Arms Lore Death Knight
An Arms Lore Death Knight built for sustained PvM, combining heavy armor, Chivalry, and disease effects with increased swing speed for higher damage and more frequent weapon ability procs.
Overview
This build is an extremely tanky swordsman that is primarily used to farm PvM. This build will utilize the disease procs from Death Aspect and combine them with bleeds from the Swords weapon special to provide a great amount of sustained damage. The goal with this build is to stack melee special chance to increase procs from swords which cause bleeds. Using holy weapon in a group adds a great support element as well.
This version uses Arms Lore instead of Focus, allowing the build to push its damage further. Arms lore will allow weapon abilities to proc more frequently which will provide more damage output overall.
The tradeoff is that this version is less beginner friendly and more reliant on swing speed links to get close to the swing speed cap.
Aspect Options
- PvM -> Death Armor & Holy Weapon
- Alternative -> Frost Weapon, Madness Weapon
Link Options
This version relies heavily on swing speed links to reach its full potential. Once properly linked, the increased swing speed allows the build to attack more frequently, resulting in higher sustained damage and more frequent weapon ability procs.
- PvM:
- Swing Speed
- Melee Special Chance / Special Damage
- Damage to Bleeding
- Damage to Diseased
Codex Use
-
Swords
- Run Aggressive for weapon special chance
- Run Execute as finisher
- Run Spinslash for more weapon special chance or Rend for bigger bleeds and bursts
-
Parry
- You will sit in Testudo most of the time and run Last Stand as a finisher.
- You can use other stances situationally but Testudo offers the most DR when farming.
Additional Codex info is in the build card
Equipment
This build will run full plate. Mastercrafted gear at whatever ore your budget will allow.
- Weapon:
- Run (2H) Halberd, Bardiche, Zweihander, Great Axe for maximum damage (+25% Melee Damage)
- Run (1H) Longswords, Broadsword, Viking Sword, Norse Axe for less damage but more DR. (+10% Accuracy, +10% Damage Resistance)
- Off Hand:
- Run a kite/chaos shield of the best ore your budget allows.
- This is needed to enable parry if running 1H sword
Farming/Gameplay
This build is a great dungeon farmer and does very well in group content in a tank/damage role. It has a ton of survivability and can still do fantastic damage.
The Arms Lore version is designed for players looking to push the build further. With enough swing speed links, it can get close to the swing speed cap and will outperform the Focus version in sustained damage and weapon ability proc frequency.
Additional Notes
We only use Death for the extra disease ticks.
Arms Lore means we are more reliant on links to hit higher swing speed. This makes the build more link dependent, but the additional swing speed results in more attacks, higher sustained damage, and more frequent weapon ability procs. Arms lore will also reset our weapon specials almost twice as fast.
Stats
STR: 100, INT: 25, DEX: 100
Arms Lore Death Knight
- Aggressive 7
- Cleave 7
- Defensive 7
- Flaying 7
- Warrior 7
- Execute 1
- Spinslash 1
- Consecrate Weapon 1
- Divine Fury 1
- Combat Medic 3
- Pressure Points 3
- Self Treatment 3
- Triage 3
- Bandolier 3
- Mixed Results 3
- Panacea 3
- Volatile 3