nice how fast mob groups die but if everything is overcrowded with other players good luck doing that.
yeah, wont be able to do pulls like that in the first week or 2 of launch unless you manage to get on an underpopulated layer. It will be grab what you can as it spawns, nuke it down and start looking for the next one
After playing wotlk private servers for 7 years, unholy is the best spec overall. frost duel welding is really good for single target boss's like VOA. That's it..unholy for pvp and pve in general is best.
I am still undecided which one should I go. Is the ghoul/gargoyle something that requires a lot of effort? Never played class with a pet. My TBC main is enh shammy.
@@fatmitch1421 no the ghoul doesn't require any effort, I only use one button for him and that is stun-explode in one button hits like a train. The gargoyle is easy you just summon him and he shoots you're target he melts you're opponent with quick cast nature damage.
@@fatmitch1421 unholy is the best option it is very easy to play. Enhance shaman is very good in also they are the best 1v1 class summon you're wolf's and the target dies even ret paladins die, also do great dps in pve.
So I'm currently leveling a unholy DK. I was using wow head to see what rotation to use and I feel like I have stuff missing. What rotation should I follow. Note that I'm only 55 right now
I was on unholy build and i lasted heck of a lot longer when pulling large mobs for aoe from 55-72.. I then dual specced into frost and while i see nice dps, i was dying before i could even get death strike off cooldown and i wasnt able to get my healing from it. I started missing unholy and I went back to it the other day. By the way, having a Constant ghoul up is nice too as well as faster Cd's on death and decay and death grip. If youre not going to pvp tthen here is a lot of points to go into blood a little for an extra boost to dps from the extra 5% crit. IMO Unholy is a great dps/tank build. Its like a 5 man group having 2 tanks while not losing a dps or taking anything away from main tank as regards heals. But like everything.. Play around and go with what you like and whats best for you and your group.
Dw probably scales insanely good since you can talent your auto attacks to deal about 110% extra dps if you dual wield as unholy. But that helps when the scaling kicks in, not in green questing gear.
Honestly i enjoy blood more then the other specs i missed it when it was made tank only. Honestly going into WoTLK i think Blood dps will kill quicker since the main stats are crit / armor pen and most the end game gear from swp will be crit / armor pen. Unholy doesnt benefit as much from the armor pen.
Unholy is just better than blood. That's a fact, if you don't believe me there are plenty of veteran DK players that will tell you the same thing. Blood dps is actually a meme spec.
@@twitchmania7614 Veteran DK player here. From private servers and from retail. Blood dps is the definitive best dps spec in almost every tier in terms of RAW DPS, but not without its drawbacks. Its not a meme. Drawbacks being: Raid comp viability. (which is very important to raid progression) Rotational dps which is broken through many fights. High gear cap. you can even view my last couple runs on my twitch channel if you don't believe me.
@@Unaton thats great you think that there is footage of warmane where its pumping up with the rest on saurfang which is the dps benchmark but either way play what you want every spec was ment to be a dps and every spec was ment to tank some better then others and also depending on fights. I can say as of right now i kill every spec in 70 raids in dps ive had 1 frost dk come close to me.
One quick note about mentioning leather/mail gear, Wrath was the first expansion where the introduced the 5 % stat buff if you have all the appropriate armor type items equipped for your particular class so its basically never worth to go for anything other than plate(very very rarely)
ya i mean seems to me frost spec with whatever weap you want is bis when you consider XP per hour kiting utgarde keep mobs literally cant be touched and pull almost 1mil xp per hour
I feel like frost is much better leveling actually because the mobs die so fast and unholy has to setup there aoe I’ve been testing frost and the mobs disappear off the face of the planet in seconds before you have taken any damage
I used unholy and would kite as many mobs as I could, get my diseases up on one, spread them and they'd all pretty much just drop. With unholy you can easily take down massive groups at a time
Awesome guide. And I reminisced my 1st dive into DK Unholy before WoW put in the Dungeon queues. I would visit Tarren Mills a lot just to do pvp and take my DK and popped AOD a lot, before it was nerfed the first time. Loved summoning them ghouls.
Virulence is pronounced "Veer - oo - lence". I like your content, and I respect the hell out of the decision that "If I cant say it correctly, I wont say it at all". Cheers!
Now that WOTLK is here, I have finally started to play this week. It is just as it was when WOTLK initially released all those years ago. Everyone and their moms are Death Knights. I am making one this time around as I did not last time. It will be for pvp and farming. I might join a few raids once in a while but have no real interest in raiding this time. Just pvp.
Don’t worry unholy is the worst spec for lvling imo simply because it takes a bit to setup their aoe while frost kills mobs and instantly can use DD and howling blast the hard fact is the mobs are so easy to kill unholy is just bad because they aren’t fast enough
I prefer frost overall but im going unholy for leveling, 20% mountspeed and 15% movement speed is just too good. Frost has the best survivability tho, at least with a minor rune - you can heal to full during a lich cd by pumping 20 rp deathcoils into yourself And you can freeze an entire army mid combat to throw a bandage
I just went unholly as like a gimmick cause I wanted to learn death night and it feels like a crime. Like I'm cheating. My lvl 60 dk is doing as much damage as my 68 enh shaman. I basically just grabbed only unholly talents but it's just Soo strong.
I will stick to Blood just for the fact that I keep myself alive with sustained self-healing, and pretty confident to pull 5 or more adds at a time, once I gain some experience I will switch Unholy for content activities, awesome guide though!
I've been messing around in the beta... maybe I just suck at Unholy but Blood for me kills just as fast (maybe a little slower on really big pulls) and I never really get low on health... the passive healing I feel does as much if not more than death strike alone... I never have to stop as blood. When I was running with this unholy spec there were many times I had to stop and eat because I was aroiund 20-30% health and after applying diseases I get 1 death strike off. With blood I just never got that low.
Frost is the most lore accurate. You were frozen like a popsicle until you were thawed to help the scourge take back the Plaguelands, which only failed because Tyrion put us in the microwave for a bit.
@@Windowsprodukt Being frozen doesn't mean you're a 'frost user' "The original death knights were created for Orgrim Doomhammer by Gul'dan as powerful soldiers of the Horde. These death knights were created by placing the souls of slain Shadow Council warlocks into the corpses of fallen Stormwind knights, the first of whom was Teron Gorefiend. Unlike modern death knights of the Scourge, these ghoulish fiends were not battle-hardened warriors; they were insidious necromancers who possessed superior intellect and tremendous magical power. They often favored the use of terror tactics and reanimated the corpses of enemy soldiers who fell in battle to serve them as mindless undead minions.' Even when talking about the 'newer' death knights, "Unlike Gul'dan's death knights, these dark champions possess unholy strength."
I've always been blood, I enjoy tanking, the spec etc. But lvl thru shadowlands now I've been playing frost, gotta say its nice. Sometimes trying and doing something different is well, nice
Vicious strikes is only 6% crit to PS and SS. Pretty much worthless for this aoe type build. Also, I don't think virulence is doing anything either? As long as you have 5% hit, which you should strive for, it's not doing anything.
Icy touch grants high amount of threat.. i see you come new to wow in bfa lol. No differnce between blood and unholy presence wtf man are you talking. Blood presence increasea your dmg done for15%. Unholy presence reduce globalcooldown of abilities so you can use them faster. Bloodpresence always in raids or dungeons. Unholy presence is a pvp presence and frost presence you now its just deff. Omg you have a wow channel but no clue what you talking about. What a shame.
Here's a thought though: Some people dont care for unholy. Play what you want to play and what you enjoy. I hate pets in WoW. Always have. Unholy isnt my jam. Thanks but no thanks bud, I'll stick with my blood spec for soloing AND for getting fast groups for dungeons for tanking.
I believe a big reason why Blood's leveling speed is on-par with Unholy is being missed here. Being able to spam blood boils and not "losing DPS" while doing your Death Strikes.
The big draw for Unholy is on a pale horse for the 20% mounted speed as you go from place to place. Making your reduced kill times matter less because you take 1-2 minutes less going from quest to quest.
Blood, especially once it has unholy presence at 70, can churn out blood boils rapidly with ease while staying easily above 75% HP via their much stronger death strikes they lose nothing by performing. You also pull many mobs so your rune strikes are constantly pumping because you have Butchery and Scent of Blood basically flooding you with Runic power at all times. You also don't need 3 whole points in Scent of Blood. Just 1 or 2 is fine.
Unholy with a full set of runes can only blood boil twice, but blood can do it 6 times consecutively while their death strikes hit far harder than Unholy's. Also since death strike is part of your core rotation and not just for survival as blood, you are kept constantly healthy, which keeps blood gorged running (10% extra damage and armor penetration). You don't need the healing from blood presence to offset the damage taken. You can stay in Unholy presence which lets you run around and chain pull faster while pumping out more blood boils. These blood boils are also much stronger than the ones Unholy does because of Blood's DPS talents. What's more it's just an AoE around yourself so you can just keep running around while you do it for no big DPS loss.
The sustain of a death knight isn't in question here. Every DK can spam death strike and survive, especially if they're in frost presence. The reason why blood excels with it is because you have a pile of talents that enhance it's damage by a ton. So instead of being a survival move, it's one of your main DPS moves. As a result you can safely do very large pulls and do death and decay into blood boils after applying diseases and such.
I mean here's what a blood pull looks like when running up to an area for the first time:
- Run around while mounted for a bit to get like 3-4+ guys.
- Jump away from the pack and keep moving while you mouse turn back to attack. Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Pestilence -> Death Strike -> Blood Boil
- Gather up more guys from further away as you have damage the mobs now. Dark command and death grip are of course the best for this, which is shown a little in the video too. Mobs that are damaged follow you farther so you can get bigger pulls by dismounting first and dealing some damage.
- Throw down death and decay while everything is piling in on you, death strike again and throw out another pestilence once they're grouped up. You can now unload upwards of 6 blood boils in a row via death runes and spam Rune strikes and Corpse Explosions while killing everything. Hit rune tap/blood tap as needed to get 20% of your max HP back to keep yourself above 75% HP.
- Mobs are dead because you just blood boiled them 6 times in a row while they sat in a death and decay while hitting Corpse Explosion after you see a health bar disappear, move onto the next pack, mount if needed.
- If the mobs somehow survived, feel free to throw out some more Corpse Explosions on the ones that did die while you start walking away.
- Rinse and repeat.
Blood Boil for Blood hits so much harder than Unholy, and you can do it many more times. And Blood can easily get Corpse explosion at 71, so that also isn't a real detriment as you'll have it for a vast majority of Northrend questing, assuming you start it at 70.
The reason why Blood is considered to be the best leveling spec comes down to a combination of factors, but I would point mainly to the fact that it's pretty much idiot-proof. Unless you are literally trying to die or fall off a cliff, you should be basically immortal while still doing your top DPS. You can also solo every quest in the game so long as you are of equal level or greater than it. And really that last part only applies to 5 man group quests. Gearing up for Blood is also idiot proof. Is it plate with strength? Yoink. Does it have hit and expertise? You probably need it. Does it have crit/agility? Awesome. Armor penetration? Bonus. That's really about it.
Also, every time you dual spec swap to blood is like 10 seconds lost and your resources get wiped out. Which isn't terrible but it is noteworthy.
I won't knock anyone for wanting to level as Unholy, everyone can play however they want, but the pros and cons of each DK spec should be properly stated. For example I think Unholy is by far the best dungeon spam leveling spec out of the 3 DKs.
As one final note, Blood has the best open world PvP out of all the DK specs thanks to Mark of Blood. Hate rogues? Mark of blood basically reads "Run away, you are going to heal the target for more damage than you deal" and once again they're pumping out Death Strikes with full damage going. Warriors instantly fold to Blood DKs, Rogues have to run away once they realize they're Blood spec, and most casters don't have the damage to get through your health bar reasonably. It is genuinely a waste of time trying to fight a Blood DK because they're just gonna kill you via attrition. Every melee loses to you and every caster hates you because they can't kill you in a single CC burst (then you AMS yourself and butcher them back or make them run away).
From what I've seen, unholy's been decimating blood and frost for multi-target solo leveling. The mount speed is a nice bonus, but that's hardly the main draw. Blood and frost still have scenarios where there better, but overall, I believe unholy is the way to go.
Most of the aoe for unholy isn’t even in blood boil, it’s just keeping diseases up and spamming death and decay off cooldown.
Like blood boil ideally isn’t even part of their rotation unless the monsters would die before you could get the next death and decay off
@ Kayuni Maybe u can poste a talenttree for blood-leveling from 70-80?
Damn you just wrote a whole essay, meanwhile unholy is just better than blood. Thats a fact
@@twitchmania7614 They both have their strengths for leveling. Don't act like one is just blanket BETTER, come on now. I do prefer unholy myself but there's a reason people do level as blood.
Little tips when pulling mobs, you can basically use your pet, to taunt every mob you want to pack, and you don't get hit till you start to hit, so you don't take the first 10hits, it can help for real :)
Excellent idea, why didn't I think of that? Especially since you're getting that free healing on your ghoul from Ghoul Frenzy.
Icebound fortitude is key to survival as well as frost presence, if you pulled more than you can chew.
If you keep the diseases up and manage your runes to be able to death strike when needed, you should be fine, no matter the spec. Keep in mind, you only heal if you actually hit, so make sure you have the specs needed to hit your targets.
I recommend rune tap if you have points to spare.
imaginining the swarm of dks trying to do this mass pulling and every zone being empty at the start :D
Layers
@@erickvazquez4771 I really doubt the X number of layers Blizzard plans to roll out will keep up with the insane number of DKs.
@@erickvazquez4771 layers only keeps it at like 100 players in the zone per layer
Many death knights will also be spamming dungeons, even though they’re not actually preferable for a strategy like the karazan spider cleave it’s such good experience that they will just do it along with tons of other people. Unless blizzard nerfs it.
@@habeeb9293 warlocks and mages will be doing the same thing as they are God tier levelers in WOTLK
I don't know. My blood DK soloed every group quest in Outlands. At 68 i got to Howling Fjord and i'm pulling packs with no problem. The sustain and survivability are of the charts. i do not mind if i kill a pack some seconds slower.
If you're using Ghoul Frenzy, Glyph of the Ghoul is amazing. At 66, my Ghoul has more HP than I do and often does more melee damage than I do on big pulls since I'm swapping targets and doing other stuff. I can see Glyph of Death Strike as a solid third major glyph for grinding, but I don't think it's worth dropping Glyph of the Ghoul for.
Sorry but this one got a bit long...
15:50 I like the out of the box thinking here; more DS dmg = more dmg but most importantly faster first kill for earlier corpse explosion.... HOWEVER, you are missing the hidden strength of Unholy AOE leveling, which is using Corpse Explosion on your Ghoul, which unlike enemy corpses which is AP based, it does a whopping 28% of his HP as aoe damage -- this is 5-10 times more damage than enemy corpses. (And because you can use it immediately, the cooldown will be up by the time any thing dies anyways, so no cooldown lost)
OK so, the Glyph of the Ghoul increases his HP by a lot (because it only gains a base 30% of your stamina plus 18% from talent), meaning the glyph is a 30-50% increase to his HP, thus a 30%-50% increase to the dmg his explode does. That alone is like doing 1-2 extra normal corpse explosions, and with a super short 30s cooldown on Raise Ghoul you can use it every pull.
I just tested it on PTR at lvl 61 with tutorial gear:
- CE using enemy corpse = 430 dmg
- CE on ghoul without glyph = 1508 dmg
- CE on ghoul with glyph = 1951 dmg
And that dmg is going to keep scaling up as your DK gets stamina, much faster than enemy CE because you need roughly 25 AP for each 10 stamina for enemy CE to scale as well as ghoul CE.
i came here to say this right here!! Its nuts the Damage you get from blasting your own Ghoul!!
i don't disagree with that you said about unholy being a better leveling spec because imo it is, however death strke heals for maximum % health, you're getting 3% stamina from blood talents + 15% with vamp blood active. So a blood death strike heals more than unholy, which it should.
The passive healing bonuses you get from blood talent also should not be overlooked... on the beta playing as blood I just never really get low on health.. plus you get big damage bonuses when you are above 75% health, which I almost always am. If you plan on pulling 2-3 mobs at a time I think blood is faster.. if you find a spot to get 5-6 at a time maybe unholy killing speed makes up for it, but the healing just wasn't there for me.
@@bryane1097 yup, and a blood DS is hitting much harder. So, if you are only killing 2-3 mobs, then it should be obvious which is killing faster. And let's be real, these leveling areas are going to be packed! So, unless you are trying to find some remote spot to grind to max level, you probably won't be aoe'ing a lot.
You are still going to use blood strike to keep desolation up and it triggers off of pestilence as well!
So yea, swapping epidemic and outbreak for desolation is totally worth it!
The reason blood is so op is because you can solo any elite quest even the 5 man ones at level. No other spec can do that. Also I’d like to see the spec you made for blood, it definitely does a bit less damage but if you play it right it still shreds, plus you can pull 10 mobs instead of 4-5. And tank dungeons easily.
Hunters can do elite quests, druids also can do this
just get get dual spec and spec blood for elites bobs your uncle
@@MetaGoblin Uncle Bob touched me funny.
@@MetaGoblin This ^^
I've gone unholy and I am using the talents and rotation from Icy Veins - having a blast, feels high dps and very survivable.
I always play with my unholy DK when i get depressed playing Warrior
10:50 I think you’re spot on with blood boil being better since it’s multi target dps. I don’t think blood strike is worth it since it’s single target dps.
Blood Boil is 100% better on 2 or more targets - 3 if you have heart strike, which basically replaces blood strike if you have it. Blood Strike is there for bosses and single target. It all depends on the fight your in at that moment. No matter how much you buff blood boil, its not better when fighting a boss, unless there are adds. Using blood boil when fighting a boss with no adds is a loss of dps, other than if you have the talent(Maybe rune?) that lets you refresh your diseases by using blood boil.
Even then, you ONLY use it to refresh diseases, then go right back to blood strike.
If you're using a two hander, blood strike is better single target DPS, raid specs are using blood boil on single targets since they're dual wielding. With all the other AoE damage you have, a harder hitting blood strike that increases everything else by 5% probably works out to the same or faster kill time as a blood boil.
1:28 Vampiric Blood is not marginal at all, it can be chainpopped with IBF every minute for a really strong defensive buff.
does improved unholy presence do anything before you learn unholy presence?
Pale horse does NOT increase your already 100% mount speed on the archerus deathcharger. An I wrong?
I started WoW at the beginning of wotlk and went DK as soon as I hit 50 on my first char. I went unholy and holy shit the end game dps was insane. With the right rotation and timing unholy will top all other dps by a huge amount. I pissed off a lot of tanks drawing aggro by accident but we could do some massive pulls since I could just melt mobs. I had so much fun with it. Even used it in arena, its the ultimate cloth killer. You have at least 3 different spell interrupts including you're pets ability. Once you shut down a caster you can quickly take them down. You're just not very good at much else. In BGs you're not as effective but in 3v3 where killing the healer is the most important you shine. Frost with its crits was beast in BGs.
Yeah i remember before they capped howling blast jumping into groups of 5 people and just wiping them off the face of the earth. Haha it was glorious.
Would you suggest UH from 58 on or wait until 70+?
This has one giant weakness, other players. If you cant do this pulls because most mobs are dead then your mass kill speed means nothing. Looks realy nice how fast mob groups die but if everything is overcrowded with other players good luck doing that.
Yeah agreed, thats why frost seems better for the faster 1v1 kills, but I dont see how blood will be betetr.
yeah, wont be able to do pulls like that in the first week or 2 of launch unless you manage to get on an underpopulated layer. It will be grab what you can as it spawns, nuke it down and start looking for the next one
Layering will prevent this from being an issue.
@@MetaGoblin even with layering you aren't going to be able to pull like that on day 1
@@MetaGoblin We shall see. Unholy is still way to go. You single target damage is still good.
After playing wotlk private servers for 7 years, unholy is the best spec overall. frost duel welding is really good for single target boss's like VOA. That's it..unholy for pvp and pve in general is best.
I am still undecided which one should I go. Is the ghoul/gargoyle something that requires a lot of effort? Never played class with a pet. My TBC main is enh shammy.
@@fatmitch1421 no the ghoul doesn't require any effort, I only use one button for him and that is stun-explode in one button hits like a train. The gargoyle is easy you just summon him and he shoots you're target he melts you're opponent with quick cast nature damage.
@@fatmitch1421 unholy is the best option it is very easy to play. Enhance shaman is very good in also they are the best 1v1 class summon you're wolf's and the target dies even ret paladins die, also do great dps in pve.
What's the song at 9:40? I recognise it but can't put my finger on what it is.
Its from tes IV oblivion
So I'm currently leveling a unholy DK. I was using wow head to see what rotation to use and I feel like I have stuff missing. What rotation should I follow. Note that I'm only 55 right now
Sorry if I missed the explanation somewhere, but how come you didn’t pick up scourge strike in this build?
I think its because u will be using death strike instead
Scourge is trash for unholy
Thank you for prepping me for woltk, you absolute chad
I was on unholy build and i lasted heck of a lot longer when pulling large mobs for aoe from 55-72.. I then dual specced into frost and while i see nice dps, i was dying before i could even get death strike off cooldown and i wasnt able to get my healing from it. I started missing unholy and I went back to it the other day.
By the way, having a Constant ghoul up is nice too as well as faster Cd's on death and decay and death grip.
If youre not going to pvp tthen here is a lot of points to go into blood a little for an extra boost to dps from the extra 5% crit.
IMO Unholy is a great dps/tank build. Its like a 5 man group having 2 tanks while not losing a dps or taking anything away from main tank as regards heals.
But like everything.. Play around and go with what you like and whats best for you and your group.
Have you seen white wolfs duel wielding unholy? I’m gonna try it. Looks like a challenge and duel wielding is always awesome.
How do you wield a duel?
whitewolf himself said not to level in that spec fyi
Dw probably scales insanely good since you can talent your auto attacks to deal about 110% extra dps if you dual wield as unholy.
But that helps when the scaling kicks in, not in green questing gear.
Honestly i enjoy blood more then the other specs i missed it when it was made tank only. Honestly going into WoTLK i think Blood dps will kill quicker since the main stats are crit / armor pen and most the end game gear from swp will be crit / armor pen. Unholy doesnt benefit as much from the armor pen.
Blood DK will be one of the WORST Specs in Phase 4. Don't forget we play on the LAST wotlk patch.
Unholy is just better than blood. That's a fact, if you don't believe me there are plenty of veteran DK players that will tell you the same thing. Blood dps is actually a meme spec.
@@twitchmania7614
Veteran DK player here. From private servers and from retail.
Blood dps is the definitive best dps spec in almost every tier in terms of RAW DPS, but not without its drawbacks.
Its not a meme.
Drawbacks being:
Raid comp viability. (which is very important to raid progression)
Rotational dps which is broken through many fights.
High gear cap.
you can even view my last couple runs on my twitch channel if you don't believe me.
@@Unaton thats great you think that there is footage of warmane where its pumping up with the rest on saurfang which is the dps benchmark but either way play what you want every spec was ment to be a dps and every spec was ment to tank some better then others and also depending on fights. I can say as of right now i kill every spec in 70 raids in dps ive had 1 frost dk come close to me.
One quick note about mentioning leather/mail gear, Wrath was the first expansion where the introduced the 5 % stat buff if you have all the appropriate armor type items equipped for your particular class so its basically never worth to go for anything other than plate(very very rarely)
Cata is when they added armour specializations.
no it didnt
i litterally get dropped so fast, i dont have enough healing, i dont understand what we are doing different.
Hello, do you have any list of macros, that you use on DK? thanks:)
Do vicious strikes increase your overall crit % or just of plague and scourge strike?
ya i mean seems to me frost spec with whatever weap you want is bis when you consider XP per hour kiting utgarde keep mobs literally cant be touched and pull almost 1mil xp per hour
what sort of rotation are you aiming for?
My dk is level 62 and seems weak. His cd's are horrible. Any advice on the cd problem?
DK is my 2nd fav class and played the hell out of it in wrath. Never went Unholy though.
I’ve benn leveling in unholy and it’s fucking crazy. Shit just falls over it’s amazing
2h frost is how i leveled originally. Was a blast, and worked pretty well for pvp encounters
No pun Intended
i intend to play frost at lvl 80 and to lvl by dungeon grinding, what would be the best spec in your opinion?
DOn't think it matters. Everything pumps.
I just set blood up as my offspec to solo the elite quests as needed, Swap back to Unholy for speed.
theres been lots of theory crafting about DW unholy and it has preformed well in raid but is it decent for lvling or do the talents limit you 2 much
It is simply harder to find 2 high quality 1 handed weapons vs 1 2 hand weapon.
2h is better leveling and dual wield when you get max lvl
does this all still work in 2024?
I feel like frost is much better leveling actually because the mobs die so fast and unholy has to setup there aoe I’ve been testing frost and the mobs disappear off the face of the planet in seconds before you have taken any damage
I used unholy and would kite as many mobs as I could, get my diseases up on one, spread them and they'd all pretty much just drop. With unholy you can easily take down massive groups at a time
Awesome guide. And I reminisced my 1st dive into DK Unholy before WoW put in the Dungeon queues. I would visit Tarren Mills a lot just to do pvp and take my DK and popped AOD a lot, before it was nerfed the first time. Loved summoning them ghouls.
Hey Meta, what would you say is the best class to solo fast level to 55 on a fresh realm? thinking of rolling a DK afterwards ofc
you dont have to level any char. to 55 for your first dk but im not sure if that also includes fresh servers
@@eaghere66 they’ve confirmed that you need a lvl 55 char on fresh servers to create a dk
Always hunter for speed leveling, specially on a fresh server, not so gear/support dependent
@@tommyhelgevoldie2636 yeah was thinking about either hunter or warlock. Thanks
Mage, Hunter, and Warlock are the 3 with the best solo leveling speeds. If you have a group to level with that changes everything.
Doesnt blood strike hit like 3 targets?
Virulence is pronounced "Veer - oo - lence". I like your content, and I respect the hell out of the decision that "If I cant say it correctly, I wont say it at all". Cheers!
Canadians an the uk weren’t taught proper English it’s maddening.
Have you thought about Dual wield unholy at all?
Supposedly it’s higher dps than 2h unholy. Honestly I’m just doing it because I like dual wielding and it’s something different
nice DMF trinket! lunacy trinket. nice yes
Unholy does this on retail also
Now that WOTLK is here, I have finally started to play this week. It is just as it was when WOTLK initially released all those years ago. Everyone and their moms are Death Knights.
I am making one this time around as I did not last time. It will be for pvp and farming. I might join a few raids once in a while but have no real interest in raiding this time. Just pvp.
saw a vid on DW unholy being the better dps might be worth a squizz
It might be at level 80 but need reliable Sims first
always 2handed while leveling. You need level 80 for DW to perform better due to talents
Unfortunate that Unholy Blight will be in its nerfed state.
Your guides are awesome
"Her maximum health"? That's not very body type 1 and 2 of Blizzard
Love the vids mah dood. HOWEVER! Is that the stock blizzard UI?! 2 out of 10, I just threw up on my keyboard. Would recommend.
"Unholy Death Knight are God Tier"
Fixed it for you
You are really making it hard to choose frost over unholy…but I gotta stick with the frosty boys! Great videos Goblin! Solid content as always! Cheers
Don’t worry unholy is the worst spec for lvling imo simply because it takes a bit to setup their aoe while frost kills mobs and instantly can use DD and howling blast the hard fact is the mobs are so easy to kill unholy is just bad because they aren’t fast enough
I Want a mog set that looks like that thumbnail
That’s the starting gear for a dk.
I would go with unholy presence for the movement speed.
you get the move speed from imp unholy presence anyway
@@mattkarma1678 this
@@mattkarma1678 Yeah but unholy presence is still better due to the faster rune cd.
The only pvp pieces you can get up until launch will be weapons, there are no death knight sets in tbc.
weapons and off pieces (neck,ring,shoes etc.)
Weapons will be important to be able to smash your way to level 80
probably wont be able to get weapons since wrath vendors will replace tbc vendors
Rafflelishking!
I thought 1 handed frost leveling was going to be good? It's good great ST and just enough AOE to handle a few mobs at once?
any dk spec is "good" at leveling, unholy is just the best of the bunch
I prefer frost overall but im going unholy for leveling, 20% mountspeed and 15% movement speed is just too good.
Frost has the best survivability tho, at least with a minor rune - you can heal to full during a lich cd by pumping 20 rp deathcoils into yourself
And you can freeze an entire army mid combat to throw a bandage
I love frost
I just went unholly as like a gimmick cause I wanted to learn death night and it feels like a crime. Like I'm cheating. My lvl 60 dk is doing as much damage as my 68 enh shaman. I basically just grabbed only unholly talents but it's just Soo strong.
I will stick to Blood just for the fact that I keep myself alive with sustained self-healing, and pretty confident to pull 5 or more adds at a time, once I gain some experience I will switch Unholy for content activities, awesome guide though!
I've been messing around in the beta... maybe I just suck at Unholy but Blood for me kills just as fast (maybe a little slower on really big pulls) and I never really get low on health... the passive healing I feel does as much if not more than death strike alone... I never have to stop as blood. When I was running with this unholy spec there were many times I had to stop and eat because I was aroiund 20-30% health and after applying diseases I get 1 death strike off. With blood I just never got that low.
Unholy fits the Death Knight lore better anyways.
Frost is the most lore accurate.
You were frozen like a popsicle until you were thawed to help the scourge take back the Plaguelands, which only failed because Tyrion put us in the microwave for a bit.
@@Windowsprodukt Being frozen doesn't mean you're a 'frost user'
"The original death knights were created for Orgrim Doomhammer by Gul'dan as powerful soldiers of the Horde. These death knights were created by placing the souls of slain Shadow Council warlocks into the corpses of fallen Stormwind knights, the first of whom was Teron Gorefiend. Unlike modern death knights of the Scourge, these ghoulish fiends were not battle-hardened warriors; they were insidious necromancers who possessed superior intellect and tremendous magical power. They often favored the use of terror tactics and reanimated the corpses of enemy soldiers who fell in battle to serve them as mindless undead minions.'
Even when talking about the 'newer' death knights, "Unlike Gul'dan's death knights, these dark champions possess unholy strength."
@@realAndysan popsicle warriors
@@Windowsprodukt frost is a magic spec.
I've always been blood, I enjoy tanking, the spec etc. But lvl thru shadowlands now I've been playing frost, gotta say its nice. Sometimes trying and doing something different is well, nice
Wotlk frost and shadowlands frost are very different though keep in mind
I leveled in blood because I'm on a pvp server nuf sed
still 5x slower than prot warrior with revenge spam :)
Huh. I thought Unholy was bland...but then again, I was playing it like I played blood: one mob at a time.
Guess I'mma go respec. Again.
Vicious strikes is only 6% crit to PS and SS. Pretty much worthless for this aoe type build.
Also, I don't think virulence is doing anything either? As long as you have 5% hit, which you should strive for, it's not doing anything.
sweet, now we'll have less blood tanks
you have dual spec
"PvP" servers. You mean grobulus? Lol
Vee- your - rah - lence
blood is still more fun
It’s wrath leveling who cares what’s the rush
do ret next'
this is unwatchable unless setting the playspeed to at least 1,5x... damn
Icy touch grants high amount of threat.. i see you come new to wow in bfa lol. No differnce between blood and unholy presence wtf man are you talking. Blood presence increasea your dmg done for15%. Unholy presence reduce globalcooldown of abilities so you can use them faster. Bloodpresence always in raids or dungeons. Unholy presence is a pvp presence and frost presence you now its just deff. Omg you have a wow channel but no clue what you talking about. What a shame.
DW DH or go home
Here's a thought though: Some people dont care for unholy.
Play what you want to play and what you enjoy. I hate pets in WoW. Always have. Unholy isnt my jam. Thanks but no thanks bud, I'll stick with my blood spec for soloing AND for getting fast groups for dungeons for tanking.
No offense, but you’d played for 5 hours of wotlk dk and made a video about how it feel.
Dude ur clicking ur abilities..
Second!
First
Third
blood is better, you are literally unkillable
And you kill mobs soooooo slow 😂
@@MetaGoblin better then insta dying when you pull too much
Dual spec: UH for aoe pulls which is the majority of lvling, Blood for those big elites that require mitigation.
@@patriousthefallenknight3185 bro u dont kniw shit about dks, u got insane healing, def cds, and u can carry health pots,get well soon!
@@xazlabu I remember I was unkillable as blood and could wipe a shit ton of mobs
Who cares about leveling ?
milking them wotlk kids.
Such an easy noob class lol
lol just play what you feel like playing lol dont minmax the fun out of the game, thats fascist shit lol
yeah but the problem is then you're playing a DK which is the most boring thing to ever be put in this game
i intend to play frost at lvl 80 and to lvl by dungeon grinding, what would be the best spec in your opinion?
Blood if you're gonna dungeon grind, being a tank will make your queue insta pop
@@skajdz_9496 I agree about just being the tank, and I know what you mean, but there wont be a "queue" to insta pop lol. No dungeon finder.