No, just no, keep leveling related clutter out of this thread. If you've ever played World of Warcraft before, you already know how to level, and playing a Death Knight is only very slightly more complicated than any other class. I'm sure you're bright enough to figure the rest out on your own.

This thread is a fantastic resource so far of collected theory, but after reading through it I feel that it needs an explanation early on for the basics of what you should be doing while DPSing. Something like this will anticipate questions from new DKs and hopefully clear some things up before seemingly obvious questions get asked. Here's my suggestion for a section to appear early on in the compendium, based on some of the things I talked about in the old thread. I thought I'd post it here first for comments/suggestions.

How to DPS as a DK: Priorities

While you'll find a number of "cookie-cutter" or standard rotations here for each spec, it's important to keep in mind that these rotations are theoretical-- they're what most people find to be the best for a fight under ideal conditions (i.e., Patchwerk-type dps tests). The key to maximizing your dps as a Death Knight is understanding what contributes most significantly to your dps, and what priorities you should follow when your circumstances deviate from the ideal. Whether it's a mobile encounter, or you miss an attack, or you need to refresh Horn of Winter, or your timing just gets off over the duration of a fight-- it will happen. Here's a suggested priority list for single target dps:

1) Don't die.

2) Keep your diseases (Blood Plague, Frost Fever) up 100% of the time. These boost your primary damage attacks significantly, and add a non-trivial amount to your dps themselves. Use a mod to track their remaining time (I use Elkano's Buff Bars, but there are lots of mods that can accomplish the same thing-- fill in some more here if you like).

3) Use your highest damage-per-rune attack as much as possible, whenever it is available. Blood: Heart Strike, Frost 2h: Obliterate, Unholy: Scourge Strike.

4) Spend your runic power before it hits the maximum. There's a common misconception that runic power is a secondary resource to runes. Your core RP abilities (Death Coil, Frost Strike, Unholy Blight) all do significant amounts of damage, and it's just as worthwhile to use an available global cooldown on one of these abilities as on a rune ability. Managing these can be tricky, especially in Blood spec when you have Sudden Doom procs to contend with also. Use the rune latency coding to your advantage-- there's an extra GCD in there after a rune becomes available (see: Rune Mechanics). When in doubt: as long as you are still not violating any of the previous three rules, dumping runic power will maximize your dps.

5) Use your spec's secondary strikes, talented appropriately, to convert off-spec runes into Death Runes. (Blood: Obliterate, Frost and Unholy: Blood Strike). This is in support of rule #3.

6) Use your dps cooldowns appropriately to maximize their uptime. Know your rotations and how long the fight is, and judge accordingly. Note that cooldown use is an exception to rule #4: You'll want maximum runic power before using Gargoyle or Dancing Rune Weapon, for example.

7) Do anything necessary to increase your raid's dps. While seeing big numbers fly by is fun, we have some abilities that may benefit the raid's overall damage more than a selfish buff to ourselves. Remember, the boss falling down is the ultimate goal. Use your discretion as to who in your raid might benefit most from Hysteria, a pure physical damage boost. Similarly, see the explanation of how Unholy Aura can benefit the raid significantly. If you're in charge of providing Abomination's Might (AP raid buff) or Imp. Icy Talons (haste raid buff), make sure they stay up.

I think you misunderstand how gargoyle works. Gargoyle doesn't just take the cost at the beginning. It costs 50 rp, then DRAINS 8 RP every second until you run out of RP or a minute has passed. Hence, you wont be able to keep up the required RP generation needed to maintain the gargoyle for a full minute (at least, I wasn't able to) when compared to a blood or unholy spec.

And leaflock, excellent points. It is very true that the existing rotations are theoretical maximum and not always practical. Some basic understanding to how they were designed is great would help a lot of newcomers out a lot.

Well I've got the IT glyph, Dirge, and Chill of the Grave. If you stop DCing that's seems like plenty of RP generation to me.

There's currently an unresolved argument that Scourge Strike doesn't outdamage 2 Blood Strikes.

Could you get some data for an actual gearset anyway? It doesn't need to be exact, just some rounded stats. Ratings should have higher values then.

Does Desecration affect all damage done by the DK? For example, if the DK applies diseases while Desecration is up, do those diseases tick for more damage? Does it affect Gargoyle, the Ghoul (not really for raiding, I know, but useful for other PvE), and Death Coil? I assume it increases strike damage and white damage by the 5% listed, but I'm curious about the others.

While I agree completely I see this as a Catch-22. Making a thread on how to level is hardly necessary for DK's, it's just 25 levels, not the full 80 for others. There wouldn't be enough information to put in there to warrant a seperate thread and most of the information amounts to get over it do the work, get "on a pale horse" if you really want to max it out.

However without it we get a hundred requests for how to level. Maybe a quick link to the section of posts in the original thread that discussed this would be the best approach.

It's probably going to be up to mod discretion on these posts and will likely be met with the simple remark "read the thread".

It seems that people are overlooking (or haven't mentioned) Night Elves' Shadowmeld as a worthy DPS ability. It now essentially vanishes you from combat and drops all aggro. It can't really compete numbers-wise with Expertise or +1% hit, but it will uncap you from threat unlike any warrior or non-NE DK can do.

Am I incorrect in this ability's function in a raid-dps situation? Perhaps threat wasn't an issue in Beta but they've made it clear that threat will once again be an issue in higher-end raiding. I'm always a healer and haven't had the opportunity to use it as a dpser. Between our propensity for extra-large crits, melee range, and AoE damage, I imagine threat being a significant issue for us.

I still plan on going Human, can't stand NEs having played one for the past year and a dwarf for the previous 3. The human Rep benefits are also pretty substantial.

When you come out of Shadowmeld, you regain any previous threat you had. So yes, it could save your ass if you pull aggro, as you can stay Shadowmelded until the tank gets a healthy threat lead again, but it's not going to reset your threat and let you go all out if couldn't before.

Actually right now, it is bugged and not returning your aggro once you come out of it. One would assume that will eventually get fixed, but for the time being it is tremendously powerful.