On this page, we explain what the best statistics are for Blood Death Knights in World of Warcraft MoP 5.4, how the class benefits from each of them, and what your reforging strategy should be. We also detail what the various caps are (if any) and why they should be attained.

The statistics priority is important as it influences reforging strategies as well as itemisation choices (gear, enchants, and gems).

Make sure to check our Gear Optimisation Guide, which serves as a support guide for this article.

The other pages of our Blood Death Knight guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

1. Basics↑top

There are several viable stat priorities for Death Knights, depending not only on your preference, but also on your raid size.

Regarding the damage-oriented priorities, it is important to understand that these can render you very vulnerable, and you should make use of them very cautiously. If you are proving to be too fragile, or if your healers are dissatisfied, you are probably better off going with one of the other two priorities.

1.1. 10-man

1.1.1. Survivability-oriented

1. Mastery Rating;
2. Hit Rating and Expertise Rating (until 7.5% of each);
3. Dodge Rating and Parry Rating (there is an important distinction here, see below);
4. Haste Rating.

1.1.2. Balanced

1. Mastery Rating;
2. Hit Rating and Expertise Rating (until 7.5% of each);
3. Haste Rating.

1.1.3. Damage-oriented (offensive)

1. Haste Rating;
2. Hit Rating and Expertise Rating (until 7.5% of each);
3. Mastery Rating.

1.2. 25-man

1.2.1. Survivability-oriented

1. Mastery Rating;
2. Dodge Rating and Parry Rating (there is an important distinction here, see below);
3. Hit Rating and Expertise Rating (until 7.5% of each);
4. Haste Rating.

1.2.2. Balanced

1. Mastery Rating;
2. Hit Rating and Expertise Rating (until 7.5% of each);
3. Dodge Rating and Parry Rating (there is an important distinction here, see below);
4. Haste Rating.

1.2.3. Damage-oriented (offensive)

1. Mastery Rating;
2. Hit Rating and Expertise Rating (until 7.5% of each);
3. Haste Rating. 

2. Getting a Better Understanding↑top

Mastery Rating is an important statistic for a Blood Death Knight. You will want to get as much of it as possible, on all of your pieces of gear, as well as through gems, enchants and reforging. It provides you with larger shields from Mastery: Blood Shield, your Mastery, which in turn translates into more absorbed damage and a smoother damage intake.

Parry Rating and Dodge Rating give you avoidance. However, your chance to parry will be about two times higher than your chance to dodge because Strength also increases your chance to parry. Dodge and Parry have different diminishing returns curves to compensate for this (something that was not the case in Cataclysm). To make the most efficient use of your Dodge and Parry ratings, it is best to have equal amounts of rating, which will roughly balance the diminishing returns. Since you are focusing on Mastery before anything else, however, this aspect is not very important and it can even safely be ignored.

In order to see the exact relation between your dodge and parry chances, according to your current stats, you can use one of the following two macros (depending on whether or not you have the Rune of Swordshattering runeforging).

With Swordshattering:

• /run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 b=5.01 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end if UnitRace("player")=="Night Elf" then b=b+2 end p=235.5*d/90.6425-((235.5/90.6425)*b-n)+4 DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

Without Swordshattering:

• /run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 b=5.01 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end if UnitRace("player")=="Night Elf" then b=b+2 end p=235.5*d/90.6425-((235.5/90.6425)*b-n) DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

Hit Rating and Expertise Rating will ensure that more of your attacks land, thus improving your DPS/threat and saving you global cooldowns. For both statistics, you should aim for the 7.5% cap.

Most encounters have abilities that cannot be mitigated or avoided. Also, you need to have a decent amount of health, in order to give yourself the chance to be healed before a subsequent attack kills you. As such, you need a minimum amount of Stamina. This amount will, in most cases, simply come from the Stamina found innately on your gear. Therefore, you should never have to go out of your way to gem for Stamina.

3. Changelog↑top

• 10 Sep. 2013:Patch 5.4 update: reworked the stat priorities to account for the current trends, and also expanded the section to provide more options.
• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: nothing to change.
• 31 Mar. 2013: Moved Parry and Doge Rating above Hit and Expertise Rating in the statistic priority; added mention of the benefits of the old priority compared to the new one. Reworded the explanation of how you should balance your Parry Rating and Dodge Rating, and updated the macros. Removed Stamina from the statistic priority, and move the paragraph about Stamina to the end of the statistic explanations.

Buffs, Debuffs, and Useful Abilities

Gems, Enchants, and Professions