Why Were Death Knights Absent in the Undermine RWF? - Guide Writer Feedback

Posted 2025/03/21 at 1:17 PM by Taeznak

Our Class Writers share their expert opinions based on rigorous testing and theorycrafting in hopes of contextualizing the changes coming in future patches of the War Within. Check out all of our released articles in our Editorial Section.

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Why Were DKs Absent in the Undermine RWF?SyzlakMiniaugKweppWhere were the death knights?Death GripMiniaug Says:
Death Knights were not brought this tier due to multiple reasons but the main one is that there was simply no reason to with the tuning that was present for the race. While both specs have their niches that they are the best in the game at, they were not relevant this tier due to fight design and tuning.

Overall, fight design working well with your cooldown timings and overall tuning have been what enticed you to bring a DPS Death Knight to your raid over the past few expansions, but when a tier like this or Amirdrassil happens, there is just no reason to bring one to your raid.
Syzlak Says:
The reason DKs weren’t used in this tier for RWF should be examined separately for Blood DK and DPS DK.

A BDK’s spot in a RWF raid composition is determined by three key factors, in order of importance:

Grip is required for the encounter.
There’s an open tank slot because both tanks aren't bringing a required raid buff.
The spec is strong either offensively or defensively.

If grip is required, it overrides every other factor. This is why people often say, “Grip is so good, how can you not call it a raid buff?” Encounters like Fyrakk and Broodtwister demonstrate how fights can feel nearly impossible without BDK’s utility.
____
For DPS DK, the situation is much simpler. Under the current raid buff matrix, there is only one way for DPS DK to earn a RWF raid spot:

It must be the best melee DPS in some capacity.

DPS DK wasn’t the best at anything. It’s that simple. Some argue that the issue is poor tuning, but ask yourself—would a flat 10% aura buff make DPS DK a better pick than Windwalker Monk? The answer is no.
Kwepp Says:
Death Knight in this tier was mediocre at best, it did not bring anything unique or useful enough to have a great impact to the raid encounters.
Death Grip is our "raid buff"Death GripDeath GripSyzlak Says:
Grip can be extremely strong, and on some encounters, it provides tremendous value—so much so that it creates the perception that DK is a powerful and necessary raid pick. This is why people often claim that “Grip is DK’s raid buff” and DK's ticket into raid compositions.

However, it’s important to evaluate Death Grip within the current raid buff matrix. Not all raid buffs are equal—there’s a clear hierarchy.

Damage buffs like Chaos Brand, Battle Shout, and Mark of the Wild are invaluable and functionally mandatory.
Defensive buffs like Devotion Aura and Atrophic Poison are useful but can sometimes be skipped if survival is manageable through better planning or play.
Universality also matters. Some buffs provide consistent value on every fight, while situational ones like Hunter’s Mark only matter when the damage dealt above 80% is a contributing factor to defeating a boss.

Furthermore, Death Grip is not a unique utility—it’s a displacement tool. A strong one, yes, but not an irreplaceable one. Nearly every class has some form of displacement tool, and for those that don’t, Engineering belt knockbacks are always an option.
___
Grip’s limiting factor is that it’s neither universal nor unique. I’d argue that while Mass Grip is not universal, it is unique.
Miniaug Says:
The fact is that in a modern raiding environment grip is generally irrelevant. While this is partially due to fight design, there is also an extreme amount of knockbacks currently available in the game that make this virtually useless. Hunters have High Explosive Trap, Mages have Blast Wave, Monks have Ring of Peace, Shamans have Thunderstorm, Druids have Typhoon, Evokers (and all Dracthyr) have Wing Buffet and after all of that there is still the ability to get the Engineering belt knockback, Personal Space Amplifier that can be used on any class. At the end of the day these abilities make Death Grip largely irrelevant when it instead should be.
Kwepp Says:
The value of having Death Grips has decreased a lot over the years, especially with the introduction of Dracthyr. Now a lot of classes have access to a knock back which does the same job as a grip would, albeit slightly more inconvenient to use. Multiple classes have access to a few knock-back effects, so any value Death Grip had has diminished quite substantially over the years.
Death GripDeath GripDeath Grip

Geargrinder Biker - Vexie

Scrapmaster - Stix Bunkjunker

Pyrotechnics - Rik Reverb

Premium Dynamite Booty - One-Armed Bandit

Reel Assistant - One-Armed Bandit

Mk II Electro Shocker - Mug'zee, Heads of Security

Death GripDeath GripOther utility optionsDeath GripAnti-Magic ZoneMiniaug Says:
Until you get to the end bosses it is largely irrelevant and even then it is only used to try and conserve any amount of mana for healers that you can. You can never once depend on it for living as it can just not affect your entire raid if the hit is too large and is consumed before getting to the last few people. Once you get past the high end and are a few weeks into gearing, if you didn’t press AMZ for the rest of the tier nobody would be the wiser.
Syzlak Says:
AMZ is useful on most raid encounters because nearly all fights involve some form of magical damage to non-tank players. However, its impact varies from fight to fight—and unfortunately, it often leans toward the less impactful side.

The main issue is that defensive cooldowns are fungible. Blizzard has never designed an encounter where every healer CD, every personal defensive, and every raid-wide mitigation is exhausted to the point where AMZ becomes the make-or-break factor for survival. It’s generally a nice-to-have raid defensive, but never a game-changing one.

Think about raid fights where healers forget to use a cooldown, or you forget to press a personal defensive, yet you still survive. That’s how AMZ often feels. If you removed AMZ from the equation, your raid wouldn’t suddenly collapse—it would simply adjust.
Anti-Magic ZoneRallying CryHealthstoneHealthstoneHealthstoneHealthstoneKwepp Says:
AMZ is a decent cooldown when playing Blood Death Knight; however, it’s pretty sub-par for Unholy and Frost due to its health scaling. Even as Blood though, AMZ is not a good enough raid cooldown to justify bringing a DK to a raid.
Blood FortificationVeteran of the Third WarVampiric BloodAnti-Magic ZoneVampiric BloodRallying CryRallying CryAnti-Magic Zone But what about Insidious Chill?Insidious ChillKwepp Says:
This is a massive “who asked” talent that doesn’t really bring much to the table. Rogues and Warlocks have the same utility and bring more than a DK overall. So just like AMZ, it’s a pretty mediocre talent/ability which is not good enough to warrant bringing a Death Knight.
Miniaug Says:
If it didn’t exist nobody would notice. Sure, it is a nice bonus to have but tanks do not take enough damage to the point where they notice if it is missing on any of the bosses as we saw this tier.
Syzlak Says:
Insidious Chill is a complete non-starter. It provides no meaningful benefit and is never worth considering in any discussion. Let us not waste our time here.
Insidious ChillDemonic GatewayHealthstoneGorefiend's GraspWould a traditional raid buff even help?Syzlak Says:
Yes and no.

If DKs were given a universal throughput raid buff, at least one DK would always be included in the raid composition. However, in most cases, that spot would go to Blood DK, since BDK offers vastly superior utility compared to DPS DK.

So while adding a raid buff would improve the current situation, the primary beneficiary would be BDK, not DPS DK.
Kwepp Says:
Not completely, because you would just play Blood all the time and you would never see an Unholy or Frost DK again unless it was severely over-tuned. All utility between Blood and the dps specs needs to be equalised, which means shorter Death Grip cd, AMZ scaling with attack power and Gorefiend's Grasp being available for all Death Knight specs. Gorefiend's Grasp would be a good thing to replace Graveyard in the class talent tree, as Graveyard is annoying to use and unreliable at times, it would feel a lot better to just have Gorefiend's Grasp without any damage components to it, just pure utility which you can talent out of on fights where it’s not needed.
Miniaug Says:
In a sense it would force you to bring them, but it would not fix any of the underlying issues that the class currently has in terms of its design and reliability on fight design to be good. As we see with Hunter’s raid buff, it does not always force you to bring one if both your class is weak for the fight and your raid buff is weak. While this is a “doomer” take, the kit needs a serious look to make you not go “Why do we have to bring this?” in a tier where not everything lines up perfectly.
Anti-Magic ZoneDeath GripGorefiend's GraspDeath GripGorefiend's GraspGraveyardTop 3 Guild DK Representation - Liberation of Undermine

Liberation of Undermine

Liquid

Echo

Method

Boss

# of DKs

Specs

# of DKs

Specs

# of DKs

Specs

Vexie

Cauldron of Carnage

Rik Reverb

Stix Bunkjunker

Sprocketmonger

One-Armed Bandit

Mug'zee, Heads of Security

Chrome King Gallywix

Broodtwister Ovi'naxTop 3 Guild DK Representation - Nerub-ar Palace

Nerub-ar Palace

Liquid

Echo

Method

Boss

# of DKs

Specs

# of DKs

Specs

# of DKs

Specs

The Bloodbound Horror

Nexus-Princess Ky'veza

The Silken Court

Queen Ansurek

Broodtwister Ovi'naxGorefiend's GraspMiniaug Says:
Quite simply, the way it stands currently has an unacceptable level of disparity between Tank and DPS Death Knights with Tank having a shorter cooldown on Death Grip, the ability to Mass Grip (and can be talented to silence as well as having a shorter cooldown than Graveyard), and a better AMZ because it scales off of health. Honestly, if it was only 1 of these, it could be acceptable but it is all three and it is just sad. This feedback has been given for years and this issue has even been addressed in Developer interviews but nothing has ever been done. At any time you need grip, you try to bring a Blood Death Knight, as was seen on Fyrakk specifically, and bench the DPS Death Knight in favor of a better DPS, likely being the class that replaces the raid buff that is sitting in favor of bringing a Blood Death Knight.
Syzlak Says:

Blood DK’s grip utility isn’t just superior to DPS DK’s—it’s on an entirely different level. The disparity starts with Death Grip itself: BDK’s version has a 15-second cooldown, while DPS DK’s sits at 25 seconds—a 67% difference. But the real deciding factor isn’t Death Grip at all. It’s Mass Grip, a tool DPS DK completely lacks.

When a raid needs a grip solution, what they mean is Mass Grip. Encounters like Fyrakk and Broodtwister weren’t just about moving a few mobs—they required grouping entire packs instantly, making Mass Grip essential. Without it, handling these mechanics would be nearly impossible at the highest level of play. Regular Death Grip simply doesn’t compare. It moves one target at a time, is too slow, and doesn’t scale to the demands of RWF encounters. This is why when grip is needed in a raid, DPS DK is never even considered—because the thing that actually secures BDK’s raid spot is Mass Grip, not Death Grip.

Some argue that Graveyard provides some level of parity, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Blizzard and some players seem to believe it functions as a replacement for Mass Grip, but the difference is staggering. Mass Grip immediately pulls all targets into a tight cluster in one gcd. Graveyard, by contrast, drags one enemy per second over 12 seconds—a snail pace in the context of raid mechanics.
___
In a raid setting, 10 seconds is an eternity. The mobs will either be dead, already positioned by other displacement tools, or have caused a wipe due to failed coordination. This ability is simply not a practical raid tool.
___
Also, AMZ is much stronger on BDK, but this disparity is not as egregious as the grip and mass grip disparity.
Kwepp Says:
Yes as mentioned before Blood DK’s are just better utility-wise than both Unholy and Frost, so even if you did give DK a raid buff, you would just always bring Blood DK to provide the raid buff.
What do you think should be doneSyzlak Says:

Under the current raid buff matrix, two things need to be done:

Give DKs a strong raid buff
Without a raid buff, DKs will always struggle to justify their spot. Every other class except DK has a raid buff that helps secure their place in a raid composition. Grip will never be the answer. This RWF has already demonstrated that Grip alone is not a reliable reason to bring a DK, and this isn’t just an isolated case. Designing every boss around Grip would be impractical and would only limit the creativity and quality of the encounters Blizzard works so hard to create.
The simplest and cleanest solution is to introduce a raid-wide Haste or Crit buff, similar to Skyfury or Mark of the Wild. A universal throughput buff ensures that DKs have a reason to be included without warping boss design. There’s no need to come up with a wacky raid buff because it needs to be wrapped in an elaborate class fantasy or forced to fit DK lore. Function matters more than form
Equalize the grip disparity between BDK and DPS DK
Grip parity is sorely needed to help DPS DK to be on an equal footing with BDK. I’m not asking for DPS DKs to have a guaranteed raid spot—only to be given parity with other hybrid classes.
When Protection Warrior is the stronger choice relative to DPS Warrior, Prot Warrior is the one that brings the raid buff—not DPS Warrior. And vice versa. That’s how it works for every hybrid class—except DKs. No DK is ever a default requirement, and when Grip is needed, it’s always BDK that gets the spot—no matter how weak BDK is or how strong DPS DK is.

Kwepp Says:
Death Knight needs to be tuned very well in order to even be considered being brought into a competitive raid team (if your guild wants an optimal comp). In my opinion the best course of action would be to equalise the cooldown of Death Grip for Blood, Unholy & Frost, make AMZ scale with something which doesn’t differ too much between all 3 specs (attack power or something like that), put Gorefiend's Grasp in the Class tree instead of the Blood tree (you can replace Graveyard with it), and give Death Knight a raid buff (thematically you could give them a raid wide Magic Damage reduction, or a crit buff, etc)

Something has to happen though, if not then I doubt you will be seeing much of DK in future raid tiers, and there comes a point where a lot of long time Death Knight players will reroll from the class completely, including me.
Miniaug Says:
Listening to feedback that has been provided by the community over the course of many years at this point. At some point or another, all of the concerns with our poor class design and limited utility have been brought up publicly and privately and to this date have just been plainly ignored, culminating in the out-of-touch post saying that they would not be removing Festering Wounds at the start of the Alpha for The War Within and instead making them extremely irrelevant this expansion, but still necessary due to talents designed around them while adding no satisfying gameplay mechanics around them. At the end of the day, players can not change this and only provide feedback on an extremely flawed base and it is up to the developers who have largely ignored the concerns of the Death Knight playerbase for multiple expansions to fix this problem.
Absolute ZeroGorefiend's GraspControl UndeadDark TransformationGift of the San'laynUnholy PactEternal AgonyCommander of the DeadGhoulish FrenzyInfected ClawsBlessing of ProtectionAvenging WrathMiniaug Says:
Hi I am Miniaug and for the past 6 years I have raided in Echo. I first started raiding at a world-first level when I joined Midwinter at the end of Warlords of Draenor going into Legion and my first notable kill was getting World 6th Kil’jaeden with ScrubBusters. Some might know me as an Enhancement Shaman as I have gotten multiple world firsts on that spec, but I have played a Death Knight as my main since it originally came out in Wrath of the Lich King.

1. Why do you believe death knight wasnt brought in Liberation of Undermine?
Death Knights were not brought this tier due to multiple reasons but the main one is that there was simply no reason to with the tuning that was present for the race. Concerns were privately brought up to Blizzard in the week before the beginning of the tier that we needed help and as it turned out, that happened to be the case even with the buffs that happened right before release. Quite honestly the worst part about this situation is that neither Death Knight specs are truly balanced badly, we just do not bring a relevant type of damage that another spec can’t do better or more efficiently that is relevant to this specific raid. While both specs have their niches that they are the best in the game at, they were not relevant this tier due to fight design and tuning. Overall, fight design working well with your cooldown timings and overall tuning have been what enticed you to bring a DPS Death Knight to your raid over the past few expansions, but when a tier like this or Amirdrassil happens, there is just no reason to bring one to your raid.

With Frost’s current spec design, it is impossible to balance the disparity between Frost’s ability to do single target damage and cleave as they are inherently linked, some by abilities and some by talents. Obliterate has Cleaving Strikes, Frost Strike has Shattered Frost, and Howling Blast and Remorseless Winter inherently cleave. For some unknown reason, a modifier has still not gone on to Cleaving Strikes allowing them to change the amount of cleave damage you can deal with Obliterate while being able to buff Obliterate’s base damage to help our normally pitiful single target. Frostwhelp’s Aid also is a significant offender in this regard, significantly buffing our cleave/aoe when it hits additional targets, but is largely forgettable on single target. Some abilities simply need to be buffed when hitting only 1 target and have modifiers put on to the thing that makes them way more powerful in aoe, looking at Obliterate and Frostwhelp’s Aid specifically.

Unholy was unfortunately in a weird spot where this tier bonus essentially “ruined” the chance of being brought as this spec was pigeonholed into being the best 2 target spec in the game and it feels like it was balanced around it but when combined with fight design there were 0 fights where that type of damage truly mattered. One-Armed Bandit could have been that fight, but as we saw it was completely ranged passive cleave dominated by Shadow Priest and Fire Mages.As for its’ execute with Reaping, while good it wasn’t good or relevant enough to be considered for that type of damage specifically.

2. What do you believe is Death Grips most limiting factor?
The fact that in a modern raiding environment that it is generally irrelevant. While this is partially due to fight design, there is also an extreme amount of knockbacks currently available in the game that make this virtually useless. Hunters have High Explosive Trap, Mages have Blast Wave, Monks have Ring of Peace, Shamans have Thunderstorm, Druids have Typhoon, Evokers (and all Dracthyr) have Wing Buffet and after all of that there is still the ability to get the Engineering belt knockback, Personal Space Amplifier that can be used on any class. At the end of the day these abilities make Death Grip largely irrelevant when it instead should be. Currently the only reason you would ever need Death Grip is when adds spawn so far that you can not knock adds into melee with the required classes in your raid like on Silken Court last tier. While there are exceptions to it being useless, you have only brought a DPS Death Knight for grip specifically on 2 bosses in recent memory, Anduin in Sepulcher and Silken Court in Nerub’ar Palace, and both of those were partially tuning dependent as well. While it has been nice to have on multiple other bosses, grip is largely only relevant on mobs that spawn extremely far and are not quickly fixable by knockbacks from classes that you are required to bring because of their raid buffs. There is also the other issue of adds just not having enough health for it to matter that melee also need to hit them on top of ranged classes, but that is just a tuning issue. I also want to make it very clear here that I am not asking for the knock abilities from other classes to be removed or toned back as they are a very important part of those classes’ kits, but this is a large reason as to why Death Grip can not be considered a true “raid utility” button in the modern game.

Also why is Death Grip STILL on the global cooldown, please fix this.

3. Do you believe AMZ is universally useful?
No. Until you get to the end bosses it is largely irrelevant and even then it is only used to try and conserve any amount of mana for healers that you can. You can never once depend on it for living as it can just not affect your entire raid if the hit is too large and is consumed before getting to the last few people.Once you get past the high end and are a few weeks into gearing, if you didn’t press AMZ for the rest of the tier nobody would be the wiser.

4. How about Insidious Chill?
If it didn’t exist nobody would notice. Sure, it is a nice bonus to have but tanks do not take enough damage to the point where they notice if it is missing on any of the bosses as we saw this tier.

5. If blizzard were to give Death Knights a raid buff, do you believe it fixes these issues?
In a sense it would force you to bring them, but it would not fix any of the underlying issues that the class currently has in terms of its’ design and reliability on fight design to be good. As we see with Hunter’s raid buff, it does not always force you to bring one if both your class is weak for the fight and your raid buff is weak. While this is a “doomer” take, the kit needs a serious look to make you not go “Why do we have to bring this?” in a tier where not everything lines up perfectly.

6. Blood death knights do everything better?
Quite simply, the way it stands currently has an unacceptable level of disparity between Tank and DPS Death Knights with tank having a shorter cooldown on Death Grip, the ability to Mass Grip (and can be talented to silence as well as having a shorter cooldown than Graveyard), and a better AMZ because it scales off of health. Honestly if it was only 1 of these, it could be acceptable but it is all three and it is just sad. This feedback has been given for years and this issue has even been addressed in Developer interviews but nothing has ever been done. At any time you need grip, you try to bring a Blood Death Knight, as was seen on Fyrakk specifically, and bench the DPS Death Knight in favor of a better dps, likely being the class that replaces the raid buff that is sitting in favor of bringing a Blood Death Knight.

7. What do you believe the best course of action is to fix these issues?
Listening to feedback that has been provided by the community over the course of many years at this point. At some point or another, all of the concerns with our poor class design and limited utility have been brought up publicly and privately and to this date have just been plainly ignored, culminating in the out of touch post saying that they would not be removing Festering Wounds at the start of the Alpha for The War Within and instead making them extremely irrelevant this expansion, but still necessary due to talents designed around them while adding no satisfying gameplay mechanics around them. At the end of the day, players can not change this and only provide feedback on an extremely flawed base and it is up to the developers that have largely ignored the concerns of the Death Knight playerbase for multiple expansions to fix this problem.
Syzlak Says:
1. Why do you believe death knight wasnt brought in Liberation of Undermine?

The reason DKs weren’t used in this tier for RWF should be examined separately for Blood DK and DPS DK.

A BDK’s spot in a RWF raid composition is determined by three key factors, in order of importance:

Grip is required for the encounter.
There’s an open tank slot because not both tanks are bringing a required raid buff.
The spec is strong either offensively or defensively.

If grip is required, it overrides every other factor. This is why people often say, “Grip is so good, how can you not call it a raid buff?” Encounters like Fyrakk and Broodtwister demonstrate how fights can feel nearly impossible without BDK’s utility.

In Liberation of Undermine, grip was only essential for one fight—Stix Bunkjunker. Liquid initially brought three BDKs, but as their strategy evolved, they realized they didn’t need as many and eventually settled on one.

Beyond that, Prot Paladin was the optimal way to bring Devotion Aura, locking in one tank slot. While DPS Warriors were strong, Prot Warrior secured its spot by delivering the highest tank DPS and exceptional durability, making it the best choice for Battle Shout.
BDK, however, was neither offensively exceptional nor particularly sturdy this tier, so it had no justification to be included outside of Stix Bunkjunker.

For DPS DK, the situation is much simpler. Under the current raid buff matrix, there is only one way for DPS DK to earn a RWF raid spot:
It must be the best melee DPS in some capacity.

DPS DK wasn’t the best at anything. It’s that simple. Some argue that the issue is poor tuning, but ask yourself—would a flat 10% aura buff make DPS DK a better pick than Windwalker Monk? The answer is no.

The only thing that would justify DPS DK a raid spot is an extreme tuning for it to be the best melee DPS by a noticeable margin.

If you don’t believe that DPS DK only gets included when it’s the best, just look at recent raid tiers under the current raid buff matrix:

Aberrus – DPS DK was the best single-target melee. It was terrible in cleave and AoE, but it was the indisputable king of boss damage. Atlas topped Sarkareth damage on Liquid’s world-first kill.
Amirdrassil – DPS DK was middle of the pack—maybe slightly below—and didn’t see any representation.
Nerub’ar Palace – Frost DK was the best cleave melee DPS by far, so multiple Frost DKs were used. If you remember seeing DKs popping off on Broodtwister, you might’ve thought, “Wow, DK is so OP. Of course they’re strong, I see them topping my M+ runs too.” But what happened on Kyveza, the only hard single-target boss in the raid? Both Liquid and Echo dropped DPS DK entirely. Why? Because it wasn’t the best at single target.

Once again—unless DPS DK is the best at something, it simply doesn’t justify a raid spot.

2. What do you believe is Death Grips most limiting factor?

Grip can be extremely strong, and on some encounters, it provides tremendous value—so much so that it creates the perception that DK is a powerful and necessary raid pick. This is why people often claim that “Grip is DK’s raid buff” and DKs ticket into raid compositions.

However, it’s important to evaluate Death Grip within the current raid buff matrix. Not all raid buffs are equal—there’s a clear hierarchy.

Damage buffs like Chaos Brand, Battle Shout, and Mark of the Wild are invaluable and functionally mandatory.

Defensive buffs like Devotion Aura and Atrophic Poison are useful but can sometimes be skipped if survival is manageable through better planning or play.

Universality also matters. Some buffs provide consistent value on every fight, while situational ones like Hunter’s Mark only matter when the damage dealt above 80% is a contributing factor to defeating a boss.

Furthermore, Death Grip is not a unique utility—it’s a displacement tool. A strong one, yes, but not an irreplaceable one. Nearly every class has some form of displacement tool, and for those that don’t, Engineering belt knockbacks are always an option.

Fyrakk is a perfect example of this. In Phase 2, the encounter design clearly suggested that Death Grip was useful for handling small adds. While the final Mass Grip was impactful, the spread-out adds were meant to be controlled with Death Grip. Yet, RWF guilds devised a strategy that only one BDK was necessary. The rest of the mob control was handled through knockbacks—across seven different specs and Engineering belt knockback.

Grip’s limiting factor is that it’s neither universal nor unique.

I’d argue that while Mass Grip is not universal, it is unique—but that’s a discussion for the BDK section.

3. Do you believe AMZ is universally useful?

Yes, AMZ is useful on most raid encounters because nearly all fights involve some form of magical damage to non-tank players. However, its impact varies from fight to fight—and unfortunately, it often leans toward the less impactful side.

The main issue is that defensive cooldowns are fungible. Blizzard has never designed an encounter where every healer CD, every personal defensive, and every raid-wide mitigation is exhausted to the point where AMZ becomes the make-or-break factor for survival. It’s generally a nice-to-have raid defensive, but never a game-changing one.

Think about raid fights where healers forget to use a cooldown, or you forget to press a personal defensive, yet you still survive. That’s how AMZ often feels. If you removed AMZ from the equation, your raid wouldn’t suddenly collapse—it would simply adjust.

4. How about Insidious Chill?

Insidious Chill is a complete non-starter. It provides no meaningful benefit and is never worth considering in any discussion. Let us not waste our time here.

5. If blizzard were to give Death Knights a raid buff, do you believe it fixes these issues?

Yes and no.

If DKs were given a universal throughput raid buff, at least one DK would always be included in the raid composition. However, in most cases, that spot would go to Blood DK, since BDK offers vastly superior utility compared to DPS DK.

So while adding a raid buff would improve the current situation, the primary beneficiary would be BDK, not DPS DK.

6. Blood death knights do everything better?

Yes,

Blood DK’s grip utility isn’t just superior to DPS DK’s—it’s on an entirely different level. The disparity starts with Death Grip itself: BDK’s version has a 15-second cooldown, while DPS DK’s sits at 25 seconds—a 67% difference. But the real deciding factor isn’t Death Grip at all. It’s Mass Grip, a tool DPS DK completely lacks.

When a raid needs a grip solution, what they mean is Mass Grip. Encounters like Fyrakk and Broodtwister weren’t just about moving a few mobs—they required grouping entire packs instantly, making Mass Grip essential. Without it, handling these mechanics would be nearly impossible at the highest level of play. Regular Death Grip simply doesn’t compare. It moves one target at a time, is too slow, and doesn’t scale to the demands of RWF encounters. This is why when grip is needed in a raid, DPS DK is never even considered—because the thing that actually secures BDK’s raid spot is Mass Grip, not Death Grip.

Some argue that Graveyard provides some level of parity, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Blizzard and some players seem to believe it functions as a replacement for Mass Grip, but the difference is staggering. Mass Grip immediately pulls all targets into a tight cluster in one gcd. Graveyard, by contrast, drags one enemy per second over 12 seconds—a snail pace in the context of raid mechanics.

A good example is the Stormstout Brewery trash before the final boss, where the mobs are perfectly spread out—a prime opportunity for grip to shine. Mass Grip pulled everything in instantly with a single global cooldown, whereas Graveyard took 10 seconds to group them up when I tested it during Timewalking.

In a raid setting, 10 seconds is an eternity. The mobs will either be dead, already positioned by other displacement tools, or have caused a wipe due to failed coordination. This ability is simply not a practical raid tool.

Simply put, Graveyard is not a practical raid tool, and Mass Grip is irreplaceable. This is why BDK’s grip utility will always vastly outclass DPS DK’s—because in raid design, only Mass Grip truly matters.

Also, AMZ is much stronger on BDK, but this disparity is not as egregious as the grip and mass grip disparity.

7. What do you believe the best course of action to fix these issues are?

Under the current raid buff matrix, two things need to be done:

Give DKs a strong raid buff

Without a raid buff, DKs will always struggle to justify their spot. Every other class except DK has a raid buff that helps secure their place in a raid composition. Grip will never be the answer. This RWF has already demonstrated that Grip alone is not a reliable reason to bring a DK, and this isn’t just an isolated case. Designing every boss around Grip would be impractical and would only limit the creativity and quality of the encounters Blizzard works so hard to create.
The simplest and cleanest solution is to introduce a raid-wide Haste or Crit buff, similar to Skyfury or Mark of the Wild. A universal throughput buff ensures that DKs have a reason to be included without warping boss design. There’s no need to come up with a wacky raid buff because it needs to be wrapped in an elaborate class fantasy or forced to fit DK lore. Function matters more than form

Equalize the grip disparity between BDK and DPS DK

Grip parity is sorely needed to help DPS DK to be on an equal footing with BDK. I’m not asking for DPS DKs to have a guaranteed raid spot—only to be given parity with other hybrid classes.
When Protection Warrior is the stronger choice relative to DPS Warrior, Prot Warrior is the one that brings the raid buff—not DPS Warrior. And vice versa. That’s how it works for every hybrid class—except DKs. No DK is ever a default requirement, and when Grip is needed, it’s always BDK that gets the spot—no matter how weak BDK is or how strong DPS DK is.

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Comment by glassleoWho caresComment by KolplerFerriLots of other classes or specs where not there either.Comment by spartany25Let me save you the 30min read, the fights didn't need grips and ww had great st + cleve dam.

Also, it's not a bad thing DKs had an off tier, having classes rotate in and out is good for the game. Having the same classes brought every single tier is what creates imbalance and resentment.Comment by HykonWow, this Syzlak guys seems pretty smart!Comment by pawpurrThis seems reasonable, but it does overlook the fact that often, DPS DK is in fact the best melee, super tanky with numerous damage profiles to choose from between the 2 specs.

I think yes, DK raid buff would be appropriate. 1-2% leech buff would do the job, bring Vampiric Aura. Or just put AMZ back to being a proper
% dmg barrier.

Not sure I agree with making grips equal across the specs, it makes sense tank DK would grip better (and is not an issue if a raid buff is there).Comment by New007Let me save you the 30min read, the fights didn't need grips and ww had great st + cleve dam.

Also, it's not a bad thing DKs had an off tier, having classes rotate in and out is good for the game. Having the same classes brought every single tier is what creates imbalance and resentment.Comment by GellusInsidious Chill (redesigned)
The cold embrace of death surrounds the Death Knight, increasing the Critical Strike chance of their, and their ally's, spells & abilities by 2%

The Death Knight's Diseases now also apply Chill of the Grave to their target, causing the target to take 20% more Critical Damage.Comment by AxlzeeA pointless article where even the class writers got it wrong.

DK's didn't exist because alot of the encounters emphasised on melee cleave damage hence why guilds stacked Windwalker Monks, Havoc Demon Hunters with the occasional Arms warriors.

It was only Lockenstoc, Mug'Zee and Gallywix which had more emphasis on Single target damage which there was more emphasis on Shadow Priests and Fire Mages.

An absolute god S tier which Windwalker will never see again but shows how irrelevant the article is.

The set bonuses are the biggest culprit, Monks bring nothing to the raid except from 1 Mystic Touch debuff which completely writes off the whole article yapping on about raid buffs and debuffs but they got outrageous set bonuses which you could stack upto 70% damage and then you have the 2 mastery trinkets, where their mastery increases the damage of their non-repeat ability which equated to an extra 20% damage across the board, there is a valid argument that the DK set bonuses were completely crap, the Frost one even encouraged taking a talent you don't even pick in a standard build which completely hindered them this tier, but talking about raid buffs etc shows how out of touch the writers are to the point they don't even know why certain classes become meta.

All you had to do was have a look at Warcraft Logs when Liquid brought in 3 fully geared Windwalker Monks, everyone else started doing the same following the next split resets.Comment by Ztormurhow about bringing back Vampiric aura ?
have it give a 5% leech and avoidance to the whole raid or something.Comment by Mormerono need for raid buff when they bring grip said Ion xddComment by evaangelineJust bring back "horn of winter" party buff and dk will be good again, its so simple !Comment by wisedadaI play Prot Warrior, and I remember them being the worst of the worst in some patches. Still, I played the game fine. Unless you are running for World First, knowing your kit is better than having a (usually) 2-5% disadvantage coming from the class potentials.Comment by evilmark443Maybe give them new animations since they’re still running the same animations since Wrath. Also bring back corpse explosion.

Or maybe just start selling new animation packs on the store lmao.Comment by SlawoMaybe give them new animations since they’re still running the same animations since Wrath. Also bring back corpse explosion.

Or maybe just start selling new animation packs on the store lmao.Comment by CornboyI'm sorry, but "prominent World-First" sounds so funny to me lol.Comment by Nyte1103They were not used because blizzard cannot tune anything anymore.

WW Monks dumpster everyone. Warriors are still hard target capped, Mages get the golden child treatment every tier. This goes on and on.

Theres literally zero reason why classes should be gapping each other like we have had for years now. If Final Fantasy can balance classes to have them near 5% from eachother WoW 100% can do it but the Devs refuse to for some reason.

Target capping abilities and classes like weve had ever since the WoD pre patch has been a cancer to this game and will be until blizz reverts them which they @#$%^ need to at this point.

Why some classes are allowed to have insane mastery damage amp scaling like WW does and have little to no target caps for their dmg is *!@#$ insane. And for them to ONLY see a 4% nerf is even crazier. Shows how dog blizzard has become with class tuning.

They always preach about class balance and trying to ' level the playing field '.... yeah hows that working out when WW, Ehn, DH, Mage, Ret and many more just continue to dumpster every other class in raid and keys.

Just release WoW 2 at this point. Fk continuing retail. Class balance will never be achieved literally only a new game would get things back on track.Comment by LongsoloThey were not used because blizzard cannot tune anything anymore.

WW Monks dumpster everyone. Warriors are still hard target capped, Mages get the golden child treatment every tier. This goes on and on.

Theres literally zero reason why classes should be gapping each other like we have had for years now. If Final Fantasy can balance classes to have them near 5% from eachother WoW 100% can do it but the Devs refuse to for some reason.

Target capping abilities and classes like weve had ever since the WoD pre patch has been a cancer to this game and will be until blizz reverts them which they @#$%^ need to at this point.

Why some classes are allowed to have insane mastery damage amp scaling like WW does and have little to no target caps for their dmg is *!@#$ insane. And for them to ONLY see a 4% nerf is even crazier. Shows how dog blizzard has become with class tuning.

They always preach about class balance and trying to ' level the playing field '.... yeah hows that working out when WW, Ehn, DH, Mage, Ret and many more just continue to dumpster every other class in raid and keys.

Just release WoW 2 at this point. Fk continuing retail. Class balance will never be achieved literally only a new game would get things back on track.Comment by gabgab86this is why warriors should have (a form of) mystic touch, and bloodlust (for m+)
and dks should have chaos brandComment by darkroastMaybe give them new animations since they’re still running the same animations since Wrath. Also bring back corpse explosion.

Or maybe just start selling new animation packs on the store lmao.Comment by Nymphximagine writing all that when you couldve just said "they bad, lol"

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