I was looking through the Death Knight builds and saw that there are only Forcewave builds.
I have a level 68 Reaper and RE seems to be doing fine even in Elite mode.
Is there any reason why no beginner’s DK build is using Necromancer as the starting class and use the Ravenous Earth spell to level up?
There’s no particular reason, you can level DK with RE or even pets. The reason why I made it Forcewave in my phys S&B DK guide is because Forcewave was the best compromise of being similar to final playstyle vs levelling efficiency.
Thanks for the reply. I was asking because I tried to play a Death Knight in HC mode and died 2 times at Warden. Once I was trying to kite the Warden but it was difficult and I ended up dying during his 2nd phase due to a mistake. Then for the 2nd time, I tried to facetank him but I guess my Aether resistance was not enough and died again.
So I was wondering if there’s another way to start Death Knight instead of using Forcewave. Started a new Death Knight and using RE as main skill now. Maybe because I’m more familiar with RE so it seems easier to me compared to Forcewave.
Edit: Forgot to ask: Is Dying God worth getting now after the patch? If not, which one should I go for other than Rattosh?
Death Knights can be really tanky if you build them to be that way, with the life steal from necro and soldier survivability. Are you using a shield?
I assume it’s about veteran? Krieg is basically the hardest boss fight on veteran HC due to the way veteran difficulty scales. You can’t really have much aether resistance stacked that early, so he would always remove about half of your health with his AoE aether stomp. Still it’s very much doable with Forcewave soldier, so it’s either poor piloting or underoptimization of character (while aether is very hard to mitigate that early you can easily have 200-250 armor rating by the time you reach Krieg).
Have you had a point in Menhir’s Will? It could had prevented you dying.
Dying God is still a must on vitality builds.
I was using Malawiglenn’s Forcewave spammer Death Knight guide so was using a 2-hander.
Yes, I was in Veteran mode. I realised that Veteran mode gives better drops but I guess I can’t handle Veteran yet. I can’t remember how much armor I had but I was trying to stack my resistances. First time dying was due to a mistake because I got a bit impatient. Second time, I saw on this forum someone mentioning that if I keep close to the Warden, he won’t cast long-range spells so I didn’t move far but ended up got killed in very short order.
I was using Malawiglenn’s Forcewave spammer Death Knight guide so I had Menhir’s will but only 1 point I think.
How do you mitigate the HP drain in low levels?
Veteran doesn’t give better drops per se. It just gives more by spawning extra heroes IIRC.
Also Veteran gives 10% extra exp, but since enemies are both more durable and do more damage whether it’s worth it or not isn’t quite obvious.
DG is the last constellation you take in your vitality devotion path because Rattosh is a priority, so you’d have it around level 60-65 if you haven’t whored a dozen of devotion points in the Crucible. Most vitality skills have life steal, except RE you’re planning to use, but in case of RE I think you’d be taking Wendigo’s proc for sustain.
LOL! That’s what I’m doing now. I’m actually farming the first 10 devotion points in Crucible. Makes things easier when I hit the campaign until the Warden 
It does spawn more heroes but it could be me being biased as I seem to see more green/blue drops compared to normal. Didn’t do any testing to prove this though.
I’ll try Forcewave again following your devotion sequence as I’m going for RektbyProtoss’ Leviathan Death Knight build which also uses Cadence as primary skill.
As for my current Necromancer, are these devotions ok, especially the skills binded to the devotion procs?
Also, how is Tip the Scales compared to Wendigo’s Mark?
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZqklJ52
Makes no sense to get both Tip the Scales and Raise Dead, since flat sources of resistance reduction do not stack. Actually I’d question if either of them is needed because Foul Eruption has flat RR too, although it’s unreliable vs bosses.
For sustain Wendigo Mark is much better than Tip the Scales since the latter is on cooldown, while if you bind Wendigo Mark to RE you’d apply it easily to big crowds. Alternatively you can bind Wendigo Mark to Ill Omen.
I don’t recommend to build anything serious to Siphon Souls - it doesn’t multiply activation chance despite having long cooldown and it has a duration of only 3 seconds. Actually if you plan to get it then Dying God is the most reasonable binding for it.
Overall I would bind Rattosh to RE and Wendigo Mark to Ill Omen, or vice versa. Then I would bind Dying God to Siphon Souls. That leaves Bat which doesn’t really have a good activator left, so I’d get rid of it.
I redid the devotions, added some gear for RE and allocated the skill points.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/DV99k0vV
Since I have 3 attack skills and 3 defense skills, I decided to take 3 on attack devotion procs and 3 when hit devotion procs because I want to maximise skills : devotion procs as much as possible.
I wanted to take Chariot but not enough points because of the Ascendant requirement. Also, couldn’t squeeze in Wendigo instead of Bat due to insufficient points. I can let go of Scales and take Wendigo+Revenant but that means I need to get 1 more attack skill. I can get Bone Harvest but 1 more button to press and the skill being just a filler make me reluctant to take this path. In addition, I will have 1 toggle skill left open. Furthermore, Tip the Scales looks like a very nice when hit proc as it has both RR and ADctH on 1 proc.
Theoretically, the build is quite tanky so should be able to get to HC level 100.
Do you think this is a viable endgame build to farm for sets?
Finally managed to kill Warden (Veteran mode) on my Soldier using Forcewave. Can facetank him with a few HP pots.
Changing the Devotions to Kraken and Assassin’s Blade helps a lot. Killed the Warden much faster.
Level 23 Soldier
It’s just a rough draft, hard to tell without seeing the final thing. In theory, it should be enough to farm the Dark One set.
You need to take either Ill Omen or War Cry for damage mitigation. Also if it’s a RE build then you usually get Foul Eruption for extra AoE.
Also, chest has conversion of vit to acid. It would mess you damage types.
I don’t think you need to dual-wield bonespikes in this build. That’s a great item, but you’d need energy regeneration from offhands too.
Squeezing in Wendigo is possible if you pass on Ghoul:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZy8p50V
I saw on RektbyProtoss’ video that Ill Omen and Decay has the same “reduce target’s damage” debuff and they cannot stack so it’s either Decay or Ill Omen and not recommended to take both. Since Decay and Ill Omen cannot stack, will Decay stack with War Cry since it also has “reduce target’s damage” debuff?
Edit: It is because Decay, Ill Omen and War Cry share the same debuff that I only took Decay. Break Morale reduces Physical resistance which is not useful for this necro build so I didn’t bother with the whole War Cry skill. Not sure if this reasoning is correct.
I will move some points to max Foul Eruption.
Thanks for pointing out. I missed this conversion.
I will try out this build to see how it goes. Still leveling my Forcewave Soldier using your build atm.
Thanks so much for your input. Helped me understand creating builds even more. 
Oh right, I forgot. Ignore that advice, you’ll be fine with Decay.