Raining Blood

I haven't done any posts in a while. I've been busy with work and home life. And raiding! It's been a refreshing change to be in a raiding guild again. Especially one that recognizes a limited play schedule.
However, that is not the topic of this particular post. Hopefully "Blood" gives it away. If not...well I don't know what to tell you.

-=Talents for Blood DPS=-
The most important part of any play style is the talent build. If you left all your talents unused, you'd still be doing damage but not getting far. Think of it as leaving your car in neutral and stomping the gas pedal. Originally, I thought about breaking down each talent individually but that would take a lot of time and be rather dry reading. I'll highlight some key talents and provide builds.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization: Hopefully this one is obvious. Blood is just not viable as a dual wield spec so that leaves 2-handed weapons.

Death Rune Mastery: This is usually pretty crucial as in a PVE situation, you'll need those Death Runes. They'll allow for some Heart Strikes later on.

Veteran of the Third War: Increases 2 key stats for aspiring Blood DPS Death Knights - expertise and, more importantly, strength. Strength = phenomenal cosmic power!

Abomination's Might: One of 2 talents that actually provides raid utility. Increases the whole part/raid's attack power by 10% and your own strength by 2%. Physical DPS will love you, especially if an Enhancement Shaman isn't around.

Bloodworms: They only provide a small amount of DPS and a small bit of self-healing you but it adds up. The tool tip says only a 9% chance but they're out pretty often.

Hysteria: Increases physical damage by 20% for 30 seconds. This can be cast on yourself or others. It's usually recommended that it go to a high DPS warrior or rogue but if you're pulling out some good numbers, cast it on yourself with this macro

/cast [target=player] Hysteria

.

Sudden Doom: 15% chance at a free Death Coil, procing off Blood Strikes and Death Strikes. Free DPS is the best kind.

Heart Strike: This will be your main attack for Blood DPS. It works similar to a Warrior's Cleave ability but works better than Blood Strike for even a single mob.

Dancing Rune Weapon: The uber 51st point talent. Every tree for every class has one. This is on a 1min cooldown and should be used as often as possible to maximize your DPS output. Make sure you use everything you can (trinkets, Hysteria, pots, etc) before activating this ability to make sure that your dps output is at it's max.

-=Unholy talents=-
You'll have several points left over from getting things in Blood. Unholy has talents that go with Blood like chocolate with milk.

Virulence: Increases chance to hit with spells by 3%. This reduces the amount of hit you need for spells only, such has Icy Touch, Death Coil, etc.

Ravenous Dead: Another strength increasing talent, this time by 3%.

Morbidity: Increases the damage of Death Coil by 15% and lowers the cooldown on Death and Decay by 15 sec. The increase in Death Coil is definitely worth it.

Epidemic: Increases the the duration of Frost Fever and Blood Plague by 6sec. More time on the mob = more damage.

Necrosis: Adds 20% shadow damage to all auto attacks (white damage). Do I need to explain this?

Blood-caked Blade: Despite sounding wicked, this is a very powerful talent. 30% chance to cause Blood-caked Strike which hits for 25% of weapon damage plus 12.5% for each disease on the target.

This all leads to the build I'm current using: Valoren's Blood DPS build.

-=Rotation=-
The current rotation that I'm using is:

Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Death Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Death Coil (as many as possible) -> Death Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike

Rinse and Repeat.

To maximize your DPS, use Dancing Rune Weapon whenever possible. If you have trinkets, Hysteria, or other temporary increases of damage output, pop these before casting DRW as it takes a snapshot of your current stats and bases it's damage from that.

For the highest possible DPS, try this for your opening rotation:

Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Death Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Raise Dead -> Wait for Frost Rune to recover -> Pop all trinkets and Hysteria -> Dancing Rune Weapon -> Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Death Coil (as many as possible) -> Death Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Death Strike

Then fall back into the first rotation listed above.

-=Gear=-
I won't go into detail about gear because there is way too much gear to list for a single post. I will talk about a couple pieces of endgame gear that are excellent for their slots but I won't provide any "Best in slot" information. I will provide gear that is relatively easy to obtain.

Head - Helm of Thunderous Rampage
This helm is ranked 6th highest for Blood DPS as according to MaxDPS.com. This helm offers better stats than the T9 DPS helm.
75 Emblems of Triumph

Definitely do get at least two pieces of T9 gear as the T9 2-piece set bonus is rather nice.

Sigil - Sigil of Virulence
Chance to grant 200 strength for 20 seconds upon use of Death Strike, Obliterate or Scourge Strike. It procs often, trust me.

Weapon - Tyrannical Beheader
The highest max damage weapon in the game pre-raid, excluding the Quel'Delar. It's big. It's slow. It hits like a Mack truck. On a related note, always always always put Rune of the Fallen Crusader on your weapons. The benefits outweigh the downsides by far. Also on this note, you should be looking for the slowest 2h weapon you can find with the largest max damage you can find.

-=Stats=-
Finally, let's look at stats. To keep it simple, get hit capped as soon as possible, which is 263 hit rating or 8%. The less you're missing with attacks, the more DPS you're putting out. Having more than this will not hurt but do not focus on it past 8%.
Strength is your bread and butter stat. It directly increases your damage, period. This being said, all gems you put into gear should be +strength gems, minus the meta gem for helms and a couple gems to meet it's requirements and a +10 all stats gem somewhere. EVERYTHING else should be strength gems.
Crit rating is something that we can never have too much of but shouldn't but a huge focal point. Most of the time, it will come naturally with other pieces of gear.
Armor Penetration is a stat that you will find on a lot of end game plate DPS gear. Since a lot of Blood's damage is physical damage, armor penetration comes in handy for increasing damage.
Haste, unfortunately, never has really done a lot of Death Knights in general. Unholy DPS used to be able to use some of it to make sure their entire rotation could fit in before diseases expired but recent changes to Unholy had eliminated this need. It is most likely unavoidable that you will pick some up somewhere but it's not a stat that we should be seeking at all.
Expertise is something nice to have. At 26 expertise, bosses will not be able to dodge your attacks. Since you should be behind the bosses anyway, parry is not an issue here.
Agility doesn't benefit us very much. It does give us crit rating but why stack agility for crit when can stack (drum roll, please) crit rating?
Armor = more attack power from Bladed Armor but the amount is not nearly as beneficial as straight Strength. You should be wearing plate armor so you'll be gaining from this anyway.
Attack power, I hope, is obvious what it does. However, it's not as good for us as pure Strength.
Stamina gives more health and in turn, allows you live longer to keep hitting. You'll get plenty from your gear so don't go looking for it.

-=Gems=-
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
This is what I'm using as a meta right now. Requirements for 2 blue gems are somewhat nasty considering most of our gems should be reds but it can be done.
Nightmare Tear
Sbould be placed somewhere and will count towards your meta socket requirements.
Other than these few exceptions, everything else should be Bold Cardinal Rubies.

-=Glyphs=-
The 3 I would recomment for Major Glyphs are:
Glyph of Death Strike
Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon
Glyph of Dark Death

It is also possible to drop the Dark Death glyph for Glyph of Disease. This will allow you to refresh your diseases by using only Pestilence but you lose out on some DPS from Death Coils, which you'll be using a lot of. It allows for more Heart Strikes but honestly is a complicated rotation and fails completely if you let your diseases drop off. Not recommended for the faint of heart and should not be attempted by anyone who is not a trained professional.

As for minors, there's not a lot of choice for PVE at all really. Glyph of Horn of Winter should be on every Death Knight.
Glyph of Raise Dead is a good one to have handy. It removes the reagent requirement for Raise Dead. Your new minion can be used as some extra DPS and then, by using Death Pact, can be sacrificed for some health.
The last slot is up to you.

By no means is this the definitive guide for Blood DPS. There are tons more resources out there and a lot of different play styles. Ultimately, everything rests on the level of commitment the player wants to have with their Death Knight. This is meant more as a primer for someone who is new to Blood DPS and/or the class in general.

Next time I'll take a look at Frost DPS and dual wielding. For now, walk tall and carry the biggest friggin' 2-hander you can find!