Best Death Knight Leveling Spec
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In this guide, you will find out the best Death Knight leveling spec. Picking the right talents is crucial to leveling up quickly in World of Warcraft. In this article, I will be revealing the best overall spec as well as breaking down where to put your talent points on a level-by-level basis.

With the coming of Cataclysm, I feel that Frost is the best leveling spec. You can go either Dual Wield or use a Two-Hander, both seem to be equally effective and only will make minor changes in game-play.

I prefer Frost spec for leveling purposes, but any build can work end-game. Blood is the new tanking tree, so for leveling up, it is definitely not the tree you want to choose. Unholy does solid damage as well, but it lacks the convenience factor. It relies too much on building diseases and pets, both which tend not to matter much when fighting quest mobs (better for raiding and PvP).

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Additionally, Howling Blast is a nice spell in Cataclysm and gives Frost DKs a viable area of effect (AoE) attack, which makes leveling inordinately faster.

With that said, below you will find an overview of the Best Death Knight leveling spec. Below that, you will find the level-by-level breakdown of where to place your points.

Best Death Knight Leveling Spec Overview
7 Blood | 31 Frost | 3 Unholy

Frost Talents (main):

2/2 Icy Reach
3/3 Runic Power Mastery (two-hand only) OR 3/3 Nerves of Cold Steel (dual wield)
3/3 Annihilation
2/2 On a Pale Horse
2/2 Merciless Combat
2/2 Chill of the Grave
3/3 Killing Machine
1/1 Pillar of Frost
3/3 Rime
1/1 Improved Icy Talons
2/2 Brittle Bones
1/1 Hungering Cold
2/2 Improved Frost Presence
3/3 Might of the Frozen Wastes (two-hand only) or 3/3 Threat of Thassarian (dual-wield only)
1/1 Howling Blast

Blood Talents:

2/2 Butchery
3/3 Bladed Armor
2/2 improved Blood Tap

Unholy Talents:

3/3 Epidemic

As you can see, the only talents we truly skip in Frost are Licheborne, Endless Winter, and Chilblains. These are all PvP talents and you can pick them up later once you hit the level cap. The only other talents skipped are the Dual-Wield or Two-Hand talents. Naturally, you will pick up 2-hand talents if you are using a two-hand weapon, and the dual-wield talents if you chose to dual-wield.

Below is the level-by-level breakdown of the best Death Knight leveling spec.

WoW Death Knight Leveling Spec

Levels 10-17

2/2 Icy Reach
3/3 Runic Power Mastery (only if you chose to use a two-hand weapon)
3/3 Nerves of Cold Steel (if you chose to dual wield)

Icy Reach makes pulling mobs a lot easier, and is a pretty powerful spell when fully specced. Note that you have to pick between Runic Power Mastery and Nerves of Cold Steel, depending whether or not you want to dual wield or use a two-hand weapon. Both approaches are effective, it is truly personal preference.

Levels 19-27

3/3 Annihilation
2/2 On a Pale Horse

Annihilation is makes Obliterate worth using, plain and simple. On a Pale Horse significantly improve travel time and makes questing a good bit faster.

Lichborne and Endless Winter are trivial talents while leveling up and not worth speccing into.

Levels 29-37

3/3 Killing Machine
2/2 Merciless Combat

Killing Machine is amazing and makes Frost Strike do a ridiculous amount of damage. Merciless Combat increases damage to targets that are 1/3 dead. It increases your total damage dealt by about 4% for just 2 talent points, so it is a good pick.

Levels 39-47

1/1 Pillar of Frost
1/1 Improved Icy Talons
3/3 Rime

The fourth tier of Frost is loaded with good talents. All of these are big damage boosters and we will be picking them all up with future talent points, so no need to fret here. Improved Icy Talons is amazing, giving you 15% melee haste and providing a nice damage boost for just a single talent point.

Levels 49-57

1/1 Hungering Cold
2/2 Improved Frost Presence
2/2 Brittle Bones

Hungering Cold is the Death Knight's only true crowd-control ability, and you will find this can really help deal with packs of monsters. Improved Frost Presence is an outright extra 5% damage, and Brittle Bones is another good damage modifier.

Levels 59-69

3/3 Might of the Frozen Wastes (if using a two-hand weapon)
3/3 Threat of Thassarian (if dual-wielding)
2/2 Chill of the Grave
1/1 Howling Blast

In this tier, you have to choose between Might of the Frozen Wastes and Threat of Thassarian depending on whether you are using one or two weapons. Chill of the Grave is a very average talent, but there is nowhere else to place the points.

Howling Blast is actually quite powerful now and gives the Death Knight an ability for powerful AoE attacks. This is your main attack when fighting any group of mobs and essentially replaces Icy Touch.

Levels 70-85

2/2 Butchery
3/3 Bladed Armor
2/2 Improved Blood Tap
3/3 Epidemic

Unfortunately, the final 10 talents are not very exciting for Death Knights. Epidemic is not quite what it used to be thanks to Howling Blast, which when glyphed inflicts Frost Fever. The Blood talents provide some modest DPS increases and improved Blood Tap is always nice for increasing self-healing.

Conclusion

Frost Death Knights are definitely the best Death Knight leveling spec. Armed with the information in this article, you now know exactly where to put your points so you can level up quickly and efficiently. If you want to level up even faster, check out Dugi's Leveling guide:

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