Are you looking to get into World of Warcraft's latest Classic expansion, Wrath of the Lich King Classic? Does controlling the powers of the undead and disease sound like the way you want to make your glory? Well, our WotLK Death Knight leveling guide should help you quite a bit!
Leveling in World of Warcraft is a pretty lengthy process. Regardless of what class you play, knowing what the best spec, talents and even professions that you roll with can make that process much smoother. Our guide will cover all those details and more as you venture into Northrend.
While you're here, if you're interested in other Wrath of the Lich King Classic content, then check out our DPS Tier list, our Healer Tier list and our Tank tier list. You might also be interested in our guide to making your very own Death Knight.
Best Death Knight leveling spec for Wrath Classic
To start this guide off, we'll go over each spec's pros and cons and at the end, recommend which spec you'll want to go with overall.
Blood
- Pros
- Strong Offensive and Defensive cooldowns
- Insanely high self healing
- Cons
- Low mobility
- Very gear dependent
- Threat and damage take time to ramp up
Frost
- Pros
- High Area of Effect damage
- Strong defensive cooldowns
- Cons
- Low mobility
- Gear dependent
Unholy
- Pros
- High Area of Effect damage
- Strong defensive cooldowns
- Cons
- Low mobility
- gear dependent
- damage suffers when mobs die too quickly
Looking at our options here, these all seem like fairly equal. But there is one that just edges ahead, and that's going to be the Frost Death Knight. The spec offers the best balance of damage and survivability.
WotLK Frost Death Knight talent tree
Next up, we'll look at the tree, and what you're going to pick at each segment of leveling. Death Knights are a bit different in that they get a majority of their points after their starting campaign missions. For the flood of points you get, check out the image below to show where to put your points.
Level 61 - 70
- Level 61 - 62: Guile of Gorefiend (all ranks)
- Level 63 - 67: Tundra Stalker (all ranks)
- Level 68 - 70: Blood of the North (all ranks)
These points are all about building up your damage. These buff a lot of our main abilities, so you'll notice a nice damage boost from taking these points.
Level 71 - 80
- Level 71 - 73: Subversion (all ranks in Blood Tree)
- Level 74 - 75: Butchery (all ranks in Blood Tree)
- Level 76- 79: Bladed Armor (4 ranks in Blood Tree)
- Level 80: Respec for your end game PvE or PvP builds.
These last few points are taking talents in the Blood tree. These ultimately are good top end talents to take, and will boost more of our offensive power. That being said, at level 80, you'll be ready to respec into your build of choice.
Best Death Knight leveling professions for WotLK Classic
As for what professions you'll want to level, you can do whatever you want really. There is an inherent disadvantage that you'll be at because you start at such a high level. You will need to invest a bit of time going back through and leveling up the lower ranks.
That being said, we recommend picking up Jewelcrafting and Engineering. They are incredibly powerful in the late game. You can also level something like cooking, which is great for making dungeon and raid food.
Best Hunter glyphs for WotLK Classic
For Frost, we have three major and three minor glyphs to work with. Here are our recommendations for those.
Major
- Glyph of Disease
- Glyph of Icy Touch
- Glyph of Frost Strike
Minor
- Glyph of Horn of Winter
- Glyph of Raise Dead
- Glyph of Death's Embrace
Our Major glyphs all stand to increase our damage output. You can also take Glyph of Obliteration if you're using a two handed weapon. For minors, these are all utility ones. The first two are very good, and the third is really up to you.
And that's all that we have for you! The Death Knight is a very strong class overall, and by the end of the expansion, they are top tier. While you're here, definitely check out our Wrath Classic PVP tier list, as well as some other dungeon guides, for the Nexus, and the Culling of Stratholme.