Alright welcome to the final edition of the Outland Death Knight Gear Guide. Sooner or later I’ll get around to recapping all post into one and posting in a central location for future readers. This last portion is obviously going to take you through levels 66 and 67 DPS gear you can find in Outland. My final levels in Outland seemed to fly by because I used these last two levels to simply grab what I hadn’t gotten to yet on earlier levels. So once I collected most all the “easy grabs” on the list, I only had to complete 1-2 quest to ding 68. Oh what a bitter sweet day that was! Now that I had the best Outland had to offer before level 68, I found I could easily replace most of it off the auction house greens from Northrend! Such is the nature of this game though. You should never feel you will keep you’re gear very long unless you are already at the level cap and even then you are going to be upgrading sooner or later. The game doesn’t stop at 80 you know!
– Level 66 –
Weapons - Level 66 opens you up to buying a Halaani Claymore or a Arkadian Claymore depending on what faction you are. You can pick these up from your factions Halaa vendor in Nagrand. For the record I kept the Honed Voidaxe from the Ring of Blood questline because I had my eyes set on other axes down the road and wanted to work up my skill.
Hands - If you have a Blacksmithing buddy you might want to check out the Adamantite Plate Gloves. These can be awesome with the right gems in them. If you don’t care for gems and want to quest for a pair of gloves then you can pick up the Whiteknuckle Gauntlets in Blades edge for completing Whispers of the Raven God.
Helm - The Exorcist’s Plate Helm is a nice upgrade if you’ve gone instance crazy while your faction has hold of the Auchindoun Towers. This will cost you 18 Spirit Shards. I didn’t do much instance questing myself due to the overwhelming number of Death Knights in outland at the time. It made getting a solid group together too much of a pain.
Wrists - Adamantite Plate Bracers are available at level 66 as well. Might as well have your Blacksmith buddy make you a pair of these as well to match your gloves.
– Level 67 –
Weapons - The last two weapons you can get your hands on in Outland are also the best. Both the Sunfury Blade and the Saboteur’s Axe are the top of the line in 2H sword and axes for Outland gear pre level 68. The sword you can pick up by doing Kick Them While They’re Down and the axe is available through completing Teleport This! The axe is slightly better as far as stats go but the Northrend beginner zones have some pretty sweet blue 2H axes so I went that route.
Amulets - The Necklace of Trophies is a world drop that you can find by watching the AH but it won’t take you too long to get an upgrade in Northrend so unless you bought it way ahead of time, watching the auction house for this to pop up isn’t really worth your time.
Chest – If you want to fill out your Adamantite set you can now equip a Adamantite Breastplate but I chose to just keep my level 58 Battlemaster’s Breastplate which actually has better stats if you don’t factor in a nice gem.
Feet – The Kirin’Var Defender’s Greaves are a significant upgrade that you should definitely take a detour to get. I had been wearing the Boots of the Decimator since level 60 and it was high time for a replacement. This quest chain becomes available once you complete Curse of the Violet Tower.
Hands – Gauntlets of the Vanquisher are about as good as you will get out here in Outland but they are the product of a 5 man quest called Turning Point so I skipped them.
Helm - Sparky’s Discarded Helmet is a nice quest reward from the ever popular Dr. Boom! This is about on par with the Clefthoof Helm that you could wear since level 64. I already had the Clefthoof so I skipped over this one. If you didn’t feel like slaughtering 61 Clefthoofs then I’d do this quest.
Rings - A whole host of ring options open up at level 67. Band of the Exorcist is an awesome upgrade and the top of the line in 67 rings. With that awesomeness comes an awesome price tag of 50 Spirit Shards….ouch. Following behind that is the Overseer’s Signet and Kayllan’s Signet. Both of these rings measure the same in value and come from doing a 3 man quest and a 5 man quest respectively. The Band of Anguish is still a nice ring to have and you can get it from doing a simple quest such as News of Victory which is at the end of a quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley.
Shoulders – The Mech Tech Shoulders should last you even a few levels into Northrend. Pick these up from Pick Your Part which becomes available after you’ve completed A Heap of Ethereals.
FIN!
and now you should look like this! (after a few levels in Northrend that is…)
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Last night I finally got the quest to pick up a replacement for my Battlemaster's Breastplate – Blackened Chestplate from Blade's Edge Mountains. This is from the end of a quest chain both sides can get (Alliance version, Horde version).
Using a straight Fury warrior weight scale, the Blackened Chestplate comes out well ahead of the Breastplate, and is a worthwhile upgrade IMO. Most of the quests are easy (they're mostly fedex quests, rather than the long Kill X of Y quests most of BEM has), and there's an amusing interlude where you either put Grulloc to sleep or distract him with Rexxar's boar. One quest could be difficult (killing elites in front of Gruul's Lair – Horde are looking for a drop while Alliance are just killing a set number of them) but there should be enough Death Knights around that 2 of you can put down a fair number of them.
Dude I have searched all of the internet looking for the gear in the picture.Is this real gear or imaginary? If it is real would you please update your web page to show the names of each piece and where they are located? Anyways I thought the picture was awesome and would love to have that gear. Thanks
I swiped that pic from a warhammer site…I think its actually a "chaos knight" but I felt it captured the end goal of how awesome a DK should look.
ok but is that even possible?
To look exactly like that picture? No…not with current gear set design. I did feel it looked along the lines of some past offical WoW DK creative concept art though so I included it in this guide.
Aurdon,
this guide is full of mistakes. The probelm began right here:
"The data I pulled from came exclusively from my favorite wow database website: Wowhead.com. I searched for DPS Plate gear available to a player between levels 58-67. Weapons follow the same rules"
bad move because you pulled this stuff from a database that doesn't follow the rules for DK's specifically. For an example you listed Dreadtusk's Fury as an upgrade to the DK starting Greatsword of the Ebon Blade. That's actually a DOWNgrade, and here's why – All of our weapon related strikes (like Obliterate, Frost Strike, Plague Strike, Blood Strike, Heart Strike, etc) will do damage based on the weapon. The higher damage range on the Greatsword does more damage per swing compared to the much faster Dreadtusk. Because of this, each time one of those strikes is used with a faster weapon it does less damage. That's just one example of many mistakes.
Many of your armor upgrades are actually side and downgrades as well, with you suggesting items that have stat bonuses that don't line up with how a DK actually works. No offense but you really need to actually learn the mechanics of this class before posting a guide this big. I suggest you visit elitistjerks.com and educate yourself and redo the entire guide from top to bottom, because basically, the whole thing is wrong.
Well this guide was started before WotLK came out and only wrapped up two weeks after launch. Back then I had very little knowledge on what gear stats were best for DK. I knew the equipped weapon types and that they wore "dps plate". Did I expect their itemization to be different then that of a fury warrior? Sure…but for the time being, I decided to build a list that I thought would be helpful to those that read it. This was pretty much the path I took through outland and it served me well. You should honestly finish up outland in about a week or two of solid playing depending on your playstyle. For that purpose this guide will do just fine.
Does it need an overhaul? Heck yeah it does. It's needed one ever since enough data has been gathered about DKs to make educated decisions about their itemization. But again this guide was published back when even the elitistjerks DK DPS compendium was in its infancy.
Hi, I'm level 65 at the moment, and I've found your guide pretty helpful, I was wondering if you've made a guide for upgrading your gear through Northrend?
Yes I've thought about it and I think it would be a fun thing to do. Trouble is finding the time to put something like that together. If I do, it will come with a 2.0 guide of the outland gear because a heck of a lot has changed now that the class isn't only a few weeks old and everyone understands their itemization better.
As I stated to the above poster who's online handle must be FYI, this gear may not be THE BEST for outland but it is 90% of the way there…by the time you do the quests to grab that gear you'll probably be leveled up to a point of needing the next item on the list anyway.
awww comeon isheepthings, i want a lv 71-76 DK guide, right now my toon is lv 71 DK plù make a DK lv 71-75 guide
Heya Aurdon, I’m making a request on behalf of pretty much all newbie death knights (including myself, as I’m still leveling my first death knight – not been playing too long).
So you’ve posted gear guides of levels 60-67. Well players who are 68 and above, some don’t know what to get before they travel to Northrend, or what to choose from quests – when they get to Northrend. When entering the first zone (Borean Tundra (68 – 72)) even I struggled a little bit.
I’m a Frost DK, and my gear isn’t all good, because I didn’t really care much before I left, so I had level 65-ish gear when I got there. And my stats were low I have to admit, my health wasn’t amazing and my strength/stamina was bad. (Yes. I know I’m not meant to look for Stamina because I’m a DPS, but it’s what I got when I was looking for strength).
So, as of now, I’ve traveled BACK to Outland and I’ve continued searching for the Gear you listed and some that I’ve been told is slightly better off for me. And it’s been a little bit annoying. Some bits have been horde or opposite factions of which I’ve chosen and I haven’t been able to accept quests (or I just got killed trying), sometimes they are harder to find than Elites for quests (and the Elites for the quests you listed were a pain in the a*** to find as well).
So yeah. I’m basically saying, I’d really appreciate it if you wrote some more guides for DK’s as I and fellow players do need a little help finding the gear that we require.
This isn’t a plead from me, trying to hassle you to do more just for the sake of it. I genuinely need some assistance and so do alot of other players who have chosen the Death Knight class.
Well, your first 4 guides were really helpful and written well. Just a few iffy places in it, and some that didn’t help – but the rest was really good. I am grateful and I’m sure others are for your work and some may say it needs improvement – some bits do, but not many.
So if you could do this one favor, I’d be grateful.
Thanks.
I don’t know that I could even say no after that reply. Its been so long since I’ve really focused on my DK. The whole class has changed so much in 4.0 along with important stats and what not. This guide was written pre Wrath in order to speed along the newbie DK’s into Northrend and out of the old zones of Outland. TBH I think I even mentioned that I used standard DPS plate stat choices and cranked this out which were weighted poorly for DK’s at the time.
Even so I’ve been looking to toss together something for quicky gearing up a that is more of a guide on how to find what you need on your own.
More to come….
Major cudos to you for putting this together. Regardless of the current expansions, for someone just starting out and wanting to get their feet wet in the process of leveling and/or gearing up their starter DK, this guide will be most helpful! Thank you!
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