From TCWiki

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Gear 1.2 Resource Management 1.3 Death Knight Abbreviations 2 Key Stats 2.1 DPS 2.2 Tanking 2.3 Useless 3 Abilities and Talents

Overview

Death Knights are the first "heroic" class introduced to World of Warcraft. Unlike other classes they do not start at level 1, but rather level 55, and are introduced to the game via their own quest line that highlights their link to the Lich King. Also unlike most other classes, any race can become a Death Knight. They are a predominantly melee class but have a number of ranged attacks. Regarding role, with the correct spec, they are able to tank as well as dps competitively.

Gear

• Allowable Armor: Cloth, Leather, Mail, Plate Mail
• Allowable Weapons: Axes, Polearms, Swords, Two-Handed Axes, Two-Handed Swords, One-handed Maces, Two-Handed Maces
• Allowable Ranged: None, but like druids and paladins can use an class specific item called a relic.

Resource Management

• Runes: Nearly every death knight ability requires runes, which come in three varieties: blood, frost, and unholy. Depending on the ability, it may require runes of a single type or a combination of types. When a rune is used, it has a 10 second cooldown period before it can be used again.
• Runic Power: As rune abilities are used, the death knight also generates another resource called runic power. The death knight has certain abilities that consume runic power, with varying levels of effectiveness based on total runic power spent. Similar to a warrior’s rage, runic power decays over time if not spent once out of combat.

Death Knight Abbreviations

This pages will use a number of abbreviations for the abilities and talents of a Death Knight. They are located here (Death Knight Abbreviations).

Key Stats

DPS

See Death Knight DPS for Best in Slot list for each spec. A detailed discussion of Death Knight dps stat weights is available here [1]. That said, I'll summarize.

Stat weightings for: Unholy, Frost, and Blood.

Strength and Attack Power - Death Knights value strength above most other stats. In addition to providing attack power at a 1 Str: 2 AP ratio, it also increases the DK's parry rating at a 4 Str: 1 parry rating ratio (Forceful Deflection). Attack power is formulated into the DKs weapon damage as well as spell damage Death Knight - Attack Power to Spell Power.

Hit - Generally most DKs will gear to the soft "cap" for Main hand or 2H of 9% (295.11 rating). For that rely more heavily on spell damage (IT, HB, DnD, DC, etc.) a higher value is useful (up to 17% or 445.94 rating). Also note that talent points spent in Virulence increase spell hit for this purpose. For specs that use dual wield, the effective soft cap rises to an absurd 27% (885 rating) meaning that most merely reach the main hand soft of 9%. Points spent in Nerves of Steel reduce this soft cap. Conversion is 0.03% per hit rating (at 80)

Agility and Crit - Like other melee classes the DK has a base 2x crit damage. Thus crit damage can be a significant portion of your dps breakdown. Agility is converted into Crit at a rate of roughly 0.016% per Agility while 0.022% is gained per Crit rating (at 80).

Expertise - Expertise requirements are similar to other melee classes. For non-tanks that generally only need to worry about dodges (since parry can only occur in front 180 arc) only 6% is needed.

Armor Penetration - With some of the changes to APen this is a much more valueable stat than in the past. Blood benefits most.

Tanking

See Death Knight Tanking for Best in Slot list.

Armor - Not something you can normally stack as it is fairly consistent across an item level, this is our key damage mitigation stat and is amplified by Frost Presence which increases it by an additional 80% in order to make it on par or slightly higher than warriors and paladins (who can use a shield and gain block avoidance).

Stamina - The key stat to all tanks, this stat is further amplified by Frost Presence which increases total health by 10%.

Defense - Like warriors and paladins, a 540 defense (value, not rating) is required to become crit immune to level 83 level boss mobs. Beyond this point, defense is still valueable in providing additional avoidance given that it equally divides your avoidance into parry, dodge, and miss and thus doesn't push diminishing returns as quickly. A good summary of this is found on Tanktips here[2].

Dodge - Due to the diminishing returns system introduced in Wrath of the Lich King which caps parry earlier than dodge as well as the DK's inherently high parry due to Forceful Deflection, Dodge is the best stat to stack for avoidance, followed closely by Defense.

Parry - Parry is generally not a stat to intentionally stack due to risk of hitting the diminishing returns soft cap. Still, due to Forceful Deflection it generally accounts for 20% of the DKs avoidance (increased to 30% with bladebarrier). Note that BB is set to change to a damage reduction rather than 10% parry come 3.1.

49.18 Parry Rating = 1% Avoidance

41.00 Defense Rating = 1% Avoidance

39.35 Dodge Rating = 1% Avoidance

Expertise & Hit - Expertise and Hit are actually both dps flavored stats but are both important for increasing threat output. Expertise requirements are higher due to the need to reduce parries (16%). Regarding which to stack more of depends on your role as a tank. As a main tank where most of your threat is generated via weapon strikes expertise is nearly twice as effective as hit (when below the dodge "cap" of 6.5%). Even past that it is just as effective as hit. However, if you are primarily an AoE tank and responsible for picking up adds, all of our abilities are from spells (DnD, HB, BB, Pest, UB) and thus not impacted by expertise but rather hit. A good explanation is available on Tanktips here[3]. Just keep in mind it's from a warrior perspective.

Useless

Spell Power - Seriously stop wearing that crap. Someone's going to ask you for Kings or a heal or something.

Spirit and Intellect - These have next to zero value to DKs.

Abilities and Talents

Rather than have to constantly update abilities as they change, DK abilities (spells) can be found here[4] and talents can be found here[5]. In addition, the WoWHead talent calculator[6] is an excellent way to plan out your spec. It can be used in coordination with Talented[7] such that specs you make in WowHead can be imported in. Just make sure to use Talented_Data[8] as well.