[BFA - OLD] Basic Blood DK Gameplay Tips/Concepts

Here is a loose collection of tips and concepts that I think are important to any DK starting into m+ or anyone who is new to Blood DK. Some of this is already covered in the Icy Veins guide, but I'm putting the concepts that I think are valuable and important here anyways.


Icy Veins has a solid list of abilities you can counter with the Blood DK tookit on their m+ section. I recommend becoming as familiar with this list as you can.

Set up a proper UI For managing your resources. Management of Runes, Runic Power, Blood Boil, and Bone Shield is the vast majority of good Blood DK gameplay. Make sure your UI is set up to track these easily, so you can make optimal decisions during intense situations. Ensure you are keeping your Bone Shield refreshed before traveling long distances, or if it is soon to expire before engaging the next pull.

Make sure to be using a charge of Blood Boil before you Death Strike during large AOE pulls. This will increase your healing done by a large amount via the Hemostasis talent. This is an important habit to build when it comes to increasing survival.

Always be prepared for unplanned spikes in damage. Think about the most amount of damage you might receive in the next couple of seconds, and try your best to have enough resources to account for that level of damage. Always try to use downtime and a lucky parry/dodge to continue generating resource to stay "ahead" of your damage forecast. If you think you are falling "behind" on this damage prediction, call for a healer cooldown early or ask them to start healing you with maximum throughput until you have stabilized yourself.

If you need to start a trash pull without any boneshield, tell your dps to wait one second for you to marrowrend first, and then blood boil second. One of the scariest parts of a pull is the very start, when everything hits us at the same time. Making sure to get Bone Shield up fast is super important here. That is just how our class works as Blood, and your DPS need to understand that waiting 1 GCD is crucial to having a clean pull. Unfortunately people in PUGs can be rude and impatient, so you may just have to Blood Boil first so they don't kill themselves, then Marrowrend after. In an organized group, players will respect the needs of your spec, and you should Marrowrend first every time if you have no Bone Shield.

Vampiric Blood is truly amazing and versatile when it comes to our defensive toolkit. It is a fairly short cooldown, and should be used often, both proactive and reactively. Vampiric Blood is my first pick for unplanned health spikes when I have no runic power. I also use it when I know I will be taking large amounts of damage with no resource to heal up. Or just to ease the damage intake on large pulls, in the opener. VB + Abyssal Healing Potion / Healthstone will absolutely save you in a pinch, so make sure to use that combination as needed.

Let your healer heal you! As long as you are managing your resources and are sitting on enough RP to heal through a large spike in damage, then it is good practice to keep generating resource and letting your healer heal you some, instead of immediately spending RP. Make sure you are consistent when you heal, so that you and your healer can build some quick synergy. The more frequently you can safely delay death strikes, the stronger your survival will be. You will be able to save so much more RP for deadly damage spikes. This may take time to learn when you can and cannot do this, since some trash packs are too lethal to let yourself stay low hp, and some others are completely fine to do this with.

Learn where you can abuse Anti-Magic Shell. There are many spells throughout dungeons that you can reduce or negate entirely. You can use it simply to reduce damage intake, immune a debuff, or just to generate more runic power.

AMS is also very good at dealing with void emissaries. If you use AMS on the 2nd cast, you will reset your debuff so you can stay in longer. You can also use AMS if you are taking large amounts of damage and are scared of dying to the cast + other damage happening at the same time.

When kiting large pulls, a good tactic is to Death Grip the least threatening enemy out of the group, to you, and start generating more resource with it until the rest of the group catches up to you. If you have a strong and consistent slow, like an Assassination Rogue, you can grip one forward and keep it forward to significantly reduce damage intake while keeping everything grouped up just out of melee range of yourself as you kite.


Control Undead has pretty solid use in a couple of dungeons. Make sure to attack an enemy before you take it though, just in case it dies while controlled. If it does not get attacked, you may not receive credit for it dying.

>> Atal'Dazar - You can control the Honor Guards and use them to do damage, kill them later, or leave them behind entirely, if you are a Night Elf and can drop combat.

>> King's Rest - Taking a Beastmaster will allow you to do a lot of extra damage. Make sure to turn off Deadeye shot autocast though
You can also take an enemy, then turn off all the autocast abilities, and set it to attack a berserker. If nobody else is close, it will use severing blade on your Control Undead pet. As long as you hit it with some damaging ability, you can use the berserker to kill it and gain %.

>> The Underrot - Taking a Deathspeaker is sometimes worth doing, in order to make a pull less intense. An example of this is when I pull a Deathspeaker + Caster patrol and combine it with the Deathspeaker + skeleton pack. Using Control Undead on one of the Deathspeakers until both casters are dead makes this combo much easier to deal with. Then you can release the 2nd Deathspeaker later and kill it with the remaining skeletons. There isn't really anything, that I know of, that is worth keeping for increasing your damage done.