Everything you need to know to play your DPS Death Knight post patch 3.1. We discuss talent specs, glyphs, and spell rotations to get the most DPS out of your Death Knight, whether its Frost, Unholy, or Blood.
In the April 09 World of Warcraft patch 3.1, named Secrets of Ulduar, a lot of things changed in the game. Among the hundreds of minute changes made to both gameplay, professions, and items, significant changes were made to each individual class. Death Knights were by no means spared. Prior to the patch there was a lot of speculation as to what the changes would mean for the Death Knight class, as far as itemization, talent specialization, and ability rotations were concerned. Now that the patch is fully implemented, and has even been hotfixed, patched, and improved upon, we are now more fully equipped to discuss the status of Death Knights in the post-3.1 World of warcraft.
Part of what Blizzard tried to accomplish in the 3.1 patch was to equalize the "viability" of all three main talent specializations, both for tanking and DPS. For the most part, they were successful. I have seen various builds on Blood, Frost, and Unholy all perform on a fairly level playing field since the patch, whereas pre-3.1 there was pretty much nothing that could compete with the "cookie cutter" Unholy spec. Let's take a look at a basic good spec for each of the three talent trees, as far as DPS goes. We'll also discuss glyphs and ability rotations.
Blood - 51/0/20
This spec is built around chaining Heart Strikes, Death Striking for Death Runes, and massive amounts of Death Coil. The 51 points out of Blood are all DPS-increasing, and we take Improved Death Strike to not only increase damage but to keep ourselves alive. This can be particularly important on the many Ulduar fights where raid-wide damage is very high, and also helps to mitigate the negative effects of using Hysteria. They key to this build is keeping diseases up 100% of the time, getting your Death Runes rolling early in your rotation, and dumping your runic power with Death Coil. You must also keep a watchful eye on your Hysteria and Dancing Rune Blade cooldowns, as they will significantly boost your DPS when used optimally. This spec also provides a raid-wide physical DPS buff via Abomination's Might. It takes a full three points in Virulance to ensure your Death Coils are always hitting, as in any given fight the number of Death Coils cast will exceed Heart Strikes by 2.5:1 (as a result of Sudden Doom procs). One point from Epidemic is taken so that disease refreshes fit comfortably into the rotation. Instead of putting a second point into it, and thereby messing up the rotation, we put it into Death and Decay to increase AoE effectiveness.