Blood Death Knight Tank Gear and Best in Slot — Shadowlands 9.1.5

We do not currently provide a Best in Slot list. You should aim to prioritize item level above everything else, as anything 10 item levels or more is virtually guaranteed to be an upgrade.

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

There are some exceptions to this rule and encounter-specific situations where a stat is massively devalued. You should keep an eye on the raid encounter guides to be aware of this. Similarly, certain Mythic+ key levels and dungeons will require a slightly different gearing path. We linked the related guides below, but generally, we will also add a note on here as well:

Below is a guideline of items to seek and the Dungeons they drop from:

Slot	Item	Dungeon
Helm	Darkfrost Helmet	The Necrotic Wake
Neck	Sin Stained Pendant	Halls of Atonement
Shoulder	Vile Butcher's Pauldrons or Pauldrons of Unleashed Pride	The Necrotic Wake or Halls of Atonement
Cloak	Blighted Margrave's Cloak	Plaguefall
Chest	Abdominal Securing Chestguard	Theater of Pain
Bracers	Pit Fighter's Wristguards	Theater of Pain
Gloves	Fleshfused Crushers	Plaguefall
Belt	Scarred Bloodbound Girdle	Plaguefall
Legs	Halkias's Towering Pillars	Halls of Atonement
Boots	Sabatons of the Rushing Juggernaut	Sanguine Depths
Ring #1	Ritual Bone Band	Theater of Pain
Ring #2	Ritual Commander's Ring or Entwined Gorger Tendril	The Necrotic Wake or Sanguine Depths
Weapon	Rimebinder's Runeblade	The Necrotic Wake

Below is a guideline of items to seek and the Bosses in Sanctum of Domination they drop from:

Slot	Item	Source
Head	Valorous Visage of Krexus	Kel'Thuzad
Neck	Interplanar Keystone	Kel'Thuzad
Shoulders	Spires of Broken Hope	Sylvanas Windrunner
Cloak	Self-Replicating Tissue	Guardian of the First Ones
Chest	Cuirass of the Lonely Citadel	Remnant of Ner'zhul
Wrists	Vyraz's Parade Cuffs	Kel'Thuzad
Gloves	Guillotine Gauntlets	Painsmith Raznal
Belt	Disintegration-Proof Waistband	Guardian of the First Ones
Legs	Agatha's Gothic Greaves	The Nine
Boots	Greaves of Haunting Ruination	Sylvanas Windrunner
Ring #1	Tarnished Insignia of Quel'Thalas	Sylvanas Windrunner
Ring #2	Oscillating Ouroboros	Fatescribe Roh-Kalo
Weapon	Jaithys, the Prison Blade	Kel'Thuzad

Please note: With regards to Jaithys, the Prison Blade's on-use effect, it will consume an Epic-quality weapon and gain a proc that deals Physical damage. However, each time you consume a weapon it will lose secondary stats and in the final form of the weapon it will have no secondary stats but a very powerful proc. The proc is powerful enough to warrant losing these secondary stats.

You may have noticed that some items from Sanctum of Domination have Domination Sockets on them. This is a new system that has been introduced for Patch 9.1. When you use 3 Domination Shards you will gain a powerful effect which will only work in the Sanctum of Domination Raid, The Maw, and Torghast.

Using the Shards listed below will provide you with the Blood bonus Blood Link. This will give you a nice blend of damage and healing whilst not being much lower in damage than the Unholy bonus of Chaos Bane.

• Blood Shard of Bek — This increases your damage done to a target when you have 50% or more health than them. For example, If you are at 90% Health, they will need to be at 40% Health or lower for this to trigger.
• Blood Shard of Jas — This will increase your healing received and your maximum health.
• Blood Shard of Rev — This will provide you with some Leech.
• Unholy Shard of Dyz — This will give you a small damage boost to your target for 4 seconds which stacks (and refreshes) up to 3 times. You will have a near-permanent uptime on this effect.
• Your choice between:
  • Frost Shard of Cor — This will give you a small damage boost for 20 seconds when attacking a new target.
  • Frost Shard of Kyr — This will give you a small absorb shield every 5 seconds which stacks up to 6,660 at the highest rank.

If you would like to know more about the remaining Domination Shards' effects, their set bonuses, or how to upgrade their effects into even more potent forms, please see our official guide detailing everything about this new system of Patch 9.1:

It is important to know that the items available from PvP are the best items available for Blood Death Knights if you are able to achieve high PvP rating.

Notably, you are able to obtain end of Heroic-quality items (item level 246) at 2100 Rating.

All of these items have Versatility on them.

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

Splintered Heart of Al'ar from Sun King's Salvation in Castle Nathria is a good trinket to pick up for progression raiding and key pushing as it will provide you with a relatively good cheat death. If you do not need the cheat death and you know it, this trinket will be a strict throughput loss.

Old Warrior's Soul is a very strong trinket from Sanctum of Domination which will provide a large amount of Haste on a consistent basis.

Shard of Annhylde's Aegis is a must-have trinket from Sanctum of Domination as the shield will absorb damage from every hit received during the 8 seconds it is active with no maximum cap.

Codex of the First Technique is one to watch out for from Tazavesh, the Veiled Market as it will provide a consistent defensive benefit and provide a moderate amount of damage. It is quite similar to Reactive Defense Matrix.

Blood-Spattered Scale is the main trinket you will be after and drops from De Other Side. It is a good defensive trinket and also has a good damaging component behind it too. It scales very well with item level, too.

Reactive Defense Matrix can provide a good amount of damage in a multi-target scenario (such as Mythic+), however on single-target encounters it may not be a worthwhile choice if you have other options available.

Generally you will not be using two defensive trinket choices at all times. When this is the case your other trinket slot will generally be whatever you have that has a benefit that you are needing whether this be more DPS, stats, or utility.

Unfortunately, Legion timewalking offers very few appealing trinkets for us, as most of them were abused by players during Battle for Azeroth and promptly nerfed as a result. For example, things like Writhing Heart of Darkness saw its use change from a really strong defensive trinket to an effect that is barely worth talking about.

As a result, you will not be looking for anything other than a potential Jeweled Signet of Melandrus, maybe. The effect is not a part of the item's stat budget, so it is technically "free" bonus damage, but it is very little additional damage.

Blood-Spattered Scale — If you do not obtain this at the maximum item level from the Great Vault, it is recommended to upgrade this as the value of this item is not available anywhere else in-game.

Phial of Putrefaction — This is a very strong damaging trinket and as you will typically not be using two defensive trinkets at a time this is a very good choice for your 2nd trinket slot.

Rimebinder's Runeblade — If you do not have a Weapon from the raid, then upgrading this will be valuable.

Drustlord's Greataxe — As with Rimebinder's Runeblade, if you do not have a Weapon from the raid then upgrading this will be valuable. The differences between these two weapons is really minor.