Timeless Isle Gear for Blood and loot spec

[Tailstrike]

Evening fellow DKs

I have been a long time frost DK for pvp and raiding and have enjoyed immensly tanking on my prot paladin but now i am looking for something different and to be honest a more exciting and i think a blood DK may be the answer.

I have a whole bunch of timeless isle caches ready to use but am unsure on what spec to be when i open them due tocthe fact when i got some filler pieces for my paladin ret was the spec to be in due to how a prot pally gears.

Am i best to have my loot spec set to blood when i open them or another spec for gear? Is this also the case for gearing in LFR? Already have a weapon thank god.

And reading through the guides for reforging and gems and am a little confused here as i am new to blood - can anyone clarify the newbie friendly way to gem and reforge (it woud be mostly for LFR at this stage)

Appreciate the help here guys

[Deleted]

You want to be picking up mastery on most pieces as blood and if you have that as your loot spec then you will be getting gear with dodge/parry on it too which is certainly more useful than offensive stats for tanking. Ultimately it's up to the content you're raiding and how you want to gear for it, for LFR if you're at an appropriate ilvl then chances are you could very easily get away with a full dps set of gear and very little mastery.

You want to be aiming for around the 200-220% mark (that's my personal preference) which includes gemming pure mastery, mastery/parry and mastery/stam in the appropriate slots if you're going for pure survivability and if not then haste usually the stat of choice to throw in there as it gives you the extra DS's/min.

[Deleted]

Doesn't parry/dodge give more dps (and survivability) than haste after the Riposte change?

[Deleted]

Doesn't parry/dodge give more dps (and survivability) than haste after the Riposte change?

I'm not 100% as I don't main Blood any more but you don't need much haste to GCD cap as blood at the moment anyway so you're not going to be going for much before dumping stats into crit for a pure dps build. Obviously dodge/parry will always be superior for survivability though.

[Cryopathy]

Use Blood Spec as your loot spec for Timeless Isle gear. Blood Spec will give you 1 or 2 random stats from Parry, Dodge, Mastery, Hit, and Exp. Unholy/Frost Spec will give you 1 or 2 random stats from Crit, Haste, Mastery, Hit, and Exp.

You'll want to use Blood spec as your loot spec almost all of the time, unless you are trying to get a better chance at a specific piece like a weapon or tier piece, or if you are trying to get something on the DPS loot table like the Thok trinket.

Here is how you gear a Blood DK in 5.4:
-Get your hit to 7.5% and your exp to 7.5%
-Get as much Mastery as you need to feel comfortable surviving. This is a different number for everyone and depends on your item level, your skill, your healers' skill, and the level of content you are doing. I've seen people use anywhere from barely 100% Mastery to over 250% Mastery. Experiment with different levels until you find a good level for you.
-Get Avoidance. Parry is better than Dodge.

I do not recommend gearing for Haste or Crit. Crit is purely a stat for DPS scumbagging. It offers no survivability increase and avoidance stats are nearly as good for DPS due to Riposte and Scent of Blood while also offering good survivability. Haste was more useful prior to this patch, but if you are playing properly with an Avoidance build, you should be GCD locked or close to it with almost no Haste.

Gems:
Meta: Indomitable Primal Diamond if you have it, otherwise use Austere Primal Diamond
Red: Parry, Parry/Mastery, Exp/Mastery, or Exp (latter two if you are having trouble reaching exp cap)
Yellow: Parry/Dodge, Parry/Mastery, Mastery, or Exp/Mastery (if you are having trouble reaching exp cap)
Blue: Parry/Hit, Mastery/Hit, or Hit (latter if you are having trouble reaching hit cap). If you have WAY too much hit (you won't at your gear level) you can also just use Parry/Stam or Mastery/Stam gems.

[Totle]

I am a bad. I don't really gem and reforge the way I'm suppose to for end game raiding.

That being said, I am an LFR hero. I tank/lead/teach every LFR wing practically every week.

Gem for Stam, reforge stuff like hit or parry into Mastery. I remember there was an macro once that would tell you how much parry you would need based on how much dodge you have, and I was always over the cap, so I figured from now on, just reforge parry into Mastery.

It's worked so far. That being said, tank gear is pretty important. We love giant health pools because our ghoul/sac is percentage based.

[Deleted]

Blood spec.

DO NOT TRY TO BALANCE PARRY/DODGE it is not worth the loss from parryhaste and extra SoB stacks. For more info on that, read the dk tank guide on this forum.

hit/exp to 7.5% > stam until around 700k hp > mastery until comfortable > parry >>>>>> dodge

never gear for haste. with about 2k haste you will be gcd capped if you use ams, erw and the t16 4pc correctly.