10
Mar

Death Knight Top 10 Best in Slot Trinkets, aka “Trinket” slot.

   Posted by: Skeleton Jack   in Best in Slot Items

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Heya guys!!  Welcome back to the next segment of Best in Slot Items for Death Knights!!  Today we’re gonna talk about the best Trinkets for your Trinket slot that you can get for your DK.  For those of you who have been keeping up with the site, I mentioned we’re gonna change how we look at items for ranking.  And this is it.

Items have been broken up into 6 categories depending on your current Hit and Expertise Rating.  Please refer to the Hit and Expertise Revisited post if you have any questions regarding Hit and Expertise caps, their value, and how to get there.

PLEASE read the notes at the bottom of the post.  The notes are important.

 

 

Blood - Top 10 Best in Slot Trinkets

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  421.905 APE
  3. Grim Toll  377.554 APE
  4. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  5. Mirror of Truth  286.792 APE
  6. Mark of Norgannon  284.511 APE
  7. Battlemaster’s Accuracy  252.7 APE
  8. Loatheb’s Shadow  231.792 APE
  9. Incisor Fragment  221.776 APE
  10. Shard of Contempt  218.12 APE

 

 

Blood - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Melee Hit Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  421.905 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  286.792 APE
  5. Mark of Norgannon  284.511 APE

 

Blood - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Melee Hit and Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  421.905 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  286.792 APE
  5. Grim Toll  235.292 APE

 

Blood - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Hit Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  421.905 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  286.792 APE
  5. Mark of Norgannon  284.649 APE

 

Blood - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Hit and Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  421.905 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  286.792 APE
  5. Loatheb’s Shadow  231.792 APE

 

Blood - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  421.905 APE
  3. Grim Toll  377.554 APE
  4. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  5. Mirror of Truth  286.792 APE

 

 

Frost - Top 10 Best in Slot Trinkets

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  390.225 APE
  3. Grim Toll  316.016 APE
  4. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  5. Mirror of Truth  292.672 APE
  6. Loatheb’s Shadow  237.672 APE
  7. Battlemaster’s Accuracy  228.38 APE
  8. Mark of Norgannon  221.748 APE
  9. Incisor Fragment  202.816 APE
  10. Battlemaster’s Conviction  190 APE

  

 

Frost - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Melee Hit Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  390.225 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  292.672 APE
  5. Loatheb’s Shadow  237.672 APE

 

Frost - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Melee Hit and Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  390.225 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  292.672 APE
  5. Loatheb’s Shadow  237.672 APE

 

Frost - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Hit Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  390.225 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  292.672 APE
  5. Loatheb’s Shadow  237.672 APE

 

Frost - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Hit and Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  390.225 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  292.672 APE
  5. Loatheb’s Shadow  237.672 APE

 

Frost - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  390.225 APE
  3. Grim Toll  316.016 APE
  4. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  5. Mirror of Truth  292.672 APE

 

 

Unholy – Top 10 Best in Slot Trinkets

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  409.86 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Grim Toll  277.461 APE
  5. Mirror of Truth  264.784 APE
  6. Mark of Norgannon  236.709 APE
  7. Battlemaster’s Accuracy  233.985 APE
  8. Loatheb’s Shadow  209.784 APE
  9. Battlemaster’s Conviction  190 APE
  10. Shard of Contempt  189.652 APE

 

 

Unholy - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Melee Hit Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  409.86 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  264.784 APE
  5. Mark of Norgannon  236.709 APE

 

Unholy - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Melee Hit and Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  409.86 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  264.784 APE
  5. Loatheb’s Shadow  209.784 APE

 

Unholy - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Hit Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  409.86 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  264.784 APE
  5. Mark of Norgannon  219.666 APE

 

Unholy - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Hit and Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  409.86 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Mirror of Truth  264.784 APE
  5. Loatheb’s Shadow  209.784 APE

 

Unholy - Top 5 Best in Slot Trinkets: Expertise Capped

  1. Bandit’s Insignia  440 APE
  2. Darkmoon Card: Greatness  409.86 APE
  3. Fury of the Five Flights  310 APE
  4. Grim Toll  278.374 APE
  5. Mirror of Truth  264.784 APE

 

 

Notes on Trinkets:

  1. APE values for items with On Use abilities are calculated if you were to use the CD (cooldown) every single time it becomes available.  However using CD’s in concert with other CD abilities (or when Heroism/Bloodlust is up) will increase the value of these trinkets.  Also, shorter duration fights (such as a 1min and 30 second Patchwerk fight) will increase their value as well.
  2. APE values for items with Procs are calculated based off of the PPM and internal CD of said trinkets.
  3. Fury of the Five Flights is actually not very DK friendly for 2H DK’s.  Since many fights require a great deal of movement, it is highly possible for the buff to “fall off” and reset to zero.  Adding in that it is more difficult to gain stacks with a 2H, FotFF is not as good as it appears to be for non-DW builds.  While amazing at fights like Loatheb or Patchwerk, it is not nearly as useful or good in movement heavy encounters.

 

 

Things to remember

  1. Please see my “Best in Slot Items” (BISI) page for a comprehensive list of all BISI items.
  2. THIS DOES NOT WEIGH SET BONUSES.  I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT THAT FACT IS!!!  I have not yet seen a good model for measuring the DPS gain from our T7 set bonuses, however the 4 set bonus is extremely good and will have a significant impact upon our DPS.  If you can attain 4 pieces of T7/T7.5, you should consider giving those items more value.  I do.
  3. These items are weighted using a system commonly refered to as APE, or Attack Power Equivalency.  This uses mathematical formulas, and often times simulators, to determine how much each attribute contributes to your dps.  It equates item stat values into a numeric value that equals 1 Attack Power, or 1 AP.
  4. APE means exactly what it says, this item has an equivalent value of x AP.  So if it says 1 is 519 APE and 2 is 492 APE, swapping from 2 to 1 would be like gaining 27 Attack Power.
  5. Take everything here with a grain of salt.  If you had all of your gear epic’d out from Naxx+, it’s likely your personal stats will skew the results of “best in slot”.  Short of running a simulator, it’s nearly impossible to know what the best stats are for any one character.  APE changes as your stats change.  As one stat goes up, its value to your dps goes down.  Meanwhile other stats’ values will go up in value.  This however is a good baseline, assuming you have the equivalent best in slot items and have kept your stats balanced while gearing out.
  6. Keep in mind also, my information could be wrong.  But even if it is, it is most likely the closest source of information to the actual truth about DK APE values.
  7. 18 Agi is effectively 1 AP due to the armor gain from Agi (read: Bladed Armor talent).  Also keep in mind that Agi affects only your physical crit, not your spell crit.
  8. Some stats can be capped.  You do not want more than you can actually use.  Items with a stat that you’ve exceeded the cap are not worth their “true” value anymore because you’re not getting all of the benefit.
  9. 262.32 Hit Rating is equal to 8% Melee Hit (this is the Melee Hit cap).
  10. 445.91 Hit Rating is equal to 17% Spell Hit (this is the Spell Hit cap).  The spell hit cap is 288.53 rating or 17% if you have 3/3 Virulence and Misery debuff up.
  11. The expertise cap is 123 rating or 15 skill for Blood.  The cap for Unholy/Blood is 172.15 rating or 21 skill.
  12. Your stats need to be balanced.  If you pick gear that always has +Strength on them, then you’re going to be screwed. These items are balanced around the concept that you do not overstack certain stats.  Aka, 4% hit and 3000 AP is bad.  But so is 15% hit and 1500 AP.  Sticking with these item lists will usually avoid that however.
  13. If you don’t agree you should seriously take a moment to stop and think about what factual data you have to back up that feeling.  Often times the number crunchers out there find things that look wrong to the average person.
  14. When gemming gear most of the time you will ignore the slot colors.  Only pay attention to slot colors when trying to meet a metagem requirement if you need to.  Otherwise every gem slot should be either +Strength, +Expertise, or +Hit.  These numbers assume you are using Rare gems available to any player.
  15. For more information on the Expertise and Hit caps you should read here: Hit and Expertise Revisited.

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 7:12 am and is filed under Best in Slot Items. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

15 comments so far

Soft
 1 

Finally the trinkets! Good job as usual. I had hoped to see how Extract of Necromantic Power placed in order to see if it really was worth picking up. Any ideas?

March 10th, 2009 at 8:43 am
lancelol
 2 

SJ, how come the proc from bandits insignia is makes it so much better then the pvp 190 AP trinket.. I am just wondering :)

March 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
LB DK
 3 

Sorry dude but Darkmoon Card: Greatness is better, especially for dps, since it scales much better. Buffs r kewl, yo, esp BoK. It also stacks with Rune of the Fallen Crusader. If they both proc at the same time, you get +507 Strength, or 1014 AP, and that’s without factoring in a DK’s numerous talents that raise Strength by a percentage, or the Blood tree’s +10% AP effect. For a Blood DK with the Veteran of the Third War and Abomination’s Might talents, the gain increases to approximately 1205 AP. Also, this trinket procs like crazy and out of pretty much everything, and it has 45 seconds internal cooldown. Seriously, Bandit’s Insignia don’t even come close.

March 13th, 2009 at 6:55 am
Skeleton Jack
 4 

This sir is where we disagree. I do not take EJ posts as the bible laid down before me by God. I think for myself. In T8 itemization I believe Greatness will scale well and out perform the BI trinket, but in T7 itemization I do not agree.

March 13th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Killa
 5 

Can you explain why you don’t agree with that?
Darkmoon card is just so much better in every single way.
1. 90str gives more than 190ap in every spec so the passive stats go to DCG.
2. The proc, 300str or 2k damage every 45sec.
I admit I’ve not done the calculations on how much the 300str is in dps, but 2k every 45sec is roughly 35dps.
But I imagine around 700ap (even if nothing else you have proc’s in the meanwhile like Rune of the fallen crusader) for 15sec pretty much own that tiny 35dps in just so many ways.
And bare in mind that for that proc to even get 35dps it would have to proc exactly every 45sec.

Like LB DK said above and was spot on, BI doesn’t even come close.

March 15th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
LB DK
 6 

You’re welcome to disagree, but the facts speak for themselves. Think about it yourself. Screw EJ, it’s math, practice, actually using the items. The card is +90 STR with a chance to proc 300 STR for 15 seconds, it procs out of everything like crazy, so that equals to around 165 static STR, and that’s just a raw number, without buffs. Bandit’s Insignia give you 190 AP, the same internal cooldown, which is one hit per 45 seconds, capable of hitting for a little less than 5k dmg (IF it crits!), counting Ebon Plague, Blood Presence and Bone Armor. Also, STR scales much better with buffs in T7, especially since you can boost it more with talents and FC rune. It’s common sense, really.

March 16th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Skeleton Jack
 7 

It’s a question of calculations really. The number spread I have results in a different result. Any time you go anywhere where some one ranks items, there are bound to be a few items you question or argue with. Think of it this way, if out of all of the BISI posts the one major contention is that I ranked the 1 and 2 trinkets in reverse order, probably everything is pretty damn close to where it should be. :)

I don’t really share my research or my math for determining things because it is not my intention to create a massive debate about the rankings, but I’ll spend some time seeing if I can find some stuff on Greatness to see if I used a formula wrong, or something similar.

March 16th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Blake
 8 

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40373 should definatly be up near the top for unholy, at least… Imo it’s far better than Grim Toll and Loatheb’s shadow at least..

It procs off diseases and Unholy Blight, is affected by Runic Focus, ebon plaguebringer and seems to scale with AP slightly..

10% proc chance and 15second internal cooldown, accounts for 4-6% of my total damage for a naxx25 run.

March 25th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Blake
 9 

*Forgot to mention it’s also affected by Blood Presence

March 25th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Skeleton Jack
 10 

Maybe the issue is how much dps you do then and not the trinket. It’s not one of the better one from any report of actual testing that I’ve seen.

March 25th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Lolelf
 11 

SJ – What do you think of the changes to the Darkmoon Undeath card in 3.1? Since the proc damage is doubling, do you think that would get it into the top 5 for any spec?

March 27th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Antigen
 12 

Ok, i just did my own math. I excluded the fact that fallen crusader will proc. I also simplified the greatness card to proc 1/3 of the time. This may not be fully correct because if it lasts 15s, cd 45s, it still has to proc again. If the proc is not 100%, then the gap between 45s CD and the next proc could throw off DPS. If i made it one proc per min, its only up 25% of the time, i will keep it at 33% for this though.

I assumed that the bandit’s insignia will proc once every minute, 45 sec cd. I also assume 25% spell crit rate.

I accounted for kings and blood +4% str for the greatness deck, and for the dmg proc on bandits i acounted for bone armor, ebon plague, blood presence. (15 + 13 + 2)

14 AP = 1 DPS

Greatness Deck: 2[90(1.14) + ((300*1.14)/3)]/14 = 30.9 DPS

Insignia: [(1.325(1880))(1+.99(.25))]/60 +190/14 = 65.37 DPS

Bandit’s insignia is roughly 65 DPS.

Dark moon card is roughly 31 DPS.

Please check my math.

March 30th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
kyN
 13 

Just want to point out the changes blizz made to Darkmoon Card: Death (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42990) in patch 3.1.

The proc is 1750-2250 Shadow Damage.
BInsignia is 1504-2256 Arcane Damage.

They both have a 45s internal CD, they both can proc off just about anything, but Death has a 35% chance while BInsignia has only a 15% chance.

I am running 0/10/61 (so nice w/ 4pc. t7.5) and Death’s proc does seem to benefit from Black Ice (but this could use some more investigation.)

So the proc on Death is easily better than BInsignia.. just one problem, crit instead of AP.

My question is, is 190AP so much better than 85crit for 0/10/61 that I should make sure I’m in a 25 naxx every week till I get BInsignia? None of the Ulduar trinks really catch my fancy…..

April 15th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Jadr
 14 

I have Pyrite Infuser and Mirror of Truth, I now have Nobles Deck, should I replace the Mirror Trinket with Greatness Trinket?

May 13th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
muadib
 15 

Hey skel,
I’m seriously wondering what the change of darkmoon card: death, has done to the ranking of the trinket in your eyes. Can you plz tell us something about it?

July 2nd, 2009 at 6:31 pm

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