WoW Blood Death Knight Tank Guide

Blood Death Knight is a uniquely interesting tank, where most tanks try to mitigate damage in some form, Bloods mitigation is healing itself back up which will
have you saying “I’m the Healer Now”, cause you will be topping the healing meters with huge absorbs and death strike healing. Blood offers a lot of anti mechanic abilities and control over the battlefield.

Blood is an interesting builder spender tank with two resources, two spenders, one builder with runes and runic power. Runic power is the lifeblood of the spec, if you can’t Death Strike, you die. Build Runic power through spending runes, spend by Death Striking.

Blood is in a funny state, its one of the lower dps Tank specs, but wields the highest amount of survivability.

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The class tree for Blood offers a lot of utility defensively and offensively and offers us customizability of our abilities. Unfortunately, the tree can feel rather rigid going down due to the strengths of our capstones, pretty much needing to get down to Empower Rune Weapon and Abomination Limb forces us down some pathing options we could be using differently.

• Chains of Ice(default): Reduces the target’s movement by 70% for 8s at the cost of one Rune.
• Mind Freeze(default): Your interrupt, baseline 15s cooldown and locks enemies out of the casted school of magic.
• Cold Thirst(flex): A returning shadowlands conduit, successfully interrupting an enemy reduces the cooldown of Mind Freeze by 3s and grants you 10 Runic Power. While 3s doesn’t sound like a lot it allows Blood Death to solo kick a lot of encounters that usually require a kick rotation.
• Blinding Sleet(flex): Targets in a cone in front of you become blinded, disoriented for 5s, Damage breaks the effect. A very useful AoE stop that Blood has sorely been lacking in previous expansions. When Blinding Sleet ends targets are slowed by 50%.
• Icebound Fortitude(default): A 30% Damage Reduction for 8s, also grants immunity to Stun Effects. Currently in Season 1, Thundering is our seasonal affix in mythic plus, if Thundering isn’t cleared you become stunned for 5s, this grants immunity to that if misplayed. There are also a lot of abilities coded as stuns in the game that can be immuned.
• Death Strike(baseline): At a variable runic power cost, depending on talent options, you heal for 25% of all physical damage taken in the last 5s, a minimum of 7%, there are other talents that increase this healing. As stated above, this is the lifeblood of the spec, you take damage, you heal yourself
  back up.
• Anti-Magic Shell(default): Also known as anti-mechanic shell, grants you a magic absorb for 5s that also prevents the application of harmful effects. There are a large number of effects that you can simply ignore using this ability, Fel Detonation and Arcane Lockdown(Court of Stars), The Ritual of Bones wall in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds can also be walked right through. While the absorb itself will always be useful, the prevention of harmful applications really makes this ability borderline overpowered.
• Anti-Magic Barrier(flex): Increases the Absorb by 40% and reduces the cooldown by 20s. The more challenging the content, the more this talent is incredibly useful.
• Improved Death Strike(default): Increases the healing of Death Strike by 5% and reduces its runic power cost by 5.
• Veteran of the Third War(default): Stamina increased by 20%, while boring, more health means more hits, which equals more healing.
• Raise Dead(default): Raise a ghoul to come fight by your side for 1m.
• Cleaving Strikes(default m+): Heart Strikes up to 5 enemies inside your Death and Decay, since Death and Decay is vital to our gameplay(explained in further talent choices), this adds a core AoE component to our main runic power generator.
• Enfeeble(flex): Your ghouls attacks have a chance to apply enfeeble, reducing their movement speed by 30% and damage dealt to you by 15%. Sadly the uptime on this isn’t fantastic and a bit of RnG, Raise Ghoul does gain some small defensive benefit from its use.
• Brittle(flex): Your diseases have a chance to apply Brittle to the targets, increasing your attacks by 6% for 5s(15% proc chance). We apply plagues by using Blood Boil or Death’s Caress, in short, our plagues are always up, so this has a decently high uptime.
• Merciless Strikes(default): Increases Critical Strike by 2%, this talent is taken for pathing.
• Gloom Wards(default): Absorbs are 15% more effective on you. This is from all sources, internal and external. When combined with other talent options listed later, we really start to see absorbs shining in our kit.
• Runic Attenuation(default): Auto-attacks have a chance to generate 5 runic power. You’ll notice in damage breakdowns our melee white swings are a significant portion of our damage with talent options to speed them up, granting us approximately 10-11 procs per minute. Free resources are good.
• Anti-magic Zone(flex): Place an anti-magic zone on the ground, reducing magic damage to the group by 20% for 8s. This can be a powerful group utility, if you can convince your group to stand in it.
• Might of Thassarian(flex): While marked as flex we need it for pathing, and a 2% Strength increase for one talent point is fairly strong.
• Grip of the Dead(flex): Death and Decay reduces movement speed by 90%, decaying by 10% every second. With the frequency of our Death and Decay placements, this offers us a lot of battlefield control.
• Unholy Ground(default): Gain 5% haste while inside out Death and Decay. This is one of many talents that we’ll be utilizing to gain a lot of benefit from DnD. Blood really likes haste, and since we’re constantly in our DnD, this is a constant benefit.
• Insidious Chill(default): Your auto attacks reduce the target’s attack speed by 5% , stacking up to 4 times. In higher end content, auto-attacks really start to hurt and will be the most significant damage taken source.
• Icy Talons(default): Runic Power spending abilities increase your melee attack speed by 6% for 10s, stacking up to three times. Basically, Death Strike increases your auto-attack speed, a simple maintenance buff to gain more offensive value.
• Empower Rune Weapon(default): Gain 15% haste and generate 1 rune and 5 runic power instantly and then again every 5s for 20s. This was previously a frost death knight exclusive coming to blood in Dragonflight. This ability provides us with resource generation and a nice haste buff.
• Will of the Necropolis(default): Reduces damage taken by 30% while below 35% health. This is an incredibly strong ability with no internal cooldown. To be noted that you have to be below the health threshold to activate, and won’t trigger if you go from 100 to 0% health. Since Blood’s health loves to ping pong bounce, we activate this a lot and allow us to remain incredibly tanky at low health.
• Death’s Echo(default): Grants us a second charge of Death’s Advance, Death and Decay and Death Grip. This offers us more control and stops through Death Grips and gives us the many benefits of Death and Decay talents at almost full combat uptime.

Below I’ll be discussing what other flex options you can opt into by removing flex talents up above.

• Permafrost: Auto-attack damage grants you an absorb shield for 40% of the damage done. In higher end keys this talent falls out of favor, but while learning the spec, this can provide enough defensive benefit to warrant its selection.
• Acclimation: Reduces the cooldown of Icebound Fortitude by 60s. This is an optimal flex point for lots of encounters.
• Asphyxiate: A single target 5s stun on a 45s. More stops are always a good option.
• Sacrificial Pact: Sacrifice your ghoul to deal AoE shadow damage and heal for 25% of your maximum health. This can result as a nice healing defensive when in dire straits, given how much we heal with death strike, this isn’t the greatest option but not a bad one.
• Control Undead: Take control of an undead target for 5 minutes. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of uses in Dragonflight as of now, In Nohkud Offensive you can take control of a Mystic for a very nice buff.
• Unholy Endurance: Increases the duration of Lichborne by 2s, and grants you a 15% damage reduction while active. This can add another defensive ability to our toolkit.
• Unholy Bond: Increases the effectiveness of your Rune Weapon enchant by 10% per point spent. Rune of the Fallen crusader is a power enchant for Blood, increasing that effectiveness gives us both offensive and defensive value.
• Soul Reaper: If you don’t need Abomination Limb for raid encounters, opting into soul reaper is a powerful execute ability.

• Heart Strike(baseline): Replaces Rune Strike with our main Rune Spender, and Runic power generator. This has always been a core Blood Death Knight ability.
• Marrowrend(default): A single target damaging ability that grants you 3(9 in Dancing Rune Weapon) stacks of bone shield at the cost of two runes. This is your main fallback ability to maintain your Bone Shield stacks. Grants a small amount of runic power on use.
• Blood Boil(default): Deal AoE damage to all targets within 10 yards and applies your blood plague. With two charges of Blood Boil baseline, this is a big part of your snap threat generation bigger AoE pulls. Blood Boil deals a considerable amount of our damage and is core to our rotation, one of the only abilities that doesn’t spend any resources.
• Vampiric Blood(default): Increases your health by 30%, and increases healing and absorbs received by 30%, baseline 1m30s cooldown, reduced further by Red Thirst, this is a great defensive that increases in value the better you play.
• Ossuary(default): While above 5 bone shield stacks, the cost of your Death Strike is reduced by 5 runic power while also increasing your maximum runic power pool by 10. This allows us to pre-emptively pool runic power for a total of three stored death strikes uses.
• Crimson Scourge(default): Your auto attacks on targets afflicted by your Blood Plague have a chance to proc a free Death and Decay, and reset its cooldown. Note this does not proc while you have an active DnD. While we have high combat uptime on DnD with two charges, heavy movement encounters or affixes can expend those charges quickly and offset the cd rotation, resetting the cooldown can be very useful, since this is also needed for pathing, it’s a situationally useful ability we’re going to take anyway.
• Death’s Caress(default): One of our only ranged abilities that deals small amounts of damage and grants us 2 charges of Bone Shield. Useful for pulling mobs at range and starting our pulls with Bone Shield stacks, previously, our weakest point was the beginning of pulls, relying solely on Marrowrend to gain our active mitigation. Grants a small amount of runic power on use.
• Improved Heart Strike(flex): Increases Heart Strike Damage by 30%, since damage can be our weak point I personally opt for this talent.
• Rune Tap(Flex): At the cost of one rune, gain a 20% damage reduction for 4s. This uses valuable resources for purely defensive gain.
• HeartBreaker(default): Each enemy struck by Heart Strike generates 2 runic power per target hit. A very useful talent for Runic Power generation.
• Improved Bone Shield(default): Having a minimum of 1 stack of Bone Shield stack increases our haste by 10%. As said before, we love haste, easy point.
• Reinforced Bones(default): Increases armor gained from Bone Shield by 10%. While armor isn’t the most useful mitigation, it is welcomed, but mostly this point is taken for pathing.
• Hemostasis(flex): Each enemy struck by Blood Boil increases the damage and healing done by your next Death Strike by 8%, stacking up to 5 times. With how frequently we Blood Boil, this is a consistent buff to our death strike usage.
• Relish in Blood(flex, pathing): When Crimson Scourge is proc’d, our next Death and Decay will provide us with a small HP and runic power gain. Unfortunately this is slightly un-synergistic with our play, since we can consistently keep death and decay active without proccing Crimson Scourge, mostly taken for pathing.
• Rapid Decomposition(default): Blood Plague and Death & Decay deal damage 18% more often, as well Blood Plague heals for 50% more of its damage done. Again, mostly taken for pathing, but the extra damage is well welcome.
• Voracious(flex): Death Strikes healing is increased by 15% and grants you 10% leech for 8s. An easy leech maintenance buff to upkeep as well as increases our main source of healing.
• Dancing Rune Weapon, Insatiable Blade & Everlasting Bond(defaults): It’s worth it that I simply talk about all three talents in one go. Dancing Rune Weapon summons 2 copies of itself that mirrors our melee attacks for 16s and gives us 40% parry rating while active. Insatiable Blade grants us 5 stacks of Bone Shield upon DRW use, and when a stack of Bone Shield stack is consumed, reduces the cooldown of DRW. This ability is a big damage and defensive gain, 40% parry is nothing to scoff, add our critical strike parry rating and it’s easily above 50%. While DRW is active, our Blood Plague stacks three times on targets as well. Each rune weapon mirrors our attacks, increasing our damage and runic power generation. All around all three talents are default choices and core to our rotation. This ability can easily come down to around 45s with proper tombstone usage as well.
• Tombstone(default): Consume up to 5 stacks of bone shield, for each charge consumed gain 6 runic power and an absorb equal to 6% of our max hp. Given our interaction with Dancing Rune weapon(a full 5 stack Tombstone reduces the cd of DRW by 25s), and the new talent Shattering Bone, tombstone is an integral ability in our setup.
• Shattering Bone(default): When a Bone Shield stack is consumed, deal damage to enemies to nearby enemies, damage is tripled in Death & Decay. Tombstone consumes 5 stacks, making this ability combination a nice big nuke. This has become a high damaging ability for blood and needs to be played around.
• Sanguine Ground(default): While inside our Death & Decay we gain a 6% damage and 5% healing done increase. Combining this with all the other abilities that increase the benefits of being in our Death & Decay, this is an obvious pick.
• Red Thirst(default): Reduces the cooldown of Vampiric Blood by 2s per 10 Runic Power spent, given the amount we Death Strike, this can reduce Vampiric Blood to around 45s.
• Iron Heart(default): Blood Shields duration is increased by 2s and its absorb by 20%. With this talent, Blood Shield will be one of our highest healing ability.
• Heartrend(flex): Heart Strike has a chance to increase our next Death Strike damage by 20%. Honestly a slightly weaker talent in comparison to our other talent options, mainly taken for pathing for Purgatory.
• Purgatory(flex): While there is a level of content where this becomes default, that is all on the player and the content they are playing. I personally started using this in 20 keys and never had an issue before then. The ability itself is a cheat death on a 4m cooldown, granting you a large healing absorb for 3s the needs to be healed through or you die. This is a good safety net, but not needed for all content.

• Coagulopathy: Deal 5% increased damage to enemies afflicted by Blood Plague. Death Strike also increases the damage of blood plague to that target hit by 30%, stacking up to five times. If I can at any point spare a talent point, this is my go to pick, unfortunately some core abilities and defensives are just needed to live in higher keys. If you opt out of any of the flex points I suggest this being your first pick.
• Improved Vampiric Blood: Increase Vampiric Blood’s duration by 4s and its absorb and healing by 10%. All around solid defensive option, most likely as the cost of offense.
• Foul Bulwark: For each stack of bone shield increases your maximum help by 1%, gain be a nice constant increase to our max hp.
• Bloodworms: Auto-attacks summon bloodworms, dealing minor damage to your target, after 15s burst to heal you for 15% of your missing health, if you dip below 50% health, they automatically burst to heal you. We are basically always going below 50% health so these will pretty much never last the 15s duration, but do provide a passive healing and damage component to our kit.
• Umbilicus Eternus: When Vampiric Blood ends, you gain an absorb for five times the amount of damage that Blood Plague dealt during its duration. The absorb by any means isn’t small, especially when paired with DRW’s 3 stack of Blood Plague, unfortunately the benefit of this is mostly when the defensive is over, meaning, when you’re mostly out of danger. This can buy you time where your health won’t bounce and make sure your resources and rotation are in order.
• Bloodshot: While Blood Shield is active, you deal 25% increased physical damage. While a nice damage amp, Blood shield is higher end content or with insufficient mastery just doesn’t last long enough to make great use of this talent to its fullest. In raid encounters with a co-tank, you will easily
  have this buff’s uptime be substantially increased.

Blood Death Knights tree offers us a lot of control over our defensive and healing capabilities, at the sacrifice of what little offensive gain we can opt into, while you may not be topping the damage meters, you will be topping the healing meters. The trees offer us incredible survivability with proper gameplay and resource management.