Tarragon's How To: Melee Dps

Overview

Melee dps is the art of hitting things while standing close to it. You will spend a lot of time staring at some dude's butt. Melee dps (I'll start using a first person plural from here on out) comes in multiple flavors: Cat Druids, Retribution Paladins, Arms and Fury Warriors, Subtlety, Combat, and Assassination Rogues, Blood, Frost, and Unholy Death Knights. We are pretty high on the manliness scale, because we actually stand there and hit stuff, instead of running away and throwing snowballs or something.

Gear

Different classes will want different gear, but all of us want at least 8% hit so we don't miss. That is 263 hit rating. Also, we want 26 expertise so the boss won't dodge you. Any more hit rating is a waste, but more expertise isn't as bad.

Specifics

Death Knight

Gear: You want Strength on everything. If you are blood spec, then at high gear levels armor penetration comes in, but you probably don't need to worry about that now.

Specs: All 3 of our trees have solid dps specs. Blood is high in physical dps. Frost has a lot of frost (big surprise!) damage. Unholy has a pet and a bunch of unholy (is your mind blown yet?) damage.