DK Leveling Guide and DK Leveling Specifications
The fact that Death Knights start at a high level means they have a steep learning curve. This DK leveling guide and its DK leveling specification will give you the skills you need to avoid being one of the ‘Death Noobs’ people always complain about!
When Wrath was released, the ability was not really important to the Death Knights; they were dominated. These days, however, they are a powerful yet balanced class. The unholy spec is currently the best for most things, and this includes leveling.
Your Unholy DK grade specification should be as follows:
Stay with Unholy until you finish getting everything you need.
Virulence – 3/3
Vicious Strikes – 2/2
Ravenous Dead – 3/3
Epidemic – 2/2
Necrosis – 5/5
Sprout – 3/3
Night of the Dead – 2/2
Blood Covered Blade – 3/3
Unholy Plague – 1/1
Dirge – 2/2
Ghoul Master – 1/1
Impurity – 5/5
Desolation – 5/5
Crypt Fever – 3/3
Bone Shield – 1/1
Scourge Strike – 1/1
Ebon Plaguebringer – 3/3
Wandering Plague – 3/3
Rivendare’s Rage – 5/5
Summon Gargoyle – 1/1
Complete your Specialization with Blood Talents:
Subversion – 3/3
Carnage – 2/2
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization – 2/2
Blade Armor – 5/5
Dark Conviction – 5/5
This is your DK leveling specification, now let’s move on to your DK leveling guide.
General tips for playing and leveling:
I’d be surprised many Death Knight players didn’t know about it, but make sure to use hotkeys instead of clicking attacks! It can be difficult to get used to, but it is much faster. Also, use the mouse to rotate quickly by holding down the right mouse button. These two things combined will increase your responsiveness exponentially.
Again, this is something you might already know, but I’ll say it anyway: sell EVERYTHING quality white or better that you don’t need in the AH. To speed things up, please do so by mailing the items to an alt in a capital city and using that character for everything AH related.
Rest XP is a great advantage for leveling up, so don’t forget to log out inside an inn or capital city. Use a good quest guide! I’ll link my review of the most popular ones at the end of the article. Maintain a supply of food; Usually Death Strike and Frost Presence combined will keep your health high, but when the going gets tough, food can get you going quickly.
Here we go now, the specific tips from the DK leveling guide:
Blood Presence is a bit more damage, but Frost Presence means you never have to stop and regain health. Frost Presence combined with Death Strike regeneration can allow you to take down elites effortlessly.
Don’t forget to get your glyphs asap – Ghoul and Death Strike are good for leveling up, and the minor glyph that removes the Corpse Dust requirement is also very useful.
Committing! When things go absolutely wrong, you can either make the mob sick, put your Ghoul in it, and run until he dies, or regain health from Death Strike runes. Don’t bother with Bone Shield except in emergencies, and don’t bother too much with Death and Decay; both are not worth their rune costs in 99% of typical leveling situations. Get around 4% hit, then stack Strength, Attack Power, and ArP over other stats! Stamina is fine, but you don’t really need it to level up.
Now playing your Death Knight is pretty simple. But if you don’t know the basics, you’ll do pretty bad – keep diseases on target and use Death Coil when all of your runes are on cooldown.
The optimal rotation looks like this at level eighty:
PS – IT – BS – SS – BS – DC – How
SS – BS – SS – BS – DC – DC- (DC if runic power / time allow)
But this rotation is more for mobs that are going to last a while. When leveling up, just roll with IT, then use HP to increase your other diseases, then just burn runes, use Blood Strike for Blood Runes and Death Strike or Scourge Strike with the rest, depending on whether you need the health of DS or not .
Lastly, don’t forget your pets! Use your Ghoul’s cooldown often until you get the permanent version, and then when you get your Gargoyle, do the same; It’s useless if you never use it!
