Death Knights

2. Common Abbreviations used

Abbreviation Ability Abbreviation Ability
IT Icy Touch
SD Sudden Doom
BS Blood Strike
MoM Might of Mograine
PS Plague Strike
BG Blood Gorged
HS Heart Strike
HB Howling Blast
FS Frost Strike
BotN Blood of the North
SS Scourge Strike
GoG Guile of Gorefiend
DS Death Strike
TS Tundra Stalker
OB Obliterate
HC Hungering Cold
DRW Dancing Rune Weapon
CE Corpse Explosion
MoB Mark of Blood
SG Summon Gargoyle
OaPH On a Pale Horse
IBF Icebound Fortitude
CF Crypt Fever
BT Blood Tap
EP Ebon Plaguebringer
AMS Anti-Magic Shell
RoR Rage of Rivendare
AMZ Anti-Magic Zone
UB Unholy Blight
ERW Empower Rune Weapon
DC Death Coil
BB Blood Boil
FF Frost Fever
BCB Blood-Caked Blade
BP Blood Plague
AoD Army of the Dead
DG Death Grip
DnD/D&D Death and Decay
MoG Master of Ghouls

Death Knights use two major Resource mechanics to do damage.
This is a new concept, as with all previous classes they only use one mechanic, be it Mana, Rage or Energy.

4.1 Runes: How They Work

Runes are the primary resource mechanic for Death Knights. It's a very new concept (somewhat) that can be compared to Energy. Runes have a set regeneration period, which is 10 seconds. A Death Knight starts with 2 Blood Runes (B), 2 Frost Runes (F) and 2 Unholy Runes (U).

It was always assumed that Runes just had a pure 10 second regen time. This has proven to be false from various tests. The behaviour that has been noted is that after the first set of runes very often runes regen after 8 seconds. The current concensus is the following:

Runes have a 10 second regen time. However, if you do not use your regenerated rune as soon as it comes up, it will activate a timer (up to 2 seconds, is the current theory) which will count as the Rune being used. Think of it like this:

Time Ability Regen time Runes
00:00:00 Icy Touch BBFUU
00:10:00 10s BBFFUU
00:11:50 Icy Touch BBFUU
00:20:00 8.5s BBFFUU


Because you waited 1.5s after the rune was available to use the second frost rune, it's regen time was reduced to 8.5s. Do note, if you wait longer than 2 seconds the above does not apply.

4.1.1. Death Runes

If you spec Death Rune Mastery, Blood of the North or Reaping, upon using the specified abilities the Runes that they use up will regen into Death Runes. Death Runes are a 4th type of Rune which is able to be used as either a Blood, Frost or Unholy Rune. They only stay a Death Rune for one usage and in general you will only use up a Death Rune if none of the normal Runes are available to be used with an ability.

Say, for example you are specced into Death Rune Mastery and you have used Obliterate. The Frost & Unholy Rune will become Death Runes. However, you still have 2 Blood Runes, 1 Frost & 1 Unholy Rune left. If you let the Death Runes come up so that your Rune layout looks like BBFDUD and you want to BS twice, PS once and IT once, you will only use up BBFU, leaving you with DD. The Death Runes are always the last runes to be used.

As a side note, Blood Tap is the only non-talented ability that will give you access to a Death Rune.

It should be further noted that Death Rune Mastery works somewhat different from what you'd expect. If you have all your Unholy and Frost Runes as Death Runes (so BBDDDD), and then use an Obliterate or Death Strike, the following happens:
[1] Your two Unholy Runes which are currently Death Runes will get used by the ability.
[2] Only one of your recently used Death Runes will remain a Death Rune. The other will turn back to Unholy, despite having just been used for an ability. (Or BBDDDU)
If you have only your Unholy Runes as Death Runes, and your Frost Runes are currently on cooldown, thus making it that your two converted Unholy Runes get used by Obliterate or Death Strike (BBFFDD), the following happens:
[1] Your two Unholy Runes which are currently Death Runes will get used by the ability.
[2] As before, only one of your two Unholy Runes becomes a Death Rune, however one of your Frost Runes (despite not being used by the ability) will also become a Death Rune. (BBDFDU)
That also applies if you have two Frost Runes as Death Runes and you use those for Obliterate or Death Strike. You end up with one of the Frost Runes staying a Death Rune, while one of the Unholy Runes will also turn into a Death Rune.
Thanks to Chicken

4.1.2. Empower Rune Weapon

Empower Rune Weapon will generate 25 Runic Power and immediately activate all your runes, meaning, if some of your runes were on cooldown, the cooldown is gone and the runes become activated. It can be useful in DPS situations where you need to pull that extra rotation and can't afford to wait. The cooldown is 5 minutes, so use it with consideration.

4.2. Runic Power

Runic Power is the second Resource Mechanic of a Death Knight. You could compare it to a Warrior's Rage, as they are somewhat similar. Runic Power is generated through using abilities which require a Rune. There are set values for the amount of Runic Power generated, depending on the amount of Runes said ability requires:

Abilities that require one Rune will generate 10 Runic Power.
Abilities that require two Runes will generate 15 Runic Power.
Abilities that require three Runes will generate 20 Runic Power.
Runic Power can be consumed by other abilities, varying for each spec. Blood will commonly use Death Coil to use up Runic Power, mixed with Dancing Rune Weapon. Unholy on the other hand, will use up their Runic Power on Unholy Blight, Summon Gargoyle or even Death Coils (depending on the situation). Frost finally will use up most of their Runic Power with Frost Strikes.
We commonly refer using up Runic Power as Runic Dumps.

Runic Power generation can be modified by various abilities (and even setbonuses) such as Chill of the Grave.

4.2.1. Runic Power generation
Runic Power generation can also be relatively simply calculated, using the following equation:

(((# of abilities used)-2)*5)+40 = Runic Power per rotation

This equation works for untalented rotations. The lower bound of 40 corresponds to a DnD and AoD rotation. The upper bound of 60 corresponds to rotations using all 6 runes individually.

Example:
DnD-IT-PS-BS gives you 20-10-10-10 = 50rp.
Using the equation we have (((4)-2)*5)+40 = (10)+ 40 = 50.

For the purposes of further study we will assume a standard 10 second rune cooldown. The reason for this is first it makes the math easy, and second I believe the buffer code is intended to give us more flexibility from rotation to rotation and while still providing a fairly predictable runic power generation.
This means our untalented lower bound is 4 RP/s, and the upper bound is 6RP/s. (RP/s = Runic Power per Second)

Talents
There are four talents that effect runic power generation: Butchery, Scent of Blood, Chill of the Grave and, Dirge.

Butchery
Gives us an additional .2/.4 RP/s, the secondary effect is hard to model for obvious reasons so we will ignore it for the time being because against raid bosses and even most arena environments this effect will be largely unimportant.
Scent of Blood
Gives us an additional .25/.5/.75 RP/s this is also hard to surely model since it has an cooldown and requires you to be hit, but for maximum study purposes we'll assume that it procs exactly every 20 seconds.
Dirge
Gives us an additional .5/1 RP/s. A way to view this and Chill of the Grave is that it gives you additional RP when you use Unholy and Frost runes respectively.
Chill of the Grave
Gives us an additional .5/1 RP/s. The only note here is that Death Strike is not included in this talent so a frost build using Death strike hampers it's RP generation.
Since all of these talents can be acquired in the same build we can generate an upper bound for RP/s with talents:
6+1+1+.75+.4= 9.15 RP/s
Death Runes:
Can change the results from tree to tree and depending how they are used. However given that Death Runes can only be used in certain ways we can show that used appropriately they can still only generate an additional 1RP/s.
Using this we can generate a greatest upper bound on RP/s:
6+1+1+1+.75+.4= 10.15 RP/s

Max RP/s for Tree centric talent builds without Death Runes:

Spec RP/s
Blood 7.15 RP/s
Frost 7 RP/s
Unholy 7 RP/s

Max RP/s for Tree centric talent builds with Death Runes:

Spec RP/s
Blood 7.15 RP/s
Frost 8 RP/s
Unholy 8 RP/s

Most rotations will fall into the 5.5 and 6.5 RP/s range.

While you'll find a number of "cookie-cutter" or standard rotations here in this thread for each spec, it's important to keep in mind that these rotations are theoretical-- they're what most people find to be the best for a fight under ideal conditions (i.e., Patchwerk-type dps tests). The key to maximizing your dps as a Death Knight is understanding what contributes most significantly to your dps, and what priorities you should follow when your circumstances deviate from the ideal. Whether it's a mobile encounter, or you miss an attack, or you need to refresh Horn of Winter, or your timing just gets off over the duration of a fight-- it will happen. Here's a suggested priority list for single target dps:
[1] Don't die.
[2] Keep your diseases (Blood Plague, Frost Fever) up 100% of the time. These boost your primary damage attacks significantly, and add a non-trivial amount to your dps themselves. Use a mod to track their remaining time (I use Elkano's Buff Bars, but there are lots of mods that can accomplish the same thing).
[3] Use your highest damage-per-rune attack as much as possible, whenever it is available. Blood: Heart Strike, Frost 2h: Obliterate, Unholy: Scourge Strike.
[4] Spend your runic power before it hits the maximum. There's a common misconception that runic power is a secondary resource to runes. Your core RP abilities (Death Coil, Frost Strike, Unholy Blight) all do significant amounts of damage, and it's just as worthwhile to use an available global cooldown on one of these abilities as on a rune ability. Managing these can be tricky, especially in Blood spec when you have Sudden Doom procs to contend with also. Use the rune latency coding to your advantage-- there's an extra GCD in there after a rune becomes available (see: Rune Mechanics). When in doubt: as long as you are still not violating any of the previous three rules, dumping runic power will maximize your dps.
[5] Use your spec's secondary strikes, talented appropriately, to convert off-spec runes into Death Runes. (Blood: Obliterate, Frost and Unholy: Blood Strike). This is in support of rule #3.
[6] Use your dps cooldowns appropriately to maximize their uptime. Know your rotations and how long the fight is, and judge accordingly. Note that cooldown use is an exception to rule #4: You'll want maximum runic power before using Gargoyle or Dancing Rune Weapon, for example.
[7] Do anything necessary to increase your raid's dps. While seeing big numbers fly by is fun, we have some abilities that may benefit the raid's overall damage more than a selfish buff to ourselves. Remember, the boss falling down is the ultimate goal. Use your discretion as to who in your raid might benefit most from Hysteria, a pure physical damage boost. Similarly, see the explanation of how Unholy Aura can benefit the raid significantly. If you're in charge of providing Abomination's Might (AP raid buff) or Imp. Icy Talons (haste raid buff), make sure they stay up.

5.1 Presences

Presences are the Death Knight equivalent to a Warrior's Stances. There are three Presences total.
Blood Presence: Commonly accepted as the Presence you will be DPSing in.
Blood Presence just flat increases the damage from all your abilities by 15% whilst providing you with selfhealing.

Frost Presence: Your tanking Presence.
You can swap to this when you pull aggro or when you need to offtank, but make sure to not try and DPS in this Presence as the Threat modifier is quite big.

Unholy Presence: This Presence is commonly accepted as not being so useful, for anything but PvP.
Due to the fact this Presence grants Haste rather than the Damage % increase that Blood Presence grants it performs significantly worse. Haste is one of the worst Stats for a Death Knight.
Unholy Presence also lowers your GCD by 0.5 seconds, which is not all that bad but in a lot of specs you will not be bound by GCDs, but by Rune Regeneration time so again it loses some of it usefulness.

On a side note, there are several talents that will look like they increase the effect of each specific Presence at first glance (and while that was true in the early stages of beta) but they are not linked to any Presence and are just like a Paladin's aura. Said Talents are Blood Aura, Frost Aura and Unholy Aura