Tank Rotation & Cooldowns

This rotation offers a general priority list for Blood Death Knight abilities, along with key cooldowns at the bottom. It's based on a standard build and is here to help while we work on a smarter, build-aware system. If you are very new to the game or this class, we added info on the new assisted rotation features at the bottom of this guide. Updated for the latest patch in World of Warcraft: The War Within (11.2).

Single Target

Ensure Death And Decay is pre-placed and pull with Deaths Caress.

• BlooddrinkerView detailsUse before Dancing Rune Weapon.
• Dancing Rune WeaponView detailsActivate during the last second of Blooddrinker.
• Blood BoilView detailsTo maximize Blood Plague duration.
• BonestormView detailsUse if conditions for cooldown reduction are met.
• Death StrikeView detailsUse with >35 Runic Power or Vampiric Strike otherwise.
• ConsumptionView detailsUse with 4 seconds left on Dancing Rune Weapon.
• Heart StrikeView detailsUse as filler to consume Runes.
• TombstoneView detailsUse if Dancing Rune Weapon is on cooldown and >6 Bone Shield charges.

Start with Blooddrinker and activate Dancing Rune Weapon during its channel. Maintain Blood Plague with Blood Boil, and use Bonestorm or Tombstone when conditions are met. Spend Runic Power on Death Strike and use Heart Strike as a filler.

AoE

Ensure Death And Decay is active for cleave benefits.

• Death And DecayView detailsKeep active for cleave and buffs.
• Blood BoilView detailsTo spread Blood Plague to all targets.
• BonestormView detailsUse if cooldown reduction conditions are met.
• ConsumptionView detailsUse when available for AoE damage.
• Heart StrikeView detailsUse as filler to consume Runes.

Maintain Death And Decay for cleave, spread Blood Plague with Blood Boil, and use Bonestorm or Consumption for AoE damage. Use Heart Strike to consume Runes.

Cooldowns

• Dancing Rune WeaponView detailsUse for parry, damage, and resource generation.
• Vampiric BloodView detailsUse proactively for high damage or reactively when low health.
• Icebound FortitudeView detailsUse to reduce damage or counter stuns.
• Anti Magic ShellView detailsUse to absorb magic damage and prevent debuffs.
• TombstoneView detailsUse if Dancing Rune Weapon is on cooldown and >6 Bone Shield charges.
• BonestormView detailsUse if Dancing Rune Weapon is on cooldown and >6 Bone Shield charges.

Use Dancing Rune Weapon for parry and resource generation, Vampiric Blood for health boosts, and Icebound Fortitude for damage reduction. Anti Magic Shell is ideal for magic damage, while Tombstone and Bonestorm are situational based on Bone Shield charges.

New to Class? Try Assisted Rotation

Patch 11.1.7 introduced new features that make it eaiser to pick and play new characters. These new settings can be enabled from settings » gameplay enhancements:

• Single-Button Assistant
• Assisted Highlight
• Cooldown Manager

If you are new to World of Warcraft or a certain class, enabling Assisted Highlight and Cooldown Manager can help you learn which abilities to prioritize and use.

While the Single-Button Assistant can be a much easier and more accessible way to play the game, it does come with a slight performance hit due to a small GCD penalty, as you will have to wait 25% longer in between spells and abilities.

To see which specs are best with the Single-Button Assistant feature, you can check out our DPS Rankings which uses SimC to sim every class using this feature.