Blood Death Knight Tank Gear and Best in Slot — Shadowlands 9.0.5
On this page, you will find the best gear and best in slot items for your Blood Death Knight in World of Warcraft Shadowlands 9.0.5.
Best in Slot List for Blood Death Knights
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:
Dungeon Gear Recommendations for Blood Death Knight
Below is a guideline of items to seek and the Dungeons they drop from:
Castle Nathria Recommendations for Blood Death Knight
Below is a guideline of items to seek and the Bosses in Castle Nathria they drop from:
Weapon Tokens from Castle Nathria
Weapons:
Guarding Cudgel of the Goliath — This is purchased from the vendor in your covenant sanctum with
Abominable Anima Spherule which drops from Sun King's Salvation.
Polemarch's Scepter of Faith — This is the highest item level weapon that drops in Castle Nathria. It is obtained from the
Abominable Anima Spherule that drops from Sire Denathrius.
PvP Gear Recommendations for Blood Death Knight
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 item level 233 Weapons from 2400 Rating, and item level 226 Gear in all slots from 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.
Trinket Recommendations for Blood Death Knight
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.
Sanguine Vintage from Sire Denathrius in Castle Nathria
is a weaker version of
Blood-Spattered Scale, however it is on a 1-minute cooldown.
It will also provide you with a heal should any absorb remain and not require multiple targets
to have the maximum benefit.
Stone Legion Heraldry from Stone Legion Generals in Castle Nathria
is a good defensive choice that provides more value the more people use it.
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.
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.
Valor Upgrade Recommendations for Blood Death Knight
Valor is a new currency in Patch 9.0.5 that allows you to upgrade items.
Blood-Spattered Scale — If you do not obtain this at item level 226 from the
Great Vault, it is recommended to upgrade this to 220 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 an item level 226 Weapon, then upgrading
this to 220 will be valuable.
Drustlord's Greataxe — As with
Rimebinder's Runeblade, if you
do not have an item level 226 weapon, upgrading this to 220 will be valuable.
The differences between these two weapons is really minor.
Changelog
- 09 Mar. 2021: Added Valor recommendations. Updated trinket recommendations. Added PvP gearing section.
- 22 Dec. 2020: Added Castle Nathria loot. Fixed incorrect dungeon link.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Fixed typo.
- 20 Nov. 2020: Removed BfA information. Added Shadowlands Dungeon Gear.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
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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