Blood Death Knight Tank Gems, Enchants, and Consumables — Dragonflight 10.1
On this page, we list the best gems, enchants, flasks, potions, and food you can get for your Blood Death Knight, based on your stat priority. We also give budget alternatives. This page is updated for World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.1.
Best Gems for Blood Death Knights
You should use a Resplendent Illimited Diamond in your first
available gem socket, and fill every other with
Radiant Malygite.
Best Enchants for Blood Death Knights
Slot | Enchantment |
---|---|
Rings | |
Weapon |
|
Chest | |
Cloak | |
Bracer | |
Belt | |
Legs | |
Feet |
In practice, these guidelines are largely down to how enchants do not compete over primary stats, merely secondaries. As a result, the gearing stat priority is applicable and can be simply followed: Versatility as a good default, or whatever sims the highest for you at the time for damage. You can find more information about this on the stats page of this guide.
Best Primordial Stone Gems for Blood Death Knight
Patch 10.0.7 introduces a new customizable ring — Onyx Annulet — and a
plethora of socketable gems for it. Each gem provides unique effects, and this,
in turn, allows you to customize the ring to what suits you.
Going into Patch 10.1, the following Onyx Annulet Primordial stones are the best for Blood Death Knights:
Raid
For pure single-target encounters, we would generally recommend the following primordial stones:
In anything but pure single target, and even possibly on single
target depending on how high your Critical Strike chance is, Storm Infused Stone
gains a significant amount of bonus value. As such, in those situations, we would
instead recommend the following Primordial Stones:
The Onyx Annulet is a very strong ring for any raiding content, and you
should be able to easily justify it for every encounter.
Mythic+
Due to the significantly higher average target count in Mythic+, we only recommend the following setup:
Your Onyx Annulet's relative strength compared to a regular / crafted
ring depends largely on target count, as the secondary stats of normal rings have
gained a small amount of value for each additional enemy.
Nevertheless, the chance for you to gain a meaningful amount of bonus value
from a regular ring over the Onyx Annulet is low, even in extremely
large target-count dungeons such as
Brackenhide Hollow, and the value the
Onyx Annulet brings in terms of priority damage, and single target damage
is significantly more valuable. As such, we recommend just defaulting to it
for all content.
For more information regarding the Onyx Annulet, the Primordial Gemstones, and how to obtain them, check out our dedicated guide for it below.
Consumables for Blood Death Knights
Best Phials for Blood
Use Phial of Tepid Versatility as a general-use phial if you are
unsure whether anything else would bring situationally better value. This phial is
both cheap and mechanically simple - it increases all your damage done by 3.6%
and reduces your damage taken by 1.8%.
Should you wish to gain more damage, or you find yourself in a situation where
auto-attack damage is great; you can consider Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage.
This gives you a significantly higher amount of stats than other phials (almost
25% more than
Phial of Tepid Versatility), but comes with brief periods
where this effect is instead a small damage over time on you.
Don't let the tooltip scare you - the damage over time effect converts into
bigger Blood Shield as its effect counts in the calculation window for
Death Strike. It is also small and predictable damage, making it ideal
to just ignore. The damage calculation part of this effect also considers
Mythic 0 damage - in other words, the uptime on the positive effect
from this phial should be roughly consistent no matter what key level you
are doing.
Mythic+ Phial Swap Strategies
If you are actively pushing Mythic+ keys and gold is no issue to you, it is possible to gain a significant amount of value on specific encounters by swapping phials mid-run. If you intend to do so, you should plan your swaps ahead. You can leverage the following phials:
Phial of Tepid Versatility as your default phial
Phial of the Eye in the Storm when fighting trash packs, as its value is significantly higher there than
Phial of Tepid Versatility, both defensively and offensively
Phial of Icy Preservation when dealing with encounters with predictable, large, one-hit tankbusters. This phial applies to the entire hit if you had the right debuff at the time of the hit - be above 50% when the tankbuster lands and you will gain 6% damage reduction instead of the 1.8% you would get from
Phial of Tepid Versatility.
Best Weapon Augments, and Potions for Blood Death Knight
Howling Rune as a safe defensive and offensive option. Unfortunately,
once you are relatively geared, it takes a very high number of targets for
Primal Whetstone to catch up offensively.
Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power should be your combat potion of
choice on pure single target. For anything else, you should instead use a
Potion of Shocking Disclosure.
You should use Refreshing Healing Potion for in-combat healing.
Healing potions do not share a cooldown with
Healthstones, so you can use both
independently if you can access a Warlock.
You should also keep a stack of Potion of Withering Vitality in your bags
for when a
Refreshing Healing Potion just is not enough. If you have
Anti-Magic Shell active when consuming it, the Damage over Time effect from
Potion of Withering Vitality is immuned.
Best Food for Blood
Use Deviously Deviled Eggs as your food buff of choice. This is equivalent
to the Primary stat buff from Feasts. The recipe drops in the Zskera Vaults, should
you wish to craft it yourself. You can also buy them at the Auction House.
If a Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak is available, use this instead.
Augment Runes for Blood
In addition, if you can afford it, you should use Draconic Augment Runes to
increase your primary stat. Since there is a finite amount of the consumable
runes available, you should make sure to use them wisely and to stock up on them
for when you need them.
Changelog
- 01 May 2023: Updated and clarified Onyx annulet section, added 10.1 Belt enchant, clarified gems, clarified potions and phials. Ready for 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Added Onyx Annulet and clarified info for 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight 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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