gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight

Preparing For Your Death Knight is for those players planning to switch their mains to a death knight and are willing to go the extra mile before expansion to help speed up their death knight’s development after expansion launches. These steps are by no means required if you want to level a death knight, but they do help speed up the leveling process.

Death Knight Set vs Outland Quest Rewards

The death knight armor set you’ll get at the end of Ebon Hold, the start area, is great. Item level wise the gear is as good as 20-man raid epics from vanilla WoW, but with stats designed for Outland leveling. It is also one of the best looking sets I’ve seen in game. Given its stats and looks it would be a shame to trade it in within hours of play time for an infamous Outland clown suit.

So don’t.

That’s right, I say don’t bother with Outland upgrades. When I first went through Outland leveling with Dedbitt in WotLK beta I ended up spending a good bit of time trying to decide whether to upgrade to a new quest reward or not. I later went back through WoWHead and compared stats of Outland upgrades (quest rewards and craftables) and the death knight set. While the Outland upgrades did give a slight boost to stats I doubt the time I gained in faster kills made up for the time it took deciding whether to upgrade or not in the first place. I don’t think I need to go into the downsides of the clown suit from an esthetic point of view.

From level 58 through 68 you want to speed level. You’ve done Outland before, the only thing new to enjoy is your death knight itself. Keep in mind your guild mates will be progressing through Northrend by the time you even get to Outland. Keep the armor set you get and sell or disenchant items you get, you’ll need the gold for your epic flying mount anyway. Worry about getting quests done, not weighing minor gear upgrades.

Enchants

If you are going to keep the same gear for 10 levels then it is worth investing in some gear enhancements. With Inscription being available before expansion in patch 3.0.2 you can even get all of your enchants put onto scrolls, then just mail the scrolls to your death knight. It’ll be easier than trying to connivence an enchanter in Northrend to come back to Azeroth. Go for the better enchants over the cheaper ones. Outland materials will be dropping in price from now until expansion.

[Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed]
[Enchant Bracer ? Brawn]
[Enchant Chest ? Exceptional Stats]
[Enchant Cloak ? Greater Agility]
[Enchant Gloves ? Major Strength]
[Nethercobra Leg Armor] (apply at level 60)

Crafted Gear

As I mentioned earlier I did look over crafted gear as possible Outland upgrades. For the most part the crafted gear either wasn’t worth the slight upgrade or required level 70, by which point you’ve been getting nice Northrend quest rewards for two levels. You can easily skip crafted gear altogether, however if you insist on doing everything you can to boost leveling here’s what I recommend.

[Adamantite Breastplate]
[Adamantite Plate Gloves]
[Adamantite Plate Bracers]
[Cloak of Darkness]

The Adamantite Battlegear set gets you through the longer levels in Outland, though it is worth noting the breastplate might not last long once you hit Northrend the next level. Cloak of Darkness lasted me a long time in beta leveling. It may of been due to lack of itemization during that point in testing, but without running instances I kept it until level 80.

The base stats aren’t a big improvement, but if you put blue or epic quality gems in them and enchant the gear you’ll get a nice boost. For enchants use the same ones listed above. For gems just use [Bold Living Ruby] or [Bold Crimson Spinel] (the cost of epic gems is plummeting) for either the red sockets or all sockets, or use [Sovereign Nightseye] or [Sovereign Shadowsong Amethyst] for the blue sockets to get the socket bonus. Going with all red gems gives you slightly better DPS, going for the socket bonuses gives you better survivability.

Weapons

I don’t have the same stance on weapons as I do on armor. Why? Well, none of these weapons look bad for one thing. For another weapons are the biggest single upgrade any melee DPS class can get, so it makes sense to upgrade weapons where you can easily, even if it does mean losing a weapons with actual rune graphics on it. Besides, with runeforging we get all the free weapon enchants we want. I’m sticking with two handed weapons for leveling. Dual wielding looks to scale well, but not until you are getting better gear and can go deeper into the Frost or Unholy talent trees.

[Blade of Misfortune]
[Halaani Claymore] (Alliance) or [Arkadian Claymore] (Horde)

Blade of Misfortune is an Outland world drop and can be found on the auction house for ~100 gold. If you just can’t find Blade of Misfortune for sale before expansion then there is always [Helboar Carving Blade], which comes from a Hellfire Peninsula quest series. Halaani Claymore/Arkadian Claymore are vendor purchases from Halaa. It is BoP so your death knight will need to buy them when your faction is in control of Halaa.

There are other 2H weapons available in Outland, but the rest typically require group quests which don’t work for everyone while leveling (especially with no healers about, except for the occasional eccentrically blood speced death knight). However if you end up with a good group of death knights then do the Ring of Blood quest series in Nagrand for a nice 2H axe, [Honed Voidaxe].

Bags

Technically not gear, but they are just as important to efficient leveling. Death knights start with four 12 slot bags, which just won’t do. The more bag space you have the more gold you’ll make and less you have to go back to town. Personally I’m going to use these bags.

[Primal Mooncloth Bag] x4
[Imbued Netherweave Bag] x7

The Primal Mooncloth Bags are for my character, the Imbued Netherweave Bags are for bank slots. If you don’t want to pay for the primal mooncloth then all 18 slot Imbued Netherweave Bags should be fine. Don’t waste gold on the 22 slot bags. Tailors in Northrend will soon be able to create cheaper 20 slot bags and maybe even 22 slot bags later on, but the cloth will be in high demand for weeks after expansion so have the good Outland bags ready to go while those materials are dropping in price.