Death Knight Guide To Consumables
The best elixirs for Death Knight tanks will change depending on your stats and what areas you need to improve on. For starters it's important to reach defense cap and an Elixir of Mighty Defense can help you reach that goal. An Elixir of Mighty Strength will then serve as a good Battle Elixir for any Death Knight. Once your defense cap has been reached, Elixir of Protection will be your best Guardian replacement, especially since when talented properly a percentage of your armor rating will be transformed into attack power.
DPS Death Knights will use similar Elixirs, using Elixir of Mighty Strength as their Battle Elixir and Elixir of Protection to provide the largest DPS boost. However, once you max out your stats to do proper Tanking and DPS, it's important to switch to Flasks, especially in a Raid environment.
Potions
To get a quick protection and DPS boost, when properly specced into Bladed Armor, use Indestructible Potion. Some Death Knights have also been known to use a haste potion, like Potion of Speed, to increase their casting time of Army of the Dead and for a slight DPS boost when needed on a boss. However, haste is at the bottom of the list for important stats for a Death Knight.
Food buffs will also change depending on what stats you need the most. However, for Death Knight tanks, it's generally important to use Dragonfin Filet and Rhinoliscious Wormsteak.
Death Knight DPS food buffs should be focusing on hit, if required, crit and attack power. There are 3 foods generally acceptable to Death Knight DPS, Mammoth Meal, Snapper Extreme, and Spiced Wyrm Burger.
Death Knight Guide to Stats
The stats that Death Knights look for are very similar to other Plate Wearers, with a few exceptions. For starters, Death Knight DPS should always be focusing on Strength, Agility, and Crit and ignoring anything with spell power or intellect. Death Knight Tanks should focus on Stamina, Defense, and Mitigation stats like Dodge and Parry. Block value is useless to a Death Knight tank since we are not capable of wielding shields.
A general rule of thumb for new Death Knight tanks is to ignore other stats like Dodge and Parry and focus solely on building a large health pool, while meeting defense cap requirements. When following this general rule of thumb it's possible that the other stats will merely fall into place as better gear is acquired.
Death Knight Guide to Patch Notes
-Frost Presence now provides 8% stamina, up from 6%.
-Icebound Fortitude now provides 30% base damage reduction, up from 20% damage reduction.
These small changes were not done to necessarily 'buff' Death Knights, rather they were made to equalize health pools for tanks going into ICC. The changes from this last hot patch should not affect your normal game-play, especially in heroics, in any significant way.
To Do:
- Add images to properly separate Death Knight guide sections.
- Discuss the most popular DPS and Tank Death Knight builds.
- Discuss Death Knight rotations and the importance they play.
- Build a section devoted to Death Knight specific add ons.
