80-90 Frost

[bleh bleh 420 bleh]

Okay, i haven't touched my DK since wrath (he was lvl capped) but i got bored so i hopped back on and went to hyjal. I got some gear and now I am destroying everything in my path. I did one dungeon as a frost tank (forgot to switch to blood) and my dps was ridiculously higher than all the dps combined. I am definetly leveling him to 90 I'm just wondering when this power will subside and is it really as lopsided as i see or am i just a beast?

[Zirhark]

I had the same case when i was leveling. you hit a quick decline in power as soon as you hit Pandaria. Up until then everything was dieing in a couple hits. I get to Jade Forrest and boom, reality check. It gets tough until you get some MoP gear but then it smooths out. You never quite get back to the one and two shotting everything tho.

so yes, you will be beast mode in cata but not in MoP.

[JohnBrown1917]

85-90 is faster as blood, frost won't be-able to pull as many mobs as blood.

[bleh bleh 420 bleh]

So blood with dps or tank gear?

[iktankniet]

i've done it in tankgear. It goes slow(er) then dps gear, but i can take up to 7 mobs each time and walk away with full hp. also taken down a zandalari warscout at lvl 88 just for the fun of it. that does take a long time, but it gives you more xp then a quest

[Rorke]

85-90 is faster as blood, frost won't be-able to pull as many mobs as blood.

Common misconception. Play Frost or Unholy with dark succor glyph and you'll get things done 3x faster.

I honestly like Unholy better for leveling. It has much better control of runes, Frost has way too much down time because its so dependent on haste. Its good for killing one thing real quick, but I feel Unholy is definitely better in longer fights with 3-4 enemies.

[Hodge94]

85-90 is faster as blood, frost won't be-able to pull as many mobs as blood.

Definitely not, unless you have a large pack of mobs on you consistently feeding you vengeance (which would in most cases be very unnecessary) then Frost is a lot faster.

As said above Frost or Unholy are very good.

Frost just obliterates (heh...) everything in a few swings but has a fair amount of downtime - if you're good with rune control (Frost you never really have to look at your runes, blood when levelling is similar) then unholy peels mobs down quickly aswell as having incredibly strong AoE.

[roflwaffle]

So blood with dps or tank gear?

blood in dps gear / pull everything

[saidolol]

blood is so lol to lvl with, i did it mostly of the levels up to maxlevel, no downtime whatsoever, if you go with frost the downtime will drastically go up.

[bals]

go frost.
glyph of dark succor makes really hard to die unless you pull way too much. just use pillar and burn down 1 mob then chain dark succor procs on everything else that should be pretty low.

blood leveling isn't that great unless you can constantly pull 5+ mobs. Anytime you have to kill 1-2 it's painful. You end up spending way too much time running around trying to tag enough units

[Nalfeinn]

You do get a bit of a spanking when you get to pandaria but as soon as you are in MoP gear frost is back to vomiting damage everywhere

[JohnBrown1917]

So blood with dps or tank gear?

dps

Definitely not, unless you have a large pack of mobs on you consistently feeding you vengeance (which would in most cases be very unnecessary) then Frost is a lot faster.

As said above Frost or Unholy are very good.

Frost just obliterates (heh...) everything in a few swings but has a fair amount of downtime - if you're good with rune control (Frost you never really have to look at your runes, blood when levelling is similar) then unholy peels mobs down quickly aswell as having incredibly strong AoE.

Which is something that is possible for a lot of areas. Dread wastes is especially good for this with the AoE buff you get. Pulling 15 or so mobs will be no problem at all.

I found blood to be a lot faster than any other spec/class I levelled.

---------- Post added 2013-05-08 at 05:06 PM ----------

Common misconception. Play Frost or Unholy with dark succor glyph and you'll get things done 3x faster.

I honestly like Unholy better for leveling. It has much better control of runes, Frost has way too much down time because its so dependent on haste. Its good for killing one thing real quick, but I feel Unholy is definitely better in longer fights with 3-4 enemies.

I wouldn't consider it a misconception, I consider it to be the truth. Zero downtime, no deaths, you can pull a ton of enemies without problems etc..

[Ranaas]

I'm currently levelling a DK myself (my second one) and I can fairly say

55-80 = Blood
80-85 = Frost
85-90 = Unholy

Reforge to mastery till 85 , and haste onwards

You can pull a fiar number of mobs as unholy after 85 and with conversion + death succor , you won't have any trouble living.

[Stormcall]

go frost.
glyph of dark succor makes really hard to die unless you pull way too much.

With Blood you can't pull way too much. You could grip the entire ZONES pretty much and turn out fine. Frost can't, even with Dark Succor you can get overwhelmed as Frost, I had it happen on more than 1 occasion. Plus Frost can't handle elites/rares(where you can't keep chaining dark succor) as well as blood can.

[galluk]

It's more how geared you were end of wrath

Though you can pick up some MoP blues starting at level 80, that can completely skip all gearing in cata. my DK lev 82 has blue, Ilvl 409ish leggings he got round 81. Better than normal Deathwing drops.

[bals]

With Blood you can't pull way too much. You could grip the entire ZONES pretty much and turn out fine. Frost can't, even with Dark Succor you can get overwhelmed as Frost, I had it happen on more than 1 occasion. Plus Frost can't handle elites/rares(where you can't keep chaining dark succor) as well as blood can.

yes but blood takes forever to kill groups less than 5. frost plows through 1-2 mobs at a a time.
some spots it takes a long time to pull enough mobs as blood to make it worthwhile
also rares/elites are easier as frost since they all do little damage besides easily avoidable attacks.

[Rorke]

yes but blood takes forever to kill groups less than 5. frost plows through 1-2 mobs at a a time.
some spots it takes a long time to pull enough mobs as blood to make it worthwhile
also rares/elites are easier as frost since they all do little damage besides easily avoidable attacks.

What people like Stormcall don't understand is that you can pull 4-5 enemies as Frost/Unholy, plow through them and get Dark succor to proc after each kill in which you use it. It basically serves as a Warriors Victory Rush and my Warrior can easily solo up to 6-7 enemies as a dps spec. And if you're still in trouble, you can always spec chillblains/conversion and kite enemies around while being healed. Or just go Death Pact. Death Siphon is also good for leveling. You know sometimes I feel like some people in this thread act like there isn't a healing tier and think Blood is the only spec that has access to it.

Oh yeah and Lichborne. I means there's seriously no reason to die as a dps DK with all of that.

[Stormcall]

What people like Stormcall don't understand is that you can pull 4-5 enemies as Frost/Unholy, plow through them and get Dark succor to proc after each kill in which you use it. It basically serves as a Warriors Victory Rush and my Warrior can easily solo up to 6-7 enemies as a dps spec. And if you're still in trouble, you can always spec chillblains/conversion and kite enemies around while being healed. Or just go Death Pact. Death Siphon is also good for leveling. You know sometimes I feel like some people in this thread act like there isn't a healing tier and think Blood is the only spec that has access to it.

Oh yeah and Lichborne. I means there's seriously no reason to die as a dps DK with all of that.

It's EASY to pull more than 4-5 enemies in most zones(not all, but many), and if you do it as Frost while you're leveling, Dark Succor or not, you're in trouble. I'm not forgetting, as you put it, I'm speaking from EXPERIENCE with actually getting in trouble as frost. I know, because I have done it, multiple times(as have several other players I know). And Unholy is even worse, as it lacks the burst frost has. Sure you can scout around looking for small groups of enemies to burst down as Frost, but blood, you don't have to. It doesn't matter how packed the mobs are, if there are patrols, if there are elites that might get pulled into the fight, none of it matters you can charge right in and not worry about it. Death Pact and Lichborne are on a 2 min CD each and if you have to use Lichborne heals/Death Siphon/kiting mobs around...you're damage is dropping resulting in doing less damage than blood is anyways. You may not die, but you WILL spend time eating/bandaging/waiting for health to regen, none of which you will ever do as blood.

I don't forget that blood has access to the healing tier, blood doesn't NEED the healing tier. And when I say Frost is fragile, I'm COUNTING using the healing tier.

[Rorke]

It's EASY to pull more than 4-5 enemies in most zones(not all, but many), and if you do it as Frost while you're leveling, Dark Succor or not, you're in trouble. I'm not forgetting, as you put it, I'm speaking from EXPERIENCE with actually getting in trouble as frost. I know, because I have done it, multiple times(as have several other players I know). And Unholy is even worse, as it lacks the burst frost has. Sure you can scout around looking for small groups of enemies to burst down as Frost, but blood, you don't have to. It doesn't matter how packed the mobs are, if there are patrols, if there are elites that might get pulled into the fight, none of it matters you can charge right in and not worry about it. Death Pact and Lichborne are on a 2 min CD each and if you have to use Lichborne heals/Death Siphon/kiting mobs around...you're damage is dropping resulting in doing less damage than blood is anyways. You may not die, but you WILL spend time eating/bandaging/waiting for health to regen, none of which you will ever do as blood.

I don't forget that blood has access to the healing tier, blood doesn't NEED the healing tier. And when I say Frost is fragile, I'm COUNTING using the healing tier.

No its not. Frost and Unholy easily do more damage over Blood even while fighting defensively. You act as if leveling a dps dk which wears plate is as fragile as something like a Rogue. It's not. I didn't die once leveling my DK as Frost from 85-90. I even tried Blood during that process to see what all the fuss was about and I hated it. Way too goddamm slow just to be invincible instead of being slightly invincible was not a good trade off to me.

You also don't lose much damage from Death Siphon at least from an Unholy standpoint. Death Pact and Lichborne are on 2 minute cool downs yes, but you shouldn't need to use them for every pull. It's also best to use one of them in one fight and another in a different fight as long as you don't stack them. Also I honestly would like to know what quests make you pull 6-7 things at a time without the mobs resetting. And what exactly is wrong with Conversion? It only nabs 5 runic power a second, its not like you need it on all the time. Just use it between pulls when you have excess runic power.

Unholy also does much better spread damage over Frost in lesser gear. Frost at low haste levels has way too much downtime and is only superior over Unholy if you're pulling one or two things at a time. Otherwise, Unholy is better because it has much better rune control with icy touch and blood boil and Unholy Presence itself gives haste.

I'm hate to say this, but DK leveling is the easiest in the game and there's no reason to play a tank spec unless you're looking to get some practice. The class literally has no gear scaling issues like Rogues have. You can basically put dot on things and spam blood boil and things die. The end.

[Deleted]

I must say that Blood DK was dominating DPS in dungeons over frost and unholy untill level 70. Then I had to try out Frost and Unholy. Unholy was CLEARLY doing higher DPS than frost, so I decided to continue with it. Now I'm 80 (almost 81) lvl and still Unholy is very clearly beating the other specs.

Few tips:

1) Pick talent Lichborne and use Death Coils to heal yourself if the big pack you pulled feels overwhelming.

2a) Use your Dark Succor Glyph to use free Death Strikes to heal yourself. You will spend most of your time 100% health even with greater packs.

2b) Death Pact is great talent to get you a fair amount of health sacrificing half of your ghoul's healthpool. Then heal the pet full with Death Coil

3) Pick talent Roiling Blood to make huge AoE damage and spread diseases.

4) Once you hit 80 try to get your hands to this item:

Bjam's Door-Breaker
Item Level 409
Binds when equipped
Two-Hand Sword
6038 - 9059 Damage Speed 3.80
(1986.5 damage per second)
+544 Strength
+816 Stamina
+394 Hit (15.02% @ L80)
+309 Critical Strike (6.73% @ L80)
Durability 100 / 100
Requires Level 80
Sell Price: 35 19 22

Read more at http://www.wowhead.com/item=87423/bj...jKHyO6t8sD5.99

EXTRA) Macro your Ghoul's Gnaw (3 sec stun) for close-call situtations

I really like the creativity you can use while leveling Unholy Death Knight. Especially when you are at edge of dying and you come up with craziest solutions to keep yourself alive. In my opinion Blood is great if you're casual and enjoy leveling with slightly slower pace but staying alive with no problems.

As Unholy I still use unholy presence for more DPS. With Bjam's Door-Breaker I 1-hit overkill every quest monster in my way.