I noticed that the nodes after pyromancer and cryomancer, should actually also work on Deathknights. Because the nodes after pyro/cryo only specifies skeleton mages (which DKs count as). The only real loss, is that the pyro and cryo skill to get there are wasted nodes (with arch mage anyway).
I just want to make sure that this is indeed correct and that I’m not missing anything.
Yeah, the Death Knights can benefit from that nodes. But not under all circumstances. Note that the standard Death Knight only has melee attacks so doesn’t benefit from any spell related stuff. Unless you spec into mortar and/or Hungering Souls in the Death Knight branch. Then the spelldamage will apply to these special attacks.
From my experience you have the best damage potential for Death Knight, if you skip the spells, especially the mortar, because usually you would either scale minion melee or minion spelldamage. And when you go for melee, the standard melee attacks do more damage than the mortar, so choosing mortar will decrease DPS.
But those skills can be useful for an minion ailment build, where it’s more important to hit and stack ailments than to do damage with those skills
Thanks for the info! 
I actually tried mortar with DKs and dropped the skill because it didn’t seem like my DKs ever used it. I actually ended up dropping both mortar AND hungering souls to max their melee. So that was the right call?
The mortar has a relatively long cooldown. It’s an aoe ranged attack like a small necrotic grenade. It also has a long spell animation.
The Souls aren’t an instant cast either. So the DKs will stop moving and cast souls instead of approaching the target and attack with melee strikes. So it will also be a DPS decrease for a melee focused minion build.
I usually skip Souls. I’d use it on a melee poison build, though. When 5 Knights cast a bunch of Souls then you get a lot of additional hits that can apply bleed and/or poison. And when you stack minion damage over time, the possession of the Souls will also benefit from it.
So hungering souls benefits from the poison node too? Not just their melee attacks? O,o
I’m not sure what node you are referring to. There’s a passive in the Acolyte passive tree that increases minion poison chance in general. Souls is a hybrid skill, that hits and applies the “possessed” rebuff that is a DoT.
The souls hit will inherit the minion poison chance of your stars and the poison stack will get all minion poison damage bonuses.
There’s another minion poison chance node in the necro tree. But this one states “poison chance if minion melee attacks” so this won’t apply to the Souls from the DKs.
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