Death Knight DPS guide The Death Knight is a fantastic DPS class . With three specs to DPS ( yes three ) there are so many different options as to how to hurt your enemies . As a general outline , Blood provides hard hitting 2h abilities with self healing included . Frost is either 2h or dual wield Haste hits with lots of AoE and CC . And Unholy relies on hard hitting disease s and the Ghoul pet to plague your enemies even after your death . A Death Knight DPS is specced purely to their preference . DPS - ing at a glance . So when the Death Knight starts , you have an ability of each type and Death Coil , with your racial . Not a very big mix or abilities but it gets the job done in Acherus . A good rotation is to apply your diseases and then hit with any moves that scale with the number of diseases applied . Plague Strike , Icy Touch , then Blood Strike is a really good one to start , burning your excess Runic Power with Death Coil . Once you get access to Blood Boil , Pestilence , Death Strike , and Obliterate , things get much more interesting . Blood . Moving on , in Blood , you ' ll want to be in either Blood Presence or Unholy Presence . If you see your health in the low a lot , Blood Presence will heal you for 2 % of all damage done ( increased by Improved Blood Presence ) . Unholy Presence is for those who have really mastered the rotations of Blood and are ready for a decrease in wait times for GCD and runes . Also , with the Improved Blood Presence talent mentioned above , Unholy Presence is the choice for you because you will gain the healing effect here as well . Moving on to the rotation . The rotation criteria for Blood is very simple . Get in your diseases , then Death Strike to burn the extra runes and get some Death Rune s to fuel your constant Heart Strike s . Death Runes are gained by Death Rune Mastery in the lower Blood tree . My typical rotation is below : Plague Strike : To apply Blood Plague . 10 Runic . Icy Touch : To apply Frost Fever . 10 Runic . Death Strike : To burn extra Unholy and Frost runes , change them to death runes , and heal for a decent amount . 15 Runic . Heart Strike : Most powerful move , affected by diseases . 10 Runic . Extra Blood Rune : Depending on the situation , I like to leave a Blood Rune open sometimes to maximize survivability or damage output . A well placed Pestilence can net you much more DPS ( in a multi target situation ) then a Heart Strike . But generally , this is burned on Heart Strikes . Runic Power : Burned on Death Coil or Rune Strike if the tank is generating enough threat and if you have 3 / 3 Subversion talents . Rune Strike is more DPS , but is somewhat conditional . More Notes : Your diseases should last much longer than this rotation , so only use Plague Strike / Icy Touch as openers or if your diseases run out with more than 20 % health . Frost . In Frost , things are fast and furious . Each Presence serves its own purpose . Also , for the sake of time saving , 2 things . I am not re - linking all of the abilities and things you can find above . And , I will be abbreviating Runic Power RP . So first thing ' s first . Presence selection is a variable of DPSing in Frost . If you want to self - heal because you see your health going down a lot , use your Blood Presence . Another way to take care of this is get high - armor items and use Frost Presence to increase mitigation through armor and stamina . As another option ( and again , as sort of a " Master " Presence ) use Unholy Presence . The speed increase will be amazing with all of the Haste you will have in Frost . * Personal Experience * I have frost DPS ' d H HoR with a Tyrannical Beheader ( Scourgelord Tyrannus , Heroic mode Pit of Saron ) and hit with a 1 . 50 second speed . I topped a t10 arcane mage by 10 % DPS against Falric . * Exit Memory Lane * So back to the Haste bonuses , you will hit really fast and really hard with a 2h , but the choice is yours : 2h or Dual Wield . The Rotation for Frost revolves around AoE and CC - ing your enemies , as well as being faster and more resilient then them . This has nothing to do with Resilience unless you are PvP ing . So here is the rotation : Plague Strike : Apply Blood Plague . 10 RP . Icy Touch : Apply Frost Fever . 10 RP . Obliterate : High Damage low cost burst . Better if it doesn ' t consume diseases . 10 RP untalented . 15 talented . Blood Boil : AoE burst . Blood Boil : Aoe Burst . RP burn : Frost Strike is the only rational choice for a high damage strike . Notes : If you Glyph it , Howling Blast is shifted with Icy Touch to AoE spread Frost Fever . Hungering Cold can spread it too . But generally , Hungering is only used in intense situations with many mobs . A great time to pop Hungering is , if you want the title , hatch all the Rookery Whelp s and pop it once they aggro on to you for an easy kill , especially if combined with Howling , Blood Boil , and possibly Death and Decay . Unholy . To be added . . .