Unholy Death Knight Battleground Blitz Guide (The War Within (11.0.2)) (2024)

In Battleground Blitz, Death Knight, regardless of spec, is focused ondisrupting the enemy team. This is done using Chains of Ice, Blinding Sleet,and even Strangulate can be useful.

The strengths of a Death Knight in the Battleground Blitz format arethe pressure during an extended team fight, the ability to stop healer drinksthrough walls using Epidemic, and their ability to interrupt basecaptures using pets.

Death Knight lacks mobility, so you will find yourself often playing Defenseand being in the team fight. You should not be looking to drift between nodesunless it is necessary. This role is typically reserved for moremobile classes such as Druids and Demon Hunters.

Where possible, you should ramp your damage before using crowd control on healers.However, at the beginning of a game, when you know yourwhole team have their offensive cooldowns ready; it is better for your teammatesto use their CC as Death Knight has relatively short CC.

When you are able to, it is a good idea to pressure casters such as Magesand Warlocks, as you are the best anti-caster DPS in the game. You can also lookto shutdown healers, especially immobile healers like Discipline Priests.Simply throwing Chains of Ice on the healer can make it difficultfor them to keep up with their team.

Save Death Grip for high-priority targets. For example, you can gripthe enemy flag carrier (EFC) into your team or you can grip healers to coordinate stunsand land a kill.

Death Grip is one of the primary reasons that Death Knight is useful inBattlegrounds. As mentioned, this allows you to bring high-priority targets into your team.You can even use grip to save your teammates when they are Mind Controlled if you grip thembefore the Mind Control ends.

You should also be using Anti-Magic Zone on your teammates as earlyin the fight as possible. This can be used to counteract strong offensivecooldowns such as Combustion and Avenging Wrath.

Whenever you are supporting a flag carrier that is kiting enemies, youcan continually spam Chains of Ice to prevent enemies from catching themand ensure that they are able to escape.

You have a number of defensive cooldowns which can be used to carry flags orstall at a base while waiting for help from teammates.

• Icebound Fortitude
• Anti-Magic Shell
• Anti-Magic Zone
• Lichborne (if talented into Unholy Endurance)

Death Knight does have the option to get additional self-healing by using a Death Strike and this can keep you alive for quite some time butthis does not mean you should try and tank enemies if you do not need to.

At the start of a Capture the Flag map, you should either:

1. Identify who the likely enemy flag carrier is and move to slow/crowdcontrol/kill them to delay their push to your base for as long as possible
2. Join the team fight, shutting down an enemy healer or caster as soon as possibleand getting your damage rolling

Death Knight is great at fulfilling both of these roles.

On both Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks, if you are defending your own flagcarrier, you should encourage them to take high ground as you can grip enemiesdown if your flag carrier stands near the edge.

Similarly, when attacking enemy bases, you should look to grip players offthe high ground. You can do that either to make sure that your teammates canattack the enemy flag carrier or to separate the flag carrier from theirhealers.

Generally, you will never want to pick up the flag as a Death Knight. Youhave okay defensives, but you lack mobility and will quickly become overwhelmed.The only time you will pick up the flag is when there is no one else around, and the enemy is about to capture the flag

Before a Resource Race battleground starts, you should decide with your teamwhich base you should focus on first, but generally, you will want to go for theteam fight.

Whether defending or attacking, whenever you are in Arathi Basin at LumberMill, you should try to get value from your Death Grip. Simply gripan enemy near the edge and have a teammate with a knock use it when they arein position such as Ring of Peace or Blast Wave.

Death Knight can excel at defending/attacking bases or controllingthe fight in the centre map, and during the game, you can choose whichever yourteam needs most. Usually, you will aim to join the fight in the middle as soonas possible, although if nobody on your team is going to take and defend a basewhen the Battleground starts, you should focus on that instead.

During any skirmish at mid, you want to be careful not to overextend, as it can be easy to get caught behind the enemy team and die. Thiscan set your team back significantly.

As a Death Knight, you will almost never pick up the orbs but rather focuson defending the orb. Using Chains of Ice will make it very easyfor the orb carriers to escape. You can pickup the orb in rare circ*mstanceswhere no one else is available to do so, and you are at risk of losing.

This build survives some single-target damage in favor of more cleave and AoE.Keep in mind that the standard Unholy build will work for Blitz, and there areonly minor differences. At the end of the day, the playstyle is largely the same.Your goal is to keep up your DoTs on as many targets as possible and maintain Plaguebringer with near 100% uptime.

Your default talents will be:

1. Doomburst
2. Rot and Wither
3. Life and Death

These talents might seem out of place, but Life and Deathactually provides a noticeable damage increase due to the factthat healers will be dispelling non-stop in Blitz and Battlegroundsin general.

With the damage increase to Defile, we actually see Rot and Witherproviding a sizeable healing absorb and rivals Necrotic Woundsin heavy cleave situations. With many of your globals requiring you tocontinually use Outbreak it makes your rotation much easier tomanage.

If you feel more comfortable with standard arena talents, those willwork in Blitz, as our PvP talents do not have enough impact to dictatethe outcome of a game.

1. Versatility,
2. Haste, to 20%;
3. Mastery;
4. Crit (should be avoided)

The stat priority for Death Knight is the same in Battleground Blitzto Arena. There is no benefit for going for a different gearing strategy

In Battleground Blitz, the strongest Embellished gear bonuses are Duskthread Lining which will significantly increase your versatility.

You can also play the defensive Embellishment option Captured Starlight.However, this is generally not needed on Death Knight.