Stat Priorities
Stat Ranking
Stats for Blood are pretty straight forward. Ilevel is king and reigns supreme. If something is higher ilevel, you equip it regardless of the secondary stats it has. There’s a few exceptions to this, mainly for trinkets, embellished crafted items, and jewelry, but you cannot go wrong equipping your highest ilevel pieces. When comparing two equal ilevel pieces, the best thing to do is to sim yourself to see which is better. Secondary stats for blood are all pretty equal in value and the amount of stats you have will also have an impact on the value on which secondary is better.
In general I would say that the ranking is Haste >= Crit = Mastery >= Vers.
But, you should sim yourself to really see the value of each stat for your character.
Stat Outline
Secondaries for Blood all interact with each other and improve on each other, which is why it’s better to have more of all stats than just more of one.
For instance, defensively, haste increases your rune regeneration rate, which allows you to Death Strike more often. Death Striking more often means that you will gain more value out of your mastery (Mastery: Blood Shield). Vers increases the healing that your Death Strike does, which in turn increases the value of your mastery. Crit is the only secondary that doesn’t directly impact this loop, however it still does interact with it. Crit rating is turned into parry via Riposte. The more you parry the more value mastery gets because it will absorb a larger portion of the melees that you do not parry. And with how the parry from Dancing Rune Weapon works, and how parry, dodge, and misses are calculated, Blood is often able to get VERY high values of physical avoidance (parry+dodge+miss) with very little crit rating.
In terms of offense, again all the stats are great. Vers is the most straight forward, it’s a flat % damage increase. Mastery and crit are similar. Mastery is an increase to your attack power, which increases your damage, and crit makes numbers go big. Haste is the only one that’s not completely straight forward, but it’s still easy to see its value. As I said earlier, haste increases your rune regeneration rate, which means you are able to use your rune spending and runic power spending abilities more often, meaning more damage. Haste also decreases your global cooldown which means you’ll have less time between your abilities, which translates to more damage done as well.
Races
Race doesn’t really matter for Blood. They all have their uses and benefits. For example:
- Goblin provides you with an extra movement cooldown.
- Dwarf and Dark Iron Dwarf are great for M+ because of the dispel.
- The dodge from Night Elf is great for increasing your physical avoidance and Shadow Meld can be useful to reset packs.
Just choose whichever race you think looks the coolest and have fun with it!
Enchants
Head: Incandescent Essence Helm Enchantment
Cloak: Homebound Speed
Chest: Waking Stats
Waist: Shadowed Belt Clasp
Bracers: Devotion of Speed
Boots: Watcher's Loam
Legs: Fierce Armor Kit
Rings: Devotion of Haste
Weapon: Rune of the Fallen Crusader
Avoidance has very minimal impact for Blood, and we get tons of leech passively from Voracious and Lichborne, this, and the fact that we are relatively slow as a spec, makes speed a valuable stat for Blood DK in all content.
Gems
The rest will likely be Haste + Mastery / Crit gems.
However, Sims will be able to give you the best answer for your character.
Consumables
Food: Grand Banquet of the Kalu’ak or Timely Demise.
Phials: Phial of Tepid Versatility is best in every scenario currently.
Potions: Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power or Elemental Potion of Power as a cheaper alternative.
Health Potions: Dreamwalker's Healing Potion. Also, you can currently use Anti-Magic Shell before using a Potion of Withering Vitality to completely negate the downside and get an almost 200k health potion.
Weapon Oil: Howling Rune
Runes: Draconic Augment Rune