World of Warcraft Death Knight Talent Tree Overview

Death Knights are not one of the easiest classes to grasp for the veteran World of Warcraft player, but that has more to do with the unique mechanics of the class.  While there are many articles that focus on the best builds for the class, that will not be the focus of this article.  Instead, this article will just be a description of each talent tree and what it is best suited for.   The best players experiment with talent builds or at least follow the builds of other players who have.  With that said, the three talent trees available to the death knight are blood, frost, and unholy.

Group Roles of the Death Knight

Unlike the class’s holy counterpart, the paladin, the death knight can only fill the roles of tank or damage per second.  A DPS death knight may fill the role as a raid or group off tank upon occasion.  Knowing when to do this can save a group from a wipe and save a grateful shaman on of his or her ankhs.  All of the trees are capable of tanking or filling the dps role, but dps builds are more commonly used for leveling.  Many players will switch to the tank roles later.

The Blood Branch of the Death Knight Talent Tree

As the name implies, the abilities of this tree are used to slowly drain the opponents life force.   This tree focuses on improving the innate damage over time abilities of the class.  It can offer high damage per seconds rating, but its kill time for most builds tends to be slightly slower than that of the other trees.

The Unholy Branch

This branch is considered  to be the primary branch for death knights that want to fulfill the group and raid role of tanking.  Their leveling will not quite be as easy as that of the protection paladin, but their abilities allow them to build up rune power faster and keep more aggro, if the player decides to build purely on the unholy branch.

The Frost Branch

Some death knights are seldom seen without their icy skeleton pet.  While this does not do as much as the hunter's constant companion or the warlock's controlled demons, it does add to the damage per second rating of the group, and the frost branch specializes in adding to the death knight's overall damage by dealing direct icy blasts on the target.

Straight Specializations in World of Warcraft

These characters are not as common as they once were.   As the game has matured, it has become more common for people to split the talent trees for a suitable goal.  What each character tries to do is somewhat different, but cookie cutter builds based on what is most effective become common.  Talent calculators can help a World of Warcraft player build his character, but they do not tell you the overall effectiveness.  Other players are an invaluable resource for this kind of information.  Some of them have even posted their builds on their own web sites.