Blood Death Knight Tank Gear and Best in Slot — Season 4

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Blood Death Knight for Dragonflight 10.2.6. Check this page to learn everything you need to know about gearing a Blood Death Knight, including the BiS Gear from all sources, Raiding, and Mythic+, information on the best Trinkets, Tier Sets, and much more.

We only provide a "Best in Slot" list as a mandatory requirement stemming from certain guilds and players thinking they absolutely need to blindly chase that one item in that one slot and nothing else will do. Sometimes, it is raid leaders enforcing a very strict "BiS list" for loot council without any nuance; other times, it is players themselves enforcing it on themselves.

Blood Death Knight gearing is very simple: you prioritize item level above everything else on everything except trinkets, as anything 6 item levels or more is virtually guaranteed to be an upgrade.

If you have a choice on the same item level, the alternative will not, in generic circumstances, make a difference defensively. As such, we recommend just simming the choice and going with whatever helps you do more damage.

There are exceptions to this rule, and encounter-specific situations where a stat is massively devalued. Whenever an encounter features a difference (such as a boss not having a parryable auto-attack or dealing pure magical damage) and is deadly enough to warrant recommending small gearing changes, we will highlight it in the encounter guides as an exception, not a rule.

Similarly, at the absolute cutting-edge Mythic+ key levels, a slightly more fine-tuned approach towards secondaries and key-specific trade-offs on secondary stats may occur. This is extremely rare, and very often, even these players eschew or illogically favor choices that prove to be major mistakes just by cursory log analysis.

We have covered some of the caveats in a more detailed fashion on the following page:

Throughout this page, we will regularly refer to the importance of simming yourself on Raidbots, as it is an indispensable aspect of optimizing your character.

While we do offer generic sim charts for Trinkets, this should not be a replacement for simming. These charts are generated in isolation, without including a second trinket. As a result, this can mess with - to name just a few:

• Cases where you have two on-use trinkets and the order in which they are used
• Cases where trinket cooldowns clash at specific points
• Cases where a certain trinket drastically impacts your rotation when it comes off cooldown

If you are new to simming and Raidbots, check out our detailed guide below.

Embellishments are additional item effects present on profession gear, either as a baseline (such as Elemental Lariat) or added as an optional reagent when crafting (such as Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch). These grant a free, additional effect to the piece.

You may only have two embellishments active at a time.

For Blood Death Knights vying to perform optimally in Season 4 raiding, we recommend the following embellished pieces:

1. As your first craft of the season, craft a Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl and embellish it with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch.
2. For your second craft of the season, craft Primal Molten Vambraces and embellish them with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch.

Alchemical Flavor Pocket can be added to crafted items and does not count as an embellishment.

For Blood Death Knights vying to perform optimally in Mythic+ and wanting to focus on AoE damage instead of priority damage, we instead recommend the following:

1. As your first craft of the season, craft a Vibrant Wildercloth Shawl and embellish it with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch.
2. As your second craft of the season, craft Allied Wristguard of Companionship.

Alchemical Flavor Pocket can be added to crafted items and does not count as an embellishment.

With the launch of Season 4, Blood Death Knights will be able to don the bonuses from Lingering Phantom's Encasement (Season 2 bonus) but with the appearance and name of Risen Nightmare's Gravemantle (Season 3). As usual, Head, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves and Legs provide the following set bonus:

• Death Knight Blood 10.1 Class Set 2pc — Heart Strike and Blood Boil deal 20% increased damage and have a 10% chance to grant Vampiric Blood for 5 sec.
• Death Knight Blood 10.1 Class Set 4pc — When you would gain Vampiric Blood you are infused with Vampiric Strength, granting you 10% Strength for 5 sec. Your Heart Strike and Blood Boil extend the duration of Vampiric Strength by 0.5 sec.

As of the time of writing you should aim to get the Head and Chest as soon as possible and equip 2-piece from Season 4 and Myth 4/4 2-piece from Season 3, as this works out to be the best defensive and offensive gain.

The 2-piece bonus essentially just gives you more damage for two key rotational abilities. The chance to trigger Vampiric Blood for 5 seconds is largely superfluous as it will not have any real impact on your decision-making and is just a nice bonus when it triggers.

The 4-piece bonus turns Vampiric Blood into a DPS cooldown. Vampiric Strength triggers both when you cast Vampiric Blood and when you get a 2-piece proc.

Obtaining gear from rated PvP can be a powerful boost to your item level early in the season.

All of these items have Versatility on them.

If you are wanting to obtain PvP gear, we would advise doing Solo Shuffle as Frost.

Season 4 brings back all of the raids in Dragonflight and the 8 Dragonflight dungeons for Mythic+. Blood Death Knights get to re-discover a wide array of trinkets with different effects.

We strongly recommend using trinkets that suit the encounter at hand. For instance, if you are not able to line up a defensive trinket with a mechanic, or flat-out do not need it, pick a generic trinket instead!

Caveat: All trinkets with a primary stat budget (Strength) or a secondary stat have defensive value. In fact, the bulk of any trinket's defensive value is in the Strength they have, as this provides armor and a noticeable amount of parry rating.

Manic Grieftorch is the trinket of the season. An old favorite returns with new functionality. You can now move whilst channeling the trinket. This trinket provides a very large amount of priority damage and has a small chance to cleave to nearby enemies. Furthermore, the cooldown is reduced by 90 seconds if someone in your team dies, making it that much more impactful for raid progression scenarios, as the tank will be the last one alive most of the time.

Cataclysmic Signet Brand is by far one of the most potent trinkets acquired in Amirdrassil, both for single-target and AoE. All of your direct damage abilities have a chance to apply a very potent damage over time effect to your target and grants you a stack of Firestarter. Each application of Firestarter increases the damage of the DoT by 2.5%, stacking up to a maximum of 15 times. Above 5 stacks, this DoT also deals 50% of its damage to you (this is irrelevant in practice - effectively, more fuel for Death Strike). At 15 stacks, all enemies within 8 yards of the DoTted target also take 10% of the damage from the DoT, split between them. Every 5 seconds spent not in combat causes a stack of Firestarter to fade, with all stacks fading after 15 seconds.
In raid, this is a completely fire-and-forget trinket. In Mythic+, its behavior is similar to Elementium Pocket Anvil, where you have a very strong incentive to stay in combat for as much as possible. Similar to last season, you can use Worn Doll to spawn an attackable NPC that you can then hit to force yourself in combat and prevent the stacks from decaying for 6 seconds.

Augury of the Primal Flame, the Very Rare DPS trinket from Fyrakk, simply grants you a chance to deal bonus damage to your target with every critical strike. It sounds boring, but it is very potent, with its 10 bonus item level compared to the competition taking it one step further.

Storm-Eater's Boon drops from Dathea returns and is one of two trinkets with uncapped AoE damage (the other being All-Totem of the Master). After activating the trinket, you will be rooted for 10 seconds and pulse damage around yourself. Timing the use of this trinket well is an essential requirement, as if you do not consider the next 10 seconds of the encounter, you may find yourself dying to otherwise avoidable damage.

Elementium Pocket Anvil adds a chance for your Heart Strike to deal additional damage. The on-use aspect of this trinket boosts the damage from this proc up, and this additional damage buff can stack up to 5 times. The buff from the on-use effect will fade when you leave combat, and you have 15 seconds to keep the buff up.

Branch of the Tormented Ancient allows you to tether yourself to a target, which slows you by 15% per root, with 4 roots total. This works out to a 30% slow thanks to the passive effect from Death's Advance. Every direct damage ability damaging a rooted target deals a large amount of shadowflame damage, split between all nearby targets.

Coiled Serpent Idol is a completely passive trinket that spawns hydras that then damage your current target for 10 seconds. The targets have to be within 20 yards of the hydra for it to deal damage, and it will pick any target nearby if it cannot hit the target it was spawned on. If the target it picked dies, the hydra AoEs instead.

Gift of Ursine Vengeance is probably the most interesting trinket from Amirdrassil. It is completely useless in raid. Every time somebody near you takes direct damage, you gain a stack of Rising Rage up to once every 3 seconds. This grants you a decent amount of Strength.
When you reach 30 stacks, these are converted into Fury of Urctos, causing you to lash out at any target within 8 stacks that damages you and regenerating a small amount of health every second while this effect persists. The counterattack proc has a 0.1s internal cooldown, allowing you to deal a significant amount of damage in AoE with this. The Strength gained from the primary effect is also very good, particularly as, unlike most stacking primary stat budget trinkets, this one also comes with a full primary stat budget.

Season 4 also bring a number of stat stick trinkets. Rather than endlessly copying descriptions, we have instead created a table to represent what they do:

Trinket	Stat	Cooldown	Notes
Pip's Emerald Friendship Badge	Cycling between all secondaries	Passive	Cycles every 12 seconds between secondaries and decays for 12 seconds thereafter.
Ominous Chromatic Essence	A secondary stat of your choice	Passive	Buffs you and all other users of this trinket
Whispering Incarnate Icon	Versatility	Passive	Buffs you and all other users of this trinket. The loss for yourself is larger than the gain to an entire party. In a raid, you should consider trying to scam your co-tank if they are not a Blood Death Knight, as Blood is the worst possible Icon buff bot.

Season 4 brings back a few additional defensive trinkets to the mix. Most of them either have a very concrete (but niche) use case or deal enough damage to be considered hybrid. We have listed them here, along with their use case

Trinket	Use case	Notes
Fyrakk's Tainted Rageheart	Shield every 1min30	Deals a high amount of damage to targets when used. You have a very strong incentive not to delay using this trinket. It is worth noting that if you do not need the shield, it is not worth using this trinket.
Ward of Faceless Ire	Shidld every 1min and usable on anyone	This trinket has seen some changes since the last time it was available in Season 2 and is in a now much more usable state. The cooldown got reduced from 2 minutes to 1 minute, however the absorb has been lowered. Overall this buffed the trinket in usability as you can rotate the effect in your cooldown plan more effectively.
Treemouth's Festering Splinter	Shield every 1min30	A worse version of the above two trinkets./td>
Prophetic Stonescales	A second cheat death?	In Season 4, this trinket is only available from Mythic0 and has an item level ceiling of 515. If for some obscure reason, you think Purgatory isn't enough, you can waste a trinket slot on this. This procs before Purgatory and does not actually protect you from everything the way Purgatory does, along with costing you a trinket slot in a season crammed full with amazing trinkets.

Season 4 offers a way to target specific, powerful items with the new Antique Bronze Bullion. This list will focus on the items that will be the hardest for a Blood Death Knight to obtain.

1. Scale of Awakening - To upgrade Fyr'alath the Dreamrender as soon as possible!
2. Seal of Diurna's Chosen - This ring is desired by pretty much every class in game.
3. Manic Grieftorch - This trinket will be desired by all Str/Agi specs.
4. Storm-Eater's Boon (M+) / Seal of Filial Duty (Raid) - Once again highly contested items

Dragonflight Season 4 continues the same trend of item level upgrading which started in Season 2. They can also upgrade Crafted Gear up to iLvl 525, which is late-Mythic Item Level.

For more information on the new Gear Upgrades system, check out our dedicated page for it below.

As with Valor, the cost to upgrade scales differs per slot but now also increases quickly as item levels go up.

We recommend upgrading with the following priority list:

• Upgrade your crafted items (Bracer/Cloak).
• Upgrade your lowest item level slots or use a Raidbots Droptimiser sim to evaluate what to upgrade next.
• If you do not have Fyr'alath the Dreamrender yet, upgrade your weapon with any spare crests.

Once you have obtained a piece of gear containing a prismatic socket or needing to be enchanted, you will need to know how to modify it. Details about these tweaks can be found on our dedicated gems, enchants, and consumables page.

A new helm enchant was added with the launch of Amirdrassil. Don't forget to complete the raid-only quest to unlock access to Incandescent Essence!