Lichborne: Emblem of Triumph Gear for Death Knights
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Sep 29th 2009 at 7:00PM
Ah, Emblems of Triumph, the new hotness. Even if you're not running the coliseum, you still have chance to grab them in the heroic daily, and by now, surely most of us have at least had the opportunity to save up enough to buy something. Deciding what to buy, however, is a whole different question. Let's take a look at the badge loot and see what's in it for a death knight.
Trinkets
Hitting 8% hit (to remove melee special attack misses) is still one of the most important goals for almost any death knight DPS spec. With that in mind, if you've been having trouble keeping up to that level, Emblems of Triumph may have your answer. Shard of the Crystal Heart and Mark of Supremacy both grant a whopping 128 hit rating, almost half of your recommended daily allowance. Mark of Supremacy will be the choice for most death knights, but unholy may actually want to grab the Shard of the Crystal Heart. Haste is surprisingly good for unholy, especially since the lower global cool downs it grants can make the new 10-second non-Epidemic unholy damage rotation a lot more forgiving.
Now this said, once you have 8% hit (Or, in the case of some specs, most notably frost dual wield, 17% hit for the spell hit cap), there's much better trinkets you could fit here, such as Death's Choice or a Greatness Card. Hell, arguably even a basic trinket like the Mirror of Truth will be better. But if you have the badges to spare and can't seem to hit that hit cap, these are great stopgaps.
For tanks, the Glyph of Indomitability is very much worth it for a tank. Most solid Death Knight tank build include Bladed Armor, which means the armor on this glyph will also translate into a nice chunk of extra threat. Dodge on use is also nothing to sneeze at. Basically, this trinket will let you laugh at physical damage, and is a very smart purchase for a tank.
Rings
If you're down a good DPS ring, consider the Bloodshed Band. It has plenty of strength, which is the most important DPS stat for most death knight DPS specs, as well as a good chunk of hit rating if you've yet to hit the 8% cap. That said, if you have hit the 8% soft cap, you may actually find, at least as blood or unholy, that the armor penetration or haste, respectively, will actually make the Dextrous Brightstone Ring a better choice overall despite the presence of plain old vanilla attack power.
Tanks can rest assured that Clutch of Fortification is a very solid ring. Again, that extra armor means extra threat for most specs, and dodge continues to be perhaps the strongest of the avoidance stats. If you're needing a good tank ring still, this is a good use of badges.
Sigils
The Sigil of Virulence is a very solid choice for DPS, easily outpacing Sigil of the Vengeful Heart and Sigil of Awareness for most specs due to massive up time. Indications are that Sigil of Awareness may still be slightly better for dual wield frost DPS, but otherwise, this is a wise upgrade to purchase and probably the one thing (other than tier gear if you don't plan to run heroic 25-man) that you won't be replacing with a drop in the Coliseum.
The Sigil of Insolence, by all accounts, has close to 100% Up time, so as long as you're remembering to use your Rune Strikes, this is probably going to be your best bet for tanking as well. Really, you should consider both of these sigils "skill checks" of a sort. As long as you have a solid rotation going, they should offer their benefits nearly full time.
On Tier Gear and Armor
Okay, here's the basics on buying Tier Gear: First, there's two sets (or rather, four, since there's both tank and DPS varieties) that are buyable with Emblems of Triumph. The Horde set is named after Koltira, and the Alliance set, after Thassarian. The first, Conqueror's, is ilevel 232, and requires only 30 or 50 emblems for each piece - quite a steal! The second, Triumphant, is ilevel 245, and those cost either 45 or 75 emblems and a Trophy of the Crusade. The trophies only drop from the bosses on 25-man normal mode or the tribute chest at the end of a 10-man heroic run.
If you'll be able to run 25 man Trial of the Crusader (or if you can't wait to win 5 trophies), you may want to save up your badges for the higher level gear. If not, you can still grab the basic set, though it'll take you at least a couple of weeks per a piece, especially if all you're doing is the heroic daily.
Now, even if you can't get into 25 man, there's still a few ilevel 245 pieces of gear you can get, specifically helms and shoulders. Essentially, they're more or less clones of the ilevel 245 tier gear, with some slight differences, such as hit rating swapped for expertise. If you don't expect to have access to Trophies of the Crusade any time soon, they may well be tempting to purchase.
Of course, if you do choose to swap out some of the lower level tier 9 gear for the 245 pieces, be aware of any set bonuses you may break.
On Set Bonuses
DPS
First, let's jog your memory on the set bonuses:
- 2 pieces: Your Blood Strike and Heart Strike abilities have a chance to grant you 180 additional strength for 15 sec.
- 4 pieces: Your Frost Fever and Blood Plague abilities now have a chance for their damage to be critical strikes
The four piece bonus is a probably a bit more nebulous for some specs, so we'll try to break it down a bit more. For unholy, getting the 4 piece is a no brainer. With the Patch 3.2.2 Subversion buff, critical strike rating is a lot more valuable for an Unholy Death Knight, and since Wandering Plague stacks with this bonus, it's difficult to say no. Overall, there's a dearth of testing and some debate still on whether it's properly powerful for other specs, especially since the proc was only just fixed with Patch 3.2.2. Still, if you're rocking a lot of critical strike rating in your build, you probably shouldn't underestimate double damage tics. This set bonus is worth it.
Tank
Here are the tier 9 tank set bonuses:
- 2 pieces: Decreases the cool down on your Dark Command ability by 2 sec and increases the damage done by your Blood Strike and Heart Strike abilities by 5%.
- 4 pieces: Decreases the cool down on your Unbreakable Armor, Vampiric Blood, and Bone Shield abilities by 10 sec.
Too Long; Didn't Read?
To put it frankly, here's the deal. If you're really hurting for hit rating or armor, the trinkets make a good stopgap measure. Same for the rings if you're still trying to get some good rings. For the most part though, we've gotten some pretty awesome set bonuses this time around, so most DPSers, if they can, should head straight for that four piece bonus.
Of course, one of the joys of playing and writing about death knight is that we're still very much a class in flux, and with 3 unique trees with unique gear needs and wants that change nearly every patch, it's sometimes hard to pin down the exact ideals of "Best in Slot" with any real sense of permanency. That said, it's hard to go wrong with Tier gear, and honestly, even the look is sort of growing on me, even if I still would have preferred the old level 60 Alliance PvP plate look.
Still, whether you're downing Anub'arak every week or just plugging away at a couple heroic dailies a week, it's going to take you a while to save up those badges, so get to it, and we'll see you at the tournament.
Welcome to Lichborne, the new class column on the new WoW class, the Death Knight, where we discuss Patch 3.1 cookie cutter builds, basic defense gear and Heroic defense gear for the Death Knight tank, 5-man Crusader's Coliseum gear previews for tanks and DPS, and basic Death Knight statistics and mechanics. You might also want to check all the other articles in our Death Knight category.Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Instances, Raiding, Guides, Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Meethan Sep 29th 2009 7:07PM
Yeah I'll be trying to work my dk up to this level where I can actually acquire Triumph gear... Thanks for the guide!
And do DKs really frost dual-wield often? Or is it just higher ups?
Mike Sep 29th 2009 7:32PM
Until 3.2.2, dual-wielding Frost DKs were pretty much laughed at, for good reason. They probably still are, but I'm sure once somebody crunches the numbers a DW-Frost build will be equally effective to a 2H-Frost build.
Clydtsdk-Rivendare Sep 29th 2009 7:42PM
DWing was worthless during 3.1 pretty much. In 3.2 deep-Frost specs got Threat of Thassarian which finally made up for DW's biggest weakness, that is, it's weak strikes. The same patch nerfed FS pretty badly (removing the dodge-block-parry immunity, -5% and -100 or so off base damage, MASSIVE Vengeful Heart nerf, and BOTN nerf) meaning that you had to DW and use ToT to pull similar dps.
Cyrus Sep 29th 2009 7:47PM
I haven't looked into the theorycrafting and min-maxing and all that, but I understand that dual-wielding is the way to go for frost dps. If you get lucky and get an ilvl226 two-handed dps weapon and you're still using ilvl 200 one-handed dps blues, then sure, equip the epic and drop Threat of Thassarian and Nerves of Cold Steel and put those points somewhere else. Otherwise, though, based on a quick and very rough test on the target dummies in IF, dual-wielding dps is much higher.
But for tanking, I think dual-wielding is frowned upon. Quicker blows means more parries which means more attacks you take (unless you have ridiculous amounts of +hit and +expertise, which would mean itemization and gems that could be better spent on avoidance or mitigation). I seem to remember reading somewhere that bosses in ToC don't have that faster-hit-after-parry mechanic, but (a) I can't find where I read it, so take it with a grain of salt, and (b) even if so, that's only ToC, so parries would still be a problem in Naxx and Ulduar.
tim Sep 29th 2009 8:54PM
@Mike,
I think you mean 3.2, not 3.2.2.
@everyone
The consensus is that you should DW as a PvE frost DPS (unless, of course, your 2-hander is currently far superior). In any case there's a 72-page thread on 3.2 dual wielding on EJ forums that's a pretty good read.
Jeff Sep 30th 2009 1:50PM
I do believe that paladin on the far left is quite fancy and intelligent looking.
aapods Sep 29th 2009 9:18PM
http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?rb_v=viewtopic&p=490580
This is a current conclusive list of all bosses in raid content that have or do not have the parry haste mechanic. It's still a fairly large margin of bosses that DO contain the mechanic, and I would doubt they get rid of it any time soon.
There are similar posts on wow, ej, and guild forums across many sites. This was simply the first full list I found in searching teh googlies.
Picviewer Sep 30th 2009 12:39AM
As a tank that trinket is a waste of a trinket slot. Only good for 20 seconds every 2 minutes? Granted the extra armor isn't bad but otherwise just trash. No stamina boost, no def boost, no hit boost that is always there is junk. Save your badges for a better piece of gear and use another trinket which has a constant use benefit not a on use.
Raenz Sep 30th 2009 9:11AM
Not valueing armour highly is a mistake made by alot of tanks, try not to do it. I cant seem to find the post, but some of the number crunchers on tankspot worked out that against a boss who only uses physical damage, the armour on that trinket gives you a longer time-to-die then the dark brew 170stam trinks. Ofc it is always down to the tank in question to wiegh up items of gear and work out what is best for each encounter, but do not overlook this trink, its certainly worth picking up.
Wowinsider Sep 30th 2009 9:46AM
The trinket isn't offensively bad, but it's also probably not worth spending badges on until you've exhausted other uses for them. Depending on what your avoidance is, an avoidance trinket may mitigate more damage as well as generate more threat (by proccing more Rune Strikes, your biggest threat generator).
I'd use EoT on getting two pieces of T9 (especially if you're a blood tank) because it's a nice threat boost, getting the ring, and the sigil. The T9 4 piece is trash for tanks. You're better off picking up offset pieces or (as I'm personally doing) holding on to two T8.5 pieces for the imba Rune Strike damage boost.
Hiro Sep 30th 2009 4:17AM
DW can be viable as a tank, provided you have enough expertise. By 30 exp, you should only encounter parry haste as often as a warrior with a fast weapon.
Agree with the above re: DW being the frost dps spec. If you like DW unholy, there's a couple of options, both covered at Elitist Jerks as well.
When using emblems as a dps DK, I'd recommend using them in this order:
1. First 19 on the Sigil. It's a big, inexpensive upgrade.
2. Ring (maybe - if you're mostly only getting them through) if you do toc:
3. two-piece T9. Replace your weakest of the head, shoulders, chest, legs, or hands. If all are equal, get the cheapest ones.
Be very careful getting the trinket, and only do so if you're DESPERATE. And ignore the OP's advice on DW hit. You should NEVER waste hit above specials cap (8%). You lose too much benefit trying to hit the spell cap. after 8% hit, go expertise to cap (usually) then strength. So the trinket is unlikely to be useful in any decent gear.
Valt Sep 30th 2009 7:27AM
Last I've heard haste does NOT lower melee GCD (only that does is unholy presence), only casters are affected by this GCD lowering thing. Autoattacks hit faster, yes.
Did they change this? Because I sure don't remember...
Hoggersbud Sep 30th 2009 9:51AM
I believe it's still true, however many of the DK abilities are spells, not melee attacks. so they have the spell GCD not the melee one. Which means it can be lowered by haste.
Feyd Sep 30th 2009 12:32PM
I quote Ghostcrawler here from blizzcon "haste makes you push buttons faster"
and yes haste does apply to GCD, the idea is with an unholy build to get your GCD to about 1 sec WHILE STILL IN BLOOD PRESENCE at about 14% you really notice the GCD comming down
Feydrautha - Alexstrasza
Nawaf Sep 30th 2009 10:27AM
Can some one please answer my question, Is there any point of having Blood strike on the bar if I have heart strike? because I have it on my bar and I never touch it.
Barak Sep 30th 2009 10:59AM
You won't be using BS in blood spec. BS is used in unholy and frost rotations to generate Drunes, provide extra dps (through desolation).
Wowinsider Sep 30th 2009 12:52PM
Barak is not entirely correct.
You won't use BS much, but you will use it when doing the Faction Champions fight in ToC. All AoE (this includes cleave abilities like Heart Strike) has its damaged decreased by 75%. In order to do any decent damage, you need to use Blood Strike. Weird but true.
Colleen Sep 30th 2009 7:00PM
I've always heard that extraneous armor on items like rings, that wouldn't normally have armor, are NOT factored into a DKs frost presence, or any other ability that we have which uses our armor score. Can anyone confirm this?