How to win Blood Death Knight Vs. Arcane Mage

This guide is a short excerpt from http://www.wowtalentspecs.com/Bestblooddeathknightpvpguide.html :

Let me start by saying that I have a lot of experience in world of warcraft and considered myself one of the best in stormstrike until I retired a few months ago. I play every now and then just for kicks but devote most of my time sharing tips and tricks with others. I have played every class at 80 and know probably every trick there is to know. You don't need the best gear, or enchants, and epic gems to win. You just need to be calm, and follow my guide.

As a blood death knight there are some classes you love to see running by themselves, and there are some that you avoid. All death knights hate two things, Shamans and other Death Knights. You probably hate fighting other death knights the most, but after this, maybe you will have a change in heart.

First of all let me recommend a deep blood build with dancing rune weapon and dip into frost for lichborne and annihilation. If you need specific builds, go to my website http://www.wowtalentspecs.com . This guide is based on a build similar to this with rune tap, hysteria, vampiric blood, lichborne, and dancing rune weapon.  You also need to learn to key bind if you are not already. This is a huge help and cuts down on the time your eyes are off the enemy.

I will go through a lot of different scenarios with you. Along the way I will throw in some tips you may have never saw before and some strategies that I know you have never used.

Arcane mages are for sure a tough fight for your blood death knight. With AB and slow, you will be feeling the pain really fast. You have to make good use of COI and strangulate to win this. Mages have as much utility and death knight but can't heal. You need to force burst fast and time you strangulates and mind freezes perfectly.

This can either be a very quick fight, or an extremely long figh, depending on how good you timing is. You have to worry about being kited and slowed. Also AB hits hard and as blood you really don't have that much magic mitigation. You want to be in unholy presense untill you get kited and the go to frost presense. You also want to remember that you have some hard hitting ranged specials with IT and DC.

Start this battle with a death grip, strangulate, and your normal rotation. It is not time to blow you DRW macro just yet. You should do some substantial damage and the mage will blink when the silence is off. You will get slowed and kited. This is when you need to make use of AMS. This will get you to the mage after you COI him. You should close the gap quick and now be in melee.

After you are in melee, you need to keep COI on every 5 seconds. After the second blink you death grip should be up. First you need to heal up with a rune tap, then cast MoB on the mage. After you do this, death grip, COI and:

/cast empowered rune weapon

/cast hysteria

/use (insert your trinket)

/cast dancing rune weapon

This will give you the burst you need to break the mage down and the mage will not have blink. With this hitting hard and hopefully a few sudden doom procs. They mage may be done for right now. Usually this is where the mage ice blocks. You just have to wait this out, i usually pop a quick bandage just so he gets to fight me full health.

When he comes out of ice block he will blink if you are close so get half way between him and where he would be if he blinked. Now when ice block breaks, charge him and he will blink behind you. You need to COI him and trinket out of slow which will be on you right now. Keep COI on him as much as you can and if you get a pvp glove proc, gap the COI closer to lock him down even more.

By this time, the mage should be 50% or less depending on how much damage you got in before the ice block. If he is really low, then just use a ranged to finish him off. If not then use:

#showtooltip Death Coil
/cast Lichborne
/target
/cast Death Coil
/targetlasttarget
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Use this to heal yourself up while keeping the mage locked down or trying to run him down.  I would suggest using vampiric blood around now also. Mages have great controlled burst and will wait till you are low to surprise burst you down. You do not want to get to this point. IBF is also a great tool if you find yourself kited.

Once you run the mage down with COI and death grip, all you should have to do is finish him off. You heart strikes hit very hard on cloth and i have saw 10 OB on a mage before. Many mages die to fast to Ice block during DRW but i would not count on it.

Here are some counters for mage strats:

1) POM.

This is a great controlled burst tool and you have to watch this. If you are paying attention, you will see indications of this but most do not buff it till they use it. The only real counter to this is to be ready to rune tap after a hard hitting POM special or time AMS perfect for this.

2) Blink.

You have death grip, a great snare, AMS, and triket. You will find yourself getting over this hup fast if you use COI and one of the others. Make sure you dont blow all the cooldowns at once.

3) Slow.

This is a great move for pvp. You need to keep them in melee and in COI so this doesnt break the fight. A trinket and AMS will save you twice, and death grip / COI will counter this another time.

4)Ice block.

This is just a delay and you have more short cooldowns that he does. Pop a bandage and wait for rune tap and strangulate to cool down more. This is just him delaying his death and getting one last chance to try to kite you. Death grip, COI and you will win this one at full health.

When fighting an arcane mage, remember that you can get burst down quickly. You need to watch your health and use your healing utilities fast starting with rune tap so the cooldown refreshes at least once during the fight. You also need to keep COI on the mage to lock him down a lot. With the glove bonus procing at 30%, you should be able to chain lock him to the ground. Your last task is to land 2 or 3 specials while in DRW. Ive saw 8k HS and 10k OB on mages and it doesnt take many of those to shorten the battle. Remember that death coil is there and dont cap your RP.

-Brandon C. ; Aka. darksun22