Blood Gearing Question

[Suture 0]

Is a higher ilvl piece of STR/STAM gear always the better choice?  Browsing the following list, the way pieces are sorted would lead me to believe that to be true.

 

https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/blood-death-knight-pve-tank-gear-loot-best-in-slot

 

I just came to the painful realization that Ask Mr. Robot is crap for making gear choices.  I've probably made a lot of lousy decisions and vendored equal ilvl gear based on AMR's best in bags tool.  Also, if anyone can point me toward somewhere Reniat or a similarly knowledgeable DK tank discusses gear choice while progressing from SoO LFR to Flex to Normal, that would be greatly appreciated.  So far I haven't been able to find a good discussion on that topic.  Thanks!

[Ceraius 34]

Technically, yes a higher ilvl item is better due to the increased stat budget.

Edited August 15, 2014 by Ceraius

[Storm 426]

It depends on the pieces you're comparing, and what your goal is gearing wise. Often times for blood DK's the higher ilvl gear will be better because quite honestly we can just about stack whatever stats we want and succeed with it. but there are a few cases where it just won't make sense.

 

for example if you have a normal Earthbreaker's Steaming Chestplate and you're thinking about replacing with with a heroic tier chest Chestguard of Cyclopean Dread , but you're already way over exp cap, and the tier chest is going to be your 1st, 3rd, 5th tier piece (AKA it won't be the piece that gets you a set bonus). 268 str, 401 stam, 1665 mastery vs. 1267 dodge and 1267 parry, would be fairly even survivability wise, and definitely a dps loss.

 

the same could go for pieces with hit since hit is worth 0 after cap. If you're already so much over cap that you can't reforge out of enough hit, then a higher ilvl piece with hit on it probably won't be better than a slightly lower ilvl piece without hit.

 

But anything with mastery/dodge/parry the higher ilvl piece will usually be the better piece.

[Suture 0]

Looking specifically at the trinket list is why I'm not sure whether to trust Icy Veins' list as a whole.  Unless I'm seriously missing something about this class (or really starving for stam), I'd have to be an idiot to replace Iron Protector Talisman with Grievous Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity, barring an encounter where I specifically need to defeat a snare/mc/fear/stun mechanic.  I'm not yet at the level where I have to worry about not being able to reforge out of enough hit/exp, what I really need is an easy reference to identify gear that is time-effective to go chasing after.  I'd rather spend my time learning fight mechanics and improving my playstyle than crunching numbers between different ilvl gear to figure out whether an ilvl 522 piece is worth picking up because it actually surpasses the bottom few contenders for that slot on the 528 list.  I'm trying to figure out the most efficient use of my time after I've exhausted my LFR and Flex1/2 loot locks for the week.  Thoughts on all this?

[Storm 426]

3000 dodge for 15 secs with 55sec cd = 3000 * 15/55 = 818.18 effective dodge vs. +610 static stam + a CC break. I'd go with pvp trinket unless you're at so much stam that you don't want anymore no matter what (which given those trinket choices you aren't at that ilvl yet).

 

most gear is going to be fairly straight forward, and even if you're comparing a mastery piece (highest survivability) to a dodge/parry piece, or even crit/haste (blood dk's can seriously gear however they want and still be effective) the higher ilvl is pretty much better while you're in the gearing up stages unless you have a specific goal in mind (like maximizing tank dps, or maximizing survivability so you can solo an LFR boss after the rest of the group has failed).

 

trinkets are a bit more difficult because the proc's blizzard chooses from tier to tier go all over the sprectum from extremely OP for the ilvl to laughably useless.

[Storm 426]

Lao-Chin's Liquid Courage was one of the best trinkets in T14 and a lot of DK's even used it deep into T15. You can buy it now with JP so it should be really easy to acquire.

 

Resolve of Niuzao comes from a timeless curio on the Timeless Isle. this should also be fairly easy to get your hands on.

 

after that I would just focus on getting LFR or Flex versions of the SoO trinkets.

 

Rook's Unlucky Talisman is probably one of the easiest to get since it comes from wing 1. It's one of the weaker trinkets since it only offers stam and a situational on use ability, but it does offer a lot of stam at least.

 

Juggernaut's Focusing Crystal is in wing 2 off Iron Jug. People either love or hate this trinket, but I prefer to use it. The healing is debatable but certainly not useless and the dodge gives you a lot of crit from riposte.

 

Vial of Living Corruption and Thok's Tail Tip are by far the best trinkets and the ones you should be trying to get the most. They are both in wing 3

 

I have all of the above mentioned SoO trinkets. My default setup is Jugg's and Vial. If I'm in a crazy survival situation like solo tanking thokk I go with Rook's and Vial for a little bit of a stam stack. and when I want to YOLO tank dps I use Jugg's and Tailtip.

[Suture 0]

Thanks for the insight, Storm!  I actually have the first 2 trinkets on your list, I threw that blue into my comparison just because I didn't think the extra stam was worth giving up the dodge proc, and there's a big ilvl difference.  It seems the math doesn't back me up, but looking at those equations to figure that out on my own kind of makes my head hurt.  So anyhow I suppose I should be concluding that outside of the trinkets, ilvl is usually king for us?

[Storm 426]

for the most part yes. higher ilvl will usually be better overall when gearing up. once you get to 540+ is when you'll start worrying more about staying within a specific build (mastery vs. avoidance). but even then mixing and matching mastery and avoidance isn't a wrong answer either.

[AMonkeyCourier 2]

That thing at the end isn't a BiS list. It's just a list of all possibly relevant gear sorted by ilvl. Lower on the list does not mean better.