Tier Sets
The first season of The War Within has quite basic tier set bonuses, this is mainly due to all of the new tools and passives that we are gaining with Hero talents, so these tier sets are pretty self explanatory.
- 2 Set Bonus: Your minions deal 8% increased damage.
- 4 Set Bonus: When you summon a minion, your Haste is increased by 2%, up to 8% for 8 sec.
2 Set Bonus
Very simple minion damage increase which favors minion based builds. This damage bonus does not apply to the Riders from Riders of the Apocalypse, but will apply to all of your minions such as Army of the Dead / Apocalypse Ghouls, Magus of the Dead, your own Ghoul and Raise Abomination.
4 Set Bonus
Everytime you summon a minion (Army of the Dead / Apocalypse Ghouls, Magus of the Dead, Raise Abomination etc) you gain Unholy Commander which is a 2% haste buff that stacks up to 4 times. Unholy Commander is refreshed whenever you summon a minion, which makes Sudden Doom procs very important to time well so you can extend the buff and keep it at 4 stacks for as long as possible (Sudden Doom will summon a Magus of the Dead via Doomed Bidding).
If you have a Sudden Doom proc waiting, do not immediately need runes and are not on 2 stacks of Sudden Doom, you can hold it for a bit until your Unholy Commander buff is about to drop, this will greatly help to maintain the haste buff.
Trinkets
Ara-Kara Sacbrood
This is one of your best trinkets in Season 1 and comes from the dungeon Ara-Kara, City of Echoes. It’s a passive trinket which gives you haste and can proc a 1 minute strength buff. Multiple strength buffs can overlap, so it works in a similar way to Festermight. Haste is one of our best stats and this trinket gives a strong and steady flow of strength, as well as some additional damage from the trinket itself (although it’s very negligible).
Treacherous Transmitter
This trinket can be very difficult to play around, so it may not be a viable choice in some boss encounters and you will want to use Skarmorak Shard instead. This is a very powerful trinket that is on a 1.5 minute cooldown (which aligns perfectly with Raise Abomination and your other cooldowns) that gives you an insanely big Strength buff for 15 seconds once you have completed one of the three tasks that it gives you at random (you have 15 seconds to complete the task):
- Jump 3 times
- Walk into the orb
- Stand in the portal pad
You will want to always use this trinket alongside Unholy Assault, and you can delay completing the task for a bit so that you still have it active for Infliction of Sorrow consumption at the end of your Gift of the San’layn window (if playing San’layn).
Mark of Khardos / Skarmorak Shard
Both of these trinkets are very similar in their uses and are easier to use than Treacherous Transmitter. You use both with Unholy Assault so you get a big mastery buff during your cooldowns. They are both strong because they have a 1.5 minute cooldown, aligning with both Raise Abomination and Unholy Assault. Both give you a big amount of mastery which will increase your minion and shadow damage (which is the majority of your damage).
However, they are both good but outshine each other in different scenarios. Mark of Khardos is generally more single target throughput value, as you gain 5.2% more Mastery with the on use effect than you do with Skarmarok Shard. However, as soon as there are multiple targets/adds dying at the same time, then Skarmarok Shard pulls much further ahead as you can gain a total of 10.5% additional mastery from its secondary effect (triggered by enemy deaths).
So with this in mind I generally recommend using Skarmarok Shard over Mark of Khardos, as the single target difference between the two is pretty small and as soon as there are additional enemies involved, that small difference goes away completely, so it’s a lot more flexible across different target profiles/fight styles.
Embellishments
DISCLAIMER: Embellishments we’re not tested much if at all and will most likely see some major changes/tuning! While I compete in the RWF, I will not be able to update the Embellishments recommendations until after the race, so wait before crafting anything and double check in the Acherus Discord!
Embellishment Combinations
Everforged Vambraces & Consecrated Cloak with Dawnthread Lining
This is quite a simple embellishment that gives you a flat amount of Crit when you are above 80% health. As a Death Knight you are very tanky and can immune a lot of incoming damage via Anti-Magic Shell. So with this in mind you can keep quite a good uptime on this embellishment.
Sadly the current tuning on most embellishments is pretty sub-par, so these will be the best choice for maximum throughput. They are also crafted on Bracers, as it’s one of the lowest stat budget pieces across all of your gear which this Embellishment can be crafted on. Crafted pieces are 3 ilvls below the maximum (max = 639), so we want to craft our embellishments in slots that don’t have a high stat budget. This is why Bracers are chosen, as it’s a low stat budget slot.
Everforged Vambraces & Consecrated Cloak with Elemental Focusing Lens
This embellishment is very simple and doesn’t really have much to do. It just does damage based on the gems you have equipped into your gear. It is mostly a single target embellishment though, and you are generally better off with embellishments that give you secondary stats for cleave/multi-target scenarios, such as Dawnthread Lining.
For the same reasons as above we will want to craft this embellishment on a low stat budget piece, so you ideally want to craft this embellishment on bracers and a cloak.