PVE Blood DK Inquiries

[Primalistic]

Ok, in advance, i apologize if this thread was already created. my research was the extent of the first page. I honestly haven't had an issue in heroic 5mans and our reg10 man MSV runs. However yesterday while running an LFR in hopes to get that 2h Axe, I had a healer whisper me letting me know I was squishy.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...etastic/simple

this is my armory, i just hope i remember to log off in my pve gear. so, i've done the reading of websites, i even did the askmrrobot thing and i was under the impression that as a Blood DK, i want pure Mastery with a side of Parry. so, i did so. anyone have any other thoughts? did i do something wrong? am i on the right path and someone was just trolling me?

[Pickwickman]

Ok, in advance, i apologize if this thread was already created. my research was the extent of the first page. I honestly haven't had an issue in heroic 5mans and our reg10 man MSV runs. However yesterday while running an LFR in hopes to get that 2h Axe, I had a healer whisper me letting me know I was squishy.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...etastic/simple

this is my armory, i just hope i remember to log off in my pve gear. so, i've done the reading of websites, i even did the askmrrobot thing and i was under the impression that as a Blood DK, i want pure Mastery with a side of Parry. so, i did so. anyone have any other thoughts? did i do something wrong? am i on the right path and someone was just trolling me?

Do not jump to the conclusion that someone was trolling you. Your gear level is fine, your stat allocation is fine also. This could only be an issue if you do not truly know how to use the blood spec to its full potential.

Firstly, you have a ton of short cooldown defensives, use them pretty much whenever you need them, for example on Sha of Fear's Trash ability. Also, which is even more crucial to have a hang of as a Blood DK, know when to Death Strike. If you just Death Strike every time its icon pops up, you will only get the bare minimum shield (7% max HP, modified by mastery) but if you use it after taking a buttload of damage (example. Blade Lord's special attack, Sha's Trash, Tsulong's Breath) you will get a much, much bigger Heal and therefore a much, much bigger absorbtion shield.

That's basically it, if you already do those things right, it might be that that healer just isn't used to a DK tank (which is weird by now) seeing our active mitigation is a REactive mitigation.

It would have been nice if you included a log of a standard fight though. www.worldoflogs.com

[Berraant]

...and our reg10 man MSV runs.

am i on the right path and someone was just trolling me?

MSV 10 is tons harder than LFR. You survive that, and you are golden.

[Sacul]

You can gain a lot more mastery and lose some parry/gain dodge if you reforged somewhat differently (By differently, I mean lowering your overall parry/dodge %'s to gain a higher mastery%. Preference is whether you wanna Mastery stack or be Avoidance built). You want Parry to be 2.5x higher than Dodge regardless for either spec. You are ~2.10% Parry higher than you really "need" to be. That could account for more mastery.

Ideally, 120% Mastery outside of raid buffs is great. It results in 150% Mastery in a raid setting [3000 mastery buff] (nice round # for Blood Shield to work with and still heal well/not overheal to hell).

Make the prismatic and yellow slots Fractured (Mastery). Make your blue slots Puissant (Mastery/Stamina). Stamina stacking isn't what it's all about these days. You're more of a mitigation tank via healing than just a giant Bubble Heal like Cata.

Your enchants are fine. Without logs, not much more can be analyzed. You're on the right path, especially if you've cleared nMSV as a tank. Just keep practicing and looking at where you can improve (more hps, better CD usage, better rune control).

[Reniat]

You want Parry to be 2.5x higher than Dodge regardless for either spec.

That may have been true to true at the end of cata after 5.0 when we had a BUNCH of dodge, but that's not the case anymore.

copied from the sticky:

Balancing Avoidance and DR
Gone are the days when we just needed to balance ratings. With the new DR mechanics We'll want to balance the % on our character screen according to this equation:

Parry% = 2.598*dodge% - 5.797 (with Rune of Swordshattering)
Parry% = 2.598*dodge% - 9.797 (without Rune of Swordshattering)

So for example if you had 10% dodge on your character sheet and had Swordshattering on your weapon, you would want...
2.598 x 10 - 5.797 = 20.18% parry rating.

NOTE: Night Elves have a different base dodge, and should use:
parry% = 2.598*dodge% - 10.992 (with Rune of Swordshattering)
parry% = 2.598*dodge% - 14.992 (without Rune of Swordshattering)

Or you can just use a macro that will do all the work for you.

With Swordshattering:

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 b=5.01 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end if UnitRace("player")=="Night Elf" then b=b+2 end p=235.5*d/90.6425-((235.5/90.6425)*b-n)+4 DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

Without Swordshattering:

/run d=GetDodgeChance() n=3.22 b=5.01 if UnitRace("player")=="Gnome" then n=n-.01 end if UnitRace("player")=="Night Elf" then b=b+2 end p=235.5*d/90.6425-((235.5/90.6425)*b-n) DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Ideal parry: "..string.format("%.2f",p))

NOTE: Unless you are going for an avoidance build, never take out of mastery to balance your avoidance stats.

[Temp name]

I'm seeing a whole lot of Stam gems and way too much parry on your character Prim, you really don't want to gem for stamina (unless you're doing Lei Shi), mastery is better. And for the Parry, use the macro that Reniat linked and then balance your parry / dodge.

[Maelstrom51]

Are you Death Striking correctly? Generally while tanking you only want to use Death Strike after you've taken a hit, or in order to refresh a large Blood Shield stack. Oh, also make sure to not waste resources while doing this. An overheal Death Strike is likely better than a few seconds of no rune regen at all.

And obviously spam Death Strike while offtanking, in order to have a maximum Blood Shield when you taunt back.

By the way, you have stamina gems everywhere. You generally want mastery everywhere, with stamina/mastery gems in blue sockets.