Blood Death Knight Gearing Guide

Tier Sets

• 2-set Bonus: Consuming runic power has a chance to cause your next Heart Strike to apply Ashen Decay, reducing damage dealt to you by 10% and increasing your damage dealt to afflicted targets by 20% for 8 sec.
• 4-set Bonus: Soulreaper's execute damage and Abomination Limb's damage applies Ashen Decay to enemy targets, and Heart Strike and Blood Boil's direct damage extends Ashen Decay by 1.0 sec.

The new Amirdrassil tier-set is a bit of a trip back to shadowlands and the heart strike rotational play we saw around extending the tier set effect. Only this time, it’s Ashen Decay which can currently be extended to a maximum of 10 seconds. 

The nice thing about this tier set is the direct link to empowering the talent heart breaker, with this talent  you generate more runic power, allowing for more death strikes, which equals more Ashen Decay procs. It’s nothing exciting, but it's something.

Soul reaper becomes a very sought after raid execute option now, with the talent being buffed in 10.2 this now means on raid encounters when taking soul reaper you’ll have 100% uptime on Ashen Decay during your execute phase. This is due to Ashen Decay having a default application of 8 seconds, and with soul reaper having only a 6 second cooldown, you can just spam soul reaper each time it pops for 100% uptime, you can’t complain about that (someone will).

Abominations Limbs interaction is interesting, as once you have 4pc, abomination limb will refresh the 2pc every tick to the max duration of 10 seconds. This means even if you do nothing during your abomination limb (which you won’t cause you’re a good BDK) you would have Ashen Decay on all targets for 20 seconds (up to 5 targets).

Once you engage over 5 targets the rotational implications start to intrude on your fun here, Heart Strike is target-capped to 5 targets, therefore if you’re pulling over 5 mobs in M+, your heartstrikes won’t actually hit all the targets to extend Ashen Decay and it’ll be your Blood Boil charges picking up the weight of this.

Blood Death Knight Best in Slot Gear

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.

Overall Best Gear

Whilst in pursuit of the Legendary weapon, there are a few other good options: Gorehowl, Might of the Warchief (M+), Incandescent Soulcleaver (Smolderon) or Gnarlroot’s Bonecrusher (Gnarlroot).

Best Gear from the Raid

Best Gear from Mythic+

Trinkets

Cataclysmic Signet Brand - S Tier - Drops from Smolderon

The Cataclysmic Signet Brand is a stupidly strong trinket, like insane in the membrane kinda strong. You’ll be wanting to get your hands on this ASAP. The trinket builds in strength as you keep yourself in combat to build stacks gaining a max of 15 stacks. At 15 stacks enemies near you will suffer 10% of the damage split between them and this does a tremendous amount of damage in both raid and M+ the trick will be formulating clever ways to keep yourself in combat as you move from position to position in M+ or raid transition styled encounters.

Rezan’s Gleaming Eye - S Tier - Drops from Atal’Dazar

Rezan's Gleaming Eye is an old trinket returning from BFA and although it lost its haste proc (sadge) the trinket itself is still a very powerful trinket in the form of damage from the little chomping child of Rezan. The rend that is applied to the target causes physical damage and a bleed for 12 seconds. Due to the damage of the trinket being physical this is buffed via our talent Bloodshot giving it a 25% boost and giving even more value to Bloodshot if you have this trinket equipped. 

Branch of the Tormented Ancient - S Tier - Drops from Gnarlroot

The Branch of the Tormented Ancient is another strong damage trinket, every 2 and half minutes you’re able to apply four stacks of a debuff to a target. Each Death Strike, Heart Strike, or Marrowrend, will then remove a stack of the debuff and cause an explosion to everything within 8 yards, split between all targets up to 5. This will be a strong trinket in M+ or raid encounters with ads. 

Augury of the Primal Flame - A Tier - Drops from Fyrakk

Augury of the Primal Flame comes loaded with critical strike which fits with the trinkets value, as the trinkets value is heavily weighted around your own critical strike chance. The trinket pumps damage and is pretty bananas at the time I’m writing this. The DPS in your group will be salty but if you get the chance to pick this up, do it.

Fyrakk’s Tainted Rageheart - A Tier- Drops from Fyrakk

Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart has seen a direct fall from heavens, before going live in 10.2 the last PTR tuning saw this trinket get a 50% buff on the absorb and self-inflicted damage, which in turn saw it’s raw damage from the on use increase by 31%. It made the trinket hugely valuable and something you wanted to pick up. Now since going live, it has been beaten into the ground and Jane Douglas from the Simpsons is screaming stop, stop, it’s already dead. If you can get this on a mythic kill, then the ilvl makes it worth it, otherwise, move along.

Coiled Serpent Idol - A Tier - Drops from Volcoross

The Coiled Serpent Idol spawns Hydras that live for 10 seconds and spew out lava bolts every 2 seconds. It’s a pretty basic trinket that deals significant damage. 

Pip’s Emerald Friendship Badge - A Tier - Drops from Council of Dreams

The Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge it’s a super stat stick kinda, every 12 seconds, every single action you take has a chance to trigger this trinket buffing you with a massive amount of secondary stats that then diminishes over 12 seconds, before having the chance to proc again. 

Accelerating Sandglass - A Tier - Drops from Dawn of the Infinite

The Accelerating Sandglass works in a very particular way. You can gain up to 8 stacks of the haste buff. Once you receive your first stack of the haste buff,  a 20 second buff timer will start to roll and you can build this to a max of 8 stacks. When the buff runs out it triggers a flurry of accelerated strikes dealing damage and the cycle starts again. The haste buff is nice, but it’s nothing amazing, and the damage from accelerated strikes was very lackluster on PTR.

Gift of Ursine Vengeance - A Tier - Drops from Council of Dreams

The Gift of Ursine Vengeance trinket will likely get hailed as a defensive tank trinket and get pushed around in that format. It’s not a terrible trinket and it will have value in M+ more so than raid as it’s a fluctuating stat stick that’s proc occurs from any damage event every 3 seconds. It’s not bad, but there will be better options at this stage for raiding. 

Spores of Alacrity - A Tier - Drops from The Everbloom

The Spores of Alacrity is a large haste stat stick that you can just macro into Empower Rune Weapon and proceed as normal. The good thing about this trinket is you gain solid value from the haste, it lined up with Empower Rune Weapon on the 2 minute cooldown, so you’re gaining the haste from the trinket and Rune Weapon and you don’t have to alter anything in your play style. 

Ember of Nullification - A Tier - Drops from Blackrook Hold

The Ember of Nullification is a large Vers stick with an equip where taking magic damage has a chance to proc a silence on a target for 2 seconds. The trinket has a 20 second ICD and a 40% proc chance, which means it could come in clutch in some moments in M+ but RNG is a huge factor in that luck.

Key items/Crafted gear

Rashon, the Immortal Blaze:

I’ve included Rashon, the Immortal Blaze as I figure there will be questions raised around this due to the proc. Rashon, is one of the rare weapon drops from Fyrakk which all feature the Shadowflame Corrupted equip; giving your spells and abilities a chance to draw on the corruption within, dealing an additional 16947 Shadowflame damage to you and your target. Damage increased by 400% against enemies above 90% health. The Shadowflame damage is a nice bonus, but the 400% increase to enemies above 90% in Mythic+ when you’re constantly pulling new enemies is something to draw attention too. If the weapon could be swapped in and out during M+ without debuff, then it would be something to consider ninjaing from the agility users. However, it is not, and you will be better off with the either strength weapon from the raid. 

Fyr'alath the Dream Render

Fyr'alath the Dream Render is going to be what every strength wielding 2 handed user is coming over to dinner for. The details around the axe are yet to be fully clear but it’s expected to be linked to a quest chain that all player levels will be able to complete via the raid. This is more than certainly going to be your best in slot weapon as Blood Death Knight.

Crafting and Embellishments

Once the new season kicks off you’ll be able to obtain Spark of Dreams to craft items at their maximum item level.

Best Crafting Options M+:

• Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl + Shadowflame Tempered Armor Patch
• Allied Wristguard of Companionship
• Torc of Passed Time + Flavor pocket

Best Crafting Options Raid:

• Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl + Shadowflame Tempered Armor Patch
• Primal Molten Vambraces + Shadowflame Tempered Armor Patch
• Torc of Passed Time + Flavor pocket
• Unstable Frostfire Belt