Blood Death Knight Gearing Guide

There are new Season 3 Blood Death Knight Tier Sets.

Deathbringer Season 3 Tier Set Bonus:

• 2pc - When you cast Reaper’s Mark you gain two charges of Exterminate. The single target scythe which is the first scythe is 50% more effective, while the AOE scythe which is the second scythe is 25% more effective.
• 4pc - Reaper’s Mark stacks up to 15 additional times (from 40 to 55 stacks), and when it detonates your critical strike chance is increased by 10% for 8 seconds.

Let’s start with Deathbringer and how the tier set interacts.

The new Tier Set comes with a strict rotational change due to Exterminate still being capped at a max of 2 charges. The goal is to always spend your exterminate charges before Reaper’s Mark detonates. But it’s not a matter of just chaining them back to back, even though you do want to execute them rather quickly, each Exterminate cast can add up to 8 stacks in a single cast, and any procs left over when Reaper’s Mark expires, along with their empowerments are lost, which is a large damage loss.

This means as Deathbringer now you’ll be pressing Marrowrend more than before, as you’ll now have to spend FOUR marrowrends very shortly after applying Reaper’s Mark, (this is in both ST and AOE) which isn’t exactly what we have been raised to do as good function rotational Death Knights. The issue being if your target dies for example causing your Reaper’s Mark to explode you lose a lot of power that your tier set is supposed to give you.

San’layn Season 3 Tier Set Bonus:

• 2pc - Infliction of Sorrow extends the duration of your diseases on your main target and Essence of the Blood Queen increases your mastery by 0.88% per stack.
• 4pc - Blood Beasts last 14 seconds, and Vampiric Strike increases the melee attack power of your Dancing Rune Weapon by 10% for 6 seconds. Multiple applications can overlap.

This tier set might sound exciting when you first read it as a San’layn player, but it’s important to take note of a few things. With the blood beast nerf coming into 11.2 it actually means this 14 seconds of Blood Beasts doesn’t equal the skyrocketing numbers you are hopefully for on the details meter. In fact, Blood Beasts post 11.2 is going to contribute far less to AOE damage than before. Which is odd considering the 4pc is based around it, so you would assume that would just equate to more power from it.

Don’t forget we are also losing the cleave component from our Death Strike in Season 2. The good news is though San’layn still turns out to be a gain on single target from Season 2, and will still be the best option for all your content endeavors on the Blood DK.

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 3 Dungeon rotation for The War Within:

• Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
• The Dawnbreaker
• Priory of the Sacred Flame
• Operation Floodgate
• Eco-Dome Al’dani
• Halls of Atonement
• Tazavesh the Veiled Market

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 patch is live.

• Overall
• Raiding
• Mythic+

Dungeon Trinkets

S Tier - Tome of Lights Devotion

The trinket on equip gives a buff called Inner Resilience, this gives you armor and grants a magic absorb, that increases each time you are attacked. When you get attacked for the first time the buff will change to “The 50 Verses of Resilience” each time you’re hit, you’ll gain a stacking effect which is impacted by a small icd on the trinket, and this will stack to 50.

There is no duration on this buff either in or out of combat, you’ll also have a glowing light around you to see when it’s active. When the trinket hits 50 stacks, it changes from armor and the magic absorb, to critical strike and holy damage and this is the true value of this trinket. Once you hit 50 stacks in this phase it will cycle back to the armor and absorb for another 50 and so on.

The goal with this trinket is to remain in the crit/holy damage phase for as long as possible, which you do via the on use function of the trinket. When you activate the trinket, it’ll swap you from one phase to the other, whilst also giving you 20 seconds of double benefit via the buff Radiance. You’ll use the trinket on pull, to swap from armor/absorb to crit/holy, and then once you’ve hit your 50 stacks and cycle into the armor/asborb phase, you would use the on use again to swap back to the crit/holy damage and repeat.

Just prior to raid release we saw a trinket nerf come through which impacted Tome of LIghts Devotion. It’s unclear at the moment how much this impact is going to have on the M+ side of things regarding the ICD change but due to how far ahead it was in a raid style environment the trinket is likely going to remain BIS or very much near the top even with the 15% nerf.

S Tier - Cursed Stone Idol

A new trinket added into the Season 3 dungeon loot table with the return of Halls of Atonement, the Cursed Stone Idol is a quick on use channeled trinket (1 second) to massively increase your critical strike rating for 15 seconds. It also comes with an AOE which if optimized can deliver an extra 28972 crit rating which = large dups. Even not playing optimally with this trinket is still a hefty net damage gain.

A Tier - Ara-Kara Sacbrood

Static haste value with a strong primary stat buff. This trinket was a favoured choice in season 1 so it’ll be another popular choice when it comes back as an option in season 3. When the trinket procs you gain a stack of Egg Sac which can stack up to 99 times with each stack granting you a primary stat boost. There is also a damage component to the trinket as when the Egg hatches after 1 minute, a Spiderling spawns dealing nature damage.

A - Tier - So’leahs Secret Technique

B Tier - Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker

Static strength value on the trinket with a chance to proc a large crit buff for 15 seconds, every 60 seconds from your first ability. You then have the chance to proc 1 second extensions up to a max of 15 seconds with your critical strikes whilst exploding in the first 15 second window. So in an idea situation you could have a large crit buff rolling for 30 seconds every minute, however there are a lot of variables that go into that situation in M+ which would likely not lead to the trinket working out in this way, you also have the issue of effective uptime in a dungeon.

B Tier - Codex of the First Technique

Some will remember this trinket and everything that came along with it in Shadowlands, it’s a good trinket for content extremes we will call it. If you’re pushing world first keys and things of a like there is a chance this trinket will hold some decent value for you, but it’s still a random proc and for 99% of the playerbase there are better options.

B Tier - Signet of the Priory

Static strength with the ability to increase your highest secondary stat for 20 seconds. You’re able to trigger the effect at a lesser rate onto others in your party who are wearing a signet also.

D Tier - Ringing Ritual Mud

Raid Trinkets

S Tier - Araz’s Ritual Forge

Stat crit trinket with an onus for a massive strength boost which decays over 30 seconds at the cost of 15% of your maximum health on a 2 minute cooldown. The 15% max health isn’t going to be an issue as EHP is generally not a real factor for most people in their line of content.

S Tier - Unyielding Netherprism

This trinket at the moment hasn’t been hit with the tank tax, it’s likely to come but for the moment this trinket provides outstanding value. Your harmful abilities deal damage split amongst nearby enemies, and damage is increased by 30% per enemy struck up to 150%. The effect can occur every 10 seconds up to 15 times. You can then activate the trinkets on use, to consume the stacks gaining a massive amount of primary stat for 20 seconds.

A Tier - Brand of Ceaseless Ire

Tank only specialisation trinket loaded with static crit rating. The equip effect on this means when you get hit you absorb damage and deal shadow damage back. The damage is increased by 30% per additional enemy up to a cap of 150%. This is actually a pretty decent tank trinket in terms of providing some damaging smoothing and output.

A Tier - Eradicating Arcanocore

B Tier - All-Devouring Nucleus

Cheat Death trinket on a cap of 20.9 million damage which restores you to 20% health, you then need to be healed back above 65% health to stabilize and avoid death. Obviously there are a few caveats with this trinket that make it different from previous cheat death trinkets we have seen. In the end it will come down to if you require a cheat death or not, remember we do have Purg.

B Tier - Astral Antenna

Delve Trinkets

S Tier - Funhouse Lens

A Tier - Mechano-Core Amplifier

B Tier - Void-Touched Fragment

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.

Reshii Wraps

For Patch 11.2 your cloak is being taken care of via the Reshii Wraps. This is a cloak that you’ll gain access to via a quest chain and completing chapter 3 of the main patch storyline will reward you with the Reshii Wraps. The Reshii Wraps are able to be upgraded via Ethereal Strands.

You can also add a secondary stat of your choosing to the Wrap via the Fiber Socket - as always Sim yourself as you can remove the Fibers at any point to slot another in.

But the result will most likely be:

• San’layn Haste thread - Pure Chronomantic Fiber
• Deathbringer Critical Strike thread - Pure Precise Fiber

Blizzard has also made a stunning move on PTR removing all cloaks from the dungeon pool and raid, meaning you don’t have to worry about cloaks popping up in your great vault for the season!

Crafted Gear

For crafting in season 3 bracers and Belt are going to be your best bet. This gives you an easy double socket option, and with the artifact styled cloak coming into play in Season 3 with the Reshii Wrap, these are the best bang for buck you’re likely going to get.

The recommended Blood DK Crafted Gear:

• Everforged Vambraces
• Everforged Greatbelt

Both with Elemental Focusing Lens embellishments.

Due to crafting items having a slightly lower max item level you generally want to aim your crafted pieces at slots like bracers, belt or ring.

Crafted Trinkets

Alchemy

Algari Alchemist Stone - The alchemy and inscription trinkets generally start with really solid value in season 1, however, we didn’t really get the same impact in the War Within, mainly due to item level around the inscription trinkets. Moving into Season 3 the alchemy trinket is still a solid amount of static versatility with the bonus proc from damage or healing to gain a solid amount of strength for 15 seconds which you can continue to upgrade. There are many better options for you to seek out though it has to be said.

Best D.I.S.C Belt & Miniature Titan Disc Effects

Note: The belt still holds some early value in Season 3 but will likely be replaced quickly as the season starts to progress or you craft your belt.

Patch 11.1.7 introduces an unlikely hero from the world of Delves. A new mode called Overcharged Delves is incoming and with the release of 11.17 all players will be able to obtain a new belt - Durable Information Securing Container Durable Information Securing Container (D.I.S.C) the belt has it’s own progression system to work through and has 9 different effects. You can swap between these effects as you obtain them.

You obtain the belt by doing a short questline which kicks off from Dagran Thaurissan II. You’ll do the questline, smash some of the new Overcharged Delves, then get another quest which will lead you to obtaining the D.I.S.C belt at 684ilvl.

The 9 effects or powers you can put into the belt (only using 1 at a time) are:

• Charged Bolts
• Charged Crystal
• Spark Burst
• Electric Current
• Critical Chain
• Static Charge
• Energy Shield
• Cauterizing Bolts
• Charged Torch

Originally the belt was a complete donut, meaning 0, it was rubbish. Blizzard buffed the belt to be BIS for the end of Season 2. Charged Bolts which was the default power on the belt was originally the winner for all forms of content clearly winning out sims, so Blizzard hit up an orbit nuke and hit it with a 62% nerf which then made Critical Chain become our new best option for basically all content.

• Single Target / Raid: Critical Chain
• Mythic+: Critical Chain