Blood Death Knight Tank Gear and Best in Slot — 12.0.5

Welcome to our Blood Death Knight Gear Page for Midnight Season 1. 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.

Upgrading gear in Midnight continues to use the Crest system which lets you increase the item level of gear along tracks that relate to where you obtained the item, which harder content dropping gear that can be upgraded to higher Item Levels. For more information, read up on our dedicated page on how the gearing system works and what has changed in the Midnight expansion.

Overall Best in Slot (San'layn)Overall (Deathbringer)Mythic+Raid

This list contains the Best in Slot Gear from any source in Midnight raids for San'layn. It is there as a reference to what is currently the highest performing gear available to players.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. What is BiS right now may not be the same as the below as this would be an example of an end game setup, and serve as guidance of what items to target.

FAQWhich Tier Set Pieces Do I Want?

For Midnight Season 1, due to the presence of cantrip gloves ( Voidclaw Gauntlets), Blood Death Knights will want to prioritize getting Helmet, Shoulder, Chest and Legs. However, this advice only stands if you have Voidclaw Gauntlets on Myth-track.

Blood Death Knight

1.1.

Overall BiS List (San'layn)

Relentless Rider's Crown Helm

Catalyst or Lightblinded Vanguard in The Voidspire Empowered Blessing of Speed

Voidclaw Gauntlets Hands

Seat of the Triumvirate

Eternal Voidsong Chain Neck

Crown of the Cosmos in The Voidspire

Bent Gold Belt Waist

Pit of Saron

Relentless Rider's Dreadthorns Shoulders

Catalyst or Fallen-King Salhadaar in The Voidspire Akil'zon's Swiftness

Relentless Rider's Legguards Legs

Catalyst or Vaelgor and Ezzorak in The Voidspire Forest Hunter's

Defiant Defender's Drape Cloak

Magister's Terrace

Greaves of the Unformed Feet

Chimaerus in The Dreamrift Farstrider's Hunt

Relentless Rider's Cuirass Chest

Catalyst or Chimaerus in The Dreamrift Mark of the Worldsoul

Eye of Midnight Ring

Midnight Falls in March on Quel'Danas Silvermoon's Tenacity

Shirt

Loa Worshiper's Band Ring

Crafted by Jewelcrafting Silvermoon's Tenacity

Tabard

Gaze of the Alnseer Trinket

Chimaerus in The Dreamrift

Spellbreaker's Bracers Bracers

Stabilizing Gemstone Bandolier

Crafted by Blacksmithing

Light Company Guidon Trinket

Imperator Averzian in The Voidspire

Liferipper's Cutlass Main Hand

Maisara Caverns Rune of Sanguination

Off Hand

This list contains the Best in Slot Gear from any source in Midnight Season 1 raids for Deathbringer. It is there as a reference to what is currently the highest performing gear available to players.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. What is BiS right now may not be the same as the below as this would be an example of an end game setup, and serve as guidance of what items to target.

Blood Death Knight

1.2.

Overall Best in Slot (Deathbringer)

Relentless Rider's Crown Helm

Catalyst or Lightblinded Vanguard in The Voidspire Empowered Blessing of Speed

Voidclaw Gauntlets Hands

Seat of the Triumvirate

Eternal Voidsong Chain Neck

Crown of the Cosmos in The Voidspire

Hate-Tied Waistchain Waist

Crown of the Cosmos in The Voidspire

Relentless Rider's Dreadthorns Shoulders

Catalyst or Fallen-King Salhadaar in The Voidspire Akil'zon's Swiftness

Relentless Rider's Legguards Legs

Catalyst or Vaelgor and Ezzorak in The Voidspire Forest Hunter's

Defiant Defender's Drape Cloak

Magister's Terrace

Greaves of the Unformed Feet

Chimaerus in The Dreamrift Farstrider's Hunt

Relentless Rider's Cuirass Chest

Catalyst or Chimaerus in The Dreamrift Mark of the Worldsoul

Masterwork Sin'dorei Band Ring

Stabilizing Gemstone Bandolier

Crafted by Jewelcrafting Nature's Fury

Shirt

Loa Worshiper's Band Ring

Crafted by Jewelcrafting Nature's Fury

Tabard

Gaze of the Alnseer Trinket

Chimaerus in The Dreamrift

Kasreth's Bindings Bracers

Nexus-Point Xenas

Umbral Plume Trinket

Belo'ren in March on Quel'Danas

Liferipper's Cutlass Main Hand

Maisara Caverns Rune of Sanguination

Off Hand

This list contains the best items available per slot from Mythic+. It is there to provide you with a quick list of easily farmable gear if you need something in a specific slot.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. What is BiS right now may not be the same as the below as this would be an example of an end game setup, and serve as guidance of what items to target.

TipsWhich Dungeons Should I Farm?

If you have limited time to play the game, we recommend to farm the following dungeons:

• Pit of Saron: A good defensive trinket ( Rotting Globule), two weapons, a very nice neck and a chest piece make this your highest value farm target if you need a variety of slots. You can also significantly help your group with Control Undead there, making it a nice dungeon to get value out of.
• Seat of the Triumvirate: Voidclaw Gauntlets - a decently high value pair of cantrip gloves.
• Nexus-Point Xenas: A pair of rings with an added bonus, which only loses value once you craft Loa Worshiper's Band.

Blood Death Knight

1.3.

Best Mythic+ Gear

Crown of the Dark Envoy Helm

Seat of the Triumvirate Empowered Blessing of Speed

Voidclaw Gauntlets Hands

Seat of the Triumvirate

Barbed Ymirheim Choker Neck

Pit of Saron

Bent Gold Belt Waist

Pit of Saron

Spaulders of Scorching Ray Shoulders

Skyreach Akil'zon's Swiftness

Lightscarred Cuisses Legs

Nexus-Point Xenas Forest Hunter's

Defiant Defender's Drape Cloak

Magister's Terrace

Sabatons of Furious Revenge Feet

Windrunner Spire Farstrider's Hunt

Frost Wyrm Ribcage Chest

Pit of Saron Mark of the Worldsoul

Occlusion of Void Ring

Nexus-Point Xenas Silvermoon's Tenacity

Shirt

Omission of Light Ring

Nexus-Point Xenas Silvermoon's Tenacity

Tabard

Heart of Wind Trinket

Windrunner Spire

Trollhunter's Bands Bracers

Maisara Caverns

Solarflare Prism Trinket

Skyreach

Liferipper's Cutlass Main Hand

Maisara Caverns Rune of Sanguination

Off Hand

This list serves as a "My raid leader needs me to provide a wishlist, here is the wishlist" item list. If you were to assemble the best gear set from Dreamrift, Voidspire, and March on Quel'Danas specifically, and no other source, this is what you would wear.

This list is by no means a replacement for simming yourself. What is BiS right now may not be the same as the below as this would be an example of an end game setup, and serve as guidance of what items to target.

Deathbringer would use Radiant Plume as their 2nd trinket instead of Light Company Guidon

TipsWhich Are the Most Important Items?

The following items are the most impactful in Dreamrift, Voidspire, and March on Quel'Danas:

• Gaze of the Alnseer is currently the best-performing trinket for almost every spec, even after its nerfs. The competition will be fierce.
• Eternal Voidsong Chain happens to be perfectly itemized for San'layn and triggers off of shadow damage - allowing us to very easily saturate its proc chance.
• Radiant Plume will be very valuable when March on Quel'Danas opens; until then, Heart of Ancient Hunger is almost as good.
• Finally, Light Company Guidon is particularly nifty for San'layn.

Blood Death Knight

1.4.

Best Raid Gear

Relentless Rider's Crown Helm

Lightblinded Vanguard in The Voidspire Empowered Blessing of Speed

Relentless Rider's Bonegrasps Hands

Vorasius in The Voidspire

Eternal Voidsong Chain Neck

Crown of the Cosmos in The Voidspire

Ezzorak's Gloombind Waist

Vaelgor and Ezzorak in The Voidspire

Relentless Rider's Dreadthorns Shoulders

Fallen-King Salhadaar in The Voidspire Akil'zon's Swiftness

Relentless Rider's Legguards Legs

Vaelgor and Ezzorak in The Voidspire Forest Hunter's

Draconic Nullcape Cloak

Vaelgor and Ezzorak in The Voidspire

Greaves of the Unformed Feet

Chimaerus in The Dreamrift Farstrider's Hunt

Relentless Rider's Cuirass Chest

Chimaerus in The Dreamrift Mark of the Worldsoul

Bond of Light Ring

Lightblinded Vanguard in The Voidspire Silvermoon's Tenacity

Shirt

Loa Worshiper's Band Ring

Crafted by Jewelcrafting Silvermoon's Tenacity

Tabard

Gaze of the Alnseer Trinket

Chimaerus in The Dreamrift

Spellbreaker's Bracers Bracers

Stabilizing Gemstone Bandolier

Crafted by Blacksmithing

Light Company Guidon Trinket

Imperator Averzian in The Voidspire

Alah'endal, the Dawnsong Main Hand

Midnight Falls in March on Quel'Danas Rune of the Fallen Crusader

Off Hand

Itemization

Enchants and Stat Priority

Looking to optimize your character? Check out our Enchant and Stat Priority guides for more information!

EnchantsStats

Vessel of Tortured Souls is deliberately kept off the ranking as its implementation makes it extremely difficult to give a general ranking for. Its stacks are independent of each other, stack up to 3 and each last 1 minute. Taking a soul requires noticing a very faint green swirl and walking over to it (within 10 yards of you in any direction). Managing to snipe every soul puts it in S-tier, while missing even one puts it at barely B-tier.

As a general rule of thumb, we recommend the following:

Blood Death Knight Trinkets

• San'layn: Gaze of the Alnseer + Umbral Plume/ Light Company Guidon
• Deathbringer: Gaze of the Alnseer + Umbral Plume/ Radiant Plume

Click for Blood Death Knight Trinket Rankings

Ranking	Raid	Mythic+
S Tier	Gaze of the Alnseer - Click for Details This trinket has the downside of being very swingy due to how it functions. Radiant Plume/ Umbral Plume - Click for Details Pick whichever currently sims highest for you. There is no hard recommendation on this one as both hero talent and current stats can shift the recommendation from one to the other. Heart of Ancient Hunger Light Company Guidon (SL) - Click for Details San'layn only - macro this into Dancing Rune Weapon.	Radiant Plume/ Umbral Plume - Click for Details Pick whichever currently sims highest for you. There is no hard recommendation on this one as both hero talent and current stats can shift the recommendation from one to the other. Heart of Ancient Hunger Light Company Guidon (SL) - Click for Details San'layn only - macro this into Dancing Rune Weapon.
A Tier	Kroluk's Warbanner Heart of Wind Solarflare Prism - Click for Details Decent on long fights, gets noticeably worse the moment you add extra targets mid-way through a fight. Void Stalker's Contract - Click for Details This trinket does not split its damage, making it much more appealing if you can snipe adds with it.	Gaze of the Alnseer - Click for Details This trinket has the downside of being very swingy due to how it functions, so while its average performance is very desirable, it can truly feel like feast or famine if you get unlucky and you are unable to extend your stacks. Mythic+ exacerbates this behavior by adding downtime between pulls. Heart of Wind Void Stalker's Contract - Click for Details This trinket does not split its damage, making it much more appealing if you can snipe adds with it.
B Tier	Latch's Crooked Hook Algeth'ar Puzzle Box - Click for Details Technically A-tier in performance but why would you put yourself through the hassle of having an on-use with cast time that also does not spell queue properly, only to get average performance?	Void Stalker's Contract - Click for Details This trinket very frequently snipes high-health targets, granting you less crit than you would get in raid on average. Kroluk's Warbanner Latch's Crooked Hook
C Tier	-	Algeth'ar Puzzle Box - Click for Details Puzzle Box is even worse in Mythic+ than it is for raid, as the forced downtime casting it inevitably means you will waste all its uptime while gathering enemies.

"SL" denotes SL-specific trinkets.

2.1.

Defensive Trinkets

Defensively, the trinkets available this season are unbalanced, and some of them are a mix of procs, controllable effects and just... terrible design.

• Rotting Globule is the most useful/interesting trinket on the list, as it is a controllable, very large on-use shield every 2 minutes.
• Jelly Replicator should just be avoided. It lacks the controllable aspect of Rotting Globule and confers no benefit to offset this. The pseudo-cheat proc is laughably small at half the power of the random proc.
• The Eternal Egg attempts to do both throughput and absorb and fails miserably at both. It manages to be worse than Jelly Replicator.
• Gloom-Spattered Dreadscale is just a worse version of Rotting Globule, and no primary stat on it means taking more physical damage at all times. It shines in AoE, but is effectively a dead trinket on single target.
• Ampoule of Pure Void only shines in AoE and when taking a very large amount of damage, as its damage done is not split between targets. This is its niche - and it is useless outside of it. Its requirement to take damage while it is active (it only heals) makes it significantly less versatile in M+.

Midnight's patch 12.0.5 reintroduces two former systems to PvE content:

• Nebulous Voidcore can be used to Bonus Roll a boss of your choice, and the possible drops from it are visible before you commit to this choice. The item you receive is random, but each item can only be acquired once from these bonus rolls. Subsequent bonus rolls on the same target will yield one of the remaining items from the pool, until none are available.

  These Bonus Rolls are usable in Mythic+ and in raids, and yield items that have an item level equivalent to looting them normally from this difficulty.

• Ascendant Voidcore can be used to boost the item level of any fully upgraded Hero- or Myth-track trinket or weapon, along with any max-quality Radiance crafted items. This is functionally equivalent to previous Turbo Boost events, but in a more constrained manner.

Seasonal Mechanics

Voidforge and Voidcores

Check our our guide on the Voidforge to learn how to acquire this powerful upgrades!

Go to Guide

Using your Nebulous Voidcores depends largely on the content available to you, and what you have already acquired. If you have access to them, the later Mythic bosses in The Voidspire and March on Quel'Danas should be your targets. If not, you should aim to use these bonus rolls almost exclusively in Mythic+.

No matter what content is at your disposal, we have prepared lists for you to follow:

Voidcore (Bonus Roll) Priority

1. Myth Track Weapon (Midnight Falls if San'layn, Lightblinded Vanguard if Deathbringer)
2. Mythic Chimaerus for Gaze of the Alnseer
3. Mythic Crown of the Cosmos for Eternal Voidsong Chain
4. Mythic Belo'ren for Radiant Plume

If you do not raid in a competitive Mythic raid team, we recommend the following priority instead.

Voidcore (Bonus Roll) Priority

1. Myth-Track Weapon (Maisara Caverns is the best target for this)
2. Heroic Crown of the Cosmos for Eternal Voidsong Chain
3. Use all other rolls to fill your current weakest slots. The best keystones for this are Skyreach and Windrunner Spire due to their relatively diverse loot pools.

Using your Ascendant Voidcores follows a very simple priority thanks to their extremely restricted usage conditions.

1. Your Weapon is the highest priority, but only on Myth track
2. Trinkets you will not replace - Myth-track Gaze of the Alnseer, Myth-track Radiant Plume and the likes
3. A crafted weapon, if you do not have a Myth-track weapon
4. Any temporary trinkets (but bear in mind that this is a significant long-term cost)

Since these can be used on crafted items, it is worth noting that embellishments granting secondary stats do not gain in power from an increase in item level. Only embellishments dealing direct damage and primary stats do.

Midnight brings with it a host of new embellishments and crafted gear, and thanks to the exorbitant costs of upgrading items, you may see some unusual piece and types of pieces showing up on recommendations.

We recommend the following early crafting choices:

Blood Early Crafting Order

Blood Knight's Warblade → Loa Worshiper's Band → Optional Crafts

• A weapon with Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt; this is for when sparks become available, as doing this with Myth crests is significantly cheaper than upgrading any Myth-track weapon.
• Loa Worshiper's Band

Once you have acquired and fully upgraded a Myth-track weapon, swap your second embellishment to any of the bandings ( Devouring Banding is a good default, or Stabilizing Gemstone Bandolier if you are using Loa Worshiper's Band) on bracers or belt, depending on which is your worst piece. The absolute BiS profile has it on Bracers, and this is an added advantage due to the scarcity of Socket items from the Great Vault.

• A weapon with Darkmoon Sigil: Hunt; this is for when sparks become available, as doing this with Myth crests is significantly cheaper than upgrading any Myth-track weapon.
• Signet of Azerothian Blessings or Spellbreaker's Bracers with Devouring Banding (personal stats) or Arcanoweave Lining (group value)

Once you have acquired and fully upgraded a Myth-track weapon, swap your second embellishment to Devouring Banding on bracers or belt, depending on which is your worst piece. The absolute BiS profile has it on Bracers, and this is an added advantage due to the scarcity of Socket items from the Great Vault.

You can add sockets to Helmets, Belts, and Bracers with the Radiant Jewelbinder consumable that you can get if you do not select any of the choices in your Great Vault. Not picking a choice will grant you tokens, six of which can be traded in for the Radiant Jewelbinder item that allows you to add a socket to the above piece of gear, if you acquired them in Season 1.

We recommend not upgrading pieces using Myth crests in the first few weeks of Midnight. The reason for this is due to the crest upgrade system requiring significantly more crests per upgrade level. Due to the partial overlap between Hero and Myth tracks, you can also save a handful of Myth crests by upgrading Hero pieces first.

As a result, if at all possible, you have an incentive to strategically game your upgrades, and craft Myth-track embellishment items first.

Use the following priority list to target your upgrades. These denote the item slot priority by its relative power:

Blood Death Knight Crest Upgrade Priority

Weapon → Trinkets → Helmet/Chest/Legs → Shoulders/Gloves/Belt/Boots

Once you have upgraded a slot to a certain item level, irrespective of the item track the original item was on, upgrading other items of that slot to that item level is free. This includes crafted items; these restrictions, and more, are detailed here: Gear Upgrade System.

Throughout this page and elsewhere in our guide, we regularly refer to the importance of simming yourself on Raidbots. This is because every character is unique, and each gear piece you have access to can change what is best right now for you.

While we do offer recommendations for gear and trinkets, these are not complete replacements for simming yourself. The only way to truly optimize your character to that degree is by making use of the tools available!

Optimization

Simulations and Tools

For further reading on how to truly maximize your character's potential, check out our guide on Raidbots!

Go to Guide

Mandl and Panthea

Guide Authors

Follow Mandl,Panthea

This guide has been written by Mandl and Panthea.

Mandl is one of Acherus' Useful Minions and an avid Blood Death Knight theorycrafter.

Panthea raids in the Hall of Fame guild Catalyst. He plays all tanks and is a "Useful Minion" for the Acherus Death Knight Discord. You can follow him on Twitter.