[Legion][Blood] Whats your opinion to the changes to DS

[bogate]

Well Blood dk has come a long way till we finally had a 1second GCD and an AP scaling death strike and i wanted to know whats your take in reverting back to our old shitty cata 1.5s GCD and the healing based over the last seconds prior to the cast Death Strike. Am I the only one scared shitless? There were a lot of good reasons for those changes, and now blizzard is just reverting them without even mentioning the issues that caused them in the first place.

[nathrizarri]

As long as Blood can have it's desired Hp room to effectively heal it is going to be fine. Rest is just little functional differences. This spec is all about getting a good DS healing, which crippled by healers all the time.

[Veiled Shadow]

As long as Blood can have it's desired Hp room to effectively heal it is going to be fine. Rest is just little functional differences. This spec is all about getting a good DS healing, which crippled by healers all the time.

Blood's Death Strike healing right now most certainly cannot be crippled by a healer.

@OP
It's definitely a change for the worse. Maybe it's due to how strong we were throughout WoD? I don't know, but the old Death Strike design caused huge problems throughout Cataclysm/MoP and depending on damage intake patterns these could arise again.

[Murderdoll]

Its a terrible terrible change which further hinders our self sustain in order to "fix" the healing model.

But thats one of many many terrible changes this spec has taken during alpbeta. Probably wont be the last at this rate.

[bogate]

Its a terrible terrible change which further hinders our self sustain in order to "fix" the healing model.

But thats one of many many terrible changes this spec has taken during alpbeta. Probably wont be the last at this rate.

I see im not the only one who sees that in order to fix the "healers dont need to heal tanks" problem they are destroying the tank specs.

That and the changes in boss damage output, to no burst mechanics and smoother damage intake, are going to make playing as a tank terribly easy. HFC was bad when it came to tank mechanics and the only increase in difficulty from hc to MM is burst damage. if they remove that in Legion i fear tanking will just be having agro and doing a basic dps rotation while we are healed. Then taking into account that agro is so fucking easy it doesnt even count as a mechanic and that easy=boring as tank i see a grim future for tanking in legion. i will probably continue to tank with my dk but i doubt to what extend it will continue to be fun.

[Murderdoll]

The change seems to be in place so that no matter the circumstance, effective healing, absorbs etc, always trumps self healing, in this instance from a Death Knight.

As long as we are given things in other areas. I dont mind. However, what we have been given is mind numbingly boring Bone Sheild upkeep.

[Deleted]

It's horrible.
That change alone made me nearly drop from cata (among others), it's awful, feels clunky and you don't have healing when you need it, making healing you total shit since you take too much damage (class is designed for this, after all gotta get demn big healings) so healers end up making you pop because you're too low. It's a BAD mechanic.

[Narzon]

Agreed. I'm scared for blood's future (well, for all DKs tbh, but blood the most). I don't see what was wrong with DS, and punishing tanks because they can't figure out what kind of healing philosophy they want is kind of bullshit.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

I'm not on alpha so can't say, but I tanked just fine in Cata so I'm sure I'll be fine in Legion too.

I will say that tanking on my DK in WoD has been almost silly. Healers tell me regularly that they never needed to heal me, and if I could disperse my over-healing throughout the party then they wouldn't need to heal anyone else either.

[Raiju]

You may have not had a problem in cataclysm due to the level you tanked at, but there certainly were problems. A fun read to see the full coverage during firelands:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...s-(and-beyond)

[Murderdoll]

I'm not on alpha so can't say, but I tanked just fine in Cata so I'm sure I'll be fine in Legion too.

I will say that tanking on my DK in WoD has been almost silly. Healers tell me regularly that they never needed to heal me, and if I could disperse my over-healing throughout the party then they wouldn't need to heal anyone else either.

I do the same in heroic dungeons. I often tell the healer to go DPS.

However, thats not indicative of the strength of Death Strike a) at the start of expansion and b) through raiding progression.

Yes, we are to a degree, self sustainable in raids. However, at what price?

If youre taking our mitigation with one hand, whilst telling us that Death Strike is the strongest reactionary mitigation in the game, whilst also making negative changes to that, something has to give.

[Deleted]

I'm not on alpha so can't say, but I tanked just fine in Cata so I'm sure I'll be fine in Legion too.

I will say that tanking on my DK in WoD has been almost silly. Healers tell me regularly that they never needed to heal me, and if I could disperse my over-healing throughout the party then they wouldn't need to heal anyone else either.

^This

Death Strike healing itself, both WoD version and Cata/Legion version, have never covered the iconic weakness of having lower EH and low preemptive mitigation. What this change does is have DS not do the stupidly high (over)healing when the DK starts to overgear the content, or in a one-healer CM scenario. Seems fair and good to me.
I don't have Alpha access either, but just comparing tooltips of passives, abilities and artifact talents, DKs aren't very far behind warriors for example in their cumulative preemptive mitigation (in fact they are ahead on any unblockable damage). So unless boss autoattack damage (and unless that will be the only threatening tank damage bosses do) falls into that narrow zone where it's juuust a bit too much for DK EH to handle, DS seems to cover the gap fine... and then some. Nevermind that DKs have quite a versatile mitigation toolset overall, most of which applies to all damage not just autoattacks.

Firelands was a thing, so I hear, but then some tweaks later DKs ended up the strongest tank in Dragon Soul, still with %-based Death Strike. It was a good tier to be a DiK.