You guys may have missed this in the OP. Voldrethar is a hard-mode drop, thus is not listed. In my opinion, though, Voldrethar is BiS for any DPS DK.

Great thread, please keep this updated as it will eliminate a ton of commonly/frequently asked questions that clutter up other threads. Also, please add the hardmode items in asap, many guilds are doing them this week and many more will be next week.

For your suggested Blood equipment, if you sub in Bladebearer's Signet, enchant the Gloves with 20 to hit, and also pop in one of the purple gems needed to activate Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (unless you have it on the Shoulders), you can reach both the hit cap and exp soft cap (the socket bonus for the gloves or shoulders pushes you up to the hit cap). That would free you up to use any weapon without hit or exp on them (like Rune Edge, or Lotrafen) and means you could later equip Voldrethar without having to shuffle equipment around.

You can also swap in Frozen Might of Hodir later and just switch a red gem into the gloves and put the purple gem into Frozen Might.

edit: norg pointed out in another thread that I made an error with counting the expertise. Swapping out Girdle of Embers for Belt of the Titans will compensate for the error, and grants you an extra two slots to make up for the Str lost on the item itself.

I've been working on a fairly simple program that uses stat weights with several other parameters to calculate the best in slot combination for a given set of gear. It's written in c++ and is fairly naive, so it suffers from the problem of speed of execution. However, the upside is that the results are guaranteed to be accurate and completely best in slot (for the given parameters) when it finishes running. That said, I'd be more than glad to post a compiled version (or source) of this after a few modifications to the program to make it appropriate to the task at hand. The specifics of calculation are:

Pre Calculation
After reading items, gems, and enchants from comma separated files, the program attempts to reduce the number of options being considered by eliminating all items that are strictly inferior to others in the same slot. That is to say, Any item with a lower value (calculated from item weights) excluding hit and expertise and smaller values of hit / expertise is eliminated from the potential item pool.

The reasoning for this is sound, if confusing. Hit and expertise have varied values based on caps, meaning that you cannot simply equip the best overall items and get the best set. This is the entire purpose for this utility. However, if you have an item with for example 100 points of non-hit, non-expertise stats and 0 hit or expertise, it will be inferior in all potential gear sets to an item with 110 points of non-hit, non-expertise stats and 0 or more hit and / or expertise.

The same situation applies for enchants. This is mostly relevant for the Icewalker enchant, since using it can affect the balance of hit on the rest of your gear, meaning it has a dynamic value as your gearset changes.

Gearest Calculations
The program naively iterates through all possible gear sets. When a gearset is chosen, the program checks several constraints (Did I meet any specified set bonus requirements? Do I have at least two gem slots? Am I above the specified minimums for specific stats?) From this point it's a simple weighted stat system to determine relative value of a given set. The program tracks the top several sets and spits it out at the end of execution.

Assumptions
I make several key assumptions here, but I'm fairly certain that no one will argue with them. They can actually be overcome quite nicely, but it exponentially (read: trillions of combinations) increases the complexity of the run. I assume Chaotic Skyflare is the desired meta. I assume every slot will be gemmed with a Bold Scarlet Ruby - replacing two gems with the Sovereign cut is left as an exercise for the player.

Now, please realize that this isn't the most graceful way of doing this, and I know it. Item lists have to be created by hand and turned into *.csv files. Right now output is simply to the terminal, but it's manageable. I've been planning to run this thing once I know all the hard mode loot (for a truly 'optimal') setup, but it would be quite easy to simply limit it to normal mode iLevel loot. If people are interested I'll post it later today to mess around with. No promises on how to compile / run it. I've fairly limited knowledge in that department.


Regardless, I hope that helps our quest for best in slot gear for our various specs and tiers. I know I never like not knowing with absolute certainty what our best in slot is, which is why I made this utility.

I am currently 51/2/18 spec with 4pc T7.5 and I've recently received several pieces of loot from Ulduar. I was considering on breaking my set bonus, but I am not entirely sure how much the 4pc bonus is for blood DKs. I assumed it wasn't nearly as valuable as it is for Unholy, but am not sure if the trade off for more stats over a set bonus is worth it. Any thoughts on the value of 4pc T7 bonus?

Zerack: Sounds interesting -- I look forward to seeing it.

Kaejin: Done. Seems like a better set overall than the one I had initially. As you quite rightly point out, the ability to pick up Voldrethar without having to shuffle other gear around is quite useful. Although of course other ilevel 239 pieces will probably necessitate gear shuffling anyway, which is the main reason why I'm not including any until they're pretty much all discovered.

As I said before, 'Best in Slot' is misleading in a way and we're actually after an overall set. A great team rather than a collection of talented individuals, so to speak.

Infiniteone: Since the 3.1 buffs to haste you are probably right, at least for Unholy and perhaps Frost. I'll change it.

Kalian: I know I've seen some discussion on this in the Blood thread, mostly by Methods. Might be worth searching his posts there as I don't know the answer off the top of my head I'm afraid.

Rough & Dirty calculation: 4p7 adds roughly 20rp per 20sec rotation, so it's adding extra Death Coil every 40 seconds. Get your average death coil damage from recount or guild raid logs and divide that number with 40. You will see rough dps increase for blood.

Why do both the blood gearsets have such low epertise? Blood gorged no longer grants expertise anymore so you only get 6 from veteran.

Just get World Carver then or Belt of the Titans to get that extra expertise rating.

Some hard mode loot got added to armory and Armbands of Bedlam from Mimiron 25 Hardmode looks to be BiS wrists for Unholy.

I would love to see the actual BiS items, when you got no restrictions to items.

A set of item that keeps you over the hit and the soft expertise cap. The very best possible set of items out there.