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Death Pact

Death Pact

Instant	2 min cooldown

Requires Death Knight
Requires level 75

Heals the Death Knight for 50% of max health, and absorbs incoming healing equal to 25% of max health for 15 sec.

Buff

Spell Details

Duration

15 seconds

School

Shadow

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

2 minutes

GCD

0 seconds

Effect #1

Heal for % of Total Health
Value: 50

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Mod Healing Absorb % (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature, Physical, Shadow)
Value: 25%

Flags

Guides

Blood Death Knight Guide

Death Knight DPS Guide
(Frost/Unholy)

Raid and Class
cooldown list.

Unholy Death Knight
PvP Guide (Gearing
up, Pressure and Utility)

Warlords of Draenor Death
Knight Changes

Comments

Comment by Polkarama

Love seeing this true WC3 death knight skill :D, will be really handy in the oh shi- moments, or when your ghouls are just about to despawn/die (again... they are undead :P)

Comment by blah17

Hm... if only Death knights had some way of mind controlling an undead unit (I'm going to take it for granted that Gnomish MC cap wouldnt work at high level, and not even sure if it works against undead)

but imagine how awesome that would be? go up to undead mob, MC it, then sac it.
(Or better yet against an enemy DK using Lichborne...)

Comment by d3nyd

Protip: This works on Bloodworms, but does NOT kill the worm! Don't tell Blizzard!

Comment by zalazour

Baron Rivendare on Stratholme also uses this skill.

Comment by Ritz

For eating a 5m + 3m cooldown the health gain seems kinda underwelming, especially when you consider that with Improved Rune Tap you can heal for the same amount every 30 seconds.

Comment by Afoxi

I'd imagine if you were taking huge amounts of beating in a fight you could use this along with Your Ghoul Squadron for a good heal and some breathing room.

Comment by Quickkill

does this work in arenas? thx

Comment by Avandor

Totally worth using. I can say that I've soloed many of the elites in Outlands and Northrend with this spell giving the extra health heal advantage. Also, if you use the ability you can just summon another ghoul to take the other one's place. Combine this ability with Death Strike and Rune Tap from the blood tree and taking down elites will be a much easier task.

Comment by soltiris

I found during tanking that using death pact can really give you an instant boost in threat ( and health too of course) and at the cost of only a slight bit of dps.

Comment by chaosking202

The pet from Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire can be sacrificed for the 20% hp.

Comment by LegatoYo

When it crits it crits for 60% of your maximum health (either that or it was a strangely exact coincidence), can anyone else help me verify this?

Comment by Nuadrir

Love this ability; as a 20/0/51 Unholy DK, it's wonderful as a back-up heal in case Rune tap/Death Strike doesn't do enough.

Comment by robotgiraffe

As an unholy death knight, you probably shouldn't be using Death Strike, ever. Since you're not specced into blood the health gain is minimal and not only are you using the exact same runes you would be using for your primary strike, but you're skipping a lot of the deep unholy buffs that sync up with SS. Bottom line: you're sacrificing a lot of burst (or overall) damage for minimal unspecced heals. Save your runes for SS and use your RP to heal with Death Pact.

Comment by Dreu

I made a macro to use this ability much more easily.

#showtooltip Raise Dead; Death Pact
/cast Raise Dead; Death Pact

You make a macro with the ? picture and when you hold the shift button, you get the "raise dead" ability, then when you release shift you can cast your Death Pact all in 1 button. It's really good for those moments in PVP when you're about to get killed.

Feel free to use it and share it.

Comment by frmorrison

Here is my macro (when I am tanking):
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=30 Raise Dead, Death Pact

You have to hit this macro twice to summon the pet then get the heal. If you click it fast it goes off nearly instantly (assuming you had the spell ready and 40 RP).

Comment by Deluge

This should do the trick:
/cast Death Pact; Raise Dead

-Deluge

To the below post: I made a new macro on the first comment page:

#showtooltip
/cast Death Pact; Death Pact; Death Pact; Death Pact; Raise Dead

Hold alt to kill your gargoyle, if you don't hold alt or you dont have a gargoyle then it kills an army of the dead ghoul, your risen ghoul, your (unholy) pet or tries to summon a new pet, in that order.

Comment by Mutantgerbil00

In case anyone didn't know, this can actually be used with Army of the Dead, sacrificing a single ghoul from your army.

Comment by TheMandanga

The pact is sealed!

Comment by gazzilla

As far as I can tell, unless its a bug at the moment (currently awaiting confirmation from GM), a blood tank cannot use this ability on a "Raise Dead" ghoul, and can only be used on minions from an Unholy specced DK.

Comment by sammyak

If u have Vampiric Blood active and then use your Death Pact. Does the heal benefit from VB?
Also having trouble creating a macro to cast VB, Rdead, Dpact....

Comment by Brain314

In case people are having trouble using Death Pact and getting the error "You can't use that here", apparently, it doesn't work in some indoor areas like Ebon Hold or the Underbelly. I had to use the training dummies in Stormwind to test my macros.

As for what macro works best for my blood tank, the one I use is:

#showtooltip
/castsequence Death Pact; reset=61 Raise Dead, Death Pact

It'll cast Raise Dead into Death Pact with a 61-second reset, or press a modifier key to bypass Raise Dead for whatever reason. From my testing, your Risen Ghoul doesn't register as a pet, so trying to detect it as one in a macro doesn't seem to work.

Comment by QuickBASIC37

None of these macros worked well for me... here's the one I use... Works in Blood and Unholy. (and probably Frost)
#showtooltip Death Pact
/cleartarget
/targetexact Ebon Gargoyle
/targetexact Risen Ghoul
/targetexact Army of the Dead Ghoul
/cast Death Pact; Death Pact;Raise Dead
/targetlasttarget

Kills Army of the Dead Ghoul, Risen Ghoul, Ebon Gargoyle, or Unholy pet from in that order.

Comment by james44776

This spell is affected by Vampiric Blood (not that there's any reason it shouldn't). If I've done my math right (good chance that I haven't) then if Vampiric Blood is unglyphed, Death Pact will restore 62.5% of your max health. If glyphed, it should restore 70% of it. If you use Rune Tap or Death Strike just before of just after this then you almost have a full heal. Enjoy!

Comment by jtunis

Kills Army of the Dead Ghoul, Risen Ghoul, Ebon Gargoyle, or Unholy pet from Master of Ghouls in that order.

I don't think this priority information is accurate any longer as of the 5.04 patch. I used Death Pact a few moments ago while Army of the Dead ghouls, Ebon Gargoyle, and pet ghoul were all up simultaneously. Death Pact leeched life from my permanent ghoul above the others. Intended or bugged, I can't say. Hoping for the latter.

Comment by Teerai

For whatever reason unknown to me, this is unusable in the Brawler's Guild fights.

Comment by Yakeshi

You can modify this macro for other purposes, too. Like a Lichborne: Death Coil combo. Just replace "Playername" with your characters name.

#showtooltip Lichborne; Death Coil /cast Lichborne; Death Coil

This also works with Gorefiend's Grasp and Death Grip. Really helps free up space on your action bar for other abilities you might need.

Comment by AveryZan

Made a macro for blood spec that's pretty fun maybe a bit overkill but I enjoy it.
#showtooltip Death Pact
/cast Vampiric Blood
/cast Raise Dead
/cast Death Pact
/cast Rune Tap
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/y I"M STILL STANDING!

Adjust as you like (you can showtooltip Raise Dead if you prefer instead as you will need the ghoul present for death pact, you also probably won’t need runetap) It's a good idea to have all these abilities separate too, but I highly recommend using Vampiric Blood and Death Pact together when possible. The heal is Massive. One odd thing I found out is you cannot use Blood Pact in Cities, not sure why. So if you are testing this go outside first. Hope it helps.

Comment by Combine456

For a reference: This talent was changed with patch 6.0.2 (WoD prepatch). It used to read:

Drain vitality from an undead minion, healing the Death Knight for 50% of <his/her> maximum health and causing the minion to suffer damage equal to 50% of its maximum health.

The reason for that change is fact that due to ability pruning only unholy has ghoul. Earlier every spec could summon ghoul for 1 minute on 2 minute cooldown.

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