Enchants

People tend to ask me about enchants so I am making this post to answer which ones are the ones you want.

Tanking Enchants
helm - Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector
shoulder - Greater Inscription of the Gladiator
cloak - Mighty Armor
chest - Super health
bracers - Major stamina
gloves - Heavy borean armor kit
pants - frosthide leg armor
boots - tuskarr's vitality
weapon - Rune of the stoneskin gargoyle

Now you may ask why are there a few enchants on that list like armor to cloak and stam to gloves, reason is simple. Stamina and armor are the two top stats as a tank nowadays since the ICC dodge debuff and diminishing returns ontop of that. The goal is to have as high health as possible while having as much armor to mitigate incoming damage. Rune of stoneskin Gargoyle is the only way to go with the weapon enchant because it gives a little dodge, parry, miss rating and 2% stamina. Tuskarr's vitality is a extremely important enchant because in almost every fight there will be movement and as a tank you have to be there to pick up the target (very rare for a stand still fight).

Dps Enchants
helm - arcanum of torment
shoulder - greater inscription of the axe
cloak - greater speed
chest - powerful stats
bracers - greater assault
gloves - crusher
legs - icescale leg armor
boots - greater assault
weapon - rune of the fallen crusader

Not too much to explain for the dps enchants, pretty self explanatory. Some people like to put 15 strength on there gloves and I wish it was the better enchant to go with but at the end of the day it isn't since it gives less AP than the 44 ap enchant. I see some Dk's using 22 agility to the cloak and it overall does less dps compared to the 23 haste to cloak.

All in all these are the enchants every Dk should be using no matter which role you have chosen to play. I did not add any defensive enchants excluding the helm enchant since your gear will put you way over 540 defense. As for dps Dks these are the enchants you want to pump out max dps.

Ashen Verdict Strength Ring

Blizzard has announced that they will be adding a strength dps ring from the Ashen Verdict Faction. This is big news for us dps Dk's because the only option they had for melee dps at the time was Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance. I personally did not choose this ring and decided to choose the tank version ring for my offspec. Now I have yet to do the math or research to see if the new strength ring will be BIS with the current loot out in ICC but it is extremely easy to get, especially the exalted version with farmable trash. This ring will be available this upcoming Tuesday.

Stats

Here is some information on stats

1. Strength - Our best stat in terms of dps, 1 strength gives us 2 attack power and attack power scales with all of our attacks. Our ghoul and gargoyle benefit from our strength especially if you have Glyph of the Ghoul.

2. Expertise - 26 expertise is needed not to be dodged while attacking behind the target. 56 is the parry cap (which is hard to get with current gear). A tank should aim for 26-30 expertise thru gear alone and dps should aim for 20-26 expertise. Unholy and Frost specs give 5 expertise while Blood spec gives 6 expertise.

3. Hit - 263 (8%) is needed to not miss white and special attacks. 446 (17%) spell hit rating is needed to never miss a spell, if you have Virulence then 368 hit is needed. You should never aim to get past 263 since we are a melee class.

4. Armor Pen - 1399 is the hardcap, something we should not focus on. Arp increases physical damage done, even though DK's have a few dots it's still a very good stat for all three specs. With the changes to Scourge Strike you will notice a nice bang for the buck.

5. Haste - Increases your attack speed and lowers your GCD. Not the best stat for us but with Bloodlust, windfury totem, haste pot, swift retribution and any other loot that increases your haste, your 3.60 weapon speed will drop down a lot. I see my attack speed go as low as 1.75 with everything going.

80, Now what?

80, now what?

Tanking :

So you just hit 80 on your Death Knight and are eager to start tanking, well there are a few things that you have to do before being able to tank any instances and / or raid. First things first, you need 535 defense for heroic 5 mans and 540 defense for raids so you won't be critable. That's the first stat that you need to aim for, even if you have to gem for it. Blizzard has made it extremely easy to get gear and be ready to start tanking 10 and 25 ICC within matters of weeks. I will be going over a few things in this post to help you get started on your fresh level 80 Death Knight tank. First off there are two enchants you want to grind rep for and they are Sons of hodir and Argent crusade. Argent crusade provides Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector and Sons of hodir provides Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle. Eventually you will replace that shoulder enchant for Greater Inscription of the Gladiator which I will cover later on down the road. The reason why those two enchants are very important for tanks are because they provide defense, which you will need all the help you can get as a fresh level 80 tank and the other reason, atleast for the helm enchant, provides stamina. Before you are able to start tanking all the big bad bosses in game, you will need to start running regular 5 mans, yes I said regular and by regular I really mean toc 5 man. Now there are only five pieces (belt, trinket, legs, gloves and boots) of gear you can obtain from normal mode that are tank pieces but they are pretty solid for being a fresh 80. As for the other pieces (helm, neck, chest, bracers, ring x2 and trinket) you will have to run other instances for those and a great way to look up what you need from this or that instance is http://www.wow-loot.com/deathknight.htm and / or a addon called atlasloot enhanced which is a great addon to have. Now that you know what pieces of gear you should be aiming for let's briefly talk about specs. No matter which spec you decide to go with should have http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#j0xZhxZ0x. Again I won't go into full detail, atleast not now, about specs, rotations, gems etc. All three specs are capable to tank and all have their plus and minuses. Blood has the highest survivability, the best single target threat and is widely used in end game tanking but also takes the most damage from all three specs. Frost dual wield or two handed spec gives very good AOE threat and good single target threat, downside is it is very tight with rotation and if you are DWing you are prone to being parry gibbed a lot more than a two hander. Unholy is unique and the most complicated spec to play. Used to be the spec to go back when OS was the hardest content in game especially with Bone Shield but with all the fast hitting bosses those bones do drop rather quickly, too quick if you ask me. All in all Blood spec is the preferred spec for endgame tanking and I personally use it on my Dk, although I would recommend testing all three specs and seeing which playstyle fits you.

Dps :

I know what you are thinking, I am a Death Knight and can faceroll to 10k dps. Wrong. There is one stat that is and always be the most important stat to aim for and keep, hit. You need 263 (8%) hit rating to not miss, that's not the hit cap for your spells though. Again there are two enchants you want to grind the rep for, Sons of hodir and Ebon Blade. Ebon Blade provides Arcanum of Torment and some nice starter boots at exalted, Death-Inured Sabatons, as for Sons of hodir it provides Greater Inscription of the Axe. As a Death Knight dps our #1 stat after being hit capped is strength. Strength is our bread and butter and here is why, we get 2 attack power per 1 strength and attack power scales with ALL of our attacks. No matter which spec you decide to go with you should gem for strength, unless you aren't hit capped. We need 26 expertise to not be dodged while dps'ing from behind the target, expertise and hit are two completely different things and isn't as important as hit is although you shouldn't ignore it. Now with your fresh level 80 Death Knight dps you are able to start doing heroics right away compared to tanking where you actually need some gear for heroics. A great place to start farming is h.toc 5 man everyday and also farming reg 5 man toc until you get all the pieces of gear you can from there. There are a total of 11 pieces of gear that you can get from reg and heroic 5 man toc. You may ask but wait what spec and presence should I be using before stepping into these 5 mans, it's very simple, blood presence and Unholy spec. With or without the 2pc t10 Unholy is the dominant single and aoe dps bar none and the 15% increased damage is hands down the presence you want. Blood Spec is very gear dependant and even after getting the gear you won't be happy with the numbers compared to Unholy. Blood at one point was the way to go for dps and is the spec that quite boring if you ask me in terms of dps. Frost duel wield in the other hand provide some nice numbers, again not as good as Unholy. Duel Wield Frost is very proc reliant too and needs a lot more hit which means gimping other stats in order to gain hit.