gnomeDK – Your Pink Haired Guide to All Things Death Knight

Blue socket gems are a bane for DPS classes. At best a blue gem provides you with half the DPS value of our favorite gem, [Bold Scarlet Ruby]. Socket bonuses aren’t worth going beyond an all strength gem strategy, given they are usually small amounts of secondary DPS stats or even worse, stamina. However we have to use blue socket gems
for one thing that makes it worth the trouble: meta gems.

The three favorite death knight meta gems are [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond], [Relentless Earthsiege Diamond], and [Swift Skyflare Diamond].

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond gives us 0.46% chance to crit, Relentless Earthsiege Diamond gives us 0.34% chance to crit (remember crit rating > agility), and Swift Skyflare Diamond gives us a lot of attack power. These are all measurable, as you’ll see in a minute. Their secondary stats are not, but we can judge them. The crit-based gems both give 3% bonus to crit damage, which is really nice and what makes meta gems worth while. The AP gem gives us 8% run speed, which is useless if you run with an unholy death knight (which you should have) who provides a superior run speed buff for everyone (which they should). Ah, but how do these all stack up when we take their gem requirements into account? Let’s run the numbers, shall we.

Here are the gems we’re dealing with and their stat weight values:

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond – 987
Relentless Earthsiege Diamond – 651
Swift Skyflare Diamond – 1722

Smooth Autumn’s Glow – 752
Sovereign Twilight Opal – 800
We’re going to assume hit cap without gemming and that there are several Bold Scarlet Ruby already socketed for red gem requirements

Now let’s try the various combinations, ignoring gemming bonuses for the moment:

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond + Sovereign Twilight Opal x2 = 2587
Relentless Earthsiege Diamond + Smooth Autumn’s Glow + Sovereign Twilight Opal = 2203
Swift Skyflare Diamond + Smooth Autumn’s Glow x2 = 3226

So at first glance Swift Skyflare Diamond looks to be the winner. But let’s remember it gives a run speed bonus that may be useless to you, compared to the 3% bonus to crit damage (which isn’t scored here) of the other meta gems. The min/max theorycrafters put the 3% bonus to crit way ahead of speed bonus because (as min/max players) they assume Unholy Aura is up.

If we go with the theorycrafters then Chaotic Skyflare Diamond pulls out as the clear winner. It is a significantly better meta gem and its support gems also score higher. To add to this, before patch 3.0.8 our best blue gem was actually [Balanced Twilight Opal] which scores lower than Sovereign Twilight Opal, however even then Chaotic Skyflare Diamond comes out as a clear winner. At best gem bonuses which favor Relentless Earthsiege Diamond increases the score by up to 800, so bonuses could make it the winner but those will be unusual cases and something you’ll need to determine on your own.