We break down all the reasons you should consider playing Blood Death Knight in Patch 10.1 and even throw in a few reasons of why you might not. From all the changes since launch to the new tier set bonuses coming in 10.1, join us as we explore Dragonflight Season 2 Blood DK!
Why You Should Play a Spec in Dragonflight Season 2 Series
Feral Druid
Preservation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Arcane Mage
Shadow Priest
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Protection Warrior
Dragonflight Season 2 Death Knight Tier Set
Why You Should Play Blood Death Knight in Dragonflight Season 2 (and Why You Shouldn’t)
Blood Death Knight has kept its identity throughout all expansions since Legion, for good and for bad – the spec’s toolkit has seen very few changes, and mechanically, almost everything has been preserved. In many ways, it feels like an old car: trustworthy, reliable, but with that unmistakable scent of age around some parts of the kit that likely could do with an overhaul.
Possibly the biggest change in Dragonflight was the addition of talents that emphasize receiving auto-attack damage: Shattering Bone and Insatiable Blade require the user to get hit to gain a significant amount of throughput.
| Why You Should | Why You Shouldn’t |
Why You Should Play Blood Death Knight in Dragonflight Season 2
Blood Death Knight Utility for Dragonflight
Blood Death Knights have excelled at controlling enemies in Season 1, and Season 2 should be no different. Our toolkit revolves around impactful utility to remove mechanics from pulls, and whilst a significantly higher number of enemies are marked as CC immune (and thus ungrippable) in Season 2 dungeons, there are still plenty of juicy targets to abuse.
As a reminder, these are the cool things blood death knights were able to do:
- Death Grip: Works as a grip, a taunt, a way to move enemies mid-cast so their cast stops (and often goes on cooldown!). To name one of the best examples of this from Season 1, a skilled death knight could prevent Nokhud Warspear from ever landing a Swift Stab on anybody in the group. Season 2 brings a lot of other opportunities to take advantage of this. To name a single example, Rotten Bile can be permanently reset on Fetid Maggot (Underrot).
- Blinding Sleet: A point-blank AoE disorient followed by a decently strong snare on a 1 min cooldown. This also costs no resources, and does not immediately break on damage.
- Anti-Magic Zone: Have you ever wanted to help your team take less magic damage for a group nuke that does not forbid the group from standing within 8yds of each other? Say no more! If you pick it, you can also use it as a 20% magic damage reduction cooldown for yourself, too!
- Death’s Advance, Lichborne, Anti-Magic Shell: I’ve lost count of the number of abilities we were able to cheese with Anti-Magic Shell alone. The most impactful use was on Overgrown Ancient (to guarantee 7 seconds of immunity to poison stacks from Lashers), but there were plenty of other high-value casts we could straight up immune. This also allows us to ignore mechanics that place immediate DoT debuffs on targets (Wise Mari’s beam being the most iconic example), and there’s plenty of both in Season 2!
- We also bring a combat ress, which isn’t the most interesting thing to have, but certainly helps
All of these impactful spells are either free, or cost very little due to being either baseline, or on the class tree. This means that all death knights should be able to easily pick these up if needed.
Self-Sustain Machine
A Blood Death Knight played by an expert player is a force to be reckoned with, both in the value they bring to the group, but also in terms of their own independence and agency on their survival. This has been a staple of the spec almost since its inception, and continues to be so.
Pick Up and Get Going
The barriers to entry when it comes to swapping over to Blood are very low. Blood Death Knights do not require or depend on any specific piece of gear to be relevant (although Ashkandur, Fall of the Brotherhood does look very juicy), and do not need to prioritize or avoid any specific secondary stats or items. In terms of preparation, it is probably the lowest barrier to entry of any tank.
Our new tier set for Season 2 is also largely passive, and while strong enough to warrant getting it, it is not strong enough to feel naked without it. This is in stark contrast to a couple of other contenders.
Why You Shouldn’t Play Blood Death Knight in Dragonflight Season 2
There are very few reasons not to play a blood death knight in Season 2. The biggest one of those is, unfortunately, balance-related peer pressure.
Mistakes Aren’t Obvious
This has been the biggest issue plaguing Blood Death Knights since Legion, and in Season 2, this gets even worse, particularly for players used to getting a plethora of free runes from our current tier set.
Rotational and cooldown-oriented mistakes on Blood Death Knight tend to become obvious a significant while later. Possibly the best example of this, albeit very simple, is the feeling of “running out of resources” – typically attributed to underusing Dancing Rune Weapon, overusing Marrowrend, capping runes or RP. All of these have a long-lasting effect into the pull, but are not immediately obvious to the player, and tend to only be obvious when going over the log of an encounter or dungeon. Don’t forget to log your runs!
Additionally, a lot of interactions with enemy mechanics aren’t obvious. One of the most obvious examples was the ability to entirely remove Severing Slash as a mechanic from Algeth’ar Academy, or Haunting Gaze from Temple of the Jade Serpent. It is significantly easier for a new player to figure out that you can stun a cast, than it is for a new death knight to figure out what can be reset with Death Grip, and more importantly, what does not re-cast after it.
To this end, this season’s guides will include a list of all these casts.
Not a Protection Paladin
I despise having to point at the elephant in the room. Unfortunately, at this point, it needs to be said: one tank spec is significantly further ahead than the rest, and has been for the entirety of Season 1. This is due to a volatile combination on group-saving utility, borderline unlimited cheese potential on some mechanics, all while dealing superior damage inside and outside cooldowns and having no real weakness.
Stark tank balance failures like these have a ripple effect on the community, even in content where the relative impact is small, such as something as trivial as weekly keys. And, unfortunately, the bigger the gap on the high end, the wider the chasm at lower levels due to group peer pressure.
Unless anything gets done from a balancing perspective, the pressure to reroll or be passed on for content as people inevitably wait for the “meta” tank to show up in the list of applicants will only get worse in Season 2. Unlike Season 1, the new dungeon set features a significantly higher focus on interrupts (something that can be trivialized with Avenger’s Shield and Divine Toll), Disease effects and a number of extremely dangerous situations that can be trivialized with Blessing of Protection or Blessing of Spellwarding.
Heck, an entire new affix (Afflicted) gets literally trivialized by having a Protection Paladin in group, whereas as Blood Death Knights, all we can do is watch as our team struggles – we cannot heal or dispel the souls, and so, we’re stuck watching, like passengers in a car about to crash.
If this were not enough, any utility we can bring is superseded:
This is in addition to being able to do the kind of party assist that led to no-healer keys in Season 1, and the recent adjustments in terms of game mechanics were not nearly enough to prevent this from happening again.
In addition to this, the changes coming in 10.1 regarding interrupt and CC duration only serve to bring the value of Avenger’s Shield up, as most specs with relatively freely available interrupts and CC see a 25% to 33% duration nerf to spell lockout effects on them, all this while the silence effect on Avenger’s Shield is unchanged and its chance to proc is increased significantly through the new 4-piece bonus.
All of this toolkit gets brought at essentially no cost: Protection paladin does more damage in the hands of a capable player, is tankier (Sentinel is absolutely insane, along with the baseline kit), and has no effective cooldown- or mechanics-based weakness. Unlike previous expansions, there is effectively no downside, and this extreme utility bloat does not come at a cost in any way – a stark contrast to the Guardian Druids, Brewmasters or Blood Death Knights of this world, and something that was extremely quickly adjusted for Protection Warriors in Season 1.
It’s not all doom and gloom since Blood is fully viable, and will be a perfectly capable tank in Season 2 (and has absolutely unhinged mechanical cheese potential in Aberrus). It’s just… man, I despise peer pressure that stems from spec balance failures.
About the Authors
This guide has been written by Panthea, who raids in Catalyst (Tarren Mill-EU) and Mandl (Mandl#0001 on Discord). They are both tank multiclassers and Useful Minions for the Acherus Death Knight community, where they answer questions regarding death knights and discuss class and encounter strategies.
For more information on playing Blood Death Knight, please see our class guide updated for Dragonflight:
Blood Death Knight Guide
