Jan 9

Welcome to Part 2 of the “So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight” series. Today we will talk about gear for your death knight.
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Death Knight Gear Proficiencies

Death knights are proficient in plate armor; that-is to say, they can wear any type of armor. Like DPS warriors, you may very well find mail or leather gear pieces that have better stats than available plate armor. Of course, if you are tanking, you will want plate armor.

Death knights are able to use several weapon types: 1H and 2H swords, 1H and 2H axes, 1H and 2H maces, and polearms. They may dual-wield one-handed weapons–we will discuss the pros and cons of doing this later.

Gear Attributes Overview

Attribute priorities are very similar for all death knights, though certain attributes will favor certain specs over others.

Strength/Attack Power: All death knight spells scale with attack power, even the ones that seem more “spell like,” such as Death Coil. Death knights gain 2 attack power for every point of strength, just like warriors. Strength will be your primary attribute. Strength for a death knight also increases parry chance more than normal.

Agility/Critical Strike Rating: A death knight requires 62.5 agility to gain 1% melee critical strike chance, but no spell critical strike chance from agility at all. Critical strike rating is good for any death knight, but is not as important as for other classes (for example, a feral druid). Death knights get extra critical strike damage on spell critical hits due to Runic Focus (this is baseline, not talented). Also, talents such as Wandering Plague make a higher critical strike chance attractive. Tanking death knights get dodge from agility.

If specced 5/5 into Bladed Armor, every 18 agility increases a death knight’s attack power by 1, due to gaining 2 armor per point of agility.

Hit Rating/Expertise: Like any DPS characters, DPS death knights will want to reach the hit cap. Expertise is also a good stat for both tanking and DPS death knights, as it reduces the chance for a mob to dodge (from behind or from in front) or parry (from in front only) an attack.

Haste: Haste rating directly increases how much of your DPS comes from normal (white) attacks. Death knights draw a smaller portion of total DPS from white attacks, so haste is not as strong for death knights as other classes. However, Necrosis, Blood Caked Blade, and Killing Machine make haste a bit more valuable to Unholy and Frost specced death knights. Dual-wielding death knights will always benefit more from haste.

However, haste also decreases the global cooldown time, allowing death knights a little leeway in their already very crowded rotations.

Stamina: Obviously as important to death knights as any other DPS/tank character.

Armor Penetration: Armor penetration is decent for some death knights, most notably those that are Blood specced. Blood’s specialty is physical DPS, so armor penetration helps quite a bit. Other specs, such as Unholy (with Scourge Strike) deal their damage as magic damage, which ignores armor anyway.

Caster Stats (Intellect, Spirit): As useless to death knights as they are to warriors–death knights gain no benefit from them.

So, in summary: DPS death knights should focus first on reaching the hit-rating cap (and what expertise is available), then on strength (or attack power), and finally critical strike rating. Tanking death knights will focus on capping defense rating first, then on the traditional tanking stats such as stamina and armor. Death knight tanks are a bit more reliable on avoidance than other tanks, but we’ll discuss this in the tanking article.

Dual-Wield vs. Two-Handed Weapons

There is a lot of discussion in the death knight community over whether dual-wielding is viable, or should even be allowed at all (for lore reasons). There is, however, a vocal minority of death knights that continue to use two one-handed weapons.

Blizzard’s stance is that they don’t want either choice to “win out” in the end; there are talents scattered about the death knight’s trees that benefit one system or the other. Dual-wielding helps build early threat while tanking due to faster swings, and allows a death knight to stack mitigation by using two tanking weapons, which are all one-handed. However, dual-wielding significantly decreases your chance to hit a mob, which is further complicated by the fact that most boss mobs do a “haste counterattack” when they parry a blow. Furthermore, since many death knight abilities are based on weapon damage, they will hit harder while using a two-handed weapon.

Dual-wielding for DPS, assuming the proper talent spec, is just as viable as two-handed specs. In the end, it is all a matter of taste and preference, though I have a feeling most death knights will stick to two-handed weapons for both DPS and tanking.

Recommended Glyphs

While certain glyphs definitely favor specific talent specs, most death knight glyphs are very good for any spec. We will cover the PvE focused ones here.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Icy Touch: This glyph is great for any death knight. Generally, the DPS contribution of Icy Touch is very low, and the extra 10 runic power at the start of the fight lets you start unloading runic power dumps more quickly. Patch 3.0.8 will change this glyph to remove the damage penalty.

Glyph of Obliterate: Practically required for Frost right now (one of your primary double-rune abilities), and very, very good for Blood as well. Unholy death knights don’t use Obliterate. Patch 3.0.8 will remove the per disease damage penalty, and will also remove the Howling Blast cooldown, possibly rendering this glyph much less useful for frost.

Glyph of the Ghoul: Ghouls provide quite a bit of DPS while they’re up, and this glyph just bumps that number higher. This glyph is great for Unholy death knights with a permanent ghoul, and will become even better after patch 3.0.8.

Glyph of Bone Shield: Unholy death knights only. Extra mitigation for tanks, and another charge (two charges after 3.0.8!) means longer periods of increased DPS for DPS death knights.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Pestilence: Manditory for all death knights. There are not very many good minor glyphs to choose from as a death knight. You will use Pestilence any time there are multiple mobs up, and this glyph saves you the hassle from reapplying your diseases when a mob is just a bit out of range.

Glyph of Horn of Winter: Currently lowers the cost of Horn of Winter, but in patch 3.0.8, Horn of Winter will have no cost, and this glyph will increase the duration of the buff for 60 seconds.

Glyph of Death’s Embrace: Good for Unholy death knights who willw ant to keep their pet alive.

Related posts:

1. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Tanking
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: DPS
3. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Frost Tree
4. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Unholy Tree
5. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Basics