Blood Death Knights are two hand wielding tanks, using Death Strike has a way to mitigate damage by healing after taking damage, short cooldowns and a good tool to mitigate both physical and magical damage they are often the preferred off tanks along druids. However, Blood Death Knights are active tanks, the player plays a huge role on how much of a good tank the Death Knight is.

Stats for Blood Death Knight Wotlk

Stat priority

540 Defense rating > 8% hit cap > 21 Expertise > Stamina > Armor > Avoidance

Blood Death Knight Stats Overview

Hit Cap

Melee hit cap is 8%, it increases the chance to hit the target, missing attacks and abilities will reduce threat by a lot, and with it the ability to tank properly.

Expertise

Expertise lowers the chance of getting dodged or parried.
Has a melee class 26 expertise is the soft cap, with [Thundra Stalker] giving 5 expertise, 21 expertise is the amount needed.

Stamina

Stamina increases the health pool, by having a larger health pool the healers will have more time to heal after damage. Stamina is increased by frost presence so, the value of each point is even more valuable. There is no cap on stamina.

Armor

Armor reduces the amount of damage taken by a percentage, it’s the best stat after stamina. Armor is capped at 75% damage reduction ~42000 armor, any value above no longer applies.

Avoidance

Dodge and parry are good stats, however they are based on RNG with diminishing returns, their value and survivability for a tank can end up falling short.

Stats Breakdown without increasing effects

33 hit rating ≈ 1% to hit

33 expertise rating ≈ 1 expertise

33 haste rating ≈ 1% haste

45 critical chance ≈ 1% critical

1 stamina ≈ 10 Health

1 intellect ≈ 15 mana

1 agility ≈ 1 attack power

1 strength ≈ 2 attack power

1 critical chance ≈ 84 agility

14 Armor Penetration ≈ 1% Armor ignore