Death Knight Transmogrification Gear

Wish you would have saved all that Death Knight starting gear, back when Wrath launched?  No worries, the quarter master, Ozorg, has all your starting gear for sale.  Now you can transmogrify to your hearts content and look like you are getting back to your roots.

There are reports of people showing off the gear they never got rid of, but now it's time for them to feel foolish. Why wouldn't Blizzard throw us a bone, so we too can enjoy the Transmogrification added to the latest WoW Patch 4.3?

Find Quartermaster Ozorg  here.
Have fun looking like a dk noob.

Preparing for Transmogrify DK Guide

Oh wait, we don't have any retro gear to worry about.

Blood Tank Reforging

Personally, I'd wait until you start gearing at 85 before reforging.  I noticed during leveling from 80 to 85 that I was swapping gear out constantly, weapons, shoulders, everything just seemed to be constantly replaced.  This is expected, so don't worry about min/maxing just yet.  Although, the cost is low enough, if you are struggling with tanking some dungeons, go ahead, throw a reforge on there to get used to it.

Mastery is a great stat for Blood tanks and generally speaking this would be the stat I would reforge into.  However, you must first be to the Hit and Expertise soft cap.  This will become an issue as you struggle more and more for aggro as your DPS starts gearing and becoming more of an issue.  After hitting the mob is no longer a worry, start putting some points into Mastery.

A Death Knight Tanks Mastery Rating will affect Blood Shield.  Blood Shield will proc off of your use of Death Strike, which will provide a 50% damage absorption of what you were healed for.  The percentage of damage absorption is directly affected by how many points you have in Mastery.  Each point in Mastery stats will increase the percentage of absorption by 6.25%

More Blood Shield information on Wowhead.com.

Death Knight Tank Reforge Gear Guide

With the introduction of 4.0.1, everyone has access to an NPC that will reforge your gear.  That is, reforging will allow you to take 40% of one stat and convert it to another stat not found on that particular piece of gear.  Reforging cannot affect gem slots or base stats, which means as a Death Knight tank you will typically only be attempting to reforge stats to reach cap on hit or expertise.

When choosing a stat to reforge, consider stealing from hit or expertise.  The reason for choosing these stats is because you are most likely over the cap for one or the other, if geared well.  Take the amount over cap and convert that stat into the one needed or into the new Mastery stat.

Basically the reforging process is a method to get rid of useless over cap stats and convert them into needed stats to reach cap.  Once caps are reached, spend excess stat points on the Mastery skill.

Death Knight Sigils

This is a guest article on the differences and availability of Death Knight Sigils.

There are a number of sigils in the game. However, Blizzard claimed that there will be more sigils for the death knight. At the present moment, all the sigils will increase your damage because of the lack of tanking sigils.

Sigil of the dark rider is given to you after you have created the character. The sigil of the dark rider will increase the damage dealt through the blood strike and heart stroke by 90. This sigil is the solid basis. However, if you hit Northrend, you must replace it.

Sigil of awareness will increase the damage dealt through the scourge strike by 189. In addition, it will increase the damage dealth by the obliterate strike by 336 and death strike by 315. This sigil is suitable for death knights that are unholy spec but with lesser frost spec. Due to the fact that you can spam scourge strike as unholy, you will be able to use this sigil on most of the assails against you. Frost spec will use obliterate lesser but it is still the best choice. If you are a blood death knight, you should not use this sigil because they will use Obliterate to cause the effect of the death runes.

Sigil of haunted dreams will increase the base damage dealt by blood strike and heart strike by 173 strikes in 10 seconds. Because death knight produce lots of blood/heart strokes, it makes the sigil likely to proc. This sigil can be obtained for 15 Northrend heroid badges

Sigil of unfaltering knight increases the defense rating for the icy touch by 53. This sigil is suitable for tanking death knight that have not obtain the recommended defense rating. Most tanking death knight has the icy touch as part of their rotation so the sigil of unfaltering knight is good for them.

Sigil of arthritic binding will increase the base damage dealt by the scourge strike ability by 91.53. This sigil is suitable for unholy death knight that is unable to obtain the sigil from 25 man Naxxramas. If you spam the enemies with scourge strike, your blood runes will transform into death runes.

Sigil of the wild buck increase the base damage dealt by your death coil ability by 80. This sigil is suitable for all kinds of death knights except frost death knights that has the frost strike spec.

Sigil of the frozen conscience increase the damage dealt by icy touch ability by 111. This sigil is used with the Icy Touch. However, before choosing this sigil, you must determine how often you are going to use Icy Touch. If you are an unholy death knight, you will not regularly use it because the scourge strike will refresh the diseases. Blood and frost death knight can obtain talents which will lengthen the duration of diseases so the icy touch is only use to apply to its disease.

Sigil of deflection will cause your runes ability to grant 136 dodge rating for 5 seconds. This sigil is suitable for tanking death knight which can gain access to the Ulduar loot. The sigil of deflection can be obtained from Razorscale.

Sigil of the Vengeful Heart will increase the damage dealt by the Death Coil ability by 380 and frost strike ability by 113. This sigil is suitable for the any death knight including blood death knight, frost death knight and unholy death knight that carry out destruction up to Ulduar.

Regarding Rolling

With the upcoming patch 3.3.3 there will no doubt be some roll changes to many servers.  The usual way to roll on items would be to Greed, but with changes to Frost Orbs being traded for mats, why shouldn't everyone roll Need?  But another discussion would be about Tanks rolling on DPS gear and vice versa.

I'm a firm believer in a few things, which have shaped my random dungeon runs and made them tolerable.  First of all, announce your intent at the beginning of the run.  If you will be rolling Need on Orbs, let it be known so that everyone has a fair shot at it.  Also, if you are a Tank looking for DPS gear, tell people up front, and likewise if you are a plate wearing DPS that you are looking for tank gear.

The only real issues crop up when it's a surprise and lack of communication develops bad attitudes.  Also, by announcing your intent to roll on certain loot you are giving others an option to drop if they don't like it.

The importance of establishing loot rules up front will become even more important the closer we get to Cataclysm and after Cataclysm is released.  Those that have been tanking the majority of the Lich King expansion will be wanting to grab some DPS gear out of the early Cata dungeons, so be prepared for drama over loot.

What tips do you have for rolling on gear in random dungeon runs?  And no, the answer is not always to just run with friends and guild mates. ;)

What Is An Update For The Titansteel Destroyer?

Death Knight tanks fight over weapons that may also be decent for other classes, like Druid's and Hunters. Luckily there are a few easily accessible weapons in the game that make replacing that craftable Titansteel Destroyer a little bit easier. We will stick to 2H Weapons, which will of course require the rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle for tanks.

Edge of Ruin - This is a great 2h Axe with lots of stamina and a plethora of strength, which us DK's eat up. Death Knight tanks appreciate the increase in strength to increase our damage and thus improve our threat.

The Edge of Ruin drops from the Champions Cache in Heroic Trial of the Champion.

Tyrannical Beheader - This 2h Axe is an ilvl 232 with lots of stamina and strength. Without question this is a big update from the Titansteel Destroyer, but may remain marginal when compared to the ilvl 219 Edge of Ruin. The main reason is because it contains haste, which is kind of a toss up stat for Death Knights. So, it's still an upgrade, so feel free to roll against those Hunters and Druids.

The Tyrannical Beheader drops from Heroic Pit of Saron on the last boss.

Death Knight Tanking Gear List Trinkets

There are some seriously nice tanking Trinkets for Death Knights available once you start raiding Heroic Naxx and Ulduar. However, this post will focus on building your tanking set before entering Raids.

The two tanking trinkets most easily accessible will be Seal of Pantheon (WoW Head Link), which is an iLevel 200 Rare piece and Essence of Gossamer (WoW Head Link), which is an iLevel 200 Rare Piece as well.

The Seal of Pantheon drops off of Loken in regular Halls of Lightning and the Essence of Gossamer drops off of Hadronox in Heroic Azjol-Nerub. While these aren't the easiest instances to be learning to tank in, with a good healer they are possible to run. Also, the experience in these more difficult instances will prep you for things to come.

My Death Knight Hit 80

Well, my Death Knight hit 80 last night! It's been a fun ride and now the adventure really begins, mainly with my foray into tanking at max level. Unfortunately characters aren't automatically endowed with copious amount of perfect gear once dinging, so I've been running some level 80 reg's and dps'n in heroics. Oddly enough I've been getting in groups faster and easier as DPS rather than PUG's needing a tank. We'll see how long that lasts.

I'm looking forward to gearing up for Raids, even at a casual pace. Thanks to Blizzards methods of badge rewards and craftables I should be well on my way to handling most heroics in a few weeks. As I do research into what gear I need and work toward I'll post here, with options for new level 80 Death Knight Tanking and DPS gear.

See you then.

Death Knight Leveling In Alterac Valley

Believe the rumors, put on your pvp gear (or whatever) and head on over to Alterac Valley. Bar none it seems to be the absolute fastest way to level, especially compared to grinding out instances. Heck, even compared to non flying mount questing it seems faster, but that might be attributed to the play style.

After every single AV game I've played I've went up at least 1 bubble, even if I lost. However, if I got a good team, which caps towers, prevents capping, and smacks Drek, then I can get 3 bubbles easy or more. This is the average I've been seeing from level 74 to 77, give or take.

I like it because it always takes less than 1 minute to get into a game and provides a clear goal, instead of following the quest helper arrow around. Not to mention it's nice to take a break from grinding instances and quests, yet still have a means to earn XP. Consider this, by the time I'm done running all these Alterac Valley's to hit 80, I'll be able to score some decent Purple PVP gear too. Some gear that will allow me to jump right into tanking some heroics.

*Update

Looks like I opened my mouth too soon and just at the wrong time. Apparently there was a ninja nerf to xp gain in Alterac Valley with the release of patch 3.2.2. This means that the XP gain in Alterac Valley was nixed by about 50%.

Big Bummer.

Death Knight Venture Coin Rewards

Well, after completing all the PVP dailies down on Venture Bay and taking over the zone by myself, I realize the rewards were not that great. As mentioned in an earlier post, there are 3 new Sigil's available for purchase from the Venture Coin Vendor, but for my playing style, they just weren't the 30 coins each.

I think my time will be better spent moving on to Dragonblight and doing all the quests out there. Mobs are definitely not a problem, especially since I just upgraded most of my gear to blacksmithing blues. I even created enough gear to use the integrated Blizzard Equipment Manager, which allows me now to easily swap out between DPS and Tank gear.

Speaking of Death Knight Tank Gear, as mentioned in a post found on the Blizzard forums, for leveling dungeons I'm only planning on stacking stamina. The rest will work itself out as I get closer to 80 and have to worry about Heroics. Right now I want to focus on just being able to handle a few big hits from bosses so my healers don't stress too much.

New Death Knight Sigil At 74

Looking to upgrade that tired old Sigil you started with as a level 55 Death Knight? Well, at 74 there are 3 more readily available for purchase with a few coins and a little gold. Specifically, there are 3 Sigil's available for completing the PVP quests in Grizzly Hills, with the acquired Venture Coins.

The daily quests themselves are simple as pie and the coins come easy. The Sigil's you can purchase are 30 Venture coins each, so if you are looking for some variety, why not buy all of them. Each Sigil will either provide a bonus to your Death Coil, Icy Touch, or Sourge Strike.

Sigil of Arthritic Binding
Sigil of the Frozen Conscience
Sigil of the Wild Buck

After feeling connected at the hip with the Death Knight Sigil I started with, I might just have to purchase these to change things up a bit. As it stands I'm about 6 bubbles from leveling to 74, might as well start heading to Grizzly Hills.

Death Knight Gear At 73

I leveled to 73 last night, through a combination of grinding out quests and running a few instances. The most beneficial instance I ran was The Nexus and not because I lucked out on a drop, but because of the easy to obtain Blue Quest Rewards. The following quests provided some Blue loot to make it easier on a low 70's level Death Knight, especially one interested in tanking.

Have They No Shame? - Reward is a decent set of Plate shoulders with great stats like Stamina, Strength, Dodge, and Defense. There is a Shield stat too, which obviously doesn't pertain to Death Knights, but still makes this a great addition to a leveling DK.

Postponing the Inevitable - Reward is a sweet set of Plate gloves that comes with a little bit of Hit rating and the usual Strength, Stamina bonuses.

Quickening - Time to replace those Cobalt Boots or Spiked Cobalt Boots. The quest reward for this one offers 2 different Plate Boot options, so choose wisely. Hint, being a Death Knight means you could care less about Intellect. ;)

Also, keep in mind this gear is easily obtainable at a lower level. I ran this with a group of 70's and even a level 69 DPS. So, while it might be a little challenging for a tanking Death Knight at a low level, support can get you there if you're in a hurry.