Blood Death Knight Tank Gear and Best in Slot — Dragonflight 10.2

Welcome to our Gear and BiS Page for Blood Death Knight for Dragonflight 10.2. 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 Amirdrassil, 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. This is the lowest budget slot, and will allow you to keep using one of the Season 2 sockets, as the next craft will occur on a slot with a socket.

2. As your second craft of the season, you have two choices:

   • If you have looted an item level 486 or above bracers and your primary focus is Raiding, craft Unstable Frostfire Belt.
   • If your primary focus is not raiding, craft Primal Molten Vambraces and embellish them with Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch.

   The difference between these two choices is within margin of error on up to 3 targets, but the latter allows you some gearing flexibility if you are ever interested in optimizing for large AoE situations, where Allied Wristguard of Companionship currently outpaces Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch slightly.

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. This is the lowest budget slot, and will allow you to keep using one of the Season 2 sockets, as the next craft will occur on a slot with a socket. As you will notice, this is also shared with raid embellishments.
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 Amirdrassil, Blood Death Knights will be able to don the Risen Nightmare's Gravemantle, their season 3 tier sets. As usual, Head, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves and Legs provide the following set bonus:

• Death Knight Blood 10.2 Class Set 2pc — casting Death Strike has a 1% chance per Runic Power point spent to grant you a buff ( Ashen Decay), which causes your next Heart Strike to apply Ashen Decay to all targets it hit. This debuff causes them to take 20% bonus damage from you, and reduces the damage they deal to you by 10%.
• Death Knight Blood 10.2 Class Set 4pc — The detonation/execute effect of Soul Reaper and each damage tick of Abomination Limb now also apply and refresh Ashen Decay to its full duration. Heart Strike and Blood Boil damage events now also extend any existing Ashen Decay present on the target by 1 second.

Once available, you should aim to acquire the set bonuses as soon as possible.

The 2-piece is the crowning glory of the set; it incentivizes proper play in both generating Runic Power efficiently (more Death Strike — more chance to gain Ashen Decay and therefore more uptime on Ashen Decay), spending Runic Power Efficiently (more chances to gain Ashen Decay), and another reason to work on your Death and Decay uptime on anything above 3 targets, as the cleave damage from Heart Strike enabled by Cleaving Strikes also applies Ashen Decay.

The 4-piece, on the other hand, is almost entirely unnoticeable in the hands of a skilled player. Its only value is guaranteeing ~35 seconds of Ashen Decay to all targets every time Abomination Limb is cast. The extension effect in the hands of a skilled player only provides around 10% more uptime on Ashen Decay, and is problematic in situations where more than 5 targets are active due to Heart Strike being strictly target-capped, while Blood Boil is not.

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 Rated Battlegrounds as Frost.

With the release of Amirdrassil and the launch of Dragonflight Season 3, Blood Death Knights get to discover (and, in a few cases, re-discover) a wide array of trinkets with different effects. For once, there are very few dead-on-arrival trinkets , and the majority of trinkets acquired from Amirdrassil have a concrete use case.

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.

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.

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.

Rezan's Gleaming Eye, one of the returning Mythic+ trinkets, was reworked entirely. It is now a direct damage and DoT effect - and both effects are physical damage and get amplified by Bloodshot. It is significantly stronger than other Mythic+ trinkets even before you include this amplification.

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.

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.

Finally, there is Ashes of the Embersoul. We're frankly not sure if the trinket is intended to behave the way it does, but will describe its quirks anyway. Every 2 minutes, you can use it to gain a large amount of Strength for 20 seconds, decaying every 3 seconds. When the 20 seconds are over, you then lose a noticeable amount of haste for 60 seconds.
This would be a dealbreaker in most circumstances, except that this debuff can be pre-immuned with Anti-Magic Shell. As a result, you can benefit from the full value of the trinket without having the backlash, as long as you can commit Anti-Magic Shell 20 seconds after using it.
When you drop below 15% health, you automatically trigger this effect without incurring the trinket's cooldown, up to once per combat period.

Amirdrassil and Season 3 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.
Accelerating Sandglass	Haste	Passive	Ramping bonus haste that has a chance to convert to bonus damage every time you gain its buff.
Ember of Nullification	Versatility	Static	Bonus silence effect if you get hit by a spell.
Spores of Alacrity	Haste	2 Minutes	Macro it into Abomination Limb
Nightmare Egg Shell	Haste	Passive	Lackluster
Gore-Crusted Butcher's Block	Critical Strike	Passive	Overbudget but random
Might of the Ocean	Strength (passive crit)	1min30	Lackluster and does not sync up with anything.
Porcelain Crab	Mastery	Passive (0.9ppm)	Lackluster, weak, and with no primary budget
Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows	Highest secondary	3 Minutes	Lackluster and does not sync up with anything

Amirdrassil and Season 3 have very few pure defensive trinkets. 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.
Prophetic Stonescales	Second cheat death	For some obscure reason, you think Purgatory isn't enough. 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.
Writhing Heart of Darkness	Flat (10k) damage reduction to all damage events	You get hit with a lot of very frequent but small damage events.
Xeri'tac's Unhatched Egg Sac	Random shields with no primary budget	No use case, theoretical or practical. Congratulations on your vendor gold

Ward of Faceless Ire applies a large absorb shield to either yourself or another friendly target. However, if the shield breaks, it will apply a DoT to that player.

Treemouth's Festering Splinter is a very strong defensive trinket. It will deal some damage to you but also apply a very large absorb shield. The trinket also only has a 1.5-minute cooldown, making it very readily available to fit between your other defensive cooldown options.

Dragonflight Season 3 continues to leverage the upgrade system introduced in Season 2 with the introduction of Dreaming Crests. Both Flightstones and Crests are obtainable from practically all forms of content in the game. They can be used to upgrade gear up to Item Level 483, which is entry-level Mythic Raid Item Level. They can also upgrade Crafted Gear up to iLvl 486, 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:

• While waiting for the Fyrakk 2H legendary axe, if you obtain a Gorehowl, Might of the Warchief from your Great Vault and can upgrade it to 489, upgrade it.
• Upgrade your lowest item level slots or use a Raidbots Droptimiser sim to evaluate what to upgrade next.

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!