Blood Death Knight Gearing Guide

Tier Sets

• 2-set Bonus: Heart Strike and Blood Boil deal 10% increased damage and have a 5% chance to grant Vampiric Blood for 5 sec.
• 4-set Bonus: When you would gain Vampiric Blood you are infused with Vampiric Strength, granting you 10% Strength for 5 sec. Your Heart Strike and Blood Boil extend the duration of Vampiric Strength by 0.5 sec.

The return of the Season 2 Tierset is a very welcome one, it’s a very potent but passive throughput gain that requires little interaction from the player. As we saw in the transition from Season 2 to 3 in Dragonflight, we will see the same thing likely in Season 4. The old how’s ya 2pc, 2pc working for you. This means you’ll be wearing 2pc tier from the current DF season 4 giving you the 2 set bonus of Heart Strike and Blood Boil dealing 10% increased damage and having a 5% chance to grant Vampiric Blood for 5 seconds AND 2pc from the previous season 3 (yes even at the decreased item level) giving you the bonus when consuming runic you have a chance to cause your next Heart Strike to apply Ashen Decay, reducing damage dealt to you by 10% and increasing your damage dealt to afflicted targets by 20% for 8 sec.

This will be the go until we see the devs step in and tune the season 3 tierset down, which is exactly what we saw the first time around. When that occurs, you’ll just default to wearing the 4pc of the current season.

To refresh your brains around Season 2 and the finer details around the tierset, the 2pc bonus proc on Vampiric Blood will extend any previously activated proc of Vampiric Blood. The 4pc bonus adds a strength component to this proc granting you a 10% strength bonus and allows you extend the duration of your vampiric blood by 0.5 seconds each time you Heart Strike or Blood Boil.

The important thing you want to try and monitor here in your playstyle is to avoid casting Vampiric Blood if you already have this activated from a tierset proc.

Antique Bronze Bullions

With the launch of season 4 comes the return of the Dinar styled system, we now have Antique Bronze Bullions. You’ll obtain these bullions from defeating raid bosses in the weekly awakened raid rotation. Only one bullion can be looted each week, but there is a rolling cap so if you miss a week you can catch back up. There are 4 vendors in Valdraken located at the Parting Glass, vendor locations guide.

Each vendor is set up and dedicated to each of the three Dragonflight raids, weapons, trinkets and a legendary upgrade for the Strength Axe and the Evoker Leggo. The fourth vendor sells cosmetic appearances though, which leads me to believe we can earn a decent number of these bullions as it would suck to have to choose between performance in Season 4 and looking good. We still don’t actually know the cap for the season on these yet though.

Antique Bronze Bullions Purchase Order for Blood DK

Obviously you can do as you wish with your Bullions, but I’m here to provide a guide to what is likely the best bang for your buck in spending your bullions.

1. Scale of Awakening - This starts the upgrade process on your Fry’alath the Dreamrender. This is your first chance if you want to be like the Scarecrow and have a brain.
2. Manic Grieftorch - Everyone is going to be in hot pursuit of this trinket so buying it takes the stress out of poor rolls and sad times.
3. Seal of Diurna’s Chosen - Eranog is easy to kill even on mythic (I have a video that will walk you through it!), but every man and his dog will be seeking this ring. Our legendary axe procs the ring so it’s just free damage for us.
4. Storm-Eater’s Boon - This is the best AOE trinket you can get your hands on, if you’re only seeking an M+ pathway and are comfortable in using this, I would likely favor its purchase over Grieftoch, but both are fantastic pickups, but again you can yell I’m BOONING IT if you have this.
5. Seal of Filial Duty - Again the legendary axe procs this ring for a free absorb and being from Broodkeeper comes with a higher item level and stat budget. If you’re a pug raider you might find it hard to obtain this ring or get it at a decent item level so this is an avenue of obtaining it.
6. Cataclysmic Signet Brand - Much the same as the above options, everyone is going to be seeking this trinket also, If you have been lucky enough to pick up one of the above from raid, I would look to purchasing this, rather than running double on use, but that is a preference of course.

Blood Death Knight Best in Slot Gear

You should still prioritise the gear you use by running a sim for your character, but the lists below will give you a good idea of what items are considered good for Blood Death Knight, and help you target the right content for each piece of loot.

Overall Best Gear

Whilst in pursuit of the Legendary weapon, there are a few other good options: Algeth’ar Hedgecleaver (M+) Sargha’s Smasher (M+), Incandescent Soulcleaver (Smolderon), Gnarlroot’s Bonecrusher (Gnarlroot), Ashkandur, Fall of the Brotherhood (Neltharion).

Best Gear from the Raid

Best Gear from Mythic+

I’ve put 2 Bullion trinkets in this list even though it’s supposed to be the best gear you can obtain via M+ only. This is due to the dungeon trinkets being so bad I would have rather left the guide blank than include them.

Trinkets

With the Antique Bronze Bullions being introduced in Season 4, aka Dinars for those from the Shadowlands era, obtaining those stupidly annoying trinkets you’re always praying your deity of choice to drop, becomes a lot less of a pain. As such there are several trinkets you should focus on obtaining if drops aren’t going your way. The top 5 trinkets straight off the bat are:

• Manic Grieftorch
• Storm-Eater’s Boon
• Elementium Pocket Anvil
• Cataclysmic Signet Brand
• Augury of the Primal Flame

Cataclysmic Signet Brand - S Tier - Drops from Smolderon

This is a stupidly strong trinket, like insane in the membrane kinda strong. You’ll be wanting to get your hands on this ASAP. The trinket builds in strength as you keep yourself in combat to build stacks gaining a max of 15 stacks. At 15 stacks enemies near you will suffer 10% of the damage split between them and this does a tremendous amount of damage in both raid and M+ the trick will be formulating clever ways to keep yourself in combat as you move from position to position in M+ or raid transition styled encounters.

Manic Grieftorch - S Tier - Drops from Broodkeeper Diurna

A dps meter favorite from Season 1, this is a primarily single-target nuke trinket that can make you feel very good about yourself. The trinket has a channel time of 2 seconds and you can move to break the channel if required. Each time somebody in your party or raid dies, the trinket's remaining cooldown is reduced by 90s, thus bringing a smile to your face each time someone in your raid or party does something stupid.

Storm-Eater’s Boon - Drops from Dathea

This trinket is stupidly powerful for anything at 2 targets and beyond, it is especially fun in M+, for one you deal stupid amounts of AOE damage, whilst still having access to all your abilities whilst you go full elemental for 10 seconds, the second is each time you use it, you have a responsibility to yell out - I’M BOONING IT.

You do have to be considerate as to where you decide to activate this trinket, remembering you will be grounded in place for 10 seconds whilst it activates, meaning you’ll eat all ground and frontal abilities from enemies.

Elementium Pocket Anvil - Drops from Shadowflame Amalgamation

This trinket has some very fun interaction and gameplay in the Mythic plus scene, this trinket isn’t valued for its damage to enemies, rather than the stacks you get for hitting enemies in combat and the buff you receive. Your priority with this trinket is to get to 5 stacks as quickly as possible, and then prolong your combat time for as long as possible to avoid dropping the stacks. This means using clever interactions like chaining mobs, neutral mobs and toys. Once you drop combat you’ll have a 15 second window to get into combat again to refresh your stacks, or you’ll need to build again from 1 stack.

Enduring Dreadplate - Kazzara, the Hellforged

This trinket, although not much of a gangbanger in its Aberrus days, could be a real sleeper in Season 4. The trinket is dealing massive amounts of damage when the plates rupture and its damage straight line of death is triggered, keep an eye on this one.

Branch of the Tormented Ancient - S Tier - Drops from Gnarlroot

Another strong damage trinket, every 2 and half minutes you’re able to apply four stacks of a debuff to a target. Each Death Strike, Heart Strike, or Marrowrend, will then remove a stack of the debuff and cause an explosion to everything within 8 yards, split between all targets up to 5. This will be a strong trinket in M+ or raid encounters with ads.

Augury of the Primal Flame - A Tier - Drops from Fyrakk

Augury of the Primal Flame comes loaded with critical strike which fits with the trinkets value, as the trinkets value is heavily weighted around your own critical strike chance. The trinket pumps damage and is pretty bananas at the time I’m writing this. The DPS in your group will be salty but if you get the chance to pick this up, do it.

Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart - A Tier- Drops from Fyrakk

Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart has seen a direct fall from heavens, before going live in 10.2 the last PTR tuning saw this trinket get a 50% buff on the absorb and self-inflicted damage, which in turn saw it’s raw damage from the on use increase by 31%. It made the trinket hugely valuable and something you wanted to pick up. Now since going live, it has been beaten into the ground and Jane Douglas from the Simpsons is screaming stop, stop, it’s already dead. If you can get this on a mythic kill, then the ilvl makes it worth it, otherwise, move along.

Coiled Serpent Idol - A Tier - Drops from Volcoross

Spawns Hydras that live for 10 seconds and spew out lava bolts every 2 seconds. It’s a pretty basic trinket that deals significant damage.

Pip’s Emerald Friendship Badge - A Tier - Drops from Council of Dreams

It’s a super stat stick kinda, every 12 seconds, every single action you take has a chance to trigger this trinket buffing you with a massive amount of secondary stats that then diminishes over 12 seconds, before having the chance to proc again.

Gift of Ursine Vengeance - A Tier - Drops from Council of Dreams

This trinket will likely get hailed as a defensive tank trinket and get pushed around in that format. It’s not a terrible trinket and it will have value in M+ more so than raid as it’s a fluctuating stat stick that’s proc occurs from any damage event every 3 seconds. It’s not bad, but there will be better options at this stage for raiding.

Key items/Crafted gear

Seal of Diurna’s Chosen - Eranog & Seal of Fillial Duty - Broodkeeper Diurna

These rare rings are once again making a return in Season 4 with fated and with that the chance to once again obtain them. The bonus is the Fry’alath procs both the rings, so depending on your luck or Antique Bronze Bullions these might be a hot nuggets to grab.

Fyr'alath the Dream Render

This is going to be what every strength wielding 2 handed user is coming over to dinner for. The details around the axe are yet to be fully clear but it’s expected to be linked to a quest chain that all player levels will be able to complete via the raid. This is more than certainly going to be your best in slot weapon as Blood Death Knight.

Crafting and Embellishments

For Season 4 our embellishments see no change so carry on my wayward son.

Best Crafting Options for Mythic+

1. Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl+ Shadowflame Tempered Armor Patch
2. Allied Wristguards of Companionship
3. Torc of Passed Time + Flavor Pocket

Best Crafting Options for Raiding

1. Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl + Shadowflame Tempered Armor Patch
2. Primal Molten Vambraces + Shadowflame Tempered Armor Patch
3. Torc of Passed Time + Flavor Pocket
4. Unstable Frostfire Belt (can be another option)