Blood Death Knight Tank Stat Priority — 12.0.5

Whilst stats do not make or break your character, they can influence your performance and impact a number of aspects of combat. Blood is noteworthy on this, as both hero talents want different secondary stats.

The following aims to act as a guide for secondaries, both defensively and offensively.

2.

Stat Priorities

Deathbringer Stats San'layn Stats

The general stat priority on armor pieces for Deathbringer Blood Death Knights is as follows:

1. Item Level
2. Critical Strike, Versatility or Mastery
3. Haste

The general stat priority on armor pieces for San'layn Blood Death Knights is as follows:

1. Item Level
2. Haste
3. Critical Strike, Versatility or Mastery

The benefit of Armor, Strength, and to a lesser extent Stamina from higher item level gear, generally outpaces the benefit from optimal secondary stats. Do not consistently sacrifice item level to chase Haste, or any other secondary stat! With the exception of rings and trinkets, practically any item that provides a 10+ item level increase should be treated as an upgrade.

Generally, all secondaries are so close together in value defensively and offensively that most gear adjustments should be made by simming rather than chasing certain secondaries. To discover potential upgrades worth farming, you can use Raidbots' Droptimizer feature to allow you to look at any item's value for your character right now, which will give a more accurate result.

Strength is your primary statistic as a Death Knight. It increases the armor granted by Bone Shield increases your damage, increases your chance to parry attacks, and provides a small increase to your self-healing through several Leech abilities available to Blood Death Knights.

Mastery passively increases your attack power and increases the amount of Blood Shield you generate when using Death Strike (and Consumption if talented into Carnage).

Critical Strike increases your chance for your abilities to deal 100% more damage, and grants an equal amount of parry rating through Riposte.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Haste increases your attack speed and Rune regeneration while also reducing your Global Cooldown. Both of these effects are small, and only provide additional value over the course of encounters.

Most encounters have abilities that cannot be mitigated or avoided. Also, you need to have a decent amount of health, in order to give yourself the chance to be healed before a subsequent attack kills you. As such, you need a minimum amount of Stamina. This amount will, in most cases, simply come from the Stamina found innately on your gear. Therefore, item level is the determining factor in keeping your health pool growing.