Blood Death Knight Tank Mythic+ Tips - Dragonflight 10.2.7 (2024)

Last updated on May 07, 2024 at 11:20 by Mandl and Panthea36 comments

Blood Death Knights have seen a very positive set of changes in Dragonflight,both in terms of baseline changes and in the massively increased freedom anddepth of expression that the new talent trees brought to the game. With somepretty amazing opportunities to pick utility that was either unavailable to uspreviously ( Blinding Sleet), belonging to other specs( Empower Rune Weapon) or preserving some of the most impactful covenantability available in Shadowlands ( Abomination Limb), there is noshortage of appreciation for what the developers have done.

In addition to this, the talent trees feature a massive amount of defensiveand offensive gains, ranging from a 12.5% cost reduction to Death Striketo a potential (and very easy pick) 20-second cooldown reduction to Anti-Magic Shell - which comes in super handy in Dragonflightdungeons, as there is no shortage of magic tankbusters and immunable debuffs!

Unfortunately, it is not all roses. Dragonflight Season 4 comes with no changesto the previous, threatening group affixes that we have no answer to, the mostimpactful being Afflicted. And, much to the chagrin of all othertanks, two of the dungeons in the set available for Season 4 contain pulls that aretrivialized with Sigil of Silence. Fortunately, it is a significantly lowerprevalence than in Season 3, but it is still something to be aware of.

If you want to learn more about Mythic+ during Dragonflight in generalor Blood's place in the overall rankings, see our overviews below.

Your rotation in Mythic+ is unchanged from the rotation provided on our Blood Death Knight Rotation page. From apractical perspective, the biggest difference is the ability to carry overresources between pulls.

Bone Shield management gets a major shake-up in terms of prioritiesand tricks you can do to reduce the number of runes you spend on Bone Shieldgenerators to a minimum:

• Before the key starts, you can use Abomination Limb and Empower Rune Weapon (since you have them macroed together). The chargesof Bone Shield accumulated do not get removed by the instance bubble,and as a result, this allows you to go into the very first pull of anydungeon with 9 charges of Bone Shield and a modicum of Runic Power
• As a pull is about to end, cast Marrowrend on an enemy. This willrefresh Bone Shield to its original 30-second duration, and give youthree charges. If you have followed the rest of this guide, this guaranteesan easy start to the next pull.
• Finally, as a pack is about to die, save some runic power. Whileyour leftover Runic Power decays if you are not in combat, the decay rate isvery slow. Doing this - ideally saving around 50 Runic Power - allows you tohave a Death Strike in the tank to be used while gathering the nextpull!

• Grips are a thematic core of Blood Death Knight utility and can be usedfor much more than just relocating enemies. A very large number of enemy castsin dungeons can be canceled by forced movement - we call this soft-looking. As Death's Echo is a baseline talent, and Abomination Limb is a defacto pick in Mythic+, you are guaranteed to be able to leverage 2 charges of Death Grip and Abomination Limb to do so!
  We will attempt to keep a list of all spells that can be soft-locked in keys,alongwith whether they recast or get put on cooldown when they are interrupted thisway.
• Gorefiend's Grasp is a signature Blood Death Knight ability, althoughitis now significantly less appealing than before due to it costing a talentpoint.On a 2-minute cooldown and costing a full GCD, it will immediatelypull all enemies within 15 yards of the target together.You will typically want to plan ahead of time where in a given dungeon you willwant to use it. Gorefiend's Grasp is particularly strong for bringingloosely spread casters together to cleave, interrupting multiple dangerouschannels or casts simultaneously, and positioning multiple high-prioritytargets together.
• Returning with Dragonflight is one of three AoE disorientsin the game: Blinding Sleet. This is on its own DR chain and allowsyou to disorient all enemies in front of you in a 12-yard cone every minute.This is extremely powerful for Mythic+, particularly asa lot of casters cannot be kicked but can be disoriented. It is an easyand perfectly justifiable default pick on the talent tree.
• Mind Freeze is the Death Knight interrupt ability. It operatesidentically to other melee interrupts, such as Kick and Pummel, except that it has a 15-yard range. This allows DeathKnights to interrupt casts when enemies are standing in zones that other meleecannot reach, helping to reposition them in a safer location.
• Asphyxiate is a 4-second, single-target stun on a 45-secondcooldown. This is particularly useful for preventing uninterruptible casts orpreventing enemies with movement abilities or that are coded to flee at lowhealth from repositioning. As with Death Grip, be aware that enemiesthat are immune to stun effects will not be interrupted by Asphyxiate.
• Death and Decay, when paired with the Grip of the Deadtalent becomes a highly effective tool for starting to kite as you head to thenext pack. As with Bone Shield, be sure that Death and Decay isavailable to use when you are ready to move on to the next pack.
• Raise Ally is the Death Knight combat resurrection spell. Whilein a raid environment, you would not normally want to rely on the tank forcombat resurrection, in a Mythic+ dungeon you may be the only player to bringthis utility. Additionally, the instant-cast nature of Raise Ally will make itpreferable to other combat resurrections in some circ*mstances, even consideringthe cost of Runic Power. If you need to resurrect an ally, be sure to considerboth timing and positioning — avoid placing the newly resurrected playerin the path of a dangerous boss cleave or immediately before a dungeon-widedamage event.
• The last and newest staple in our toolkit, Anti-Magic Zone, providesDeath Knights with a way to help the group survive large bursts of magicdamage, something which is very frequent in the new Dragonflight dungeons.Its range and duration are limited but can be increased if necessarywith a Conduit.

Below you will find more granular talent strings to import for each dungeon. Thesepick certain niche utility talents in order to benefit your group:

• Ruby Life Pools - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJiISERiIhgkkEJAAAAAQikkDERSTISAAAhkkEAAAA
• Brackenhide Hollow - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• The Nokhud Offensive - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0SEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• Halls of Infusion - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJiISERiIhgkkEJAAAAAQikkDERSTISAAAhkkEAAAA
• Neltharus - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• The Azure Vault - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• Uldaman - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA
• Algeth'ar Academy - BoPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACJJCJJi0iEBJiECSSSkAAAAAAJSSOQEJNhIBAAESSSAAAAA

If you prefer a generic talent loadout, the following build provides all of the core talents,and skips the niche utility in favor of a couple of quality of life for yourself.Be sure to use the 'Copy Export String' to import our build ingame!

On the class tree, we opted to pick up Anti-Magic Barrier and Blinding Sleet as default utility points.Our main choices of core talents are unchanged from the default AoE talent build; Abomination Limb and Empower Rune Weapon are much more appealingchoices for Mythic+, especially as the former brings in massive utility on top of justdamage.

On the class tree, on most of the builds, wherever we had additional points,all our builds feature Grip of the Dead. This isa fantastic value proposition, mainly because it can also be used easilystep out of range of tankbusters on slowable enemies, even if they can movewhile casting. This is significantly more valuable than picking Asphyxiate, particularly as we have Blinding Sleet andtwo charges of Death Grip.

We have detailed all of the talent rows on the talents page; as such, wewill only summarize the important differences in Mythic+. For more detailedinfo, the talents section is linked below:

Certain Mythic+ affixes will lead to significant differences in dungeonroute and tempo. As a Blood Death Knight, this knowledge issomething you will have to anticipate and manage for your group. We recommendpaying particular attention to the following:

• Bolstering causes all Hostile enemies in combat togain a stacking 20% damage buff every time a nearby enemy dies, for 20 seconds.Practically, this means that any pulls with a large number of low-health enemieswill cause the other enemies to suddenly deal significantly more damage - to you,and to your group. Review your route to make sure that your group can survive thissudden increase in group damage from mechanics happening while Bolsteringis up - and don't get caught out by getting complacent at the end of pulls!
• Bursting might look like a healer affix at first, but in reality,as a tank, you can make a massive difference with routing. Bursting's tick period doesnot reset when it is refreshed, and as a result, if it stacks all at once,your group can very easily survive 10+ stacks. On the other hand, a slow ramp from2 to 6 stacks, extending within the last 0.5s every time, tends to kill any group.Pull to leverage this.

As playing around these affixes applies to more than justBlood Death Knight, feel free to consult our larger guides about Mythic+ andits affixes below. Within are also discussions about changes to how loot isacquired, changes to existing affixes, and even a few other new surprises.

Mythic+ is about more than picking the right talents and knowing the basicsof your specialization, however. In the week following the launch of Season 4,when we have had a chance to verify that none of the encounter cast sequencing haschanged, we will publish detailed cooldown plans here. Stay tuned!