Do not be afraid to splurge on gems when it comes to your raiding set.If you have a piece of gear that you will take into Naxxramas with you,and you can find a blue quality gem for it,grab it.Not every blue quality gem has been implemented yet for some reason,but buy wow gold most of the important ones have.If you want to save a little money,you can also go for the Perfect green quality version.

Now that we have covered most standard pemutations of gear gathering in past Lichborne columns,I figured this week would be a good time to start talking about taking the extra steps to really trick out your gear.This week,will focus on gems.Not only will this help you take your gear to the next level,but it gives me a good excuse to talk about some new discoveries and discussions going on as we try to figure out the best ways to squeeze the most DPS out of a Death Knight. So to start,let us talk about which statistics you will want to focus on when you gem.

On Choosing your stats

In theory,gems can be a place to switch up your stat choices and tweak and customize your armor.In practice,it is generally a good idea to choose stats that are in line with your spec.For DPS,your priority for gemming should probably look something like this: Hit to 8%>Strength>Expertise to dodge cap>critical strike rating>Everything else.

As we world of warcraft gold have discussed before,8% hit is the bare minimum you need to prevent misses with 2-handed weapons and melee/physical special attacks.For some classes,such as feral druids and hunters,this makes it easy.Just hit that 8%,and you are golden.It is a bit more complicated for us, since for preventing misses with spells and dual wielding, you need a whole lot more hit.

Luckily,a lot of Death Knight raid parses are suggesting that 8% may be all you really need.Once you hit that, strength seems to provide an overall better dps buff.So if you want to experiment a bit,you may find that 8% hit is all you need to stay competitive on the damage meters.

Expertise is a bit more sticky.It affects only melee attacks,and maybe Death Knight DPS specs end up doing most of their damage through spell-like effects,which do not need expertise at all.We also get a lot of our expertise through talents,which helps as well.Still,if your damage feels a bit lackluster and you seem to do most of your damage via weapon strikes and melee,you may want to grab that extra 21 expertise skill or so to hit the dodge cap and see what it does for you.Otherwise,it is hard to go wrong gemming strength.Critical Strike rating has its place too, especially if you have talents that trigger on critical strike.

For Tanks,you will definitely want to gem for defense first up to that 540 skill cap.After that,it world of warcraft widely depends on your gear and needs.If you are having trouble surviving,go for stamina gems,and maybe some parry or dodge.If you need more threat,strength provides and some bonus parry,but expertise might prove better since it prevents parries as well,thus giving you less change to take an extra parry-hasted hit.

In final,general advice,while it may be tempting to gem to grab set bonuses,always make sure the set bonus is worth it. If the bonus is armor penetration,as of 3.0.8, it is probably not worth it.A +3 strength socket bonus may look nice,but if it means you have to settle for a purple gem instead of a red one,the stat tradeoff may be worse after all -- unless,of course,that purple gem helps you make your metagem bonus,in which case it all becomes a nice synergy. In short,be sure to