Blood Death Knight Gearing Guide

Season 2 Blood Death Knight Tier Set:

• 2 Set Bonus - Each time you take damage you have a chance to cast Icebound Fortitude for 4 sec and gain Luck of the Draw! which increases your damage dealt by 15% for 10 sec.
• 4 Set Bonus - Luck of the Draw! has 2 sec increased duration (12 seconds with 4pc).

While Luck of the Draw! is active, Death Strike costs 10 less Runic Power and can strike up to 2 additional nearby enemies.

I can’t say I was blown away by the tier set idea here. Even though I wasn’t overly thrilled at the season 1 tier set from an interactive point of view, it did end up giving us a solid amount of bonus damage (7.5% bonus damage that included trinket affects and other procs), which made for a pretty baller tier set for the start of the expansion.

Moving to this set in season 2 feels a little flat. The 2pc has a super low proc chance of 1.5ppm and you get this random proc of Icebound Fortitude for 4 seconds, along with a 15% damage buff (luck of the Draw!) for 10 seconds. So I can see people reading it and going sick, my 2pc can proc IBF and I’ll get a damage buff, but again 1.5ppm and fully random, not exactly the stuff Hillary Duff dances too.

The 4pc sounds a lot cooler than it works out to be also, the tooltip originally read that Death Strike could cleave up to 15 enemies. From that, I was like now we cooking lads, but it was corrected of course to Death Strike can cleave up to 2 additional enemies (3 in total) now don’t get me wrong, this is still great for M+ but for a raid application if the fight doesn’t feature add cleave, it’s wasted, which I don’t think feels great.

The low proc rate of 1.5ppm, and no control over when you will get to unleash your damage increase really feels like a miss, as you’re left praying for line up. If you do manage to get a good line up, you’ll send some boom anime babes that make you do the wrong things kind of damage, but outside of that it’s just hoping, and then screaming at the screen when you proc at the end of a pack. I’m glad they upped the runic power save on the Death Strike for the 4pc, as it’s first concept was a 2 less runic power per DS, which is rubbish, being 10 at least gives you some impact, however it’s still linked to luck of the draw on a random proc, so it’s not going to turn into all these free death strikes you’re likely thinking it will.

Having the 2pc/4pc trigger off an ability giving us control of this would have given us far more player agency over the tier set and it obviously would have made it a lot stronger, I’m just not a huge fan of the last mob in a dungeon dying and getting a proc of IBF and 15% damage that dwindles while I run to the next pack.

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 2 Dungeon rotation for The War Within:

• Cinderbrew Meadery
• Darkflame Cleft
• Priory of the Sacred Flame
• The Rookery
• Operation Floodgate
• Theatre of Pain
• Operation Mechagon
• The Motherlode!!

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+

Dungeons

S Tier - Tome of Lights Devotion

This trinket is straight up bonkers on PTR at the moment, the tooltip is a little deceiving though and if you don’t know about this trinket, you’ll like be rather confused.

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.

A Tier - Viscera of Coalesced Hatred

This trinket has a nice link in with our talent Bloodshot which boosts physical damage by 25% triggered by each Death Strike. Thins trinket gives your abilities the chance to lash out with a Hateful Strike, dealing Physical damage to an enemy and healing you. The effects are increased by 100% while you are below 50% health also which as a Blood DK pending your content curve can be a regular occurrence.

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.

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.

C Tier - Cinderbrew Stein

Has the ability to share benefit with your group granting primary stat, whilst having the ability to boost your own primary stat with an absorption shield. You can trigger a proc by dropping below 50% for yourself, but this is on a 1 minute ICD and the trinket comes with no static secondary or primary stat.

C Tier - Razdunk’s Big Red Button

Trinket comes with static strength and an on use to launch a missile barrage which you have to place on the ground. Back in BFA it was a good option from a bad bunch, now that we have better options on the loot tables, it’s not something you should chase.

C Tier - Remnant of Darkness

This trinket might sound good, but it takes forever to get to a 5 stack to start actually pulsing your darkness and it can also occur at the end of a dungeon pack whilst you’re moving to the next. The stacks themselves whilst you build to 5 have no duration and the strength gain is certainly nice. But due to the time it takes to build your stacks, and the damage when pulsing not being anything to write home about, there are better options for you.

C Tier - Sigil of Algari Concordance

Static strength and a chance to call an earthen ally to your aid. Be better if it had a chance to hearth you far far away from this trinket.

D Tier - Ringing Ritual Mud

Static versatility on the trinket and another option defensive attached to a 2 minute cooldown. Gives you a decent absorb and pulses some damage but again better options to be had.

D Tier - K.U-J.O.’s Flame Vents

You channel fire out dealing fire damage split between all nearby enemies and any mechanical enemies struck become Superheated taking additional fire damage when you use your next damaging ability. This trinket could maybe have had some cool applications if it wasn’t a channel but as it stands it’s not worth chasing.

D Tier - Modular Platinum Plating

Nope.

Raid

S Tier - Eye of Kezan

Comes with static mastery and an equip chance that gives your spells and abilities a chance to empower the eye and grant you 474 strength that can stack to a cap of 20. Once you leave combat this decays rapidly, but if you manage to fully empower the trinket to 20 stacks you’ll be pulsing fire damage or healing allies. This trinket gains significant value for long encounters but will also lose value on long RP/downtime situations likely earning it an auto ban in a dungeon like Theatre of Pain.

A Tier - Mister Lock-N-Stalk

Comes with static Haste and an equip chance for your spells and abilities to trigger a large physical damage output to your current target. The link for us as Blood with this trinket is the physical damage component, as the talent bloodshot increases physical damage output by 25% from each deathstrike causing this trinket to gain more value from our talent loadout. The on use for this trinket also allows you to switch the physical damage trigger from ST to AOE on a 20 second CD.

B Tier - Chromebustible Bomb Suit

Comes with Static Haste and an one use function that effectively gives you another defensive on a 90 second cooldown. The on use reduces damage taken by 75% for 20 sec or until a certain amount pending on ilvl has been prevented.

Upon depletion, the bomb suit detonates to deal Fire damage split between nearby enemies. This trinket will likely have niche uses and will be interesting to see how it plays out in the M+ environment.

B Tier - Geargrinder’s Spare Keys (DPS spec)

Trinket comes with static strength and an on use function that launches a trike into enemies which explodes for fire damage that gets split to all nearby enemies. On PTR this thing was doing a bucket load of damage, it is on the dps spec loot table and I don’t for a second think it will remain in this state (if it does it’d be S Tier), but if it does for large pulls this thing will own in dungeons. I’ve made this a B Tier option cause I don’t know how hard it’ll get hit.

B Tier - Zee's Thug Hotline (DPS spec)

This trinket for odd reasons was simming well when I was messing about on PTR, but testing it in dungeons, confirmed it was pretty woof. The proc chance is low and the damage that comes with it is just as shite. This trinket has static strength and gives your abilities the chance to call a member of the Goon Squad to attack your target for 10 sec. Gaining Bloodlust or a similar effect summons the whole crew. I only wanted to mention this trinket due to you getting to call out the goon squad.

B Tier - House of Cards

Static strength with the on use ability to proc a whole lotta mastery on a 1.5 minute cooldown. It’s ok but not a high listed choice for Blood.

C Tier - Reverb Radio

This trinket comes with static strength and an equip that allows your abilities to boost your haste stacking up to 5 times. Upon reaching 5 stacks the effect is increased by 100% for 15 seconds before starting again.For a myth 6/6 track trinket on PTR 5 stacks at max hyper was worth just under 4000 haste.

C Tier - Vexie’s Pit Whistle

Trinket comes with static strength and an on use that summons a Pitbot to assist you for 5 seconds. This will cause fire damage to explode and split with all nearby enemies. The trinkets damage is underwhelming at the moment and nothing to seek out.

Delves

None of the trinkets gained from delves this season are anything to seek out or write home about. If they are one of your only forms of content then the best 2 to seek out are:

Mechano-Core Amplifier - Your harmful spells have a chance to proc a stat amount for either your highest secondary or your lowest secondary for 10 seconds. The proc has a decent uptime and is the best trinket you’ll find from Delve content.

Shadow-Binding Ritual Knife - Static mastery trinket with a hefty boost to your primary stat, does come at the cost of a low chance proc to decimate one of your secondaries for 10 seconds during combat though which can be less than ideal.

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.

Dinars Are Back…Maybe!?

On the 8th of Feb the Dinars were removed from the Gallagio loyalty renown track. We actually don’t know exactly what the plan is for these at the moment, only that they are intended to be part of 11.1 and Blizzard will release more details in the future.

If dinars do end up making a return for this raid tier (which I think they will) you have 3 very easy allocated purchases.

1. Best-In-Slots
2. Jastor Diamond
3. Eye of Kezan

The trinket has been placed last because Blizzard could nuke it from orbit so it’s a wait and see what they do rather than rush and buy.

Crafted Gear

From early sims, crafted items are a little different in season 2 with boots and cloaks winning out on sims at the moment. Belt and wrists are still a good option if you like a decent item in that slot.

The recommendation would be

• Everforged Sabatons
• Consecrated Cloak

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, and in Season 1 this was the case with Belt and Bracers, but as mentioned above, boots and cloak are simming above at the moment, it is only a 3 item level drop too I should mention.

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 2 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.

Cyrce's Circlet

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

The new ring introduced Patch 11.0.7 much like the Annulet that we saw in Dragonflight is seeming to continue it’s run into patch 11.1. This ring is called Cycre’s Circlet and it comes with 3 gem slots that you can slot Citrine gem stones into. You’ll do a quick quest and the ring will be yours.

The ring starts out at item level 639 and can be upgraded 3 item levels at a time all the way to 658. You get your 3 gem slots straight away and the ring comes with stamina as its only fixed stat.

The current state of play has the following gems simming the highest, this could change as we eventually get access to all the Citrine gems after reset but I’ll continue to update this :

Raiding:

• Stormbringer’s Ruined Citrine
• Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine
• Legendary Skipper’s Citrine

Mythic+:

• Thunderlords Cracking Citrine / Roaring War-Queen’s Citrine.
• Fathomdweller’s Runed Citrine
• Legendary Skipper’s Citrine

Do note as well for M+ if you have a set group or at least a group that knows what they are doing, you might want to swap your Thunderlord’s for a Roaring War-Queen Citrine. This does require 4 out of 5 players in your group to run the Roaring War-Queen though and 1 player in your group to run Thunderlord’s Crackling Citrine. This can create a loop where the War-Queens, proc the War-Queen’s, and the player with Thunderlord’s blasts. It appears due to spaghetti that this is working this way, but it is what it is, a big thanks to Mandl in Acherus for pointing this out.

There will no doubt be a lot of talk about the healing and absorb effect citrine gems in the tank community. Majority of the time these effects are wasted on 99% of the playerbase and actual strategic points of use with impact, the sun and moon need to align for your random proc so that said absorb or heal will save you, but people will still likely push it as a good option. The recommendation as always is to go with the highest simming damage output on the ring and this is what I recommend.

In a stunning move like when Cru Jones does the backflip in the end race of 1986 classic RAD the legendary BMX movie, Blizzard buffed the ring PRIOR to release. This made the ring an easy choice to equip with no mucking about. This is a move I can 100% get behind, and I think if you’re going to put items like this in the game, you need to make them a BIS item for that slot.

The thought was this ring would likely see you into heroic raid level items before being replaced. At the moment though, at 658 the ring is still simming as a best in slot. The guide will be updated when patch goes live and we see what Blizzard are going to do with it.