The War Within Death Knight Guide

The one whose name was whispered by the very forests of Lordaeron is dead, now for sure. But his warriors, Death Knights, are still alive. At least, on the outside. In this WoW The War Within Death Knight Guide, we will provide detailed breakdowns of the changes that the Death Knights have undergone in the upcoming expansion and the basics of their gameplay. For a detailed breakdown of all the changes and the new Warbands feature read our TWW Expansion Overview Guide.

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The War Within Death Knight Overview

Death Knight was the first hero class introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Freed from the power of the Lich King, they decided to atone for their guilt and swore allegiance to the living. Death Knight has three specializations at his disposal — Blood (Tank), Frost (DPS), and Unholy (DPS). Each of the specializations appeals to dark forces and is able to resurrect the undead.

In brief, Death Knight’s core features include amazing survivability, meaning you can withstand almost any encounter. Strong damage mitigation is your friend. You can use, for example, Bone Shield to protect yourself from melee attacks. It’s also a great soloing class, so you can enjoy the game even without a party.

Death Knight Strengths and Weaknesses

Blood Death Knights are tanking specialists. They excel at surviving through powerful self-healing and damage mitigation abilities. Frost Death Knights in their turn are a melee DPS specialization known for their powerful burst damage and control over the battlefield with chilling effects. Unholy Death Knights are the second melee DPS specialization with a focus on diseases, pets, and high sustained damage.

The War Within Death Knight Changes

In WoW The War Within, Death Knights received substantial updates to enhance their overall performance and gameplay experience. Among the key changes, Blizzard introduced the Hero Talents, which seem to be particularly useful for the DK class and bring a bunch of utility. Some choice nods in their class talent trees got reworked. Additionally, tier set bonuses were revamped, their impactful buffs that synergize with each specialization’s core mechanics, boosting their effectiveness in both PvP and PvE environments.

Also, the new Warband Bank brings a massive change to currency management and the overall alts ecosystem. It helps to transfer items between all your characters and track the progress. You can easily get access to Warband Bank right now with the help of our experienced players.

The War Within Death Knight Abilities

Thanks to the new talent system, WoW Blood Death Knight builds have become very flexible and can differ dramatically from dungeon to dungeon. The best abilities, that are extremely useful in any type of situation are:

• Purgatory — prevents fatal damage, instead absorbing incoming healing equal to the damage prevented;
• Bone Shield — surrounds you with a barrier of whirling bones, and blocks the incoming damage.

Frost DK has not received the same diversity in TWW as Blood spec. He still puts his trust in Breath of Sindragosa and does his best to generate as much runic power as possible.

Unholy DKs enjoy their powerful ending abilities and their good old spells:

• Soul Reaper — inflicts Shadowfrost damage, the low HP targets will explode;
• Death Coil — a blast of unholy energy, runic power spender.

Also, new Hero Talent Trees add spice to the Death Knight’s gameplay, as they are highly customizable. While some Hero Talent builds may arise soon, offering the best or optimal choices, you can still make it a fun instrument to test while playing a DK. You can read our Hero Talents Guide for a detailed Hero Talent Trees overview.

The War Within Death Knight Rotation

Blood Death Knights, as well as other specs, are both simple and interesting to play, You need to manage your unique resource and watch the CDs:

• Pre-place Death and Decay at the pull location.
• Spend Runic Power on Death Strike for additional healing and Blood Shield.
• Maintain Bone Shield stacks using Marrowrend when necessary.

Now, Frost Death Knight’s gameplay also relies on resource management. Here you can see a few tips on better performance:

• Use Frost Strike to stack and maintain Icy Talons and Unleashed Frenzy buffs.
• Use Obliterate if you have 2 stacks of Killing Machine.
• Use Remorseless Winter on cooldown.

And Unholy Death Knight. While the main task is to spread diseases and benefit from their impact. This is particularly useful for those who seek the disease-focused playstyle. And you can also use these tips for even better results:

• Use Soul Reaper when the target is below 35% health.
• Maintain Virulent Plague with Obliterate.
• Spend Runic Power with Death Coil to avoid overcapping or utilize Sudden Doom procs.

The War Within Death Knight Leveling

Frost is the easiest specialization to level, so you can choose this one at the start and change it later. Its mechanics are simple and don’t take long to learn, so the leveling experience promises to be smooth. Unholy, in turn, forces you to follow a lot of mechanics and is very dependent on long cd utilities.

However, if you like to collect huge crowds of mobs and survive at the same time, then the Blood DK will suit you. Even if he doesn’t have a lot of damage, he’s almost impossible to kill, making dungeon spamming a nice leveling experience for Blood spec.

And here’s a list of consumables and equipment for easier leveling:

• Gunshoes — a very useful object to increase your movement speed for 25 sec;
• Light-Step Hoofplates — gives +20% mounted speed;
• Goblin Glider Kit — allows you to slowly glide jumping off any cliff. Saves a lot of time;
• Fried Bonefish — food from Shadowlands. Gives 263 move speed for 6s after killing an enemy.

Or, you can get the Power Leveling service and forget about long hours of farming and questing.

Runeforge Choice

The War Within Death Knight BiS Items

For Death Knights, Reshii Wraps is the obvious BiS cloak for this season in WoW The War Within. It increases your Strength scaling and plays well with high-burst talents such as Obliterate and Death Coil. Even Blood DKs enjoy it for its defensive secondary stats and steady stamina increase. Read our full guide to Reshii Wraps here.

Best Death Knight Cartel Chip Items

Also, the Turbo Boost event is a source of BiS items in the current season. The best Death Knight Cartel Chip purchases include:

Spec	Best Cartel Chip Purchases
Blood Death Knight	Brand of Ceaseless Ire  Tome of Light’s Devotion  Unyielding Netherprism  Cursed Stone Idol  Interloper’s Plated Sabatons (Myth track only)
Frost Death Knight	Astral Antenna  Cursed Stone Idol  Unyielding Netherprism  Araz’s Ritual Forge  Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker
Unholy Death Knight	Cursed Stone Idol  Astral Antenna  Interloper’s Plated Sabatons

The War Within Death Knight Stats

The priority of stats for each class differs, but this is an important aspect, as the right priority enhances your overall performance in any type of situation. Whether it is Raid, Mythic+, or anything else, you need to remember what to focus on.

• Thus, Blood Death Knight’s priority goes as follows:
  Strength > Haste > Critical Strike / Mastery > Versatility;
• Speaking about Frost DKs, you are going to seek for these stats on your gear:
  Strength > Mastery > Critical Strike > Haste > Versatility;
• Unholy Death Knight’s priority slightly differs from previous ones. Here it is:
  Strength > Haste > Mastery > Critical Strike > Versatility.

The War Within Death Knight Consumables

One of the many things that can enhance your performance in PvP and PvE environments is consumables. They come in a variety of shapes and forms: phials, flasks, food, etc. You should always keep track of how many bottles of each are left and buy what is lacking. With the use of the consumables, your DPS and overall effectiveness in combat skyrocket, so it’s a really important matter.

Therefore, we gathered lists of the most useful consumables, runes, and enchants, to help you navigate the needed resources.

Death Knight Flasks in The War Within

• Flask of Alchemical Chaos;
• Flask of Tempered Aggression;
• Flask of Tempered Swiftness.

Death Knight Combat Potions in The War Within

• Tempered Potion;
• Potion of Unwavering Focus.

Death Knight Health Potions in The War Within

• Algari Healing Potion.

Death Knight Weapon Buff in The War Within

• Algari Mana Oil;
• Ironclaw Whetstone;
• Ironclaw Weightstone.

Best Death Knight Food in The War Within

• Beledar’s Bounty;
• Fiery Fish Sticks;
• Feast of the Midnight Masquerade;
• Everything Stew;
• Chippy Tea.

Best Death Knight Gems in The War Within

• Culminating Blasphemite;
• Masterful Ruby;
• Versatile Ruby;
• Masterful Emerald;
• Quick Onyx.

Death Knight Best Enchants in The War Within

Slot	Best Enchant	Cheaper Version
Cloak	Enchant Cloak – Chant of Winged Grace	Enchant Cloak – Whisper of Silken Avoidance
Chest	Enchant Chest – Crystalline Radiance	—
Bracers	Enchant Bracer – Chant of Armored Avoidance	—
Legs	Stormbound Armor Kit	Dual Layered Armor Kit
Boots	Enchant Boots – Defender’s March	—
Ring – Regular	Enchant Ring – Radiant Critical Strike	Enchant Ring – Glimmering Critical Strike
Ring – Cursed	Enchant Ring – Cursed Critical Strike	—

The War Within Death Knight Best Race

Death Knights are among the classes, which can be of any race (except for Dracthyr), and you can choose depending on your preferences. But if you like the practical approach, you can use the information below to make a well-thought-out decision.

Horde

The best Death Knight Race for Horde is Orc. Their Blood Fury racial increases your Attack Power for 15 seconds and Hardiness reduces the duration of stun effects by an additional 20%.

Then, Highmountain Tauren is an optimal choice. Bull Rush grants you extra kick and Rugged Tenacity and Mountaineer increase your survivability.

Alliance

Playing for the Alliance faction, the best choice is the Dwarf race. They utilize Stoneform — the best race save in the game. Also, Combat Analysis increases your primary stat by 50, stacking up to 8 times; Re-Arm provides you with little cheat death.

The War Within Death Knight PvP

In the War Within expansion of World of Warcraft, Death Knights are expected to be good opponents in PvP due to their relatively high survivability, crowd control, and burst damage potential. Each of the specs can compete on the Arena.

Frost Death Knights deal sustained damage and control the battlefield. Unholy Death Knights bring powerful pets, disease-spreading, and strong burst through abilities. Blood Death Knights, while typically a tanking spec, can be resilient and disruptive in PvP. So, with the start of PvP season, you can test your skills.

The best reward for PvP is a Gladiator Title, which you can get without any effort with the assistance of the Overgear pro players.

The War Within Death Knight Best Professions

DK wears plates, so he will always like Blacksmithing and Mining to be able to craft cheaper gear, or even earn a bit of gold by selling the crafted items.

• Blacksmithing — now you can craft plate armor up to Mythic raid item levels;
• Mining — bread and butter for gold making and Blacksmithing.

The War Within Death Knight Macros

Here is the summary of the WoW The War Within Macros, which proves to be the best and most convenient for Death Knight class. Macros are a real game changer, and once you understand how to work with them, there’s no coming back to basic keybindings.

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In general, WoW The War Within Death Knight continues to be an exceptional choice to play. They are still strong, versatile, and viable. Moreover, their lore also adds some spice to playing this class. We hope, our guide will be a useful tool in mastering Death Knight class in The War Within. For even more reliable information, read other The War Within guides on the Overgear platform.