Thoughts on Tanking and Blood going into Legion (LONG)

[Deleted]

Most of the complains i'm reading here are really stupid and clueless:

-Complaining they're weak when they can tank every of the current available content just fine Bremasters can tank every content, that doesn't make them good tanks. Viability doesn't mean good.

-Low mitigation: that's how dks always worked, you get trucked, you heal back with death strike, that's the core of the class, if you've experienced absorbing everything with blood shield it's because you were way overgeared for the content you were doing and still stacking absurd amounts of mastery for no reason Mastery stacking was the way to go since forever, I don't even know what you're talking about. Also, Blood Shield always covered huge chunks of your health if you were able to time DS correctly

-Dumbed down gameplay: while a lot of spells and cds are gone, it makes runes and runic power management way more important, the gameplay sure feels more dull but pooling is more rewarding than ever and failing to do it more punishing than ever because you can't just fail and press an oh shit button other than vamp blood Gamplay is subjective. Some like new Blood some don't. It's true however that legion blood has little to no choice in its gamplay, nor a kit to react to different situation. No matter what fight you'll be in, you'll be doing the same thing in every scenario

-Low death strike/mastery healing: it scales with damage taken, and it actually scales way more than it used to, if you experience low death strike/blood shield healing it's because you're not getting hit hard, in wod you used to get a fair amount of resolve even taking kinda low damage, and that made death strike and blood shield good in every situation, now your death strike heals you for 20% of the damage taken in the last 5 seconds, which means it can heal absurd amounts when you're getting trucked, and it will barely heal for anything when you're taking low damage Wrong, wrong, wrong. You have no clue. During MoP Scent of Blood made DS healing scale to insane level (as much to heal back to full health with just one DS), and during WoD it scaled with ap + resolve, proving to be the "monster healing" everybody knew. Legion DS is the lowest point of healing ever reached by DS post-cata

-No Dr cd: The whole class is balanced around that, vampiric blood is straight up insane and has a short cd with red thirst, having a dr cd on top of vamp blood would just make dks completly overpowered and lead to a vamp blood and/or red thirst nerf, it's literally a "problem" for 1 mechanic in this raid, and it can be solved just speccing into rune tap and calling for an external You miss the point entirely. We have to rely on others or spec into a sub-par talent just to deal (in a mediocre way) with a mechanic every other tank has no problem with. If you truly believe such mechanics will be limited to Cenarius during Legion, you're disilluded

-Low damage: Tanks are pretty much equal, with paladins and bears playing in cat form when not tanking being ahead ,
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...nks&dataset=95 , and dks have ways to do insane damage even if it's risky (like taking both debuffs on ursoc and using blood mirror), i don't really see any reason to complain here No wonder, you seems to be absolutely clueless. Blood damage is not too low compared to other tanks, is low compared to what else its kit offers. A paladin doing the same damage as you, but with one billions utility cds and better mobility, makes you an inferior spec. A warrior doing your damage, but with better defenses and mobility, makes you once again an inferior spec. See the pattern now?

If anything the only real issue pointed out here is mechanics eating bone shield stacks from irrelevant ticking dot damage, that is gamebreaking and should be fixed
The talent tuning is really poor too, making talent choices really easy because they're just not even close, it's really clear which talent is best for what and there is no room for optimisation most of the time

Don't call other stupid and clueless when you seems to be the most clueless of all.

[Mokuna]

-Brewmasters are good tanks, just because you hear bad feedback from people who can't/aren't used to play them doesn't mean they suck. And what makes a tank bad or subpar if he can literally tank anything the same way other tanks do and pull the same damage and bring niches (grips, heavy burst resilience, self sustainability to an extent) ?

-Mastery was literally never the way to go in wod out of the first weeks of hfc, stacking it was just compensating for a poor gameplay, dks didn't need that to survive, it altered the way the class was perceived doing stupid stuff like death striking at full hp because your blood shield absorbed too much, precisely because you were overgeared(not even to talk about the "scumbag breath" argument when breath was actually the best defensive talents on a lot of fights )

-In mop every tank selfhealing was broken by high vengeance, it's not even a relevant point, in wod if your death strike was a massive heal then again it's because you were way overgeared (just look at how late you even did the easy mythic bosses it's like 10 months after they were released and you probably had 20-30 ilvl too much, at this point you could prolly lick your keyboard and be fine),
I've seen death strike going as far as 3.8m healing right now in Legion, you just need to take real damage, which isn't the case in heroic out of extreme situations

-How can you call a talent subpar when it's the best choice on a fight? it's literally moronic, and yeah the spear is the only mechanic where your lack of dr actually affects your raid, and you don't even have to take bloodtap, you can just call for externals and negate it

-"one billion utility cd", the only real utility paladins get for free is hand of protection, which is useless in most cases(and when it's useful the one from your holy pala/ret will prolly cut it anyway), to get spellwarding you need to sacrifice both mobility and survivability, and the rest of the utility is a gimmick in raids, dks get a grip and a massgrip which is proven useful in a lot of cases

You're also comparing dks to warriors, when warriors are obviously op and being nerfed(their rage generation got hit hard today and an ignore pain nerf was already announced), and then again "better defenses" is subjective, blood dks can survive stuff warriors have no chance to, like a 50+ stacks tentacle of il'gynoth flurry, because death strike keeps scaling up with damage taken when ignore pain is just capped, if you mean for mitigating low damage, yeah dks aren't really good at that, but what's the point of being good at something that isn't relevant?

[Deleted]

- so apparently both dk and monk tanks are complaining over nothing. Thank god you're here with th truth in your hand showing us how bad we are. And yet again, you miss the point of viable =/= good

- yes mastery was always the way to go. You stacked hate > mastery (or mastery> haste, can't remember) in Cata and MoP, and Multistrike > Mastery in WoD.

- Vengeance affected AP, which had nothing to do with Ds healing. As I said, it was Scent of Blood that made it scale to insane level. Looking at my armory won't prove nothing. I unsubbed right after Highmaul released and returned two months after HFC went live. I tanked mythic HFC with upgraded baleful gear, and still got huge heals and shields from death strikes.

- again miss the point. Rune Tap is good-ish just for the spear mechanic, and useless for the rest of the fight (so like, 90% of it?), unlike FB. That's why it's a subpar choice.

- oh yeah, Mass Grip proved so useful on Nythendra, Ursoc, or Elerthe. Oh wait, you can grip Il'gynoth slimes under the eye, saving like 3 seconds of time.
Once again people are overstimating the value of grip/mass grip, while infact the only time our grips were grossly overpowered and needed was just during HFC. You can run EN just fine without grips.
Paladins get two blessing baseline (can transform Protection to a magical defensive one via talents, never taken tbh), and will spec into Hand of the Protector and either Judgment of the Light or Aegis of the Light (raidwide cooldwns).

And finally, Ignore Pain makes warrios op. Balance IP to human level and warriors are still better tanks than dks, with better baseline mitigation, cooldowns and mobility (and arguably controls). Our kit is broken, there is no bandaid patch that can fix this.

[Deleted]

-Brewmasters are good tanks, just because you hear bad feedback from people who can't/aren't used to play them doesn't mean they suck.

Funny how those clueless people tend to be the most experienced BrM players around, the guide-writers and theory-crafters. To the point that Blizzard's CMs came into the beta feedback thread and flat-out told everyone "this is how you're supposed to play the class", followed by an absolutely insane design idea that runs completely opposite to the idea of tanking.

[Tojara]

Telling people that every complaint in here is bad is just fucking retarded.

We didn't use mastery in WoD FOR ENTIRELY different reasons than now. In WoD death strike scaled off of damage and we had resolve, there was no need to stack mastery because of this. However, despite not 'needing it' it wasn't like it was absolutely terrible either. MoP blood DK is essentially the model we have now for death strike, except for a few key differences. In MoP it scaled off damage taken and it was only a minimum of 7% (it's 10% now), but we also had scent of blood and mastery also gave 6.25 or 6.5% shield per percent of mastery. Despite all that we still didn't really stack mastery in that expansion because it wasn't needed, but do you see the very clear difference? The minimum heal is higher now, but we have no scent of blood, no resolve and mastery conversion rate is terrible at the moment.

Nobody cares that mastery wasn't stacked in WoD or MoP because it simply wasn't needed. What people care about is a stat that's such dog shit that you feel like shit getting it on your gear. I don't care if it's literally the worst stat because one stat has to be, what's pretty shitty is when that stat is avoided like the plague. Mastery always felt like an option for DKs even if it wasn't required, now you just flat out avoid it.

People can call talents subpar and shitty all they want because it's true. Who the fuck is going to take tombstone and mark of blood in any situation? How can anybody argue that the talent row that red thirst is on is balanced in anyway. It's not that red thirst is even overpowered, and they nerfed it likely because it was taken by everybody. Instead of nerfing red thirst, what they should do is just trash that entire tier because it's one of the worst tiers in the entire game. Go ahead and tell me where in the hell you would use the other two talents on that tier? I can live with one talent on a row being terrible or extremely niche (or like used in PvP or something) but the design of that tier is awful.

Why go on and explain every talent row and why it's bad when it's been outlined like 100 times in here. Are the talents that we pick traditionally actually good and powerful? Yeah, for the most part they are. What's awful and shit design is that all the other options on those rows are pretty awful in 99% of situations.

Our talents are shit. Our artifact tree is probably one of the worst and our artifact ability is absolutely the worst on a single target, and only passable when you have several mobs available for it to hit. What other artifact is even remotely close to as bad as ours on a single target, it heals you for like 3-4% of your maximum health, and last I checked most bosses in the EN really don't have a lot of adds.

Nobody reasonable here is really asking for much. DRW just being a flat DR and the DRW trait maybe reducing the CD of DRW would basically solve a lot of issues without actually giving us a baseline strong CD (it would literally be changing a CD we already have). Changing consumption to always heal a minimum of 20-25% still wouldn't make it the best, but it would make it passable against a single target. Buff mastery to a level where you don't cringe when you get it on your gear. Those aren't really major things and they really don't reinvent the wheel for the specialization. Outside of that it's literally adjusting some of shit artifact traits and talent tree options. The talent tree options are so bad though that they really would need to reinvent the wheel.

It still puzzles me that AoE grip is 3 minutes base and DKs are one of the worst tanks when it comes to magic damage bursts. Legendary that effects AMS and a talent that effects AMS but none of them reduce the CD on it, completely puzzling. Not saying the old 45 second CD would solve it, but it's crazy when you compare it to the short CD that every other tank has and the amount of DR it gives. I certainly don't want AMS to be a DR or change the way it works, but a 1 min CD base, let alone nothing to reduce that CD is awful.

Not sure why anybody would be happy having roughly the same damage as every other tank, probably the worst tool kit available and obviously the worst mobility. What do we excel at? We have good self healing (DHs do too), wider range AoE grip on a longer CD, zero untalented DR CDs? What are we exactly suppose to be the best in? I'll still play my DK because I still enjoy it, but it makes me sad that there is literally nothing we are the best at right now.

Also I don't claim to know BrM, but despite what all of Blizzard says I doubt the community can't figure out how to play it correctly. It was a popular tank in all of WoD and all of MoP, if people disappeared because it's bad I doubt the reasoning is that it's too difficult for previously top BrMs to figure out. TLDR; It's bad.

[Zethras]

Telling people that every complaint in here is bad is just fucking retarded.

We didn't use mastery in WoD FOR ENTIRELY different reasons than now. In WoD death strike scaled off of damage and we had resolve, there was no need to stack mastery because of this. However, despite not 'needing it' it wasn't like it was absolutely terrible either. MoP blood DK is essentially the model we have now for death strike, except for a few key differences. In MoP it scaled off damage taken and it was only a minimum of 7% (it's 10% now), but we also had scent of blood and mastery also gave 6.25 or 6.5% shield per percent of mastery. Despite all that we still didn't really stack mastery in that expansion because it wasn't needed, but do you see the very clear difference? The minimum heal is higher now, but we have no scent of blood, no resolve and mastery conversion rate is terrible at the moment.

Nobody cares that mastery wasn't stacked in WoD or MoP because it simply wasn't needed. What people care about is a stat that's such dog shit that you feel like shit getting it on your gear. I don't care if it's literally the worst stat because one stat has to be, what's pretty shitty is when that stat is avoided like the plague. Mastery always felt like an option for DKs even if it wasn't required, now you just flat out avoid it.

People can call talents subpar and shitty all they want because it's true. Who the fuck is going to take tombstone and mark of blood in any situation? How can anybody argue that the talent row that red thirst is on is balanced in anyway. It's not that red thirst is even overpowered, and they nerfed it likely because it was taken by everybody. Instead of nerfing red thirst, what they should do is just trash that entire tier because it's one of the worst tiers in the entire game. Go ahead and tell me where in the hell you would use the other two talents on that tier? I can live with one talent on a row being terrible or extremely niche (or like used in PvP or something) but the design of that tier is awful.

Why go on and explain every talent row and why it's bad when it's been outlined like 100 times in here. Are the talents that we pick traditionally actually good and powerful? Yeah, for the most part they are. What's awful and shit design is that all the other options on those rows are pretty awful in 99% of situations.

Our talents are shit. Our artifact tree is probably one of the worst and our artifact ability is absolutely the worst on a single target, and only passable when you have several mobs available for it to hit. What other artifact is even remotely close to as bad as ours on a single target, it heals you for like 3-4% of your maximum health, and last I checked most bosses in the EN really don't have a lot of adds.

Nobody reasonable here is really asking for much. DRW just being a flat DR and the DRW trait maybe reducing the CD of DRW would basically solve a lot of issues without actually giving us a baseline strong CD (it would literally be changing a CD we already have). Changing consumption to always heal a minimum of 20-25% still wouldn't make it the best, but it would make it passable against a single target. Buff mastery to a level where you don't cringe when you get it on your gear. Those aren't really major things and they really don't reinvent the wheel for the specialization. Outside of that it's literally adjusting some of shit artifact traits and talent tree options. The talent tree options are so bad though that they really would need to reinvent the wheel.

It still puzzles me that AoE grip is 3 minutes base and DKs are one of the worst tanks when it comes to magic damage bursts. Legendary that effects AMS and a talent that effects AMS but none of them reduce the CD on it, completely puzzling. Not saying the old 45 second CD would solve it, but it's crazy when you compare it to the short CD that every other tank has and the amount of DR it gives. I certainly don't want AMS to be a DR or change the way it works, but a 1 min CD base, let alone nothing to reduce that CD is awful.

Not sure why anybody would be happy having roughly the same damage as every other tank, probably the worst tool kit available and obviously the worst mobility. What do we excel at? We have good self healing (DHs do too), wider range AoE grip on a longer CD, zero untalented DR CDs? What are we exactly suppose to be the best in? I'll still play my DK because I still enjoy it, but it makes me sad that there is literally nothing we are the best at right now.

Also I don't claim to know BrM, but despite what all of Blizzard says I doubt the community can't figure out how to play it correctly. It was a popular tank in all of WoD and all of MoP, if people disappeared because it's bad I doubt the reasoning is that it's too difficult for previously top BrMs to figure out. TLDR; It's bad.

*looks furiously for an up vote button*

You should copy this, and post it on the official forums, after a little tasteful editing.

[Resurgo]

Heh, I remember looking at warcraftlogs to see what tanks were parsing in Heroic after the first day of raids.

There were something like 900 protection warrior parses, 700 guardian druids, 500ish protection paladins, and Demon Hunters, 200ish blood DK and down to a low of 55 monks.

[TrueAbstract]

Guys, what is your opinion on Tremble Before Me talent and mythic+ usage? It looks cool at first glance, although after some runs it seems that Tightening Grasp it better for me (kitting stuff). What do you think?

[Deleted]

Tightening Grasp is much better. The fear is random and breaks immediately, not to mention that you have other classes with aoe-stuns anyway.

[Snuffleupagus]

Guys, what is your opinion on Tremble Before Me talent and mythic+ usage? It looks cool at first glance, although after some runs it seems that Tightening Grasp it better for me (kitting stuff). What do you think?

Currently very niche use where you will need to have a group setup with no other stuns and be in an environment where kiting isn't feasible.

I imagine that no group stuns + Teeming may be an application for the talent here.

[Philondra]

I wouldn't take the lack of tank-related hotfixes as a sign that Blizzard thinks the tanks are balanced completely around each other. They only nerfed prot warriors because it was so obvious how out of line they were with the rest of the crowd. If you notice, healers got zero changes as well (other than damage changes, which are extremely unimportant in any serious scenario).

I would wager that Blizzard's balance team is spending the majority of its time aggressively balancing DPS and hasn't had time to look at tanks and healers. Don't take any changes or lack thereof seriously just yet.

[Spiffums]

I wouldn't take the lack of tank-related hotfixes as a sign that Blizzard thinks the tanks are balanced completely around each other. They only nerfed prot warriors because it was so obvious how out of line they were with the rest of the crowd. If you notice, healers got zero changes as well (other than damage changes, which are extremely unimportant in any serious scenario).

I would wager that Blizzard's balance team is spending the majority of its time aggressively balancing DPS and hasn't had time to look at tanks and healers. Don't take any changes or lack thereof seriously just yet.

Would explain the knee-jerk 10% damage nerf. Quick lets get something out there throw some darts at the board......hrmm we got a 10 and Damage. Go with it!

[redfella]

Currently very niche use where you will need to have a group setup with no other stuns and be in an environment where kiting isn't feasible.

I imagine that no group stuns + Teeming may be an application for the talent here.

You don't ever want random fears interrupting casters and syncing mob melee attacks for very very obvious reasons, especially in larger pulls.

[Casterbridge]

I use Tremble before me when soloing and well that's about it.

[Deleted]

Telling people that every complaint in here is bad is just fucking retarded.

We didn't use mastery in WoD FOR ENTIRELY different reasons than now. In WoD death strike scaled off of damage and we had resolve, there was no need to stack mastery because of this. However, despite not 'needing it' it wasn't like it was absolutely terrible either. MoP blood DK is essentially the model we have now for death strike, except for a few key differences. In MoP it scaled off damage taken and it was only a minimum of 7% (it's 10% now), but we also had scent of blood and mastery also gave 6.25 or 6.5% shield per percent of mastery. Despite all that we still didn't really stack mastery in that expansion because it wasn't needed, but do you see the very clear difference? The minimum heal is higher now, but we have no scent of blood, no resolve and mastery conversion rate is terrible at the moment.

Nobody cares that mastery wasn't stacked in WoD or MoP because it simply wasn't needed. What people care about is a stat that's such dog shit that you feel like shit getting it on your gear. I don't care if it's literally the worst stat because one stat has to be, what's pretty shitty is when that stat is avoided like the plague. Mastery always felt like an option for DKs even if it wasn't required, now you just flat out avoid it.

People can call talents subpar and shitty all they want because it's true. Who the fuck is going to take tombstone and mark of blood in any situation? How can anybody argue that the talent row that red thirst is on is balanced in anyway. It's not that red thirst is even overpowered, and they nerfed it likely because it was taken by everybody. Instead of nerfing red thirst, what they should do is just trash that entire tier because it's one of the worst tiers in the entire game. Go ahead and tell me where in the hell you would use the other two talents on that tier? I can live with one talent on a row being terrible or extremely niche (or like used in PvP or something) but the design of that tier is awful.

Why go on and explain every talent row and why it's bad when it's been outlined like 100 times in here. Are the talents that we pick traditionally actually good and powerful? Yeah, for the most part they are. What's awful and shit design is that all the other options on those rows are pretty awful in 99% of situations.

Our talents are shit. Our artifact tree is probably one of the worst and our artifact ability is absolutely the worst on a single target, and only passable when you have several mobs available for it to hit. What other artifact is even remotely close to as bad as ours on a single target, it heals you for like 3-4% of your maximum health, and last I checked most bosses in the EN really don't have a lot of adds.

Nobody reasonable here is really asking for much. DRW just being a flat DR and the DRW trait maybe reducing the CD of DRW would basically solve a lot of issues without actually giving us a baseline strong CD (it would literally be changing a CD we already have). Changing consumption to always heal a minimum of 20-25% still wouldn't make it the best, but it would make it passable against a single target. Buff mastery to a level where you don't cringe when you get it on your gear. Those aren't really major things and they really don't reinvent the wheel for the specialization. Outside of that it's literally adjusting some of shit artifact traits and talent tree options. The talent tree options are so bad though that they really would need to reinvent the wheel.

It still puzzles me that AoE grip is 3 minutes base and DKs are one of the worst tanks when it comes to magic damage bursts. Legendary that effects AMS and a talent that effects AMS but none of them reduce the CD on it, completely puzzling. Not saying the old 45 second CD would solve it, but it's crazy when you compare it to the short CD that every other tank has and the amount of DR it gives. I certainly don't want AMS to be a DR or change the way it works, but a 1 min CD base, let alone nothing to reduce that CD is awful.

Not sure why anybody would be happy having roughly the same damage as every other tank, probably the worst tool kit available and obviously the worst mobility. What do we excel at? We have good self healing (DHs do too), wider range AoE grip on a longer CD, zero untalented DR CDs? What are we exactly suppose to be the best in? I'll still play my DK because I still enjoy it, but it makes me sad that there is literally nothing we are the best at right now.

Also I don't claim to know BrM, but despite what all of Blizzard says I doubt the community can't figure out how to play it correctly. It was a popular tank in all of WoD and all of MoP, if people disappeared because it's bad I doubt the reasoning is that it's too difficult for previously top BrMs to figure out. TLDR; It's bad.

Just... thank you.
I'm happy to see you can still enjoy your dk. After running some M+, I have never felt tanking this unrewarding. There was nothing I could react to. I am just a dps that doesn't die. I'm currently gearing my alts and considering to ditch my main altogether for at least 2 major patches, if not the entirety of legion.

[Freedom]

At what point of Mythic + would you say Blood starts running into unfair disadvantages? At 850, +2Nelth/Maw was a joke, +3 Halls was rough, and +4 Vault with Bolstering we did not finish... though I suspect that last one was due to other things than my being Blood, and Vault being Vault.

[karasique]

Guys, what is your opinion on Tremble Before Me talent and mythic+ usage? It looks cool at first glance, although after some runs it seems that Tightening Grasp it better for me (kitting stuff). What do you think?

I am only using it now because of Sephuz's Secret.
Other tanks get loss of control effects on a shorter CD than our Asphyxiate so one has to adapt. The fear itself is useless outside of interrupting caster-y mobs like others have said.

PS: If you know what else could trigger the ring please share it with me.

At what point of Mythic + would you say Blood starts running into unfair disadvantages? At 850, +2Nelth/Maw was a joke, +3 Halls was rough, and +4 Vault with Bolstering we did not finish... though I suspect that last one was due to other things than my being Blood, and Vault being Vault.

Having done +7 and +8 (albeit not on timer) I would say that its not as stressful for a blood DK as it is dependent on group DPS. Timer and TTK are the main limitations and it would surprise me if other tanks could pull and survive multiple packs there at once.

[Snuffleupagus]

You don't ever want random fears interrupting casters and syncing mob melee attacks for very very obvious reasons, especially in larger pulls.

I've never used it, but I infer from your comment that the debuff is applied at the same time to mobs affected by DnD as oppsed to chance per mob?

What poor design.

[redfella]

It's a high chance with 10s internal CD, usually most mobs get feared at the same time.

An player just about interrupting an enemy mob heal/fear/etc can easily waste an interrupt by having the fear proc just at the same time, the fear breaks about instantly and the mob will restart the cast without being silenced, thus fucking up a possible interrupt rotation.

[Snuffleupagus]

It's a high chance with 10s internal CD, usually most mobs get feared at the same time.

An player just about interrupting an enemy mob heal/fear/etc can easily waste an interrupt by having the fear proc just at the same time, the fear breaks about instantly and the mob will restart the cast without being silenced, thus fucking up a possible interrupt rotation.

I did mention niche use where you have no other stuns/CC. It's not a great talent, I agree, but I can certainly see it being used.

Although if you end up in a situation where you lack CC, I think there are much bigger issues to worry about.