Blood Death Knight Best Legendaries in Shadowlands — Shadowlands 9.0.5
Legendary Powers are targetable, unique effects that you can imbue certain base items with through the Runecarving system. In Shadowlands, these enable you to customize your Blood Death Knight, drastically improving your performance, and are arguably the most important aspect of your gear.
The purpose of this page is to help you pick the right legendary powers (and item slots for them) for your character, depending on the content you are interested in.
Introduction: Legendaries in Shadowlands
As part of your progression through Shadowlands you will gain the ability to craft Legendaries through Runecarving. Runecarving becomes available to you as you progress through Torghast. The Legendary Powers are obtained via various gameplay sources and once obtained you can craft your own specific, targeted Legendary! Each of these Legendaries will boost the power of your character in a specific way, however you can only wear 1 Legendary item at a time. This guide will detail the Legendary Powers available and which are the best ones to use in any given situation.
Best Legendaries for Blood Death Knight
In the table below, the recommended slot for each item is bolded.
Focus | Legendary | Available Slots | Source | Stats |
---|---|---|---|---|
Raiding | ![]() |
Neck or Chest | Stone Legion Generals (Castle Nathria) | Haste and Versatility |
Mythic+ | ![]() |
Hands or Shoulders | Halls of Atonement | Haste and Versatility |
Torghast | ![]() |
Neck, Wrist or Back | Torghast (Layer 6+) | Haste and Versatility |
Generic Legendary | ![]() |
Neck or Chest | Stone Legion Generals (Castle Nathria) | Haste and Versatility |
Best Overall Legendary for Blood Death Knight
The aim with the new Runecarving system is that you can target
specific Legendaries so you are not in a situation where you have to make the
best of a bad situation. However, should you want a Legendary that works for
all content types but is not strictly the best for all content types, we would
recommend Superstrain. Whilst it may appear as a strictly DPS option,
it has defensive benefits via Runic Power generation from
Frost Fever.
Best Raiding Legendaries for Blood Death Knight
If raiding is your main focus, Superstrain
will be your choice. This Legendary will provide you with a DPS boost, but
also provide you with Runic Power via
Frost Fever, which will
facilitate more casts of
Death Strike.
An alternative competitive option for Raiding is Crimson Rune Weapon.
This Legendary is optimal in fights when you are constantly losing charges of
Bone Shield — you are always tanking something — and requires precise
and optimal knowledge of the rotation in order to be able to incorporate the large
number of modifications to it that this Legendary offers. The gain is obvious:
sub-minute
Dancing Rune Weapon cooldown, which is amazing both offensively
and, for the fights where incoming damage can be parried, defensively.
Should you find yourself in a situation where you do not require the defensive benefit from a Legendary, we would recommend simming your character to find out what your highest DPS option is.
Best Mythic+ Legendaries for Blood Death Knight
For Mythic+, Crimson Rune Weapon is the de facto preferred
option thanks to the versatility of play it provides. As you will be tanking a
majority of the time, this Legendary allows you to lower the cooldown of
Dancing Rune Weapon to around 1-minute, and reap a ton of benefits on top of it.
The main benefit, however, is that you will have
Dancing Rune Weapon going into
virtually every pull of any key, instead of every other pull.
Other competitive options for Mythic+ include:
Superstrain can be used in Mythic+ and technically is better than
Crimson Rune Weapon when doing dungeons with very frequent large pulls, Halls of Atonement being the best example. As its damage is not tied to a cooldown and not capped to a number of targets, it can certainly shine. The Runic Power coming from
Frost Fever is a minor consolation prize defensively, however, and you lose the ability to have
Dancing Rune Weapon for every pull.
Best Torghast Legendaries for Blood Death Knight
Should you require additional Phantasma in Torghast, then
Stable Phantasma Lure is a natural choice, as it will facilitate
faster and more reliable Phantasma.
Should you not need the additional Phantasma, then we would recommend a more generic Legendary choice or the Mythic+ choice.
Changelog
- 09 Mar. 2021: Updated Legendaries; removed all mentions of Bryndaor as Crimson Rune Weapon is now better than it in every way.
- 29 Nov. 2020: Changed Raiding Legendary recommendation to Superstrain.
- 20 Nov. 2020: Page added.
More Death Knight Guides
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This guide has been written by Mandl and Panthea.
Mandl is one of Acherus' Useful Minions and Blood Death Knight theorycrafter.
Panthea raids in Catalyst and is the author of TankNotes. He plays all tanks and is a "Useful Minion" for the Acherus Death Knight Discord. You can follow him on Twitter.
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