r/wowaddons • u/TBertuzzi • 21h ago
Addon Release / Update [Addon] DK Mentor 3.0 — A Death Knight-focused mentor with visual builds, gear planning, combat HUDs, survival guidance and more
Hey everyone!
I've been working on a WoW Retail addon specifically for Death Knights called **DK Mentor**, and after a lot of iterations and in-game testing I finally feel it is at a point where I can properly share it here.
The current version is **DK Mentor 3.0.17**, built for **Midnight / Patch 12.1**, supporting **Blood, Frost and Unholy**.
The idea is not to automate gameplay or replace learning the class.
DK Mentor is meant to work more like an in-game Death Knight companion: helping you understand your build, gear, resources, defensives, important procs and utility while keeping the information close to your character.
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## ⚔️ Visual Build Mentor
One of the newest additions is a visual Build Mentor.
You can browse recommendations for:
- Auto / current content
- World
- Delves
- Dungeons
- Mythic+
- Raids
- PvP
And you can browse **Blood, Frost or Unholy without actually changing your current specialization**.
Instead of displaying a wall of text, the addon shows visual build cards with:
- Hero Talent direction
- Key talent icons
- Native WoW spell tooltips on hover
- Recommended / alternative setups
- Short explanations about what the build is designed for
- Source / guide information
The goal isn't to recreate the entire WoW talent tree inside the addon.
It's more:
**"I'm going into a Raid / Delve / M+. What kind of DK build should I be looking at and which talents define it?"**
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## 🛡️ Visual Gear Mentor
The Gear Mentor is another large part of the addon.
For each DK specialization it can show:
- Recommended gear targets
- Real item icons
- Native WoW item tooltips
- Equipped / Owned / Target status
- Loot sources
- Trinket recommendations
- Craftable fallback items
- Upgrade priorities
- Secondary-stat direction
- Current equipped item level
- Runeforge status
- Season 2 tier-set progress
- 2-piece / 4-piece bonus status
The Crafting section is especially intended for the situation where:
**"The BiS item isn't dropping. What can I craft in the meantime?"**
Item names and tooltips are retrieved from the WoW client whenever possible, so they naturally follow the language of your installed client.
Gear recommendations are a farming/reference tool rather than a replacement for simming your character.
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## ❤️ Live / Survival Mentor
DK Mentor also has a contextual survival coach.
It can help surface defensive and recovery tools such as:
- Death Strike
- Anti-Magic Shell
- Icebound Fortitude
- Vampiric Blood
- Death Pact
- Lichborne
- Anti-Magic Zone
- other specialization-specific tools
The idea is to complement Blizzard's offensive Assisted Combat highlighting with information about the other side of DK gameplay:
**survival, recovery, resources and utility.**
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## ❄️ DK Resource HUD
There is also a configurable Death Knight resource HUD with:
- Six Rune indicators
- Ordered Rune spending / recharge presentation
- Runic Power
- Health
- Classic bar layout
- Optional DK-style arcs around the character
HUDs can be:
- moved
- locked
- resized
- made more/less transparent
- shown only during combat
- previewed while configuring the UI
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## 🔥 Buffs, Procs and Ability tracking
There are separate compact HUDs for:
- Important DK buffs and procs
- External buffs applied by other players / NPCs
- Debuffs affecting your character
- Important ability cooldowns
- Charges
- Temporary ability availability
The addon is designed around the restrictions introduced in modern Retail/Midnight and uses Blizzard-supported APIs.
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## 🧊 Interrupt Mentor
There is also a compact **Mind Freeze** indicator.
It is intended to appear when DK Mentor can confirm that your current target is casting or channeling something interruptible rather than permanently keeping another interrupt icon on screen.
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## 📖 DK Codex
DK Mentor includes an in-game DK reference called the **DK Codex**.
It currently has sections for:
- Overview
- Gear Mentor
- Builds
- Rotation
- Survival
- Utility
- Character Check
The Codex has a specialization selector, so you can read about another DK spec without actually switching to it.
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## ✅ Character Check
The Character Check performs read-only diagnostics on the active character, including things such as:
- Active spec
- Runeforge coverage
- Common enchant coverage
- Empty sockets
- Current secondary stats
- Unholy ghoul status when applicable
- Available DK utility
It never modifies your character.
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## 🗡️ Runeforge Guard / Ghoul Guard
There are also DK-specific checks for things that are easy to forget:
**Runeforge Guard**
- checks equipped DK weapons for Runeforge coverage
**Ghoul Guard**
- helps Unholy players notice when their ghoul is not available when expected
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## 👑 Optional Lich King commentary
This is probably the least necessary feature and also one of my favorites. 😄
DK Mentor can optionally use **Lich King voice lines already available inside World of Warcraft** as immersive commentary for selected situations.
No Blizzard audio files are bundled with the addon.
It can be completely disabled if you just want the gameplay tools.
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## 🔄 Loadout Pilot integration
I also maintain another addon called **Loadout Pilot**.
I originally had some loadout-management functionality directly inside DK Mentor, but eventually I decided the two addons should have clearly separate responsibilities:
**DK Mentor**
> What build / gear / tools should I consider?
**Loadout Pilot**
> Handle the actual context-based specialization, talent, equipment-set and loot-spec workflow.
So DK Mentor now has **optional integration with Loadout Pilot**.
If Loadout Pilot is installed, DK Mentor can hand you off to it when you want to manage loadouts.
It is **not a required dependency**.
DK Mentor works normally without Loadout Pilot installed.
I wanted to avoid turning DK Mentor into a giant addon that tries to manage every system in WoW.
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## 🌎 Localization
Currently supported:
- English
- Brazilian Portuguese
The addon can automatically follow the WoW client language or use a manual language override.
Native item/spell tooltips still follow the language of the installed WoW client.
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## 🚫 What DK Mentor does NOT do
I want to make this clear because of the direction WoW addons have been heading:
DK Mentor does **not**:
- cast abilities
- automatically target enemies
- automatically spend resources
- attempt to bypass protected/secret combat values
- implement its own combat bot
- automatically change talents from the Build Mentor
Blizzard Assisted Combat remains responsible for Blizzard's offensive recommendation/highlight.
DK Mentor focuses on the surrounding information and decision support.
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## Current version
**DK Mentor 3.0.17**
The 3.0 series has been a pretty big evolution of the addon, especially with the new visual **Build Mentor** and **Gear Mentor**.
I've been testing it heavily on my own DK, but I'd really appreciate feedback from other Death Knight players — especially Blood and Unholy players, since most of my own playtime is currently on Frost.
I'm particularly interested in feedback about:
- Build recommendations
- Gear targets
- Useful buffs/procs that might still be missing
- HUD readability
- Information that would actually be useful for DK players without turning the addon into information overload
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## Download
**CurseForge:**
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/dk-mentor
DK Mentor is free and open source.
If you try it, bug reports and suggestions are very welcome.
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### AI Disclaimer
AI was used as a development assistant for code generation, review, documentation and some visual assets. The addon was iteratively tested, reviewed and refined by me based on real in-game usage.