my hunter template

Spec Layout

Death Knight Guide

A friend of mine needed a guide for Death Knight, so here it is, a blood template and how to play it.
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Here is the Template

http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=6&tal=2305020530003303231123001351000000000000000000000000000002302203050030000000000000000000

copy and paste that into your browser if the link doesnt work
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Here is how your hotkeys will be set up

1) Death Grip

2) Icy Touch

3) Plague Strike

4) Heart Strike (You Get this at your 41st spec in blood)

5) Death Coil

6) Death Strike

7) Will of the Forsaken

8) Cannibalize

9) Hysteria

0) Dancing Rune Weapon ( you get this at your 51th spec in blood)


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Understanding how a death knight plays

If you are fighting a pack of mobs and they seem dangerous you can pull them into you one at a time with Death Grip

Rotations

While soloing and leveling, the most important thing to do is get a solid handle on the Death Knight damage rotations. Unlike most classes that have very simple rotations of 2-3 spells, a Death Knight needs to manage runes, runic power, cooldowns and 5-8 spells. The sooner you get used to doing this the better off you will be.

Death Knight rotations are usually split into two sequences. This is done to ensure that you use all of your available runes each time they become available, keep diseases up, and burn off all of the runic power that you generate. The first cycle in a rotation ensures that you get diseases up on the target so that your special attacks do more damage. Your second cycle takes advantage of not having to cast diseases to do more damage. By the time the second cycle is over the diseases are falling off the target and you revert to cycle one.

Initial Cycle
Icy Touch - Plague Strike - Heart Strike - Heart Strike - Death Coil - Death Coil

2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 5 - 5

Second Cycle
Heart Strike - Heart Strike - Death Strike - Heart Strike - Heart Strike - Death Coil

4 - 4 - 6 - 4 - 4 - 5

Realistically you Cycle between these so everything is refreshed, however if you look up to where your colored runes are and none of them are greyed out anymore you can start over with cycle 1

So basically all you have to do is press on your hotkeys

2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 5 - 5

then

4 - 4 - 6 - 4 - 4 - 5
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If you are having a hard fight and need more damage output (example you are getting beat on badly or you want to do fast damage for a pvp kill)


Press 0 (Dancing Rune Weapon)

Summons a second rune weapon that fights on its own for 12 sec, doing the same attacks as the Death Knight but for 50% reduced damage.For 12 seconds your special attacks do an additional 50% damage so if you have your DOT's (damage over time) spells on someone you should activate this right before your heart strikes, which do huge damage to begin with.

or

press 9 (Hyseria)

Induces a friendly unit into a killing frenzy for 30 sec. The target is Enraged, which increases their physical damage by 20%, but causes them to lose health equal to 1% of their maximum health every second.


What this does is add + 20% damage for 30 seconds a good increase in your damage per second when your dancing rune weapon has been used.bear in mind Hysteria makes you lose 1% of your health a second for 30 seconds, but being that you are blood speced the healing from your attacks should compensate for the health loss.If you are dying and need something dead and fast, this is your kind of last resort for a rough fight, or a pvp fight. if your Dancing rune weapon is down



Hysteria Has a 3 minute cooldown, and Dancing Rune Weapon Has a 1.5 minute cooldown, so these cant be used over and over (spammed) however they can save your ass in a pinch.

If you have Charm, sleep or fear cast on you:

Press 7 (will of the forsaken)

Instant Cast

Removes any Charm, Fear and Sleep effect. This effect shares a 45 sec cooldown with other similar effects. (2 min Cooldown)

Also some times you can take down a running charatcer with your Death Coil.This casts like a ranged spell
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Basic PVP tactics:

First of all you are melee so you will be fighting at close range (obviously)

Get used to doing this and practice it some on mobs

Your W,A,S,D keys move you as do your arrow keys.

Get used to moving with your arrow keys at all times.

Pvp is all about reaction, and reaction time.A spit second can and will make or break your fight.If you use WASD to move you arent going to be able to move and use hotkey attacks. WASD should only be used as a last resort if you have to mouseclick to select an enemy to pull towards you with Death Grip.(For example picking a caster out of a stack of people, or a Preist, as the caster will do high damage, and the priest is healing and keeping a group alive... or doing damage themself perhaps.) For the most part if someone is charging in you will use TAB key to target nearest enemy.

Now here is a trick with arrow keys and melee

hold forward arrow and left arrow at the same time (or right arrow it really doesnt matter) and you will see that your character runs around in a circle.You can try this without fighting to get a hang of it.Practice circle running on mobs (try ones that aren't too dangerous until you get used to it) wehn you do this to a player you will make it hard to land positional required attacks and can also force line of sight errors on your enemy.

Runners- Hopefully you have your DOT (damage over time) skills applied those being Icy Touch and Plague strike. Also you can Fire off your Death Coils and they fire away at range like a spell, you dont need to be right up on someone in melee range.Finally and the most obvious you can lasso them in to you with Death Grip.(if it is not on cool down)

For PVP you really want to concentrate on anyone in cloth first because they are going to be doing damage or healing.Take out the healer and the group falls more easily.Take out the casters, and the group does less DPS (damage per second).Both are priority, however healer is higher, as a healer can heal the magic users.