Death Knight Gearing/Gemming/Enchanting Guide
Get to 9% melee hit ASAP. For raid bosses, 9% melee hit is the cap to make your auto-attacks/non-spell attacks NOT MISS (This is different from getting dodged or parried, which hit does nothing for). This won't cap you for spell hit purposes, but you don't really have to worry about this for the most part since the majority of our damage can be accounted for with the 9% hit rule.
- I'd recommend trying to get some more expertise, with the cap being at 6.5% to remove dodges from the combat table when attacking from behind on a raid boss. This one is not quite as important as the hit requirement, but it helps the greater majority of our DPS (Not spells though). This will reduce the amount of dodges your attacks run into, to the point that you'll get maybe 1 or 2 dodges at most throughout the course of a boss fight if you have 6% expertise. But more importantly, it provides a smoother, more reliable "feel" to DPS'ing as a DK. Your mileage may vary here.
- Focus on strength over AP. 1 str = 2 AP unmodified. Strength also scales with kings, some of our talents, and one of our major DPS runeforge weapon enchants (Rune of the Fallen Crusader) gets drastically better the more strength you have.
- Crit isn't bad at all. Some of our talents work very well with higher crit (Wandering plague, killing machine). Generally speaking though, you'll benefit far more from strength than crit since strength works for every single attack/ability we use while crit does not , and crit is still an expensive stat to gem/gear for. Don't ignore it, but don't make it your priority.
- Armor Penetration (ArP) is a little odd. It benefits blood the most, followed by frost, and unholy the least. It isn't one of our highest priority stats (We have a lot more armor-ignoring moves than most other physical DPS'ers do. unless you're blood), but it doesn't hurt. This one isn't too important though.
- Haste. Out of all our DPS stats, this one is probably one of our least valued. Inevitably, you'll find many DPS pieces with haste on it. Haste only affects our auto-attack damage, and does not help at all with the greater majority of our DPS (Instant attacks and spells). Never, ever gem for haste. It will come with the gear we use, but try not to get too much of it at the cost of losing out on strength.
- Spell power. No.
- Gemming: Use your gem slots to follow the previously mentioned stat priorities. One case does bear worth mentioning though, which is the meta-gem slot. RED (Relentless Earthstorm Diamond) was the golden standard for melee DPS-types of ANY kind back in Burning Crusade. Following along a similar theme, Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (Which is relatively easy to gem for) is probably your best choice for meta-gem. The increased % to crit damage really is that good.
- Enchanting: See the gemming section above, with a few caveats. I really like getting the expertise/hit enchants early on when I cannot achieve the hit/expertise caps from gearing alone. When I do reach the point in which I do not need those enchants, then I switch to straight AP (There are unfortunately no strength equivalent enchants in Wrath) enchants.
