Death Knight Corner: How to avoid the ‘Noob DK’ label as a DPS death knight.
Let’s face it, most of the wow population absolutely scorns at the idea of inviting a death knight into their parties or raids. There is such an abundance of terrible players in any video game, not just world of warcraft. So naturally, as irony would have it, a large portion of these terrible players flock to playing a death knight because of a few very obvious reasons. 
For one, they start off at a dominant level 50 and get awesome gear handed to them for their starting journey into Outlands. And more importantly they level almost more efficiently (even when played terribly) than any other class in the game up until you are near the level cap. This issue has turned a lot of folks away from the class entirely because everyone wishes to avoid being called a noob as much as possible.
However, the few good death knights really do rise to the top in this game, which really pays off. So this week we are going to discuss different ways to improve your general skill and knowledge of the class while part of a group scenario. If your currently playing a death knight then this will really help you avoid that noob death knight label your probably afraid of obtaining. If your just browsing then I urge you to continue reading in order to better recognize the good death knights you encounter while playing World of Warcraft.
Play Nicely With Your Group.
Not everyone is a people person, that is common knowledge. That doesn’t mean that you cannot be courteous to your group mates. I mean seriously you are a death knight, so by nature you are most likely on your group mates most hated list. They invited you and in their minds they are taking a risk even going into this instance with you. Now the thing is, you know your not a bad person to group with, you pull your weight. But by being polite and courteous to your mates from the moment you join up, you will automatically start making them feel comfortable with you being in the group. Just remember to be polite, but not annoying and most importantly – do not act like a jerk.
Protect The Clothies.
You wear plate and half a TON of defensive cool downs even if you are not tank spec. Your health pool is most likely thousands above your clothie team mates and you need to remember that. If you are in a group with a tank that is either distracted or just completely out of the loop and he is letting mobs flow past him in a terrible manner and they are bashing on your clothie and healer friends…help out for gods sake! I don’t know how many times I have seen DK’s save a wipe by death gripping a powerful melee mob, that the tanks taunt was down for, just before it gets in range of their healer. Its safe to protect your teammates, just do not burden them at the same time. Some useful tricks are to use all your abilities to their fullest. When you DG that mob away from the healer, follow it up with a Chains of Ice and start kiting it. Are you planning to pop frost presence and blood boil pulling adds because your tank just went down and you want to save a wipe in the heroic? Make sure you pop your defensive cooldowns while doing so, they will all thank you in the end for it…even the healer. DISCLAIMER: I am by NO MEANS telling you to interfere with your tanks job. All I am trying to get across to you is that you have a LARGE array of abilities open to you. Both defensive and offensive, magic and physical. USE THEM. Save your friends, but let your tank do his job.
Learn about the creatures in your instances!
The biggest advantage ANY player can have in an instance is knowing what to expect from each mob. If you go into an instance with a group and you are completely clueless as to the abilities the mobs and bosses have that effect you then you can garauntee you will screw up significantly and your group mates will be all over you for being a ‘Noob DK’. I cannot possibly sit here and list every ability mobs have throughout the instances you will encounter and even if I could I would refuse to. You need to understand and learn how to discover these for yourself. You can research boss abilities and add abilities on a number of websites even when they are only in PTR (public test realm) testing. You can also ‘estimate’ most of them just by having played the game a lot. Just remember to really do your research and not just run into every instance and expect people to carry you through. As far as DK specific things go, its quite simple once you understand it. Here are some examples:
- Does the mob/boss have an AOE magic damage attack? Use your AMS (Anti-magic shell) to absorb the damage AND give you runic power in order to boost your DPS output!
- Is there an physical damage ability that is used by the mob/boss that only effects melee isn’t on a perfectly set timer? Use your IBF (Icebound Fortitude) a couple seconds before you think he is going to do it (after all it lasts 12 seconds) in order to prevent a large chunk of the relatively unavoidable damage.
- Does the mob/boss do an aoe knockback that will effect your DPS? Place yourself in a position to where your back is against a wall so you only get knocked back a certain distance. Or even better, keep yourself at MAX melee range because a lot of these abilities only reach a range that is just shy of this.
- Does the boss do an attack that will hit the entire raid for a large amount of damage? Raise your pet and sacrifice it in order to heal yourself for 50% of your hp!
These are just some basic examples of things to look for and remember about different mobs and bosses, and also some ways to use your DK specific abilities to help prevent or lessen their effects.
Follow instructions!
It is truly impossible for you to know EVERYTHING about every instance you run. It is good to be informed but there will be times people will know more than you. LISTEN TO THEM. Follow instructions that are given to you. Don’t worry about who is on top of the DPS meter. DPS your correct targets, avoid the abilities you are told to avoid and no one will have an issue with you.
Conclusion(s)
If you’ve read through this article you can clearly see you thing, its not hard to keep yourself above the noob death knights of WoW. Yes, there are a lot of them. Yes, you will without a doubt run into them. However, the only reason they fail so hard is because they lack the drive to discover things about their class through the internet and conversations with other competent death knights. Will the death knight population ever become more stable and less noobish? I believe so, especially if people spread the teachings of how to NOT fail. Also I wanted to note that this is by FAR not the entire list of things you could/should be doing to improve your game play. These are just some tiny helpful hints and ideas to increase your abilities early on and to establish a good working habit of increasing your abilities over time. Every class has a learning curve, and death knights are for sure one of those classes that is really easy to play – but to be on top, you really have to master EVERY aspect of the class. We are a unique class…remember that.
Weekly Question:
This week we are going to start a small tradition (hopefully it sticks with the community). Each week I will include a weekly question. These questions can and will be anything about death knights or anything affecting them in the game. It could be about raids, about the article presented, about specs etc. So, this weeks question is….
If there was one tip or trick you could tell a new death knight that would enhance his/her game play, what would it be?
I’ve run into many “misinformed” DKs out there. Some of which are in our raiding guild. The one point I cannot stress enough to them is learn from DKs that are actually doing well on the charts. Not their attitudes, but their rotations, talents, gems, enchants… everything you possibly can. Don’t go by the gear score or BiS. Best gear doesn’t necessarily mean best DPS.
This is the main thing. Attitude is a factor, but refusal to learn is the biggest contributor to the “DK = n00b” think.
just dont make a DK
But we love our death knights
And trust me, once you learn enough and put enough effort into becoming more than just a noob death knight, it really..really pays off 
The biggest tip I can give to any dps knight is to USE YOUR COOLDOWNS. Learn what mobs have strong or debilitating magic attacks, and make very liberal use of Anti-Magic Shell. Example: Ingvar (last boss in UK) dies, and then returns with a big, high-damage AoE. Use your AMS to absorb the damage from his attack, and it generates 50+ Runic Power! Follow that up with Frost Strike or some Death Coils for a nice boost in burst dps.
But don’t just use your cooldowns on bosses! Trash is easy to kill, but it’s also more fun (and impressive) to kill if you’re using your cooldowns. Example: make life easy on your tank by casting Strangulate on a caster who is out of range, and follow it up immediately with a Blood Tap so you get that rune back and don’t mess up your rotation.
You have a lot of really fun abilities that other classes wish they had. If you aren’t using them, you are doing yourself an injustice and you aren’t having as much fun as you could be.
Perfect tip for almost ANY DK that has not grasped this concept yet. Learning to manage your cool downs as a dps dk is an absolute must! Great tip!
Ok, so the best thing i can say is that if you are a death knight find the combo's of abilitys that work really well and just use that, and if someone tells you to avoid a spell in your combo list then dont do it, skip it. Cause for all you know thats gonna screw things up for the whole raid. So yeah….