Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Jellospally]

How about ST?

I cant make my mind up about which of the spec to main in legion. How does it look end game wise (Tier 2x) ? If we can say anything about it at this point.

DK will probably higher overall in raids than anything unless a prot pally uses seraphim a dps trinket macro'd to wings.

Bear single is non existant. DH is pretty low. War isn't bad esp if they get their legendary its a MASSIVE dps increase. Monk is a pile of poop. Really depends how much the DK is tanking really. The more you tank(getting hit) the worse your dps gets.

[Deleted]

Right now blood feels so utterly horrible to play at 705 item levels. I have as much haste as I can get and yet it feels so clunky when tanking. Marrowrend is a pain in the a** to maintain since the bone shields drop so quick, and having to dance above 5 stacks throughout a fight is not fun at all. And I really don't get the whole "make blood only rely on healing" part from blizzard this expansion. Playing without IBF feels so crippling because healing will only get you so far. Even if all of the rune regen crap is fixed at 110, that still doesn't fix the zombie like playstyle which is just so sad. Is your job as a tank now to just stand there and be a heavy meat shield and completely be at the mercy of your healers?

Being able to react to incoming damage with rune tap was fun and engaging, this is just a sad shell of its former self. I haven't really been keeping up to tabs with changes during beta, but are the rest of the tanks also this zombie like in gameplay? Just maintain a buff and hit your spender (Death strike in this case)?

[TheGreatestWaffle]

Is your job as a tank now to just stand there and be a heavy meat shield and completely be at the mercy of your healers?

Yes, Blizzard stated they wanted healers to focus more on tank healing more than raid healing, So tanks get gutted with self sustaining survive ability.

Welcome to Legion.

[Deleted]

Yes, Blizzard stated they wanted healers to focus more on tank healing more than raid healing, So tanks get gutted with self sustaining survive ability.

Welcome to Legion.

But this is just idiotic gameplay only to satisfy the "class fantasy", which is just utter bull. I am fully aware after having tanked on this toon since the start of cataclysm, that blood is supposed to be the reactionary tank, I get that. What I don't get however is why they felt the need to flat out remove our one and only flat dmg reduction cooldown. The amount of times IBF has saved me is beyond counting, and it eases up on the healers during dmg heavy phases, now we have VP and DRW, great. And I completly and utterly refuse to call bone shield a defensive cd anymore, because you maintain that uttre trite of an ability during the entire fight, something that is just not fun when the bone charges drop quicker than you can say "I want IBF back".

And since our entire defensive kit is completely revolved around healing now, if blizz ever decides to make another boss like Velhari again, well, then we're just screwed without IBF and rune tap. I did however try the rune tap talent, but I can't really explain why, but it just does not flow with the rotation. It feels like when you use it when you need to, you have nothing else to press for the next 3 seconds because of rune charging, fully aware that that could just be me though, but honestly it feels clunky.

Well atleast unholy and frost is still fun to play I suppose, RIP blood.

[Jellospally]

@DrMurloc BS will drop less you if get more crit as well. Parry or Full Absorbs = not losing a stack if its off ICD to lose a stack.

Rune Tap wasn't really fun. It was just a CD you have planned in your head for X mechanic. Using it after you take spike damage you might as well not have used it.

As for how the other tanks play.

War: uses SS, Revenge, Spam Dev and use rage on IP for a shield 20 to 60 rage for shield size.

Bear: Moonfire dot, Mangle, Trash, afk swipe spam. Spend rage on Ironfur or Ursol if you need magic reduc instead both are 45 rage. Also has FR 2 charges longish CD heals for 50% of dmg taken over 3 sec for 10 rage.

Monk: hopefully no one subjects themselves to this class.

Pally: Judgment, Cons, BH, AS. SoTR for shit has 3 charges so you can hold for longer duration chain if needed otherwise just use it when needed etc. Has a heal based on missing hp.

DH: Spam generator, immo aura on cd, leap on cd(added talents can be rotation buttons Fel Blade and Fel Eruption). Soul Cleave to heal and heals more with more souls which are procs.

BDK: Marrow at to 5+ stacks and keep it over 5, DnD on cd basically, HS, BB don't let hit 2 charges. DS to heal or multiple in a row for max dps once you get golden trait.

Most are pretty similar-ish. Diff skills or way to get resources. Ya most have a spammable button that does about 41 dps and doesn't really do anything. Rather have all my spells actually do something and be slower but scale with gear because of haste and crit allows more spamming because of parry.

PS: those skills are not in any particular order of importance in the "rotation" of each tank.

I don't really have a strong opinion on if we should have kept IBF or not. Class feels fine without it and will be maining again after I left it when HFC started.

[Deleted]

@Jellospally I suppose that gear will fix BS and actually make the spec less monotonous than it is right now where you have to literally spend every single rune on Marrowrend, which in turn nets you next to no RP. When I get the time to actually use HS and get the RP flow going, the rotation isn't that bad. But as it is right now, having to spend 80% of my runes on MR is grinding the entire thing to a halt.

[Jellospally]

@DrMurloc ya in my DKs gear with 24% crit and 19% haste its not bad and you will have double that in normal mode raid gear/M+ gear at the start of legion.

On fights I am getting hit a lot like Tyrant I did 16 Marrows and 24 HS. If I had 35-40% haste and 25-30% crit, which isn't that hard to get, it would be even better. Artifact helps too with Marrow having a 30% chance to give another BS stack and DRW gives 10 anytime you Marrow during it. Also have another move on 45 sec CD that heals for 100% of the damage it does and its aoe.

Then Set bonuses in NH will help even more. HS/MR generate 25% more RP and DS has a 25% chance to activate a rune.

If you get lucky enough to get the Vamp Blood CDR belt. HS reduces Vamp by 3 sec per cast as well which with a good amount of haste and most fights you can push 75%+ uptime on Vamp Blood.

[redfella]

@DrMurloc: I don't feel like I'm spending all of my runes on Marrowrend, feels like about 50/50 on long uptime fights and less on some. Are you perhaps using Spectral Deflection? That talent sometimes eats your Bone Shield stacks so fast, and can leave you in a dangerous spot when that 40% DR is gone and you suddenly get trucked. I prefer the relatively safe increase in runic power SD yields, at least for current content.

I also usually DRW on pull after applying BB, that way I'll drop a DnD, do a Marrowrend, few other abilities and a second Marrowrend just before DRW falls off -- if I don't start the pull, then I just do one Marrowrend during DRW. Popping it in the start gets me high on Blood Shield stacks right away and in to the regular rotation of "am I inside DnD or not?" (Rapid Decomposition).

To elaborate, since I go with Rapid Decomposition, I prioritize Heart Strikes during Death and Decay, unless I fall down to 3 bone Shield Stacks (which happens sometimes when you get Crimson Scourge procs so that you spend more time in DnD than out of it). This basicly gives me a rhytm of building up Bone Shield when not standing in Death and Decay, and pumping out Heart Strikes when inside it -- again, while tanking, if offtanking it's just HS all day and Marrowrend at <= 5 seconds buff left on Bone Shield. Prioritizing Heart Strike during when you drop DnD means you will gain a couple of extra Death Strikes during the course of a fight. It's at least a small bit of rotation finesse in the Legion tank-land where most tanks I've tested have pretty rigid and somewhat boring rotations.

And about removing Rune Tap/IBF: I didn't consider those very fun abilities to start with, either a really short mitigation CD that felt so inferior compared to what I was used to on my Monk in the "same" spot (Guard), or IBF which had a very long CD, and I've never really liked long cooldowns. I prefer to have meaningful choices all the time that I'm tanking, not just maximizing DPS and popping a CD here and there to mitigate something that would kill me otherwise. I feel more enganged now than before, even if the rotations themselves could be more complex tbh.

As it stands, if we want to react to a large burst damage ability, the option is to build RP for up to two or three Death Strikes and DS once just before a hit for topping yourself, a bit of Blood Shield and the AM buff Death Striking gives for 3 seconds, followed by one or two back-to-back Death Strikes post hit. There shouldn't be any "big spike" abilities in Legion though, but the AM game is still there on some bosses.

I would say our kit is more about steady damage reduction via Bone Shield absorbs and smoothing out damage intake with heals, as compared to DR cooldowns vs. spikes and healing back up with Death Strike.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Literally makes no sense... but neither does half the shit that has been done to classes so far for the reasons of #classfantasy(ps no one cares they just want fun rotations and a reason to pay attention to more than 2 buttons).

I care about class fantasy, but don't see why we should have to choose between that and fun rotations.

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@DrMurloc BS will drop less you if get more crit as well. Parry or Full Absorbs = not losing a stack if its off ICD to lose a stack.

Rune Tap wasn't really fun. It was just a CD you have planned in your head for X mechanic. Using it after you take spike damage you might as well not have used it.

As for how the other tanks play.

War: uses SS, Revenge, Spam Dev and use rage on IP for a shield 20 to 60 rage for shield size.

Bear: Moonfire dot, Mangle, Trash, afk swipe spam. Spend rage on Ironfur or Ursol if you need magic reduc instead both are 45 rage. Also has FR 2 charges longish CD heals for 50% of dmg taken over 3 sec for 10 rage.

Monk: hopefully no one subjects themselves to this class.

Pally: Judgment, Cons, BH, AS. SoTR for shit has 3 charges so you can hold for longer duration chain if needed otherwise just use it when needed etc. Has a heal based on missing hp.

DH: Spam generator, immo aura on cd, leap on cd(added talents can be rotation buttons Fel Blade and Fel Eruption). Soul Cleave to heal and heals more with more souls which are procs.

BDK: Marrow at to 5+ stacks and keep it over 5, DnD on cd basically, HS, BB don't let hit 2 charges. DS to heal or multiple in a row for max dps once you get golden trait.

Most are pretty similar-ish. Diff skills or way to get resources. Ya most have a spammable button that does about 41 dps and doesn't really do anything. Rather have all my spells actually do something and be slower but scale with gear because of haste and crit allows more spamming because of parry.

PS: those skills are not in any particular order of importance in the "rotation" of each tank.

I don't really have a strong opinion on if we should have kept IBF or not. Class feels fine without it and will be maining again after I left it when HFC started.

I'm playing three of these: DK, Pally, Bear. I'm having a blast with all three. Each has its own rhythm. Takes me a minute after switching to get into the flow, but I'm having no problems tanking any of the current content on any of them.

[Jellospally]

@DarklingThrush Ya Pally is... alright no where near as good when you had HP idk. Bear has just been boring 1 button spec with super high passive reduction.

MoP Pally was probably my favorite followed by DK in Highmaul and BRF so far since the start of MoP.

Class Fantasy is their bs excuse of they want to make shit easier. Classes have gone downhill every expansion. Losing snapshotting, certain spells that really change how you have to play fights, the inability to care about tanks damage etc etc.

[Tehr]

I think a way to improve Blood significantly is to do the following:

Make Heart Strike cleave 2 additional targets passively (3 total, up from 2)
Make it so Heart Strike doesn't cleave additional targets when standing in your DnD
Make it so Marrowrend cleaves up to 3 additional targets when standing in your DnD (and generates a stack of Bone Shield for each target hit, but does NOT generate extra RP per target hit)

This would make it so Bone Shield isn't such a pain in the ass to keep up in an AoE situation, allows us to actually use Heart Strike in an AoE situation where we're taking a lot of damage, but reduces our Heart Strike cleave in an AoE situation. This would temper the most annoying parts of Blood at the cost of slightly reduced AoE damage.

From what I've seen of streams and videos, AoE scenarios with semi-dangerous mobs (defined as mobs that will consume a stack of Bone Shield every auto attack) revolve around keeping your Blood Plague up and then spamming Marrowrend, Consumption, and Death Striking before you cap on RP, and that's fucking lame.

Previously, I thought that taking Death Strike off the GCD was the only change necessary, but it seems as though Blizzard doesn't want to continue the whole "reactive healing class fantasy", and instead wishes to focus on their "vampire class fantasy". While I think that's dumb, I think that the above changes will be able to contribute to both.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

@DarklingThrush Ya Pally is... alright no where near as good when you had HP idk. Bear has just been boring 1 button spec with super high passive reduction.

MoP Pally was probably my favorite followed by DK in Highmaul and BRF so far since the start of MoP.

Class Fantasy is their bs excuse of they want to make shit easier. Classes have gone downhill every expansion. Losing snapshotting, certain spells that really change how you have to play fights, the inability to care about tanks damage etc etc.

I feel like a holy storm on my pally, with judgments, avenger shields, and blessed hammers flying in all directions, all centered around Consecration and Blinding Light. Almost like being a ranged tank who can also smack you in the face with his shield. I may have lower health, but not sure how that translates into effective health. Or at what point we'll have enough health for it to be a non-issue. Paladins have some of the best oh-shit buttons in the game (Final Stand, Blessing of Spellwarding), and Last Defender is a DR+DPS buff that scales with every extra pack of adds my favorite hunter finds a way to barrage.

I use lots of buttons with my Bear, both offensively and defensively. Snap decisions on Ironfur vs Mark of Ursol, when the fight isn't all one or the other. Barkskin and Survival Instincts and the BoA trinket, plus timing Frenzied Regen most effectively. Or maybe I can mitigate with a roar, stomp, or bash! Offensively it's all about when I proc the ring and Incarnation at the same time. I don't get the kind of numbers from the bear as I do from the pally, but he sure looks impressive!

All that said, my DK will continue to be my main. Have to disagree with Dr Murloc - I'm finding it easy enough to maintain Bone Shield. There is a rhythm to playing Blood, but you can find it if you play with it enough. Love the new animations - even Wraith Walk feels very cool and unique. Much better than just another "push this button to run faster". Dropping D&D and wailing with some Heartstrikes feels very satisfying. Death Strikes are not quite as OP as they have been, but that just means we need to be reactive with them again, instead of spamming them for the shield like we could in WoD.

[Jellospally]

@DarklingThrush Well I see their Class Fantasy works for you, but people who want to max damage as a tank and put more skill behind a tank and more to show you are a better tank than others is being removed at a extremely fast pace.

Paladin is the SAME THING just without holy power. BH is just a alright spell effect for basically the same move it replaces already it does more damage I guess i'll take that. Their talents are alright. Cons should have alrdy been down. They have now buffed what it does for bad ppl to do their rotation better. Still missing my HP which apparently people couldn't play with correctly until it was removed. CDs are... eh. CDs are boring when living isn't an issue and using double dps trinkets for progression is what you do when you play well.

Bear is... missing like the old dragon soul bear/cat. Current iteration of it with feral affinity is lackluster. Bear atm is just Mangle/Trash and keep Moonfire up. Swipe cuz you literally have nothing else to do... and it doesn't do anything weew... A few off the GCD AM buttons. I will give it to them they actually gave bears something else to use rage on holy shit world first. They can spam armor stacking buff, magic for when you need it instead of using an actual CD when its unneeded and the new FR is better. Their actual buttons feel like shit outside their mitigation though. Snap decisions really aren't a thing you either know you need to use magic reduc or you spam armor thats about it and FR when you won't waste it.

DK ya bone shield is a joke to maintain its just frustrating using up to 66% of your runes on MR when HS feels literally 2x better per rune spent. Boneshield really needs stupid dots and passive raid wide dmg mechanics to not eat BS stacks when its off ICD. I like Blood Boil being its own thing now its better. DnD + HS interaction is at least more of a reason to cast it than it does 3% more dmg(random number here but you get the point) than spending a rune on X. I like that DS is back on Dmg Taken instead of just AP healing, but they are no where near how it felt in MoP.... that won't ever happen anyway so w/e. PS: wraith walk makes me wana kill myself because 1. I can't attack during it. 2. the fucking CD man im a slow ass fat bitch. I'd rather have 10% passive movespeed and literally no movespeed cd. Sure it is alright animation with a story sorta but thats not me... I want practical CDs in raids.

Really my main gripe with almost any class atm in this game is... its just... idk less fun to play my class than killing the boss getting my loot and logging off. I want to play wow a lot(i will in legion obviously), but man sometimes when I really look at the classes I play they are so watered down compared to what I used to play.

Animations and fantasy just don't matter I want what I do in a raid to MATTER. I want to have to care about doing everything perfectly to get that extra 10... 15% dmg. Now its like... 1%? The difference between a person who at least does their rotation basically right vs perfect is literally | | that big. Its insane how little it matters how you play outside just not fucking up a mechanic.

Blizzard is too focused on getting us away from looking at our UIs and to the look of the game.... Thats fine... but not in raids. Its 100% WRONG. Raids are about maxing your damage, maxing the fight, maxing the speed in which you kill bosses. Not about pretty animations on my spells or the bosses stuff(idk words). They have normal mode and LFR and maybe even Heroic to get that out of the way. Let us REALLY play our classes with real skill gaps because... we haven't had those for a while. We had them a lot more during Cata raids... some in MoP and basically removed in WoD. Just bring it back.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

@DarklingThrush Well I see their Class Fantasy works for you, but people who want to max damage as a tank and put more skill behind a tank and more to show you are a better tank than others is being removed at a extremely fast pace.

Paladin is the SAME THING just without holy power. BH is just a alright spell effect for basically the same move it replaces already it does more damage I guess i'll take that. Their talents are alright. Cons should have alrdy been down. They have now buffed what it does for bad ppl to do their rotation better. Still missing my HP which apparently people couldn't play with correctly until it was removed. CDs are... eh. CDs are boring when living isn't an issue and using double dps trinkets for progression is what you do when you play well.

Bear is... missing like the old dragon soul bear/cat. Current iteration of it with feral affinity is lackluster. Bear atm is just Mangle/Trash and keep Moonfire up. Swipe cuz you literally have nothing else to do... and it doesn't do anything weew... A few off the GCD AM buttons. I will give it to them they actually gave bears something else to use rage on holy shit world first. They can spam armor stacking buff, magic for when you need it instead of using an actual CD when its unneeded and the new FR is better. Their actual buttons feel like shit outside their mitigation though. Snap decisions really aren't a thing you either know you need to use magic reduc or you spam armor thats about it and FR when you won't waste it.

DK ya bone shield is a joke to maintain its just frustrating using up to 66% of your runes on MR when HS feels literally 2x better per rune spent. Boneshield really needs stupid dots and passive raid wide dmg mechanics to not eat BS stacks when its off ICD. I like Blood Boil being its own thing now its better. DnD + HS interaction is at least more of a reason to cast it than it does 3% more dmg(random number here but you get the point) than spending a rune on X. I like that DS is back on Dmg Taken instead of just AP healing, but they are no where near how it felt in MoP.... that won't ever happen anyway so w/e. PS: wraith walk makes me wana kill myself because 1. I can't attack during it. 2. the fucking CD man im a slow ass fat bitch. I'd rather have 10% passive movespeed and literally no movespeed cd. Sure it is alright animation with a story sorta but thats not me... I want practical CDs in raids.

Really my main gripe with almost any class atm in this game is... its just... idk less fun to play my class than killing the boss getting my loot and logging off. I want to play wow a lot(i will in legion obviously), but man sometimes when I really look at the classes I play they are so watered down compared to what I used to play.

Animations and fantasy just don't matter I want what I do in a raid to MATTER. I want to have to care about doing everything perfectly to get that extra 10... 15% dmg. Now its like... 1%? The difference between a person who at least does their rotation basically right vs perfect is literally | | that big. Its insane how little it matters how you play outside just not fucking up a mechanic.

Blizzard is too focused on getting us away from looking at our UIs and to the look of the game.... Thats fine... but not in raids. Its 100% WRONG. Raids are about maxing your damage, maxing the fight, maxing the speed in which you kill bosses. Not about pretty animations on my spells or the bosses stuff(idk words).

But if animations and fantasy don't matter, couldn't you just play a math game? You'd get all the numbers without any of the fluff.

[Jellospally]

@DarklingThrush math game might be more fun than HFC was. Literally like all of Cata and all of MoP raiding on almost every class through each of those expansions was just amazing in comparison to WoD classes(raids were fun... until HFC came out). Legion looks way better, but at the same time worse. Classes just have less buttons, less choices in why you press X over Y or Z in X or Y situation. Its just do this all the time and if the fight doesn't let you... tough enjoy doing nothing cuz your class sucks.

There just isn't enough choice and reason to push your class anymore. Having 3-4 buttons as your main rotation is awful. Where is Cata warlock with literally 10+ and having to position Shadowflame on CD? Where is REAL tank damage that actually makes you care about every button press? Because thats been gone for a long time(hell some could argue its never here at all). Where is a reason to care if my trinket procs? because you sure can't really react to them anymore with anything. You just go weew... it proced now my normal rotation does X% more. GRATS. Where is Wrath or MoP Feral? One of the harder classes to actually max the potential.

I don't want Cata or MoP again. I played them for the whole duration. I just want my classes to feel like it matters what I do and thats just removed and removed every tier and expansion. They bring some removed stuff back as "talents" like its new. That doesn't help. Add more to the classes for skill.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

@DarklingThrush math game might be more fun than HFC was. Literally like all of Cata and all of MoP raiding on almost every class through each of those expansions was just amazing in comparison to WoD classes(raids were fun... until HFC came out). Legion looks way better, but at the same time worse. Classes just have less buttons, less choices in why you press X over Y or Z in X or Y situation. Its just do this all the time and if the fight doesn't let you... tough enjoy doing nothing cuz your class sucks.

There just isn't enough choice and reason to push your class anymore. Having 3-4 buttons as your main rotation is awful. Where is Cata warlock with literally 10+ and having to position Shadowflame on CD? Where is REAL tank damage that actually makes you care about every button press? Because thats been gone for a long time(hell some could argue its never here at all). Where is a reason to care if my trinket procs? because you sure can't really react to them anymore with anything. You just go weew... it proced now my normal rotation does X% more. GRATS. Where is Wrath or MoP Feral? One of the harder classes to actually max the potential.

I don't want Cata or MoP again. I played them for the whole duration. I just want my classes to feel like it matters what I do and thats just removed and removed every tier and expansion. They bring some removed stuff back as "talents" like its new. That doesn't help. Add more to the classes for skill.

It never hurts to take a break. I did for three years. Sometimes you just need a breath of air and fresh perspective.

As for tanks distinguishing themselves through DPS... I feel like that's something that's developed while I was away, and it happened mostly because tank survival became passé. When tanks don't even need healers to stay alive, they turn to DPS out of boredom I suppose.

Tank's #1 job of course (suspect you know this, just thinking out loud) is to control the fight. I'd compare it to point guard in NBA. Tank runs the show. Good tanks should be judged not by their own dps (although nothing wrong with contributing) but by the overall raid dps - and even more so by how smoothly the fights go. Tanks can do so much to help a fight go smoothly vs. chaotic. Like NFL QBs being judged more for winning games than how many yards they pass for.

As for having fun with your dps, I still feel like we make lots of decisions to affect our numbers. You yourself observed that spec'ing for more crit would mean fewer Marrowrends and more Heartstrikes. Since we can't have 100% uptime on D&D, deciding when to drop it and spam some Heartstrikes will be a key decision involving boss movement, adds spawning, etc. Then what if we drop D&D only to lose some charges of Bone Shield? If we get down to 6, can we squeeze out another Heartstrike or two or should we Marrowrend - even while D&D is up - so we don't risk losing the buffs from 5+ charges? Add in trinket procs and pulsing your Blood Boil at the right times, all while trying to set the rest of your team up to do their best work, and I think you'll see plenty of distinction between tanks.

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[MENTION=1245444]Where is a reason to care if my trinket procs? because you sure can't really react to them anymore with anything. You just go weew... it proced now my normal rotation does X% more. GRATS.

Doesn't that depend a bit on how you spec? Bears can react with Incarnation. Paladins with Seraphim.

[Highwhale]

I think a way to improve Blood significantly is to do the following:

Make Heart Strike cleave 2 additional targets passively (3 total, up from 2)
Make it so Heart Strike doesn't cleave additional targets when standing in your DnD
Make it so Marrowrend cleaves up to 3 additional targets when standing in your DnD (and generates a stack of Bone Shield for each target hit, but does NOT generate extra RP per target hit)

This would make it so Bone Shield isn't such a pain in the ass to keep up in an AoE situation, allows us to actually use Heart Strike in an AoE situation where we're taking a lot of damage, but reduces our Heart Strike cleave in an AoE situation. This would temper the most annoying parts of Blood at the cost of slightly reduced AoE damage.

From what I've seen of streams and videos, AoE scenarios with semi-dangerous mobs (defined as mobs that will consume a stack of Bone Shield every auto attack) revolve around keeping your Blood Plague up and then spamming Marrowrend, Consumption, and Death Striking before you cap on RP, and that's fucking lame.

Previously, I thought that taking Death Strike off the GCD was the only change necessary, but it seems as though Blizzard doesn't want to continue the whole "reactive healing class fantasy", and instead wishes to focus on their "vampire class fantasy". While I think that's dumb, I think that the above changes will be able to contribute to both.

Well i ALWAYS use DRW at 1st pull to fast regenerate 10 stacks of BS (im using Foul Bulwark). If you not sit on ass after every fight it pretty easy to hold BS stacks between packs. On very hard and BIG pulls Bonestorm + Vampiric Blood saves the day. You get 1% of your HP for each enemy what Bonestorm hits. So if you spend 100 RP and have like 7 mobs you will get like 70% of your HP pool in next 10 sec. Plus VB buff.

[jearle]

Class Fantasy is their bs excuse of they want to make shit easier. Classes have gone downhill every expansion. Losing snapshotting, certain spells that really change how you have to play fights, the inability to care about tanks damage etc etc.

@Jellospally I don't think it is about making content less difficult it is simply about making everything easier to balance. The general WoW community and the population that incessantly wines about balance causes Blizzard to move in this direction. It is near impossible for them to make the game so every single thing is balanced between PvE AND PvP. So one solution is to make classes simpler and similar that balancing them is much easier. I can't say I blame them for this.

[redfella]

I agree it's hard to for them to keep stuff in balance from the starting gear to increased itemlevels. That's why they squish us between each expansion so they have a somewhat balanced starting line.

If we didn't have a gread treadmill, but say just appearance treadmill, class reworks wouldn't be such a common happenstance. But people want to gain power with each passing tier, and they want more classes and specs, so we end up where we are now.

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Does anyone have a comprehensive list on what DRW mimics (or doesn't mimic) for Blood?

Mimics: Marrowrend (applies Bone Shield stacks), Heartstrike (5 bonus RP per Heart Strike), Blood Boil (applies and spreads a separate Blood Plague), Death Strike (no healing / absorb)
Doesn't mimic: Death and Decay, Bonestorm
Unsure: Death's Caress, Consumption

And before someone says melee -- no it doesn't, it has it's own swing timer. :P

Edit: Went to look at Beta logs and found something peculiar. It seems like DRW is casting Blood Strike instead of Heartstrike when we look at the RP gains, even thought in the damage log side it shows that DRW has dealt damage with Heartstrike -- but the difference is, the RP generation seems to be 5 flat instead of 15, which we should be seeing from the HS.

TL;DR; Seems like DRW Heartstrike is bugged and generating 5 RP per HS instead of 15.

Runic Power gains:




Casts:



ps. That log ain't mine.

[Jellospally]

Doesn't that depend a bit on how you spec? Bears can react with Incarnation. Paladins with Seraphim.

Can't really react with Sera. You basically have to use it literally on CD so it always lines with wings and get as many uses because its just more overall damage than reacting to CDs.

Incarn if it even gets used would generally be saved for cleaving or just on CD to get the most of them out of a fight instead of waiting for procs.

Also just looking at legion proc trinkets are kinda just gone. They either proc raw random damage or are on use(Id rather have on use than the new RPPM lol)

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@redfella its weird. Looking even at my live logs in HFC. DRW is gaining RP from "Blood Strike" 5 RP, but it is actually doing Heart Strike damage. The fact it is generating RP is the weird thing. Because it doesn't generate RP with Marrowrend but it does damage with it.

So basically the fact that it is generating RP in the first place is wrong, but I will take it lol. Even more reason to get Mouth of Hell now. DnD > DRW > Marrow > HS spam > many RP