Blood Death Knight Gearing Guide

• 2 Set Bonus - While you have one or more Bone Shield charges, the damage you take is reduced by 2%. Losing a Bone Shield charge has a chance to reduce the damage you take by an additional 1%, up to 3% for 6 sec.
• 4 Set Bonus - Your damage is increased by 0.5% per active Bone Shield charge. Taking damage while below 6 Bone Shield charges has a chance to generate 1-2 Bone Shield charges.

At first glance, you likely did the same thing I did, tilted your head to the side and thought, this isn’t it. However, if we stare a little longer into this tier set there are some interesting factors.

The tier set is split in value with the 2pc covering defensive value, whilst the 4pc covers offensive value. The issue is the 2pc is extremely weak from a defensive value standpoint, Bone Shield is locked behind a internal 2.5 seconds cooldown, this means you cannot lose more than 1 bone shield charge every 2.5 seconds. It’s also linked into auto attacks further reducing the chance to lose a charge.

The 4pc on the other hand is solid, the buff you gain from your 4pc is called Piledriver, and this stacks up a total of 7.5% bonus damage. But that’s not the kicker, this bonus damage affects everything, including trinkets and other procs. This is pretty insane for an entry tier set into the expansion.

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.

Season 1 Dungeon rotation for The War Within

• Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
• City of Threads
• The Stonevault
• The Dawnbreaker
• Mists of Tirna Scithe
• The Necrotic Wake
• Siege of Boralus
• Grim Batol

Disclaimer - the tables below have been generated around damage output as this will serve the majority of the player base who read these guides. Sims can be a little funky prior to release and see large swings in results, these tables will be updated once the expansion goes live.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

Ara-Kara Sacbrood - S Tier

Ara-Kara Sacbrood is a haste stick with a strength proc and damage component, can stack up to 5 times for a lot of strength with the ability to continue refreshing stacks and duration.

Spare Meat Hook - S Tier

Spare Meat Hook works extremely well with us as Blood DK’s even though you might think it on face value. The trinket causes physical damage with it’s on use, our talent Bloodshot causes you to deal 25% increased physical damage when blood shield is active, therefore you want to Death Strike first to gain a blood shield and then throw this trinket. Free 25% extra damage for the win.

Oppressive Orator’s Larynx - A Tier

Oppressive Orator’s Larynx deals decent damage, with a very high uptime on its effect giving you a decent strength buff throughout encounter combat time.

Skarmorak Shard - B Tier

Skarmorak Shard is a huge mastery boost trinket with the ability to further increase mastery easily in Dungeon situations, the trinket draws energy from defeated enemies granting you extra mastery with the ability to stack 5 times.

Mark of Khardros - B Tier

Mark of Khardros is a strength trinket with a mastery on use activation for 15 seconds. Comes under the frost and unholy loot table.

Void Pactstone - C Tier

The damage component is low but the uptime on the Void Pactstone for the haste proc is very solid around 45% of combat time

Ceaseless Swarmgland - D Tier

The uptime on the Ceaseless Swarmgland is really solid but the damage is very low, although the uptime regarding the DR is high, it’s not something you would chase.

Overclocked Gear-a-Rang Launcher - D Tier

Overclocked Gear-a-Rang Launcher is a frontal trajectory styled trinket that drops off in damage the further it passes out, you can stack the trinket's damage via melee attacks and reduce the cooldown. Its damage is pretty underwhelming though.

Reinforced-Wax Plating - D Tier

Reinforced-Wax Plating is just a bait trinket; it's worth 86 gold.

Raid

Skyterror’s Corrosive Organ - S Tier

I had really hoped Skyterror’s Corrosive Organ was going to be the Merektha’s Fang 2.0 trinket when I read the tooltip, however it’s not, it’s easy to build high stacks with the trinket though and it is extra free damage from just basically executing your rotation at the time of writing this it’s the highest damage dealing trinket on offer.

Mad Queens Mandate - S Tier

From a damage output perspective Mad Queens Mandate bangs in M+ it shines even more with the ability to reduce its cooldown by 60 seconds if you time your trinket right and kill the target. The healing is a bonus to the trinket but the huge value is in the priority or burst damage you can leverage from this trinket. The only thing to be aware of is the cast time on the trinket, you can move whilst casting though and it won’t break the channel but like beacon, don’t Reholy yourself.

Sikran’s Endless Arsenal - A Tier

Even though Sikran’s Endless Arsenal is featured on the unholy and frost loot tables, it is still currently at the time of writing this simming as one of the top dps trinkets for Blood. The trinket changes its stance each time you active it, moving between 3 in total.

Stance - Surekian Barrage

When activated this deals Shadow damage in a burst to all enemies in front of you.

Stance Passive: Whilst you remain stationary you build a speed increase which activates the next time you move.

Surekian Flourish

When activated you deal shadow damage via a DoT to your current target.

Stance Passive: you are granted bonus parry and avoidance.

Surekian Decimation

When activated deal physical damage in a line, split between targets.

Stance Passive: Critical strikes deal 10% more damage to absorb shields.

Ovinax’s Mercurial Egg - A Tier

Ovinax’s Mercurial Egg is super easy to maintain high uptime on strength stat with the ability to move and gain secondary stat boosts.

Foul Behemoth's Chelicera - A Tier

Primary Stat trinket with an on use to deal damage over 20 seconds. The interesting part about Foul Behemoth's Chelicera comes in this 20 second window though, your attacks and abilities restore health to you, and overhealing permanently increases your maximum health by the same amount, then turn to an absorption shield when leaving combat. Likely going to see more shenanigan use in M+ with this trinket and it’ll certainly be a niche requirement.

This trinket is also going to be an exclusive tank trinket so DPS won’t be able to use it for the extra max health/absorb output in M+

Treacherous Transmitter - C Tier

Treacherous Transmitter is a stat stick with an activation mechanic every 1 minute that allows you to gain a ridiculous amount of strength for 15 seconds. The trinket appears to have 3 different instructions to follow, 1 is to catch a void ball, another is to jump 3 times and the last is to stand on transmitter, completing these which is very easy nets you a huge amount of strength for 15 seconds on a 1 min CD.

Swamlord’s Authority - C Tier

Fairly low absorption and the damage from Swarmlord’s Authority is extremely lackluster.

Crafting and Embellishments are a hard thing to call at the beginning of an expansion as until people have crafted and properly tested items, you’re playing a lot of guessing games via simulations. I would recommend holding on your Sparks until we see further tuning and people have crafted them to test.

There aren't a lot of options when it comes to embellishments so you’ll be going with Elemental Focusing Lens on your crafted gear, this gives your spells and abilities a chance to deal bonus magic damage, with the chosen school of damage being based from your socketed gems. You can only have 2 embellishments on your gear.

Crafted Gear

Again as I mentioned in the embellishment section I would hold off on crafting anything until other people have rolled the dice for you, just save your sparks until the dust settles.

Crafted options are likely going to be

• Everforged Greatbelt
• Everforged Vambraces
• Ring of Earthen Craftsmanship

Due to crafting items having a slightly lower max item level you’ll likely want to aim your crafted pieces with the bracers and ring, but this will also depend on what you’re able to acquire on your quest for gearing. At the moment the crafted ring doesn’t have a unique equip listed on it, if that stays the case it could mean crafting double rings for the ease of filling out 2 slots with no primary loss.

Crafted Trinkets

Alchemy

Algari Alchemist Stone - As per the usual trend in Season 1/Tier 1 the alchemy and inscription trinkets always start with really solid value. Again this is no different, the alchemy trinket is a solid amount of static versatility with the bonus proc from damage or healing to gain a solid amount of strength for 15 seconds.

Darkmoon Faire Trinkets

The Darkmoon Faire Trinkets are back once again as they generally do in Season 1 of each new expansion.

The 3 Trinkets that we can use as tanks also seem to pack some really solid value.

• Darkmoon Deck: Ascension - Static Strength with the ability to Ascend every 8 seconds whilst in combat, which grants a small amount of random secondary stat for 15 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.
• Darkmoon Deck: Symbiosis - Static Strength of the trinket, with the equip of every 10 seconds in combat take 1% of your maximum Health as Nature damage and gain a stack of Symbiosis, granting Versatility for 20 sec stacking up to 5 times.
• Darkmoon Deck: Vivacity - Static Strength of the trinket, with the equip of your damaging spells and abilities, has the chance to grant Vivaciousness, increasing secondary stats and Speed or Avoidance based on the school it was activated from.

It’s hard to tell with sims at the moment but the Alchemy trinket and DMF trinkets should all prove to be rather strong trinket options, though not likely BIS slots. It’s difficult to make this judgment at the moment as sims aren’t showing a true reflection of each trinket's worth.

Once the expansion has launched I’ll revisit this and update it.