Blood Death Knight Vs. Retribution Paladin

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.

The retribution paladin may be the hardest match up to you in the game. The pally will have great armor, burst, healing, movement, cc, and locks out your lichborne and will kill your pet fast. I will honestly say that you will have to outgear or outskill the paladin. If you are not on par with the ret you are fighting, you will die. This guide can help you with the skill, but you will have to get gear yourself.

This is one of the rare fights you will fight in frost presence only. This will help your rune taps, attack power for your dots, and other scaling abilities. This will also help the damage you take from all attacks.

Buckle down now because this fight will be fast and furious to begin with. You want to blow AMS fast in this battle. Time the burst combos and pop this fast. I also pop IBF fast in this fight. The trick here is to keep your health above 75% for the first few seconds so you can rune tap during the next burst cycle.

You treat this like a holy paladin dps wise. You want to blow DRW macro fast. Ret paladins are very powerful and know it so a lot will go into the fight thinking they will train over you. Use this to your advantage and pop defense early and burst back. You will be able to burst half of them down before the bubble.

For the other half that respect you and play smart, lets continue. These pallys will bubble during your DRW which sucks, but your forced the bubble fast. While they are bubbled you can count on your pet dying and them healing up to full plus doing some damage to you.

Sometimes you can run the pally oom if you are still in the S5/t7 range. If you are S6/t7.5 and up you can forget running the pally oom.  You want to stop the paladin from running away and healing with a flash heal. You also want to time your mind freezes. Ret paladins will use FOL because they get a HOT off of it. This will make it hard for you to mind freeze, but it is very possible. You need to mind freeze any cast bar. (Really skilled rets will hearth fake so you waste mind freeze. If the pally you are fighting is this skilled then you have your work cut out.) The good thing is you know FOL is coming after a hearth. Use your strangulate right after the hearth fake so you control the tempo.

If at any time you get the pally close to dead (after the bubble) then you need to trinket any cc and COI rotation if he is trying to run. Again, you can not use lichborne on this one unless you have a full RP bar. You can lichborne and DC up then cancel lichborne if you think you have 4 seconds of free time and your bandage is on CD.

AMS will be cooled down once if the fight is normal. Use this during burst cycles if you can anticipate them. Also IBF will be cooled down again if you used it early enough. You want to rune tap every  CD that you are 75% or less. Vampiric blood will help you survive controlled burst when all cooldowns are used.

This is more of a gear/skill race then anything. You have to be close in your gear match up or the paladin will burst you down too fast. If you are way outgeared, your only chance is to blow all cooldowns and hope you can slip in and burst him down before the bubble. If an overgeared paladin gets a bubble off then you are toast so run and COI kite till you find some help.

-Brandon C. ; Aka. darksun22